“They’ll get me into the Great Council right away and organize a political career for me-I’ve no talent for commerce. Rhetoric and elocution lessons.”
“You certainly have the voice for it,” I said, stalling for time. “You’ve seen the Hall of the Great Council?”
“Giro said the same thing. I’ve been told about it.”
“About seventy paces long.” Many good men have failed in Venetian politics because they could not make themselves heard in such a vastness. My mind shied away from an image of a thousand or more nobles sitting there listening to Danese Dolfin pontificate.
“I’ll see you and the Maestro are invited to the wedding.”
“He won’t come, but I certainly will.” I would take Violetta and bask in the massed jealousy of all the other male guests.
Having given the Maestro enough time to disappear, I led the way into the atelier. The second door, the one through to the dining room, is not exactly secret, but it needs a sharp eye to see it. Danese counted out ten gold sequins and I fetched the scales. The coins were full weight, so I made out a receipt for twenty-seven ducats, four lire. I wrote it in my finest Cancellaresca Formata hand, just for a change, and sealed it with the Maestro’s signet.
“Very pretty!” he said. “You ever need a job as a scribe, just let me know.”
“Thank you.” I would rather jump off a bell tower. “Anything else?”
“Well…Yes, there is.” Danese turned on his most unctuous smile, cute as a shampooed puppy.
My heart sank like the doge’s wedding ring. As far as society knew, Danese and Grazia were not yet married, so propriety would not allow them to live under the same roof before the wedding. It was late on a Sunday evening, although that was his fault, not mine. I put on my stupid face and waited attentively, so he would have to ask. Ask he did. Shyness had never been one of his faults.
I shuddered to think what the Maestro would say, but the request was not unreasonable. I admitted we had a spare bedroom. It is a luxurious twenty-foot cube and, like everywhere else in the Ca’ Barbolano, is opulently endowed with art and treasures. I refrained from mentioning that I kept a detailed inventory of its contents. Nor did I tuck him in and hear his prayers.
I always wake at dawn, just moments before the marangona rings. By the time I had dressed and reached the kitchen in search of hot water, Mama Angeli was already baking bread and feeding six or seven offspring gathered around the big table. I warned her that we had a houseguest.
Any apprentice is expected to keep his master’s work area clean, and early morning is almost the only time the Maestro is not anchored in the atelier. Monday is my day to wash the floor, a job I rarely manage to finish before he appears; then I have to postpone the rest until after he goes to bed. That day I completed it, though, and had fetched a tray with my usual breakfast of cheese, hot rolls, and a steaming cup of kahve. I was hard at work deciphering the illegible work notes when he came hobbling in, but he disappeared into the red chair with a book, saying nothing. Obviously he had not yet learned about Danese.
I rarely speak before he does in the morning. It is not his best time. About an hour went by before he suddenly said, “Forget about those notes. Throw them out. I was wrong. I need more sulfur.”
“The Lord be with you this fine day, master.”
“And with you. I need it right away.”
I rose. “Swift as the stooping eagle.”
He grunted. “I meant send Giorgio. The Dona horoscope is urgent.”
I took some money from the cash cache and went in search of Giorgio. Giorgio, I learned, was presently delivering sier Danese to the Ca’ Sanudo. Before leaving, sier Danese had eaten a large breakfast, so Mama informed me in unusually cool tones.
“Did he take his bag when he left?” I asked hopefully.
Like any first-class servant, Mama can make her feelings known without a word or expression that could possibly cause offence, but the way she shook her chins clearly indicated that she shared my opinion of Danese. Fortunately Giorgio walked in just then, saving me from having to break the bad news to the Maestro so early in the day.
I explained about the sulfur. I walked him to the top of the stairs, so we would be alone when I asked, “Did he tip you for the ride?”
Since Mama has all the spare flesh in the family, Giorgio has only one chin. He wears a neatly trimmed beard on it. The beard bristled. “No.”
“You amaze me,” I said. Danese had not rewarded Mama for his breakfast, either, although guests are expected to tip their hosts’ servants liberally. Perhaps he really was broke, if he had not yet gotten his talons into Grazia’s dowry, but I suspected that the new Danese Dolfin was the same old scrounger I had known back in San Barnaba. I went back to start wrestling with aspects, ascendants, conjunctions, and ephemerides-casting a horoscope, that is.
Near to dinnertime, I explained the situation. The Maestro’s reaction was as negative as I had expected, although he stopped short of turning me into a toad. There are very few people in the world whose company he enjoys, and freeloading guests belong in the nether circles of hell.
“Get rid of him!”
“Yes, master. If I know Danese, though, he will turn up after dark and pull his lost-waif act again. He cannot defend himself with his arm in a sling, so turning him out in the streets at night would be unfair. I can tell him that tonight is the last night.”
“Pack his bag and put it outside the door.”
“He may bring another sack of sequins with him.”
Grunt. Scowl. “Take the money and then throw him out.”
“Yes, master.” Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I assumed he did not mean that.
I copied out the horoscope in fair. The Maestro approved it with barely a glance, and I went out on foot to deliver it, wanting the exercise. The lady whose future I had foretold did not thank me in person, being less than a month old.
Supper came and went with no sign of Danese, but if he turned up late again he would have to be given a second night’s shelter.
Monday being my fencing night, I retrieved my rapier and dagger from the top of the wardrobe, made sure Giorgio knew exactly what to tell Danese, and trotted happily down the stairs. As I neared the piano nobile, I heard voices. There, just inside the doorway, stood our landlord, sier Alvise Barbolano, chattering happily to sier Danese Dolfin. Danese had a lute slung on his back and a very large leather portmanteau at his feet.
Sier Alvise is older than San Marco, gaunt and stooped and toothless. He moves in a senile fog much of the time, with disconcerting flashes of shrewd cunning, and he can throw the entire Nostradamus household out on its collective ear at any time without a moment’s notice. We are all, even the Maestro, very nice to sier Alvise. I cast horoscopes for his ships, mix rat poison for his rats, and audit the Marcianas’ ledgers for him so they do not cheat him unreasonably.
He beamed his gums at me. “Ah, er…Zeno! You didn’t warn me you would be entertaining sier, er…”
“Dolfin,” murmured Danese.
“Dolfin. I knew his father, er, Domenico, when I was wha’ch’m’call’it at Padua! Or was it Verona?”
“Both, clarissimo. My grandfather.”
“Quite. And, um, Danese has promised to play his lute for us as soon as his arm heals. Wonderful young fellow, his father, er, Domenico! Wonderful singing voice…” And so on.
Eventually I managed to make my excuses and creep back upstairs to warn everyone that Danese had arrived to stay.
My fencing that night was terrible. I learned nothing except some spectacular invective, which Captain Colleoni must have picked up in his campaigning days during an especially nasty siege. Even my friend Fulgentio Trau hammered bruises all over my chest and shoulders. I can usually give him as good as he gives me, which is reasonable, as we are exactly the same size and weight and were born only a few days apart.
Fulgentio lives in San Remo also, so we strolled home together through the hot and moonless darkness, our way lit by two Trau servants walking ahead with torches. That saved me from having to light my own torch, but it was a sad reminder that the Traus, although commoners, are richer than Croesus ever was. Fulgentio’s only fault is that he tries too hard to share his good fortune and cannot see how humiliating that can be to us deserving poor. In bad weather he arrives by private boat and gives rides home to three or four of us. That night the air was so unbearably steamy that I wondered why he had chosen to come on foot and why he had not invited others to walk with us. I am suspicious by nature; Fulgentio is not.