He seemed to read her thoughts. ‘He is a dangerous man, Aemilia, and his master more so. The whole of Christendom is caught up in these battles and we must not provoke the eye of the Pope to fall on us.’
‘To demand obedience to your law is not to provoke. This priest oversteps his charge—’
Her father rapped his fist on the desk. ‘Enough, Aemilia. I command here but to command is not to be free to act only as you wish. Command demands that sometimes a sacrifice be made. Your Machiavel, your Caterina Sforza, they would understand that, mark me.’
A scowl marred the graceful angles of Aemilia’s face.
‘What was the offer that he spoke of?’
The Duke waved his hand to waft away the question and then gave her a hard look.
‘Ah yes, you mind me that still you have not answered my first question, Aemilia. Wherefore were you late? How is it that you give Thornhill power to shame me by talk of Valentine?’
Aemilia blushed. Her thoughts had been too taken with anger at the insolent priest to have prepared an excuse. She stumbled to reply. Her father, not waiting, gestured to his steward.
‘Rodrigo tells me you have neglected to attend him. How are you to know our estate if you will not take the time to study it? One day you will have the running of your husband’s household and you must know...’
‘A husband’s? Why not my father’s? Why not my own?’
Duke Leonardo shook his head.
‘We will make a good marriage for you, Aemilia, fear not. A strong man, rich, a good alliance for our family.’
He reached out and patted the hand she had planted on the desk, before gripping it hard.
As to Valentine,’ he said, ‘from this time forth be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.’
‘What do you mean?’ she answered.
‘You know well what I mean.’ The Duke slapped his other hand on the table. ‘I would not, in plain terms, have you from this time forth so slander any moment’s leisure as to give words or talk with the boy Valentine. Do you understand me?’
Chastened, Aemilia nodded her head and her father released the painful hold he had of her. He turned to speak again to his steward and did not see the look of frustration on his daughter’s face. Aemilia realised she was dismissed and turned for the door. The moment to speak in praise of Valentine would come. But it was not now. She needed time to think on that campaign. She would win her father round. Of that she was certain.
Condemning some to death and some to exile
Venice
Isabella still looked pale the following morning when they returned to Tintoretto’s studio.
‘Madonna, you are more lovely in your distress than many in their pomp,’ said her friend, the painter. ‘Come and sit with me by the window and I will draw you.’
Isabella let herself be taken by Tintoretto into the depths of the studio, between tables strewn with paper and paint, the cloth, the canvas pooling and piled upon the floor. The pain that had come with the news of Vittoria Accoramboni’s fate and Prospero’s release had not passed but stayed as a reminder of the unhappy news. She moved slowly so as to let her thoughts stay in the place around her rather than fly to fear of Prospero and fury at her failure to protect Vittoria Accoramboni. There was comfort in the familiar space of Tintoretto’s studio. She let herself sink into it.
William watched her walk away with her arm on the old man’s. Hemminges came up behind him.
‘Jacopo will comfort her, Will, come and join us,’ he said.
William turned to join him, turning slowly, legs, hips, torso and last his eyes moving, in order to watch his lover as long as he might.
‘This news changes everything,’ insisted Hemminges. ‘Where before we had but fancies now we have hard truths to contend with. The Pope still seeks his vengeance, his agents still prowl the streets looking for their prey and to be English is to be numbered amongst those they hunt.’
‘For your own security and the security of those you love we must leave Venice,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Rumours fly of popish plots, of spies. My God, Will, they speak of tortures and of cruel deaths. These are not stories.’ All trace of his usual bantering tone was absent from his speech.
‘All so and still I cannot leave Isabella,’ said William in answer. ‘Of flight, of exile, we have spoken and she asks where she will go and with what hope for the future? Answer have I none. To England? That’s a cold and cheerless bier for one born to Venice. To be my mistress in a nook of the Theatre? To learn new languages? To ply new trades?’
William looked up as Hemminges rose and turned away.
