‘Visitors for the Countess Montemoro,’ said Celia when Sarah still did not speak. ‘There was a message sent this afternoon. She is expecting us.’
‘Very well,’ said the guard. ‘Draw level with me, boatman. The ladies are to come in my craft to the palace. You are to leave. Those are Captain Maffei’s orders.’
‘Very well, sir,’ said Claudio. But as he stepped down to help the girls out from his boat and into the other, Celia saw that his face was set in a rictus of anxiety. There was nothing she could do to reassure him now, though, for she herself had been suddenly stricken by unease. The Countess was not a fool and, if the stories about her were true, was ruthless into the bargain. What did they think they were doing, trying to trap someone like her?
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She saw Sarah’s face clearly as the girl took Claudio’s hand and stepped from their gondola into the guard’s boat. It was very pale, the eyes v6ry bright. Sarah’s and Claudio’s eyes met. And in that instant Celia knew, with a leap of the heart, that Claudio was not loving in vain. He saw it too, and his face changed, softened, a look of incredulous joy coming into his eyes.
The guard groused, ‘Hurry up, fellow, the Countess doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’
‘Yes,’ said Claudio hastily, and in a trice first Sarah, then Celia were in the guard’s boat. The guard was just about to row away when Sarah said breathlessly, ‘Is there a place the gondolier can tie up his boat to wait for us for the return journey? He gave us a very fair price for this trip, and I should very much like not to be bothered with having to find another boatman when our business is finished.’
‘Someone from the house could take you back—’ began the guard.
‘I should not dream of disturbing them. And this gondolier is honest, unlike so many others. Such a one should be encouraged, do you think not, Officer?’ she said, smiling up at him so dazzlingly that the guard was quite overcome.
He muttered, ‘I suppose that is true. Hey, fellow,’ he shouted at Claudio, who was waiting by impassively, ‘get yourself over to that landing-stage there. Wait for
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us. Your fares might be a while. I just don’t know how long. We weren’t told.’
‘Yes, your honour,’ said Claudio, ducking his head in a humble gesture. ‘And thank you, sweet lady,’ he said to Sarah, his voice changing. ‘I shall wait. I shall wait for you all night. For ever, if need be.’
‘Hey, fellow, fancy yourself as a gallant, do you?’ said the guard with a hoot of laughter. ‘Young ladies who call on countesses are a little above your league, I would say.’ And still laughing, he rowed away from Claudio, towards the lights of the palace glowing before them.
Meanwhile, directly on the other side of the canal, in the shadow of a dark alley between two houses, a huddle of figures waited for Claudio’s signal. Amongst them was Ned. Next to him was Henri. The young Frenchman had found out what was planned and had immediately declared that the best sword in Paris was certainly not going to stay in its scabbard tonight if any game was to be had. So he had been coopted into the plan and included in the invasion party of Claudio’s men.
The invasion party must be one of young, fit men, so Master Ashby and Dr Leone had gone back to the Ducal Palace to meet with the Duke’s men. Dr Leone would have preferred to go with Claudio’s men, but reluctantly agreed that, as a friend of the Duke’s, he must be the go-between and Ashby must come with him, for
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he was certainly no fighting man. But Dr Tedeschi, his sister Rachel, Mistress Quickly, and the poor madman Edmund stayed at Dr Leone’s house. The first three would have come too but had to watch over the fourth, who could scarcely be asked to fight alongside his former comrades, but had to be guarded, in case he should do himself a mischief, wandering around the streets searching for his Beatrice again.
‘There it is!’ said Henri as his sharp eyes made out a light moving up, down, up, down, three times. ‘It’s coming from the Ca’ Montemoro Watergate.’
Claudio’s second-in-command, a thick-set young man called Lucius, barked an order. The men scrambled to the small boats waiting under the poles of the landing-stage at the end of the alley. They set off without lights, navigating under the sure guidance of Lucius, who knew the canal like the back of his hand. They reached the other side without incident, one or two houses up from Ca’ Montemoro; then one by one the boats slipped closer and closer to the landing-stage where Claudio sat waiting.
