A Jester’s Fortune

It…

Stank, he noted, of a sudden.

They'd come in through the Porto Lido, one of the sea-channels nearest the city, threading between its long, south-jutting breakwater barriers, in Navy boats. They'd landed at one of the lazaretti, the customs and quarantine stations, and transferred to a local sailboat, a very odd-looking craft, indeed, called a sanpierota, which mounted a single, trapezoidal gaff-sail far aft of amidships. It was beamy in the extreme, so shoal-draught Lewrie thought it incapable of sailing over a heavy dew-but the Venetian authorities at the Lazaretto insisted they take it. A heavy British rowing-boat would surely come to grief in the Grand Canal, much less the narrower Rios; there was no way to employ both sides of oars in all that heavy traffic. And, should they allow their Navy hands two hours of idleness once they were ashore, it was very possible they'd never see them again-run off to taste an indolent Lotus-Eaters' paradise!

The sanpierota proved to be a most stable and swift sailboat, though, and bore them the several miles from the lazaretto to the Canale di San Marco in moments, on a pleasant little breeze; over to the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, and its imposing cathedral; thence to the Dogana di Mare-Customs Point-roughly across from the Doge's palace, on the far side of the Bacino di San Marco. And there had yet been a pleasant sea-wind.

They'd changed to a gondola from there, and a gondolier who had some English, at least. Into the Grand Canal for a sunset tour, past the Cathedral of Santa Maria della Salute, past all those regal, faery-like palaces and such. Under the soaring Ponte dell'Accademia, following the arc of the canal…

Until they'd been… 'winded,' so to speak. Just about level with the Palazzio Balbi, and the Palazzio Contarini della Figure, where the canal took an abrupt starboard turn, where no breeze could reach.

'Tis no wonder they're heading out, Lewrie realised, wrinkling his nose and fanning his face with his hat, of a sudden, as the garbage-midden reek overpowered him; I'd go sailin' out where the air's clean of an evenin', too! Shut in a bit from a spectacular Adriatic sunset, the prospect to either hand suddenly didn't look quite so faery-like, so otherworldly. It was just a row of bricks and such, set along a slackwater ditch the colour of the Thames… which bore the cast-offs of London down to the sea.

Must toss everything out the windows, and hope they don't hit a passer-by, he thought sourly. Into the canals… out of sight, out of mind… if not the nostrils.

There were dead fish, he noted, bloated and belly-up, just below the murky surface. Carrot-tops, browned lettuce leaves, more fish-guts lay waving like indolent ribands, at which the surviving fish nibbled with desperate hunger. It suddenly resembled the Hooghly River, which ran past Calcutta, the most inaptly-named Pearl River, just off Jack-Ass Point at Canton, Dung Wharf along the Thames…

Some rather ripe turds went wafting by, close-aboard-while a gay song trilled from shore, taken up by their gondolier. The corpse of a tiny calico kitten… Lewrie felt an outraged sulk coming 'pon him. Why, it was all a fabulist sham! he thought. A trick of smoke or mirrors! He expected bodies in the water, too-human ones. After all, hadn't Machi-avelli grown up here in Venice? Didn't the Venetians murder people left, right and center… officially and unofficially? Then let the tides do their work, unlike the rest of the Mediterranean, which mostly had none. No, he thought, casting a chary eye upon the latest wonders round the bend in the Canal… it ain't so grand, at that!

They took a hard turn to starboard into the Rio di San Luca, just short of the Palazzio Grimani. A hard larboard swing, into the Rio Fuseri, then a landing on the Fondamenta Orseolo and a stroll to St. Mark's Square, as night came down for certain. It must have been some saint's day or Carnival event, for there was a continual popping of fireworks, bands of revelers dancing through the streets in gaudy costumes and more of those masks, the din of bands competing with each other from balconies or side streets, and their way lit by a multitude of torches or street-lanthorns. Mountebanks clad as harlequins, atop impossibly tall stilts, who leaned on upper-floor balconies to share a glass of wine with hosts in masks, or play gallant to some young lady. Jugglers, acrobats and mimes were two-a-penny, dancing dogs, begging bears…

'Ah, here's the place I was told of,' Captain Charlton said, leading them into a restaurant. Lewrie noted he had a slim notebook in a side-pocket, to which he referred now and again. 'This comes well recommended.'

