Death in the Floating City Read online

  “It’s Venice, Emily. Yesterday I saw at least three gentlemen dressed like Casanova. Perhaps limoncello has a bad effect on tourists.”

  Now it was my turn to glower. “I’ll brook no criticism from you, Mr. Hargreaves. I’m throwing myself into being as Italian as possible while we’re here. It’s disappointing you insist on remaining so very English.”

  “This whisky is from Scotland, my dear.”

  I swirled the limoncello in my glass and took another tentative sip. A shadow crossed my field of vision, and I looked up to see the ominous figure of the plague doctor standing above me. He dropped a heavy envelope onto the table and disappeared into the crowd without uttering a word. Colin leapt to his feet in a flash and followed him.

  I opened the envelope. The paper within bore only three words, written in what looked like medieval calligraphy:

  Pericolo vi aspetta.

  Danger awaits you.

  Colin returned, breathless, a few moments later. “No success,” he said, dropping back into his seat. “Was able to keep sight of him until he turned in front of the basilica and started for the Doge’s Palace, but then I lost him in the crowd. He vanished.”

  “Pulled off his cloak and mask and looked normal, I’d guess,” I said. “Heaven knows there are enough people in the piazza to hide almost anything.”

  “Quite right.”

  “He left this thoughtful sentiment for us.” I passed him the note. “We must be doing something right.”

  * * *

  Colin and I were used to our work coming with threats, dangers, and any number of unpleasant side effects. We accepted the risks we took in search of justice and would not be daunted by a silly man in a ridiculous mask. After finishing our libations (my husband refusing to so much as taste my limoncello), we parted ways. He set off to gather further information about Paolo, while I had been charged with looking into the affairs of the old conte and continuing my pursuit of Besina’s history.

  I planned to start by collecting the letters I’d left for Signor Caravello to translate. I was beginning to feel more confident in my navigational skills and decided to walk to the bookshop rather than take a gondola. Map in hand, I plotted my course. To begin, I followed every PER RIALTO sign I saw. When I reached the famous bridge, I passed rather than crossed it, winding my way through a series of increasingly narrow passages. I had come away from the bustling shops near the bridge and entered a more residential area. Flowerboxes hung from windows, and the sound of family chatter escaped through shutters closed against the afternoon heat. I wondered what it would be like to live in such close quarters, surrounded by the good smells of baking bread and simmering sauces and the sounds of your neighbors’ conversations.

  I’d intended to plot a course parallel to the Grand Canal, but when I was stopped by the waterway at the end of the shaded calle, I knew my sense of direction had run amiss. Only a few steps ago I’d been on a crowded pavement, but now I was all alone. It was as if everyone had disappeared. I had not yet spent enough time in Venice to understand this was how the city streets worked. One was never more than a turn or two from utter isolation. The ornate facades of the palazzi visible from the canal were not matched by what I found here, at the rear of the same buildings. Behind, they were all brick or plain stone. No frescoes, no paint, no decoration at all. It was difficult to reconcile front with back. This was a city meant to be seen from the water, not from its hidden alleys.

  I turned around, ready to retrace my steps. My heart quickened when I caught the flash of a black cloak and the long white hooked nose of the plague doctor’s mask. He stepped out from a doorway, his hulking form blocking the center of the pavement not fifty feet away from me. He raised his arms, beckoning to me. I started to back up but knew there was nothing but the canal behind. Quickly weighing my options, I gathered my heavy skirts, lifted them, and ran, ducking into a sotoportego that veered to the left.

  My heels clicked loudly on the pavement, and the sound reverberated against the solid stone of the narrow passage. It felt as if I were in a tunnel. My lungs burned and pain shot through my feet, but I did not slow my pace. I knew better than to look back—it would only slow me down. All I could do was chant a silent prayer that I could remain fleeter of foot than my would-be assailant.