There were no guards about. Claudio whispered to them that there had been one there just a few minutes ago, but he’d been called inside, Henri translated to Ned, on some ‘urgent matter.’ Claudio looked rather grim as he spoke, and Ned knew he must be worried for his beloved—as indeed he was for his, though not as much, perhaps. Not because he cared less, but because he knew his Celia better than Claudio did his Sarah, and
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thought she might be a match even for a wily and ruthless aristocratic woman.
Clearly, anyhow, the Countess did not expect any attack from the outside—-no, the danger was inside, and she must think she was close to dealing with it. For the message that had been sent to the palace on Sarah’s behalf had made it quite clear that the girl had information that she was willing to trade for safe passage out of the city for herself and her family. The Countess must think it would be easy to shut her up for good—or even, at the best, to bribe her handsomely to stay away and keep her mouth shut.
Ned was jerked from his thoughts by a soft exclamation from Claudio. ‘Look!’ He was pointing to an arched window on the second floor where, just for an instant, something white had fluttered. Celia's handkerchief thought Ned with his pulse racing. They're in the room, with the Countess.
The Countess was dressed all in black now, as if she were in mourning. Only her ruff was white, and it stood up around her face, which had been powdered so it was no longer sallow but almost as white as the ruff. It made her look like a ghost. When she entered, her cold blue eyes settled on Sarah at once, her gaze flicking over Celia with little interest. But it was to Celia she spoke first.
‘You are English. What have you to do with this business?’
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‘I am a courtier of our Queen’s,’ lied Celia boldly, ‘and I am here to tell you that our monarch’s protection is extended to this young woman and that, as soon as is practicable, she shall be moved to England, where her father is to take up a post of doctor to the royal household.’
‘Indeed!’ said the Countess with an arch of her eyebrow. ‘You speak good Italian, for an Englishwoman. Pray, remind me, what is your name?’
‘Emilia Lanier,’ said Celia, using the name that had been written in the message. ‘English by birth, but Venetian by ancestry. My father was a Bassano.’
‘A Bassano!’ said the Countess with great scorn. ‘Converted Jews, it’s said. No wonder you take this girl’s part.’
‘My father’s family is close to the Duke’s,’ said Celia warningly, ‘as my husband’s is to the English Queen.’
The Countess shrugged. ‘Very well. So—you are the one that boy who came to visit my husband was really working for.’
‘Yes,’ said Celia.
‘I knew the kidnap story was a lie. So, you are here now as her guard, are you? In case I should go back on my word of safe passage. You fool—do you not think it is easy enough to disappear even such as you? If an English courtier is foolish enough to go in a boat a little merry and fall overboard, then that is sad, but not such an unusual thing.’ She came close to Celia. Her eyes
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were like blue ice. ‘So do not think you can threaten me, girl. I hold real power—not the gossamer kind that can be destroyed in an instant.’ She turned to Sarah. ‘Enough of this. What have you come to say, Jewish witch?’
‘That I am no witch, though indeed I am Jewish,’ said the girl, her head held high. All trace of fear had left her face now and only a cold anger
burned there. ‘That you are a corrupt, evil woman who has sought to silence me because you thought I knew about the ugly reality behind your facade of respectability. You fool, when you accused me I knew nothing. Nothing at all. But now— now I know everything.’
‘Indeed?’ said the Countess, her face impassive. ‘And what is this thing you think you know?’
Sarah’s eyes glittered. ‘You are in league with the Verona trader Gamboretto. Indeed, you are not just in league with him, you direct his operations. It is you , not he, who finances his evil schemes. It is you who skims off the profits of his corruption. It is you who waits in the shadows like a giant spider bloated with blood, as sailors are slaughtered on the high seas, and valuable cargoes are lost, and merchants and their workers lose their livelihoods as you destroy their trade. It is you who is at the heart of one of the biggest and ugliest of corrupt enterprises in all of Venice—nay, even beyond. You are behind this evil plague of piracy. And you have profited very well from theft and corruption and mass murder.’
