One Knight in Venice

by Tori Phillips

  Sophia cocked her head. “I am already married!”

  The Englishman cast her a wry look. “So is he, signora. Four times!”

  “Truly?” Jessica eyed the grinning giant. If he practiced such a heathenish custom he could not possibly be a cleric. Relief relaxed the knots in her stomach.

  The African popped a sugared almond into his mouth. “Indeed, madonna. Now go to, Francis. I know that I leave you in good hands.” He turned his merry eyes on Sophia. “Meanwhile, little pigeon, draw up the other chair and tell me your whole life’s history and I will tell you mine.” He winked at his friend before returning his gaze to Sophia. “Methinks you and I will be spending a goodly amount of time in each other’s company.”

  Jessica led Francis into the warm treatment room. A bushy-haired little man sat on a stool in the far corner and tuned his lute. Though he did not hide his bold scrutiny, the little fellow inclined his head to Francis with a sign of respect. He must be the husband of Jessica’s companion, Francis thought.

  Under her mask, Jessica smiled at her accompanist. “This is Gobbo, messere,” she introduced him.

  Though Francis was almost twice the man’s height, he returned the other’s bow with equal gravity. “Your music is a feast for the ears, signore. I have not heard such skill in a long time.”

  Gobbo gave him a gap-toothed grin. “You do me honor, my lord,” he replied. Then he returned to his strings.

  Jessica held out the blindfold as before. “Pray disrobe to your waist, Messere Bardolph, and once again, I must ask you to wear this.”

  Francis started to protest but saw, out of the corner of his eye, that Gobbo opened his vest to reveal that he wore a wicked-looking stiletto on his belt. Francis suppressed a grin at Jessica’s protector. The little man would no doubt defend her with his life, if necessary.

  “I am at your command, madonna,” Francis replied, though he wished otherwise. Her pale mask teased him to distraction.

  “Gobbo will call me.” Jessica flitted through the far door. Unbuttoning his doublet, Francis eyed the musician. Perhaps he could learn a thing or two about her from her minion. “Mistress Jessica is a gifted healer, is she not?” he began in a casual tone. “Where did she learn her art?”

  Gobbo considered the question for a long moment before he answered. “Her father is a doctor.”

  Francis peeled off his shirt. His shoulder ached with the effort. “Ah! And does the good doctor also reside here?”

  Gobbo took even longer to reply. “Father and daughter disagreed. Her parents live…not far.” His dark eyes glittered in the light of the fat candle on the sideboard. “Why do you ask?”

  Francis gave him a disarming grin. “To make idle conversation. In truth, I am not used to undressing before an audience.”

  Gobbo’s expression did not change. “Unless your audience is Signorina di Luna?” he inquired.

  Francis’s mouth went dry. Hoy day! Have I blundered into a nest of informants? He cocked an eyebrow at the lutist. “You are singularly sharp, Master Gobbo. Is it your habit to spy upon your mistress’s clients?”

  Gobbo grinned. “Sì, my lord. Jessica’s welfare is my greatest concern. And,” he added with a note of triumph, “this is Venice. In our city, a mere cat cannot sneeze without a hundred people knowing within the hour when and where and what color was the cat.”

  That unruly hair hides a clever mind. I had best watch what I say to the bewitching lady. The Council of Ten has many eyes and ears about this city of secrets. Aloud, Francis said, “I thank you for your advice.”

  Gobbo plucked a chord on his lute. “Consider it a warning, my lord.” He pursed his lips, then added, “There is one who follows you.”

  Francis nodded. Cosma’s young spy was singularly inept. “I will keep your words in mind.” He lay down on the padded table. “Tell your mistress that I await her magic.”

  Gobbo cleared his throat. “The blindfold,” he reminded Francis.

  Francis sighed as he tied it over his eyes. “Surely an angel with such a sweet voice should not fear to show her face. I have roamed enough in the world to know that true beauty resides below the skin.”

  “Then you claim to be wiser than most men, my lord,” the lutist replied. “Nevertheless, it is Jessica’s wish.”

  “Tell me, friend Gobbo,” Francis said softly. “Have you seen her without her mask?”

