The Remedy: A Novel of London & Venice

by Michelle Lovric

  The girl has commenced to weep. In strongly accented English she tells him: “That is a very evil man, my lord! Take care if you have dealings with him!”

  “You know who he is?”

  “He’s called Mazziolini. He’s some kind of state agent. Two years ago, he came as a client. I thought he’d chosen me for the usual reasons”—she runs a distracted hand over her breasts—“but he was very desultory in that department. Afterwards he became much more alert, asked a lot of questions. I suspected nothing—boasted of my brother, who used to trade a little in, well, traded a little with the English wool merchants. The next day my brother was denounced by this Mazziolini, for consorting with foreigners, and was sent into exile. It was merely a business matter, not political. This Mazziolini knew, but he had scalps to take. And when my brother returned before his allotted time, for the funeral of our mother, he was murdered. Mazziolini had sworn it would be so, and it was so. And at his hand, there’s no doubt.”

  The girl breaks down and sinks to her knees. She lays her head on his lap. He is embarrassed but strokes her hair abstractedly and wipes her eyes with his handkerchief. It comes away stained with paint.

  At last Valentine has a name and a proof of the murderous nature of the man he saw at the viewing of Tom’s body at Bankside. He feels a small sense of relief, a sense of light glowing through a fresh slit in the black blanket of ignorance that has been wrapped around his head since Tom’s death. He has more questions for the girl.

  She doesn’t want to answer them. She has another chapter of her own story to tell.

  Mazziolini, it seems, had the brazen face to return to this casino even after killing her brother. Naturally he asked for another girl, her own uses having expired.

  “But she is my dearest friend. She’d die a thousand times for me. And when she saw who he was, she finished his visit with a little dose of Sternutatory Powder while he dozed. It was a risk, but he suspected nothing. He thought his waking spasms some natural affliction”—she grins at the memory—“even when he sneezed so much that the blood came pouring out of his nose.”

  She giggles: “The madam made him pay extra for staining the sheets and she charged him a small fortune for the damask napkin he was still clutching to his nose when he left.

  “That part I was sorry to see because we know that the right amount of Sternutatory can kill. If you rupture enough vessels the bleeding never stops, and the brain bursts! We wanted him to die. I wanted it with all my heart. It’s what he deserves.”

  Her face is alight with hatred. She hisses, “If you’re looking to do him a damage, you’ll need all your wits, and more than them too. A foreigner like you has little hope of finding the likes of him. If you do, and aim to do him harm, then I wish you well. But be careful. It is a known thing that he hates Englishmen worse than arsenic.”

  Valentine thinks of the words in Smerghetto’s report of Tom’s death, those words that have thrashed in his head for so many weeks.

  He asks her urgently, “Is the man a sadist? Does he kill—in—special—ways? Did he disturb—ruin—the remains of your brother?”

  Suddenly she looks afraid. Her face closes. Clearly she has been Struck by the suspicion that she has made a fatal mistake, that this foreigner is perhaps another Mazziolini sent to exterminate her family. She will not be drawn any further. When he persists she suddenly lunges out and tugs on a silken cord. A bell rings somewhere below and two large men enter the room. Valentine smiles ingratiatingly and offers purses all round. It is to no avail. He is forced to leave, a strong arm on each elbow. He is effervescent, however, and cannot wait to set Smerghetto on the case.

  At the depository he finds that Smerghetto is waiting for him with information that turns everything to dust.

  “The woman you want: we know where she is,” Smerghetto whispers, in a grave voice. “It is not good news.”

  Which woman I want?

  Through a haze of disbelief, Valentine absorbs what Smerghetto evenly recounts. One of the women whom Smerghetto has been observing at the Black Bat failed to materialize that afternoon. This had alerted him to her particularity. He was already favoring her as the prime candidate, despite the fact that… here, he hesitates a moment and seems about to describe her condition in more detail, but clearly thinks better of it, or judges it immaterial to the main business in hand, or possibly calculated to drive his master out of his wits.

