Death in the Floating City

by Tasha Alexander

  It pained me to destroy the illuminated page in front of me, even though I knew I had to. As I watched the ink begin to dissolve, I wondered about the man who had written the words. A scribe, probably a monk, just like Brother Giovanni. He would not be well pleased if he could know his efforts were being erased.

  No one else seemed troubled by our task. Colin described to Emma and Brother Giovanni all that had happened since we’d left them, and all that Donata had done up to that time.

  “I do not understand how she got through the window here and at the palazzo,” Emma said.

  “She’s quite strong,” Colin said. “She rows for her father, you know, as they can’t afford a gondolier. She used a rope to climb the wall. It wasn’t difficult in the least. She employed a similar strategy when sneaking out of her house after her father had forbidden her to help Emily. She climbed down a rope from her bedroom. Her father never doubted that she was inside reading.”

  “I can understand that working, but here?” Brother Giovanni asked. “Are we to believe no one noticed her climbing up the front of the hotel?”

  “Lots of people saw,” I said. “Just as we suspected, she made a grand show of it. She was wearing her mask and cape and stopped to wave and shout at the crowd as she went. No one thought anything was amiss.”

  “What about the bit of canvas in my globe?” Signor Polani asked.

  “She was carrying it with her from the time she cut it from the painting,” I said. “Waiting for an opportunity to put it to use. As you know, she called on you alone—which is why you were able to tell me she was too smart for your taste—and when she saw the globe, she knew I would look at it. We’d discussed my fascination with old globes the first day I met her in her father’s shop.”

  “But you, Emma,” Caterina said. “I swear I saw you in the portego the night Signor Barozzi was killed. Will you admit it now? You stand to lose nothing.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Emma said. “I have no memory of it.”

  “I remember it vividly,” Caterina said. “Mostly because your dress was so inappropriate for the season. Crimson velvet. I couldn’t see it well, but I could make out the fabric and saw the way the color picked up the—”

  Caterina swayed and started to lose her balance. Signor Polani caught her with an easy grace that suggested he had much practice at saving ladies when they had cause to faint.

  “It was not you, Emma,” Caterina said, making no effort to disentangle herself from Signor Polani’s arms. “It was Besina Barozzi, watching the scene from afar. She must have known something evil was going to happen that night.”

  “That’s quite enough,” Florentina said. “I’m tired of your ghosts and visions and lies.”

  Caterina mumbled an apology, and we all set back to work, all doing our best to come to terms with what Donata had done. Paolo and Emma were, of course, rightly angry with her and lamented that in Italy she would not be executed for her crime. Florentina and her husband, now free from suspicion of guilt, found the whole intrigue rather entertaining but did their best to hide the fact from the Barozzis. Caterina, still convinced she had missed her chance to speak to Besina’s ghost, was sullen and silent. My own feelings were complicated. I had no sympathy for Donata’s actions, but I was mourning the loss of a woman I’d come to consider a friend. I thought about her apology to me on the boat. It was not I from whom she needed forgiveness. Her betrayal of me was nothing compared to what she’d done to Signor Barozzi, and by extension Paolo and Emma. They would never be able to forgive her. Not that Paolo’s father was ever given a chance.

  Donata had recklessly destroyed lives because she could not cope with impossible love. I considered how many women, throughout the centuries, had been in situations equally—or even more—heartbreaking. So many of them came through with honor and dignity. What a shame, what a terrible shame, that Donata could not have found a way to do so.

  We worked for the rest of the day. Caterina and the Polanis begged their leave before dinner, but the rest of us continued into the night, stopping only once to send for food to fuel us. The sky had turned the bright blue that comes just before dawn and the first hints of pink streaked wispy clouds when we finally finished.

  “Now we must read it,” Paolo said. “Something good has to come out of all of this. My father cannot have died for nothing.”

  “We cannot read straight away, I am afraid,” Brother Giovanni said. “First, we must let the pages dry.” They were scattered around the suite at the moment, covering nearly every flat surface. We’d had to call for extra towels on which to lay them.

  “How long will that take?” Emma asked.

  “An hour or two at least,” Brother Giovanni said. “Maybe more. I want to be very careful. It’s essential.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “We can’t risk destroying this now.”

  “When the pages are dry, I will have to try to figure out the order in which they belong,” the monk said. “That will be no small task.”

  “What should we do?” Paolo asked.

  “Go home,” Colin said. “All of us need to sleep, you included, Giovanni. The pages can dry, and then we can do the rest.”

  We were exhausted, not only from staying awake all night but from the terrible mental strain under which we’d all been operating. Paolo took Emma home while Colin installed Brother Giovanni in a room of his own at the Danieli.

  “I do realize we need sleep,” he said to me, after he’d returned to our suite, “but I am also in desperate need of being alone with you. Really alone. No one detained in the next room. No one under our protection. Just you and me and…” He looked at the bed and then he looked at me and then he began to unfasten the long row of buttons on the back of my gown.

  * * *

  When Brother Giovanni rapped on the door of our suite at three o’clock the following afternoon, I was dead asleep but sprang to life at once. Colin, who could make himself presentable more quickly than I, answered the door and settled into the other room to start piecing together the proper order of the pages. I followed as soon as I could, envious of gentlemen’s clothing that did not fasten up the back and always require assistance.

