4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight

by Beverle Graves Myers

  I sighed, running a hand over my face. What frustration! My sister had an answer for everything and took blame for nothing. “Grisella,” I said. “Jean-Louis stole something from Count Paninovich. The woman Alessandro met at The Red Tulip was a witness to Jean-Louis selling something of great price to the Russian Envoy. Can you honestly tell me you had no part in that?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Vladimir owed me that. I’d been with him for two years, and he was making plans to cast me aside like an old stocking that isn’t even worth darning. While I waited and worried, he was smiling and happy because he was going back to Russia, back to Anna Ivanova’s court to be given a hero’s welcome. Every time I looked at him, the unfairness made my blood boil.”

  “You took this valuable item to get some of your own back,” I observed, keeping my tone gentle in hopes that she would tell me more.

  “I did and I’m proud of it, no matter how much trouble that damnable list has caused.”

  “List?”

  She nodded fervently. “The list was the reason that Vladimir had been dispatched to Turkey in the first place. He’d been given unlimited funds to become friendly with the staff of all the embassies and as many Turkish military officers as would extend their courtesies. Vladimir was full of dash and quite liberal with his purse, so he gathered a substantial set of hangers-on, mostly young men with more vigor than brains. The Turks hold themselves above many of our pleasures, but when someone else is paying, you’d be surprised what they get up to.”

  “It was a list of corruptible officials?”

  She raised an eyebrow. A smile cold as mountain frost split her lips. “That would have been an excellent idea. But no, Vladimir used his naïve young men to develop a complete list of the boundary forts around the Black Sea, including their manpower and artillery stocks.”

  Aha! Based on what Alessandro had told us of Russia’s continuing designs on Turkish waterways, Count Paninovich’s list would have been very valuable indeed.

  “I saw the list as my safe passage back to Italy,” she continued. “I knew where Vladimir kept the key to the box that secured all of his important papers, but what could I do with the list once I had it in my hand? To transform this document into gold, I needed a man who knew his way around the underside of Constantinople, a man who wasn’t afraid to take a chance. Jean-Louis popped up at just the right moment…” She paused, shrugging. “I truly didn’t expect him to be so ruthless—there was no need to kill Vladimir, no need for the substitution of the red-haired girl. We could have simply run away, sold the list back to the Russians through a safe intermediary, and lived on the proceeds.

  “But Jean-Louis wouldn’t have it, and once we’d left Turkey behind, he gobbled up our gold like a pig at a trough. We visited every grand city in Europe, always the best accommodation, the finest clothing, food, drink. With no vice beyond the reach of his purse, he fell into deeper and deeper depravity. If he wasn’t at the faro table, he was bedding another woman, sometimes two and three at a time. If I so much as whispered a word of caution, I felt the back of his hand. Within six months, the money we’d received for Vladimir’s list was totally gone. To keep us from starving, Jean-Louis put me on the stage. I was just starting to enjoy a bit of success when we realized that the Russian had caught up with us again.

  “Do you understand now?” Grisella regarded me with her hands on her hips, radiating the same self-satisfaction that followed one of her stupendous arias. “Jean-Louis was a pig, and I slit his throat like a pig at slaughtering time. Why not?”

  I gazed at her in wonder, my breath constricting in my throat as I tried to detect one particle of shame. There was none. Finally, I asked, “How did you manage without getting any blood on your caftan?”

  She giggled brightly. “How would you manage it, Tito?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Well, my dear brother, if you ever find yourself in a similar predicament, you must strip down to your skin…” She nodded heartily. “Yes, I removed every stitch. After I dealt with the clock, of course. Being spotted running naked through the hall might have attracted unwanted attention. After I’d dispatched Jean-Louis, I cleaned myself up and slipped back into my Turkish costume.”

  Shaking my head at that discomfiting revelation, I rose to my feet. “And what are we to do now?”

  “I don’t suppose I can rely on you to take me back to Venice,” she replied disparagingly. “You’ve become a harsh judge, Tito. Even with the wrong that’s been done to me, you find your little sister too soiled to take her place on the Campo dei Polli with the sainted Annetta and her English buffoon.”

