The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  He began to steer him down the aisle towards the doors leading from the basilica to the city beyond.

  ‘You cannot expect Venice to bargain for the purchase of goods when their quality is untried,’ Iseppo went on.

  William despaired. This Iseppo would not be put off so easily. William fought for any way to buy delay.

  ‘Here and now?’ he asked. ‘This is a too public a setting for such a private business.’

  ‘It is,’ said Iseppo. ‘Yet, for me to be at Mass is no cause for remark. Nor is it worthy of comment for a visitor to our city, even one from an heretic nation such as your own that denies the doctrine of the Assumption, to visit the Basilica dei Frari and admire Titian’s masterpiece.’

  Iseppo waved his free hand in the air. ‘And then we two meet and share a discourse on the merits of Venetian art. Caught up in our talk we walk on to see more of the wonders of the city.’

  Iseppo weaved them through the gathered remnants of the congregation still present in the basilica.

  ‘What is it that you want from me?’

  ‘Such plain speaking,’ said Iseppo nodding in recognition to one of those Venetians still in the basilica as he passed. ‘It is the English way. Your letters to us promised three names. We must have one now. To taste the quality of the intelligence.’

  ‘You offer one in return?’ said William.

  ‘Of course,’ Iseppo’s smile stretched wider, revealing glimpses of gold teeth.

  William halted. The two men stood in the doorway of the basilica.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I must speak first to Sir Henry. Receive his blessing to this bargain. We meet again the day after tomorrow, at noon, the exchange is made.’

  He would buy himself two days. No more but it must be enough.

  Iseppo shook his head. ‘Tonight, Master Fallow, before the chimes of midnight strike. The Campo San Toma, you know it? To the north of the square, opposite the fountain, is an alley. Halfway along, a door. I will await you there.’

  William cursed but could do little save nod his own assent.

  If Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice

  As William headed through San Polo he passed from a narrow street into one of the innumerable small squares that patterned the city of Venice and paused to buy a pastry from one of the stalls. He had found a taste for Venetian fare that Oldcastle had not. He wondered if the world divided thus, between those who in a foreign land would eat only as the natives do and those who spent their time in longing for the forsaken fare of home. Before the calamitous ambush the English embassy had been of the second sort. Only he and Hemminges had ventured to try the local delicacies.

  William had stood an age after Iseppo departed, thinking. To the problem of midnight he could find no answer in all those minutes. He kicked at the wall of the basilica and then set his path for San Rocco. If disaster was to fall on him, at least let him have seen the wonders of Venice before he died.

  William came to the door of San Rocco and stepped inside. The church was cool and light and empty. The high-ceilinged silence of the nave oppressed him. He felt uncertainty come upon him of a sudden, as if the silent magnificence of his surroundings stood in judgment of him. He shuffled in to sit upon a pew. He looked up at the south wall. A vast painting of Christ among a crowd gathered below a low roof hung there. The bustle of figures in the painting seemed to force their way past each other. Their energy a contrast to the silence in the nave. Other paintings, each eager to commend itself with the painter’s energetic vision, spanned the other walls. St Roch presented to the Pope, St Roch on his way to prison.

  William had come to see the church’s interior at Isabella Lisarro’s suggestion. That he stayed spoke more of his true interest than did the wonders of the paintings. Why pluck this church from the ten thousand that Venice seemingly possessed? He gazed at a painting of St Roch curing plague victims as if the man could answer him as the other citizens of Venice had done. Answer came there none. St Roch was busy.

  The church echoed with its own emptiness. William cursed himself. That she had mentioned the church as invitation had been clear. He should have come the first day after the feast, not waited. He had not wanted to seem the over-hasty boy rushing to greet a new lover, but worldly-wise. Now he regretted his own forbearance. The tide of affairs had passed and he had missed the sailing.