  Colin and I had not slept much, but I had the energy of a small child who has been given an endless quantity of sweets by an overindulgent uncle. I found this frequently to be the case after Colin’s thorough and vigorous attentions to my person. There was an immediate period of inevitable and sweet paralysis after such interludes, when I could do nothing but sleep, but they did not last long, and once awake, I was awake.

  My husband had a much more difficult time moving past said sweet paralysis. His eyes may not have been quite so bright as mine when I joined him and Brother Giovanni, but his efforts were focused and diligent. We didn’t expect Emma and Paolo. We’d told them to sleep and then to wait for us. We would bring them the manuscript when we were done.

  First, though, I wanted to read it.

  Ordering the pages was an arduous task, at once tedious and tantalizing. We needed to put together sentences as if they were pieces in a puzzle but could not let ourselves be distracted by the words on the rest of the page. It was nearly seven o’clock by the time we’d finished.

  “We should eat something and then go to Ca’ Barozzi,” Colin said.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. “I want to read.”

  He understood my need. So while he and Brother Giovanni sat down to a quick dinner, I went to Caffè Florian, ordered a pot of tea, and read, knowing it would take some time for me to translate from the old Italian.

  Besina Barozzi always knew she was not among the fortunate—or unfortunate, depending on one’s perspective—who could rely on beauty. She didn’t possess it. It was her mind, not her too-long nose or thin lips, that would have to set her apart from the profusion of stunning girls for which Venice was famous.

  I was nearly at the end when they came to collect me, ready to go to Emma and Paolo. I said nothing, only held up my han
d to tell them to wait. Tears streamed down my face. I’d never read anything so sad. When I finished, I collected myself and gathered up the pages. There still was work to be done.

  Un Libro d’Amore

  xxv

  Nicolò had already started to feel ill when he left San Zaccaria, but he put it down to grief. He had expected to feel no differently. It was only some days later, when he could no longer ignore the fever, that he began to worry. He wrote the changes to his will. He signed them, with two witnesses present: his nephew, Nicolò Vitturi, Lucia’s son; and the man who for years had been the Vendelino family solicitor. Vitturi, in different circumstances, would have expected to be named Nicolò’s heir. Nicolò thought it best to deal directly with his inevitable disappointment.

  Nicolò had explained everything at length, and while his nephew did not much like the idea, he promised he would respect his uncle’s wishes. It was not his own fortunes that concerned him, he said, but he wasn’t sure it was wise to ally the family with the Barozzis. They could not be trusted.

  In a different time, this would have amused Nicolò. Today it served to confirm he was doing the right thing. Enough of these feuds and vendettas. It was time for a new way.

  Nicolò was not naive. He thought his nephew might give trouble, might go back on his word. With great care and the finest paintbrush he could find, he made a small addition to a painting by Titian he had acquired some years before. A painting that hung in Ca’ Vendelino. He hid the codicil in the scene. He signed it, and he had his solicitor sign it as well. The man promised that if any trouble ensued, he would direct the family to the message in this painting and to the copy of the new will hidden behind its canvas.

  Two days later, Nicolò Vendelino succumbed to the fever that consumed him. He smiled as he took his last breath, knowing that now, at last, he would be with Besina.

  It fell to me, Father Marco Grissoni, confessor of Besina Rosso, born Barozzi, to write this account, and I swear to its truthfulness. I have gone to great lengths to confirm from others involved the validity of those things told me by Besina the night before her death. She was wholly faithful in recounting her story.

  Now, as directed by her, I will turn this book into another, before giving it to her son, Tomaso Rosso, so that when he is grown, he can know the truth about his mother.

  26

  Paolo grew increasingly frenetic as we started to read Besina’s story to him after we’d arrived at Ca’ Barozzi. He couldn’t sit still. After a few minutes he interrupted, demanding that we stop.

  “I can’t take it,” he said. “Please do not think me ungrateful for all the work you’ve done or uninterested in the plight of my ancestor. Someday, I will want to know more, but right now, all I care about is the end. What happened? Is there an inheritance for me?”

  “There is,” I said. I couldn’t really blame him for wanting to cut to what mattered the most to him. He’d lost his father. He’d been through enough. I summarized Nicolò’s actions and the pledge he and Lorenzo had made.

  “So all we need to do is find the codicil?” Emma asked.

  “Assuming it’s still there, and assuming it will be upheld in court,” Colin said. “Most likely you’ll get something, but it’s hard to predict what.”

  “Why are we sitting here?” Paolo asked. “Let’s go to Ca’ Vendelino.”

  Colin and I persuaded him it would be best if we went alone. There was still much bad blood between the two families, and Paolo’s presence, demanding money, was unlikely to help the situation. Paolo saw the wisdom of this and agreed to stay behind. We also decided not to go at all until the following day, after we’d had time to do a bit more research on the fate of Nicolò’s revised will.

  Zaneta received us in the portego the following afternoon and sent for Angelo at once when she saw the grave looks on our faces. We told them everything that had happened in regard to Signor Barozzi’s death, sparing no detail. Angelo did not look up from the floor once we told him what Donata had done.