  “No, I can’t take you home, not while a man sits in jail unjustly accused.”

  “That’s hardly my fault. The peasant must have been guilty of something or he wouldn’t have broken out of the stable. No wonder Captain Forti arrested him.”

  “I have no way of knowing if most of what you’ve told me is the truth or more of your deceit, but I am certain of one thing.” My voice was thick with anger as I removed the spangled scarf from my pocket and shook it just out of her reach. “You let Santini out of the tack room intending for him to be blamed for the murder you committed. You left one of your baubles from this scarf behind, and I’m taking it to Captain Forti.”

  After an instant of paralysis, Grisella made a grab for the gauzy fabric. I was ready. I whisked my prize behind my back and plunged toward the table where the volume and note rested.

  Grisella did her best to stop me. With her entire face twitching, she tugged at my arms and the tail of my jacket, grunting, barking, and uttering curses as vile as any I’d ever heard. I pushed her away only to be assaulted anew. In the midst of our struggle, Vincenzo and two footmen burst into the chamber.

  “What’s this?” Vincenzo cried, with the boys frozen wide-eyed behind him. “Madame Fouquet excused herself for the water closet some time ago. We only just realized that she’d slipped upstairs.”

  “Help me!” I begged. “Quickly! She killed Jean-Louis.”

  At Vincenzo’s nod, both footmen laid hold of Grisella and wrestled her up against the stout wardrobe. She spat at them.

  Panting, I slid the note between the volume’s pages and crammed it and the scarf into a deep pocket. I clasped Vincenzo’s shoulder. “There’s no time to explain everything that’s happened. I promise I won’t leave you in the dark any longer than need be, but right now, I must get to Captain Forti. Keep Grisella in this room. Lock the door, and for God’s sake, don’t let her out no matter what she tells you.”

  “Yes, yes. We have her now. She won’t fool us again.”

  “I’m depending on you,” I cautioned sternly.

  “Trust her to us, Signore.”

  I shot one more glance at Grisella. Squirming and twisting in the footmen’s grasp, she could have been a savage attired in a lady’s gown. Her eyes bulged from their sockets, her hair hung in frowsy clumps, and spittle covered her chin.

  I ran from the chamber as if pursued by the Furies of Hell.

  ***

  The carriage bucked and bounced over the rutted lane. Ernesto was on the driver’s seat, pushing his team as fast as the terrain and darkness allowed. As we sped on, the coach lamps illuminated the margin of the fields bordering the road. Heartsick and exhausted, I saw sinister forms where daylight would have revealed a gentle, prosaic landscape. Shocks of grain became phantoms in the mist. Hanging vines, gibbets. And twisted tree trunks, hulking giants.

  Finally, I closed my eyes, sank back against the leather cushion, and rehearsed what I would say to Captain Forti. I could give a coherent account of the murders of Carmela and Jean-Louis; it was the first death that presented problems. I had already decided that true honor did not demand that a pair of boys defending themselves from a Russian assassin should face the hangman. And Ernesto’s noble determination to sacrifi
ce himself for his sons’ sake would be a mockery of justice, as well as a tragic waste. I couldn’t allow either. In this case, truth must be forced to bow to justice.

  I pondered uneasily. I would have to convince Captain Forti that Jean-Louis shot the Russian. Not an impossible task. After all, the Russian had come to the villa to exact revenge from Grisella and Jean-Louis, giving one of them more reason to kill him than anyone else. Only a few rough details might need to be smoothed over. Had Jean-Louis possessed a pistol? Would the impetuous Captain Forti even think to search through his belongings?

  The carriage drew to an abrupt halt. It was quite late and the village of Molina Mori had put itself to bed. I saw a shuttered house through the carriage window, and rising behind it, the black profile of the church tower blotting out the stars.

