The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  William turned to bring the cordial to Oldcastle. Then he would gather him up and help him home. The English embassy had done due service by their hosts. They might, with honour, retire from the field. The fear their false status would be discovered had hung over William like a threatening cloud the whole feast. He would be glad for the shelter of the House of the White Lion.

  Oldcastle was lingering, morose, by the window. He studiously avoided the eyes of others. As William joined him so did Prospero. Prospero’s face was clouded; his thin lips were pressed as straight as a line of pikes before the battle starts.

  ‘Beware, my lords,’ the Count said.

  William looked at him in astonishment, at the anger in the voice of the man whose seeming depthless calm was turned to spleen.

  ‘That one is not to be trusted,’ the Count continued.

  ‘Who, my lord, who is not to be trusted?’ William interrupted.

  ‘That woman with whom you spoke but a moment ago.’

  ‘Surely you are mistaken, my lord,’ said William, ‘that lady was a diverting conversation and nothing more.’

  ‘That is no lady but a whore,’ said Prospero.

  William gaped, as much to hear Prospero speak in such terms as at the venom in his voice.

  ‘Though some seek to gild that truth with false titles,’ the Count went on. ‘ “Honest courtesans” they call themselves. What is a courtesan if not a whore? And what is an honest whore if not a paradox that transforms beauty into a bawd? That mistakes brazen talk for truth. I say again, beware.’

  The initial storm of his words subsided. The former Prospero of still waters began to return. The ripples from whatever stone had disturbed his calm began to fade. Prospero pulled a smile back to his lips.

  ‘I am sorry to speak with such harshness,’ he said. ‘Venice is baited with beauty to trap the unwary. I would spare you its dangers, if I may.’

  William, mind again at a whirl, seeking to bring all this new matter into focus, bowed. He gestured to Oldcastle. Grateful that his torture was at an end, Oldcastle drained his glass and led them from the palace.

  Too hot, too hot!

  This time it was Prospero who stood and watched as others departed. He had warned Isabella had he not? This was how she rewarded his forbearance? Why did she take these steps against him? He cast his mind back fourteen years and replayed incident after incident in his mind. No man could say he had not tried to save her, to protect her from the dangers that surrounded her. Then and now, then and now. If she had only chosen differently, how different both their lives might have been. He had seen the ring she still wore. The ring he had given her. She might deny it now but he knew her true feelings then. Did she owe him nothing? His fingers ground against each other.

  His anger at Isabella was matched only by his anger at himself. Such an unseemly loss of control; so much revealed and to that cunning boy Fallow who thought too much. He breathed out a sigh to still the whirlwind in his chest. He had a tremor cordis on him. Be calm, be calm, he thought.

  He had spoken with Vittoria Accoramboni. He had set her in motion and she would be the wheel that would grind up the English. When they were done and Accoramboni and her husband in their turn taken and turned to chaff then, then, he would deal with Isabella. Patience. Would he had it, he thought, to sit like a statue staring at the very thing that stirred him, unmoving.

  A loud laugh drew Prospero’s attention. A knot of young men, deep in their cups, were neighing and snorting and stamping their feet at some tale. Their brilliant particoloured hose showed them to be members of the Compagnie della Calza, a society Prospero knew to be popular with the wealthy youth of Venice and much resented by all others. They distinguished themselves by their ostentatious dress and their prideful displays of conspicuous wealth. At the heart of the group stood the long-haired boy that had accosted Isabella earlier. An idea began to form in Prospero’s mind. A vengeful thought. A cruel thought. A thought that like an icicle, drop by drop, grew until, full-formed, its cold weight snapped and fell.

  He need not wait. He might achieve all at once. Prospero walked across the room and began to engage the young man in conversation.

  Let heaven see the pranks

  William barely slept.

  The first hint of light through the shutters had driven from him all hope of sleep. All that had occurred at the feast occupied his thoughts. He had the knowledge but not the understanding of it. It nagged at him like a poem in which he knew the words but could not make them fit the metre. It was too early to be abroad but he could not lie still. He kicked at Oldcastle’s bed to wake him and discuss the matter.

