The Venetian Contract

by Fiorato, Marina

  One of the families included a schoolmaster who began a schoolhouse in the little church for the boys, while the nuns, in rotation, kept their rule with masses sung at the canonical hours, and a daily service for the families at which Bocca was never absent, and Annibale rarely present. Bocca had donated to the Badessa, with great pride, the chalice that Annibale had given him, as a vessel for the Host. Thus a humble bronze cup from a disused wine cellar became San Bartolomeo’s finest relic.

  Annibale oversaw every detail of his little utopia. The nuns began to dig a herb garden in the good drained soil beyond the well, and Annibale made drawings for them of the Botanical Gardens of Padua, so his medicines could be grown and his unguents prepared on site.

  The wives sewed mattresses for their loved ones, stuffed with rue and heather for their medicinal properties at Annibale’s direction, with which he lined the hospital floor in neat ranks. The afflicted were to be kept in the Tezon, their families in the almshouses, and never the twain should meet. No one could pass from the Tezon to the almshouses save Annibale, in his protective clothes. All was financed by the Cason treasure, which was gradually emptying from its hiding place by the well, as the stone lion stood sentinel.

  Every day, Annibale would pause in his work, climb the torresin in the south-eastern corner of the wall, and look across the water to Venice. When the wind was in the right direction he could hear the city’s plague bells ringing incessantly, tolling the passing souls. The six doctors of the sestieri were losing their battle. Through his glasses Venice looked like it was on fire.

  Annibale was aware of the precariousness of his position. He was aware that he had commandeered an island that was the property of the Republic, and he could only hope that when his methods were proven, the Council would let him be. Valnetti did not like to be crossed, and he suspected that the doctor had already been to the Consiglio della Sanita to report Annibale’s conduct. And, every day, looking out to the roseate sea through his red smoked lenses, he expected someone to come and stop him.

  Chapter 18

  Cecilia Zabatini settled quickly into her new life as a maid in the house of the gold callipers.

  In a very short time she got to know the long tall house with its myriad of connecting stairwells and passageways. She became used to the darkness of the back rooms and the blinding brightness of the front salons, where the arches and rounds of the glazed windows let in sunbursts of light, refracting into dazzling rainbows. At the side of the house was a quiet square with a well in the centre, where the main entrance for visitors was marked by the callipers over the door. At the front, facing the shining canal and its bustling traffic, there was a watergate; at the rear, a tiny, dingy courtyard overlooked by three other great houses. The courtyard was the trash pit for all the slops of all the houses – human and kitchen waste ended up there, to be swept into dung carts once a week by the midden-men. It had a foul smell and the new maid, considering the place insanitary, avoided it as best she could.

  The household accepted the tall, quiet girl; she was intelligent and helpful, she did not need to be told what to do but anticipated the need for a task to be done before she was asked. They were kind to Feyra partly for her own sake, partly because she had an affliction of her speech, and partly because she was under the protection of her uncle Zabato, a man they liked and respected, who was, moreover, their master’s dearest friend. The two footmen were kind to the new maid for an additional reason – any fool could see that she was beautiful, however much she tried to hide it.

  The cook, who went by the name Corona Cucina for she was, as she boasted, Queen of the Kitchen, missed very little that went on in her kingdom. She quickly noticed the footmen’s glances and decided to act. She chucked Feyra kindly under the chin on the first morning she came down and tutted. ‘Gesumaria, dearie, you look like you’re fit to work the ponte delle tette, flashing your bubbies for the gentlemen! Let me give you some lace fillings for that neckline, and a longer petticoat too.’

  The cook hauled Feyra off to a chamber in the cellars, not unlike Feyra’s own, and looked around in her cupboards. She found the girl a longer underskirt which fell, thankfully, near to her ankles. ‘And here –’ Corona Cucina tied a scarf of lace about Feyra’s shoulders. Holding the knot with one meaty hand she rootled in a little drawer with another. ‘I’m sure I have an old pin somewhere – ah, here – it will serve to fasten it.’

  The kindly cook pinned the brooch through the knot to hold the collar fast to the dress. Feyra looked down at her bosom. The brooch was a little tin cross, with a tiny figure hanging from it.

