Mutiny

by Julian Stockwin

  They clambered into the forward well and settled. “Dorsoduro,’ Renzi said briefly, eyes on the colorful, bustling shore ahead. “And this, my friend, is the Grand Canal.”

  It was impossible not to be moved by the unique atmosphere of Venice—a true city of the water. Every building seemed to grow straight up from its watery origins with not an inch of wasted space. Instead of roads there were countless canals along which the commerce of the city progressed in watercraft of every kind in a ceaseless flow on the jade-green waters.

  They passed deeper into the Grand Canal, seeing the mansions of the rich, each with a cluster of gaily colored poles outside, an occasional market, throngs of people going about their business.

  A bend straightened, and into view came a bridge, a marvelous marble edifice complete with galleried buildings all along its length. “The Rialto,” said Renzi. “You will, of course, now be recalling Shakespeare and his Merchant of Venice”

  The workboat glided up to a landing platform short of the bridge, and they stepped out into the city-state of Venice. “La Repubblica Serenissima,” breathed Renzi. They were on the left bank with its fish markets, peddlers in sashes and pointed shoes, peasant women in brightly colored skirts with pails of water on yokes, shopkeepers yawning as they arranged their cheeses, porters trundling kegs of salted sardines, all adding to the tumult with their florid Venetian dialect.

  Amati wasted no time. “Follow!” he demanded, and plunged into the crowd. They fell in behind, their rapid pace taking them into a maze of alleyways between many-colored buildings until they came on a dark and heady-smelling tavern. In the rank gloom was a scattering of foreigners, hard-looking Armenians, Jews, unidentifiable eastern races. The chatter died and faces turned toward them as they slid onto benches at: a corner table.

  “Da mi quattro Malvasie,” Amati snapped to a waiter. “Sir, you stays here—please,” he told Griffith in a whisper.

  “Where are you going?” Griffith asked suspiciously.

  “The consul, Signor Dandolo, he will come soon. I—I must go to my family, they expec’ me.” His eyes flicked about nervously as he spoke.

  Kydd glanced across at the heavy Swede, whose set face gave away nothing. Renzi looked subdued. “He don’t want to be seen wi’ us,” Kydd murmured, only too aware that they were unarmed. Griffith looked troubled.

  “We are enjoying a visit to a furatole,” Renzi said, with a wry smile, “a species of chophouse, this one frequented by despised foreigners. Eminently suitable as a rendezvous, I would have thought.”

  Four earthenware pots of coarse wine arrived, a little later fish soup. The sailors tucked in, but the penetrating strength of the anchovy stock dismayed them. Only Renzi finished his bowl, with every evidence of satisfaction. Hard bread was all that was on offer afterward.

  Short and stout, but with dark, intelligent eyes and a quick manner, Dandolo arrived. He was dressed in flamboyant reds and greens, and he quickly got down to business. “Signor L’ith ha’ still not arrive. You must stay how long, one, two week? Then I mus’ find some lodging.” His eyes narrowed. “You have money?”

  Griffith brought a small purse into view and placed it on the table. It clinked heavily. “Guineas,” he said, but kept his hand over it.

  Dandolo kept it fixed with his keen eyes. “This Buonaparte is too lucky, he win too fast. All Friuli is in danger of him. There are some ’oo say Venice is too old to keep ’er empire, others, it frighten trade, threaten th’ old ways. The Doge is weak and fear the Council of Ten—but now I must fin’ you somewheres.”

  Pausing only for a moment, he turned to Griffith. “Sir, you will come wi’ me to the Palazzo Grimani. The marinaio, they go to San Polo side—”

  “Una camera vicino alla Galle della Donzella, forse?” Renzi interrupted, with a twisted smile.

  “Si.” Dandolo looked sharply at him. “With the foreign sailor. You know this place?”

  “Yes.” There were amazed looks from the other Englishmen, the sort of admiration reserved for those who had learned something of a foreign language.

  “Y’r Grand Tour—ye must have had a whale of a time!” Kydd chuckled.