  “I have known her since she was in leading strings,” he answered with fondness in his voice.

  Francis’s heart increased its rhythm. “Is she truly so…deformed as she claims?”

  Silence answered him. He chided himself for pushing Gobbo’s patience. The man’s loyalty to the mysterious Jessica was commendable.

  Without warning, Gobbo snapped, “She is a peerless pearl and one beloved by many. Woe to the man who insults or harms her!”

  Francis exhaled slowly. “Do not fear me, Gobbo. I am the chiefest of all her admirers.”

  The other man sniffed loudly. “False words often fall from handsome lips, my lord.” Then he raised his voice and called to Jessica.

  “Trust me,” Francis asked him before the healer returned.

  Gobbo’s only reply was the first chord of an old ballad. The door again opened. Jessica’s spicy perfume announced her presence even before she spoke. Its heady scent bathed him. His skin tingled with the expectation of her touch. When her knowing fingers glided across the old scar, his heart beat faster. A sudden flame seared through his veins, catching him by surprise. Then Jessica tucked a cloth around his shoulder.

  “I have a towel that I have steamed for you, messere,” she told him in that voice that reminded him of gentle breezes and singing birds. “Moist heat softens the tightness under the skin and helps to relieve pain. May I place it on your shoulder? I warn you, it is very warm.”

  “I would go into hellfire itself, madonna, if you held my hand,” he replied with more truth than charming prattle.

  She chuckled. “I do not think it is that hot, my lord.” Without further ado, she laid the heat pack over the cloth. Its warmth quickly seeped through the thickness of the material into his flesh. Then Jessica moved behind his head. She placed the fingers of both hands on his forehead and stroked his skin as if she sought to smooth away all the faint lines that years of apprehension and tension had formed there.

  “Think of nothing, my lord,” she murmured as she massaged his temples. “Let your mind float on a cloud of peace.”

  Francis drew in a deep breath. “What is peace?” he muttered. “Where can I find it?”

  “In your heart,” she answered, running her thumbs along his neck.

  He quivered under her touch. “My heart is a barren place, madonna.”

  Though he would never have admitted that truth to any member of his confusing family—not even to Belle who was closest to him—it seemed right to open himself to Jessica. Beguiled by the warmth that suffused his body, the soft music, her heady perfume and her delicate touch, Francis relaxed his customary guard.

  She worked her fingers through his hair and began to slowly massage his scalp from the crown down to the base of his neck. “Tell me about this pain that gnaws your heart. When two share a burden it grows lighter,” she whispered.

  Francis inhaled deeply. “I…I have always been a stranger among my family,” he confessed, not understanding why he wanted to reveal his hidden anguish to this near stranger.

  Jessica smoothed her palms across his forehead. “Yet I perceive that you loved your grandfather deeply.”

  He took another deep breath. “Sì, he was my one true anchor.”

  “Your parents?” she murmured. “What of them?”

  The blurred image of his wanton, feckless mother rose in his mind. “My mother is also dead,” he said in a cold voice.

  Jessica made a soothing sound in the back of her throat. “It is a true tragedy when a boy loses his mother.”

  He grimaced under the blindfold. “She was dead to me long before God took her
. The true tragedy is to know that your mother was a whore.”

  Jessica’s hand stilled in midstroke. “¡Dio mio! How can you say such a vile thing about your own mother? She must have been a fine lady since you are nobly born.”

  Francis winced inwardly. He was a bastard without land or a title, but he knew he couldn’t tell her that glaring truth. He must maintain his disguise of nobility for another month at least.

  He cleared his throat. “You speak the truth. My mother was indeed a lady but her morals would have shamed an alley cat. After she gave her husband two sons to insure the family line, she left him in his country manor among his beloved cows and horses. My lady mother went to court where she disported herself with every man in sight—including the kings of England and France, or so I have been told.”

  Jessica removed the cooling towel. She ran the heel of her hand along the scar tissue. “Surely you have mistaken her. Perhaps she was merely full of high spirits.”