  His mother, on the other hand, was of a different mind entirely. She whacked her son soundly on the arm. “You foolish, foolish man,” she said. “To behave in such a manner. To treat a woman in such a way. It is a disgrace.”

  “You sent her away,” he said. “You didn’t approve of her.”

  “Of course I didn’t. I thought you could make a better marriage, and you did. You never once suggested you wanted anything else.”

  Angelo didn’t say anything.

  Zaneta narrowed her eyes. “You never wanted anything else, did you? This is no story of forbidden love. You liked Donata well enough and were happy to dally with her. You just didn’t think she’d ever really come back to Venice, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. She was happy in Paris.”

  “You had no right to do this despicable thing,” Zaneta said. “I am ashamed. What will become of this child now? Your child, Angelo? His mother will spend the rest of her life in prison. Are you going to raise it?”

  “No, of course not,” Angelo said. Any sign of shame or compunction washed away from his face. “I could not ask that of my wife.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” Zaneta said. “You stupid, foolish man.” She whacked him again.

  “There is one other thing,” Colin said. “Something you may not like to hear.” He told them about the will. About the painting.

  Angelo was incredulous. Zaneta sat forward in her chair and looked straight into my eyes. “Is this a valid will?”

  “So far as we can determine, yes. Particularly if, as the manuscript suggests, we find the full text as executed by Nicolò’s solicitor.”

  “Before we discuss this further, we ought to see if this codicil is still there.” She all but leapt from her seat and stormed to the room that contained the painting in question. Angelo was right behind her.

  “Mamma,” he said, “surely this doesn’t matter. We can fight this. Whatever some solicitor said about the validity of unusual codicils, there’s no reason to give up. Surely the court—”

  Zaneta stopped walking and turned to her son. “I do not care what a court says. I do what is right.”

  Colin lowered the painting from the wall and placed it facedown on a table after I’d cushioned the surface with a soft shawl. Using extreme care and a pocketknife, he removed the backing from the frame.

  “I don’t know enough about frames to know whether this one is the original,” he said. The backing gone, we all stared at the canvas in front of us. Working from the bottom right-hand corner, Colin started to pull it away. “It’s blank.”

  It was just an extra layer of protection—and there, behind it, was a folded and sealed document. None of us were in doubt of the contents. Colin handed it to Zaneta.

  “Mamma—”

  His mother stopped him with the sternness in her eyes. “This is mine to read and mine to make a decision about,” she said. “Leave me, all of you.”

  There was no question we would respect her wishes. At least no question that Colin and I would respect her wishes. As for Angelo, I can offer no insight as to his thoughts or planned actions. My husband and I returned to the hotel, where we would wait to hear from Zaneta.

  In the meantime, I asked Brother Giovanni to assist me in transcribing Besina’s story so that it could be read without risking damage to the original pages. I assumed that at some point Paolo would want to see it, and I wanted to have a copy as well. We divided the work and by the end of the evening had made a great deal of progress. Before Colin and I had retired to bed, there was a sharp knock on our door.

  “Signora Vendelino,” Colin said. “What a surprise.”

  “I want to read this document you have,” she said, “and I want to read it now.”

  “Of course.” He invited her into the room.

  “We’ve begun a transcription,” I said, “but I imagine you would prefer to see the original, just to guard against any unintentional mistakes we may have made.”

  “Please,”
she said.

  We set her up on the now clear table where only two nights earlier we’d worked so frantically to reveal the hidden text. She asked to be left alone, so we closed the door and waited in the sitting room.

  Two hours later, Zaneta opened the door and stood in front of us, her eyes red and swollen. “I would like you to ask Signor Barozzi if I may call on him tomorrow at one o’clock. Will you do that for me?”

  We agreed to set up the meeting. She gave us no indication as to what she planned to say once there. Expressing her thanks for all we had done, Zaneta took her leave.

  * * *

  The next morning, I sent notes to Caterina Brexiano and to Signora Polani to inform them of the closing details of the case. As for Signor Polani, I was content to let his wife fill in the details for him. Caterina would likely be in touch with Paolo. She would want to know the rest of Besina’s story. That sorted, I settled back into transcribing the manuscript until a message arrived from the police station where Donata was being held. She wanted to see me. Colin and Brother Giovanni were perfectly capable of finishing our work without me, so I set off from the water entrance, not feeling much like walking. The day was exceptionally warm, and my spirits had taken a dive after I read Donata’s note. Not because of something she had said but because of the havoc she had wreaked on so many lives.

  The police offered me coffee and settled me into a small, dingy room. The sole window was covered with thick iron bars, and the only furniture in the space was a battered-looking table with four chairs around it. I sat in one of them and waited until an officer led Donata, her hands in restraints, to the one across the table from me.

  “Hello.” I hardly knew what to say.

  “Thank you for coming. I know I don’t deserve it,” she said. “My father died last night, in his sleep. I’ll never know if the knowledge of what I did killed him or if he would have died anyway. If it’s the latter, I wish there had been some way to have spared him such pain in his final days.”