The Spy of Venice

by Benet Brandreth

  When the messenger suggested that they might collect the Ambassador’s steward on the way if that suited, he was told firmly that it did not, and that time was pressing. The messenger gave another of the surly looks that seemed to come so easily to his pretty face and, reluctantly, set off with Oldcastle alone to the House of Bracciano. The messenger left but a part of him remained behind, thirty pieces clinking in the palm of Salarino.

  Farewell, my masters; to my task will I

  Borachio was an unhappy man. Or, since unhappiness was his natural state, say rather that he was that day an especially unhappy man. He knew the Count of Genoa of old. That Prospero he feared; the Prospero who took life as fiercely and inexorably as a winter. Something in Venice had shaken that Prospero from his cold and steady intent. Borachio knew not what.

  ‘Bloody, rash, intemperate fool.’

  Borachio quailed before Prospero’s anger.

  ‘Do you think,’ Prospero said, ‘that the Signoria will ignore the murder of one of their own within the confines of the city?’

  ‘The English spy and he would have made exchange of the names of our agents in the city.’

  Prospero threw his glass against the wall of his study.

  ‘Kill the Englishman, then,’ he roared.

  ‘You ordered me not to do so,’ Borachio shouted in turn.

  ‘It could not be left. My man Salerio overheard them in the basilica,’ said Borachio. ‘The Byzantine had to die that night. I should be praised for my action, not cursed for my rashness.’

  Prospero clenched his fist before Borachio’s face. The knuckles gleamed white with tension.

  ‘Quiet, Borachio,’ Prospero said.

  ‘None saw me,’ Borachio protested. ‘When the Englishman came I hid in the room, the door locked. I was gone an instant after he had left in the other direction.’

  ‘For God’s sake, be quiet.’

  Prospero took another glass from the table and poured fresh wine into it. He had been at his breakfast when Borachio had brought him the news of the night’s business. He sat again and allowed the process of eating to calm him. He tried to think how this rashness of Borachio’s might be turned to his advantage. Time was running out and there was still much to be done in Venice.

  ‘Your intemperate action has cost us time, Borachio,’ he said at length. ‘You must go at once to urge Francesco Tiepolo to action.’

  ‘What has this business between Tiepolo and this woman Isabella Lisarro to do with our commission from the Pope?’ said Borachio.

  ‘Is it your place to question your master?’ asked Prospero.

  ‘I tire of this false standing,’ Borachio replied. ‘You are no more my master than I yours. We have a common employment, that is all.’

  ‘Not so,’ said Prospero.

  He dabbed a crumb of pastry from his lips with a linen cloth.

  ‘It is by the Pope’s command that you are my servant in this. Perhaps you do not recall our orders?’

  ‘Better, I think, than you,’ replied Borachio. ‘Else we would not spend time on this frolic of your own when all that we were set to do lies undone.’

  Prospero poured two glasses of wine from the jug at the table. He held one out to Borachio, who took it with ill grace.

  ‘You are right, Borachio,’ Prospero said. ‘We must work together on this, to a common understanding. Without it, we shall pull against each other to the ruin of all.’

  ‘On this, at least, we are agreed, Prospero,’ said Borachio.

  ‘My lord, Borachio,’ said Prospero, ‘let us remember the parts we play lest we forget them in company and reveal ourselves.’

  Prospero sipped at his wine and looked over the rim of the glass at the sullen Borachio.

  ‘I am glad we are agreed. Then you will understand why I must insist you obey me in every particular.’

  ‘Hah,’ Borachio grunted.

  He swilled down the wine and set the glass on the table. ‘Enough, Prospero,’ he said. ‘This business with that peacock, Francesco Tiepolo, and the woman Isabella Lisarro, that is some private grudge of your own. It keeps us from our true business. I’ll have no part of it.’

  ‘Very well,’ Prospero said.

  He rose and went over to a table by the wall. He opened an ornate box and took from it a glass vial. Unstoppering it, he drank its contents in a swallow. He turned and looked back at Borachio.

