Death in the Floating City

by Tasha Alexander

  A pity, really, that he let Delilah in on the secret about his hair.

  I crossed the flat iron expanse of the Ponte della Carita near the gallery, barged into the museum, and begged to speak to someone in charge. Half an hour later, I walked out of the building, disappointed but not frustrated. The curator knew of no such painting. If it did exist, he was certain it wasn’t in the Accademia. He gave me the name of a Titian scholar, whom I could find in the small gallery near the Frari church. I hired a gondola and was soon sitting across from an extremely serious young man wearing an ill-fitting pair of spectacles.

  “Manoah,” he said slowly. “Tintoretto painted a scene of an angel appearing to Manoah’s wife, but I don’t recall one by Titian. You are sure it’s Titian?”

  “I am,” I said. “There is no possibility of mistake.”

  “Hmmmm.” He pulled a tall, narrow ledger from the shelf above his desk. “It must not be one of his more famous works, or perhaps it is lost or destroyed. Or was never finished.”

  “I’m confident it was finished,” I said.

  He went through the ledger, page after page, then flipped back to the beginning. “Could it be called something else?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “I can’t say I recall the story.”

  “She was Samson’s mother,” I said.

  He smiled. “I know the painting. It is in Ca’ Vendelino. Are you familiar with the location of the palazzo?”

  * * *

  Zaneta Vendelino, head of her still-influential family, was not home when I called, but her son, Angelo, introduced himself and welcomed me with effusive warmth. He was on the loggia, where a cooling breeze brought respite from the heat. His chair was turned so that he might watch the endless parade of boats on the Grand Canal below, and he was sitting with his long legs stretched in front of him, his feet resting on the marble rail above. He did not get up when he saw me but gave a brilliant smile and insisted I join him, to enjoy the breeze, the view, and the drink.

  I took the glass of prosecco he offered. The only chair available to me was next to him, extremely close to his own. I scooted it over a few feet and took stock of the man beside me. He was extremely handsome. Dark blond curls framed a tanned, masculine face, and thick, impossibly long lashes lined his bright blue eyes.

  “When my servant told me you had appeared at the door in search of art, I could not resist inviting you up in the hope you might teach me something. My own lack of mastery of the subject is a source of much embarrassment. Yet I am too lazy to apply myself to the study of it. Do you make a practice of knocking on doors of palazzi in search of Renaissance treasure? I understand the English are very enterprising tourists.”

  “No, it’s not something I do on a regular basis,” I said. The cool prosecco and the breeze felt good. The combination of summer heat and excitement had caught up with me more than I’d noticed. My cheeks felt hot. “Your family owns a painting in which I have great interest. It’s a Titian—a depiction of an angel appearing to Manoah’s wife.”

  He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “As I said, I’m afraid I know very little about art. I would be more than happy, however, to give you a tour of the house, and you will, maybe, recognize the piece?”

  “That would be lovely, thank you.”

  “It is unlikely there would be anything in here,” he said, leading me from the loggia—only after we’d both finished our prosecco—and into the portego. “These are all portraits of my ancestors. Very distinguished, you understand. Count the members of the Council of Ten if you wish.”

  “An impressive collection,” I said.

  “You think?” he asked. “I think they’re dour. When I inherit I’m going to pull them all down and replace them with something more pleasant.”

  “What will you do with them?” I asked.

  “Don’t be alarmed, Lady Emily,” he said. “I am not destructive. There is a room upstairs that will make an excellent home for them. But I’d prefer to make the portego a lighter, more pleasant space to be. My taste in art runs more to the modern. Do you know the Impressionists?”

  I made note of the contradiction, as he had earlier claimed little knowledge of art. The ensuing digression on the subject was extremely pleasant and proved him to be something of an expert on the topic. As I was well acquainted with a number of the painters in the Impressionist movement, I was able to give Signor Vendelino a wealth of information about them. He was particularly interested in the details of their studios. When he learned that Renoir had painted my portrait, he put his hand to his heart, threw back his handsome head, and sighed.

  “If I could have him paint the woman I love,” he said. “Nothing could be more beautiful.”

  “Are you married, signore?”

  “Indeed I am,” he said.

  “Then your wife is a lucky woman,” I said. “Your ardor is admirable.”

  “You flatter me, but don’t quite hit the mark,” he said. “My wife is lucky in many ways, but unfortunately it is not she who inspires my ardor.”

  I felt my face flush crimson. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Ah, don’t be,” he said, leading me into the next room. “It’s not so uncommon a situation. Who doesn’t share my plight?”

  We made our way through countless rooms, including that in which Zaneta had received me when I last spoke to her. But no Titian. Well. At least not the right Titian. Then, not long after I’d started to worry we’d never find it, we turned into a splendid chamber, done in shades of the palest blue. There, on the wall opposite an imposing marble fireplace, was our quarry.

  The canvas was large. In the center, a woman in a blue gown knelt, her face bowed. Above her and to the left, a lovely angel, clothed in a white gown and a scarf that nearly matched the woman’s gown, hovered in the air. To her right was a large tree, part of the luscious garden in which the encounter was taking place. And there, attached to the frame, was a brass plaque identifying the work.

