Perfect she was, but as perfection is
Insipid in this naughty world of ours,
Where our first parents never learn’d to kiss
Till they were exiled from their
earlier bowers,
Where all was peace, and innocence, and bliss
(I wonder how they got through the
twelve hours).
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto the First
James was sure the look on his face was priceless.
Hers was, certainly. She was as shocked as he was. But while he was gaping like an idiot, his head swiveling from her to Magny while he tried to discern the resemblance, her face turned a deep pink. She jumped up from her chair.
Still looking from one to the other, James rose as well, naturally. Whatever else he was, he was born and bred a gentleman.
The green eyes flashed at Magny. “Have you taken leave of your senses? I told you when you came here—”
“You do not set conditions for me,” said monsieur—or Sir Michael—or whoever he was.
She threw her hands up. “I can’t believe this! It will be all over Venice—and then—and then—”
“Aspetti.” James held up his hand. “Wait. Please. You did say, ‘daughter’?”
“He is impossible!” she raged. “He’s gone when I need him, and then, when I don’t need him, he turns up and tries to arrange my life.”
“Your life is merde,” said Magny.
James winced, recalling that he’d said the same to her, but using the Italian noun.
“No, it isn’t!” The green eyes flashed from one man to the other. “Why don’t you understand, either of you? I chose this life. I have had lovers, yes, and with one exception”—she scowled at James—“they’ve paid handsomely for the privilege. But always—always—I choose. I!” She pressed her fist to her bosom. “I have never, once, done anything for any man against my wishes—except when I was married. I have done no more—no, a great deal less—in the way of carnality than either of you.”
“Well, I should hope so,” Magny said. “After all—”
“But because I’ve chosen not to live like a nun,” she cut in, “you say my life is excrement? It isn’t. I’ve been happy. And free. And the only flies in the ointment are you—the pair of you. And you can go to hell, the pair of you.”
She swept to the door.
“Un momento,” James said. “A moment, if you please.”
She swung round, and shot him a volcanic look. “What?”
“Um…the letters?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Sorry,” he said.
“That was a magnificent exit,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I am so sorry to spoil it.”
She stomped away from the door but not to the tea table. She crossed the room and flung herself onto the sofa near the fire.
“Her mother was a little temperamental, too,” Magny said apologetically. No, not Magny but Saunders. Yet James could not stop thinking of the man as French, and a count. Perhaps this was because he continued to speak English with the correct French accent.
“My mother, indeed,” she said. “You are always throwing temper fits about every little thing.”
“My daughter is a courtesan,” said Saunders-Magny. “That is not precisely a little thing.”
“Mr. Cordier is not interested in our domestic squabbles,” she said.
“Oh, yes, I am,” James said. “Very interested.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m sick of them. It’s very boring, being treated like a child.”
Her parent sighed. “If fathers could have their way, our daughters would remain virgins all their lives. We would shut them all up in convents if we could. But we cannot, else the world will come to an end. Or perhaps not, since rogues get into convents all the time.”
“And I reckon the nuns thank God most heartily for that,” she said. And she laughed the irresistibly wicked laugh.
James was aware of the melting sensation within and had no doubt his countenance must be softening into an expression of pure besottedness, but it couldn’t be helped. “Oh, you are naughty,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“No wonder I’ve come to such a pass,” he said.
“You’re infatuated,” she said. “I’ve told you again and again.”
“I think you’re right.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t care. It’s your problem. My problem is how to end this skullduggery and stop people trying to kill me.”
James bowed. “Of course. But I am a trifle curious about your—er—about monsieur?” He turned his gaze to the beleaguered parent. “The title. No one questioned your assuming it? Wasn’t there a difficulty with passports?”
James never had difficulties with his false identities, but his superiors saw to that. This man, however, was supposed to be dead. When he was alive, he was wanted for fraud, an astounding fraud.
“If only there were, he would not be here plaguing me,” the loving daughter said.
Saunders-Magny gave her an incinerating look. She returned it. It was then James finally discerned the resemblance. It was not so much in physical appearance but in manner: the way they carried themselves and their facial expressions.
The so-called count moved to the window. He stood with his back to the late afternoon light, his hands clasped behind his back. “My mother’s family was French,” he said. “The title belongs to my cousin. There is a resemblance. When we were boys, sometimes we tried to fool people. Sometimes we succeeded. We were good friends, you see. And so, when my financial troubles occurred, I went to my cousin in France. This happened at the time Napoleon escaped from Elba.”
