“It’s you!” Magdalena screamed, beside herself. “Did you abduct her? Where are you hiding her? Speak!”
Everything was going very, very fast. Edgardo tried to understand what logic was prompting the mistress to this conclusion, other than an obtuse desire to find a thread of hope.
“No, Signora,” Alvise whimpered, “it wasn’t me, I swear it.”
Nobody dared raise objections, and Magdalena’s accusation was almost welcomed with relief by the other servants, who, this way, saw the shadow of suspicion diverted from them.
“If you’ve hurt her I’ll scratch your eyes out,” Magdalena threatened.
The boy was shaking his head violently, like a bull led to slaughter.
“It wasn’t him, Signora, he’s incapable of doing anyone any harm, he’s a good, a sensible boy . . . ”
Weeping, Nena grabbed Magdalena’s dress, but her mistress pushed her away with a jerk of the arm and walked up to Alvise.
“Speak, you animal, what have you done with her!” she screamed.
The young man’s head was a complete muddle of words and thoughts at odds with one another: he couldn’t understand what they wanted from him or what was happening.
They were dragging him into their nightmares and obsessions, ready to sacrifice him just so they could find an explanation.
“If I may speak,” Edgardo’s calm, deep tone managed to restore a glimpse of light into the diseased shadow that had fallen over them. “Emotions tend to run away too fast and overtake the mind. May I please ask everyone: let’s not get too ahead of ourselves but remain anchored in reality as it is, and not allow ourselves to be cheated by appearances.” His own words surprised him, seeing how he was guilty of living by dreams. “So far we don’t have any definite information about Costanza’s disappearance, and none of us have lost the hope of finding her safe and sound. That is why we must still concentrate our efforts on the search.” He went up to the boy, almost as though trying to suggest a way out. “That which now casts a shadow of suspicion on this garzone is but a vague, imperfect clue that can lead us to the wrong conclusions. We have no proof that he’s abducted her. He says the hair was a gift. From what I’ve seen of him all these years, I am inclined to believe him and trust him.” Edgardo turned to Tommaso. “I beg you, Signore, let’s take the time to carry on investigating and searching.”
“With every night that goes by I see my hope drain away.” Magdalena’s voice was broken. “If Alvise was involved and would talk, we could save her.”
“Even at the cost of making him confess to something he hasn’t committed?” Edgardo remembered his father, who, although a hard, inflexible man, had passed onto his sons a deep sense of justice.
Nena dropped to her knees before the master. “I beg you, Signore.”
Tommaso started rubbing his eyes. A sign that he was torn by conflicting thoughts. He slapped his chest, as though trying to remind everybody how big and generous his heart was. “In consideration of the long time you’ve been at the service of this household and of the love we have for your mother, we’ll examine the suggestion to take time and carry on the search. However, if we don’t get definite news soon, we’ll take the only possible way and report you to the gastald.” Tommaso gave Alvise a stare full of pain. “Remember, boy, that you still have time to save your soul. Our Lord forgives those who mend their ways.”
A man’s magnanimity reveals itself when life’s accidents become more distressing, Edgardo thought.
Annoyed by her husband’s decision, Magdalena stiffened and pursed her lips in a sour grimace; she was not allowed to contradict him, and knew she had to accept that act of generosity as a sign of the greatness of their family.
Edgardo smiled, proud to be in the service of a man of noble, equanimous spirit. Justice had to take its course, and the culprit would be punished. Tommaso would wait, then strike ruthlessly. The only way to exonerate Alvise was to find Costanza as soon as possible.
The naked body, lying on the bed, wrapped in the fur blanket, reminded Magdalena of an old, lifeless seal, tossed by the waves, that she’d seen as a little girl on the beach in Bruges.
Her husband, however, was alive, breathing in his sleep, absorbing into his powerful chest the malevolent humors that seemed to have taken possession of the household.
