1 - Interrupted Aria (19 page)

“Your sister is not possessed. Nor are her spells mere artifice,” the monk replied without taking his eyes off the flames licking the lumps of coal behind the grate.

“How can you be so sure it is not an evil demon?” asked Alessandro.

“Grisella’s case lacks the relevant signs. There is no foul stench in her room or about her person. She readily admits her love of God and all his saints without interference from a satanic power.” The monk looked up and emphasized his next words. “You saw the crucifix I placed on her forehead. It is a holy relic that has belonged to our order for hundreds of years. A sliver from the true cross of our Lord’s crucifixion is embedded in the shaft. If a demon infested Grisella’s body, her skin would have burned and blistered at its touch.”

“Then what is wrong with her, Brother Mark? We are at our wits’ end.” Annetta sank to the floor in a puddle of skirts and touched the monk’s sleeve.

“She is suffering from a natural illness complicated by guilt and shame. She has been touched by despair and is too easily overwhelmed by imagined terrors.”

“My God, is she going insane?” My brother threw the crust of bread back on the table.

“No. At present Grisella is in full control of her mental faculties, but she is suffering. She didn’t tell me all that is troubling her, but she revealed enough to make it clear that a fearful anguish is causing her strange behavior. If left unchecked, her malady could end in madness. I have seen such cases.”

“You mentioned guilt, Brother,” I said. “Guilt over…what?”

“I was hoping one of you could tell me. Grisella was either unwilling or unable to explain.”

Annetta was chewing on the edge of a thumbnail. She dropped her hand and began in a doleful voice, “Our mother died when Grisella was born. Of course, we attach no blame to our sister. A babe cannot be held responsible. Berta and the rest of us refrain from even mentioning it.”

“But yet, the girl’s mind is disturbed by a heavy burden,” observed Brother Mark.

“It’s Father. Admit it, Annetta.” Alessandro began pacing again. “Whenever Grisella is particularly wayward, he calls her the spawn of the devil and accuses her of killing Mother. When she was little and wet her gown or grew fretful, he would hand her back to Berta and say ‘take this cursed child, she’s brought nothing but misery into this house since the day she was born.’”

I trembled with anger hearing Alessandro repeat Father’s cruel words. No wonder the girl was troubled. Annetta sighed. “It’s true. What Alessandro says is all true. Has Father’s attitude caused Grisella’s troubles?”

“It would certainly be enough.” Brother Mark nodded. “But I think there’s more. She seems very upset about someone named Felice. She tells me that she used to be able to fight the spells and keep them from totally consuming her, but since the misfortunes of this Felice, she no longer has the will to resist.”

“The convulsions have been getting stronger,” Alessandro agreed. “The elixir doesn’t seem to help much any more.”

Brother Mark listened intently as I explained Felice’s predicament and the limited time Messer Grande had given us to solve the mystery of Adelina’s death. “One of our major obstacles is being unable to communicate with Felice,” I finished. “We are allowed to leave food and a little money to see that his cell is kept clean and fresh bedding is provided, but visits or written messages are forbidden.”

“Surely he can request to see his doctor or his confessor if he has the need. Even the worst miscreants cannot be denied the sacrament of confession administered by the priest of their choice.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I suppose, but Felice is healthy as a horse and likes to keep his prayers to himself. At school, he only went to Mass when we all had to, and he never went to confession without being dragged there by one of the maestros.”

“Unfortunate,” said the monk. “If he asked for me I would gladly hear his confession, and tell him of your faith in his innocence and your efforts to free him.”

“You’d do that for us?” Alessandro asked in surprise.

Brother Mark stood up and shook out his robe. His cheeks glowed from the stove’s warmth and his hooded eyes radiated a kindly light of their own. “I would do that for Grisella. I made her a solemn vow that I would do everything in my power to put her mind and soul at ease. Felice’s imprisonment weighs heavily on her heart. I don’t think her fits can be cured as long as he is in danger.”

“How can we let Felice know that he must request a visit from Brother Mark?” I was asking myself as much as the others.

Annetta shook her head pensively. Alessandro fingered a hunk of Berta’s bread, then tossed it in the air and caught it with a grin. “I think I have an idea.”