  Ernesto jumped to the ground and pounded on the door. By the time I joined him, Captain Forti had appeared in dressing gown and nightcap. Grey tufts of hair surrounded owl eyes in a countenance that seemed oddly shrunken. It took me a moment to realize that the man hadn’t stopped to put his teeth in. At first, the constable refused to admit us, but once I started spilling out my tale on the doorstep, he opened the door and allowed us to pass into his drafty hall.

  Forti wasn’t at all happy with my revelations, but he was a sworn officer of justice and possessed enough integrity to hear me out. After listening to my story and duly examining the exhibits I’d brought forth from my pockets, he sent for a pair of mounted deputies with torches. He then found his teeth, dressed, and joined me in the carriage.

  As our entourage set off for the villa, the bell in the church tower sounded a deep-throated note. One, then two, then three. I counted the mournful strikes for a total of twelve. Midnight. The bell may as well have been tolling Grisella’s death knell. I shivered miserably as Captain Forti peppered me with questions I could barely answer.

  The Villa Dolfini had never gone to bed: when we came up the drive, yellow light poured from every window. My anxieties multiplied as I led the constable and his deputies to Grisella’s room. Had my desperate sister been throwing herself against the door the whole time I’d been gone? Would she go with the deputies quietly? If not, how would they subdue her? And further afield, would Annetta ever forgive me for giving Grisella up?

  Vincenzo met us at the top of the stairs. He gestured toward the door that Giovanni and Adamo were flanking like sentries. “She’s been very quiet for a half hour or so. At first she begged me to let her speak with Octavia, but once she saw that I was deaf to her pleas, she went completely silent.”

  “You’ve done well,” I replied with a nod. Relief began to unfurl within me, but then a new horror jerked it away. Grisella’s elixir! I’d had my sister locked in with nearly a full bottle of her powerful medicine. What if she was silent because she’d swallowed the lot? Just as quickly, another thought came on the heels of the first: Would the gentle death of the apothecary’s potion not be her best course of action?

  Vincenzo was handing the room key to Captain Forti. I swiped it from his fingers. Under their startled gazes, I drove the key into the lock, turned until I felt it click, and threw open the door.

  I blinked, struggling to get my bearings in the dim light. Two candles had burned themselves out. By one wavering flame, we all saw… nothing. The room was empty. Grisella had disappeared.

  I whirled on Vincenzo. “You let her escape.”

  “No, not at all. The boys and I haven’t left the corridor since you set off for Molina Mori. Madame Fouquet hasn’t set a foot through the door.”

  “You must have stepped away at some point,” rumbled Captain Forti.

  “No. Not for a second,” Vincenzo insisted with a raised chin.

  “Then…” I suddenly realized that cool, damp night air filled the room. One of the windows stood open, and in the shadows beneath it, a stool had been overturned.

  Captain Forti and I reached the window at the same moment. He tried to shoulder me aside, but I squeezed my head through beside his. Peering down, I saw a ledge that separated the first level of the villa from the second. It was a lip of stone barely four inches wide. By hanging full-length out of the window opening, Grisella’s toes would have just made contact with it.

  “Impossible,” Captain Forti murmured.

  “Surely not,” I agreed, trying to picture a woman in a full skirt clinging to the smooth side of the building, inching her way along. Even a rope dancer would have thought twice before embarking on such a daring feat. And yet.

  “What’s that?” I whispered, wiggling my arm through to point down the side of the building to a sinuous shadow that climbed from ground to roof. “A vine?”

  Captain Forti sneered in disbelief, but led us all outside to examine the area. By the light of the footmen’s lanterns and the deputies’ torches, we found a vine roughly the thickness of my arm. Some of its branching tendrils had torn loose from the wall, and fresh leaves littered the ground at its base. Nearly bent double, nose to the dirt, the constable proved his worth as a hunter by discovering faint imprints of a woman’s shoe.

  “By damn, the little woman did it. She climbed down the side of the villa.” Forti straightened with a gleam of admiration in his eyes.

  In my heart, hope exploded like a festival skyrocket. Grisella still had a chance! I’d brought the law as duty demanded, but my daring sister had outfoxed us all. Despite everything she’d done, I couldn’t be sorry.