  Apparizione dell’angelo a Moglie di Manoah —Titian

  I stepped back from the painting, first wanting to take it in as a whole. Then I moved closer, dividing the canvas into small areas and analyzing them one at a time. I didn’t notice what the painting concealed at first. The marks were hidden from my view until I pulled out Signor Caravello’s magnifying glass and looked even more closely. There they were, clearly visible magnified, halfway across the scene: a series of infinitesimally small letters winding their way up and down both sides of the tree trunk and around all its branches.

  “Will you help me?” I asked Signor Vendelino, passing him my notebook and pencil. “I’ll say the letters and you write them down.”

  Soon we had a long string of letters. From there, it took very little time to decipher their meaning. Like the clue in the page of Dante, they were not encrypted.

  I, Nicolò Vendelino, do here bequeath my estate in its entirely to Tomaso Rosso, only surviving son of Besina Rosso, born Barozzi.

  Following that were two tiny signatures, their names printed in capitals after each: Nicolò Vendelino and Giulio Zorzi. This took me aback. I’d expected it to read Nicolò Vitturi. Yet here was a different N.V., Nicolò Vendelino.

  Signor Vendelino laughed. I looked at him, and he only laughed harder, covering his mouth and shaking his head in apology. “Forgive me,” he said, “but this will send my mother to an early grave. Just to see the names Vendelino and Barozzi together.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of this feud between your families,” I said. “Have you any idea of the origin?”

  “That I do. It may be the only history I know. It was hundreds of years ago, when Venice was still a great republic, controlling all the seas. The doge had promised the Crusaders the Venetians would join their cause. Instead, he turned his ships to Constantinople and sacked the city. On the way back, some of the fleet was caught in a terrible storm, and a boat owned by the Barozzis overturned. Not far ahead of it was a boat owned by the Vendelinos. The captain saw
the chaos behind him but did not want to risk his own men’s lives. They did not go back and rescue the survivors. Unfortunately, the two men who did manage to cling to life and survive what must have been a dreadful night in the ocean, hanging on to debris, were brothers of the Barozzi family. They had watched their father drown and had been able to do nothing to save him.”

  “How dreadful,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “The next morning the sea was calm, and they were hoisted from the water and into the very ship that the night before would offer no help. When dark fell again, and everyone else was asleep, the Barozzis took their revenge. They slit the throats of every Vendelino on board.”

  “So everyone is to blame.”

  “A disinterested party might think so,” he said, “but neither the Barozzis nor the Vendelinos could be described as such. They have hated each other ever since. Through the next centuries, they fought each other whenever they could.”

  “Your mother still hates them?”

  “Of course,” he said with an engaging smile. “She is Vendelino, as am I. We would never receive a Barozzi into our home.”

  “Yet you laughed when you read the words,” I said.

  “Only at the notion that a Vendelino would leave money to a Barozzi. It would never have happened. Look, I do not hold with the past so much as my mother does. In another generation or two, no one will remember this feud. But during the age of Titian? This would have been impossible.”

  Un Libro d’Amore

  xviii

  Come to me.

  The words haunted Nicolò, taunted him, even, as he strove to concoct a plan to reach Besina. He had his spies start to watch her again. Two of his closest friends knew Rosso, but he could not risk speaking to them, even in the most general terms, about his enemy. He did not trust himself to be able to hide his hatred.

  Santa Maria dei Miracoli was the only answer.

  Besina visited there, three times a week, as she always had, and as before, she stayed for nearly an hour each time. His spies could tell him that much, but no one could say whether she still climbed the marble steps to the altar, slipped behind, and checked for a message from him, hidden in the tiny crevice he’d found on the foot of one of the benches behind the altar. If she did, he could not imagine the heartache and pain it must have caused her, over and over again, to find nothing. Still, Besina would not doubt his love or fidelity. She would know that he had stopped writing only to protect her from her husband’s rough hands.

  Now, he hoped, enough time had passed for Rosso to be distracted by other things.

  When Besina next stepped into the church the following week, the light seemed different to her. The pale marble of the walls, pastel hues divided by thick, strong bars of gray or ocher, were warm and aglow. True, the sun was shining, its light filtering through the clear windows that lined the nave and illuminated the space around the altar, but that was not out of the ordinary. She raised her eyes to the coffered ceiling and, as was her habit, counted the painted panels that lined it before she stepped forward.

  She knelt and crossed herself as she took her customary spot at the bottom of the steps leading to the holy and miraculous altarpiece, not looking up until she’d confessed her sins to God himself, not to his priest on earth. She begged forgiveness and bowed her head again and prayed with a desperate fervor to Mary. The sun sent her shadow long across the marble stairs, and this time, instead of rising to climb them when she’d finished, she moved, slowly, on her knees, one step at a time, her lips forming the words of a silent prayer as she paused before she went on to the next. At the top, she prostrated herself before the altar, weeping.

  She did not know how she could go on any longer.