There was a wreath of bad luck on her head. She’d got married in mourning and heartache. But she wouldn’t give in. Women from Nordic countries are made of ice and rock. She would find her sister and give her husband an heir.
She undressed. Her barren nudity revolted her.
She took the wad she’d purchased from the apothecary out of the chest where she’d hidden it.
Tommaso was sound asleep, so wouldn’t notice anything. She brought the stool close to the oil lamp and sat on it. She thrust her pelvis forward and spread her legs as far apart as she could.
She wasn’t sure the subterfuge would work and was also afraid her husband would notice the presence of a foreign body inside her. But there was no other way.
She folded the wad, which she’d softened with a little honey, and gently inserted it into her vagina. Not too deep, for fear of not being able to take it out again. She closed her legs and tried getting up. She felt slightly off-balance, and a kind of nausea.
She joined her husband under the marten fur blanket, and the wild animal smell grabbed her by the throat. She’d never been able to work out if it was the fur or Tommaso’s skin.
During the early years of their marriage, his body smelled of sea water and rigging, then, ever since he’d stopped spending the long summer months at sea, his scent had changed, and become more akin to soil and wilderness. Or perhaps it was Luca’s death that had made his hips heavier, and left the stench of pain in the folds of his body.
She reached out to his penis and began stroking it, bringing back to memory the days of her youth, when she used to run across fields of tall grass, during the brief springs of Bruges.
When his cock stiffened, Tommaso rolled onto his back, panting, his mind clouded over: had the demon of lust come to visit him in a dream, or was it a real sensation? He half opened his eyes and glimpsed Magdalena’s luminous face as she bent over him, her small, pale breasts brushing against his chest.
“Sleep, don’t think of anything, close your eyes,” Magdalena whispered.
Tommaso groaned, wishing he could take his body back and free his mind from the spell. A layer of sticky pitch stopped him from moving, and sleep was dragging him into the abyss.
“Abandon yourself to me, let me cradle you,” she said.
Tommaso grunted. Magdalena climbed on his belly, opened her legs, and with a decisive move that surprised even her, slid his penis into her vulva. She felt him pushing against the wad pressed inside her. Tommaso let out a moan. Magdalena smiled with satisfaction. He’d noticed nothing. He was in her power.
She started rocking, gently at first, drowning that alien flesh in the stringy humors generated by her belly. It was a new sensation, one of omnipotence, as though she was swimming deep in the sea without needing to breathe.
Then the movement became more intense, a succession of foamy waves crashing against the cliffs.
She looked at him, stunned: who was this man, lying beneath her, a being that was now lost, drifting through inaccessible waters?
Only she, wife, mother, woman, was firmly anchored to the earth.
She struck deeper into her guts, without pity. She had all the power to conduct the game as she pleased.
“Don’t resist, forget, it’s just a dream.”
One final, deep, decisive push, and a bolt of lightning pierced her mind. A cold, bright light tore through her soul. She felt her body come apart, her bones shatter, her flesh yield to a never-before tasted intoxication. It was the first time in her marriage that she had felt such ecstasy.
Tommaso g
ave a start, curled up, gave a deep wheeze, like the agony of a slaughtered pig, and emptied his scrotum, filling her vagina.
Magdalena broke away from him immediately, trying to plug the entrance to her vagina with her hand. Then she rushed to the little privy, crouched over the pot and, very delicately, took out the wad.
As she had expected, it was completely soaked in Tommaso’s sperm. She took the glass bottle she’d prepared and wrung the piece of cotton. One by one, the pearly, stringy drops landed at the bottom of the receptacle. She managed to collect a large quantity, much more than she’d anticipated.
A triumphant light flashed in her eyes. Women always find a way. Now all she had to do was deliver the precious substance to Abella, and wait for the outcome.
XI.
TORCELLUS
Edgardo just couldn’t believe that Alvise was guilty. Picturing him as an abductor, a murderer, a rapist of young girls was a stretch of the imagination. True, he’d lied, probably carried away by ignorance and fear, and now he was at the edge of the precipice.