  Her disappearance gave him occasion to make inquiries inside the Black Bat. Her daily visits there had not gone unmarked. The apothecary had news of the incident that had removed her from the scene, for indeed it is the kind of story relished by his customers, two of whom had happened to witness it, and had rushed back to tell him.

  In a full crowd, in San Marco, she has been seized and taken into custody in one of the dim palazzi kept by agents of state for their prisons.

  At this point a network of informants have filled in the rest of the picture for Smerghetto, who is all this time pouring a glass of wine, setting it in front of his stupefied master, and gently directing him toward a chair.

  Valentine Greatrakes stares dumbly as Smerghetto explains that this palazzo is the kind of place from which few prisoners are liberated. Her crime is unknown to Smerghetto’s informants, but it is surely serious. There is no way into her cell via bribery, no matter what the price.

  Smerghetto’s face is telling him the truth, though it won’t spill from his mouth: that he wouldn’t take a lease on her life, if she’s locked up in there.

  Valentine erupts in agony, “But which one of the women is it? Signorina Jallowfiwhore, Catarina Venier… or… Mimosina Dolcezza?”

  His hand is on the lapels of Smerghetto’s jacket, his breath comes in short bursts. His eyes are staring and his hands prickle unbearably.

  He reads the answer that he dreads in Smerghetto’s face.

  Valentine sags on his feet. He has come so close to her, only to have her snatched away. All this time he has wasted looking for the Signorina Jallowfiwhore, while sitting on his pride, insisting on meeting on his own terms the one woman whom he really needs, the one woman he cannot do without.

  Smerghetto tells him: “I think you must sit down. There is much to tell you.”

  Then Smerghetto explains, slowly and clearly, that this dramatic evening a number of facts have supplied the missing pieces of the fractured picture that has eluded their mutual comprehension. He mentions that there has been no sign of the young English girl who was supposed to be with the woman.

  But Valentine Greatrakes is keening, “The one woman, the one woman, haven’t I come back here again precisely and just for her?”

  He thumps his hand on the table.

  “One woman,” whimpers Valentine.

  Smerghetto now tells him, slowly and in simple words, that he may in fact triple that number, and yet still come up with the same—singular—woman.

  Who is now in peril of her life.

  Part Seven

  A Balsamic Lohoch

  Take Balsam of Tolu (powder’d, searced and subacted with Yolk of an Egg) half an ounce; Lohoch Sanans 1 ounce; Balsam of Peru 4 drops; Syrup of Coltsfoot flowers, as much as needs, mix.

  It entirely possesses all the Virtues that are after to be rehearsed, of the Balsamic Electuary, but with this advantage, that being much more grateful to the Palate; it may be more commodiously offer’d to the Nice and Nauseous, that abhor the Oiley bitterness of Capive.

  This morning I buried the incriminating ring in the orchard of Sant’Alvise.

  On reflection I don’t want to damage poor old Jaune-Fleur in Uncle Valentine’s too-credulous eyes. I’m not bitter, and forgiveness is a virtue, one of a number I am cultivating at the moment.

  I asked the other girls about Mimosina Dolcezza—they laughed at the name. Dolcezza means “sweetness,” apparently. If she is from Venice, she is definitely not Golden Book, anyway. And quite possibly one of those ladies who depends on the public for support. She could be an embarra
ssing connection.

  Better the devil you know, eh, and particularly the one that you have under your thumb. Better Miss Jaune-Fleur than Mimosina Dolcezza, the Ice Maiden, who stole my Christmas dinner.

  All these disgusting thoughts of mating and pairing! How animal it is. How crude. How much lovelier are the bosom friendships between women, how much more couth and yet how much more satisfying.

  Still no visit from Uncle Valentine, who needs to be informed of my decision to stay here. He will try to dissuade me, of course, because his heart is set upon my joining him when he arranges his domestic situation. I am sorry, but my plans are of a higher nature, and I must disappoint him.

