24
Palewski had scarcely finished his breakfast when the maid introduced a liveried servant, asking if he would care to drink coffee with the Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria.
“What, now?”
The footman bowed. “If it is convenient, signore. The Palazzo d’Aspi is just next door.”
The Ca’ d’Aspi had been built by the contessa’s sixteenth-century forebear, the hero of a naval engagement with the Ottoman fleet who had become very rich importing mastic from the island of Chios. It was a medium-sized palazzo, with five exuberant Gothic windows on each floor and a liberal sprinkling of colored marble embedded, like nuts in nougat, in the facade. It contained a great deal of martial trompe l’oeil decoration, a ceiling by a pupil of Tiepolo and, beyond the grand piano nobile apartments where the contessa entertained, barely a stick of furniture.
The contessa had inherited, along with the palazzo, almost a thousand acres of farmland on the mainland and a Palladian villa near Padua, but the land had not recovered from successive invasions of French and Austrian troops, who slaughtered the livestock and allowed the complex system of dikes and sluices to collapse. The villa lacked a roof.
The footman led Palewski up the stairs into a small vestibule decorated with frescoes of cupids pouring cornucopias of fruit into the laps of languid women.
“I shall inform the contessa of your arrival, Signor Brett.”
He was forestalled by the arrival of the contessa herself, flinging back the door.
Palewski’s first impression was of a Tiepolo sprung to life, Beauty herself, perhaps, descending from her cloud. She was wearing a brown riding skirt, a well-fitted white blouse, and a man’s jacket. Her feet were bare and her hand was on her hip. In her hand she held a foil. She was breathing hard.
“Signor Brett?” She saluted him with the foil and smiled. “Carla d’Aspi d’Istria. How kind of you to come.”
Palewski stammered a greeting.
The contessa was tall and slim shouldered, even in a man’s jacket; her waist was slender. She had the soft complexion of a much younger woman, beneath a heap of long blond curls for which, one summer after another, she had sat on the roof with her hair drenched in lemon juice and a brim to keep the sun off her skin. This morning she wore her hair tied back with a black ribbon, but some stray curls had escaped, and one was plastered damply to her forehead. She looked flushed, and her blue eyes sparkled beneath dark lids. Although her fair hair and blue eyes belonged to the classic canon of Venetian beauty, she had the straight, well-defined nose, and the full upper lip, of a Greek, reminding Palewski of certain lovely women produced by the Phanariots of Istanbul, the old Greek aristocracy. Only her mouth was perhaps too wide: it suggested-well, Palewski wasn’t sure what it suggested. And when she smiled, he thought, it was perfect.
She was smiling now. “Come through, signore. As you see, I was practicing my art. I fence-does it surprise you?”
‘I think everything about you surprises me, madame.”
She laughed. “How so?”
Palewski followed her into the salon. It was a huge, high-ceilinged room with four long windows looking onto the canal and a floor of shimmering colored marble.
“I expected the contessa to be an old lady with a lorgnette and lots of tiny spoons,” Palewski said.
Carla shook her head. “Not the Aspi style at all.” She flicked the point of her foil and held it to his chest. “We die young.”
Palewski took the foil by the button on its tip. “Not fighting, I hope.”
She shrugged and flipped the foil out of his fingers.
She pointed to the far wall, where a display of weapons was ranged above a large canopied fireplace: glinting scimitars cocked like eyebrows, two splayed fans constructed of long old-fashioned muskets, and a triumphal tableau of pikes and spears and small bossed shields. A stout gilded pole rose from the almost baroque array of weaponry, topped by a curious arrangement of three brass balls, one above the other in order of size.
“A Janissary standard!” Palewski exclaimed in surprise.
She looked at him curiously. “We took those in the Peloponnese. An ancestor of mine, who fought with Morosini.”
Palewski nodded absently. Long ago, as a boy, he had spent hours playing with just such weapons in the big house in Cracow: martial souvenirs seized from the Turks at Vienna in 1683.
“Now you have surprised me,” she said. “I didn’t think you would be an expert in Ottoman weaponry, Signor Brett.”
Palewski gave a gesture of demurral. “I’ve been in Istanbul, that’s all,” he replied.
“I was born there,” Carla said.
“Touche, madame,” Palewski said.
Carla cocked her head to one side, regarding him critically. “Do you fence, signore?”
Palewski smiled. “A long time ago.”
“Very good,” she said. She indicated a trolley that held a collection of foils, masks, and plastrons.
“No, no, madame.” Palewski laughed. “I haven’t fought for thirty years. You’d overpower me.”
“You don’t really think that, Signor Brett.”
Palewski blinked: it was another point to the contessa. He didn’t think she would overpower him, but he was less sure now.
“Best of five points, signore. A friendly bout.”
“I–I was never much on foil, madame.”
“Indulge me, Signor Brett. A practice round. Five points. Then we can have coffee.”
Palewski took off his coat and slung it over the trolley. He put on the half plastron, buckled it at the side, and selected a foil.
You are a fool, he told himself. An old fool.
He had the blade in the air before he noticed it had no button on the tip.
The contessa slipped a mask over her head.
Palewski chose another blade, checked the button, and felt its weight. He put on his own mask.
Carla backed from him, left hand up, foil in sixte, her bare right foot pointing forward. She glanced down and tamped her left heel on the marble floor.
She stood motionless, awaiting her opponent.
Palewski went to meet her, and as soon as their foils touched he took his stand.
He acknowledged immediately that he was not in condition. He lacked the suppleness of the younger woman, who was turned at the waist to present him the narrowest target. It had the effect of emphasizing her figure, and Palewski frowned.
He put up his left hand.
In the wrist, he thought: all in the wrist.
“In guardia,” Carla murmured.
They crossed swords. Palewski made a feint to quarte, Carla parried in sixte, he returned and she counterdisengaged, following the movement with a swift step forward and a simple thrust in quarte.
She stepped back. “In guardia.”
Palewski compressed his lips. The attack had been a mistake. This time he allowed her to develop it, trusting to his parries and solidifying his defense while he tried to get used to the feel of the sword.
It had been a long time, as he had said.
This time it took her four attempts to touch.
Better. “In guardia.”
The action was all in the wrist, but Carla moved lightly, too, gaining and breaking ground with speed and confidence. Twice Palewski was able to parry a feint to sixte.
He took her lunge to quarte on the hilt and pushed hard: her arm flew up and she sprang away. Palewski