Although everyone was pushing him toward the abyss, Edgardo wanted to prove his innocence.
He made an effort to analyze the results of his research and was sorry to discover that he possessed nothing tangible. Costanza’s and Tataro’s servant’s disappearance might not be connected. The only element in common was the vague coincidence of the location: the canal around San Zaccaria, where she’d been abducted, and where the young man’s abandoned boat had been found. Perhaps he would discover more if he spoke to the Jewish steward the garzone had been going to meet in order to show him the glass pieces.
He was just about to leave Ca’ Grimani when Nena came to say that the Signora wished to see him immediately. What could Magdalena possibly want from him? She’d never used his services, considering him as an immediate employee of her husband and, ultimately, Costanza’s tutor. And now, after what had happened . . .
“I must ask a favor, Edgardo.” This time, he sensed a crack in Magdalena’s usually icy tone. “It’s of paramount importance that Magister Abella get this bottle in Torcellus as soon as possible.” She showed him a receptacle made of opaque green glass. “I would be most grateful if you took it to her.”
Edgardo couldn’t conceal an expression of astonishment.
“I realize this task is not part of your duties but, in the circumstances, I don’t feel it would be appropriate to ask Nena, so I’m forced to ask you to do this, as a favor. The bottle must reach Abella as soon as possible, perfectly preserved.” She paused for a second. “You’re the only one in this house who can guarantee me the necessary discretion . . . I’d rather nobody knew you’re doing this.”
She underlined the word “nobody,” implying that the “nobody” included her husband Tommaso. Edgardo was highly surprised by this request: Magdalena had never considered him as her ally, and now she was asking him to share a secret that excluded Tommaso, his benefactor. What did the bottle contain? He wanted nothing to do with that quack’s trafficking.
However, he was certainly in no position to refuse, so he lowered his head in obedience and took the bottle.
At times, he had the impression that Magdalena forgot her suffering at her sister’s disappearance, and became absorbed by other thoughts. So he felt it his duty to remind her cunningly. “I was about to follow a lead to gather more information on Costanza’s disappearance. I’ll go to Torcellus as you ask, then, on my way back, I’ll carry out my mission.”
Magdalena stared at him, offended: how dare he remind her of her pain! “Costanza is always in my thoughts. Not a moment goes by that I don’t pray to God for her safety.”
The subtle crease in her lips expressed all her annoyance.
His last journey through the senseless labyrinth of the islands in the north of the lagoon had been with Kallis, over ten years earlier. The only sailor aboard his miserable scaula, Edgardo advanced slowly, pushing his boat with heavy strokes of the oar on the leaden surface of flat, slimy waters, amid shoals, fords, small islands, fishing pools and enclosures.
He’d left the Rivus Altus, going along the long canal that connected it to the shipyard, then turning toward the open marsh, in the direction of Amurianum.
The deeper he ventured into the industrious islands surrounding the Silis estuary, the more he felt he was penetrating an unknown, wonderful world suspended between heaven and earth. The vivid natural colors dissolved into magical reflections that transformed the landscape into an otherworldly vision that gave the inhabitants the illusion they belonged to a divine dream.
Through the threads of pale blue fog, he suddenly thought he saw Kallis, evanescent, regal, an amber-colored thread of wool pushing her scaula on the surface of the water with determined strokes of the oar. A ravenous longing devoured his heart.
He shouldn’t have come back to these islands. And yet these places, so heavy with a painful past, still managed to give him an unexplainable sense of calm, a luminosity of the soul he couldn’t find anywhere else.
The city rising around Rivoalto looked so alien to him, criss-crossed as it was by passions and desires, longings for power and wealth that did not belong to him, while one could breathe the grace of God amid these strips of land.
Leaving Amurianum behind him, he entered the throbbing heart of the islands, Majurbium, Burianum, Costanciacum, Aymanas, and Torcellus, which, according to legend, derived its name from a door of the ancient city of Altinum, on the mainland, when, following an invasion by the Lombards, its inhabitants abandoned it and fled to the sea.