  ‘You are still here, Borachio?’ he asked. ‘I thought you went to do the Pope’s bidding.’

  Borachio was looking at the empty vial still in Prospero’s hand. ‘What is in that vial?’ he asked in a quiet voice.

  ‘This?’ Prospero asked. He held the empty vial up to the light. ‘This is an antidote to the poison we have both just drunk.’

  ‘Damnable villain,’ Borachio hissed.

  ‘Such anger, Borachio,’ admonished Prospero. ‘I would think you used to the taste by now. I have fed you both poison and antidote this fortnight past.’ He laughed. ‘You were so ill that first day I feared I had overdone it.’

  The chair clattered against the wall as Borachio hurled himself at Prospero. He pulled up. The point of Prospero’s blade was before him. Prospero waited till Borachio had recovered himself before he put the dagger away again. He walked over to the chair and righted it.

  ‘You must understand, Borachio,’ he said. ‘I cannot have this questioning of my commands. I tell you that the business with Francesco Tiepolo and that woman serves us in our commission. It is not your place to question my judgment.’

  ‘The antidote, Prospero.’

  ‘You must earn it, Borachio.’

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ Borachio growled.

  ‘Then you would kill yourself, since only I know the proper physic for the poison.’

  Borachio kicked the chair aside.

  ‘What is this Isabella Lisarro to you?’ he said.

  ‘That need not concern you,’ answered Prospero. ‘Go, track her and lead Francesco Tiepolo to where she is. Then we may speak of antidotes.’

  For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine

  Isabella was waiting for William when he arrived at the Scuola di San Rocco. He stopped at the top of the stairs. She had not noticed his arrival. She stood captured by the sight of one of the paintings on the far wall. She was dressed simply. Her hair was pulled up to reveal her slender neck, pale in the half-light of the shuttered windows.

  It had been in William’s mind simply to return to her the ring and depart with what, in the scene as it played out in his imagination was quiet, injured dignity. That imagined scene now appeared to him false, his role dissembling.

  What shamed him most in her quick dismissal of him the day before was the sense that he had done nothing to deserve better. He wooed a woman who in learning, wit and spirit was his equal. Equal? Be honest at least in your own thoughts, William, she is no equal but your superior. His own shallow spirit in past affairs now stood revealed. With Alice, with Constanza, even with Anne, he had been drawn by the outward beauty of those he pursued and by the thrill of the pursuit itself. He had not cared enough for the thoughts or wit of those he chased, preferring to display his own. Was it any wonder then that, treating his lovers like ornaments, the affair had proved stiff and lifeless?

  When he first set to tilt at Isabella he had thought only to lie where kings and princes had before. A shallow, selfish boast that shamed him. A thing a child might want. Now he understood better. He desired to be with her not because of the kings and princes but because of those virtues that had made kings and princes fall before her. To have one of her mind interested in his? Now there, there was a matter to shout to the echoing hills. Not as a show or trophy but for what he might learn about himself. He would be the better simply for having known her. What a fool he had been. Isabella had stripped that foolishness from him. He had seen the shadows on the cave wall for what they were. He could no longer pretend he knew no better.

  She turned and noted him. William approached and held o
ut the ring.

  ‘You gave me this,’ he said.

  She did not move. He frowned at the ring, which tumbled in his fingers. Then he made it vanish.

  ‘I have puzzled over it. And over you,’ said William.

  ‘What is your conjecture?’ Isabella asked.

  ‘You called me to you when, at the feast, you talked of the church and the beauty of its interior,’ said William. ‘Yet, when I came, you sent me from you. Now you call me back with this ring. What washes me to and from your shores? I am driftwood on some tide whose moon is seen in your eyes alone.’

  The ring reappeared in his hands. He placed it on the sill.

  ‘What am I to you?’ he continued. ‘I have wondered at it and my late-night and truckle-bed reasoning follows: You thought to use me and so you called me to you. Discovering that I am useless to your task you sent me hence. It was worry that you were hasty in dismissing my usefulness that makes you call me back.’