'As long as they aren't on the carte de menu, sir,' Fillebrowne commented, pointing out the two dozen cats that sat, lay or gamboled just without the doorway.

'Known for its seafood, I was told, sir,' Charlton rejoined. 'And 'tis hard to disguise cat-meat as cat-fish, d'ye see, haw haw? The aromas fetched 'em, I shouldn't wonder. Fetched me, at any rate.'

Charlton put a hand to that pocket, that slim notebook once more creasing his brow in remembrance, as if to dredge up some fact he'd read from it, like a mentalist performing a parlour-trick, or a raree-show.

He's never been here, either, Lewrie told himself. Yet he's determined to play the knowing host; the experienced guide!

'… city's nigh awash in cats. A thousand-thousand of'em, I wouldn't doubt. Living along a canal, at water- level,' Charlton went on genially, 'they must be worth their weight in gold, in holding down the rat population. Your sort of town, I expect, hey, Commander Lewrie?'

'It could grow on one, sir,' Lewrie allowed, as a half dozen of the more active beasts came to twine about his ankles, scenting a mark of his Toulon on his stockings, shoes and breeches.

An adequate supper-more than adequate, really. There'd been huge shrimps, cuttlefish stew, stuffed green crab, stuffed sole, with a gigantic mullet big enough for all. And oceans of wine to slosh it all down with. Then, it was off they went for a ridotto. Charlton explained that their diplomatic gestures would be made with Venetian authorities there, instead of being invited to dine.

'Too busy celebrating, sir?' Lewrie asked, cocking an eyebrow at that news. 'They won't sup with us, but they'll have us in for an hour or so at a casino?'

'Just so, Commander Lewrie,' Charlton sighed. 'Just so.'

'An infuriating damn people,' Fillebrowne sneered in sympathy.

They were just about the only people in the palatial ridotto not in costume or masks. Those Venetians who hadn't tricked themselves out as Moors, fanciful beasts or clowns, and wore normal clothing, might as well have been in costume, for their dresses and suitings were as overly ornate as Court-dress at Versailles before the French Revolution. They might dress more soberly during the daytime, but at night, in a casino, they went all-out, as colourful and fanciful as an entire flock of peacocks. About half not in full costume still clung to a black-and-white mask, no two alike, from what Lewrie could see-or posed and preened with filigreed, lacy butterfly-like eye-masks on sticks, which could be purchased or rented, holding them to their faces like quizzing glasses.

Cloth-of-gold, cloth-of-silver, lacework so intricate, so laden with tiny seed-pearls or German glass they appeared to shimmer as they strolled, and almost reflect whatever they passed! Men's suitings so snugly tailored, so embroidered, so flounced with lace, they resembled the parody of a proper suit that had delighted Lewrie back in his teens in London-before his father had press-ganged him into the Navy, o'-course!-the old 'Macaroni' style. And those men… piss-proud, as toplofty as lords, the few unmasked faces frozen into masklike coolness, just at the instant before a sneer. Foppish, weak, limp, languid… or overpadded, full-cheeked and looking so smugly satisfied with their lots. Or, Lewrie speculated, so magnificently bored, rather!

'Uhm… a bit gaudy, would you say, sir?' Ralph Knolles said in a quiet whisper from his larboard side. 'My oath!'

That last comment came at the sight of a pair of harlequins pawing each other as fond as lovers, tilting their infernal beaked masks out of the way to exchange a playful kiss. Under the voluminous costumes, it was impossible to see were they man and woman-or another sort of combination.

'Never catch English folk capering like this, sir,' Lieutenant Knolles declared firmly.

'Be surprised, Mister Knolles.' Lewrie smirked. 'Not at home, at any rate. Overseas, now… in a flock o' foreigners… with no one they know watchin'…'

'Have to be drunk as badgers, sir, e'en' so,' Knolles countered.

'That, too, sir.' Lewrie chuckled wryly. 'Or that first! And then… out comes the bed- linen, and it's a Roman orgy!'

Sumptuary laws were being flouted on every hand, the strictures against ostentatious display of wealth broken