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.
As we passed the piano nobile, where Barbolano himself dwells, Danese muttered, “You live here, Zeno?”
“I do.” I did not mention cuisine or silk sheets.
He said, “Oh!” His eyes and mouth were round.
As we reached the top floor, Mama Angeli came scurrying along the great salone to meet us. I presented Grazia formally as “madonna Gracia Sanudo Dolfin,” which produced a gasp of joy from her, followed instantly by a wail of despair. But Mama is not mother of half the world for nothing, and easily whisked her away for some feminine consolation.
I directed our other visitor to the left and marched him into the atelier. The Maestro was perched on his high stool at the alchemy bench, heating a brown fluid in an alembic over a brazier. He looked around in annoyance at the interruption. I closed the door behind us.
“Doctor Filippo Nostradamus,” I said. “ Nobile homo Danese Dolfin. Sier Danese and I used to fight over crusts from the garbage when we were cutie putti together in San Barnaba. Recently he has risen in the world, talked a priest into marrying him to madonna Grazia, and probably fractured his radial styloid process.”
The Maestro said, “Tut! Careless of him. Show me your hand, clarissimo.”
“I was trying to break your bravo’s sword,” Danese said as we approached the alchemy bench. “And how can a man be apprenticed to a doctor?”
“He can’t,” I said. “I am apprenticed to a sage, clairvoyant, alchemist, astrologer, and all-round philosopher, who also happens to be personal physician to the doge. If I ever need a degree in medicine, I shall go over to Padua and foresee all the answers in the finals before the professors have thought of the questions.” I stalked across to the medical cupboard. “Plaster, master?”
“Just a bandage and a sling,” the Maestro said. “At worst he has cracked the radius. It may need a cast in a day or two, when the swelling has gone down. You will live to fight again, sier Danese.”
“He had better take more lessons first,” I said. “Start talking, messer. How did you get rich?”
Danese glared stubbornly, but he was tense with fear. “What business is that of yours?”
“None. It is the Maestro’s business, for he must decide what to do with you. We were not told your name, so our plan was to return Grazia to her parents and let you slither back into your hole, whoever you were. Now we have the alternative of sending them word that they can come and get her and you, too. Even if you still had your sword, which you don’t, I could lock you up until Sanudo arrived with the sbirri. Yet another possibility, although a highly unlikely one, would be for the Maestro to let the two of you go free and lose his fee. So be persuasive.”
The Maestro stared at me in outrage, wondering what I was dreaming of. Danese tried to fold his arms in defiance and yelped when he jostled his hand. I returned with the bandages.
“I’m not rich,” he said sulkily. “If you’re hoping to extort money from me, you’re on the rocks. I had a well-paying job, is all. I gave it up for Grazia. We are madly in love. I love her more than life itself. We were heading over to, ah, a place on the mainland where I have friends.”
“To starve?” I persisted.
“I can read and write. I’ll find a job as a teacher, or a musician.” He winced again as the Maestro started wrapping his wrist.
“What sort of job did you give up?” I demanded. “Teaching and writing didn’t pay for those drapes.”
“Mind your own…” He gave me a baleful look and the Maestro another, then remembered the power we had over him and shrank into a pathetic sulk. “I was a cavaliere servente.”
I said, “Oh, my god! For her mother? ” Even Nostradamus looked startled.
Danese flushed crimson. “No! Well, yes. But it wasn’t like that! I fetched her fan and brushed her hair and fed her canary. I played the lute and sang to her, read her poetry, told her how beautiful she looked, squired her to recitals and viewings because her husband was away, and told her how beautiful she looked. That night you and I met at the theater I was hunting for her to tell her where her gondola was tied up. A lapdog, that’s all-not what you’re thinking.”
Half the wealthy women of Venice employ handsome young men to dance attendance on them, but the duties normally extend to more intimate matters than any so far mentioned. Their husbands hire courtesans; why should they not employ gigolos? This is Venice. I could imagine Danese singing very well, with that deep rich voice of his. He would be very effective at whispering endearments into shell-like ears.
As he adjusted his patient’s sling, the Maestro said softly, “I am somewhat amazed to hear that madonna Eva was stupid enough to keep her innocent, unmarried daughter sequestered in the same house as an exceptionally good-looking young man. That she would do so and also expect both of them to remain chaste I find incredible.”