  He studied her face.

  ‘I see agreement in your eyes though you say nothing. That, I think, unties one knot but leaves another and another and ten times ten more. This most of all: I return to be used. To be a pawn in a game I do not understand. What are you to me that I return? You too are a thought I have pondered late night and in my truckle bed.’

  William saw Isabella’s face wrinkle with amusement.

  ‘You smile? You think I speak naughtily?’ said William. ‘Would I did. Such simple problems are solved by simple actions.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, lady. Only a thoughtless rogue with no more imagination than a post would think, even on one meeting, you were a simple problem or even dare to use that word “simple” within a thousand yards or a thousand minutes of your presence. I have the experience of more than one encounter and I know you for a German clock, seeming perfect in symmetry but in complexity unmatchable, a watch that must be watched.’

  Isabella’s brow furrowed at the comparison.

  ‘Now you frown at me,’ said William. ‘I am such a fool as takes your frowns as much for payment as your smiles. Both show me more than just an insensible tool to you.’

  Still Isabella said nothing and so William spoke on.

  ‘You think of me as some weapon to be picked up or set aside as opportunity and the fortune of war dictates. That is a poor reward for any man. Though I am certain there are many who would be content to be as little just to be held in your hand, I prize myself at something more.’

  William drew himself up.

  ‘Oh, I would be more, much more, to you,’ he said. ‘For I think, I hope, I love you.’

  He took a step towards her. ‘Yes, I love you. Not for your beauty, though yours is a beauty radiant, exquisite, unmatchable, for what is beauty but the judgment of the eye and Time’s fool? No, not for your beauty but for your wit, which is sharp as a blade and has disarmed me and holds me at the point.’

  He had said it. He had dared it.

  ‘I would be more,’ he went on. ‘I will not be held at less. Therefore, either put up your sword and let me close or strike and put me from my misery.’

  Isabella still said nothing.

  William did not know what would come of his words but he knew this, he had given his all and no man could do more. He had not feared to try. The rest, the rest was chance and the course of nature.

  Isabella picked up the ring and slipped it on her finger. She looked at it in the column of light that fell from the windows.

  ‘A pretty, flattering speech,’ she said at last.

  ‘As the poet says, “Whether they give or they refuse, women delight to be asked,” ’ William said.

  ‘True. Ovid was wise. It makes one wonder at the women he knew.’

  ‘They must have been as fearsome as you, lady. Didn’t he also say, “Fortune and Love both favour the brave”?’

  She laughed at that. ‘No one doubts your bravery, William. I least of all. What stands between us is not lack of appreciation of your qualities.’

  ‘What is lacking then?’

  ‘Trust,’ said Isabella.

  She twisted the ring on her finger. William took courage from her staying when before she had dismissed him with barely a backward glance.

  ‘As I love you, trust me,’ said William.

  ‘No,’ said Isabella.

  He stepped back at the sudden venom of her voice. She smoothed the fabric of her dress.

  ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘Love is no basis for trust. No basis at all.’

  ‘There’s an injury stands behind that judgment,’ said William. He saw it like a scar across her face and thought of Prospero’s anger.

  ‘You speak too easily of things you cannot know,’ Isabella said. ‘You speak too easily of love.’

  ‘Not so,’ said William.

  ‘How can love have been born in our brief acquaintance?’ Isabella lifted her chin. ‘Yours is the love of poets and ballad-mongers. You love the look, not the person.’

  ‘Not so,’ William stepped closer. ‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And it is your mind I love.’

  Isabella sighed. ‘You might do much.’

  She beckoned to him. ‘Still. Hasty,’ she admonished. ‘It is dangerous to move so quickly to talk of love. You may frighten it away by too rapid an advance.’

  She took his arm. ‘Let us talk of other things.’

  She led him from the Scuola di San Rocco.

  William and Isabella walked together through Venice and talked as they walked. They spoke of many things and, though neither spoke one word of their true business in Venice, as they spoke they began to understand one another.

