to speak to everyone who was in that room to find out what they saw, just as I have heard the Maestro’s version and now yours. If the Ten-” I was silenced by an irresistible need to yawn.
“Too much Carnival?” Aspasia asked sympathetically. “How much sleep last night?”
“Very little,” I admitted.
“Reclassifying your virgin, I suppose? Hard work.”
“No! I kept dreaming of you and waking up weeping that you were not there at my side.”
She hoisted a skeptical eyebrow. “Iuppoter ex alto periuria ridet amantum.”
“Ovid. ‘Jupiter laughs on high at the perjuries of lovers.’”
“Not bad! When do you ever get the time to read Ovid?”
“Never. You quoted that to me the first time we met.”
“Oh, of course!” Her smile was Helen’s. “I was bleaching my hair on the altana and a madman came leaping across the calle. Before I could even scream for help he vaulted the rail and knelt at my feet to offer me a rose.”
“And told you that you were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.”
“He was young and quite beautiful himself.”
“He swore to love you forever. And he has not touched lips to any other woman since.”
She was pleased, not convinced. “None?”
“Not seriously. I had to fight off a lust-maddened virgin two nights ago, but I thought of you and lost interest. Jupiter has stopped laughing. He weeps for me.”
I waited breathlessly to see who would respond to my plea. Minerva is intellect incarnate, sprung from the head of Jupiter, eternal virgin untouchable. I did not feel strong enough to deal with Medea, who is daunting, demanding, and deadly. Aspasia would either talk me out of it or cooperate for her own purposes while despising my animal lusts.
“What nonsense! Go home. This is siesta and you need to rest.”
“I have urgent work to do,” I agreed, but my feet were already kicking off my shoes, because that had been Helen’s voice.
“I will waken you.” She threw the sheet aside.
The rest of my clothes hit the floor in a blizzard and I had her in my arms. When we paused in our kissing to draw breath, I said, “You are very generous, giving charity to a poor apprentice.”
“Charity? With other men I must serve, but with you I can just be myself and enjoy. I need you to keep reminding me that men can be lovable. You know,” she murmured, turning her lips away as I tried to claim them again, “what I love most about you, Alfeo darling?”
“Tell me.” I nibbled her ear.
“That you aren’t jealous. That you never judge. That you never nag me to reform.”
Reform and marry me, a pauper? Live by selling off her wardrobe over the next ten years? I loved her because she did not try to buy me, as she so easily could. If she insisted I become her pimp, I would have to obey. If she thought I was not jealous, she was crazy. She was crazy, but I learned long ago not to yearn after things I cannot have.
“I would probably die if you did reform,” I said. “And while you sin, I want to sin with you. You can have all of me, my darling, every bit. I will settle for as much of you as you can spare.”
6
A man can have few experiences more pleasant than being wakened by a kiss from a beautiful girl when he is lying naked in her bed. Before I could get my hopes up, though, I realized that the woman bending over me was wearing the habit of a nun of the Carmelite Order. Some houses dress less strictly than others, and in this case my initial mistake was understandable, for her veil hid nothing and her bodice not much. I screamed and grabbed for the covers.
“Whatever is wrong?” Deviltry danced in Helen’s dark eyes. “I have never known you to be shy before.”
“I thought I was about to be raped. What time is it?”
“Time for you to meet an important witness. After you collapsed and left me to amuse myself, I recalled that Alessa used to know an Orseolo. So I went and asked her, and he belonged to the correct branch-Enrico, Bertucci’s son.”
I slid off the bed and began to collect my clothes. Alessa is a former courtesan who retired from the profession when she turned thirty or so, and is now one of the co-owners of Number 96. She runs the on-site business, a stable of a dozen or more girls.
“How much did you tell her?” I asked nervously. If my interest became widely known, whispers would start that the Maestro was worried by the whispers, and that would do his reputation no good.
“Just that you were upset by the rumors and wondered if there was anyone who might have wanted to kill the old man. Alessa is clever, though. She guessed right away that you were moved by more than idle gossip.”
“I know and love madonna Alessa, and have great respect for her sagacity and discretion.” I dragged Violetta’s hairbrush twice over my tangled mop, gave up, and stuffed it all inside my bonnet. “Lead the way, Sister Chastity.”
We went along the corridor to Alessa’s corner of the house, where we found an Ursuline abbess laying out sweetmeats and glasses. Alessa is still on the bouncy side of forty and a very appealing woman, somewhere between buxom and statuesque, well worth a cuddle. The cut of her habit was no more discreet than Violetta’s.
“What has caused this shocking outbreak of piety?” I demanded, and gave her an endearing kiss. My enthusiasm must have been convincing, because she cooperated until Medea began making menacing throat- clearing noises.
Mother Alessa recovered her breath and said, “Our new Carnival costumes were delivered and we decided to try them on. How do we look?”
“Inestimably pure and holy. You will drag saints down off the steps of the Throne of God.”
“Vi, we should set him up as a friar. We could tonsure him!”
“Or a Turk?” Violetta suggested. “We could get a rabbi from the Ghetto Nuovo to-”
“No you couldn’t!” I said firmly, sitting down and accepting a glass of Alessa’s excellent marsala. “I like me just the way I am. I have to get back to work. Reverend Mother, please keep this a secret, but the Maestro believes that the procurator was indeed poisoned, as the gossip says, although definitely not by him. What can you tell me about him?”
Alessa is another lost actress. She raised her gaze to Heaven, clasped her plump, soft hands, and began to speak with a sonority worthy of Holy Writ. “Bertucci was a very upright man, honest and devout, a generous benefactor to the Church and the city. A good man! He won great distinction in the Cypriot war. He was widowed years ago. He is survived by his son, Enrico, and two grandchildren. I have been trying to think of anyone who might hate him enough to murder him and honestly cannot.”
“You were close to Enrico?”
“He kept me generously for several years, until his father heard about our nest. He disapproved and insisted I leave. Then he arranged for Enrico to be elected rector of Verona and shipped him off to the mainland.” Alessa sighed for wasted opportunities.
Verona is a tribute city of Venice, of course.
“When was that?”
“About four years ago. Bertucci did not have me thrown out in the canal; he allowed me a month to make other arrangements. He was stern, but never vicious. Enrico told me more than once how the old man’s war wounds caused him great pain, yet he never complained. And you tell me somebody murdered him? This is a terrible thing.”
The Church would call Alessa a fallen woman, and yet I believed that she was sincere. The crusty old trooper came alive for me in her words.