‘I see you’re angry, John. But think, what safety is there on the road to England? The safety that we had as one of Sir Henry’s company? Ask Ben Connor or Nate or Watkins if the Pope will stay his hand more readily in Venice or on unregarded roads far from the Signoria’s authority?’
‘We’ll go disguised, not trumpeting our presence with carts and servants,’ said Oldcastle.
‘As Sir Henry did?’ demanded William. All three men knew how that journey had ended. In an ambush and a bloody field of bodies.
‘We must to England, Will. You know it,’ said Hemminges. ‘We were driven to Venice by the bargain our dead master, Sir Henry, had struck. Venetian names for English ones. We now have those names, the agents that work the Pope’s plans in England.’
‘And have them still.’
‘That knowledge is a buried talent. We must carry it to England and set it in the hands of those that would make use of it. God’s sake, Will, do you not want to see the Pope’s plots undermined? Do you not want that vengeance at least?’
‘If we’re killed on the road we’ll achieve nothing,’ said Will. ‘Send a letter.’
Hemminges threw up his arms and paced away. Oldcastle shook his head. ‘William, William, you’ve spoken these thoughts before. We have no trusted messenger, we know no cipher into which to place the message if we did, nor do we know to whom we ought to send the message or how to ensure its content is trusted by the one that receives it. It must be us, our witness to the truth of the names we have obtained and how we came by them, the secrecy of our minds the cipher that keeps it safe.’
Hemminges rounded on William. ‘You beat the ground to flush excuses forth. Be honest, William. You do not want to go.’
‘I do not. I have not hidden that from you, John, that you should call me false now.’
Hemminges made no reply.
The three men sat, not looking at each other. Only the distant murmurs of Isabella and Tintoretto’s conversation disturbed the air, too faint to be made out but with the music of laughter in it that was a painful contrast to the taut chord of silence between the Englishmen.
‘Here we have friends,’ said William at last.
Hemminges snorted.
‘He is drawing me you know,’ said Oldcastle, with a gesture to where Tintoretto sat, hidden at the far end of his studio behind a forest of canvas.
Hemminges and William looked at Oldcastle in astonishment.
‘There is parchment big enough?’ said William in awed tones.
‘And so much ink in this wide world?’ added Hemminges.
‘Dogs,’ muttered Oldcastle, and then louder, ‘The pair of you are merely jealous that in my figure a great artist finds more to like than in you scrawny pair.’
‘Much, much more to like,’ said Hemminges.
‘I doubt not that he needs us for another purpose,’ added William. ‘As quills to wield. Surely only pens as big as we could capture the magnificence of you, Oldcastle. We will be dipped in buckets and our hairs mark out in ebon ink the shape and form of mighty England.’
‘Enough,’ said Oldcastle against the sound of William and Hemminges’ laughter. Hemminges leaned back to try and frame Oldcastle in his hands but kept having to lean further to fit all in till he tumbled backward from his seat only to spring up and keep moving backward, muttering ’still no, still no’ as he moved.
&nbs
p; Isabella and Tintoretto returned to find all three still laughing.
‘You’re recovered?’ asked William, seeing his mistress smiling.
‘Better to see the three of you in good cheer,’ she answered.
William gathered her in his arms and all five travelled from Tintoretto’s studio to his house where they ate and drank and spoke no more of the gathering dangers until Christmas had come and gone.
Would you have a love song, or a song of good life?
The twelfth night after Christmas found the three Englishmen together again in revel.
‘A song, John, a song, God love you,’ roared Oldcastle.
Hemminges waved away the drunken demand. The three men sat, in a square near Tintoretto’s studio, on the stone surround of a well. It was early evening, mild and dry. Not so the three men, whose revels, begun at noon, now had them roused and wet with wine.
‘Come, a song, John, of England, of our home,’ insisted Oldcastle.
‘I’ve no songs like that, Nick,’ said Hemminges.