  ‘Pestilential toad,’ Oldcastle howled at William. He flapped his hands at the boy from within a mound of sheets. ‘Is it not enough that you drag me to this nightmarish, topsy-turvy city but you will not let me sleep through it?’

  Oldcastle subsided to muttering. ‘Roads are rivers, women dressed as men, feasts turn to brawls. It is enough to turn a man mad.’

  ‘Be cheerful, Nick,’ said William.

  These words were barely out of William’s mouth before Oldcastle sat upright in the bed. He pointed an accusing finger.

  ‘Zounds! What foolish prating advice is this? You command me be cheerful? Command me? As if a mood were a dog or a horse to be called by its master’s voice? I am not cheerful nor will I become so by being told to be so. I am sick of heart and sick of stomach and I will not be cheerful. For certain, not at the command of some want-beard boy. Begone flibbertigibbet, let a troubled soul rest.’

  William flung up his hands. Oldcastle, glaring, fell back, rolled over to face the wall and pulled the sheets about his head. With much noise and sighing, William pulled on his clothes and stamped out of the room.

  William walked an hour through the city before his temper cooled. Was it not enough that he must unpick the hemp that tangled him and Oldcastle? Must he do it with the old man’s calumnious contempt for company?

  He sighed at his own distemper. Hemminges’ death was the cause of Oldcastle’s mood. His was the poison of deep grief that has no cure but time. William’s own was derived as much from frustration at how little he could aid Oldcastle as any true fault of the old man’s.

  William passed south through Rialto and its markets. He stopped to buy food. He nodded to the stall owner at the offer to dress a plate of polenta with a hash of salted cod. On his first visit to the market on his way to the banker and tailor he had tried this baccalà mantecato reluctantly and at Salarino’s insistence. Now he sought it out. As he ate he conversed with the stallholder as best he could, less a matter of Latin and more of gestures. Sated, William walked away along the edge of the Canal Grande. The trouble with actors, William mused of Oldcastle as he walked, is that they are not content simply to have a feeling. They must parade it before an audience to have it noted and applauded.

  William turned into the back streets and followed the path of small canals. The light reflecting from the water sent ornate patterns dancing high on the red plastered walls of houses. Oldcastle had the right of it, of course, he thought. One could no more command one’s humours than the wind or sea. Moods came at their own prompting. Though gall and melancholy could be fed, as Oldcastle seemed to do, with too much wine and heavy food to thicken the blood. The all-present water of Venice, ever lapping at the walls and casting strange lights, played its part. It turned thoughts rolling inwards in the mind.

  William looked up at the roofs of the houses opposite. Above them the campanile, the bell towers of Venice’s many churches, overpeered the city. He set his eye on one he recognised and set out for it.

  He flicked a loose pebble into the canal as he passed and watched the water close over it. What had brought about the sudden ill humour in Prospero? The Count was no actor to parade his feelings wantonly. Something had dragged his ill temper out into the open.

  William came to a bridge. It had, set in the floor of its central span, four white marble footprints. One was place
d in each corner, as if four men had stood and dug their rear heels into the stone of the bridge. This must be one of the Ponte dei Pugni, the Bridge of Fists, that Salarino had told him about. At the winter celebrations, Salarino had explained, the clans of Venice would meet, one either side of the canal. Their champions would come and stand facing each other in the centre of the bridge, their feet set on the marble footprints. Then the two sides would fight each other until one side was driven back or all thrown into the canal. That’s one way to prevent more general riot, William thought. Such is the outward triumph of Venice that its people now war against each other.

  He walked over to one of the four marble footprints. Here I stand with Oldcastle, he thought, waiting to deliver my charge to the Signoria and leave the city. He paced to his left and the next of the marble footprints. Here stood Prospero. Was he just walking beside them? Or was he a dog at their heels?