  He pulled book, pen and ink from his satchel and, after muttering to himself for a moment and allowing his fingers to count matters out on his leg, bent to writing. After he had been there some minutes more a priest in white surplice walked along the aisle towards the chancel. Casting a doubting eye over William as he passed, subtle as the fox with its prey, the priest disappeared behind the screen. William sensed he had outstayed his welcome. He rose.

  ‘Magnificent isn’t it?’ Isabella said.

  William twisted about in the pew to see the bold smiling face behind him. Only the whisper of her perfume had foreshadowed her arrival. Not enough warning to prevent his startling at her words. She sat in the row behind and looked up at the painting.

  ‘Christ at the Pool of Bethesda,’ she said.

  William stood in a demi-crouch, half risen. His knees bent by the narrow aisle between his pew and the one before him as he twisted to see Isabella. She turned her eyes from the painting to gaze back at him, gently fluttering her fan. Some rows behind sat her maid, head demurely and discreetly bent in prayer. He sat back down.

  ‘What do you write?’ she asked.

  ‘Something, nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Both at once? There’s a skill.’

  William blushed. ‘Lines, a sonnet.’

  Isabella leaned forward in her seat, curiosity writ on her face in a wrinkled cheek and brow.

  ‘Truly? Words for a lover?’

  William shook his head. ‘Alas, no. A warning to myself.’

  ‘A warning of what?’ Isabella asked.

  ‘Not to let the moment pass. To seize opportunities,’ he said.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘You could not read it, lady. It is in English.’

  She sat back in the pew. The smiling cheek now smoothed by disappointment.

  ‘Can you turn it into Latin?’ she said.

  ‘The thought maybe but not the words,’ William replied.

  ‘The thought then.’

  William obeyed. She listened with eyes closed. When he finished she opened her eyes and said, ‘Very pretty, but if you pair “floods” and “shallows” should you not pair “glory” with something?’

  William looked down at the page and saw she was right. She did not wait for his reply.

  ‘I thought to see you here before now,’ she admonished him with a tap of the fan on his hand where it clutched at the pew.

  He tried to think of a reply.

  ‘I do not like to be kept waiting,’ she said.

  William stared at Isabella.

  ‘Lady, enough,’ he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. He gestured at his ungainly twisted pose in the pew.

  ‘You see you have already tied me in knots. I don’t know what you want of me but I am here, your willing prisoner. Ask of me what you will. Only, I beg you, do not think of me as the ordinary kind of fool. I am the worst kind. The one who sees the toil pitched and knowingly plunges into the trap.’

  The fan fluttered on. The priest emerged from the chancel and walked back down the aisle, looking with pointed interest on the tableau of strange young man and courtesan. Isabella waited till he had passed.

  ‘Trap?’ she asked.

  ‘Grant me fair?’ William said.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And witty too?’ William asked.

  ‘The little I have heard you speak, spake of a wit,’ she said.

  ‘All in such measure as might delight a woman of virtue and judgment?’

  ‘I am certain of it,’ Isabella answered.

  ‘Baubles before Sheba,’ William responded with a dismissive hand. ‘I flatter myse
lf many things as this world goes but that I have that which interests a woman such as you? I think not.’

  ‘You do yourself disservice,’ Isabella said.

  ‘As do you in thinking still to gull me,’ said William. ‘There is a web here so fine that I see it not yet know I am trapped within it. I beg of you. Speak honestly.’

  ‘Oh what brave new world is this?’ Isabella shook her head. ‘That men now think themselves favoured for speaking honestly and expect women to be so too.’

  William gave no answer. He had said enough and cast his dice on the tables. Isabella rose and straightened her dress. She turned and walked towards the exit. As she passed her maid rose to join her. Isabella, pausing, turned to look at William.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  He hurried to follow.

  The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

  William emerged into the small square to see Isabella disappearing into the entrance of a grand two-storeyed building with a white marble facing that stood close at hand. He followed.

  Inside, there was no sign of Isabella. A clerk went past at the trot, leaving him alone in the entrance. He pushed through the doors ahead and into a vast chamber, the wooden beams of its ceiling supported by columns of white marble and the floor covered in a geometry of red and white marble that stretched to an altar at the far end on which stood a statue of St Roch. The great chamber was empty save that, by the altar, stood an old man staring up at a painting. William crossed to him. The noise of his shoes loud in the open room.