  When at last she lifted her head and rose to her feet, she almost went home without looking for a message from Nicolò. It had been long, too long, too many days and weeks and months with nothing hidden behind the altar. She started to turn away, thinking she could not bear to be disappointed yet again, but as she did, the serene image of the Virgin caught her eye. She seemed to smile.

  Besina’s heart pounded in her chest.

  Today was different.

  She dropped back onto her knees, praying, her heart and mind at odds and confused. She loved Nicolò, but she knew this love was a sin. Yet here was Mary, smiling upon her.

  Besina, almost without knowing what she was doing, rose again and stepped around the altar, to the left, to the place that held all the hopes of her heart. She sat on the bench. She lowered her hand, feeling the cool touch of marble against her skin. Then there was something else. A tiny slip of paper.

  It was as if heaven itself opened up and a chorus of angels was singing in celebration. Never had Besina known such joy. She wanted to stay there, in Miracoli, and live forever in this moment. She pulled herself to her feet, steadying herself with a hand against the delicately carved marble that trimmed the walls around the altar.

  She realized she could not wait any longer to read Nicolò’s words.

  She could not bear to read them in Uberto’s house.

  Bowing again before the altar as she passed it, she went down the steps and along the aisle between the rows of wooden pews. She sat in the last on the left. She opened the paper.

  This time, Nicolò had not placed the note only a few hours before Besina would arrive. This time, he had come the night before and hidden his missive. But he had not left the church. The next day, after he’d spent a lonely night full of anticipation, no one watching Besina would have any idea that he’d entered the building. He sequestered himself in a room used for storage behind one of the two doors that led to the space beneath the altar. He hid himself in a corner, under a table surrounded by piles of stacked chairs, and he waited. He’d waited through morning mass and confessions. He’d waited what seemed like endless hours. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t done anything but listen for movement at the door.

  Now, in the nave, Besina trembled, rising to her feet.

  She walked toward the altar. She reached for the door on the left, adjacent to the statue of St. Francis. She pushed it open.

  Besina fell into Nicolò’s arms on the other side.

  19

  Back at the Danieli, I tapped my feet in impatient anticipation of Colin’s return, half inclined to rush to Signor Caravello’s shop without my husband to share with Donata what I had learned. All this time we might have been searching for the wrong Nicolò! I couldn’t wait to see my friend’s reaction when I told her Titian had modeled the face of the nameless woman after Besina’s. I had not noticed at first, but close inspection following my discovery of the hidden text in the painting had led to my conclusion. The woman’s face was a mirror image of that on the portrait that had been vandalized at the Morosinis’ villa.

  After what felt like endless hours, Colin returned from his visit to Signor Polani and found me in the lobby, where I’d taken up residence at a comfortable table not far from the front desk. It was a glorious space, with high ceilings decorated with plaster roses and large chandeliers of Murano glass a ciocca. I was drinking a glass of cool lemonade when Colin arrived. He gave me a quick kiss, ordered a coffee, and told me he’d return as soon as he’d checked on Paolo and Brother Giovanni upstairs. I sipped my drink with great impatience waiting for him to come back.

  “No trouble upstairs.” He slid close to me on the silk-covered settee. “How on earth did you handle Signor Polani on your own? I’m surprised you escaped with your honor intact.”

  “I assure you there was no danger of any other outcome,” I said.

  “I am not accusing you, my dear,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Quite the contrary. He is all persistent charm. Not many ladies could be as strong as you.”

  “Not many ladies have husbands as handsome as mine.”

  He smiled. “You’re bursting to tell me something, aren’t you?”

  “You can’t even imagine,” I said.

  “I’m going to make you wait. This time, I�
�m going first.” He sipped the coffee that had arrived before he’d come back downstairs, and then he pulled from his jacket pocket a packet of English chocolate-covered biscuits. “Before you accuse me of not drinking limoncello or something else you find suitably Italian, I will have you know Venice was the first city in the west to sell coffee. It may be, my dear, that I am even more Venetian than you.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said.

  “Polani is an interesting character. Your instincts about him are quite right, I think. He claims not to care about his wife’s near-dalliance with Barozzi, but man to man it was clear he was not entirely unaffected by the incident—and not because Barozzi had humiliated her.”

  “He was jealous?”

  “He didn’t like someone invading his territory. He doesn’t truly believe his wife was the sole instigator of the friendship.”

  His smile was too bright. “Are you intoxicated?” I asked.

  “No, but I’ve had more to drink than usual for this time of day,” he said. “How do you think I managed to get Polani to talk?”

  “You’re a cad,” I said.

  “I’m a slave to my work.” He grinned. “Polani told me he intercepted a letter that came to his wife from Barozzi. It was an invitation to go to the opera—after that first night at La Fenice.”

  “Do you think there was a relationship between them?”

  “I spoke with Signora Polani as well,” he said. “I think there can be no doubt Barozzi hurt her as much as he humiliated her.”

  “Leading you to conclude what?” I asked.

  “That either of them might have killed him if they felt so inclined in the moment, but that their motives don’t seem quite as strong as those of some of our other suspects.”

  “We may have to start considering an additional pool,” I said. “I believe we’ve been searching for the wrong Nicolò.” I recounted the events of my afternoon.