by Martin Seay
Seventeen years have passed since plague last came to the city. Although he was in Constantinople at the time, Crivano knows the last one was very bad: a quarter of the population dead, including what remained of his own family, those lucky few who escaped Cyprus ahead of the sultan’s troops. The memory of pestilence still lies across every street and every campo here like an unseen scar. At carnival time, when order is suspended, this fellow’s costume might simply be in horrific taste; during the Sensa it’s unthinkable. Or perhaps this is yet another theatrical provocation. Crivano scans the crowd, alert for the arrival of more players, but nothing moves: everyone else in the campo is frozen in place, shrunken into themselves like sea anemones at low tide.
When he turns forward again, the plaguedoctor is almost upon him. Crivano sidesteps to clear the figure’s path, but the figure tracks him, closing the distance with slow steady paces like a terror in a dream. Wisps of burning asafetida rise from its vented beak; a slim ash wand dangles from its gloved right hand. Its robe is splashed with dark fluids, dried in the creases: what might be bile, what might be blood.
A few feet from him the figure stops abruptly, silent and statue-still. Crivano stares hard at the beaked mask’s eyeholes, but they’re unscry-able, capped by blown-glass hemispheres. His worn nerves tighten like a springline in a gale.
He’s about to issue a challenge when, with a liquid motion swifter than a blink, the figure lays its wand alongside his neck. The tip rests against Crivano’s bare skin just above his ruff, as if to measure his pulse. He springs back, swats the wand away with his own stick, then slides his fingers down its shaft and swings it hard with both hands, axing the heavy silver knob downward at the figure’s clavicle.
The walkingstick bites only air; Crivano stumbles to keep his feet. As he’s rising again, the wand flicks his wrist, and his stick falls to the pavement. Crivano’s hands are up instantly, guarding his face. He’s calm, almost relieved to be in proper combat again. Flattening his gaze to hide his intentions. Figuring distances: the stick on the pavement, the stiletto in his boot. Kill the bastard, dottore! hisses a voice from the crowd. The plaguedoctor faces him, open-armed, motionless.
Crivano moves. He lunges, feigns a jab, rolls the stick behind him with the ball of his foot. Then he steps back, gets his toe under the rolling knob, and pops it into his hand. It’s a beautiful move—he’s very pleased with it—and when he lifts the stick to try another strike, the plaguedoctor is gone.
Its black shape is already halfway to the Street of the Casters, in no evident hurry, making easy strides. So quick it seemed weightless. Its turn like the pivot of a bird-rattle on the wind. Still in his attack stance, his walkingstick aloft and at the ready, Crivano looks, he realizes, somewhat ridiculous. He straightens up, adjusts his garments, plants his ferrule on the stones with a decisive click.
The campo is emptying. People avoid his eyes, embarrassed for him, or for themselves, he can’t be sure which. A water-vendor appears at his side with a ladle; Crivano gratefully drinks. That whoreson was smart to run off when he did, dottore, the man says without conviction. You’d have thrashed him.
Do you know who that was? Crivano asks between gulps.
The water-vendor shrugs, eager to move along. Someone with no goddamned decency, I suppose, he says. Probably from the mainland.
Crivano hands back the scoop. I’m a stranger to your city, my friend, he says. Tell me, the costume that blackguard was wearing. Is it commonly seen here?
Not lately, dottore, the water-vendor says, and crosses himself. Not lately.
27
A shaft of orange sunlight splits the room like a blade, and a noise that Crivano takes at first for hoofbeats resolves into a steady pounding at the door. He springs naked from bed and has his hand on the bolt before he remembers the regimental emblems that mark his skin. Yes, he calls. I’ll be with you in a moment.
The knocking stops. He unhooks his shirt from its peg, shrugs into it, and surveys the room as he pulls on his hose. Before lying down—just for a moment, to rest his eyes—he’d been working at the table; the report to Narkis is still there, along with the polished wooden grille which encoded it. Crivano hides the grille under the paper, then opens the door.
