Bianca: The Silk Merchant's Daughters

by Bertrice Small

  Bianca crept down the stairs of the house, careful to avoid the two steps that creaked when trod upon. She hurried to the front door to await her brother. There was a single lamp burning in the entry rotunda. Other than that the dark silence engulfed her. On a stool by the door, the doorkeeper slept heavily. She stepped back into the shadows as she heard a soft footfall on the stairs.

  Georgio quickly came into view, and Bianca stepped forward. He said nothing, instead opening the door of the house just enough for them to slip through. The doorkeeper never even stirred. Bianca suspected her brother had drugged the unsuspecting servant, and found she was grateful. He took her hand and together they began walking. The streets were dark and Bianca realized that without her younger brother leading her she could never have found her way. Several times her foot struck some object and she stumbled, but Georgio kept her from falling. Twice she felt something—a rat she imagined, shuddering—run over her boot. The air for the most part was damp with a faint hint of rot. But the sky was growing lighter as they hurried along.

  “We’re almost there,” Georgio said softly. “What do you want to do when we finally get there, Sister?”

  “I would simply stand by the side of the road,” Bianca said to him.

  “Why?” he wanted to know.

  “You will see,” she said to him.

  They reached the city gate to the Venice road. No one had gone through it yet, for the gatekeepers were just now removing the great bar that helped to keep the gate closed. They slowly opened the gate and a small line of traffic made up of vendors carrying fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, and dairy products, along with flower sellers and others, began to slowly file into the city on their way to the various markets and other places of business.

  Suddenly Bianca’s ears caught the sound of many horses coming at a trot. She flung back her hood as the troop of Janissaries came into view. They were distinguished from other soldiers by their red and green garments, and the glossy brown horses they rode. From the pommels of their saddles hung metal-tipped whips that, when necessary, they used to disburse crowds. There was no need for that this morning. Because of the traffic coming from the opposite direction, they slowed their horses to a walk to avoid any accidents with the Florentine populace. Foreigners must be careful.

  She saw him on his great gray stallion in the middle of the group. Her heart contracted with joy, for he looked healthy and well. Darius walked by his master’s side. It was the dog who spotted Bianca, and barking, ran to her. Amir looked in the direction his hound had run. His deep blue eyes widened with a mixture of joy and pain.

  Bianca put her fingers to her lips, kissed them, and flung her hand in his direction. His gloved hand reached up to catch her kiss, his fingers closing over it, then opening to press against his heart. Bianca’s eyes filled with tears as she sent Darius back to his master.

  Then she heard him call out, “I will find you, beloved!”

  “Amore mio! I love you!” Bianca called back to him. Their eyes met briefly.

  The troop of Janissaries suddenly moved on more quickly as the traffic lightened, allowing for their swifter passage. Bianca stood for a long moment watching them go. He still loved her. It was all that mattered to her. She could go to Venice knowing that by the time they found a suitable man to wed her, he would come for her. They would be together forever. Nothing would part them again.

  “Let us go home now, Georgio,” she said to her brother, who had silently and sympathetically watched all that had transpired with his sister.

  “That was your prince,” her sibling said.

  “Yes,” Bianca replied. “That was my prince.”

  “It will be full light when we get back home,” Georgio said. “We had better go to Mass and pretend we only went out for that.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Did you drug the doorkeeper?”

  He nodded. “He has a weakness for sweet wine. I do it all the time when I want to get out and go whoring. Marco taught me that neat little trick and one day I will pass it on to Luca.” He chuckled.

  Bianca laughed. “Our poor mother,” she said. “Here she believes she is in full charge of all of her children, and she actually has little authority at all.”

  “Please stop torturing her, Bianca,” Georgio said. “She only does what she does because she loves her family.”

  “Did you know she was in love with an unsuitable man before she was wed to our father, little brother? I think she did not want me to have Amir because she could not have her true love,” Bianca told her brother. “I believe even if he had not been an infidel she would have found some excuse to separate us.”

  “If that is so,” Georgio remarked, “then perhaps you should be kinder to her, Sister. She has been a good wife to our father, and a good mother to her children. Yet she is unhappy, and still loves another man. I find that very sad, don’t you?”

  “You sound like a philosopher,” Bianca teased, heeding the householder’s warning and dodging the contents of a night jar that were being hurled from a window above. “Or perhaps even a priest.”

  “I am considering the priesthood,” Georgio admitted to his eldest sister. “Marco is Father’s heir, and he is a worthy one. Luca is a little roughneck savage, and I think he will become a soldier one day. I am a thinker, and I seem to feel the pain of others. I want to ease that pain. For instance, I did not know what it was you planned to do this morning, but I sensed that you very much needed to do it, which was why I agreed to accompany you. Not just because of the debt I owed you, Bianca, but because I can feel your unhappiness even when you smile these days. This prince you love may not be suitable in the eyes of our society, but I believe you will never be happy unless you are with him, Sister.”

  “Do not be a priest, Georgio,” Bianca said. “Your heart is too good, and I do not believe that you can live with all the rules the Church sets forth. To dismiss a good man because he does not worship as we do does not seem right to me. Does it to you?”

