by Dave Duncan
Nevertheless, I have seldom been happier to hear the downstairs door knocker. Three hours after sunset, when the curfew rings, the Barbolanos’ antiquated watchman, Luigi, shoots the night bolts on the watergate. About the same time I do the same for our front door, but that night I had not yet done so, and Giorgio would be up in the garret, helping Mama stack children in beds. I excused myself and went out to peer down the stairwell while Luigi spoke through the hatch. If the caller wanted sier Alvise or one of the Marcianas, Luigi would go and tell them, but most late visitors want the Maestro, in which case the old man looks hopefully upward and waves if I am there. He waved. I waved back.
Trouble came plodding up the four flights of stairs, carrying his bag in his left hand. My face must have shown him just how pleased I was to see him, because his smile was uncertain.
“I brought a first instalment on your master’s fee,” he said hastily. “ Sier Zuanbattista asked me to explain that he does not keep enough bullion around the house to pay it all at once.”
“Very reasonable,” I said, impressed to see any money so soon. “I can congratulate you on being welcomed into the family?”
Even his efforts to look modest turned out smug. “They’re making the best of a bad job. The old man’s being a little stingier than I had hoped on the dowry. That’s Giro’s doing, of course, but Grazia is working on them. I won’t be going back to watermelon and polenta! There will be an intimate wedding, just a few dozen guests. October seventh. That’s as soon as they can reasonably arrange it.”
Even that was indecently short notice, socially speaking, but after the previous night there might be good reason to move things speedily along.
“Congratulations.” Since his hand was in a sling I did not have to shake it. Danese had every excuse to be satisfied. Life stretched out before him as an unbroken paradise of silk sheets and gelado -San Barnaba boy makes good. From boy toy to wealth and influence; his future was assured.
“They’ll get me into the Great Council right away and organize a political career for me-I’ve no talent for commerce. Rhetoric and elocution lessons.”
“You certainly have the voice for it,” I said, stalling for time. “You’ve seen the Hall of the Great Council?”
“Giro said the same thing. I’ve been told about it.”
“About seventy paces long.” Many good men have failed in Venetian politics because they could not make themselves heard in such a vastness. My mind shied away from an image of a thousand or more nobles sitting there listening to Danese Dolfin pontificate.
“I’ll see you and the Maestro are invited to the wedding.”
“He won’t come, but I certainly will.” I would take Violetta and bask in the massed jealousy of all the other male guests.
Having given the Maestro enough time to disappear, I led the way into the atelier. The second door, the one through to the dining room, is not exactly secret, but it needs a sharp eye to see it. Danese counted out ten gold sequins and I fetched the scales. The coins were full weight, so I made out a receipt for twenty-seven ducats, four lire. I wrote it in my finest Cancellaresca Formata hand, just for a change, and sealed it with the Maestro’s signet.
“Very pretty!” he said. “You ever need a job as a scribe, just let me know.”
“Thank you.” I would rather jump off a bell tower. “Anything else?”
“Well…Yes, there is.” Danese turned on his most unctuous smile, cute as a shampooed puppy.
My heart sank like the doge’s wedding ring. As far as society knew, Danese and Grazia were not yet married, so propriety would not allow them to live under the same roof before the wedding. It was late on a Sunday evening, although that was his fault, not mine. I put on my stupid face and waited attentively, so he would have to ask. Ask he did. Shyness had never been one of his faults.
I shuddered to think what the Maestro would say, but the request was not unreasonable. I admitted we had a spare bedroom. It is a luxurious twenty-foot cube and, like everywhere else in the Ca’ Barbolano, is opulently endowed with art and treasures. I refrained from mentioning that I kept a detailed inventory of its contents. Nor did I tuck him in and hear his prayers.
I always wake at dawn, just moments before the marangona rings. By the time I had dressed and reached the kitchen in search of hot water, Mama Angeli was already baking bread and feeding six or seven offspring gathered around the big table. I warned her that we had a houseguest.
