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.
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-”