The arrival of the other men, possibly. Or something related to their plot, which they were vexingly not discussing, could perhaps—Jane’s stomach dropped as she realized the likelihood of Vincent trying something foolish to draw them away. She looked again to the window, wishing that she could signal to him. In spite of the singular focus he could display while working, he was not gifted with a deep supply of patience. If he thought she was in danger—which, to be fair, she was—he would come for her. Whether it was a pirate’s stronghold or into a burning building, Vincent would—
She knew what to do.
Jane turned to the hearth. A burning building. If she masked the illusion within the Sphère Obscurcie while she was creating it, as Vincent had done with The Broken Bridge, she should be able to create a fairly convincing house fire. She just had to do it quickly. Then again … she did not need to create this illusion wholly with glamour.
Jane undid the Sphère Obscurcie enough to move it. By painful increments, she made her way to the fireplace, grateful for the rich Persian rug, which muffled her footsteps. There, she wove several clouds of smoke, which she pinned in place with a series of slip-knots. When she was ready, she could release them. They would fray and dissolve, leaving—she hoped—no sign of the glamour that created them.
Next Jane wove a small breeze, coming down the chimney, to fan the fire and push real smoke into the room. It was one of the few practical things glamour could do. As with all weaves, its effect on the corporeal world was faint, but enough for her purposes.
With those prepared, Jane undid the buttons on her shirt and pulled out the padding that made up the paunch of her costume. It was damp with her sweat. She pulled the wadding from inside her cheeks. The cotton had become soaked through with saliva. Wrinkling her nose, she put the wet cloth against her palm, then wrapped the padding from her paunch around her left hand.
Denaro and Coppa were still engaged in conversation, their backs to her, though their discussion had drifted to the racing gondolas kept by the owner of the palazzo and wagers about which one was fastest.
Jane wet her lips, sending up a prayer that this would all work. Then she plunged her left hand, swaddled in cloth, into the fire, and seized a small log. Even with the padding, the heat made her cringe. Moving as swiftly as she could, Jane set the rug afire. The cloth on her hand smouldered, and then its edge caught fire. Jane dropped the log and shook the cloth from her hand, adding it to the blaze on the floor.
Hidden by the sofa, neither man had yet noticed the additional fire in the room. Jane rose to her feet and walked with the Sphère Obscurcie so that it was as close to the door as possible.
From outside the palazzo, a great rumble of thunder sounded, loud enough to stop the men’s conversation. Lightning flashed outside the window. Denaro said, “They’ll have an unpleasant ride home.”
“Perhaps they will stay in Venice,” Coppa replied.
Jane could only hope that was the case. She edged closer to the door, pulling the slip-knots for the smoke with her. Before long she had to stop and bend over with her hands upon her knees to catch her breath before she could continue. Outside the thunder rumbled again, louder this time, and the flash of lightning came almost immediately. Jane straightened and wiped her face on the sleeve of her coat.
Her slow progress had taken her to within five feet of the door. She pulled the slip-knots, and the illusion of smoke added to the actual smoke in the room.
The men continued to drink and chat.
Truly … how long was it going to take them to notice that the rug was on fire?
Thunder rolled again, followed by an almost immediate flash of lightning. Jane turned to the window, only now noticing that the order was reversed. She should see lightning, then hear the thunder. It was Vincent—it had to be. But surely he was not throwing glamour that far into the air?
This time the lightning and thunderclap came simultaneously, terrifyingly loud and bright.
Denaro swore. “That sounded as though it were right on top of us.”
In the distance, someone yelled, “Fire!”
Jane grinned. Vincent had set the exterior of the building on fire—or created an illusion of the same. Even separated by distance, their thoughts ran in the same vein. The call of “Fire!” was repeated.
Denaro sat up. “Do you think that’s our—Fire!”
“Perhaps. Someone will come—”
“No, I mean there’s a fire! Here!” He cursed and stumbled to his feet. “The rug, man! An ember must’ve fallen out.”