  Wearing the sign of the shepherd prophet was not the only adjustment Feyra had to make. Without her veil the smells of the house assailed her; the fish bones boiling down to stock on the kitchen stove, the beeswax polish of the pantry and the rancid mutton tallow of candles in the studiolo. The choking, tarry scent of the coals she had to carry made her cough; even the musty leather and paper of the books in the little library, set on a high mezzanine all around the study walls, made her sneeze.

  Once she had a shock; when sent to fetch salt from the little cellar under the house, she brushed against something bristly in the dark. When she raised her candle she saw a whole pig, hanging upside down by its trotters, flesh pale and tongue lolling as the blood dripped. Feyra dropped her candle with a clatter and ran, retching, to the little courtyard in the middle of the house. Corona Cucina bustled out to her and rubbed her back as she vomited, asking what was amiss. Forgetting herself, Feyra choked: ‘Porco.’

  ‘He’s nothing to fright you, dearie. Can’t hurt you in that state, can he?’ The cook stroked Feyra’s clammy cheek. ‘Fancy you running from a porker as if you were a Muselmana!’

  Feyra froze. There was that word again.

  Muselmana.

  The word that Nur Banu had left out of her lexicon, the word she had heard on the steps of the Doge’s palace, when she had left her slipper on the stair. She blinked, and looked at the cook’s concerned face. Corona Cucina was kind; now was her chance to learn. ‘Muselmana?’ she asked, making her intonation as Venetian as she could.

  ‘Ay – they hold pig’s flesh in horror. And that was how we Venetians could bring the body of the blessed Apostle Mark –’ Corona Cucina drew a cross on her ample bosom with her forefinger ‘– from the land of the heathens to rest here in Christian Venice in the Basilica. They placed the Saint’s corpse in a large basket covered with herbs and swine’s flesh, and the bearers were directed to cry “Pork!” to all who should approach to search. In this manner they bamboozled the Muselmani and brought our Saint home.’

  Feyra’s puzzlement must have been written on her face, for Corona Cucina raised her voice as though she was simple. ‘Muselmani! Those as goes to church on yellow shoes, and wears their heads bound in turbans! Dio, your uncle said as you were dumb, not simple.’ She pinched Feyra’s chin. ‘Well, they don’t know what they’re missing, for when that porker has hung for a week I’ll make pancetta and shred pie that’ll make your mouth water. You’ll like the pigling right enough then.’

  From then on Feyra avoided the little courtyard whenever Corona Cucina was cooking pork. Even to breathe the aroma was a faithless act; almost worse than wearing the cross.

  The prevalent smell in the whole house, though, was ink and paper. Her unseen master had reams of it all about the place, tumbling from his desks, spread upon the map chest and even the dining board. She peered at them once or twice. She did not understand the annotations, but the drawings held no mysteries for her. She had seen the like many times in the company of Mimar Sinan.

  They were plans.

  This Palladio, like Sinan, was an architect.

  Feyra was beginning to tune her ear to the Venetian accent. Her fellow servants spoke a little differently to the pure and noble language that her mother had taught her. There were so many Zs in the dialect that they sounded all together like a hive of bees and waved their hands around so much that they sometimes
hit each other in the narrow passages of the house, or knocked the candles from their sconces. But during the two meals the servants ate together in the kitchen in the morning and evening, Feyra watched, and listened, and began to adjust.

  She rarely left the little square, but when she went to the market she found that Venice by day was a different city to the one she had encountered at night. There was, it seemed, no plague yet in this ward; Zabato said it was raging worst in the district called Cannaregio so if she bought her goods at the Rialto and came straight back there would be no danger.

  So Feyra got to know her sixth, or sestiere, of Castello, well. She noted the constant presence of the shepherd prophet on every corner, above every church door. In her faith it was not permitted to express God in art; it was considered not only impious but impossible. But here the Christians lived with their deity as though he was their neighbour and it was impossible to avoid him. He seemed only to have two manifestations: a babe in his mother’s arms or a near-corpse hanging on his cross like offal. The beginning and the end of his life; there was nothing in between. Even in the market, where butchered beasts were sold hanging from wooden gibbets, the shepherd prophet hung above them, higher than all.