  “No,” Georgio agreed, “it does not, Bianca. But could I not teach humanity kindness within the tradition of our faith?”

  “They would try you for a heretic,” Bianca said cynically.

  They reached their own piazza just as dawn was breaking, and entered the church for the earliest Mass. Afterwards they walked back across the square to the palazzo and entered the house, smiling at the doorkeeper, who still looked sleepy but was awake.

  “I did not see you go out, young master, signora,” he said nervously.

  “A bit too much of your sweet wine last night, Aldo,” Georgio teased the doorkeeper. “We won’t tell. My sister and I went to early Mass together. Father Silvio said Mass this morning. I think old Bonamico grows too old for such an early hour.”

  The doorkeeper chuckled.

  “You do that too easily,” Bianca said, smiling at her younger sibling, “but then our father says you are the one with the charm. Thank you, Georgio, for helping me.” She felt better now than she had in weeks. Seeing Amir had given her new courage and strength now that they were preparing to send her to Venice. And Venice was closer to Istanbul than was Florence. Did her parents not realize they were helping her to rejoin her lover rather than keeping them apart?

  She was measured for new clothing. The gowns and undergarments were fashioned and sewn. Everything was packed into her trunks along with her personal possessions. It was unlikely that when she left Palazzo Pietro d’Angelo this time she would ever return. Her family intended her for a new marriage in Venice. This time they expected her to remain where they sent her. Her new husband would be another older man. He would want children from her even if he already had them, if for no other reason than to prove he was still virile. She would live her life in a palazzo on a canal, traveling by her own personal gondola wherever she went. It might suit some women. It didn’t suit her. Bianca wanted mo
re than the security of a rich husband and a gondola.

  “Like me,” Orianna said to her eldest daughter, “you dislike being closed in as we are here in Florence. That is why you loved Luce Stellare so much. You liked the sea, and you liked the openness of it all. Venice is like that. It is an open city of blue water and blue skies. Except, of course, in the winter months when it is rainy, gray, and chill,” she amended. “Still I know you will like it there,” she continued. “And you will probably have Francesca for a lifelong companion. Your grandfather adores her, and I doubt I can make a marriage for her elsewhere because of that. I will have two daughters in Venice.”

  “For a time, perhaps,” Bianca said. “But Amir will come for me, Madre, and when he does, I will go with him.”

  “Nonsense!” her mother responded. “You will marry into a fine, noble family and be happy, Bianca. Your prince is gone, and he will not return.”

  “I am not like you, Madre,” Bianca said to her mother. “I will not spend my life longing for a man I cannot have while wed to another.”

  “You are impossible!” Orianna said, irritated. “I wish your grandfather good luck with you, Bianca. Be aware that he is not a gentle man. If you anger him he will not hesitate to whip you himself. Mayhap you need the stubbornness beaten out of you. I do not know what happened to the sweet and gentle girl you once were.”

  Bianca laughed, and the sound was a harsh one. “You forced me into marriage with Sebastiano Rovere, Madre. I would have died had I remained sweet and gentle. To survive that monster I learned to be hard and resourceful. But do not fear. I will go willingly to Venice if only to escape the confines of this city, and you, Madre.”

  “It cannot be soon enough for me,” Orianna said angrily.

  Giovanni Pietro d’Angelo had decided to have his two older sons, Marco and Georgio, escort their sister to Venice. He did not choose to leave his business, and besides, Marco needed to see the great commercial port that Venice was, for the bolts of silk that were his trade came through there. That was what had brought Giovanni Pietro to Venice all those years ago when he first saw the woman he would marry. His father had sent him for the same purpose, to learn all about the shipping trade.

  They departed Florence on a winter’s morning in a large caravan containing all of Bianca’s worldly goods along with lavish gifts for Giovanni’s father-in-law, who would now take charge of another of his daughters. They would travel through Bologna, and then across the small duchy of Ferrara before entering the territory belonging to Venice. Padua would be the last city they visited before reaching Venice itself. Because they were encumbered with a baggage train it would take a few weeks before they reached their final destination.

  The weather was cold. And not all days were sunny. If there were no inns or religious houses in which to shelter, a group of pavilions was set up, each with a charcoal brazier for heat. They were uncomfortable at best, and freezing at worst. Bianca wondered whether her hands, her feet, and her face would ever be warm again. The wind from the north was biting most days no matter the direction in which they traveled. They rode huddled over their horses, shrinking deep into their fur-lined cloaks and attempting to avoid the damp cold that seemed inescapable.

  Bianca eagerly looked forward to the two cities through which they would pass.

  At least there they stayed in warm inns and ate hot food before they had to take up their journey once more in the winter weather. Perhaps if she had been nicer to her mother, Bianca considered at one point, her parents would have waited until spring for her to make this trip.

  But then the land began to fall away, and the road they traveled was flat and there was water to be seen all about them as the coast with its many islands began to be revealed. In the distance they suddenly saw golden domes and towers springing up.

  There was an almost magical and mystical look to it.

  “Venice,” said the local guide, who had joined them in Padua, pointing.