  At last, they stood in a small piazza. William told her that he thought her mind matchless, astounding, wondrous and she, for the first time, did not respond with wit but with a silent look. William felt such a surging wave of hope in him at the sight that for a minute he was quite oblivious to the low, cruel laugh from behind him.

  More than enough am I that vex thee still

  Barely had Oldcastle crossed the threshold of the Ca’ Bracciano than he was seized by the servants. He was dragged to a dank storeroom of the palazzo and bound to a chair.

  ‘What is this? Why this outrageous dealing?’ Oldcastle demanded of the grey-haired man who stood before him.

  Antonio said nothing. Oldcastle felt the oppression of his silence, of the room that was empty save for him and the figure of the captain. The door opened and Vittoria Accoramboni entered.

  ‘My lady,’ said Oldcastle, ‘this is some prank? Some jest of Venice against the English? Very good. Never let it be said that we English do not appreciate good fooling. Now please release me. Your man has been overeager in his part and these ropes chafe horribly.’

  Vittoria ignored him.

  ‘My lady –’ Antonio began.

  Vittoria cut him off with a raised hand. ‘I will see to this business myself,’ she said. ‘Myself, you understand?’

  ‘Your husband –’ Antonio said.

  ‘Is not here,’ replied Vittoria. ‘Nor would he expect me to wait to deal with a threat to us both.’

  At her fell tone Oldcastle’s terror, which had fluttered in his breast, took flight.

  ‘Your Grace, please,’ he said. ‘There has been some mistake.’

  Vittoria gestured to her captain and he stepped forward. The blow cracked Oldcastle across the crown of his head. He howled with pain and his howl echoed back and forth against the thick walls of the storeroom.

  Vittoria’s voice was stained with cruel intent. ‘Believe me when I tell you, the mistake has been all yours.’

  Her voice rose to a sudden shout. ‘Did you think I would stand by? Did you think I was some child to lie in my bed or play with my toys while you plotted against me?’

  Oldcastle began to cry. Tears fell from him not from the ringing pain of the blow or the rope that cut his wrists. Tears fell from the terror that came on him as he realised he had no understanding of what was happening or why
he was there and no thought of how to escape what he knew was to come.

  Then the questioning began.

  She asked him his business in Venice with shouts and blows. Oldcastle, crying and howling and caring not for dignity, had confessed himself ignorant of any plot against her. He begged her to believe him her friend, her most loyal servant. In broken Latin he had urged her to know him desirous only of her long life and happiness.

  He was not believed.

  There was cruel questioning all that long day.

  . . . rather pluck on laughter than revenge

  At the sound of the laughter William turned to see Francesco Tiepolo leaning on a walking stick. His jeering was echoed by a gathering crowd of companions who emerged to stand behind him. Some were dressed in the same gorgeous fashion as Tiepolo himself. Others wore the livery of servants of his House. All were armed with cudgels. William heard Isabella draw breath behind him. Tiepolo stepped forward.

  ‘Step aside, Englishman,’ he said. ‘This is Venetian business.’

  William pulled Isabella behind him. Seeing this, Tiepolo gave another of his laughs.

  ‘How chivalrous,’ he said. ‘But you should know that chivalry to a whore is wasted.’

  ‘I am no whore,’ Isabella blazed behind William.

  ‘Oh tut. You are,’ Francesco said. ‘I speak it as am shamed by it. For didn’t I waste my time on you, whore?’

  Tiepolo was enjoying himself. Parading the moment before his companions. William cast his eyes about the square, which had emptied save for the two of them and their enemy. Tiepolo’s companions began to spread themselves out.

  ‘Is it the custom of Venice to threaten its guests?’ William shouted in hope that someone would hear and someone would come.

  Francesco Tiepolo looked pointedly around as if waiting to see if anyone would respond. When silence had reigned for an awful eon he looked back at William and Isabella and smiled.

  ‘Let me tell you of Venetian custom, Englishman. When a whore grows unruly, when a lover is betrayed by a woman, then that woman is punished and put back in her place by the ritual of the trentuno.’