Denaro leapt to his feet, spinning as though to make certain that he was not, himself, on fire. Denaro dashed to the side table and snatched a carafe of water off of it. He ran to the fire and tossed the water upon it. With a surge, the fire blazed higher.
“You fool! That’s gin!” Coppa danced back from the blaze.
Outside, the cries of “Fire!” grew more frequent and more panic-stricken. Jane could not help but note that there were no subsequent thunderclaps. Denaro raced to the door and flung it open. Finally! He ran into the hall, adding his voice to the clamour. “Fire! Alarm! Fire in the parlour!”
Jane kept her eye on Coppa. He stood transfixed by the fire, but there was no telling when he would move. Jane took three deep breaths, gripping the thread of the Sphère Obscurcie tightly. She ran for the door with her gaze fixed upon the hall beyond. Dark spots swam in front of her eyes, and her heart felt as though it would burst. As the grey fog grew denser over her sight, Jane collided with the wall. She twisted the glamour into a knot and slid, insensible, to the floor.
* * *
The smell of smoke filled her nostrils. Footsteps ran past Jane. She held still for a moment, but the men who ran past did so without seeing her. Cautiously, she sat. The Sphère Obscurcie was still intact. She sighed with relief that her instincts had led her to tie it off as she fainted. Beneath her waistcoat, her heart still thudded, so she must not have been unconscious for long.
Smoke poured out of the parlour, and Jane began to wonder if their problem could be so simply solved. If the fire were not extinguished quickly, then perhaps the papers would burn up and the Verres Obscurcis crack.
Bracing herself against the wall, Jane rose to her feet. The hall pitched around her. She fixed her gaze upon a painting of a hunting scene on the opposite wall and waited for the dizziness to pass. She would not be able to make her way downstairs hidden by the Sphère Obscurcie.
For the moment, the hall was empty. Biting her lip, Jane listened for footsteps, but the activity seemed confined to the parlour on this floor. In the distance … well, she would have to be alert. Once she was on the ground floor, her presence would be easier to explain.
Holding her breath, Jane untied the Sphère and let it dissolve. She crept down the hall, feeling terribly exposed. The sound of her own footsteps seemed to echo in the hall, even louder than the shouting and crackling of flames. After a moment, Jane realized that it was not her footsteps, but someone else coming up the stairs. She shrank against the wall and wove a Sphère Obscurcie around her.
A slender young man with shockingly red hair came up the stairs carrying two buckets. He walked more slowly than Jane would have expected of someone in an emergency. At the top of the stairs, he peered into the first room, away from where she stood. In a hoarse whisper, he said, “Lady Vincent?”
Jane gaped in astonishment. As he turned, she recognised the profile of Signor Zancani. The red hair had so distracted her that she had not recognised the young man in his disguise. Jane dropped the Sphère Obscurcie. “Here.”
He jumped and spun. “Oh, thank heavens.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Giving you an excuse for being in the house.” He handed her a bucket. “Your husband was certain that you could get out of the parlour on your own, but worried that you would be caught in the house.”
“The rescue is welcome, thank you.” She eyed the bucket. “We are watermen, here to quench the fire, I
take it?”
“Just so.” He nodded to the stairs. “Shall we go fetch some more water? Outside?”
“By all means, yes.” It was a great relief to have someone else with her so that she did not have to creep through the halls fearing discovery. Even so, she was still so fatigued from her previous efforts that she was soon winded. When they reached the ground floor, the smoke was denser, which did not help. “Is that a real fire?”
“Mostly.”
“You there! What is happening?” Spada’s voice stopped them in the hall. He stood on the landing to the water entrance for the palazzo. Jane wished that she still had the padding on her belly. The itching of her whiskers became a sudden comfort as they stood between her and the swindler.
She tried to stand as though she were not alarmed by Spada’s presence. This close, with his hair dyed black, it was impossible to understand how they had mistaken him for an older man when he had been Signor Sanuto. He had lines at the corners of his eyes, yes, but no more than a man of thirty. The limp, however, seemed real. He leaned on his cane and stepped towards them.
