“This is the kind of man you think to be with,” Mazziolini sneered at me. “Who conducts a shady business among these stews.” He mashed the assorted stinks with a resentful wrist.
“I do not believe that there is anything shady about Valentine Greatrakes. He is a merchant. Naturally not all of his transactions are picturesque,” I said, with dignity. “And how many Venetian merchants of noble families profit from filthy camel processions in the East?”
“You understand nothing!” laughed Mazziolini. “This is an Englishman, not a Venetian. Of all the people you might choose, you have chosen that one. Your masters have been kind to you, compared with what you have chosen for yourself!”
He spat.
I fell silent. I could think of nothing but seeing my lover again, and of the terrifying joy of our reunion. I was nervous, fearing rejection. Yet I also thrilled with sweet anticipation merely at the thought of seeing his face, and I allowed myself to fall into a pleasant trance, imagining his eyes and hands gently upon me again. Mazziolini, seeing my rapt expression, snorted with disbelief.
When we trotted across London Bridge he insisted on pointing out to me the stone alcove where the head of Stintleigh had been found, impaled, he informed me, on the politician’s own cane.
“Spare me the details,” I snarled at him.
He smiled, mockingly, triumphant at succeeding in rousing my temper. My fingers twitched to claw his face, but I forced them to rest demurely in my lap.
And so we entered the depository at Bankside, in an armed state against one another, and confronted the horror within.
• 6 •
A Cephalic Julep
Take Waters of Black Cherries 4 ounces; of Rue 3 ounces; Peony compound 2 ounces; Bryony compound 1 ounce; Tincture of Castor, Spirit of Lavender compound, each 2 drams; Oil of Nutmeg 4 drops; Syrup of Peony compound, 1 ounce and a half; Powder called de Gutteta, 4 scruples, mix.
It’s used with Benefit, against the Epilepsie, all kinds of Convulsive and Soporose Affections, the Head-ache, Giddiness and Palsey.
Five spoonfuls may be given, before, in, or immediately after a Paroxysm; but for Prevention, near the Lunary Periods; for about these Times the Brain suffers wonderful Alterations; insomuch, that at the Full-Moon, it groweth so turgid (which appears by Wounds of the Head) as to fill up the whole Capacity of the Skull; yea, hath often been seen thrust out through a Wound.
From one side of the river to the world on its opposite bank.
From the image I could not quite bed down, of Gervase Stintleigh’s severed head, to the real sight of an embalmed man freshly bleeding in his coffin, the first thing I saw in the depository of Valentine Greatrakes at Bankside.
You cannot imagine my feelings when I saw the corpse. Nor reckon how many sharp pieces of information suddenly came crashing through the oblivion I had drawn around myself in the cocoon of Valentine Greatrakes’s love. My paroxysms were genuine.
The giddiness gave only a temporary relief.
From the storm of revelation on my waking only one clear thought emerged. I must be with this man, Valentine Greatrakes, because I had need of his protection from the violent world and more because I urgently desired his love, that I could not ever again live without it, having known its balsam.
But I failed. Even our tender reunion failed. I did not make him marry me. A depression fell upon me: It seemed that none of my lovers was bound to me in any way that might do me good. I thought of my first lover, cursed his soul, and of Valentine Greatrakes, tender as a dove, yet nevertheless fully prepared to lose me now that he had truly possessed me.
Even then I kept trying, kept hoping that he would declare himself. I played for time, telling my employers that there were other things in London worth investigating, hinting wildly at certain items of interest in depositories on the south side of the Thames. They did not believe me. A second order came, more imperious than the first. My proposed researches were deemed worthless, but, more to the point, I had no choice in the matter. So I was informed.
There was worse. Sweet as our reunion was, I was haunted by the rank smell of cheap violet perfume on the clothes of my lover. It racked me to see that he had taken comfort with another woman in my absence. I tried to close my mind to what I had done with Stintleigh or at least what I had set out to do.