  Chapter 11

  Finally they could go no farther by land. They reached a place where there were barges waiting to be hired to take the baggage carts and the horses along with the men-at-arms who had traveled with them into the city. The three siblings and Agata were settled in a large gondola that would ferry them to their grandfather’s palazzo.

  “Prince Venier?” the gondolier said. “Yes! Yes! I know his palazzo.” He pushed off from the quay. “Are you Veniers? Have you come from the estates on Kythira or Crete? Have you ever been to Venice before?” He was very curious.

  “We are Prince Venier’s grandchildren from Florence,” Marco answered the gondolier. “I am called Marco, my brother is Georgio, and our sister is Bianca.”

  “Marco Venier! A famous name here in Venice, signore. Once there was even a Venier who was doge.” The gondolier chattered on. “And it was a Marco who took the island of Kythira when Byzantium was taught its lesson in humility by the great Doge Dandolo. Of course it was only right that the Veniers take Kythira, for it is said to be the birthplace of the ancient goddess Venus, and the Veniers are direct descendants of Venus. That is why all its women are so beautiful, as your sister here. I have even caught a glimpse of the prince’s other granddaughter, a glorious young maiden with red-blond hair, and a face to rival Helen of Troy!”

  “Our little sister,” Marco replied drily.

  Bianca chuckled from her place between her two brothers. Francesca with a face to rival an ancient heroine? “She has obviously changed in the years since I’ve seen her,” Bianca murmured, and her brothers snickered. “I recall a nosy urchin, nothing more.”

  The gondola glided swiftly over the water, entering a wide and busy waterway.

  “The Grand Canal,” the gondolier announced, a certain pride in his voice.

  They were surrounded by boats of every kind everywhere, for Venice was a great port city. There were merchant vessels, boats carrying animals, boats carrying produce and other goods. Some sold their goods from their boats. Bianca gasped as a large warship called a galleass slid by them. Through the oar ports, she could actually see the several tiers of galley slaves who rowed the vessel. She shuddered. What a terrible fate for a man to find himself in the galleys, she thought. She noticed that her two brothers were oddly silent too. One of the dangers of traveling by sea for men was the possibility of being captured by pirates and sold into the galleys.

  Now the canal was lined with great palazzos, and Bianca waited for the gondolier to pull their vessel into one of the small stone quays, but he did not.

  “Prince Venier does not own one of these palazzos?” Marco asked, curious.

  “Oh no, signore,” the gondolier replied. “Those palazzos are owned by the great merchants of the city. You will note that each has its own dockage. It is for their vessels so they may unload their cargo into the main floor of the palazzo. The families live above. Your grandfather’s home is in a more private setting.”

  “You have a district for your nobility?” Marco inquired.

  “Oh no, sir. Here in Venice the rich and the poor and those in between live next to one another. Like your Florence, Venice is a republic.” Then the gondolier turned his attention to his vessel, steering it into a smaller canal. From their boat they could see houses, some large, some small, and here and there a palazzo. At the end of the canal their gondolier pulled into a small dock. As he did so, a liveried servant appeared to help the gondola’s expected occupants out.

  “Welcome! Welcome to Palazzo Venier,” he greeted them, smiling broadly. “Your grandfather and your sister await you if you will follow me.” He flipped the gondolier a large silver coin. “With the prince’s thanks. The baggage train?”

  “Not far behind,” the gondolier replied as he pushed off. He would have lots of gossip now to share with the other gondoliers, and the city of Venice lived on gossip. Old Prince Venier was one of their most disti
nguished citizens. The arrival of three more of his grandchildren, the talk of a marriage he had overheard his passengers discussing—it was all too delicious, and might even earn him a cup of wine from one of the satin-garbed gossips in Piazza San Marco.

  The liveried servant led them into the palazzo, but before Bianca might even look about her she found herself in a large airy salon in the presence of an elegant white-haired gentleman who looked very much like her mother.

  “Welcome to Venice,” he greeted them. “I am Alessandro Venier, your grandfather.”

  Bianca curtsied politely as her two brothers bowed to the prince.

  “I am Marco,” her elder sibling told their host.

  “Named after the patron saint of our great city,” their grandfather replied. “Your mother promised me when she left Venice with your father that she would name her firstborn son Marco. I am happy she kept her promise to me.”

  “This is Georgio, my next brother,” Marco introduced the younger man.

  “How old are you both?” their grandfather inquired.

  “I am nineteen,” Marco answered him, “and Georgio is sixteen, signore.”

  “You are neither of you yet married?” his grandfather wanted to know.

  “No, signore,” Marco said.

  “Hmmm,” his grandfather replied. “You are your father’s heir?”

  “Yes, signore, I am. I came to Venice so that Bianca might have a proper escort, and so I might learn a bit of the shipping trade here in your city,” Marco explained. “Georgio and I will return with our hired soldiers to Florence shortly.”

  “I see,” Alessandro Venier answered. He turned his head now, saying, “You will be Bianca, of course. Remove your hood so I may see you, granddaughter.”

  Bianca undid her cloak, letting Agata take it. Then she turned and looked at him.