“You’ve an excellent bargain,” Massiter warned.
Daniel laughed in his face. “What? I’ve nothing I couldn’t have taken for myself, at any time I felt like it. No. It’s not good enough.”
“Careful, Daniel.”
He stared into the grey eyes, no longer in awe of them. “About what? You must meet my price, Hugo. Something precious. Otherwise I’ll tell them all. Tomorrow. What’s it to me? A little notoriety and a few months in jail at the most. I can never go back to the way I lived before, in any case. You, on the other hand—”
“Don’t threaten me,” Massiter snapped.
Daniel opened his hands wide. “I threaten no one, Hugo. I only ask for a fair reward.”
Massiter paused. He would always want to know the price, Daniel understood. It was in his nature. “What, exactly?”
“Scacchi told me you had a secret place,” Daniel said. “His exact words: ‘Massiter must own a treasure trove where he keeps his objects of a greater beauty.’ ”
Massiter said nothing.
“I think,” Daniel continued, “that you don’t come here for the music alone. You’re a merchant, Hugo. You buy and sell. All manner of things. Much like Scacchi, except on a higher scale.”
“Say what you want,” Massiter grumbled.
“I want a piece of your treasure, Hugo. I want to be taken there and see your objects for myself. When I do, I’ll pick the one I desire. That’s my price, and then we’re done.”
Massiter pulled himself away and stared at the grave-diggers, who now stood immobile, leaning on their shovels, waiting for them to leave the site. “I’ll think about it.”
“Tonight,” Daniel said. “After the concert. A few glasses of champagne and then a private viewing.” He stared at Massiter. “You’re not offended, are you?”
“Not at all,” Massiter answered. “In fact, I’m flattered. You learn quickly, Daniel.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “But then I have the finest teacher of them all.”
57
Marchese’s entrance
“I’ve no money, lad. Wave that palm elsewhere.” I tugged hard on Jacopo’s jacket and pulled him into the shadows by La Pietà. He had not been hard to spot. That yellow star on his chest stood out a mile, even among the milling masses headed for the concert.
“Hey!” His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks sallow. Still, he had lost that doomed expression I had seen on his face the day before, when he sought to drown his misery in wine. He peered at me in the darkness of the passage. “Lorenzo?”
A pretty sight I must have looked, a beggar from head to toe. I had dirtied my face — not that it needed much work — and torn my clothes. No self-respecting Venetian pays much attention to a scruffy vagrant. Or so I hoped. “Keep your voice down, brother,” I whispered. “I’m a sought-after fellow these days.”
He leaned against the wall, face half-caught by a shaft of late-summer sun, then sighed. “Murderer, too, I hear. To think I entrusted her to such a rogue.”
“She’s with a rogue now, Jacopo. And you know it.”
He watched the crowds milling on the waterfront. The mood was mixed. The public was beginning to lose patience with this game. Delapole had kept his hand over the prize for too long. They were anxious for some swift resolution.
“Perhaps I do. You didn’t kill poor Leo, did you?”
It was my time for an exasperated sigh. “What do you think? You’ve read the details on the posters — as much as they see fit to print, because the truth was much, much worse. Yes. I was there, and they’d have slit my throat, too, if I hadn’t run for it. But it’s Delapole’s handiwork. I warned you.”
“Then the game is up for all of us.”
“No! You give up the ghost too easily. As I tried to tell you before, there is a magistrate on his way here from Rome, with evidence that will put Delapole under lock and key.”
Jacopo’s eyes brightened a little. “Then where is he?”
“Delayed. There was an accident on the coach. But he’ll be here. When he arrives, we will need our wits about us, Jacopo. The Englishman will surely try to damn us alongside himself.”
A spark of hope rose in his face. “Let me talk to Rebecca after they have played. We’ll flee then, Lorenzo. I’m ready to leave this damn town now. Not really my kind of place at all.”
This was, I knew, impossible. “He’s too clever for that, Lorenzo. He’ll be watching her like a hawk when she’s out in public. Besides, until the watch are after him, he could so easily make us the fugitives, and with little chance of escape. These streets are running over with the Doge’s men.”
He rubbed his wispy beard. “Then what?”
“What do you do after the concert?”
“He wants me with him and Rebecca at Ca’ Dario. To pack, he says. I suspect we’ll ship out this evening.”
“Then that is where to make our move. They’ll surely come for him there. Before they do, you must find some way to escape the house. Meet me at Salute, and we’ll look for a boat to bribe on Zattere.”
“You make it sound so simple, Lorenzo. Do you have any idea how sly that fellow is?”
The image of poor, maimed Leo was still alive in my head. “Oh, yes,” I murmured. “More than you might imagine.”
He was silent.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I was just thinking. I remember you when you were a boy.”
I gripped his arm. “That was a long time ago, my friend.”
Jacopo Levi embraced me then, and I felt the most curious sensation. It was as if I had my arms around his sister. There was in our closeness the same warmth and affection, and some trepidation for the future, too, I suppose. I found, to my embarrassment, tears began to start behind my eyes. Jacopo looked into my face and did me the good service of failing to notice them.
“I am sorry,” I stuttered, “to have brought you both to this. To have ruined your lives this way. I will give everything I have to correct it.”
He laughed, like the old Jacopo. “Oh, God, what rubbish you talk sometimes!”
I felt wretched. There were no words in my head, only sorrow.
“It’s all a game, Lorenzo,” he said with a grin. “Never forget that. Besides, I was growing fat and lazy in that ghetto, and Rebecca couldn’t wait to get out, as you well know. Man is a sluggish animal at heart. We need to be shaken out of our lethargy from time to time.”
“All the same…”
“All the same nothing. I tire of curing Venetian matrons one moment, then sealing the remedy by bedding them the next. There’s more to life. Besides…”
He eyed the crowd on the promenade. Then, with one sudden, determined movement, he ripped the yellow star from his dark jacket and threw it into the gutter. The badge lay there in the dirt, a small, pathetic remnant of his past.
“I have learned one thing from you and Rebecca.” He undid his jacket and let his white shirt, open to the chest, show through, as is the style of the Venetian gentleman. “That I walked willingly into that ghetto and helped them turn the key. It is our acquiescence that gives them power over us. We are who we believe we are. Wherever I alight next, I’ll be what I damn well like — Jew or Gentile, Swiss or Italian, doctor, quack, or gigolo. If Delapole can do it, why can’t we?”
His certainty unnerved me. “I am not sure he makes a good example. Or that any of us can shrug off our inheritance when we please.”
“Perhaps not. But if we Jews are such a different race, why must they place badges on our coats to tell us apart?”
In his own mind, Jacopo was beginning to invent himself anew. He answered his own question. “Because it’s themselves they fear, not us. The presence in their midst of those who speak differently, worship differently, and — most of all — think differently alarms them. They mark us so we do not taint them with our dissimilarity and, as a consequence, bring this gilded state crashing down upon their heads.”