James well remembered those times, especially the slaughter at Waterloo that ended Bonaparte’s attempt to reclaim his empire.
“I helped my cousin in his efforts against the Corsican,” Saunders-Magny went on. “I was merely a courier, you know, nothing as sophisticated as what you do. My cousin, on the other hand—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Best to be discreet. Enough to say that it became most convenient for him to lend me his identity for a time while he had business elsewhere.”
“You can imagine how impatiently I’ve been waiting for his cousin’s business elsewhere to be finished.” Francesca threw an odd glance at her father. It happened too quickly for James to be certain, but it seemed to mingle affection with exasperation. It vanished, though, as she turned her gaze to James. “But to return to our business, Mr. Cordier. You wish to know what I’ve done with the letters.”
“Yes, actually. I know they’re not in your house.”
She smiled.
This was not the serpent smile, luring a man to his doom. This was amusement, with a dose of triumph in it.
“Che io sia dannato,” he said. “I’ll be damned. It is there. You clever little devil.”
“When I tell you,” she said, “you’ll slap your head and say, ‘How could I be so stupid?’”
“It won’t be the first time,” he said. He thought of all the stupid things he’d done since he met her, all the mistakes he’d made. He’d made a mistake yesterday, in failing to trust her. He should have taken his chances, like a man, instead of acting like a coward, putting off the inevitable.
I have had lovers, yes, and with one exception, they’ve paid handsomely for the privilege, she’d said.
It was a privilege, truly, to be her lover. And he’d been the most privileged of all, because she’d let him into her heart.
And now, he realized, if he wanted to win her back, he would have to pay for the privilege.
“It won’t be the first time I’ve been stupid where you’re concerned,” he said.
“I won’t disagree,” she said. “I am so tempted to make you guess, and drive yourself wild. But then we should be at it forever, and I should like to get on with my life.”
Without you, she meant.
Not without me, he thought. Not if I can help it.
“Yes, the sooner this is over with, the better,” said Saunders-Magny.
Think, James told himself. Think fast.
“It’s complicated, as I said,” she said. “I am not going to shout it across the room.” She crooked her finger at James. “Come, you stupid man, and I’ll whisper it in your ear.”
He started toward her.
Then he paused, frowning. He thought. He thought some more.
“Cordier, it’s a little late to play hard to get,” she said.
“I’m thinking,” he said.
“Don’t hurt your head,” she said. “I’ve already done all the thinking, mio caro. All you have to do—”
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Please don’t tell me.”
Francesca wanted to strangle him. She’d been looking forward so much to luring him to the sofa and torturing him, whispering in his ear and making him want her. She’d looked forward so much to punishing him for making her love him.
“This is the last straw,” she said. She rose and walked out.
She heard his footsteps behind her.
“Va via!” she said without looking back. “Go away. Vai all’inferno!”
“That is where my mama tells me I will go,” came the voice of Don Carlo from behind her. “But in time, most beautiful one. Not too soon, I hope. I beg you will not make me hurry to the place of punishment and the imps with the sharp forks to prick my bottom. Because first, you see, I have things most important to do.” He reached her side. “I have the plan most cunning.”
“I don’t care,” she said.
“Do be sensible,” he said, reverting to Cordier, the provoking, patronizing Englishman.
“The sensible thing to do, I’ve decided,” she said, “is to keep far away from you.”
“You want to be safe. Your—” He broke off, glancing about the portego for eavesdropping servants. “Magny said the important thing was for you to be safe,” he went on in a lower tone. “You will not be safe while that woman is on the loose.”
Her heart began to race. “Don’t try to alarm me. I’ll be safe when you give her the…articles.”
“I’m not giving them to her. I’m not on that side. And don’t say you don’t care whose side I’m on or that it doesn’t matter.”
“I won’t say it,” she said. “But I’ll think it.”
“It does matter,” he said. “Listen to me, please, Francesca.”
She didn’t want to listen. He was too persuasive and she wanted him too much. Time and again he’d caused her to act against good sense, to break the rules she’d spent so much time and suffering learning. She saw the great marble archway at the head of the stairs, only a few feet away. She could run down to the andron, and out to the courtyard and quickly disappear in the maze of narrow Venetian streets and alleys…where she was sure to get lost and, with her luck, fall straight into the hands of one pack of villains or other.