  Who stood opposite them? William walked to the other side of the bridge and stared at the third footprint. The Duchess of Bracciano, Vittoria Accoramboni: what was he to her or she to him? Prospero had some business with her. William had not been so distracted by Isabella Lisarro as to fail to observe Prospero and Vittoria with their heads bowed together in conversation of great pith and moment. Nor had he failed to observe Vittoria’s touch upon Prospero’s arm.

  He crossed to the last of the marble footsteps. What of Isabella Lisarro? Where came her interest in William and Oldcastle? Were he and Oldcastle just curious pleasures, toys for a cat to play with? Was her interest in them, or in the company they kept?

  William took a last look at the prints and resumed his walking. He thought of England. What would his daughter Susanna think of Venice and its wonders? Anne he felt, would have been of Oldcastle’s humour, longing for the comfort of the familiar. What was it that made some rejoice in new experience and others flee from it?

  He returned to his first thought. Whence came Prospero’s anger at the finish of the night? What of his warning? Did he know Lisarro of old? Had they been lovers? Sure, that was an answer in which lay much explanation. Seeing William and her in conversation he had assumed much more than had occurred. What matter that there had been nothing to offend in it? Trifles light as air are to jealous minds confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ. Nor could William deny that Isabella Lisarro had been in his dreams that night.

  He emerged from an alley onto the Fondamenta della Zattere, the long street alongside the Canale della Giudecca. Ahead of him was a white-fronted church. He walked up to admire the three statues at the top of the front of the building, a statue of Jesus and two saints he did not recognise. As he came closer to the church he saw there was a small carved lion’s head set in the wall with a Latin inscription above it: ‘For the Magistrates of Public Health, the sestiere of Dorsoduro’. A hole yawned in the mouth of the carved lion, one of the bocca di leone, the places where anonymous accusations could be placed for the attention of the Signoria.

  He thought for a moment of returning to the House of the White Lion, fetching the packet of letters, pushing it into the mouth of the bocca di leone and having done with Venice and its mysteries. Oldcastle would be glad if he did. William stared at the carved lion and thought again of one of his mother’s sayings: the blood stirs more to rouse a lion than to start a hare. Truly, Venice had much to stir him. Isabella Lisarro being one part of it.

  If William were right in his speculation of Prospero’s jealousy, then Prospero’s anger lay as much with William as with Lisarro. In that much danger. Yet Prospero had done Oldcastle and he much service on the road, and that did not speak of ill intent. Not at first.

  Too many questions, he thought, and too few answers. William kept walking.

  You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams

  ‘You see. Despite the foretold dangers of the feast, I live still,’ said Vittoria Accoramboni.

  ‘I thank Heaven for it,’ said Isabella.

  ‘Heaven had naught to do with it,’ Vittoria responded.

  The two women were once again ensconced in the Duchess’s study.

  Vittoria paced before the windows. Isabella sat in an ornate chair. She watched Vittoria flutter about the room and wondered at it.

  ‘Lady, something has happened?’ Isabella asked.

  Vittoria threw up her hands. She came and sat by Isabella.

  ‘The Signoria,’ Vittoria began and then stopped to smooth her dress.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The Signoria informs my husband that the Pope has sent assassins to Venice.’ She did not look at Isabella.

  Isabella fought her urge to trumpet the confirmation of her suspicions. At last, her warning would be acknowledged.

  ‘They know no more than that,’ Vittoria continued. ‘They say only that the Pope has been heard to boast that he will not be long defied. That justice will be served for his nephew. The rest they guess at.’

  Vittoria could not sit still. She rose to resume her pacing.

  ‘Justice? Hah!’ she said. ‘What does that wicked man know of justice?’

  Vittoria crushed her hand into a fist. She shook it at the window, at Rome. ‘Would I had this Pope’s throat within my hand’s reach. I’d show him such a deal of justice.’ She took a great breath.

  Gathering herself, Vittoria turned and took her place by Isabella’s seat. She took up her glass and gestured at Isabella, who had remained silent.

  ‘Tell me, did you learn anything at the feast?’