Chapter 20

From my favorite perch atop the Benedictines’ spiral tower, I watched the early winter dusk blanket Venice’s spires and domes with a creeping gray mist. The damp chill seeped under my cloak, and I wrapped a scarf more tightly around my throat. The curtain at San Stefano would rise within the hour, but I was stealing a few moments to ponder the latest mystery. Who had broken into Adelina’s apartment to steal a leather-bound folio, and what information did the book contain?

After seeing Brother Mark on his way and advising him to await a message to come to the guardhouse and minister to Felice, Annetta and I had hurried to Adelina’s lodgings. The soprano’s rooms were on the third floor of a house in the Dorsodura, a pleasant neighborhood of small squares and narrow alleys nestled in Venice’s southwest corner. I expected my friend’s possessions to tell me what she no longer could. I was particularly interested in any unfavorable information against Viviani.

When Annetta and I arrived, we were dismayed to find Caterina and Susannah ankle-deep in scattered books, linens, and empty drawers. Cabinet doors hung askew; even the bed hangings had been pulled down. Little was broken but everything was out of place.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We found the door ajar. You can see someone’s forced the lock.” Caterina indicated the splintered doorjamb. “I’ve already knocked on doors and questioned the other inhabitants of the house, but no one saw or heard anything.”

“I wonder if the intruder got what he came for?”

“We’ll never know if we don’t make our own search,” Caterina answered.

The four of us set to work. We decided to sort the late soprano’s possessions into different categories: books on the table, letters and personal papers on the desk, clothing on the bed, and so forth. Only then would we be able to make sense of the mess. I found myself working in the bedroom with Susannah.

“Are you still convinced of Felice’s guilt?” I asked her as she folded shifts and corset covers.

The little maid grimaced uncomfortably. “My new mistress says Signor Viviani is behind the murder, but I know what I saw. If your friend didn’t poison the wine, I’d like to know what he was doing in Signora Belluna’s dressing room.”

“I would, too,” I admitted as I crawled over the carpet scooping everything from shoe buckles to hair combs into a large hatbox. “I suppose there is no chance that you would renounce the affidavit you signed for Messer Grande?”

“How can I, Signore? If Messer Grande thinks I set out to deceive him, there’s no telling what he would do to me. Besides, I told nothing but the truth.”

The truth: what an elusive concept that was proving to be. I shivered on my tower, knowing I needed to exercise my voice before the performance but loath to seek the warmth of the theater until I had mulled the new developments over. After hours of sorting and picking through Adelina’s things, we had not found a shred of helpful evidence, and Susannah could be sure of only one missing item.

She described a thick, folio-sized book bound in red Moroccan leather. “My lady used to write in it for hours. She’d come home from the theater and prop herself up in bed with that book. ‘Go to bed, Susannah,’ she’d say. ‘Just leave me a pot of coffee and I’ll be fine.’ The next morning, there’d be candle wax all over the nightstand, but the book would’ve disappeared.”

“Where would she have kept it?” asked Caterina, surveying the premises with impatient eyes.

“I don’t know,” Susannah answered with a shrug. “She had hiding places even I didn’t know about.”

“That means the book could still be here, hidden in some secret space that has eluded both the intruder and ourselves,” wailed Annetta in frustration.

“Do you have any idea what she was writing?” I asked the maid, who sank onto the dressing table bench with an exhausted sigh.

“Not really, but it seemed to make her happy. From my room, I’d hear her chuckle and sing little bits of music. Mornings after she’d been at the book, she’d seem quite pleased with herself.”

Caterina and Annetta had thrown themselves on the bed among the neat stacks of clothing that Susannah had erected. All three of the women groaned when I proposed going over the apartment again, bit by bit, to look for a secret hiding place. I brought them to their feet with a graphic description of the machine used for execution when the Tribunal ordered a prisoner strangled. By the time I had reached the part where the victim’s head was strapped in a crescent-shaped collar and the executioner was using a winch to slowly tighten a skein of wire around the unfortunate neck, my weary allies were tapping floorboards and examining the undersides of the furniture. Using hat pins, tweezers, and every other implement a fashionable lady’s boudoir could provide, we poked and prodded every potential crack and recess in the place. It was all to no avail.