  When he comes, I plan to take him to the well in the center of the cloister for our painful little interview I want to let the other nuns see what kind of lover I might have, should I ever change my mind. For I believe that it was a near thing with my Uncle Valentine. He could not have helped falling in love with me, over time, and I might in the end have taken pity on him.

  But No—It Can Never Be—for I have decided to betroth myself to Someone Else entirely.

  Venice, March 1786

  • 1 •

  Chalybeate Syrup

  Take white Wine 1 pint and a half; filings of Iron 1 ounce and a half; powdered white Tartar 6 drams; Cinnamon, Nutmeg each 1 dram and a half; Mace, Cloves, each half a dram; make a warm infusion 4 days in a large open Glass (else it will burst asunder); or (which is better, if time will permit) let them stand cold H days; decant the clear Wine through a strainer; and having added to 1 pint of it fine Sugar 1 pound, make a Syrup.

  My interlocutor was pacing around the room. All his former composure had evaporated, as had his dry delivery. There was none of the cynical amusement I had read in his younger face and voice all those years ago, and none of the indulgence.

  I lay silently on the table, my head immobile, my lowered eyes following him covertly. I did not put it past him to strike me unexpectedly. Now that the worst thing had happened, and the imagined sophistication of my plans had been exposed as feeble, my fears were base and simple. I was afraid that he would beat me. He looked bitter enough to do so.

  The other men had filed away, and we were alone.

  “Of course you knew who she was! You must have known the moment you saw the father’s corpse. You must have recognized your old lover, even after all these years. You can count. Don’t tell me you did not know in that instant exactly who he was. Mazziolini says that you grew pale as glass when you saw the body. How do you explain that?”

  “Any woman of normal sensibilities would react in that way to the sight of a corpse,” I said as levelly as I could. “Bleeding like that.”

  “But you are not such a woman,” murmured my interlocutor. “We have reason to know that it is a long time since you showed honest behavior in any respect.”

  He gestured contemptuously at my pregnancy apron, destroying my faint hope that my supposed condition would gain me more merciful treatment.

  “If that is the case, you have made me this way,” I said bitterly. “And as you know everything, you must be aware of the fact that I knew him by a different name in Venice. He did not tell me the truth. I myself went by a different name then, my real name.”

  “This is immaterial. I maintain that you knew who he was when you saw his body, and at that moment, if not before, you realized that the ward of your low-life paramour Valentine Greatrakes was none other than your own daughter. That is why you were so shocked. That is why you broke your bond with us, escaped from Mazziolini, returned to London and kidnapped her.”

  “I told you! She’s someone else’s daughter! I do not think the man who came to San Zaccaria lacked for mistresses: I was not the only one who could have mothered the girl. But that’s not the point. The thing is: I do not have a daughter! I never had a daughter. I had a son! And he was murdered by the man-midwife. I never even saw the body.”

  Except in my imagination, of course. How often had I pictured the crushed skull and the forceps pulling the limp and mangled baby out of me as I lay delirious on my pallet. The facts that they were asking me to believe now—that Pevenche was the creature whom I had conceived and carried, and that she had been born alive, had lived and that my first lover had taken her away to raise her—these things were too incredible to absorb. I had never even acted in a play that spun its plot on such a preposterous premise.

  “It was a little boy,” I whispered again, feebly. “He died.”

  Real tears ran down my cheeks and between my open lips. I did not know if I was weeping for the dead baby or for myself, disbelieved and helpless to make my interlocutor understand the truth.

  “So you insist. But the nuns at San Zaccaria say otherwise. They say that you were delivered of a healthy girl, and that you rejected her. You would not even take her to your breast. They insist that you were wild with anger at your treatment by her father. You refused to have anything to do with her. You told them that if she remained in the convent you would hunt her down and put an end to her.”

  “These are lies, the most incredible and outrageous lies. You know what they are like, the sisters at San Zaccaria. They are whores, liars, all of them. They hated me. How can you give any credence to what they said to you? If they did not kill the baby inside me with that instrument, why have I never conceived again?”