  Generally one is comforted by the certain knowledge that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. I was looking forward to this certainty with indelicate ardor. But as anyone beyond the age of six knows, certainties are nearly always unreliable. My focus was primarily on the uneven stones beneath my feet. I couldn’t risk tripping. Soon, though, the realization that there was not light ahead of me crushed my spirit. I was headed straight for another dead end.

  Now panic engulfed me. I looked around for any way of escape, but there was nothing but the occasional closed door. There was no other direction for me to go. Perhaps I could rouse the residents in one of the houses, but I feared that would delay me too long. So I carried on until the last possible moment when, steps from the end of the path, I saw a narrow sliver of light coming from the right.

  The sotoportego took a sharp right angle.

  Six feet farther along, it opened into a bright campo full of people. Greeks in scarlet hats walked next to Turks in bright turbans and robes, both making the top hats favored by European tourists and Venetian gentlemen seem dull. I caught my breath as I threw myself forward with the last bit of energy I possessed, careening into the ancient well that marked the center of the square. I wanted to stop and try to slow my breath. Instead, I looked back from whence I’d come, fully expecting to see my pursuer.

  He was not there.

  A small boy rolling a hoop with a stick emerged from the sotoportego. Following him came a dour-looking woman who could only have been a particularly disappointing governess. She had a tight grip on the hand of a small girl whose face was smeared with chocolate. Emboldened more by the relative safety of the crowd around me than by any sense of fearlessness, I waited.

  The bells in the square’s church chimed the quarter hour.

  Then the half.

  Either he’d turned around or he’d disappeared into one of the houses in the sotoportego.

  Half disappointed, half relieved, I did what any sensible lady would. I marched straight into a fruit shop and asked for directions, happy that my Italian didn’t fail me.

  * * *

  “Horrible!” Donata winced as I shared the saga of my journey with her and her father. “But you can’t really think it was the same person, can you?”

  “Should I expect to encounter plague doctors on a regular basis when roaming the streets of Venice?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, “but it’s not entirely unusual. Tourists like to dress up, even when it’s not carnivale.”

  “You’re more likely to find cads dressed as Casanova,” Signor Caravello said, echoing my husband’s earlier statement. “But I would not be alarmed, Signora Hargreaves. Venice is full of people in costume, and it’s not unusual to be frightened when facing such a thing unexpectedly. There’s always the appearance of menace in disguise, don’t you think? Even when there’s no real danger.”

  “That’s certainly true,” I said. “Fantasy and horror can so easily go hand in hand. Let’s not dwell on this unpleasantness. I was hoping you could tell me about the letters.”

  “Sì.” He shuffled through several haphazard stacks of papers on his desk, grunting at regular intervals in a most displeased fashion. He shook his head and crossed to the shop’s counter. “Of course. I was working here so that I might keep a sharp eye on two unruly Englishmen who were browsing earlier. Too many of your countrymen aspire to be Byron.”

  “I wouldn’t object if they managed to succeed in style,” I said, “but they never seem to, do they?”

  “No one could.” He adjusted his spectacles. “Now. Your friend Besina Barozzi. Not a happy woman in marriage. Her husband, who apparently had high expectations for the match, found nothing but
faults in his wife. The letters were sent by the husband’s sister. She writes in the insidious way used by those who care more about gossip than the truth.”

  “Are her complaints specific?” I asked.

  “Alas, no, I am afraid,” he said. “She has recorded a litany of small criticisms, most of which stem from Besina’s education. Her sister-in-law felt Besina’s knowledge made her seem more courtesan than wife. Yet despite that, she gave her husband only one child. A son.”

  “Courtesans would know better than to—” Donata stopped almost the instant she’d started to speak.

  “But this woman is not suggesting Besina was a courtesan before she married?” I asked.

  “No, she is not. Instead she suggests that Besina used poetry and literature as a way to seduce men. But not in…” His voice trailed.

  “In a professional context?” I suggested.