Any apprentice is expected to keep his master’s work area clean, and early morning is almost the only time the Maestro is not anchored in the atelier. Monday is my day to wash the floor, a job I rarely manage to finish before he appears; then I have to postpone the rest until after he goes to bed. That day I completed it, though, and had fetched a tray with my usual breakfast of cheese, hot rolls, and a steaming cup of kahve. I was hard at work deciphering the illegible work notes when he came hobbling in, but he disappeared into the red chair with a book, saying nothing. Obviously he had not yet learned about Danese.
I rarely speak before he does in the morning. It is not his best time. About an hour went by before he suddenly said, “Forget about those notes. Throw them out. I was wrong. I need more sulfur.”
“The Lord be with you this fine day, master.”
“And with you. I need it right away.”
I rose. “Swift as the stooping eagle.”
He grunted. “I meant send Giorgio. The Dona horoscope is urgent.”
I took some money from the cash cache and went in search of Giorgio. Giorgio, I learned, was presently delivering sier Danese to the Ca’ Sanudo. Before leaving, sier Danese had eaten a large breakfast, so Mama informed me in unusually cool tones.
“Did he take his bag when he left?” I asked hopefully.
Like any first-class servant, Mama can make her feelings known without a word or expression that could possibly cause offence, but the way she shook her chins clearly indicated that she shared my opinion of Danese. Fortunately Giorgio walked in just then, saving me from having to break the bad news to the Maestro so early in the day.
I explained about the sulfur. I walked him to the top of the stairs, so we would be alone when I asked, “Did he tip you for the ride?”
Since Mama has all the spare flesh in the family, Giorgio has only one chin. He wears a neatly trimmed beard on it. The beard bristled. “No.”
“You amaze me,” I said. Danese had not rewarded Mama for his breakfast, either, although guests are expected to tip their hosts’ servants liberally. Perhaps he really was broke, if he had not yet gotten his talons into Grazia’s dowry, but I suspected that the new Danese Dolfin was the same old scrounger I had known back in San Barnaba. I went back to start wrestling with aspects, ascendants, conjunctions, and ephemerides-casting a horoscope, that is.
Near to dinnertime, I explained the situation. The Maestro’s reaction was as negative as I had expected, although he stopped short of turning me into a toad. There are very few people in the world whose company he enjoys, and freeloading guests belong in the nether circles of hell.
“Get rid of him!”
“Yes, master. If I know Danese, though, he will turn up after dark and pull his lost-waif act again. He cannot defend himself with his arm in a sling, so turning him out in the streets at night would be unfair. I can tell him that tonight is the last night.”
“Pack his bag and put it outside the door.”
“He may bring another sack of sequins with him.”
Grunt. Scowl. “Take the money and then throw him out.”
“Yes, master.” Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I assumed he did not mean that.
I copied out the horoscope in fair. The Maestro approved it with barely a glance, and I went out on foot to deliver it, wanting the exercise. The lady whose future I had foretold did not thank me in person, being less than a month old.
Supper came and went with no sign of Danese, but if he turned up late again he would have to be given a second night’s
shelter.
Monday being my fencing night, I retrieved my rapier and dagger from the top of the wardrobe, made sure Giorgio knew exactly what to tell Danese, and trotted happily down the stairs. As I neared the piano nobile, I heard voices. There, just inside the doorway, stood our landlord, sier Alvise Barbolano, chattering happily to sier Danese Dolfin. Danese had a lute slung on his back and a very large leather portmanteau at his feet.
Sier Alvise is older than San Marco, gaunt and stooped and toothless. He moves in a senile fog much of the time, with disconcerting flashes of shrewd cunning, and he can throw the entire Nostradamus household out on its collective ear at any time without a moment’s notice. We are all, even the Maestro, very nice to sier Alvise. I cast horoscopes for his ships, mix rat poison for his rats, and audit the Marcianas’ ledgers for him so they do not cheat him unreasonably.