The other direction, toward the canal, was probably safer, but then she must wait while a gondola was readied for her. So much for dramatic exits. So much for running away.
She stopped at the archway and looked at him, into his handsome, deceitful face.
“You think I don’t understand but I do,” he said. “You’re angry with England. It’s Parliament that grants divorces, and all those men—the country’s lawmakers—treated you like the Whore of Babylon. They destroyed your name and your life. Why should you wish to save such a government? Why stop Elphick? Why not let them have the leader they deserve?”
She looked up, at the sculpted figures adorning the top of the archway: Neptune in a stormy sea with strange creatures about him. She’d left the stormy sea behind when she left England, or so she’d thought. It had followed her and found her, eventually. “I could put it better,” she said, “but you’ve got it in a nutshell.”
“All the same, you know it matters,” he said. “You’ve always known. That was why you kept the…articles. If it didn’t matter, you’d have destroyed them long ago. But you kept them, even though you knew there was a chance they’d become a dangerous possession one day.”
“I’ve decided they’re too dangerous,” she said. “I’ve decided it’s not worth the risk, the unpleasantness. Why should I risk my neck for England, for that government and those monstrous men?”
“It was a bad time,” he said. “As your—as Magny pointed out, Napoleon had escaped from Elba. The upper classes were full of fear and hate already. They were worried about his returning to power and his possibly overthrowing them, with the help of malcontents at home. The Terror was and is still vivid in many people’s minds, recollect. Easy enough for the gentlemen in Parliament to picture their wives and children under the blade of the guillotine.”
“But I was not fomenting revolution! I had an affair! One! My husband had scores. He had a mistress before we wed and kept her while we were wed and has her still—and no one thinks the less of him!”
“I am not saying that you were trying to overthrow the Crown,” he said. “I am saying that these men were in a state of mind that made it easy for Elphick. A great scandal, a depraved woman—he redirected the general fear and hatred at you, a clear target. They could deal with you. Napoleon and political unrest constituted a more complicated proposition. You were simple. You were the diversion, don’t you see? With everyone fixed on you, no one noticed what Elphick was doing behind the scenes. They behaved badly, I agree. It was neither the first nor the last time they’ve done so. But they were wrong, and I know that in your case they’ll make amends if you’ll give them a chance.”
She didn’t want to understand the men who’d degraded and humiliated her. But she hadn’t considered the context. It didn’t make them any the less hateful to her, but it made their behavior a degree more comprehensible.
“I’m not stopping them making amends,” she said. “If you are who you claim to be, if you are one of the good ones—”
“Not if,” he said. “I want you to know, without the slightest doubt. Not in six months or twelve or whenever we get it all sorted out but now. I want to prove it to you.” He paused. “And I have an idea how to do it.”
Francesca looked up at Neptune, then further along the great hall to Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, standing guard over another portal. Could a woman ever be truly wise, when it came to men? Probably not, else the species would not survive.
“You are so aggravating,” she said. “After all this time, I’d finally decided to get rid of those dratted letters. Now I’m wild to get them off my hands, and you won’t take them.”
“I will, but not today,” he said. “Until I get matters sorted out, they’re safer where they are.”
“And I am supposed to fold my hands and wait patiently for you to carry out your cunning plan? I am to wait about, not knowing how or when that Fazi creature will strike next?”
“She needs to regroup,” he said. “She needs reinforcements. That gives us as much as a week. But I promise not to make you wait that long. A day or two, no more.”
What choice did she have? “Very well. Sort matters out. In the meantime, I’m going home. I have had as much as I can bear of my—of Magny. And you, if you are wise, will keep out of my way until you’ve something worthwhile to bother me about.”
The next day found James at the Ducal Palace, facing a still-suspicious Count Goetz.
“We have questioned the man Piero again and again,” he told James. “Naturally, it occurred to me that he had lied, even to you, about his motives. He is from the south, it appears. That abominable dialect. This Fazi woman is from the south, I am informed. For the two of them to come to Venice at the same time is no coincidence. But he claims he has never heard of her. He holds to the same story, like a dog with a bone. I know he is lying. What shall I do? Hang him by his thumbs? Then someone will complain of our brutality and make inflammatory speeches in one of the squares. The next we know, they make an insurrection. They are very obstinate, these people, and of a quick temper.”
“I don’t think he’s obstinate,” James said, “so much as terrified.”