  Renzi grinned shamefacedly. “We stayed at the Leon Banco, on San Marco side. It was considered a dare to spend a night with … on San Polo side …”

  Griffith had been as strict as the circumstances allowed. Renzi, as master’s mate, was placed in charge, and they occupied the top floor of a doss-house for merchant seamen, a single dark room with rag palliasses and a scatter of chairs and tables.

  Wrinkling his nose at the smell, Kydd crossed to one of the mattresses, threw aside the cover and brought down his fist in the center. He inspected the result: several black dots that moved. He wouldn’t be sleeping there that night. Renzi’s face was a picture of disgust. Below in the tavern a rowdy dice game was already in progress, a swirl of careless noise that would make sleep impossible.

  “So …” began Kydd. Larsson kicked aside some palliasses to make a clear area, then dragged up a table and three chairs.

  They looked at each other. “Sir Alastair might come at any time.” Renzi’s words were not convincing, and Kydd detected a wariness.

  “Aye, but must we stay in—this?” he asked.

  All eyes turned back to Renzi. He cleared his throat, and folded his arms. “The French are near.”

  Kydd sat back. Renzi was now going to make things clear.

  “Venice is a very old, proud and independent republic, and she has no quarrel with revolutionary France. In the legal sense, therefore, we have as Englishmen a perfect right to be here, no need for disguise, dissembling.” He pondered for an instant. “However, it would make sense not to embarrass the authorities if they must deny knowledge of the presence of English citizens to the French. I rather think our best course would be to lie low and see what happens. We must make the best of our circumstances, therefore.”

  “We stay.”

  “We must.” There was a heavy silence.

  “Why is th’ agent, Amati, s’ skittish, then?”

  “Here we have an ancient and well-worn rule of government that is unique to this place. There are no kings, rather they elect one who should rule over them—the Doge. The first one over a thousand years ago, in fact. And there are nobles, those whose names are inscribed in the Golden Book of the Republic, and honored above all.” He paused. “But the real power lies at the palace in the hands of the Council of Ten, who have supreme authority over life and death. They rule in secrecy—any who is denounced risks a miserable end in the Doge’s prison. This, perhaps, is the source of his terror.” Renzi continued: “But on the other hand, even while we are here in durance vile, there are at this moment—and not so very far from here—rich and idle ladies who think nothing of waking at noon, supping chocolate and playing with their lapdogs.” He smiled at his shipmates’ varied expressions and went on, “Should you desire—and have the fee—you may choose from a catalogue your courtesan for her skills and price.”

  Talk of this soon palled. The contrast with their present situation was too great.

  Almost apologetically, Renzi tried to change tack. “In Venice gambling is a form of art. Should there be a pack of cards, and as we have time on our hands I would be glad to introduce you to vingt-et-un, perhaps, or …”

  Time dragged. A noon meal in the smoke-blackened furatole did not improve the outlook of the three seamen.

  Back in the room, Larsson’s expression faded to an enduring blankness, and Renzi’s features darkened with frustration. Many times he went to the grimy window and stared out over the rooftops.

  “I needs a grog,” grunted Larsson, challenging Renzi with a glower.

  Renzi didn’t answer for a time. Then, suddenly, he stood up. “Yes. Below.” He left the room abruptly, without his coat.

  Kydd jumped up and followed, tumbling down the stairway. “Garba!” he heard Renzi shout. It was rough brandy and water; Kydd had no real desire for it, and was unsettled by Re
nzi’s deep pull at his pot.

  The third round of drink came. In a low, measured tone, Renzi spat vehemently, “Diavolo!” The others looked at him. “This is Venice!”

  “Aye, and so?” Kydd asked.

  Renzi glared at him. “When last I was here …” He stopped. His knuckles showed white as he gripped the stone drinking vessel. Then he got to his feet in a sudden clumsy move that sent Kydd’s pot smashing to the floor. Curious eyes flickered from other tables.

  “I’m going out!” Renzi said thickly. “T’ breathe some o’ the air of Venice. Are you with me?”

  “An’ what about Leith?” Kydd wanted to know.

  A quick smile. “Taken by the French long ago,” Renzi said contemptuously. “How can he get through a whole army to us here? No chance. We make our time here as bearable as we can. Are you coming?”

  Kydd saw that something serious had affected his friend, and resolved to stay by him. “I’ll come, Nicholas.” Larsson merely shook his head.