  Francis snorted. “I wish that were so for my, um…father’s sake. He was a good man, though he had the spine of an eel. No, the truth of the matter was that Lady Olivia opened her quiver to every arrow. She reveled in her pleasure.” His throat tightened with the shame of the memory. “Once a year, she returned to Cloverdale, her husband’s home, and there delivered herself of another child.”

  Jessica’s hands trembled against his warm skin. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

  Exhaling deeply, Francis wished he could expel the stain of his birth as easily. “My mother apparently enjoyed being pregnant but disliked the fruits of her labor. She left her children with her husband and assorted wet nurses while she returned to the pleasures of the court as soon as she could ride a horse.”

  He pressed his lips together. He had already told Jessica far more than he had intended. She kneaded his shoulder in silence, no doubt shocked by his frank revelations. Her touch, though firm, soothed him. Gobbo continued to play as if he had not overheard a single word.

  Jessica worked her way down his arm. “How very sad for your father,” she murmured.

  Francis gritted his teeth.

  “Ah,” she murmured. “I have hit the sore point of your tale.”

  He moistened his lips. “Sì, madonna, you have.” Only Francis knew the real truth of his paternity now that his mother had gone to her cold grave in that faraway convent.

  After adding more ointment to her fingers, Jessica worked on the long muscle between his elbow and wrist.

  “Do you wish to speak of this painful thing?” she asked with the gentleness of a dove. “I assure you, I am discreet.”

  Francis groaned from the depths of his soul. “Oh, sweet Jessica, if only you could erase the days of my childhood.”

  Chapter Six

  Jessica stared down at the handsome man lying on her table. She wished she had the courage to enfold him in her arms and kiss away the hundred hurts that had been inflicted in his youth. Instead she took his right hand between hers and began to gently stretch the long fingers. A man with such a hand as his possessed both a great heart and a great pride to go with it. He would disdain any show of pity. Perhaps his loneliness was why he had sought the solace of the church—if he was a priest, that is.

  Pressing his lips together in a hard line, Francis turned his head to one side away from her. Jessica knew that he had revealed as much as he could bear. She worked the muscles of his chest—his very broad chest. What would it be like to pillow one’s weary head on his shoulder, even the injured one? Jessica allowed her hand to caress the smooth skin at the base of his collarbone. She bit her lower lip. Very unprofessional, she chided herself. He would think that she was one of Venice’s infamous strumpets—until he saw her face, of course. She worked her thumb deep into his scar tissue.

  Lord Bardolph grunted with surprise. “Hold, madonna! I am not a quintain to tilt at.”

  Jessica lightened the pressure. “Your pardon, messere,” she murmured. “I think you have tilted at quintains many times,” she added.

  A wry smile tinged his lips below the blindfold. “Too many,” he replied. “My…my mentor was determined to make me into a proper knight.”

  “From the looks of your body, I would say he succeeded,” she observed lightly, though her mouth was dry. This handsome man was the very devil come to tempt her virtue—or to send her to the stake.

  “I joust more with my head, than with my arm. My grandfather taught me the wisdom of that,” he added softly.

  Jessica covered him with the blanket and laid her hands over his heart to speed the healing force through him. “A most wise man,” she observed. “No wonder you mourn him.”

  He sighed. “Though my mother was not honest in her virtue, my grandfather was indeed true of heart. He treated me as one of his sons and I…I loved him for it.”

  Jessica rocked his body with a gentle motion to balance his humors. “You are most fortunate indeed.”

  He pursed his lips. “How so, madonna? Fortunate is not a word I would use to describe myself.”

  Laying her palm on his forehead, she murmured a prayer to Saint Luke, patron saint of physicians, for the efficacy of her work. Then she observed, “Such a man as your grandfather comes only once in a person’s lifetime. You are fortunate to have recognized his greatness.”

  The Englishman turned down his mouth. “I never told him that I loved him.”

  Jessica trailed the backs of her fingers down his cheek. “He knows that now, messere.”

  A hot ache burned in her throat. She turned to her sideboard and covered her pots of ointments. The desire to kiss those enticing lips had become too strong. What had happened to her sense of decorum? No other man had ever affected her in this way. It must be his sorrow that appealed to her maternal heart.