He beamed his gums at me. “Ah, er…Zeno! You didn’t warn me you would be entertaining sier, er…”
“Dolfin,” murmured Danese.
“Dolfin. I knew his father, er, Domenico, when I was wha’ch’m’call’it at Padua! Or was it Verona?”
“Both, clarissimo. My grandfather.”
“Quite. And, um, Danese has promised to play his lute for us as soon as his arm heals. Wonderful young fellow, his father, er, Domenico! Wonderful singing voice…” And so on.
Eventually I managed to make my excuses and creep back upstairs to warn everyone that Danese had arrived to stay.
My fencing that night was terrible. I learned nothing except some spectacular invective, which Captain Colleoni must have picked up in his campaigning days during an especially nasty siege. Even my friend Fulgentio Trau hammered bruises all over my chest and shoulders. I can usually give him as good as he gives me, which is reasonable, as we are exactly the same size and weight and were born only a few days apart.
Fulgentio lives in San Remo also, so we strolled home together through the hot and moonless darkness, our way lit by two Trau servants walking ahead with torches. That saved me from having to light my own torch, but it was a sad reminder that the Traus, although commoners, are richer than Croesus ever was. Fulgentio’s only fault is that he tries too hard to share his good fortune and cannot see how humiliating that can be to us deserving poor. In bad weather he arrives by private boat and gives rides home to three or four of us. That night the air was so unbearably steamy that I wondered why he had chosen to come on foot and why he had not invited others to walk with us. I am suspicious by nature; Fulgentio is not.
The doge’s equerries are always chosen from the citizen class, but usually from those in humble circumstances, so Fulgentio’s appointment had been a surprise. Some members of the Senate had grumbled that they normally worried about the equerries accepting gifts, but now they had to worry about this one offering them. The doge himself had risen to point out that equerries are appointed for life, or until they reach sixty, and most of his were holdovers from previous reigns. One of the equerries’ duties, he had added pointedly, was to guard the ducal bedchamber at night and he had chosen Trau because he was an excellent swordsman-an exaggeration, but one I could take as a personal compliment when I heard about it.
Like the senators, I could not see why Fulgentio should want such a tedious job, playing servant, showing visitors around the palace, and so on. He just said it would be less boring than banking and he would mingle with the great. Why should he want to do that, though? Most of them are too dull to be admirable and not evil enough to be interesting. I am convinced that Fulgentio is completely honest and honorable, but his brothers are quite rich enough to have won him the job by bribing even the doge. More likely the family has some sinister purpose in mind for him that he hasn’t realized yet.
So we walked along calli, over bridges, and across campi, grumbling about the endless summer overstaying its welcome. I admit I was glad of the company, although I never walk the streets at night without making sure I do not look worth robbing, which is not difficult for me. Suddenly my companion changed the subject.
“I hear you were displaying your pathetic swordsmanship on the Rio del Vin yesterday.”
I made some brief remarks.
“Well? Were you?”
“My lips are sealed. What else did you hear?”
He laughed because I had not denied the story. “That sier Zuanbattista’s daughter eloped with his wife’s gigolo. It’s all over the city, Alfeo! There wasn’t a single Contarini to be seen in the Great Council today and usually there’s at least a score of them clucking around there. Hilarious!”
I groaned. “I suppose this means the end of Sanudo’s ducal ambitions?”
“His what?” Fulgentio said sharply. “Him? Doge? He’s a fine man, one of the best, but he could never afford to be doge, my lad! Not before the Second Coming, anyway. Have you any idea of the gold it takes to buy the votes of the forty-one? Or the running expenses in office? Many a doge is worth millions of ducats when he is elected and dies bankrupt. That printing business of Sanudo’s earns him maybe one thousand ducats a year, and the rest of his interests have gone downhill while he’s been gone. He’s been neglecting them! The best fertilizer is the shadow of the farmer on the field, remember.”