‘Yes,’ said William, ‘let us have no talk of England this day when we are drunk in Venice and with its pleasures. But still, a song, Hemminges! For the love of God.’
‘Well then,’ said Oldcastle, pouting, ‘let the song be a love song or a song of good living.’
‘A love song, then,’ said William, snatching the jug of wine from Oldcastle as he was about to drain it into his cup, ‘you’ve too much of good living already.’
‘Selfish cur,’ muttered Oldcastle as he swallowed the dregs of his cup.
William lifted his own cup in recognition of Oldcastle’s salute. Beside him Hemminges leaned back his head and began to sing.
O Mistress mine where are you roaming?
O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love, ‘tis not hereafter,
Present mirth, hath present laughter:
What’s to come, is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me sweet and twenty:
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
As such songs will often do, its words, heard in Hemminges’ voice, a voice of surprising sweetness in such a solid block of man, brought on melancholy. When Hemminges had finished each man sat in silence with his own thoughts. Oldcastle thought of his youth long past and remembered trysts that had seemed pregnant with possibilities but had passed the way of all things. Hemminges thought of the dangers that surrounded them now and grasped again for blindness to all but the pleasures of the present moment. And William thought of a future without Isabella, the lover he had found at the end of his journey from England and whose every kiss he feared might be the last they would share before their paradise was snatched away from them.
It was in this stupor that Isabella found them. She did not begrudge them their drunken state. All of the little group had been in a sullen mood since the news of Vittoria Accoramboni’s death and of that monstrous villain of the Pope’s, Giovanni Prospero’s freedom and flight from Venice. That sharp pain that had first assailed her when she heard the news had dulled to a tight ache in her gut that did not rise above the worst she endured from month to month but never left her either. She too was in want of release. She only wished she could find escape in wine as easily as the English.
‘I find you in the right mood for a pageant, I think,’ she said to the three men when they realised her presence and stopped their singing.
A pageant?’ asked Hemminges.
At Marco Venier’s palace, to celebrate twelfth night. The English Ambassador is invited and we accompany him.’ Isabella turned to William. ‘Did you not tell them?’
‘I did, sweet, I did. I told Oldcastle a fortnight past,’ answered William, holding up his hands to ward off the sudden sharpness in Isabella’s tone.
‘He told me,’ said Oldcastle, ‘but I neglected to pass the message on and then, in truth, I quite forgot it.’
‘You surprise me, Nicholas,’ said Isabella. ‘I Gelosi are to perform at Marco Venier’s palace today, at his command.’
Oldcastle gave a grunt. At Isabella’s questioning look, William explained that Oldcastle had not cared for the Commedia.
And what was to like?’ demanded Oldcastle.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Isabella, cutting across the argument. ‘Come, you must be up and dressing yourselves if we are not to be unfashionably late. An impoliteness I cannot abide.’
‘By all means,’ said Oldcastle, heaving himself to his feet, ‘let us make haste. God forbid we might miss the start of the play. We will quite lose the thread of the story if we do.’
‘Quite so, Nicholas,’ said Isabella, taking him by the arm and leading him forth. William and Hemminges, behind her, shook their heads and William was reminded once again that for all that he and Isabella shared there were some kinds of wit that passed her quite by.
Rancour will out; proud prelate
Isabella had not seen Marco Venier since the night of William’s wager with Cosimo Tiepolo. She and he had a long history, one that had begun in the usual way for a courtesan and a Venetian nobleman, but that had transformed itself with time and the discovery that they gained greater pleasure from shared thoughts than a shared bed. Isabella was the finer poet and Marco Venier was not fool enough to scorn ability in others because he lacked it in himself. He wanted to share in it and since, in this regard, the whore was greater than the noble then, in this regard, the noble paid obeisance to the whore.