  Mostly Corona Cucina went to market, as she did not trust another soul with her precious ingredients, but now and again her legs and feet pained her so much that she had to sit in a chair and raise her legs. Feyra caught a look at them once – the feet were as big as eel-boats, misshapen about the toes with huge swellings on each side. Furthermore, the vessels on Corona’s lower calves stood forth like black and blue cords. Feyra had seen such veins and pushes in the Harem, and wondered if she would ever have the courage to offer her remedies in return for the cook’s kindness.

  She greatly missed the practice of medicine, not just for the status, but for the way in which her opinion had been sought, her skills utilized. Here she was the humblest of the servants and her duties were to clean, fetch and carry and set the fires in the master’s rooms.

  After one day of work she ceased to wear the crystal ring of the four horses on her hand. Her work was hard and physical and she knew that at some point the ring would be cracked or damaged. She pulled a piece of ribbon from the hem of one of her many petticoats and hung the ring around her neck, tucked firmly in her bodice. Feyra thought of the Ottoman tradition of wearing amulets to preserve health – a verse from the Qur’an writ small and twisted into a little scroll, the name of God on a scrap of paper worn in a bag, or a pendant like the five-fingered hand of Fatima. Amulets were secret and personal; they were worn under the clothes and particular to their wearer. Well, the ring would be her amulet, the only thing about her person now that had come with her all the way from Constantinople. It struck her, too, how much she was learning about her mother since her death – it said something of her mother’s cosseted life that she could have worn a ring of glass for the whole of it.

  In Venice, even among servants, Feyra saw that women got the worst deal. They did not seem to have been schooled, any of them; and when the men came to play cards in the kitchen in the evening, the women had to retire to their rooms. In Venice, she was sure, no woman would have been encouraged, or even permitted to qualify as a doctor.

  Some things were the same here as at home. Corona Cucina was very like the kitchen wives that she’d known in Topkapi: kind, loud, brash and bawdy. She talked incessantly and at times Feyra had to stop her ears to the stream of stories about what the cook got up to in her young days, or how various members of the household conducted their courtings and couplings.

  And yet, Feyra could not help but warm to the enemy. She thought of the young mother who had given her hand to Death, the boatman who had not taken her coin, and Zabato Zabatini who had taken her into this place. At these times she remembered, with a shock, that she herself was half Venetian. She had a foot in two nations however wide the seas between.

  Feyra might have prided herself on fitting into Palladio’s household, but it was not only the two footmen who had noted her presence. News of a beautiful new maidservant in the sestiere travelled fast, especially in a city cut off from the outside world. Once again she had to become used to the gaze of men. Her few trips to the market had excited some keen interest among the stallholders and she would have been horrified to discover that she was the toast of more than one drinking session at the market locanda. Accustomed now to her Venetian dress, the veils and the swathed clothes of her homeland seemed part of another life, but one day as she hurried through the market, Feyra was brought to a standstill by a sun-yellowed pamphlet tacked to the wall.

  She drew closer, heart thudding, holding it flat to study it, the paper bubbling under her suddenly damp fingertips. The figure depicted was grotesque – a female and a Turk, wearing a veil, voluminous breeches and upturned yellow slippers. Protruding from the headdress were wiry black curls like corkscrews, and a hooked nose curved over the yashmak. Feyra could not read Venetian as well as she spoke it, but she recognized the word Muselmana. This, she was sure, was meant to be her. She tore the paper quickly from the wall and crumpled it into her basket. Looking from left to right to check that no one had seen what she had done, Feyra failed to notice the tall, cloaked figure watching her from the edge of the square.

  Chapter 19

  Annibale had just seven nights of peace on his island.

  It was Bocca who alerted him, and came running from the gatehouse. Fiercely partisan since the gift of the chalice, he apprised Annibale of every passing bark or coracle, whether they were of note or not.

  Today Annibale saw at once, from the old man’s shambling speed, and the expression on his face as he called, ‘Ship ahoy, Dottore, ship ahoy!’ that this was a craft of quite a different colour, even before Bocca elaborated.