  “Exactly,” Signor Caravello said. “In the end, her husband grew tired of the antics and divorced her.”

  “Divorced her?” I frowned. “I didn’t know that was possible in the Middle Ages.”

  “Most likely you believe divorce began and ended with Henry VIII,” he said. “Divorce was possible. Not common, mind you, but not unheard-of. Generally deserted wives were set up fairly well. Some even were allowed to keep their dowries. Besina, however, wound up in a convent after her divorce. A not unusual outcome, I imagine.”

  “Do the letters say which one?” I asked.

  “San Zaccaria,” he said, “but that is all I know. Once Besina was out of the family, she was no longer a topic of discussion in the letters.”

  “Donata told me Venetian convents weren’t what I would expect them to be.”

  “Very true,” he said. “Noble families typically married off only one daughter. Of the rest, one would remain home to look after any children in need of supervision in the palazzo, and the others would be sent to convents. When you fill such places with those who don’t have a calling, the atmosphere often becomes more secular than spiritual.”

  “Many of them were like less fortunate courtesans,” Donata said. “The church was willing to ignore what happened in convents in exchange for the money given by the girls’ families to support them. It didn’t matter if they chose to live the most debauched sort of lives.”

  “It was not all like that,” Signor Caravello said. “Many girls studied music, and some of them did find a special devotion to God. Regardless, though, the letters don’t mention Besina anymore after she’d become a nun.”

  I felt a pang of disappointment. I’d wanted the ring to signify real love. “What was her husband’s name?”

  “The letters never say. They are addressed to my dear brother and signed your dearest sister.”

  “Perhaps the ring was not from her husband,” I said.

  “N.V. might have known her after she took orders,” Donata said. “She could have been his forbidden love, doomed forever to a life of misery.”

  “Too much drama, child,” her father said. “Stories like that only happen in your dreadful novels.”

  “And in Shakespeare,” she said. “Surely you don’t count him among the dreadful?”

  Un Libro d’Amore

  v

  Besina wept and wept, but Lorenzo would do nothing for her.

  “Please, you must help me.” His sister had fallen to her knees in front of him, begging. “I cannot marry this man.”

  He pulled her to her feet and dried her eyes. “There’s no need for such dramatic display,” he said. “Marriages are contracts. Father knows what is best for the family. You should rejoice he’s picked you among all his daughters to marry. Our sisters are unlikely to be looking forward to convent life.”

  “So I’m to delight in having a slightly better prison than they will?” Besina asked.

  “This is not a decision it is appropriate for either of us to make,” Lorenzo said. “Do you think I have choices either? We are young, Besina, and we can’t always see reason better than a four-year-old who truly doesn’t understand why he can’t eat sweets all day.”

  “I am not behaving like a four-year-old.” Besina felt a pain growing in her head and raised her hand to knead the back of her neck. It was a motion she’d turned to all her life, almost without knowing she did it. To Lorenzo, it signaled how deeply she was upset, and it made him feel more helpless than he ordinarily did.

  “Cara—”

  She batted his hand away as he reached for hers. “I cannot think of a fate worse than marrying Signor Rosso. I’d rather die.”

  “Death is far more romantic in books than in real life.”

  Lorenzo didn’t know Besina had no real interest in death. She was being melodramatic. But she also had no interest in marrying Signor Rosso.

  As soon as her brother had left her, she pressed her mother for permission to visit her dearest friend. It was not an unusual request and was granted at once. The trip along the Grand Canal did not take long. Besina smiled at her family’s gondolier, who used to tell her stories of his ancestors’ escapades during the Crusades. When he stopped the boat at the slick stairs rising from the water, she stepped carefully onto the marble.

  “Would you return for me in two hours?” she asked. “I’m sure to be at least that long. There’s no need for you to sit waiting the whole time.”

  She stood in front of the door, pausing as long as she could before she made her presence known. When, inevitably, a servant greeted her, she excused herself, assuring him she would return momentarily.