“Such rotten luck.” My whisper joined the tendrils of mist swirling around my tower like ravenous spirits. “Why can’t fortune smile on our quest just once?” I pulled myself away from the parapet. It was definitely time to head for the theater. The low murmur of the monks at their evening service accompanied me as I crept down the spiral stairs in near darkness, plotting my next move. The Palazzo Viviani was uppermost in my mind. I couldn’t imagine gaining free rein to prowl over the huge residence in search of the red leather folio, but at least I could question some of its inhabitants. Of course, the book might be at the bottom of a canal by now, but maybe not. Domenico Viviani had amassed his fabulous wealth through cunning and attention to detail. He would want to examine any potentially damaging information himself. The red book might be sitting in a desk drawer at the
palazzo
waiting for the master to read it at his leisure.

As the curtain at the San Stefano rose, I forced myself to put my musings aside and concentrate on the job at hand. Over
Juno’
s run I had warmed to my role as Arcas and enjoyed singing Orlando’s score. Adelina had described it as a repetition of his earlier work, but it was new to me and presented certain charms. The libretto afforded me several opportunities to strike heroic or moving poses, and I made the most of them. There were only two discordant elements.

The first was Orlando Martello. The composer was growing bored with conducting the orchestra from the harpsichord. He complained incessantly and paid little attention to the action on stage, leading to many slips between singing and accompaniment. He bragged that he was working on a new opera that would be Venice’s most magnificent spectacle yet. If Torani or one of the other theater directors wouldn’t offer favorable terms to mount the production in Venice, Orlando threatened to sail for England and offer it to His Majesty’s Opera Company at the Haymarket.

Marguerite was a different story. The singer was neither old nor young, neither beautiful nor ugly. She made an impression by the stateliness of her bearing and the sheer strength of her voice. Her soprano could be shrill and graceless, but the pit never dared hiss her because she was known to have several powerful protectors who were particularly ruthless even by Venetian standards. Her lack of virtue didn’t concern me—I left that to the gossips—but her stage behavior plagued me. So strong was her penchant for superiority that she used every trick of our trade to overshadow her fellow singers.

Her vanity forced me to develop a few clever tricks of my own. When she pirated my favorite embellishment for use in one of her own arias, I countered by repeating the phrase with ornamentation she could never hope to match. I doubled her trills, pushed past her high notes, and sustained single tones for triple the length of hers. The audience loved it.

It was after one of these vocal duels that I realized I could put my stage success to work in my investigation. The roar of the pit was deafening as I made a reverential bow in the direction of the Viviani box. My patron had skipped the opera that night, and Elisabetta was entertaining a bevy of titled ladies. They were crowding each other at the box railing, applauding wildly.

“Maestro Torani,” I called as I came offstage, “I’m going to pay my respects to Signora Viviani. I’ll be back in plenty of time for my next entrance.” The director looked surprised but didn’t try to stop me. I fancied he thought the adulation was going to my head and I was turning into one of the willful, arrogant
virtuosi
who were more interested in being fawned over than singing.

The spacious Viviani box overflowed with feminine charm. The ladies’ skirt hoops clacked together as they shifted from the rail to card table and back again. The enclosed space reeked with their competing fragrances and the mess one of their lap dogs had made under a chair. Besides the footman who was cleaning up after the dog, the only male in the box was Elisabetta’s
castrato
attendant. I learned his name that night: Benedetto Benaducci, shortened to Benito by everyone. Dressed in a rich suit of scarlet moiré with a lining of sky-blue silk showing at his cuffs and collar, he carried his lady’s fan and handkerchief in jeweled hands and bantered with her guests in a sweet, seductive lisp. I owe him a debt; Elisabetta and her company complimented me shamelessly, but Benito was the only one to suggest an invitation to the
palazzo
.

“
Ma cara signora
, our handsome nightingale should not be caged in this theater. He should be warbling in your audience chamber.” When she nodded her head and told me she received guests on Sunday and Thursday afternoons, my entrée to the
palazzo
was assured.