Celia stared at her. Sarah had spoken as if she had
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proof. Real proof. She had taken a very big risk, gambled big. Would it pay off? ,
The Countess’s face had gone very still. Her eyes were like slits in the white mask of her face. But her voice was calm enough as she said after a little silence, ‘What a thrilling tale you spin, to be sure. Piracy! Evil schemes! Corruption! Mass murder! Why, my dear, you make me out to be some kind of evil genius.’
‘Perhaps that is what you are,’ said Sarah. Her colour was very high. ‘It is a game with high stakes you play. And though some can play such games, others can’t. And that’s what you’re afraid of. That’s why you’ve been persecuting me with your accusations, why you wanted to find me at all costs. You were afraid someone had told me about it. Someone who has been caught up in this scheme, because he can’t stop you and never has been able to. Someone who’s enjoyed the money your schemes bring, but never the risk, unlike you. Someone who knows that the Duke’s secret police have started to suspect that something is very rotten indeed in the house of Montemoro. Someone who may even be filled with remorse at what has been happening, whose sleep is troubled by the last screams of dying sailors. Someone who doesn’t have a strong stomach and nerves of steel, like you.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said the Countess. She crossed to the door. ‘Captain Maffei, will you come in?’
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The grizzled officer must have been standing just behind the door, for he came in at once. Celia shot an anguished glance at Sarah.
‘Captain Maffei, I want you here as a witness. Shut the door. Yes. Come in. I want you to listen to what this girl has to say. She is accusing this house—and me—of corruption and piracy and murder and all kinds of evil.’
‘Oh, my lady,’ said the officer in a deep, impassive voice, ‘that is a wicked thing for her to say. Why should she say such wicked things?’
His eyes—very bright, very light brown—rested speculatively on the two girls for an instant. Celia shivered. With his strong features, his hawk nose and intent, blank eyes, the man had something of the air of a bird of prey. An ageing bird of prey, perhaps, but just as dangerous as in youth and twice as merciless.
‘I think the little Jew believes she has someone to back her up in this wickedness, someone she has spellbound to do her bidding. Can you think who that might be, Maffei?’
She is playing with us , thought Celia, suddenly horrified. She is playing with us like a cat plays with a mouse . She has an ace up her sleeve—something we don't suspect, not at all.
‘My lady,’ said the man respectfully, ‘I am not privy to such dark thoughts, but if I may hazard a guess—it is perhaps a ghost, a sadly departed soul, one who has
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been frail for quite some time and for whom we mourn even this very hour.’
‘Stop this,’ said Sarah jerkily. ‘You don’t frighten me. You know to whom I refer—not to the poor woman my father treated, who may well have died; she was frail, that’s true—but to your husband, madam. To the Count!’
‘But, my dear,’ said the Countess without missing a beat, ‘it is to him that we refer. My poor husband, the Count, who in a fit of sadness and depression took poison in his room this very afternoon. Poison, in a cup of sweet wine. Is it not sad?’
Celia and Sarah stared at her. Then Sarah quavered, ‘You . . . you killed him. You killed your own husband, because you were afraid he might talk. . . .’
‘Everyone knew the balance of his mind was disturbed,’ said the Countess coolly. ‘He was falling to pieces. He was capable of any rashness. It had been so for some time, hadn’t it, Maffei? From the time you’— she pointed a long index finger at Sarah—‘you put a wicked spell on him to make him so besotted with you that he could think of nothing else but you and called your name in his sleep. . . .’
Sarah had gone as white as a sheet. ‘No,’ she said, taking a step back. ‘No. That’s not true. It’s not true. It started because he asked me if I knew Verona—and it meant nothing to me then, but it does now.’
‘And you thought that meant he was about to confide in you, about Gamboretto and the pirates?’ The
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Countess looked supremely confident. ‘You fool. You still don’t understand, do you? The Count closed his eyes and ears to Gamboretto and to all that entailed. Remorse? Sleep troubled by sailor’s dying screams? Not a bit of it. My husband liked the good things our . . . our association with these men brings. As long as I had the contact with the actual organizing of it—and not him—he could pretend it wasn’t really happening.’ Her tone held a hint of bitterness. ‘It’s always been that way.’
