The Secrets of Casanova (28 page)

“The carved intaglios for us, on the other hand, connect to the intaglio on our scroll. Further, we’ve uncovered, in anagram form, a new scroll clue: Lisbon. My theory is that in Lisbon we’ll discover other clues—and that the esoteric verses on our scroll will eventually specify the exact location of the treasure.”

Petrine spoke. “So what Dominique shared with me—Esther’s little tale—that the Templar Crusaders, upon leaving Jersualem, sailed to Lisbon—may be true?” His eyes reflected the frenzy of the campfire flames. “Treasure,” he repeated in a crisp voice.

Dominique spoke. “Even if that were true—that they sailed to Lisbon—we can’t be sure if they took treasure with them or buried it in Jerusalem.”

“If the escaping Templars had the means to flee with their treasure aboard friendly Portuguese ships, why would they possibly chance leaving the treasure to a Muslim enemy? Well,” Jacques said, stealing a look at Dominique, “the Dutch ship captain, Van Doormolen”—he sturdied his voice—“we’re contracted to meet him in four days’ time at Acre to sail west to Lisbon.”

“What? Contracted? You’ve no right. What of Paris?”
Dominique smashed her heel into the sand. “I’ll not go to Lisbon.”

“I’ll not go to Paris.”

Jacques’ mouth felt dry. He glanced over his shoulder to make certain that no one was near and, calming his stormy gut, shifted around the fire closer to Dominique and took her hand in his. His face softened at the sight of the implacable woman who sat before him. “Fragoletta, I wish you to sail to Lisbon. The treasure we’ll find
there will allow you whatever you desire. If we find nothing in Lisbon …” Jacques paused. “If we find no real treasure there, I promise it
shall be our last destination, Dominique. I give you my word.”

The wind began to whistle and whirl.

“You had no right,” Dominique said. “No right.” She jerked her hand, stood up, then marched toward their small shelter.

After Petrine bundled a blanket about himself to sleep, Jacques lay next to the fire and inspected Esther’s six books, again pinching through each page of each thin volume as he had done a day earlier, but nothing of note met his gaze until he reached the last page of
Lisbon: Favored City of Christians
. The tiny identifying colophon matched the odd painting Francesco had made for Fragonard: the cross section of a chambered nautilus. Jacques’ mind quickened. He stared at the inked device until, soon, the flickering fire invited his eyes to close, his mouth to open, and his nose to snore.

The book fell shut.

***

The next night of the journey, Khalif, warming his hands over the campfire, thundered aloud about the conquerors who had held sway in the region over the centuries.

Uninterested, Dominique gradually drifted a distance from the fire, where she found Petrine sitting, using his stiffened finger to draw on the surface of the cold sand.

“I didn’t realize you can write,” Dominique said. “What word do you mark?”

“I wrote my name,” Petrine said without looking up. “Long ago I learned. The man who managed our acting troupe taught me to write and read. And to speak with big, important words.” He picked up his cup, took a sip, then let out a braying laugh.

“Why the amusement?”

“He also taught me to avoid women whenever possible. I
remember, and I laugh. But those are stories for another night.” Petrine looked back at the ground. “Watch. With a sweep of my hand, I demolish the sand that briefly immortalizes my name.”

Dominique stared out into the starry night. “An actor?” she mused. “An interesting existence?”

“I suppose. But after a time, I realized that trooping from town to town was a proposition whose charms had faded. I’m a very good actor, they say, and I enjoyed maneuvering people to laugh and cry. But there was little money. My stomach was weary of hunger, of starvation even.” Petrine knifed his fingers into the sand. “So my teacher showed me how to better my station. To better my plight.” His mouth warped into a grimace. “All I need now is—is
not
to be desperately poor. When I have much money, my name will not be obliterated by the sweep of a hand, my belly will not cramp hard from hunger.”

Dominique sat listening intently.

“So I must—may I speak to another subject that troubles me, senora?”

“Why, surely.”

Rubbing his wrist feverishly, Petrine glanced toward Khalif’s campfire. “Esther’s parrot,” he uttered. “From whom do you think
Esther’s parrot learned those words Illustrissimo, si? Yes, Illustrious One?”