  Isabella studied the other woman. The calm in her words were as fragile as an egg’s shell. Vittoria’s glass of wine was nearly drained in one swallow.

  ‘Lady, you are frightened. There’s no –’

  ‘Frightened?’ Vittoria Accoramboni’s voice rose. ‘Angry, yes. Frightened, no. Do not confuse one for the other.’

  Isabella did not think she had it wrong. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I would have such fears in me were I you. I attributed my weakness to you.’

  Isabella saw the other woman mollified. For herself, she did not think fear weakness. Fear leads to caution. Caution before a threat of murder is no more than sense.

  ‘I spent much time talking to the Count of Genoa’s companions. The English,’ said Isabella. ‘They are strange. The older man seemed much distract. I could not discern the cause. There seemed none. The younger was full of fine words and fancies. The difference ’twixt his mood and his fellow’s was, itself, a curiosity. I did not discern in them malice.’

  ‘Was your commerce with them long? That you might safely make that judgment?’ Vittoria said.

  Isabella heard in her question some admonition. She bridled at the tone. ‘The youth and I spoke of many things,’ she said. ‘Of Venice, of England, of his companion, of poetry.’

  ‘Poetry?’ Vittoria broke in scornfully. ‘I see it was a deep examination.’

  ‘I would do more,’ Isabella replied, ‘if time permitted. I have arranged to meet with him again.’ Feeling unaccountably attacked, she sought to defend herself. ‘I think a man inclined to poetry is less inclined to murder.’

  ‘Then you are the more deceived,’ Vittoria said, her brow rising in triumph. ‘Whilst you have been engaged in questions of metre and rhyme, I have made more solid investigation of my own. My spies tell me that these English, if they are truly English, lie at the heart of the threat to me and my husband.’

  ‘Prospero is at the heart.’ Isabella was sure of it. ‘If these English are some part of his scheme, I know not. Never think, though, that the Count of Genoa is not behind them.’

  ‘So you say. What proof have I of this?’ Vittoria said. ‘Only the word of an abandoned lover.’ She rose to pace again.

  ‘What I do know is that Prospero himself has given me warning of the English,’ she rounded on Isabella. ‘Is that not strange behaviour for an assassin?’

  Isabella rose and her voice rose with her. ‘Your spies are Prospero?’ she said. ‘That is your proof? Oh lady, he distracts you. Makes you turn to look
in another direction. Then strikes your back.’

  ‘Makes me lower my guard by warning of attack?’ Vittoria scoffed. She threw back her head and cried out in frustration, ‘Is there no one that can see past their own concerns to my safety?’

  The two women glared at each other. Isabella fought for calm.

  ‘You may have the right of it, lady,’ she said. ‘Let me have time to take the measure of the English. It may be that I can discover from them some aspect of their plan that advantages you in your defence.’

  Vittoria still swelled but said nothing.

  ‘I beg you,’ Isabella pleaded, ‘beware the Count. I know you think I am poisoned against him by my past. Consider that the poison that infects me may stem from knowledge of the man. I will not see him do to another what was done to me, or worse, as I know he has done to others.’

  ‘I will not stand idle. Not while danger gathers itself,’ Vittoria said.

  ‘I do not ask you to,’ said Isabella. ‘Only that you do nothing precipitate.’

  Isabella watched the young woman wrestle with her better judgment before she nodded her agreement.

  When Isabella had departed Vittoria rang her little bell. The door opened to admit Antonio.

  ‘You heard?’ she asked.

  ‘I was at the door,’ he replied. ‘I heard all.’

  ‘Your thoughts?’ Vittoria demanded.

  ‘If my lady’s information is sound then we should not wait on the courtesan. Let me send men to follow the English, to mark their passage, who they meet.’

  ‘Agreed.’ The Duchess, her face and chest flushed, flicked her fan open. ‘These matters distress me.’

  When the captain did not leave at once Vittoria looked up at him. ‘Yes, Antonio?’

  ‘I second the courtesan’s advice,’ he said. ‘Till we know more we should show caution with the man Prospero.’