  The old man did not look around at his approach.

  ‘Forgive me, sir –’ William began.

  ‘Should I? Why? What have you done?’ the old man interrupted without glancing round.

  William straightened. ‘You mistake me, sir,’ he said. ‘I meant only to beg your pardon for –’

  ‘I understood that.’

  The old man turned. William was presented with a bearded face whose fierce brows were pulled tight together.

  ‘I am old but I am not deaf,’ said the man. ‘Beg my pardon? For what crime?’

  He waited for reply.

  William did not know how to respond to this unexpected sally.

  ‘No crime. Unless interruption of your thoughts be a crime,’ William said.

  ‘It might be,’ the old man replied. ‘Depends on what I was thinking about.’

  The man’s mad was William’s own thought. Humour him.

  ‘Sir, I wondered only if you had seen a woman.’

  ‘Of course, you codling,’ the old man snorted. ‘What man has not seen a woman, even if only at the moment of his birth?’

  Once, in his cups, William had spoken with an equally drunk merchant who was visiting Stratford. The man’s thick northern accent had been impenetrable to William, although he could see that the man was clearly agitated and becoming more so. Apologetic, William had begged him to speak more slowly, more clearly, for William could not understand him. Again he spoke and again William could not penetrate his accent and so asked him to repeat himself. Only after many minutes of this too-ing and fro-ing had the drunken man made himself sufficiently clear for William to realise that the slurred words were a threat to beat him. The pair had been so exhausted by this point, and so relieved finally to have reached an understanding, that they had collapsed back to drinking, with both threat and original offence quite forgotten. Compared to his commerce with the old man that conversation in Stratford had been the very model of clarity.

  William sighed and looked about the room. Spying two staircases behind him he made to move towards them in search of Isabella. The old man turned back to contemplation of the painting. He spoke to William over his shoulder.

  ‘What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning plants?’ he said.

  William cursed but did not wish to provoke the lunatic figure lest it create a greater delay than simple answering.

  ‘That the soul of my grandmother might haply inhabit an onion or a bird or any other thing living,’ said William. ‘Now, would you excuse me, good father, I must –’

  ‘What do you think of his opinion?’ the old man asked.

  ‘I think greatly of his soul and nothing to his opinion,’ replied William.

  ‘Think again, lest in the killing of a gamecock you dispossess the soul of your grandmother.’ The old man held up his finger in warning.

  William nodded for want of better response and turned to escape. The wide staircase ascended in turns to the second floor. When he crested the steps he found another great chamber whose every surface roared colour at him. Isabella stood alone at the far end. She had framed herself in the light thrown by one of the high pairs of windows. That light inhabited her hair turning it to a crown of ruby gold. William approached, aware he had been cast as supplicant to Isabella’s monarch.

  ‘You made me wait, again.’

  ‘Forgive me, lady,’ William said. ‘I was engaged in discourse by a philosopher as I passed.’

  Isabella circled him. William stood patient under inspection. He had cast his bait upon the water in the church. Now he must wait to see what fish came swimming to it.

  ‘Who are you, Englishman?’ she asked.

  ‘A simple steward. Nothing more,’ he answered.

  ‘I think not. There is too much mystery to you.’

  ‘Mystery, lady?’ said William.

  ‘Is England so short of men that it sends but two to be its embassy?’ Isabella said. ‘And of those men it is the steward that speaks like an educated man and the ambassador who stands like a mute dog save for howls at the name of England?’

  ‘We were more,’ said William. ‘Our party was attacked on the journey. We two are all that remains. We have lost friends, gentle friends since we came from England. It is a wonder Sir Henry does not weep more for England and the safety that we had there. It is a wonder I weep so little.’

  William turned to track Isabella’s pacing.