He immediately noticed how much the landscape had altered since his last trip. New monasteries and churches had been erected everywhere, in an even higher number than in the past.
Towers, belfries, and crosses seemed to rise out of nothing through the mist. A dense forest of offerings to the glory of Our Lord.
It was Terce, and the tolling of the bells was like an echo that seemed to be repeated ad infinitum. He felt that the to-ing and fro-ing of boats, trade, and exchanges he’d seen blossom so much in the past had given way to spirituality and prayer. As though the Venetian people had wished to move the heart of productive, political, and commercial life to Rivoalto, and leave the islands in the lagoon only to religious life.
The barges still crossed natural and artificial canals, but they no longer carried merchandise, timber, and animals, but rather salt and crops produced from the countless vegetable patches scattered all over the islands.
Approaching Torcellus, he was surprised to see a group of workmen taking apart the remains of an ancient crumbled church. Up to their hips in water, they were loading onto a barge all the salvageable material: precious marble slabs, blocks of Istrian marble, bricks, wooden beams, and pieces of mosaic that could be re-used for new buildings in Venice.
In recent years, the water level had constantly risen, flooding land that was once totally above water, making some places of worship unusable and forcing the monks to abandon them. Extensive works had been launched to counter the invasion of the tides: embankments, dams, fondamenta. Even so, many seemingly unassailable small islands had been submerged, swallowed by the mud of the lagoon.
He reached Torcello via the large upper canal that ran at the back of the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, the most direct route to Altinum, on the mainland.
He tied the scaula to a branch of a fig tree and made his way to the main square, walking around the watchtower that had been turned into a belfry. Outside Santa Fosca, many craftsmen were exhibiting their work: objects made of horn, bronze buckles, glass pieces very similar to the ones he’d seen at Tataro’s foundry. All the items had been manufactured on the island.
Blending in with the crowd, he made out various foreigners, Saracens and especially Africans. This mix of races was however but a memory of the emporion mega, as Constantine VII, emperor of Constantinople, had called Torcellus two centuries earlier.
The island could obviously no longer compete with the new commercial center in Rivoalto or with the docks at San Marco.
Outside the baptistery, once a hot spring with running water that poured out of the mouths of gargoyles, he asked a woman if she could point him toward Magister Abella’s house.
“Who? The witch? She’s by San Giovanni Evangelista,” she replied, hesitating, then indicated a path running alongside a canal.
Not the least reassured by that description, Edgardo walked along the Torcellus canal. The houses there looked tidier, more even than those in Venice: they looked out onto the canal on one side, and onto a courtyard equipped with a well on the other. They were timber buildings, two stories high, with four doors: on the ground floor the storerooms and hearth, built from clay; on the upper floor the family rooms. There were vegetable patches in the gaps between the houses.
All around, there was a large number of monasteries and churches. Edgardo had counted seven. The surrounding fords were covered in dense woods with oaks, alders, and cypresses. There was an atmosphere of peace, and Edgardo thought that perhaps, someday, he could live here, serene, removed from the tribulations life had dealt him until now.
He went past the ancient church of Sant’Andrea and the Benedictine monastery of Santa Margherita, walked over two narrow canals across swaying planks, and finally reached a large island where rose up the Benedictine monastery of San Giovanni, the oldest in the lagoon, founded in 640. The surrounding fields were cultivated as vegetable patches, and there were long rows of vineyards extending as far as the lagoon.
Behind the monastery, there was a small cluster of huts inhabited by fishermen and men working in the salt pans nearby.
Edgardo couldn’t imagine Abella living in one of those humble abodes. Then, on a small island, separated from the monastery by just a narrow canal, he noticed an unusual, eccentric-looking building. The front part, made of brick, one story high, was nestled in a round block of white Istrian marble with a domed roof.
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