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Magny’s voice ended her brief journey into the recent past. “You never let me help you,” he said.
“Make decisions for me?” she said without looking up. “No, thank you, sir.”
“Francesca, this is absurd. Let me take you back to Paris.”
“My enemies can find me as easily there as here,” she said, “if that’s what worries you. I’m not worried. They dare not kill me until they find what they want, because they don’t know what arrangements I’ve made in the event of my untimely demise. They cannot risk those letters being published.”
“Francesca.”
“I have letters to write,” she said.
Sunday night
When Marta Fazi learned that Piero had been taken into custody and Bruno had disappeared, she smashed several more madonnas, had a weeping fit about her lost emeralds, and vowed revenge on everybody who’d ever annoyed her. Then, as was usual with her, she abruptly became completely calm again. Plan A—using bullies to terrify the Englishwoman into handing over the letters—having failed, she swiftly devised Plan B. Then she went out in search of lackeys to replace the pair she’d lost. This was difficult in Venice but not impossible. Everywhere, Marta had learned, a strong-willed woman could find weak-willed men to do her bidding.
It was true that Venice was not the most welcoming place for criminals. This didn’t mean it hadn’t any. As was the case in more lawless cities, it had a population of desperately poor persons and desperate neighborhoods in which they lived. In such places, crime flourished, and as long as the criminal element confined itself to stealing from and cutting one another’s throats, nobody bothered about them very much.
The difficulty was not in finding ruffians but in finding ruffians whose speech she could understand. The Venetians definitely didn’t qualify. For all she understood of their language, they might as well have spoken Chinese.
Luckily for her, people came to Venice from everywhere. It had its Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Turkish, and Jewish communities. It had drawn, as well, its share of outcasts from other parts of Italy, including regions where she’d lived. Among the ne’er-do-wells who met her requirements were a handful willing—for a price—to venture outside their neighborhoods and risk the attention of the Austrian soldiers. The price, as one would expect among the poor and desperate, was quite low. It didn’t take Marta long to find what she needed.
Three o’clock in the morning,
the following Tuesday
Caffè Florian, Piazza San Marco
At this hour the coffeehouse’s rooms were thin of company. Customers were drifting away, either homeward or to other entertainments.
Francesca and Giulietta remained, though, sharing a table with Lurenze—and, for once, no one else. He’d contrived to shed the various diplomats and most of his retinue, except for a few bodyguards trying to be unobtrusive here and there: some inside the café, others outside, loitering about the entryway.
At the other end of the same room, most of the remaining patrons were gathered about the Countess Benzoni. Don Carlo was not among them. Francesca wondered if he’d decided Venice had insufficient quantities of the “the more old woman, who sometimes she is ugly, but very, very beautiful in the purse,” and had taken himself elsewhere.
She’d decided to take herself elsewhere, and was debating how best to discourage the prince from following, when the atmosphere of the room changed. She looked up as Cordier came through the door.
He was dressed in a black tailcoat worn open. Over the frilled white shirt and black under-waistcoat he wore an embroidered waistcoat, from which hung a gold watch chain and fob. His immaculate neckcloth was tied with a simple knot. Close-fitting, light-colored evening trousers displayed long, muscular legs. The black pumps, black hat under his arm, and white gloves completed the picture of the proper English gentleman. His air and the way he moved, as lithe as a panther, told another story.
She remembered Magny’s warning: This one, I warn you, ma cherie, is trouble.
Trouble did not look her way but made straight for the countess.
To Francesca’s exasperation, all the men in the group made way for him, including the countess’s lover, the Cavalier Giuseppe Rangone.
Francesca returned her attention to Lurenze, who was describing a miniature recently presented to him, of a Bavarian princess, one of the hordes proposed as the next Queen of Gilenia.
That was to say, Francesca tried to attend to Lurenze. Her gaze kept reverting to Cordier. Though far from flamboyantly dressed, he was impossible to ignore. For one thing, the café was thinly populated. For another, he stood at least a head taller than those about him…except when he was bowing over one of the women’s hands or whispering something to make them smile or—no small achievement in that group—blush.