That did not stop him playing his friendship with her to his advantage over the years. Inviting her to his parties and steering her towards friends of his from whose night-time lips might fall words that would profit him when, in turn, Isabella let them drop into his ears. Isabella had understood what she was, though she hated it. Hated that Marco might admire her mind but still sell her body, that his friendship was above all else self-serving and, this most of all, that she was too weak to throw it in his face and cast aside the present pleasures of his feasts, the security his wealth had brought her, the chances for advancement that his company gave.
Marco had in him that same perverse streak of self-interest possessed by all the men with whom she had been close. Not for the first time she found herself wondering what wound it was within her that led her to these men: Giovanni Prospero, who’d had the devil in him; Marco Venier, who was but indifferent wicked and only when it served him; and William Shakespeare, who railed against his own will and yet still let it drive him on. Perhaps it was no wound at all but rather that each of them sought to seize so much of life that to be in their orbit was to be set in thrilling spin.
‘Your pain returns?’ asked William at her side.
‘No, no.’ She stroked his arm. ‘Just thoughts.’
‘Sad ones?’ asked William, looking at her furrowed brow and reaching up to smooth it.
‘Just thoughts. Good? Bad? It is too soon to say. You are worried?’
‘For your safety. Always.’
‘For my safety? Have you reason?’
William let out a breath. ‘No more than usual.’
Isabella laughed at that. ‘You and I have made so many enemies.’
‘We have.’
She dipped her head in a small nod. ‘We’ve lived.’
Their gondola pulled up to the water gate of the Ca’ Venier and forestalled further talk. The Ca’ Venier was one of the oldest palaces on the Canal Grande, its front adorned with spoils from the sack of Constantinople four hundred years before. The early evening was brightened by torches set in brackets that guttered and smoked in a strong wind blowing across the water. Isabella shivered beneath her cloak. ‘Let us go in,’ she said.
The courtyard of the Ca’ Venier was decked with cloth of gold and at its end was built a stage that was itself drape
d in so much finery that William wondered where the actors might stand. Liveried servants stood at the sides with trays of wine in fine Murano glass while others passed between the guests with platters of food.
Within the centre of the courtyard moved the wealthy of Venice, many of whom William now recognised. To his knowing eye the currents and eddies of this sea of people revealed much about the alliances, schemes and plots of Venice. The Dandolo and the Tiepolo never came too close to each other but, like corks thrust into water, would push suddenly back when each the other spied. Loredan and Foscari came together in waves, spoke and parted, carrying with them murmurs of gossip to others of like mind. On this occasion something disturbed the usual pattern, some rock around which the waters swirled. William looked up. On the colonnaded walkway that ran around the first floor of the courtyard he saw Marco Venier looking down, observing. William followed his gaze and found the cause of the changed waters. From moment to moment the crowd parted enough for William to see a scarlet-clad figure at the centre of the courtyard, surrounded by black-robed men. The papal legate had a florid face, cheeks and nose quite as red as his cloak, his hair as pale as milk, and the combined effect of face and hair was of a strawberry caught with mould. By his side, among the black-robed colleagues, was a face that William felt he recognised but could not place at this distance.
‘A strange fellowship for a feast,’ whispered William.
It is Marco’s way,’ answered Isabella, ‘to bring flint and steel together and watch the sparks fly.’
The two advanced to Oldcastle and Hemminges and whispered their warning of the legate’s presence. Oldcastle’s pallor turned as pale as the legate’s hair and he made to depart. Hemminges stepped before him.
‘Courage, Sir Henry,’ Hemminges admonished. ‘The English Ambassador cannot fly from England’s enemy quite so swiftly.’
‘Here, Sir Henry,’ said Isabella, pretending a calm she did not feel herself, as she pressed a glass of wine into Oldcastle’s hand. He took it in one swallow and held the glass out for more. Hemminges rolled his eyes at the thought of the time to come, spent guiding Oldcastle along the cliff’s edge of courage without letting him fall into unseemly drunkenness. Their thoughts were interrupted by a sharp echo round the courtyard’s walls as Marco Venier clapped his hands for his guests’ attention.
The Assassin of Verona Page 6