  The evening, drawing in, had a spring coolness, but this did not deter the swelling numbers joining the hurrying tradesmen, market porters and domestics concluding their working day. An outrageously sequined and powdered harlequin stumbled by, well taken in drink, and an apparition emerged from the shadows wearing a cruel bird’s-head mask and flowing blue cape. It trod softly, a thinly disguised Dulcinea on its arm in a red silk swirling cape and a glittering mask.

  It was dreamlike and disturbing. No one took any notice of the grotesquerie in their midst. A group of masked revelers turned the corner, laughing and singing to the discordant accompaniment of timbrel and tambourine.

  Kydd stood rooted in astonishment. “Is this—”

  “Carnivale!” cackled Renzi harshly “The world is aflame, and all they think of is carnival!”

  A couple passed, exchanging kisses, elaborate coquetry with their masks doing little to conceal the naked sensuousness of their acts. Renzi stopped, staring after them. “But who then is to say—in all logic, for God’s sake—that they are the ones with the perverted sense of the fitness of things, their perspectives malformed, their humanity at question?”

  He breathed heavily, watching a figure in a russet cloak approach. The man’s mask had slipped, exposing his foolish, inebriated grin as he staggered toward them. Renzi tensed. The figure bent double against a wall and Renzi darted across and toppled him over.

  “Carnivale!” he howled triumphantly, tore away the cloak and snatched up the ivory mask. “Se non ha alcunio obiezione,” he threw at the fallen form.

  Kydd was appalled. “Nicholas, you—you—” But Renzi had thrown the cloak around himself, and pushed forcefully ahead, predatory eyes agleam through the cruel saturnalian mask.

  Kydd hurried after him, helpless in the face of the unknown demons that possessed his friend. The narrow maze of streets now looked sinister, threatening. Renzi plunged on. A small humped bridge appeared ahead, spanning a canal. The blaze of a link torch carried by a servant preceded a decorous, well-dressed group, which scattered at Renzi’s advance.

  They were soon in an ancient square with a dusky red church facing them. Light showed in its high windows. As they thrust across, music swelled from it. Renzi faltered, then stopped. It was a choral piece, the melodic line exquisitely sustained by a faultless choir, the counterpoint in muted trumpet and strings a meltingly lovely intertwining of harmonies.

  Kydd stopped, too, as the music entered his soul. Within those moments came a dawning realization that there were regions of the human experience above the grossness of existence and beyond the capability of the world to corrupt and destroy.

  He turned to Renzi, but his friend was lost, staring at the church, rigid. Kydd tried to find some words but, suddenly, Renzi crumpled to his knees. The mask fell and Kydd saw his face distort and tears course down.

  “N-Nicholas—” He struggled to reach out. Around them the people of Venice bustled with hardly a glance, the harlequins, falcons and the rest in a blur of color and impressions, and all the time the cool passion of the music.

  Kydd tried to help Renzi up, but he pulled himself free and shot to his feet.

  “Nicholas—”

  Renzi rounded on him, his face livid. “Damn you!” he shouted. “Damn you to hell!” His voice broke with the passion of his words.

  “M’ friend, I only—”

  Renzi’s savage swing took Kydd squarely, and he was thrown to one side. He shook his head to clear it, but when he was able to see, there was no sign of Renzi.

  CHAPTER 4

  Images streamed past Renzi, as bittersweet memories flooded back. He pushed past the gay troubadours, weary craftsmen, giggling couples, bored gondoliers—on and on into the Venetian night. His thoughts steadied, coalesced. For someone whose pride disallowed a display of emotion, his sudden loss of control in the square was disturbing and frightening.

  His frenetic pacing calmed and he took note of his surroundings. He was heading in the direction of the dark rabbit warrens around Santa Croce and turned to retrace his steps. Then, recalling the soaring beauty of the Vivaldi that had so unfairly got under his guard, he stopped, confused. In truth, he could not go back—or forward.

  A memory of what had been returned in full flower. The more he considered it, the more he yearned for her, the calm certitude and steel-cored passion he remembered from before. He had to go to her.