  ‘As for Sir Henry’s learning,’ he said, ‘there are other studies than language. It is unwise to judge the quality of a man by the merit of your first encounter. You speak of mysteries when your own are deeper, darker than mine, which are not truly mysteries at all. Just matters that have not yet had explanation.’

  Isabella did not acknowledge the implicit question. Instead she stopped. Still saying nothing she turned to look at one of the paintings on the wall of the hall. She had expected something different. Evasion, perhaps, or a clearer bargaining of secret for secret. Not this, this honest, plain speaking. For so she took it. All that he said thus far having been confirmed by report of her own agents.

  Her friend Iseppo had tried to tell her so.

  ‘I tested him, Isabella, as you asked. To my every question, the right answer. He is from London as he says. I think him gentle, be gentle with him,’ the Byzantine had urged. ‘By his look, I think you are more threat to him, than he to you.’

  Iseppo had his own mysteries and was not always to be trusted. Yet she did not think he played her false in this. Her friend Faustina had given a similar report.

  ‘For an ambassador’s man he is most shockingly ignorant of the world,’ Faustina had declared as she left Marco Venier’s gathering. ‘He is either a master deceiver or a gross innocent. I do hope it is the former. Else it would be too, too dull.’

  Isabella heard William and did not think him a deceiver. She began to think that her time was wasted. These Englishmen were not part of Prospero’s purpose nor his means to the murder of Vittoria Accoramboni. Most like they were a deliberate distraction by Prospero to lure the unwary from his true intent. She cursed. She had exposed herself to Prospero’s watch for no advancement. Decision made, she acted.

  ‘I wish you good day,’ she said.

  William looked at Isabella Lisarro’s back in astonishment.

  ‘You are going?’ he said.

  She paused and turned to him. ‘I am. Please, stay and admire the paintings.’

  She gestured expansively and ma
de to turn away again. William took a step forward. His honesty had not disarmed her as he’d hoped. Instead it seemed she took it for an attitude of business.

  ‘There are other sights I would rather admire,’ William said.

  Again, she halted. This time the smile stayed but was as indulgent as a priest’s.

  ‘You flatter me when I am not worthy. Your youthful energy is better spent elsewhere,’ she said.

  ‘I do not think so,’ he said. ‘It was by your invitation that I came. You gave me to think that youthful energy flattered rather than bored.’

  William railed at how petulant he sounded. Where was any power of his to read the secret book of people? All gone, if he’d ever had it. In looking at Isabella he’d stared at the sun and blinded himself.

  ‘Then you mistook me,’ Isabella said. ‘You and your master are the curiosities of the town.’

  Isabella waved away her own intentions. Her inward irritation with herself at having led the boy to believe that here might be something more joined hands with her irritation that she had so clumsily dismissed him. She wondered at her own distraction. Since she had cut the boy best make the blow a clean one and sever relations.

  ‘At least let us speak,’ William pressed.

  ‘I asked to meet you but to wonder at you,’ Isabella answered. ‘That curiosity sated I would go.’

  ‘You are too cruel,’ William said. ‘You may have fed but I am hungry still. Your beauty is as fuel for fire. So fed, so consumed and burning hotter needing feeding more.’

  Isabella shook her head at such clumsy wooing.

  ‘That’s easily cured,’ she said. ‘I shall remove that fuel which feeds the insatiable fire.’

  Isabella turned and began to descend the stair.

  William conscious only that the moment was passing, wondering at his increasing desperation that was leading him to such heavy and lifeless seduction, could not seem to break free of its grip.

  ‘Then will my hearth be cold and black and ashen,’ he protested.

  ‘Rake it clear and set it again,’ said Isabella.

  She disappeared behind the turn of the steps.

  William despaired. He’d had no expectation that the seduction of one as beautiful and worldly as Isabella Lisarro would be an easy task. So much the better. Toys snatched from babes win no renown. Victory against odds is fame’s foundation. Yet here was ignominious defeat when he’d scarce drawn his sword. He hung his head. The pleasures of Venice were beginning to pall.