  ‘Longboat, Dottore, forty-oar, hoving from San Marco.’

  Annibale hurried through the gate, although he was not so flustered that he forgot to dip his feet in the potash. He could see a speck on the horizon, and marvelled at the keenness of the gatekeeper’s eyes, although his own were hampered by his smoked lenses. The barge came closer till he could see the diamond dips of the oars, down and pull, down and pull, all forty in perfect synchronicity. The boat appeared to be made of some light timber for it seemed gilded by some trick of the sunlight. As the craft grew nearer Annibale realized that he had made no mistake – the barge was, in fact, made of gold; and as soon as he saw the face of a lion on the prow, with his mane spread like sunrays, he knew it was over.

  This was the Bucintoro, the barge of the Doge.

  A man stood in the prow, his magenta cloak bellying and cracking in the wind like a sail, the sea breeze ruffling his short blond hair. He was not especially tall, nor muscular, but he carried an air of great authority.

  ‘Are you Annibale Cason, Dottore della Peste?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I am the Camerlengo to Sebastiano Venier, His Serene Highness the Doge of Venice.’

  Annibale was glad of the mask. He looked at the Camerlengo. The chamberlain was suited in black beneath the cloak, in a suit of clothes that seemed to be made of hide, some sort of supple black leather. He was a younger man than Annibale expected, with the blond hair and blue eyes of a northerner. He was neat, cleanshaven, with his hair cropped short as a Teuton; and his voice was cultured and low. There was nothing threatening about him, and yet everything; and suddenly Annibale was afraid.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can speak privately?’ the Camerlengo asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Annibale looked at the semicircle of guards. ‘All of you?’

  The Camerlengo smiled pleasantly. ‘Just me.’

  Annibale began to relax a fraction, and took courage. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Camerlengo, could you walk through this pit?’

  The Camerlengo lifted his wine-coloured cloak and walked obligingly through the potash. Annibale followed him through the gate.

  Once inside the walls, Annibale led the way across the lawns, giving the Tezon a
wide berth. He tried to imagine what the Camerlengo would be thinking and tried to see the place through his eyes. It was a sparkling autumn day – the sun was shining and there was a fresh coolness in the shadows and a breath of winter in the air. The mulberries were turning to rose and amber. He could see the children running around by the schoolhouse, and hear the chime of the little bell of San Bartolomeo calling Tierce for the nuns. The rich dark loam of the neatly dug herb garden with its botanical sectors in circles and squares made a pleasing contrast with the verdant turf, and the area of wilderness that he’d had scythed and marked off for a graveyard was yet to receive its first body. Things had been going so well. Annibale pointed with his cane. ‘My house –’ he stopped himself, for the title sounded overly proprietorial ‘– the place where I stay is this way.’

  The Camerlengo stopped and drew in a deep breath of the cool autumn air. ‘It is a fair day, is it not? Shall we take our ease here? I spend overmuch of my time in the great chambers of government.’ There was no hint of a boast in the statement: the Camerlengo’s power was complete. ‘So I take the air whenever I can. And certainly it seems sweeter here than in our stricken city. Better to be out than in on such a day, don’t you think?’

  He sat down on the ancient fallen pillar by the mulberry walk, and Annibale sat warily beside him. He did not think the question required an answer, but the Camerlengo thought differently. ‘Don’t you think, Cason?’ he repeated.

  There was an edge of threat in the idle question. Annibale turned to him and the sun caught the ice in the blue eyes. The Camerlengo expected his question, this conversational nothing, to be answered with a considered reply; and, by implication, all future questions too. Annibale wondered if the chamberlain ever left those great painted salons of the Doge’s palace to descend down to the dungeons and apply his inquisitorial skills with rather more pressure, assisted perhaps by the fire and the irons. His eyes wandered to the guards beyond the gate. They stood on the jetty in a neat semicircle, hands clasped before them. They did not loll or jest as men-at-arms at ease were wont to do. These, he knew were the Leoni, the elite guard for the Doge and his household. So Annibale waited for the next question, knowing he was powerless.