black hair, a dark complexion, and curves in all the right places.” He sketched the shape of her body in the air with both hands. “She had brains to go with her body too, and helped me with my duties as Kubilai’s chief crime investigator.”
Katie laughed out loud. It was like the tinkling of a small bell.
“You were an
“Yes. What’s so funny about that?”
“My grandmother said you were the biggest rogue in Venice.”
“Well, your granny was wrong.” He paused for effect. “The biggest rogue in Venice is the Doge. But I ran him second best.”
They laughed together, their treble and bass blending like a peal of bells in a tower.
“Anyway, you know what they say. Set a thief to catch a thief.”
Katie leaned against his shoulder, her long tresses draping over his arm.
“About this Gurbesu. Did you love her?”
Zuliani waved his hand dismissively.
“Love? What’s that? She was beautiful, mind you. All Kungurat girls are — the Khan gets a hundred of them every year for his harem. Virgins all. That’s why Gurbesu had to be smuggled away. You see, before she got to the Khan, she had lain with me. But as for loving her …” He shook his head. “There’s only one woman I loved.”
“Really? Who was that?”
Zuliani stared off into the distance, and pictured the woman he had been forced to abandon almost forty years earlier. His crooked deals and an untimely death had caused him to leave Venice abruptly. Leaving behind the incomparable Cat, love of his life. Her true name was Caterina Dolfin — she of the peach complexion and pale blonde hair — but he called her his Cat. Her slender but muscular body moved like a cat too when they made love. There were tales of her giving birth to a child while he had been in the East. But her family had spirited her away to the mainland and, when he had returned many years later, he had been unable to trace her. He sighed.
Katie prodded his ribs with a slender finger.
“Who was she, this love of your life?”
Zuliani was looking at her eager, young face, and about to tell all, when he heard a piercing cry. He looked up and saw his neighbour, old Justinia, waddling across the square. He had never seen her move so fast. She was waving her hands and screaming. And he could hardly believe what she was saying.
“Signor Niccolo, your house is on fire.”
Stunned, Zuliani remained seated under the elder tree, until Katie took a firm hold of his hand and hauled him to his feet. Together, they ran down the west side of the church, and towards his house. They could both hear the crackle of the flames before they could even see the house. Reaching the canal, they looked up. Flames were shooting out of all the lower windows, the shutters merely shards of burnt timber already. Zuliani gasped.
“I don’t believe it. The place is so damp. How could it have gone up like this?”
Katie just gazed in horror at the sight.
“Nick. All your precious things from the East.”
Zuliani knew what she meant. It was a lifetime — his lifetime — going up in smoke. Even as they watched, the flames found their way up to the next floor, only one below his attic rooms. And all his memories. Tongues of fire burst from the shuttered windows, and smoke billowed out across the canal. Suddenly, Katie pointed upwards.
“Look!”
Zuliani followed where she was pointing, and saw a face at an upper window. Someone was inside — but who? Zuliani had left the house bolted and barred. Vettor, his servant, had been sent off to visit his family at Malamocco. Surely he could not have returned yet? If he had, he was in dire trouble now. The figure at the window leaned out, waving his arms. Zuliani’s eyesight wasn’t so good, but Katie recognized him.
“It’s Francesco Tiepolo.”
“Tiepolo? What’s he doing in my house?”
Even as Zuliani spoke, the terrible cries of the traitorous conspirator carried over the roar of the flames.
“For pity’s sake, help me. I am roasting to death.”
Zuliani called up to him.
“Is there anyone else trapped with you?”
For a moment, Tiepolo seemed to look fearfully back into the room, and Zuliani thought there was someone. But Tiepolo must have just been looking at the encroaching flames. He now turned back to the horrified onlookers, terror in his eyes.
“No one. Please, help me. The stairs are on fire.”
Zuliani thought of the beautifully carved oak handrail he had slid down as a boy, only to be faced with wrath of his father, Agostino, at the bottom. He had slid off before encountering the iron escutcheon on the newel post, cast in the shape of a lizard. That would have been painful. But his father’s beating had been just as painful. Now the staircase was in the middle of a raging fire. Zuliani felt infinitely sad, but called up to Tiepolo all the same.
“I will try and open the door. Can you reach it?”
“I will try.”
By now, two or three enterprising neighbours had arrived with wooden buckets, and were ferrying water from the canal to the site of the fire. Zuliani could see their efforts were useless. Each bucketful turned into steam even as it was thrown in the ground floor windows. Somehow, the fire must have taken a strong hold in the accumulated junk he had stored on the lower floors of Ca’ Zuliani. His childhood home was burning down before his eyes. Zuliani edged closer to the doorway, holding his cloak up as a shield against the heat. He leaned against the iron-bound door. The wood was hot and the metal straps even hotter. It was no use. The lower floors were already an inferno.
As he scuttled back from the heat and flames, a horrible scream pierced his heart. He looked up to Tiepolo, and saw the man’s face disappear from the upper window. It was replaced with a sheet of flame. Francesco Tiepolo was gone.
The representative of the Avogadori de Comun was a fat, ponderous man who lifted his long, fur-trimmed robe to keep it clear of the blackened, water-damaged debris in the shell that once had been Nick Zuliani’s home. His name was Matteo Mocco, and he would have preferred to have avoided entering the house. Especially as he could still feel the heat of the fire through the soles of his fine leather shoes. But it was necessary for him to see in situ the charred lump of flesh that was all that remained of Francesco Tiepolo, traitor to the Serene Republic. Zuliani had found it on the second floor, one level below the top rooms where Tiepolo had last been seen alive. It had been a while before he could get back into his home, and he had cautiously tested the stairs and each floor level before venturing into the recesses of each room to find out what had happened to Tiepolo. On the top floor, he had found that most of his collection had been destroyed. The lion skin was merely a burnt jawbone, and the wonderful almanac a pile of papery ash. Even his old companion, the suit of armour, was unrecognizable. He had hung his head, and descended to the next floor down. There, he had found the body.
Now Mocco was poking the husk cautiously with the toe of his shoe. It stirred in a way that suggested it was as light as the ashen remains of a burnt log. The avogador shuddered and wiped the black smear on the tip of his shoe on the back of his leggings. He snorted.
“Good riddance.”
“What am I to do with the body?”
Mocco shrugged at Zuliani’s question.
“If it was me, I would throw him out with the rest of your fire-damaged rubbish. But I suppose he warrants a Christian burial. If there are any of his family left after recent events, tell them to come and collect him.”
Mocco departed, leaving Zuliani staring at the blackened remains.
“Is that him? Tiepolo?”
The question had come from Katie Valier, who now stood in the doorway of the room that was Tiepolo’s last resting place for the time being. As ever, she did not take much care of her fine clothes. Zuliani could see a layer of soot and ash on the dress’s hem. There were dark marks on the front of her gown too. She must have got soot on her hands, and had wiped them clean on the sumptuous material. Zuliani wondered if her grandmother, of whom Katie spoke a great deal and with adoration, would approve of her granddaughter’s careless attitude. Even as he