  She’d chosen this particular friend’s house for a reason. It was on the Grand Canal, but there was a stretch of pavement next to it, running along the water, past a church and on toward a public gondola stand. Confident after taking a last look to ensure her own gondolier was long out of sight, she walked with what she hoped was an air of nonchalance in the direction of the boats. Her tall chopines clopped as she made her way to the end of the wooden dock that jutted out into the canal.

  “I need your help,” she said to the first gondolier who met her eyes. “You will be well paid for your trouble.” She knew her secret would be safe. There was no one on earth more discreet than a Venetian gondolier. If any of them dared tell of the trysts that went on in the felzi of their boats or of the sensitive messages they frequently delivered, their colleagues would drown them.

  Besina sat in the center of the boat, taking a seat inside its felze and pulling the shutters closed, knowing she must not allow herself to be seen. While still at home, she had written a message. Now she pressed it into the gondolier’s hand and had to trust that he could do with it what she asked. Never had she had to use more restraint than when she could hear him shouting to the servants inside the water entrance at Ca’ Vendelino. She wanted more than anything to look out and see what was happening, but she did not move. She hardly dared breathe.

  It seemed as if hours went by. Then days. She felt a sharp pain in her hands and looked down to see that she had clenched them so hard her nails had drawn blood from her palms.

  It reminded her of the stigmata.

  She stared at the blood till the gondola lilted heavily to one side. She closed her eyes and began to pray, beseeching the Virgin to send her love to her. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.” Her whole body was trembling as she wondered if her prayer was a sin. She had been promised to another.

  Then she heard Nicolò’s voice calling to his mother as he stepped out of the house.

  “Ciao, Mamma!”

  And all worries of sin left her head in a flash.

  6

  The next morning when the concierge at the Danieli handed me a thick pale yellow envelope, I’d nearly forgot I had written to the owners of the Villa di Tranquillità, requesting to see their portrait of Besina Barozzi. No sooner had I read Signora Morosini’s response to my note than I rushed back to our room and grabbed Colin. Within minutes, we were in a boat headed for the estate on the banks of the Brenta River.

  “The
invitation said to come anytime,” I said, sliding on my gloves only after I’d sat down in the vessel. “I’m taking Signora Morosini at her word.”

  “I don’t know if I’d describe it as an invitation,” Colin said. “She wrote to say someone has broken into her house and ruined the painting you’d hoped to see.”

  “Clearly she is in dire need of our help, whether she knows it or not,” I said. “If that’s not an invitation, I don’t know what is.”

  The trip to the Brenta River was not a short one. Fortunately, the day was pleasant, if warm. I closed my parasol, welcoming the heat of the sun on my face. I tipped my chin towards the sky, smiling as I recalled the incalculable number of times my mother had warned me to be vigilant about guarding my complexion. This thought led me to remember the trouble I’d had running through the sotoportego away from the plague doctor. If I were going to abandon bits of my regimented upbringing, I might as well fling the bulk of it out the proverbial window and start wearing comfortable boots as well. It would be most conducive to my work. I would have some made as soon as we returned to England.

  Our boatmen were singing, something from an opera I didn’t recognize. They were glad, I suppose, that a steady wind was filling the sail and keeping them from having to row. The city, seeming to float above the glistening lagoon, had become almost too small to see, and a brisk breeze danced over the water. The sun felt even better against my skin. Colin touched my cheek, turning my head towards him. I sighed and let my eyes close as his lips brushed mine.

  “When this tedious work is done, my dear, I’m going to have my way with you.”

  I pulled back in half mock horror. “What do you want the men to think when they see you kissing me? It’s scandalous behavior in public.”

  “I’d hardly call a private boat public. And what I want them to think is that the fact we’re English doesn’t mean we’re deficient in—” He paused, his dark eyes dancing. “Certain areas, shall we say?”