Signor Zancani raised his bucket in answer. “The palazzo was struck by lightning, Signor. It is on fire.” His voice had risen and cracked like an adolescent’s. “We’re getting water.”
“Fire?” he exclaimed. He tapped his cane on the floor, in a gesture that Jane recognised as him thinking. With a sudden curse, he turned to Bastone. “The Vincents are likely in the house.”
“Surely not.”
“All of us out, save Denaro? Then a fire. Check the parlour.”
Bastone cursed and ran to the stairs.
Spada called after him. “Send Denaro and Coppa to me if you see them. I’ll watch here.” He leaned on his cane, frowning. From here, he could see the stairs and the front door. He also blocked the way to the water entrance.
Signor Zancani waved his bucket wildly. “We need to get more water, Signor.”
With a grunt, Spada stepped back. Jane had to brush by him on her way to the water entrance, but he was looking past her to the stairs. They had to hurry before Bastone reported the second fire upstairs. It would, perhaps, have been better if she and Vincent had not had quite so much the same idea. She hurried down the steps to the water.
Signor Zancani dipped his bucket in the water and handed it to Jane, taking hers from her. She repressed a groan as she lifted the bucket. Her limbs ached with fatigue from stringing the bouclé torsadée across the street. With luck, the grimace would make her look even more masculine.
She and Signor Zancani made their way, water splashing, up the stairs and past Spada. He watched them go past, and Jane could feel his gaze weighing them. She felt the loss of the padding now. With every step she took, Jane tried to project manhood. Aged manhood, perhaps, but manhood nevertheless. Though she had wished all her life for a graceful stride, it now seemed all she could do to avoid mincing down the hall. The bucket of water helped.
Then they were past the kitchen and into the courtyard, where there was a small fire in the remnants of Jane’s barrow. The flames had spread to the ivy covering the palazzo’s walls. A line of people stretched from the fire, out the gate, and to the canal, passing buckets full of water to throw on the fire. Signor Zancani handed his bucket to the nearest man. “It’s faster to go through the house to the water gate.”
“Good thought!” The man clapped his hand on Zancani’s shoulder and called instructions to the volunteer watermen who were working diligently to put out the fire.
Jane passed her bucket off, and in minutes the line reorganized itself to run through the house. In the midst of the change, she and Zancani slipped away.
Walking away from the palazzo, and from the apartment where the nuns waited, Jane finally allowed herself to take a full breath. “How did you set the fire? I thought it was glamour.”
“Not everything needs to be. Sulphur matches.” He frowned for a minute as if he had omitted something from his conversation. “Vincent’s lightning sold it though. You should have seen it fork down out of the sky. Amazing.”
She must have misheard him. To have the lightning appear from the sky, Vincent would have had to run a line of glamour up to … the sky. Jane swallowed, feeling suddenly ill, and certain that she had not misheard. “How is Vincent?”
Signor Zancani paused—not long, but enough that Jane felt every twist of his thought as he considered his reply. “He was alert when I left.”
This was, Jane thought, not the heartening sentence that the puppet player must have intended, because it meant that Vincent had not been alert for some time before that. It took all of Jane’s discipline not to change her direction and run back to the apartment where her husband was. It would do him no good if she led Spada there. Vincent was alert, at least.
Twenty
Fire and Water
Jane and Signor Zancani took a circuitous route back to the small room opposite the palazzo. In response to her questions, the puppet player related the events leading to Vincent’s collapse as best he could. To get the sound and light of the storm to come from the right area, her husband had worked with the nuns to build a scaffold of yokes, atop which he placed his own glamour. Zancani was not well practised in the art, but he said that the nuns appeared shocked by its height.
Vincent had swayed after the second thunderclap. Sister Maria Agnes had stepped in to help, but the thread was so long that, even with it supported by the yokes, she had fainted after they performed the third thunderclap. For the fourth effort, he had worked the sound and light simultaneously, and fainted.