  Lucrezia Carradini was married, but that was not of concern before and would not be now; in the Venetian way it was a matter of comment if a lady did not have at least one lover. He racked his brain to recall her whereabouts—yes, it was somewhere near the Palazzo Farsetti on San Marco side.

  With rising excitement he made his way to the Grand Canal, taking an indolent gondola trip, then stepping feverishly through the night until he found himself before the Palazzo Carradini. He remembered the ogling brass-mouth knocker, but not the servant who answered the door.

  “Il giramondo,” he said, as his name—“the wanderer.” Would she remember?

  Footsteps came to the door. He raised his mask. It opened slowly, and there was a woman before him, in red velvet and a mask. Renzi saw the glitter of dark eyes behind the mask, then it dropped to reveal a delighted Lucrezia. Her vivacity and Italianate presence were just as he remembered. “Niccolò—mió caro Niccolò!” she screamed, and clung to him, her warmth and fragrance intoxicating. He thrust back guilt at the memory of how he had treated her and allowed himself to be drawn into the house.

  In the opulence of the chamber she eyed him keenly. “You—you ’ave changed, Niccolò,” she said softly. “An’ where Guglielmo?”

  It were better that his wild companion of the Grand Tour be allowed to live down those days in anonymity, Renzi decided. He was now one of England’s most celebrated new poets. “Um, married,” he said. “Lucrezia, I—” A flood of inchoate feelings and unresolved doubts roared through his head.

  She looked at him intently. “You’re still the crazy one, Niccolò—and now you come?”

  “If it does not inconvenience,” he said.

  Little more than a child before, she had now firmed to a woman of grace and looks, and was just as much in possession of her own soul.

  “Niccolò … it is Carnivale, not’s good to have heavy thoughts now, carissimi nonni.” A shadow passed over her face. Then she said impulsively, “Come, we shall ’ave chocolate at Florian’s.”

  “But, Carlo—”

  “It is Carnivale. I don’ know where he is,” she said impatiently. “We go in th’ gondola Carradini.”

  The family gondola waited by the small landing platform at the water frontage of the house, varnished black with a shuttered cabin in the center. Renzi allowed himself to be handed aboard and the two gondoliers took position noiselessly, gazing discreetly into the middle distance.

  Renzi and Lucrezia settled into the cushions of the closed cabin; her features softened to a tender loveliness by the little lamp. The craft pushed off with a gentle sway.
Firmly, she reached across and pulled the louvered shutters closed, and then, just as purposefully, drew him to her.

  They stepped ashore arm in arm into the magnificence of St. Mark’s Square, alive with excitement and color, light and sequins, noise and mystery. There was an electric charge in the air, a feverish intensity that battered deliciously at the senses. They passed by the looming campanile into the arched colonnades of the square, Renzi’s spirits willingly responding to the vibrancy of the atmosphere.

  Caffè Florian had, if anything, increased in splendor. Outrageously clothed exquisites bowed to each other under glittering chandeliers hanging from polished wood paneling, their subdued voices occasionally broken through with silvery laughter. Renzi and Lucrezia sat together in a red padded alcove.

  “Questo mi piace,” Renzi breathed, but Lucrezia held her silence until the chocolate came.

  Renzi did his best to pull himself together. “Tell me, what of this Buonaparte? Does he threaten Venice, do you think?”

  She went rigid. He could see her eyes darting furtively behind the mask, scanning the room. “Niccolò—pliss, never say again!” She lowered her mask so he could see her seriousness. “Venezia, it is not like you remember. It is dangerous times now, ver’ dangerous!” He could hardly hear her soft words, and bent forward. She smiled, popped a sweetmeat into his mouth, and continued in a whisper, affecting to impart endearments. “The Council of Ten have th’ Inquisition, an army of spies, look everywhere for th’ Jacobin.” Renzi could sense her tension behind the gay smile. “Ever’where—you never know who.”

  She slid toward him, close enough that her words could not be intercepted. “Carlo, he brings wine from Friuli, he says French are all over nort’ Italy like locust, nothing can stop them, not even th’ Austrians.” Staring at her drink, she went on, “Montenotte, Lodi—that Buonaparte, he will not be contented with this. And he advance ver’ fast—an’ all the Veneziani think to do is more spies—and Carnivale!”