“Well, that subject—”

“Those words stay with me. Give me shivers. In the night. As
does Esther, who comes to my dreams. Do you think the bird
repeated what he heard from Esther’s killer?”

“It seems possible.

“I wish I’d—we’d—never gone to Jerusalem. Never met that woman.” Petrine quickly glanced at Dominique, then lowered his eyes.

“Disturbing, I agree.”

Dominique watched Petrine stare into his coffee cup and waggle it round and round, its steamy contents sloshing over the lip of the chipped vessel. He poured his drink in the sand, sniffed at the cool
night air, then bounding to his feet, hurried back toward the
campfire.

Sensing the valet had spoken more plainly than he wished, Dominique called out. “I enjoyed our talk, Petrine. Again, soon.”

She stood captivated, gazing at the glory of the starry threshold until before long her awe transformed into the sense that she might be only an immaterial speck in a vastness of sky and sand. “Sweet Jesus, protect us. Guide us,” she prayed. “All of us.”

ARRIVING IN ACRE, THE ADVENTURERS
located Captain Van
Doormolen’s serviceable-looking
senau
that would provide sail
across the waters of the Mediterranean—this time to Lisbon. After the passengers were boarded and their belongings had been stowed, the ship pushed out to sea.

The first day and night were uneventful. Things were about to change.

“
Videlicet
—
that is to say, ‘from one, learn to know all …’”
Jacques mouthed, his closed eyes not yet detecting the weak light of dawn seeping into the ship’s hold.

As his hammock pitched to and fro, his mind hazily awoke, his nose assaulted by rotting timbers and brine. “Another day,” he mumbled. “Seneca is correct. Sea travel is tedious.”

Jacques vaguely recollected Captain van Doormolen in Crete. That was yesterday. Or was it the day before? His mind seemed unclear, numb. The last thing he was able to recall was the spry old captain cursing his crew when he’d uncovered the barrels of brackish water aboard. What a stink that had been.

“Help me survive this voyage,” Jacques muttered while he drew in a chest full of air and opened his eyes.

He began to lift his arms but found both lashed tight to his hammock. A coil of thick hemp rope firmly encircled his body!

“What in the devil?” With all his strength Jacques struggled, but the rough rope only raked at his arms and torso. His smallsword was missing. And the dagger with which he’d slept?
Gone.

“Pssst,” came a popping of lips from behind him. “Jacques.”

He stretched hard over his right shoulder and found
Dominique’s green eyes staring wide at him. She, too, was bound to her hammock berth, rocking back and forth at the mercy of the sea’s watery pulse.

“Are you all—” Jacques fell silent. Just beyond Dominique, he
saw a stark and perpendicular object. A knife. Buried in a
passenger’s belly. Jacques’ innards grew cold.

His eyes remained on the sight a moment longer before glancing quickly around the small ship’s hold. He saw two dozen passengers asleep—or scared silent—men, women, and children. All held fast
by rope, rags, even articles of clothing. Jacques felt as if an anvil
crushed his body.

“Dominique,” he gasped again, “are you all right?”

“Yes,” came the whisper.

“Is Petrine—?”

“He sleeps directly behind you.”

“Sleeps?”

“I believe. Or drugged. We all must have been.”

“Bound tight?”

“Yes.”

Jacques listened to the stamp of boots on the deck above, his heart galloping. For a moment he thought he understood the strange language, but surging water against the ship’s hull drowned out the voices. While daylight wavered its way into the senau’s hold, he decided a course of action.

“Petrine,” he announced.

No answer.

“Petrine,” Jacques said. “Do you serve me?”

“
Certainment
, master,” came the groggy reply. “Certainly.”

“Dominique—”

Jacques stopped himself cold when indistinct shadows stole across the walls of the hold.

A half-dozen ruffians with long knives at the waist appeared among the rows of hammocks. One gruff man wearing a red felt cap
and embroidered red waistcoat ordered the release of the children,
one
by one, until a half dozen were directed at musket point to the deck
above.

The red felt cap and the scimitar, Jacques knew, signified Turks, known for—his next thought made him tremble—a fearsome cruelty toward Christian women and children.

Several of the men eyed Dominique while they strode by.
Moments later, Jacques spied Petrine—his body like a sack of potatoes—being lugged between two ruffians.

