The doge’s equerries are always chosen from the citizen class, but usually from those in humble circumstances, so Fulgentio’s appointment had been a surprise. Some members of the Senate had grumbled that they normally worried about the equerries accepting gifts, but now they had to worry about this one offering them. The doge himself had risen to point out that equerries are appointed for life, or until they reach sixty, and most of his were holdovers from previous reigns. One of the equerries’ duties, he had added pointedly, was to guard the ducal bedchamber at night and he had chosen Trau because he was an excellent swordsman-an exaggeration, but one I could take as a personal compliment when I heard about it.
Like the senators, I could not see why Fulgentio should want such a tedious job, playing servant, showing visitors around the palace, and so on. He just said it would be less boring than banking and he would mingle with the great. Why should he want to do that, though? Most of them are too dull to be admirable and not evil enough to be interesting. I am convinced that Fulgentio is completely honest and honorable, but his brothers are quite rich enough to have won him the job by bribing even the doge. More likely the family has some sinister purpose in mind for him that he hasn’t realized yet.
So we walked along calli, over bridges, and across campi, grumbling about the endless summer overstaying its welcome. I admit I was glad of the company, although I never walk the streets at night without making sure I do not look worth robbing, which is not difficult for me. Suddenly my companion changed the subject.
“I hear you were displaying your pathetic swordsmanship on the Rio del Vin yesterday.”
I made some brief remarks.
“Well? Were you?”
“My lips are sealed. What else did you hear?”
He laughed because I had not denied the story. “That sier Zuanbattista’s daughter eloped with his wife’s gigolo. It’s all over the city, Alfeo! There wasn’t a single Contarini to be seen in the Great Council today and usually there’s at least a score of them clucking around there. Hilarious!”
I groaned. “I suppose this means the end of Sanudo’s ducal ambitions?”
“His what?” Fulgentio said sharply. “Him? Doge? He’s a fine man, one of the best, but he could never afford to be doge, my lad! Not before the Second Coming, anyway. Have you any idea of the gold it takes to buy the votes of the forty-one? Or the running expenses in office? Many a doge is worth millions of ducats when he is elected and dies bankrupt. That printing business of Sanudo’s earns him maybe one thousand ducats a year, and the rest of his interests have gone downhill while he’s been gone. He’s been neglecting them! The best fertilizer is the shadow of the farmer on the field, remember.”
“He may have made a lira or two on the side in Constantinople?”
“Not as I hear it. The Senate always expects a ducat’s worth of display for every soldo it votes for its ambassadors’ expenses. A diplomatic posting can bankrupt a man, no matter how rich he was beforehand, and the general view is that Sanudo was unusually honest while he was there.”
“He owns large estates on the mainland.”
Fulgentio snorted. “What if he does? Land is a safe investment but it doesn’t produce great revenues. The only way Sanudo could finance a run at the dogeship would be to sell everything he owns, and that would leave his son penniless. No Venetian patrician ever breaks up the family fortune. He hoards it to pass on to his sons. Nobles think in terms of centuries.”
This was a startling contradiction of what Violetta had told me. Her source must be mostly pillow talk, either direct or secondhand. Fulgentio was in a unique position, surrounded by money at home and political power at work. She knew what people wanted. He might be a better judge of what they could get.
Poor Eva! Her dreams had been vain even before Danese Dolfin sank her ship. And poor Danese, who would never be the doge’s son-in-law!
7
L ife was strained around Ca’ Barbolano for the next few days. To be honest, Danese troubled no one but the servants. He rose early, ate breakfast, and disappeared until nightfall. Twice more he brought instalments of the Sanudo fee back with him, but he was curt with Mama and Giorgio, never tipped them, and snapped at their children. He cultivated old sier Alvise and his wife, even singing for them-a lute is fingered with the left hand, and he could still strum with the right. As long as he kept the Barbolanos happy, we dared not evict him.
The Maestro never saw him, but he resented the interloper’s presence unreasonably and considered the intrusion to be all my fault. Never easy to live with, he became steadily more pettifogging, punctilious, and persnickety than ever. I retaliated with an odious servility, creeping around on tiptoe and inserting “master” into every phrase. That made him even madder, as I intended.
Thursday evening brought unwelcome relief. He and I were supping in our usual silver and crystal splendor, seated under priceless Murano chandeliers at a damask-draped table that can hold fifty. I was savoring seconds of Mama’s exquisite Cape Longhe in Padella. He was picking at his plate with his fork as if looking for pearls; I did not have the heart to tell him that pearls come from oysters, not clams. I had arranged to go carousing with Fulgentio, just to get out of the house.
“You should eat more, master,” I said. “You have told me more than once, lustrissimo, that fasting is very bad for the brain, as evidenced, I believe you instanced, master, by the hallucinatory disquisitions of certain holy-”
“And you should eat more because it is the only useful purpose to which you put your mouth.”
Before I could frame a suitably unctuous apology, there was a rap on the door and Marco Martini strode in without waiting for a response. Martini is one of the fanti who guard the door when the Council of Ten meets and generally run its errands. They seem innocuous enough in their blue cloaks, but look at them closely enough and you will see that each one carries a rapier hidden in the folds, hanging vertically under his left arm. Martini is short and trim, aged around forty, with a no-nonsense expression stressed by a pointed beard that juts forward. He has the reputation of being handy with a sword, but I can’t vouch for that.
Giorgio hovered behind him, looking alarmed. I sprang up and bowed, prepared to leave if told to do so and hoping it was not me he wanted.
“Maestro Filippo Nostradamus?”
If the doge had been taken ill, one of his equerries would have come, and would have addressed Nostradamus as “Doctor.”
The Maestro snorted. “By the saints, Marco, if you’ve forgotten my name, it is time you retired.”
“The Most Excellent Council of Ten,” the fante continued without taking offense, “requests and requires that you attend Their Excellencies this evening at your imminent convenience.”
Some people would have fainted out cold on the floor. The Maestro calmly dabbed at his wizened lips with a finely starched napkin. “It is always an honor to wait upon the noble lords. I may follow you in my own boat?”
“That will be permitted. I shall report that you are on your way.” Marco nodded at me. “Don’t forget.” With a hint of a trace of a shadow of a bow, he departed.