In the days of the Republic, affairs of state were debated by members of the Senate, drawn from the noble families eligible for service. No other Venetians had any influence over the Republic’s policy.
Real authority was vested in a Council of Ten, elected from members of the Great Council. The ten governed in the name of the doge.
And behind the Ten, pulling the levers of absolute power, without appeal, stood a Council of Three.
All this, a system of absolute rule by a secret cabal, was swept away by the Napoleonic intervention. In 1797 a departing honor guard of Croat infantry had fired a farewell salute; the senators, in panic, instantly voted themselves out of existence and fled the chamber.
But a relic of the old government still survived.
While the contessa’s friend lamented the loss of the old stone lions of St. Mark, there was one, at least, whose future seemed assured, even under the Habsburgs. At the back of the Doges’ Palace, in a narrow alley with blank windowless sides, a stone head of a lion was fixed to the wall, its eyes staring, its mouth agape.
And into this mouth, the bocca di leone, ordinary citizens had always been encouraged to post information that would be of use to the Council of Three. The information, anonymously supplied, would be investigated and, if it proved interesting, could be used immediately-or simply filed away in dossiers that the Venetian state kept on all its more prominent citizens. A whiff of treachery, a sharp commercial practice, a breach of contract, a marital infidelity-hidden knowledge was the tool by which the Venetians governed their state. Knowledge of the world at large had made them rich; knowledge of themselves, they hoped, would keep them safe.
It was not, after all, a very progressive republic, which is why it broke apart when Napoleon touched it, like a bubble of Murano glass.
Far from stopping the mouth of the terrible lion in the name of Liberty, the French had actually widened it: the anonymous denunciation became a tool of the revolutionary government in Paris, too.
And the Austrians, who were never the most zealous reformers, and preferred to leave things much as they had found them, soon took to regularly inspecting the bocca di leone themselves.
Naturally they didn’t turn up much. The people of Venice were generally reluctant to provide their foreign rulers with information.
But old habits die hard.
Venice was the first city in Europe to have street lighting, but the alley at the back of the Doges’ Palace was almost dark when a shadow slipped past the bocca di leone toward ten o’clock at night.
The shadow seemed to glide along the alley without a pause, but the lion was fed with a lozenge of paper, very small and tightly rolled.
37
Palewski watched as Maria licked a trace of ice cream from her upper lip.
A slow procession of barges with rust-colored sails was making its way along the Giudecca. Foreign, seagoing ships were rare; Palewski thought of the great three-masted schooners and the frigates that often crowded the Bosphorus at home. Here, the shipping was strictly local: flatboats from the lagoon, island ferries rowed by four men with long sweeps, a huge, covered burchiello, or passenger barge, and a shoal of smaller craft- wherries, skiffs, and the occasional gondola-dotted the smooth blue water, sparkling breezily in the late afternoon light.
On the Zattere, the passeggiata had already begun. Couples strolled along arm in arm, their children zigzagging around them through the crowd; old men tapped their canes over the cobblestones, stopping now and then to admire the view or to hail a friend; knots of young men, with toppers tilted at rakish angles, lounged on the bridges; the ubiquitous gray uniforms of Austrian officers; a matron sailing by with two young women in tow, casting furtive glances at the loafers.
Palewski shifted his glance from Maria’s lips and observed a ragged girl with a tray of matches working her way through the tables. He felt in his pocket for a small coin.
Then he froze.
“Maria!” he whispered urgently. “Kiss me!”
Maria turned her head and smiled coquettishly. “Not here, silly.”
Palewski bent his head. It had been the most fleeting glimpse-he could not be sure. Compston in Venice? But why ever not? The young Byronist-it was exactly where one would expect to find him, with the British embassy in Istanbul in summer recess. At least-if it were Compston-he’d not been spotted. He hadn’t even met his eye.
Yet Palewski’s glance, however light, must have somehow left an impress, for seconds later a meaty hand descended on Palewski’s shoulder.
“I say, Excellency! This is too fantastic!”
Looking up with a grim smile, Palewski saw a shock of yellow hair crammed under a top hat, and beneath it the open, ruddy face of the third secretary to Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the Sublime Porte.
“Compston,” he snapped, in low tones. “I am not here. You didn’t see me.”
The young man blinked.
And then, to Palewski’s horror, there were three of them.
“Found a friend, George?” Another Englishman, also fair, slightly older than Compston: Ben Fizerly. Fizerly registered Maria’s appearance and goggled. “Er, friends, I should say-why, it’s Palewski!”
They shook hands.
The third member of the group was not an Englishman. He was tall and very good-looking, with sallow skin and the faint line of a mustache across his upper lip. His eyes, like his hair, were black.
“This is Count Palewski, Tibor,” Compston said. “Count, Tibor Karolyi. He’s with the Imperial embassy in Istanbul. Um.”
Tibor’s heels clicked together, and he bowed rapidly. Compston looked embarrassed. An inkling of the situation had finally penetrated his mind.
Palewski, for his part, was thinking fast. Curse his damned fond memories, he should never have walked down the Zattere at this hour! And curse his bad luck, too. Compston on his own he could have managed; even Fizerly too. But Karolyi? Karolyi was a Hungarian. He might sympathize-but he might not. The fact that he was at the embassy, working for the Habsburg monarchy, linked him straight to the people Palewski most wanted to avoid.
“Won’t you join us, my dear fellows? Maria will be delighted to meet someone of her own age.” He gestured to the chairs, playing for time. “On his lordship’s trail, Compston?”
Compston blushed. “Venice, you know. La Serenissima and all that,” he murmured, “and, well, ahem.” He glanced over at Maria, who was sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She had finished her ice cream.
Compston’s blush deepened.
“I know a man in Venice who claims he swam with Byron,” Palewski said. “Perhaps you’d like to meet him?”
Before Compston could reply, Fizerly leaned forward. “To be honest, sir, I’ve had about as much Byron as a man can take. Tibor too, I’m sure. Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow, nine o’clock.”
“For Istanbul?”
“That’s right.”
“What a pity. Your last evening in Venice.” Palewski cocked his head. “But this is an occasion, gentlemen! Perhaps-if you’re not engaged-you will allow me to entertain you all? I have an apartment on the Grand Canal and some very good champagne.”
“I say, sir! But really, we can’t intrude-”
“No intrusion, Compston. It would be my pleasure. Waiter, hi! Grappa, if you please. Now, gentlemen, I propose a toast.” He paused, holding up one finger like a bandmaster, while the waiter set the bottle and five small glasses on the table. “For you, my dear, and for you fellows… and so: Stambouliots together!”
They drank. Palewski refilled the glasses and gave them La Serenissima, then Byron’s swim, and finally a toast to the evening that lay ahead, before the bottle was empty.
