appraisingly. I had not veered from my first impression, that Grazia Sanudo was cast from the same hard metal as her mother. She was wondering how to play me, which should not be a difficult decision, given our respective ages and genders.
“Madonna, I must take you home. My master’s orders. Do you want Danese to accompany us?”
She blinked several times, but no tears welled up in her magnificent eyes. “ Sier Alfeo, how could you? You think I would marry a man yesterday and cast him off today?” She dropped her gaze and smothered a dramatic sob. Better, but she needed practice. She had never learned how to speak to men other than relatives or servants.
“No. But he may be taken from you. I told you the message your father sent. Do you trust his word? Will your parents accept Danese now?”
Another dry little sob…“You realize what they may do to him? You condemn me to a life sentence in a convent? You will send your childhood friend to jail or exile?”
“No. If you think that, he is free to go.” Good riddance, mustn’t say so.
She hesitated, chewing her lip. The tragic heroine role is hard for fifteen-year-olds. We both knew that if Danese walked out of her life now she would never see him again.
I was confident that whatever choice she made would be the wrong one. The previous day, just for my own amusement, I had cast Grazia’s horoscope, using the date and time her parents had given the Maestro. The stars were very bad for her at the moment and had been for several days, with Mercury in the house of Virgo. Next weekend her fortunes should improve dramatically. Curiously, my own horoscope showed the reverse-good now, bad later.
“Your father said-”
“Yes, I know!” she snapped furiously. “I heard you. I always knew he would say that. Of course he will take me back! I never doubted it. But did my mother say the same? She’s mad because Danese loves me and she thought he loved her!”
Both ladies had relied on information from the same source. Love makes fools of us all.
“Won’t your father have final say? Why do you doubt?” I asked patiently.
“Because it’s too soon!”
Ah! The Sanudos were supposed to suffer. “Would it help if I asked them for you?”
She melted. “Oh, would you? Please, sier Alfeo?”
Back down to the gondola we went. Grazia naturally took the place of honor, the left side of the felze, and this time I did not stop Danese from joining her. He wrapped his good arm around her and the two of them sat there like birds in a cage, scowling at me. Giorgio pushed off. Nobody said a word until we emerged from the narrow ways onto the Grand Canal.
Grazia had not given up on me yet. “How did you find us?”
“The Maestro foresaw you.”
“That’s witchcraft!” She appealed to her husband. “Isn’t it, dearest?”
“Probably.”
She tried her best tigress stare on me. “We shall report you to the Council of Ten!”
“Don’t waste ink,” I said. “Every year Nostradamus publishes his almanac and includes a dozen or so prophecies. Every year I deliver a copy for the doge and another for the cardinal-patriarch.” I did not suggest that those esteemed gentlemen ever actually read the books, but they did not lay charges either.
“And can you foresee what my parents are going to decide about Danese?”
“The Maestro probably could, but he charges a lot of money for private predictions. I don’t have the knack. I can cast horoscopes, though, and I drew yours.”
She hesitated, but a desire to know the future stands very high in human wants. “And what did you foresee?”
“I saw your present trouble-which wasn’t difficult, of course,” I added quickly, foreseeing her sneer from the way her lip had started to curl. “But I also predict a dramatic improvement in your affairs about a week from now.”
She turned and beamed at Danese. Danese was quick; he saw the ambiguity right away, but he turned his snarl at me into a smile at his wife.
“Then we may just have to be patient a little longer, beloved,” he said.
I leaned forward and closed the curtains on them.
So we returned to the Ca’ Zuanbattista Sanudo. Giorgio tied up alongside the family gondola and I left the lovers hidden in the felze while I set off to face the music for them. A footman opened the door, but he was young and broad shouldered, and I recognized yesterday’s gondolier…Fabricio.
I gave my name and was escorted upstairs and to the same salotto as the previous day. Zuanbattista stood with his arm around his wife. Her antediluvian aunt had been moved to another seat, but did not as much as twitch at my entrance, or indeed during my stay. Girolamo hovered in the background.
I bowed. “ Messere, madonna-Grazia is safe and I can go and fetch her directly. I must inform you that yesterday she performed the sacrament of holy matrimony with sier Danese Dolfin.”
Eva’s mouth hardened like cement.
Zuanbattista sighed. “Your news is welcome. I hope no daughter of mine would sleep with a man without the blessing of Holy Mother Church.”
At their back, Giro merely shrugged, which for him was a wild display of emotion. I gathered that the decision had already been made.
“I confess,” I said, “that I exceeded my instructions. By coincidence, Danese and I knew each other as children. He drew on me and I had to disarm him. I gave him my word that I would not turn him in to the authorities. If you will give me your word likewise, messer , then I can bring him here also.”
Eva showed her teeth and looked up at her husband as if daring him to do any such thing. She had been made the laughingstock of the Republic, the woman who lost her daughter to her cavaliere servente. Dreams of being dogaressa clad in cloth of gold had been dashed by a child’s romantic delusion.
“We do not want a galley slave in the family,” Sanudo told me. “You have my word as a Venetian nobleman, messer. Go and fetch them both.”
Good for him! I resisted the temptation to slap him on the back, and bowed instead. “I brought them both with me.”
The old man had guessed I would say that. I returned to the watergate with the Sanudos trailing at my heels. To my surprise, they even followed me out to the fondamenta, which was conveniently deserted. The felze blinds were still down, but as I approached I heard a girlish snigger, followed by a deep male chuckle. For the moment, at least, Grazia was happy.
“You can come out,” I said. “The pasta is ready and the fatted calf won’t be long.”
Danese handed her ashore and watched her tumble into her mother’s arms in an orgy of mutual hypocrisy. He followed and bowed warily to his father-in-law.
Feeling unwanted, I stepped aboard. “Home, Giorgio, please.”
“Wait!” Zuanbattista’s command knelled in the manner of one that must be obeyed.
“Clarissimo?”
He parted his jungle of beard long enough to display a smile. “I shall make arrangements to pay Maestro Nostradamus his fee. Meanwhile, this is for you, messer, for a job well done.” He tossed me a purse, whose weight astonished me.
Noble is as noble does. I bowed so low I almost fell out of the gondola. He had my vote for doge.
6
A nd that, I thought, was that. The Sanudo affair was closed. When I got home I noted it in the casebook and entered one thousand ducats in the ledger under accounts receivable. Many members of the nobility, even the richest, are notoriously reluctant to pay their bills, and this fee was so outrageous that I could imagine myself haunting the Ca’ Sanudo for months trying to collect it. I asked the Maestro if he thought he would ever see a