A plump masculine figure hove into view, blocking the scene at the other end of the room.
The approaching fellow paused at Francesca’s table. He carried a covered tray.
“What is it?” Lurenze said. “Trinkets for ladies?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Giulietta said. With an impish glance at Francesca, she signaled the vendor to uncover the tray.
He did so, and Lurenze leaned forward to peer at its contents. He instantly recoiled, as though it had been filled with rats, and waved his hand. “No, no! Are you mad? Cover those things! Be off with you!”
When he chose, Lurenze could be imperious. The vendor hastily threw the cloth over the tray and started to back away.
“No, please wait,” said Giulietta. With crooked finger she summoned the vendor. She turned a limpid, doe-eyed gaze upon the prince. “This is most important, your illustriousness. These are cundums.”
“I know what they are,” Lurenze said. “I am not a child. But you—please not to speak of this in a place so public. It is most improper of this man to come before ladies.”
“It is always improper for the man to come before the lady,” said Giulietta.
Francesca laughed.
After a moment’s cogitation, Lurenze understood the joke. “Oh, she is wicked,” he said, clearly torn between mortification and amusement. “Someone must wash her mouth with soap.”
“But your radiance, the cundum is most useful,” Giulietta said. “You would not wish to have a deformed heir, or an idiot to succeed to the throne of Gilenia—or perhaps to have no successor of any kind. These are some consequences of the pox. Also, to go mad and have ugly sores on the face, not to mention warts on the manly organ.”
His fair countenance instantly turned rosy. “Signorina Sabbadin, I promise you, I do not consort with persons who carry these diseases,” he said.
“But what of Lord Byron?”
His eyes opened very wide. “Lord Byron? Lord Byron? What is this you say? He is a man! A man does not consort with men. It is unnatural!”
“He is a great poet,” said Giulietta. “Yet even he, an intelligent man of letters, received an unwanted gift from a highborn lady.”
“I could name several ladies in England who received similar gifts from titled gentlemen of their acquaintance,” said Francesca. With any luck, a lady will be so accommodating as to pass on the gift to Elphick.
Lurenze’s gaze went from her to Giulietta. Then it settled upon the cundum seller, patiently waiting.
“Very well,” said the prince. “I do it for my posterity.”
“Show his excellency your wares,” Giulietta briskly told the vendor. “The good ones. Underneath.”
Obediently, the man
lifted out the first tray, to reveal the articles below, in their thin paper packets.
Lurenze peered at them for a time. Then he reached for one.
“Not that one,” said Giulietta, nudging his hand away. “This one.” She picked up one of the larger packets and took out the cundum. The ribbon with which one tied it onto the penis was deep red. The prince’s color, which had begun to return to normal, instantly matched the ribbon.
“Is this the largest one you have?” Giulietta asked the seller. “A prince is more magnificent, you know, than the ordinary gentleman.”
“Signorina, I promise you, this will accommodate the greatest size,” said the seller. “These are of the finest quality, of the intestine of the sheep.”
Her face grave, Giulietta tugged on the cundum. Then she stuck her dainty hand into it, as though it were a glove. She held up her sheep-gut-encased hand. “Do you think this will be large and strong enough, your sublimeness?” she said.
Lurenze studied it, eyes narrowed. Then, “I cannot be sure,” he said. “Pull it over your head.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners and he laughed, so heartily that Francesca had to laugh, too. Giulietta joined in.
Every head in the room turned their way.
Including, at last, Cordier’s.
James did not want to look. If he didn’t, though, he’d be the only one.
There were the three of them, laughing while a vendor pressed his wares upon them.
Bonnard dripped rubies this night. Along with the gems hanging from her ears and throat and wrists, she wore a magnificent ruby-colored cashmere shawl. It had slid from her shoulders, revealing the deep neckline of a jade green gown of a thin fabric—possibly silk or a crepe of some kind. Metallic thread in the embroidery made it shimmer when she moved. It fell from the high waist in numerous thin pleats, like certain draperies he’d seen on women in Egyptian tomb paintings. The pleats clung in a perfectly obscene manner to the curves of her hips and long legs, of which he had a mouth-watering view from this angle.