  Jessica wiped her hands on her apron. “I have done for today, my lord,” she said, backing toward the door. “Please dress and rejoin your friend. I will be with you anon.”

  She slipped through the welcome portal with Gobbo right behind her. Once safely in the back hall, Jessica sagged with relief.

  Gobbo touched her elbow. “Are you unwell, madonna? I thought for a moment in there that you might faint.”

  Jessica patted her flushed face with her hands. “It is nothing, dear friend. The room was too warm. I worked too hard. In faith, the English lord will be quite sore by tomorrow morning’s light and speak most ill of me.”

  Gobbo cast her an arched look. “I think not, child. That man will bless your name at morning Mass.” Leaving that observation nestled in her ear, he walked down the narrow hall with his lute under his arm.

  Jessica leaned against the cool plaster wall for a few minutes until her quickened pulse subsided. Closing her eyes, she inhaled a few deep breaths. What had come over her in there? Why should that handsome stranger cause her mind to flutter and her skin to burn? She again wondered if she were coming down with some dread fever.

  Common sense warned her to have little to do with the enigmatic Lord Bardolph. Intriguing rogue! Though she was more sympathetic to the melancholy that he bore in his heart, she still did not trust the man’s motives toward her. They say the devil has a handsome face and speaks with a honeyed tongue. She harbored no further doubt that his garish clothing and outward manner of a pleasure-bent gentleman was nothing but a sham—as much a disguise as the mask she wore to face the world.

  On the other hand, she wondered if he was indeed a priest—he seemed far too much a man of the world for that role. She massaged her temples. Yet Venice teamed with clerics who overate, overdrank, slept through confessions, missed Mass and disported with lewd women. If the messere was not a priest, he could still be in the pay of the Holy Office. The mere thought of the Inquisition filled her with icy dread. She had been weaned on the tales her parents had told her of the horrors they had endured before they fled from Spain. Late last year, the pope had sent the Holy Office to Venice with its dreaded instruments of torture.

  Jessica shivered. She was a
good Catholic girl. She attended Mass nearly every day, fasted and prayed at the appropriate times and led a chaste life. And yet that might not be enough to save her from the flames. In recent weeks, spies of the Inquisition had made it their special business to observe the activities of the marranos like her parents—Spanish Jews who had converted to Catholicism in order to save their lives. By one false look or word, Jessica knew she could be the downfall of her family who lived close to their friends inside the Jewish Ghetto.

  No, the somber Englishman in the gaudy clothes was a man to be watched but never trusted—not with her family secrets and certainly not with her heart. She heard Lord Bardolph reenter her antechamber. With a sigh, she slipped on her mask and then opened the door just as Sophia hopped off her chair and planted herself squarely in front of the Englishman.

  “You are looking better, messere,” the little woman observed. “Pray do not forget to pay the fee for such good health. We have to eat in this house, you know.” She shot a wry glance at Jobe. “Indeed, your giant has consumed enough provender for a week!”

  Before Lord Bardolph could reply to this brazen speech, Jessica intervened. “Hush, Sophia! You insult these gentlemen to the quick with your blunt words.” Do not ruffle their feathers, she silently begged her friend. They could do great damage to us in return.

  Instead of growing angry, the Englishman threw back his handsome head and laughed with real mirth. The sound and sight of such a surprising display rendered Jessica speechless. Opening his money pouch, he smiled with added brilliance at her. Her knees weakened.

  “Fear me not, little Jessica. The good service you have done for me this day is worth a Turk’s ransom!” He took her cold hand in his and counted out ten ducats into her palm.

  She trembled at his touch and at the sight of the pile of money.

  He closed her fingers around the coins. “Take these paltry pieces of gold, madonna. You have lightened my heart, so I shall lighten my purse.”

  She backed against the door. The coins shivered against each other in her hand. “You are too generous, messere, but I cannot keep such a fortune.” It was blood money! She would rue it later when she would be forced to confess to the Inquisition that she had received a great deal of gold from this man for…for…She couldn’t think what but she knew the Inquisition would turn this outrageous gift to their own hideous purposes.