Anzolo, the proprietor of the White Eagle, waits in the hallway, studying the framed woodcut on the opposite wall. He turns with a ready expression, as if mildly surprised, as if Crivano has emerged quite by chance. Ah, he says. Good day, dottore.
What is it, Anzolo?
I’m sorry to disturb you, dottore. Dottore Tristão de Nis is downstairs, and he wishes to speak with you. He says that you are expecting him.
Anzolo is a very good innkeeper—he has an imperturbable ease any courtier would admire—but now a shade of doubt haunts his manner, an uncertainty regarding protocol. Doubts of this sort follow Tristão as birds follow cattle.
Yes, Crivano says. I’ll be a short while. Please give Dottore de Nis my apologies for the delay, and see to his comfort. We’ll take supper in the parlor.
When Anzolo is gone, Crivano bolts the door again and takes a moment to collect his thoughts. He’d been enmeshed in vivid dreams, and they slip from him now in an indistinct rush: fragments in the midst of fragments, like the mirrored passage in the Piazza. His mother and young sister on the Redeemer’s white steps, milk-eyed and smiling, dead of the plague. His father and older brothers, bloodied and proud at the Famagusta Gate, offering him a robe fashioned from his own skin. Crivano wonders what these dreams augur for the success of his mission, and why they fail to disturb him.
He retrieves the wooden grille from the table and tips back the lid of his massive walnut trunk. Jostling items aside—spare shirts and hose, heavy boots and rainwear, his rapier and the new snaplock pistol he purchased in Ravenna—he uncovers his books. Beneath these is a spring-loaded panel that conceals a shallow compartment, and Crivano opens this to put the grille inside. Then he replaces his belongings and closes the trunk. The brass key scrapes between the wards; the lock clicks.
As he’s draping the key from his neck by its leather thong, he remembers the plaguedoctor. He lowers his wrist into the sunbeam to inspect the skin where the ash wand struck it, but he finds no rawness there, no bruise. The inevitable notion arises— was that too a dream?—but Crivano swiftly stifles it. He flexes his fingers, noting the smooth glide of tendons under skin, and returns to his task.
On the floor beside the trunk is his box of physic; from it, he withdraws a square of white linen, and a narrow ceramic jar stoppered by a wide cork. The jar is half-full of dried ragwort root; Crivano shakes this onto the linen, ties it into a bundle, and puts the bundle back in the box. Then he rolls his report to Narkis into a narrow tube, drops the tube into the jar, and stoppers it again.
The bells of San Aponal are ringing the hour, a few long breaths out of phase with the bells of San Silvestro farther south: Crivano counts twenty-three. He combs his hair, slicks the prongs of his beard, and dons his boots and doublet and black robe. A corner of curtain is trapped in the double window in the eastern wall; Crivano opens the sash for an instant to let the curtain fall plumb, and the ray of sunlight vanishes. Then he takes up his jar and Serena’s sealed letter, lifts his stick from its corner, and walks downstairs.
The White Eagle is quieter this evening than he’d anticipated. Most locande in the Rialto are double- or triple-booked for the duration of the Sensa, but Anzolo has been cautious not to let occupancy exceed what his eight servants can manage. The inn is expensive, especially for a room to oneself, but worth it. Narkis suggested the place. Crivano wonders how he learned of it, since the law forbids him from ever spending a night here.
Nearly all the tables in the parlor are occupied. Crivano recognizes most of the lodgers from previous meals: two fat merchants from Frankfurt struggling to parse the mumblings of a one-eyed galley captain, Bohemian pilgrims studying a map of Jerusalem with madness simmering in their eyes, a pair of shabby young nobles from Savoy pointedly
ignoring a second pair of shabby young nobles from Milan.
In the middle of the room sits Tristão. He’s absorbed in an octavo that he holds in his left palm; his right hand makes an automatic circuit—flipping a page, plucking a nut from a dish, bringing wine to his lips, flipping another page—as if it’s a separate creature, a helpful imp. Crivano approaches, hesitates, clears his throat.