I left the theater in better spirits than I had entered. One goal was in sight, and I hoped that when I reached home Annetta would tell me that Brother Mark had been called to hear Felice’s confession. I hadn’t covered more than one square’s distance from the stage door when another worry popped up.

After leaving Adelina’s apartment earlier in the day, I had noticed a knife grinder’s cart outside her building. Not an unusual sight in a residential
campo
, but my instincts told me I’d seen the man before. My interest was further piqued when the same cart showed up in the market next to the Benedictine monastery. From my tower roost, before the mist had engulfed me, I had studied the cart owner’s movements. His rolling gait and habit of hunching his left shoulder would be unmistakable.

There he was again. He had been waiting at the mouth of the alley that ran by the theater, this time without his knife grinder’s implements. I slipped on a mask and directed my steps from
campo
to
campo
in aimless fashion, like a man seeking pleasure but unsure of where to find it. My shadow never wavered. With his cap pulled low to shade his face, he kept well back, but never let me leave his sight. My only other companion was one of Alessandro’s Turkish daggers, which he had given me after I had been attacked at the Colleoni statue. I moved it to my waistband for quick access.

Uneasy at the prospect of leading my shadow home to the Campo dei Polli, I strolled toward San Marco’s. A stiff wind off the Adriatic had blown the evening mist over to the mainland. The night had turned clear and cold, but the spirit of Carnival, and a multitude of large braziers, warmed the great piazza. A dizzying parade of costumed revelers surged to and fro, pushing frantically from one entertainment to the next, always seeking a bigger thrill. I stopped to watch a troupe of acrobats catapult onto each other’s shoulders from a teeter board set on the ground but was soon diverted by a juggler who was keeping three lighted torches in the air at one time.

My shadow’s rolling gait followed close behind me as I made my way down the piazza. When I stopped to buy a cup of smoky black coffee from a vendor who was roasting his own beans at the back of his stall, the faux knife grinder turned to inspect a notice board announcing the arrival of an Egyptian contortionist. I suddenly realized that I was ravenously hungry and looked around for a place to eat. I didn’t think I’d be attacked in the middle of a crowded café, so I joined a stream of masqueraders heading for a brightly lit doorway down a narrow
calle
just off the north side of the piazza.

Instead of food, I found a large building of interconnecting salons filled with gaming tables. Masked men and women jostled around tables throwing dice, playing faro, or betting on the wheel. This must be the Ridotto, the state-sponsored gambling house, not what I wanted at all.

I had turned to go when a tall, straight-backed man in a
bauta
caught my eye. Surely that was my father’s coat. I had noticed him wearing a patterned green taffeta many times. I slipped behind a thick column to get a good look without being seen. I watched as the man laid wager after wager on the spin of the wheel. The tall stack of coins before him shrank inexorably, yet he continued to lay coins on the black or red squares like an unthinking, mechanical being. Murmurs of “Bad luck, Signore” and “Better try your hand at faro” reached my ears. One woman grabbed his arm and tried to tease him into leaving the table. He shook her off without taking his eyes off the wheel.

He seemed to come back to life only when the stack of coins had dwindled to nothing. He patted his pockets, and his masked eyes scanned the crowd as if looking for someone. Could this really be the Isidore Amato who insisted on a thousand small economies in the household, who wouldn’t give Annetta an extra
soldo
to hire another servant, who had kept me on a meager allowance all my years in Naples? It was hard to imagine the thrifty father I had known squandering money at the gaming tables, but I was almost convinced of this man’s identity. I wished the cloth of the
bauta
wasn’t covering his wig; I would have recognized that without doubt.

Wondering what my shadow was making of my behavior, I followed the man in the green coat as he strode quickly from room to room. On the mezzanine, he entered a particularly sumptuous chamber lit with a wide chandelier and many extra candles. He hesitated on the edge of a group gathered around a richly dressed man who stood out all the more because he was one of the few unmasked men in the establishment. It was Domenico Viviani. I watched as the man who I thought was my father tried to catch his attention. A waiter hung at my elbow, inducing me to buy a glass of Cyprus wine. I had better start spending some money or the management would be ushering me out onto the street.