“We are even,” I said to myself, grimly. “I shall not make trouble over it, though he should have been more subtle.” I comforted myself with the vulgarity of the scent: At least he had sought relief with a whore and not some lady of quality who might nave inspired his admiration. So I told myself, but my unconscious mind tortured me with my rival. That night I suffered a dream in which Valentine Greatrakes was dancing an intimate eye-strung minuet with Angelina, the nun whom I had blinded. Her features were not only undamaged but transformed into an incandescent beauty, and his face, gazing down on her, was illuminated with all the passion I had thought reserved for myself. In the dream, he caught my eye while his chin rested softly on her curls. An angry guilt ravaged his features for a moment, but he did not follow me as I fled. As I ran down dark dream corridors, scraps of paper pursued me like malevolent snowflakes. I grasped at a handful. They all bore the same words, in my lover’s fine handwriting, “Lovely little Angelina, Lovely little Angelina, come away with me.”
The dream shipwrecked the night. For the rest of it I lay by his side sad and still as a leaf frozen on the surface of a pond. I did not dare turn to him for comfort, for fear of all that I would then need to explain.
And anyway, by this time, my mind acknowledged what my body had known since our first night together: that I felt for him the kind of affection that transcends misuse, even in dreams. I loved those things about him that a mother loves—the tousle of his hair, the dip of his neck where his queue was ribboned, the single eye opened to greet the morning. His poor blistered back inspired not disgust but a tender, eager desire to soothe it. I loved him like a lover for all the rest, of course.
And I was comforted by the unselfconscious grandeur of his giving—even the repulsive Chelsea Porcelain figures, which I consigned to a cupboard whenever I could, barely remembering to restore them to view when I knew he was coming. The expense of these creations was enormous. This I knew because when Mazziolini rented my rooms, the inclusion of our own Chelsea china had almost doubled the price.
“A merchant must lay out her wares in attractive packaging,” Mazziolini had jeered, no doubt imagining all the dinners I would be serving Lord Stintleigh on these bilious creations, pimpled all about with roses, snickering with gold at the edges, and wherever there was an area of blessed plain white, well then the tireless craftsman had embossed it with some busyness quite at odds with the rest of the decoration.
My lover, with typical sensitivity, must have detected my lack of enthusiasm for Chelsea work because suddenly I was showered with the busts of ancient Roman matrons. All slightly chipped and expertly repaired, but still genuine objects of antiquity. Then I received trays of pinned butterflies, always bestowed with significant looks, or so I fervently hoped. I had them sewn into a dress to please him, but he did not seem to notice.
With my lover I now tried to make up lost ground in every possible way, even with his ward. When I spoke of her, there was always sugar on my tongue. I even suggested some mutual excursions, but he appeared undelighted by these propositions, so I did not press him. But when, one day, he admired a bonnet of mine, I went straight to my milliner and commissioned a perfect miniature of it for the child, telling the woman that I estimated her age at about eight. The resultant confection, small as a doll’s, I presented with a flourish a few days later. But my lover merely mumbled an embarrassed thank you and distractedly crushed the delicate little masterpiece into his large hand. He never mentioned how my extravagant gift was received and I dared not ask. It seemed that the situation was irretrievable. There was no act of generosity on my part, which would remove the stigma of ogress he had bestowed on me in her regard.
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Like the icebound Thames, I allowed myself to grow numb. In that calmer state I hoped that some clear thoughts might emerge. But all the time I was aware that our sweet meetings and partings were merely tiny rehearsals for truly being severed. Those separations of a few hours were survivable only because we would soon be together again. How would I manage an indefinite rupture?
As the end approached, I let Valentine Greatrakes make a great sentimental fool of himself, mooning over my departure, drinking himself to a slush, such as I had not seen in him before, yet never quite bringing himself to ask me to stay, when at one word from him I would have fallen into his arms.
