I told his ear, “Let’s get out of here before someone calls the sbirri. We can talk it over somewhere quieter.” Releasing him, I said loudly, “I regret I frightened you, madonna. Your parents are very worried about you. I do have your father’s written permission to take you home.”
“I don’t want to go home!” Her voice was larger than she was. “My father has no authority over me now. This man is my husband!”
“Yes,” I sighed. “I know. Do you want to argue that to a magistrate? Now let’s go before the sbirri get here.” Taking him along was not part of the plan and would complicate matters considerably, but I knew him and had hurt him. Call me a softie, but I could not just abandon him.
Venetians are good Venetians first and good Catholics next, but most priests will marry a couple who threaten to embrace adultery-or embrace adulterously-no matter what the law says about parental permission. My tarot had told me what was brewing.
Giorgio had already brought the Maestro’s gondola across and I urged everybody aboard. Danese was in too much pain to argue and the girl clung to him like tree bark. Their would-be gondolier had emerged from his bath. Had I thought that he was just a gondolier, I might have tipped him a lira for his trouble, but he had tried to brain me and I need all the brains the good Lord gave me. The fight had gone out of him; he did not try to block our departure.
A grinning bystander handed me the portmanteau Danese had dropped. I thanked him politely.
The girl went in the felze, of course, but when her evil kidnapper tried to follow her I told him to sit on the thwart and trail his hand in the water to keep it from swelling.
“You think you’re a doctor?” he snarled.
“Not quite, but that’s the best way to ease the pain and stop it swelling.” I clambered in beside Grazia, being careful to leave visible space between us. A grinning Bruno settled in behind the felze , raising our prow significantly, and of course Giorgio stood at the stern, wielding his oar.
I told him, “Ca’ Barbolano please.” The original plan had been straight to the Ca’ Sanudo. He turned our stern to the Rialto and headed home.
Grazia was small, as I said, and seemed little older than she had in the family portrait. Her nose…Either Maestro Michelli had flattered his subject, or her nose had grown more than the rest of her since he painted her likeness. Truly she had her uncle Nicolo’s nose and on a woman it was a disfigurement. Her body might just qualify for “sylphlike” instead of “skinny” but her complexion was unremarkable and there was an unwelcome trace of hardness about her mouth. Her dress looked childish and somewhat crumpled. But oh, her eyes! They almost atoned for everything else. Without her excess of nose they would have made her a beauty.
Danese I have already described. Normally he always seemed a little too conscious of his good looks, but just then he was more like a lemon, pale and bitter.
“Damn you, Alfeo Zeno!” he whimpered. “Why are you meddling in my life? And how did you find us?”
The first answer was, “One thousand ducats,” and better not said.
“You have heard of the celebrated Maestro Nostradamus? Grazia’s parents hired him to find her. I am his apprentice. I will take you to his home so he can treat your hand. And maybe we can talk this out. You do have a piece of paper with a priest’s signature on it?”
“Of course we do!” the girl shouted at me, although we were side by side. “What sort of a woman do you think I am?”
Young and incredibly gullible to fall for a fast-talking snake like Danese Dolfin, despite his luminous sapphire eyes and subterranean voice. “But you did not have your father’s permission to marry, so you are married only in the eyes of the church, not under the laws of Venice.”
Danese said, “But we are married.” His sneer implied that he had made sure the Church would allow no annulment.
“Do you have the Great Council’s approval?”
He went back to sulking without answering my question. His name would be struck from the Golden Book, but that would be the least of his worries if Zuanbattista Sanudo chose to lay charges. Then he would face exile, or three years in the galleys, or worse. The galleys are a slow death sentence, each year counted equal to two years in jail. Grazia would still be married and likely doomed to end her days in a convent.
Grazia sobbed at my side, her hands covering her face. She was hoping, no doubt that a lovable, romantic young man like me could never resist such an appeal, but she was miscalculating. I felt no impulse to clasp her in my arms and beg forgiveness. She was too young to light my touch-paper, and her fake tears merely made her seem more childish.
“Madonna,” I said, “now that you are married, will not your family accept your husband and forgive? Your father did tell me that he loves you.”
She muffled a couple of quite realistic gasps. “He should have thought of that before he ordered me to marry Zaccaria Contarini.”
“What is wrong with Zaccaria Contarini?”
“He’s old and ugly.”
Now I knew the name of the king of coins. The Contarini clan is one of the largest in the Republic, with scores of votes on the Great Council. That might account for Zuanbattista Sanudo’s election to ducal counselor. With his own Sanudo clan, and marriage connections to the Marcellos, the Morosinis, and potentially the Contarinis, Zuanbattista would have about a hundred votes for the asking.
Grazia lowered her hands and fixed me with her lustrous eyes. They did not look as if they had been weeping much lately. “Who are you? I mean really?”
“I told you.”
“An apprentice?” She glanced over my apparel and it did not impress her. “Look!” She pulled back a sleeve to reveal a bracelet of gold and amber. “This is very old. Byzantine work, from Constantinople. My grandmother left it to me. I’ll let you have it if you’ll let us go. It’s worth two hundred ducats.”
I thought maybe thirty or forty. They make them by the score on Murano. “It looks much prettier on you than it would on me, madonna. It probably wouldn’t close around my wrist.”
“You could sell it, you stupid boy!”
Danese curled his lip at me. “Don’t try to bribe him, Grazia. You’re wasting your breath. He’s an idiot and always was.”
Whereas Danese had always had an aye for a good offer.
Whether or not Grazia had been foolish to turn down a Contarini, I thought she had been utterly daft in her choice of alternative. A week before, at the theater, Danese had been dressed like a wealthy young patrician. That had not been a one-time extravagance or rags borrowed for the occasion, because his present outfit was even grander. Somehow he had come into real money. Not by marriage, unless he was a secret bigamist, and not from his sisters if they had all married artisans or laborers, as he had told me. Looks, birth, and money together work miracles for a man’s eligibility. Just because I had always found him insufferable did not mean that Grazia Sanudo was not entitled to worship his footprints. Nor did it mean that I wanted to see him chained to an oar for years on end.
My head and my heart were locked in battle. We could still report that the fugitives had escaped and hope that no details of the fight ever got back to the Council of Ten. The decision would be up to Maestro Nostradamus, but I could not imagine him passing up a thousand ducats.
5
A s we disembarked, I signed Bruno, Go quick-tell-Mama-lady-here. He grinned and went charging up the stairs as if shot from a bombard. Grazia and Danese were entangled again and she was sobbing on his chest. I carried the bag and his sword.
The androne, where the business is done, was silent that holy day. We started up the stairs, passing the mezzanine apartments where the Marciana families live-Jacopo and Angelo are citizen-class partners of sier Alvise Barbolano. He contributes housing and certain trading rights restricted to the nobility; they and their sons do the work. We carried on up.
