This Rough Magic

'You're drunk. You left my baby, all alone. Anything could have happened. Anything!'

The nurse wrested herself away, clumsily, and looked down her nose at Maria, her face reddening with more than just wine. 'You're nothing but a canaler, even dressed up like that. Why should I sit here with your misbegotten brat?' she spat. 'You begrudge me a glass of wine . . .'

Maria stepped forward, pulled back her arm, and slapped the woman hard. And hard again. The nurse's head jerked back and her cheeks each had a scarlet handprint on them, but Maria wasn't done. She seized the woman by the front of her gown, and threw her at the seat. It cracked as the dry nurse fell onto it, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open with shock. It didn't break—quite—but Maria knew with satisfaction that it was damaged. The dry nurse was going to have to answer to one of the Doge's upper-servants for it.

'I might be a canaler,' she hissed, 'but I'm worth three of you. At least I always did what I was paid to do, honestly.'

Maria snatched up Alessia and stormed out; out into the crowd, out past the crowd, too angry to even hear if anyone was trying to hail her. She was still so angry she wasn't really thinking, just walking, once she'd got past the revelers. But when she got out of the palace and past the fires in the piazza, the night air was cool. It helped to cool her temper and her anger, too. After a while she paused and took stock of where she was.

With a sense of surprise rather than shock, she saw that she was on one of the walkways bordering the canals, and must be more than halfway to their lodgings. She'd walked farther than she'd intended in this dress. The hem and the petticoat hems would need washing.

Her feet, crammed into shoes that were too narrow for her, complained. One of the disadvantages of marrying Umberto had been that she had to wear shoes all the time. His position, he said, demanded it. Well, her canaler feet demanded space. She kicked the shoes off, then struggled to pick them up, with Alessia fast asleep in one arm. She gritted her teeth, as she realized that the shoes were meant for dancing in ballrooms, not striding along canalside. The pretty doeskin would be ruined.

She sighed irritably; there was little point in spending money on a gondola now. Anyway, the gondolas would be as thick as flies down at the Piazza San Marco, and few and far between anywhere else. She might as well walk the rest of the way, cross the Rialto bridge and go to the apartment. Not more than a few hundred cubits now.

Besides, she'd been walking and poling for most of her life—her own two legs were good enough. She was just a canaler, after all; canal-born and canal-bred, and the day she couldn't make it anywhere in Venice on her own feet, they might as well start building her coffin. So she walked on quietly. With half of Venice already drunk on the Doge's wine, and the other half trying to get to that state, there probably wasn't a bullyboy or a pickpocket anywhere nearer than Naples. She'd be more than safe enough tonight.

* * *

The riot and rumpus met her just short of the Rialto bridge.

Schiopettieri. A lot of them. The professional soldiers who served Venice for a police force had two struggling figures in their midst, yelling and fighting like young bulls. Maria stepped up onto a mounting block, partly to avoid the press of Schiopettieri, partly to see what was going on.

She looked across the heads—and straight into Benito's eyes. As their eyes locked, he stopped, and a look of absolute horror transfigured his face.

That was the opportunity that the Schioppies needed. They piled onto him. Maria caught a brief glimpse of Benito, upended over someone's shoulder. He wasn't wearing any trousers. Or small-clothes.

Maria, with Alessia in her arms, stood transfixed, watching the tide of Schiopettieri bear Benito and his large companion away. The large companion seemed content to be restrained. All the fighting had obviously come from Benito.

The tide passed, and moved on, away from her, and Maria stepped down off the block, and walked on.

For a brief moment she'd nearly waded into that crowd of Schioppies to help Benito. Then Alessia had stirred against her, and how could she interfere in a drunken brawl with a baby in her arms? She couldn't exactly have put Alessia down. Benito had gotten himself into that trouble, whatever it was. Benito would just have to get himself out of it. It wasn't her job to rescue him anymore.

If it ever had been.

This close to midnight, even when there was a great wedding on at the Doge's palace, with feasting in the Piazza San Marco, the stall-lined wooden Rialto bridge ought to be quiet.

It wasn't. There were several groups of people, mostly local women, gossiping eagerly about what had just happened.

One of the women, her eyes bright with excitement in the lamplight that the Republic provided to make bridges and sotoportegos safer, turned to Maria as Maria tried to get past her. 'Did you hear? Did you see? Isn't that younger Valdosta a scandal!' Her voice was full of glee.

Maria could not restrain her curiosity. 'No, I wasn't there. I'd just come from the celebration. What happened? What did he do?'

She did restrain the 'this time' she'd been about to add.

The woman pointed at one of the crossbeams that held chains that supported the center bridge section. 'He was up there.'

Well, Benito climbed things. He always had been like a little shaved ape. 'What was he doing?' she asked warily.

The woman shook her head—then told her. 'Scandalous! In a public place like that!'

Maria felt herself redden. 'You mean he was . . .'

An older woman, looking out of her half-shuttered window, snorted. 'Well, he was so drunk, that it'd be better to say he was trying to. Good thing for her the girl is a dancer.'

'The Doge will have to make an example of him!' pronounced the first woman; half-primly and half-gleefully. 'The last time—'

'And the other man?' asked Maria hastily.