On the last day I suggested a walk in Hyde Park. I gently guided him to the place where Gervase Stintleigh had met his death, at least according to the journalists. My lover had been suspicious of my interest in that story when he unfortunately saw my collection of newspaper reports. But now he walked heedlessly over ground recently soaked with the vital fluids of Lord Stintleigh. Then I reflected that perhaps the papers were wrong, anyway. Maybe the politician died on London Bridge and the murderers brought his lower body back to Hyde Park. These gore-drenched thoughts drew my mind involuntarily to something that I had once heard said in Venice: that Englishmen were three times more afraid of getting married than they were of the sight of blood.
So I had not conjured a consuming jealousy in my lover: true passion was not what he felt for me. He could countenance my loss, even though it hurt him sorely. I was not indispensable to him. I felt so much used up in failure, so piteously lacking in whatever gains the hearts of men, that I grew dim and silent. I lost conviction to plead my case. I did not flaunt my charms any longer because I no longer believed in them. I simply sank in the wash of my own misery. On that final afternoon, I let him hand me into the post-chaise and never once uttered a complaint at his ill usage, or appealed to his mercy.
But to the last I flattered him, made him think that it was love for him and not disappointment in his weakness that paled my cheek and stole my voice.
“Shall I sing for you?” I asked, listless as mud, as we strolled in the park in that dying light.
He took his punishment like a man. He whispered, “Yes, darling, sing.”
I sang in English, a tinkling volley of notes cold as the frosty branches of the trees above us.
I bought myself a red rose at Rialto
The vase in which I put it left a ring
(a ring you did not give me)
On the love letter you did not write me,
In front of the mirror which showed me
The face you did not love any more.
He blushed and turned away, hiding his face.
I asked: “Old it not please you? Shall I sing you another verse?”
He shook his head mutely, and took my hand in his.
I held fast to his wrist, thinking, You have a pulse, so you must have a heart.
But I let it go, when that was what he wanted.
• 7 •
A Litus for the Face
Take Ox Galls 3, rectify’d Spirit of Wine 3 pints; having extracted a Tincture, and exhaled to the consistence of Honey; dissolve it in Juice of Lemons 2 ounces; and add powder’d Calomel 3 drams; Salt of Vitriol 2 drams; Venetian Borace 1 dram; Faeculae of Cuckow 1 dram and a half, digest in the Sun 4 days, strain and evaporate to a mellaginous Consistence.
For Sun-burning, Freckles, Spots, Pushes, Pimples, Redness, Gutta Rosacea, and all blemishes in the Face whatsoever. Strike it over the part thrice a day.
After that frozen leave-taking, I remained almost comatose for the whole journey back to Venice. Mazziolini, who, as always, magically joined me at the first changing post, observed my passivity with evident satisfaction. It was only when the gondola left Mestre, and the towers of Venice bloomed in front of me, that I at last woke up from my stupor.
I sensed that I was coming to danger: What mercy would my employers show me? I had not failed them in a mission before and so never had cause to wonder. But Stintleigh was a notable lapse. Worse, in the grimy glass of the last inn of my journey, I held my curls away from my forehead and confronted the truth. My skin was tired; my eyes bore a tracery of fine wrinkles. There were blemishes on my nose and chin. My mouth was losing its fullness. An awareness stole over me that in the last months my beauty had taken on a variable quality: I still had my beautiful days, but there were also days when it was better to hide away until I was in face again. I was losing my looks, my free passage, my key to unlock my fate and keep me out of the convent.
When I was called to the interview with my employers, they would read my face with cold eyes, and my future would be decided.
As the gondolier poled toward Venice, the salt wind snarled around my cheeks and filled my eyes with tears. The towers and churches of my native city were distorted and magnified in the teardrops that hung on my lashes. I clutched a velvet cushion against my breasts and sniffed its mustiness, compounded of the perfumes of dozens of women who must have reclined upon it while borne from one man’s house to another: daughter, bride, mother, or widow. The smell and the images it conjured repulsed me. I threw the cushion against the curtains of the felze and it disappeared through the parting at their center. I lifted the velvet aside and was astonished to see that the cushion did not sink, but floated away, its tassels glinting gaily in the sun. The gondolier, fortunately, faced the other direction, and did not observe the liberation of his expensive accessory.