“Till we meet again, master. At our port of destination.”

“In Lisbon, Petrine, Lisbon.”

The Turks disappeared topside. For most of the trip from Acre,
Petrine had been as sick as a cat at sea. Now the sorry Spaniard
would no doubt be sold into slavery. Jacques’ stomach knotted in pain.

He clenched his fists and strained his head sideways to give
Dominique a heartening look, but her eyes were closed. He wanted
to howl.
It was I who persuaded her to sail
!

The ship creaked and groaned. Beleaguered by the immediate future, Jacques shut his stinging eyes.

“The last time I saw you, you cradled a corpse like your lover.” The voice was coarse, malicious.

“That corpse was my brother,” whispered Jacques forcefully. The reek of alcohol annoyed him. He glared into the dark liquid eyes
of Carlo Brose, longtime nemesis, sometimes accomplice, and
always, it seemed, persistent shadow.

“Last time we met, you owned a nose,” Jacques said. “Now,
whoremaster, you’ve a flat black patch where it should be.”

“You may recall that at your Voltaire fête I had on a mask that covered my face. Yes, I did possess
some
nose that night, but it was decaying even then. Ulcerated.”

Turning his head away, Jacques spat. He felt sickened. Brose faced an impending and painful death. He glanced back at his rival. “So, the pox then?”

“Sadly, yes. And such a magnificent nose it was.”

“Sadly, no.”

Brose shoved a small crate under his rump and sat next to
Jacques’ hammock, pushing it to and fro. “No need for me to be brief. Seeing as you’re not going anywhere and the Turks won’t be back soon, we might even find time to—”

“How do you manage to be onboard this ship, Carlo Brose? And who holds us captive?”

“You shun my playfulness?” Brose swigged from a small bottle. “Let me see, let me see. It was not long after you were hounded out of Paris I peddled my exceptional chair to a certain Comte. My chair,
you may recall, guaranteed success with the opposite sex. I would—
”

“Your diabolical chair, you mean. To mechanically subdue a woman in a chair—to render her helpless—so that some depraved aristo might notch a rape? I cringe at your revolting perversion.”

“Calumny, Herr Adventurer, calumny.”

The wail of a passenger momentarily interrupted Brose, but he turned back to Jacques.

“My exceptional chair seemed inadequate for the Comte’s
needs,” he continued. “The Comte complained—whereupon I was bid, at the
king’s pleasure, to depart Paris. Given the state of my health, I
decided a cruise might do me good. And it was, in fact, restful. Until these Algerine corsairs, many of them Muslims, some of them
renegadoe
s, captured and sank my vessel in early September. Such is the life of adventuring, is it not? So since you ask,
that
is how I came to be on this ship.”

“And yet, you’re not bound as am I and these others?”

Carlo Brose ignored the remark, placed his lips to the bottle, and drank. “As for discovering your whereabouts today, Piccinio, the renegado captain, was informed the prisoners stank of foul garlic. At once I knew Jacques Casanova to be aboard,” Brose laughed.

“Our situation is hardly a matter for jest.”

“Do you not wonder how you and the rest of these passengers
came to be captured so easily? One of the Algerine corsairs
masqueraded as a paying passenger aboard this ship. He drugged the water in the barrels—the brackish water, remember? These corsairs, you see, rely on their cannon and flintlocks only as a last resort. They much prefer
deceit. Oh, I saw their methods: once the Algerines had been
signaled that most everyone aboard your ship was drugged, they put a small boat afloat. They tied strips of sacking round the oars to deaden the sound of their rowing, and upon scaling your ship and taking it, the first thing they did was roll your Dutch captain and his men in rugs and heave them overboard. There’s a burial for you. The rest of you are fortunate.”

With his head, Jacques motioned to the corpse with the knife in
it. “How is it you are free and these passengers are not?”

Brose scratched the black patch that covered what used to be flesh. “Providence seems to provide for those in need, Jacques.”

“Hah.”

“These Muslim Turks are reasonable enough, I suppose. It’s the
renegadoes—the Christians converted to Muslims—that seem to
possess
a special vindictiveness.” Brose flapped his lips. “You ask how I
saved
myself? I have, to my eternal credit, shown my fellow poxers
different ways to administer the great cure.”