Goetz stared at him for a moment. “What difference does it make? Either way, he tells us nothing.”
And even if Piero did tell them, they wouldn’t understand one word in twenty. If that.
“I wonder if you might let me have a go,” James said.
“No,” said Goetz.
Two hours later, James returned to the Ducal Palace, this time with Prince Lurenze.
Though he cast an unamiable eye upon James, Goetz was all gracious welcome this time, eager to know what he could do for his highness.
There were certain advantages to being royalty.
“Please to explain,” said the Prince of Gilenia, “why Mr. Cordier is not permitted to try where you have failed, to obtain information which may prevent harm coming to Mrs. Bonnard.”
Goetz began to recite certain rules about prisoners and foreign visitors.
Lurenze held up his hand. “Please to explain,” he said, “where is the rule to endanger a lady instead of doing all that is possible to protect her and capture dangerous persons?”
Goetz gazed down at his immaculate desk. His jaw set.
It wasn’t difficult to guess what he was thinking.
People spoke of the Austrians as rulers of northern Italy but of course it was Austro-Hungarian rule. Goetz knew as well as James did that a certain Hungarian lady of high birth had been proposed as Prince Lurenze’s consort.
The governor of Venice would be most unwise to risk offending the crown prince of Gilenia, especially over such a small matter: merely giving one of the prince’s English friends a few minutes alone with a prisoner.
The count, upon further consideration, decided he was not sure he’d interpreted the rule correctly. “You may try your luck with him, Mr. Cordier,” he said. “But you will give me your word as a gentleman to tell me everything he tells you.”
“Certainly,” James said. Gentleman or not, he’d lied before and would do it again. Not that he necessarily needed to lie. After all, Goetz had not specified when he must be told.
James had been through the Ducal Palace before. On his previous tour, when the governor had felt more kindly toward him, he’d been given a tour. They had not gone as far as the prisons, however. On the last visit, Goetz had had Piero brought to them.
This time, James deemed it best to go to Piero.
Lurenze insisted on going with him, in case anyone made difficulties, he said.
“I am not happy with the behavior of the governor to you,” he said after they left a deeply annoyed Goetz. “His look is unfriendly. If I am by, he will not make up some foolish rule to put you in prison, too.”
Ah, well, at least someone trusted him, James thought. Ironic that it was a rival. Or perhaps not—or not so much of a rival as previously.
James had chased all over Venice looking for Lurenze, and finally run him to ground—or water, rather—en route to Magny’s palazzo. In the gondola with his highness was Giulietta. They had seemed quite cozy, though Giulietta persisted in addressing his highness in the most ridiculous terms: “your celestiality,” “your luminescence,” “your magnificence,” and the like, all of which Lurenze bore with a straight face.
His absurdly handsome face was solemn now, as they followed the guard assigned to take them to Piero.
The route from the Ducal Palace to the prisons was not calculated to lift the spirits. They traversed a narrow, uneven, and dark passage that led to the Bridge of Sighs. From the outside, the arched bridge was quite beautiful. Within, all was gloom, proving how it had earned its title. A pair of corridors ran its length. Two heavy grated windows dimly lit the way. The guard, bearing a lighted candle, led Lurenze and James through narrow passages and down the stairs to the nether regions, to the dungeons known as the pozzi, the wells.
The guard, clearly accustomed to the role of guide—and probably in the habit of conveying tourists through the place, was cheerfully talkative. He told them there were eighteen cells built in tiers. The cells were about ten or twelve feet long and six or seven feet wide, he said. They were arched at top, with a small opening in front. The lower group were level with the water in the canal.
He pointed to little niches in the stones on the wall. These, he informed them, were made to hold bars on which convicts were hanged or strangled to death. He called their attention to other niches, black with smoke. Here the executioners used to set their lamps, to allow them to see what they were doing. With relish, he explained certain holes in the pavement. When criminals were quartered, he explained, the blood drained off through the holes and into the canal. He indicated a door, from which the corpses were thrown into boats and taken away to be disposed of.
“I was told these were the modern prisons,” said Lurenze. “Prigioni Nuove is the name. The New Prisons.”
“They were modern two hundred years ago, when they were built,” James said.
“This is barbaric,” said Lurenze.
“I’ve seen worse,” said James. He’d been confined in worse.