I came to several swift epiphanies. I did not need to allow myself to be handed, passively, from one man to another. I need not allow Valentine Greatrakes to surrender me as a victim because he lacked the backbone to demonstrate his love.
None of these thoughts were visible upon my face or Mazziolini would not have acted as he now did, in a rare instance of carelessness.
Thinking me all but delivered, and lulled by my sleepwalking state, Mazziolini had pushed my gondola from the shore, but he had not accompanied me. For the sake of discretion, in Venice he seldom traveled in the same conveyance as I did, but always followed me closely. Now, I saw him distracted by an acquaintance at the shoreline. Mazziolini was from terraferma himself, not a Venetian of the floating city I saw him motion to his own gondolier to wait while he exchanged a few pleasantries. It occurred to me dimly Yes, he too had a life. From time to time he turned his head to make sure of my progress. I saw his eye skim to the shining cushion now floating toward the shore, and dismiss it.
A larger vessel, a fishing boat, now hove into sight, heading back to terraferma. I calculated that in about five minutes, at our present progress, our paths should cross. Seeing the danger, my gondolier escalated his speed, and soon the fishermen were between us and the shore, blocking Mazziolini’s view of me.
Swiftly I crawled out of the felze and stood up, rocking the boat dangerously. I clutched at my belly. At the same time I cried out at the top of my voice in the direction of the fishermen, “Help me, I am taken ill!” I turned to the astonished gondolier, and whispered, “Pray continue your journey without me.”
I tossed him a large coin, which he caught dextrously. He had no idea that I had just paid for his certain discomfort at the hands of the Inquisitors. I selected just one valise, and told him that he might make a gift to his wife of all the others and their contents. Whatever mystery he thought to have stumbled on, the sight of the elegant luggage soothed any worries. He made me a happy salute and hoisted me up to the arms of the anxious fishermen.
In moments I was lying on my back in the dank cabin beneath the deck of the fishing vessel. Begging my pardon all the while, one of the fishermen felt my belly for the signs of a pregnancy. Finding none, his fingers rested on my neck glands and my wrists. I told him that I was feeling better now: the nausea had passed.
“Perhaps you would like to go on deck, my lady? It’s close in here.”
He did not exaggerate: The boat’s cargo raised up abominable fetid belchings with each new wave.
“The
sight of the horizon would do me good,” I agreed, “but I am afraid to sit up there among all the men. Let me just climb the ladder till only my head is above the deck, and I may take some breaths of fresh air.”
And so I hid and yet allowed myself the gladdest of views: that of Mazziolini poling swiftly toward Venice in his gondola, and, if I turned my head, the shore of Mestre, fast approaching me in the other direction.
On landing, I told my rescuers that I was now fully recovered and that I required only their help in directing me to a coach that might take me to Naples.
“Naples, how I long to be there!” I sighed. For extra emphasis, I added, “It’s the only place in the world where I feel safe,” lest any of them forget what I had said during the interrogation, which they would shortly undergo when my pursuers caught up with them. I tried not to think of them being used hardly, and hoped it would not be so: They had thwarted the Council of Ten inadvertently and with only gallant motives.
I permitted them to help me with the single valise I had selected from the gondola, and to put me in a coach, which, with the greatest of good fortune, was due to leave within the half-hour.
At the first pausing place, I climbed down from the carriage, and joined another going in the opposite direction. For two days my progress scribbled a criss-cross of feints and doublings-back so dense as to lose any pursuer.
At last, when I felt dizzy myself with all these maneuvers, I made my first honest move, and joined a coach that headed north and west. At Torino I found a stationer who, for a ludicrous fee, prepared me some unimpeachable identity documents.
The Remedy: A Novel of London & Venice Page 18