  But there was no gainsaying him.

  “The nuns were instructed by your lover, and informed by their own good instincts about the best way to deal with a lewd little troublemaker like you. After the birth, certain instruments were used to ensure that you would not stray into that kind of mischief again.”

  When I thought of all that had been taken from me in that short period of unconsciousness I suddenly felt savage with grief for the misuse I had suffered. A girl of sixteen, what chance had I then with the forces ranged against me, the callousness of my lover, the venality of the nuns, the power of the drugs, and the swift hands of the doctor exterminating my fertility? I had been rifled and robbed by everyone, and left to a deceived and blighted life. I had not been innocent, but my crimes paled in comparison with this abuse I had suffered, starting from the moment I snatched the first candied fruit from a tree in the orchard of San Zaccaria. My tears continued to flow, slicking my cheeks and dripping off my chin. They raised no compassion whatsoever in my interlocutor, who plied me with more and more indigestible tales.

  “And so they gave the baby girl to the father and he took her back to England, quite willingly, I may say,” he added with a vicious kind of quietness, “so long as he did not have to take you too.”

  “But she is too old, too gross,” I moaned. “This happened only sixteen or at most seventeen years ago—that great big girl must be twenty if she’s a day”

  “She is sixteen years old, though large with it, our reports say. On the English diet even a girl with Venetian blood can run to fat. I can scarcely be surprised at your lack of maternal tenderness, but you can deceive neither us nor yourself about her true age. It seems you were happy to keep her amused with childish toys, when it suited you.” He gestured toward Pevenche’s ukulele, evidently ransacked from my rooms and now displayed upon a velvet cushion on his desk.

  I had nothing to say to this—I had never actually asked her about her age—so he continued.

  “Why do you think we kept you out of Venice as much as possible? We know what kind of woman you are. We were afraid that you would find the Englishman who had betrayed you and make trouble with him, and then we would have had a diplomatic incident on our hands. We were able to hush up the scandal of the nun you blinded-she was not Golden Book, fortunately. But a foreign businessman—no! And now that he has got himself killed in any case—it is worse than we thought. It seems he was mixed up in a criminal community of a type that insists on a primitive English kind of rough vengeance. It is all we can do to contain the situation.”

  He had grown distracted, thinking of problems that no longer concerned me.
I watched his shoulders rise and fall. Suddenly he turned back to me, clearly harnessing his feelings and his intellect for one last effort to reason with me.

  He said softly: “It was a most unfortunate chain of circumstances that brought you into contact with that corpse.”

  He waited for this sugared offering to open my mouth; when it did not, he abandoned all pretence of sympathy.

  “You are that kind of hellbrand who will not let the sins of the past die, to pass away if not be forgiven. No, not you. As soon as you knew that the father of your daughter was dead, it infuriated you to be robbed of your chance of revenge. I suspect you took the daughter because you wanted to punish her for your own pains. God alone knows what other plans you were formulating against her and would have carried out, if we had not caught you. When we put you back in San Zaccaria, you can be sure that there will be no more lapses of security.”

  So this was it, then—my worst fears confirmed. I was to be incarcerated in the convent again. As my interlocutor stared grimly out of the window into the blank calle, I fell to wondering what they wanted from me and why I was not already chained to a bed in a cell at San Zaccaria.

  Suddenly I realized that they were probably looking for Pevenche. They would want to appease the English criminals, as he had put it, by handing back the girl to her guardian. A stolen English girl in Venice could certainly cause difficulties. Withholding that information was the only way to keep myself out of San Zaccaria for the moment, until I thought of a better plan. It was imperative to muddy the trail that might lead to Pevenche, and so I dared to hiss: “It is strange how in this supposedly godly city everyone sees a life spent in piety as the worst kind of torture.”

  He made a sharp movement with his hand, but controlled himself at the last second. He was not interested in anything I might observe, unless it was to throw light on the situation, he told me.