“He may have made a lira or two on the side in Constantinople?”
“Not as I hear it. The Senate always expects a ducat’s worth of display for every soldo it votes for its ambassadors’ expenses. A diplomatic posting can bankrupt a man, no matter how rich he was beforehand, and the general view is that Sanudo was unusually honest while he was there.”
“He owns large estates on the mainland.”
Fulgentio snorted. “What if he does? Land is a safe investment but it doesn’t produce great revenues. The only way Sanudo could finance a run at the dogeship would be to sell everything he owns, and that would leave his son penniless. No Venetian patrician ever breaks up the family fortune. He hoards it to pass on to his sons. Nobles think in terms of centuries.”
This was a startling contradiction of what Violetta had told me. Her source must be mostly pillow talk, either direct or secondhand. Fulgentio was in a unique position, surrounded by money at home and political power at work. She knew what people wanted. He might be a better judge of what they could get.
Poor Eva! Her dreams had been vain even before Danese Dolfin sank her ship. And poor Danese, who would never be the doge’s son-in-law!
7
L ife was strained around Ca’ Barbolano for the next few days. To be honest, Danese troubled no one but the servants. He rose early, ate breakfast, and disappeared until nightfall. Twice more he brought instalments of the Sanudo fee back with him, but he was curt with Mama and Giorgio, never tipped them, and snapped at their children. He cultivated old sier Alvise and his wife, even singing for them-a lute is fingered with the left hand, and he could still strum with the right. As long as he kept the Barbolanos happy, we dared not evict him.
The Maestro never saw him, but he resented the interloper’s presence unreasonably and considered the intrusion to be all my fault. Never easy to live with, he became steadily more pettifogging, punctilious, and persnickety than ever. I retaliated with an odious servility, creeping around on tiptoe and inserting “master” into every phrase. That made him even madder, as I intended.
Thursday evening brought unwelcome relief. He and I were supping in our usual silver and crystal splendor, seated under priceless Murano chandeliers at a damask-draped table that can hold fifty. I was savoring seconds of Mama’s exquisite Cape Longhe in Padella. He was picking at his plate with his fork as if looking for pearls; I did not have the heart to tell him that pearls come from oysters, not clams. I had arranged to go carousing with Fulgentio, just to get out of the house.
“You should eat more, master,” I said. “You have told me more than once, lustrissimo, that fasting is very bad for the brain, as evidenced, I believe you instanced, master, by the hallucinatory disquisitions of certain holy-”
“And you should ea
t more because it is the only useful purpose to which you put your mouth.”
Before I could frame a suitably unctuous apology, there was a rap on the door and Marco Martini strode in without waiting for a response. Martini is one of the fanti who guard the door when the Council of Ten meets and generally run its errands. They seem innocuous enough in their blue cloaks, but look at them closely enough and you will see that each one carries a rapier hidden in the folds, hanging vertically under his left arm. Martini is short and trim, aged around forty, with a no-nonsense expression stressed by a pointed beard that juts forward. He has the reputation of being handy with a sword, but I can’t vouch for that.
Giorgio hovered behind him, looking alarmed. I sprang up and bowed, prepared to leave if told to do so and hoping it was not me he wanted.
“Maestro Filippo Nostradamus?”
If the doge had been taken ill, one of his equerries would have come, and would have addressed Nostradamus as “Doctor.”
The Maestro snorted. “By the saints, Marco, if you’ve forgotten my name, it is time you retired.”
“The Most Excellent Council of Ten,” the fante continued without taking offense, “requests and requires that you attend Their Excellencies this evening at your imminent convenience.”
Some people would have fainted out cold on the floor. The Maestro calmly dabbed at his wizened lips with a finely starched napkin. “It is always an honor to wait upon the noble lords. I may follow you in my own boat?”
“That will be permitted. I shall report that you are on your way.” Marco nodded at me. “Don’t forget.” With a hint of a trace of a shadow of a bow, he departed.