  “But she can’t have got far,” Forti finished. On a shout, he urged his men to their horses, and furious activity ensued.

  The constable gave me a push and chivvied me along. “You’re with me in the carriage. Now, where to? Toward the river? Doesn’t really know the country, does she? How fast can she run?”

  Yes. No. I don’t know. With my mind reeling, I’m not sure whether the words passed my lips or not. Our party pulled away from the Villa Dolfini with a pounding of horseshoes and rattle of wheels on gravel. We turned left at the gate and sped along the road in the opposite direction from Molina Mori. After just a few minutes, I heard a shout and Ernesto whipped up the horses. I leaned out, gripping the window’s edge for all I was worth.

  “There she is,” someone cried.

  The rays of the carriage lamps lit on a limping figure making her determined way along the road: a woman with a dark cloak trailing behind her, brassy curls spilling from its hood. At the sound of our commotion, she stumbled into an uneven run, but with our greater speed, we soon overtook her.

  The deputies jumped from their horses. Grisella whirled this way and that, still seeking escape from certain capture. For a heartbeat, her wild gaze fastened on me. With a terrible wrench of sorrow, I looked upon her dark eyes glittering with rage and her mouth contorted in a slash of misery and pain.

  ***

  Venice, Feast of All Souls 1740

  Dear Alessandro,

  Grisella is gone. Her lovely face, her intriguing smile, and most elusive of all, the crystalline voice that could make an entire opera house shiver.

  You know this, of course, because Gussie has written. He’s been stronger than I, the rock of our entire household. Though I returned to Venice several weeks ago, I’ve been too dispirited to compose a letter. This day set aside to pray for the souls of our beloved departed seems like a fitting time to take up my pen and relate a few things I think you would like to hear straight from me.

  I stayed with our sister throughout her trial, until the very end, as close as I could get. Grisella was held in the guardhouse at Padua. Nearby, I found a tiny room usually rented out to university students, and I visited her whenever the authorities would permit. She suffered with her palsies during the trial, but once she knew her fate was certain, she turned as calm as the lagoon on a windless day. Her twitching and writhing disappeared entirely.

  Grisella and I didn’t speak of recent ev
ents during the last days, but spent our time recounting memories of our childhood on the Campo dei Polli, dissecting them like the corpses of small animals on a naturalist’s slab. Grisella only became angry with me when I did not recall events in the same light that she did. Then she instructed me in the particulars, extracting the promise that I would never forget again.

  Our sister’s end was mercifully quick. To insure that she would not die by slow suffocation, I had arranged for men who excel at the sport of leaping up to pull on the legs of jerking bodies to wait near at hand. Their services weren’t needed. When the trap gave way, her slender neck broke with a sharp crack.

  I saw that she was buried in a churchyard outside Padua, for good this time. Given Grisella’s history, the priests at first denied her a sanctified resting place. It took my entire purse from Tamerlano to change their minds. No matter, I can soon earn the sum back when I’m ready to take up my work again.

  When that will be I cannot say. Liya and Titolino are the bright spots in my life, but even they cannot lift this gloom that has settled upon me. Some days I wander the streets, numbly absorbing the sights and smell of the canals. Other days I sit with Annetta. She has forgiven me, I think, but this tragedy has set her back. For a while, Gussie had hoped to bring her to Padua to see Grisella one more time, but she wasn’t strong enough to make the journey. Now Annetta rocks endlessly as she stares at that last drawing Gussie made of Grisella. We took it away once, but Annetta’s unquenchable tears were even worse.

  You say you often visit your mosque. When you are at your prayers, don’t forget Annetta. Don’t forget any of us. On top of our grief, we still live in fear of a steely-eyed Russian showing up at our door.

  Perhaps after Christmas I will be ready to return to the stage. It is rumored that a production of Il Gran Tamerlano is to be mounted with all the pomp and splendor the opera deserves. But not in Venice. Maestro Weber found a generous patron at the court of Naples. A castrato fresh from my old conservatory will play the cruel tyrant. I have no regrets. As Gussie so candidly observed, I am completely unsuited for the role. I must find something that fits me better.