“Did he convulse?”
Signor Zancani shook his head. “No, but he was unconscious longer than I expected. Usually he wakes immediately.”
“Usually?” Jane raised her eyebrows at that. One of Vincent’s great advantages as a glamourist was that he had tremendous strength and stamina. He would have the occasional light-headedness at the end of a long workday, but that was common among professional glamourists. He had only passed out completely twice in Jane’s time with him. She had fainted more often, but, given the difference in their frames, this was not surprising. “How often has he fainted, to your knowledge?”
“A handful of times at most. Usually when it was hot out. And only for a few moments.” Signor Zancani guided her into a small alcove set back from the street. The back of it, which had seemed closed off, took a little zigzag through a courtyard and then led on to the street where the room was.
“And how long was he unconscious this time?”
“Ten minutes?” He shook his head and paused at the door to their building. “I was changing into costume, so it may have been less than that. He was alert after that, though.”
Something in the way he said that made Jane wonder. “Was he sitting up when you left?”
“Ah—no.”
Jane opened the door and ran up the stairs. On the second landing, she had to stop and lean forward to catch her breath. Here she was angry at Vincent for over-taxing himself, and she did not have sense enough of her own to remember how much she had exerted herself. Bosom heaving, she proceeded up the rest of the stairs to the third floor as quickly as she could. Signor Zancani was not far behind.
The little hall outside the room seemed to be filled with nuns. Sister Maria Agnes was seated in a chair by the door and waved at Jane. She, at least, seemed none the worse for wear. On the other side of the door, Lord Byron sat like a guard. She hesitated upon seeing him, which he seemed to interpret as concern for Vincent.
Lord Byron rose as Jane came up the last few steps. “He is resting.”
“How bad is it?” Jane kept her voice low.
“The Reverend Mother tended to him while he was sick—” He broke off, as if understanding that she had not known. The poet’s concern for Vincent was so evident in his voice that it was difficult to believe that he had aligned himself with Spada. And yet, the swindler had also evidenced concern for her husband while impersonating Sanuto. “He only vom
ited, I think from acute dizziness. I have been in worse condition from drink, so I think he will be well if we can convince him to sleep.”
Jane had no doubt that Lord Byron had indeed been deep in his cups on frequent occasions, but that was quite different from the toll too great an exertion of glamour could wreak on one. If Vincent had vomited, that meant he had been severely overheated. “Where is the Reverend Mother?”
“Here.” The Abbess had been standing in the hall, lost among the crowd of black and white. “Lord Byron is correct. Your husband is stubborn, but should be well if he will rest and—”
The door opened. Vincent stepped into the hall and swept Jane into his arms. “Muse—thank God.”
She huddled in the circle of his arms, thanking providence. He was standing. His heart beat strongly against her cheek, even through her whiskers, with a steady and regular pulse. He would be all right. “I am quite well.”
“Good.” He stepped back and lost his balance. Vincent swung his arm out and caught the doorcase, steadying himself. All her relief fled. Vincent’s face was ashen, with dark circles under his eye. His hair was matted to his head with dried sweat, and he squinted against the light.
“Vincent, you need to rest.” Jane reached up to feel his brow. His skin was clammy to the touch.
“Later.” He walked into the room, bracing himself against the wall with one hand. “We have things to discuss.”
The Abbess exchanged a look with Jane that spoke clearly of her frustration and concern. Nodding, Jane followed Vincent into the room. It had the reek of someone’s sick, which no cleaning would quickly lift. She did not see how he could even be standing. “There is nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow. You need to rest. For that matter, I need to rest, and so does Sister Maria Agnes.”
Vincent gripped the frame of the bed and lowered himself to sit upon it. He kept his head level and his gaze fixed upon a point on the wall. “We need to speed up our plans. Their Lombardy-Venetia buyer is coming on Saturday next, and today is already Friday.”
Valour and Vanity Page 23