Sarah stammered, ‘But—but the secret police—they were on your track, they might have found out, in time. . . .’
The Countess shrugged. ‘They had not ever come close. They knew very little. Only rumours. I know, because we had an informer in their ranks. They could not touch us. No. Verona meant something quite other to him.’ She looked at Celia. ‘I overheard him talking to your messenger boy, that fool of an Englishman. Pleading with him to take a commission. And I knew then I couldn’t trust him any more. His sentiments had got the better of him. He was always an unstable man, and now he was a liability. I knew I couldn’t trust him in anything any more—not even about Gamboretto, eventually.’
Sarah was very pale. ‘But I don’t understand. ... I don’t. . .’
The Countess had a strange smile on her face. ‘Then you shall. Everyone should know the truth before they
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die. What else did he ask you, that fateful night? Do you remember, my pretty witch?’
‘Don’t, Sarah,’ said Celia. ‘Don’t answer.’
But Sarah stared at the Countess, like a little bird mesmerized by a snake. She quavered, ‘He asked about my father and my mother.’
The Countess began to laugh. ‘Of charity, lady, what kin are you? What countryman? What name? What parentage? And what of Verona? Ah, Captain Maffei, is it not a good joke!’
‘Yes, my lady,’ he said, though his face was very grim and very dark.
The Countess reached inside her dress and pulled out a tiny locket. She said, ‘I found it on him, at the very last. He died with her face on his heart.’ She sighed. ‘I believe he knew what that cup of wine contained and he drank it willingly. He wanted to die. Thus do fools pass away.’
She clicked open the locket. And there, inside, was the painted miniature of a beautiful young woman, with creamy skin, large, long-lashed dark eyes, and dark red hair.
‘Oh, my God!’ said Celia, staring at the painted face, then at the other girl, as the full force of the revelation burst in on her. For Sarah was the spitting image of the young woman in the portrait. ‘Oh, my God, no, it cannot be. . . .’
The Countess smiled. It was a wintry smile that froze
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her features into
a cold mask. ‘She was a scheming little creature from Verona. Her name was Julietta. My husband ... he was always a fool. He had had many women in the past. He kept mistresses. It did not bother
me, for they meant nothing to him. But this one—this
•
one was different. He was besotted, mad with love. She became pregnant. Pregnant with you, girl. Well. He was afraid of my reaction. So he hid her while she was with child. He thought he should hide it completely from me and that once the child was safely born he would seek an annulment of his marriage to me, on the grounds of my barrenness.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘The ungrateful, weak, unreliable fool that he was! Pd given him everything, I’d risked my neck for him—and he still sought to rid himself of me. But I found out his secret. I found her. And I found her child. . . .’ Her eyes glittered, her hands shaped into claws. ‘I arranged for Julietta’s death, her disposal and that of her baby. It was done quietly. He never knew. He thought she’d left him—I arranged for a note to be left at the safe house, saying the child had been born dead and that she couldn’t bear disappointing him and had gone away. He was beside himself, searched for her—but in the end, he believed it. There were no witnesses, you see, except for Maffei and the hired man. And they didn’t talk.’
‘There was one other,’ said Maffei grimly. ‘By cursed bad luck, there was a witness that night on the canal. Someone saw us, heard us with the baby. And so . . .’
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‘Even then we were fortunate,’ said the Countess, and over her features spread a ghastly parody of a smile. ‘You see, this witness was a silly young woman, an acquaintance of my family, who came to me in great distress with the information, having no idea at all of course that I was involved. It was easy to silence her.’ She paused. ‘Strangely enough, I had a child of my own only a year or so later. The Count could no longer say I was barren. He did not love me or our daughter— but he could not forsake me any longer. And over the years he’d grown used to my fortune, to his easy life. He bent to my will happily enough. And so you see, everything worked for the best for me.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘Until . . . until the cursed night that my husband walked into this room where you sat—and saw you looking at him with her eyes.’
The Madman of Venice Page 17