They arrived, finally, at the cell in which Piero had been left to ponder his sins and the advisability of telling his captors what they wanted to know. He had been left in the dark. When the door was unlocked, the stench wafting out into the passage was nigh overpowering.
It seemed to overpower Lurenze, who staggered back from the door.
“This is abominable,” he said.
“You needn’t come in,” James said. “It’s going to be very close in there.”
“No, I come,” said Lurenze. “A moment is all I need.” He squared his shoulders. “There. I am ready.”
A prince, perhaps, and pampered, but he had some solid stuff to him.
Still, this had better not take long, James thought. Brave or not, the lad wasn’t used to it, and was all too likely to faint or cast up his accounts. That was no way to awaken fear and respect in the prisoner.
“Very well, your highness,” James said. He lowered his voice and reverted to English. “First, I advise you to stay near the door. You’ll get a bit of air—such as it is—from the passage through the little window. Second, you must give me your word you will not speak until spoken to, and then you will follow my lead. This is most important, excellency. A matter of life and death.”
“Yes, of course,” said Lurenze.
James told the guard they were ready. The man lit the lamp in the passage and gave James the candle. James entered the cell, Lurenze following.
The door clanged shut behind them.
Piero was sullen. His week in the cell had turned him into a lump. Even the sight of James could not rouse him to emotion beyond a grimace. He squatted in a corner, staring at his bare and unspeakably filthy feet.
Lurenze dutifully took up his position by the door. James wondered how long he’d remain upright. The stench was beyond anything.
No time to waste, James thought.
He came directly to the point. In slow, simple Italian, he said, “We are looking for Marta Fazi.” Piero’s dialect might be all but incomprehensible but he understood the language of the educated—or enough to get by, at any rate.
“Never heard of her,” said Piero.
“That’s a pity,” said James, “because I have something the lady wants. Something the English lady had. Not jewels. Some papers.”
Piero did not respond, but his posture stiffened.
“I know Marta Fazi wants these papers,” James said. “I can sell them to her or I can sell them to the other side.”
“It’s nothing to me,” said Piero.
“I think it is,” James said. “If I can’t find her, I will sell them to someone else. When she learns you had a chance to help her get these papers and you did nothing…”
Piero shifted uncomfortably.
“If she learns you failed her, she will not be pleased with you,” James said.
Still no response.
“I’m not sure you’ll be safe from her, even here.”
No answer, but something changed. The man’s fear was palpable. James pressed his point. “Ah, well. You say you know nothing. Perhaps you don’t know her, as you say. In that case, it’s unfair to keep you here. I had better arrange for your release.”
He heard Lurenze’s gasp and glanced that way, as Piero did. But the prince, to his credit, said nothing. Or maybe he dared not open his mouth for fear of vomiting.
Piero’s gaze came back to James. The sullen expression was gone, and the fear was plain on his grimy face. “They won’t let me out,” he said.
“Of course they will,” James said cheerfully. “Don’t you fret about it. I’ll simply tell them that, when I looked at you again, more closely, I realized I made a mistake, and you are not the man who attacked the English lady.”
“I tell you nothing. I know nothing.”
He was afraid of Marta, clearly. Still too afraid of her to tell what he knew.
“This is annoying,” James said. “I am tired of this stinking hole and tired of you. I have tried to be reasonable but you won’t be reasonable. So this is what I’ll do. I shall spread a rumor that you’ve betrayed Marta Fazi, and as a reward for betraying her, you are to be released.” He looked once more at Lurenze. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, but he seemed to be turning green.
“Your excellency,” James said. “Would you be willing to use your influence to arrange this man’s release?”
“Assuredly,” the prince said, gagging on the syllables.
“I say nothing,” Piero said doggedly. “I know nothing.” But his voice was less sullen now, the pitch a degree higher.
“Rumors travel so quickly in Venice,” James went on. “If Marta Fazi is here, she’ll hear the news by this time tomorrow if not before then. I should be able to have you released in two or three days’ time. Maybe you’ll be able to get away before she finds you. Or maybe she’ll be waiting for you when you come out of this place. Or maybe some friendly men will offer to take you for a drink. Or maybe they will not be friendly. Maybe they will take you somewhere, and not for a drink, eh, my friend?”
“You are the devil,” Piero said. “But the name you say—she is a devil, too.”
“I only want you to take a message to her.”
A silence while Piero considered. “This, maybe I will do,” he said. “But send that one away before he pukes on me.”