Tristão blinks and shakes his head, his eyes unfocused, as if the book won’t relinquish its hold on him. Then he looks up with a broad smile and a sigh of pleasure. Doctor Crivanus, he says, rising for an embrace. You demonstrate great kindness by your willingness to see me.
They speak Latin, as is their custom. Tristão’s speech is by turns stilted and poetic and urbane, a Latin learned from books, far removed from the bland efficiency of Crivano’s university argot. Of the three languages they share, it’s the one in which Tristão is most comfortable. In this room it also affords a measure of privacy.
May I ask how fares Senator Contarini? Tristão says, sinking into his chair. Does insomnia still prolong his nights?
I haven’t spoken with the senator of late. I’m to call on him tomorrow. I’ll pass along your good wishes.
I am grateful for your doing so. You prescribed him cowslip, I suppose?
Cowslip wine, Crivano says. Given his age and his temperament, I thought it best. What’s that you’re reading, Tristão?
Tristão averts his eyes, flashes a sheepish grin. His teeth are lead-white, improbably straight. Oh, this? he says, caressing the octavo. This is the Nolan.
The Nolan?
Tristão opens his mouth, looks up, and closes it again, pushing the book across the tabletop instead.
One of Anzolo’s Friulian serving-girls has emerged from the kitchen, bearing sweet white wine from Sopron. Before Crivano’s cup is full, a second girl arrives with food: tiny artichokes, rice porridge, Lombardy quail stuffed with mincemeat. The girls giggle and blush whenever they meet Tristão’s gaze, then hasten away. Oh! Tristão says, fanning steam toward his face with dove-wing hands. Oh oh oh!
Crivano smiles. Tristão is a caricature of masculine beauty: ample curly hair, dark eyes with feathery lashes, smooth skin the color of old brandy. A skilled physician much favored by the city’s patricians, he’d long since have married into the nobility were it not for his peculiar circumstances. He’s a converso, Contarini explained. From Portugal. Like all Portuguese, he’s assumed at best to be a hypocrite Jew, at worst an atheist and a spy for the Sultan. I will introduce you to him, of course—no doubt you share many interests—but I must urge you to be cautious in your dealings with him. He is an ingenious man, and kind, but not always prudent.
They say a brief prayer and cross themselves. As Tristão pulls apart his bird, Crivano opens the book to the title page. de triplici minimo et mensura, it reads. Flipping ahead reveals a long philosophical poem—an imitation of Lucretius, inventive if lacking in grace—and then a page of geometric figures: circles and stars ornamented by flowers and leaves and honeycombs, obvious magical sigils. Crivano shuts the book hurriedly, slides it back to Tristão. So, he says. The Nolan.
A Dominican friar, Tristão says between bites, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. Long since expelled by his order. For intemperance, and for promulgating heterodox notions.
Such as?
Anti-Aristotelian notions. Heliocentricity. The wisdom of the antique Egyptians. The existence of infinite worlds. It is perhaps best not to speak of these matters here.
Tristão puts a bit of quail in his mouth, moves his jaw, puts his fingers to his lips and withdraws a pair of clean bones. The Nolan, he says, has been for many years peregrine in the courts of Christendom. Prague with Rudolf II, England with Elizabeth, Paris with unlucky Henri III. Searching for a philosopher-king. A monarch receptive to his instruction.
Where is he now?
He is here. He is a guest in the house of Lord Iovanus Mocenigus, where he has undertaken to teach Lord Mocenigus the art of memory, as practiced by the learned orators of the ancient world. That is why I am reading his book.
So this Nolan is a rhetorician as well?
Oh no, Tristão says, arranging bones on his plate. Not a rhetorician. He follows Thomas Aquinas in prescribing the art as a tool for reminiscence and devotion. But he goes much further, I think, than Aquinas would countenance.
Crivano furrows his brow, sips his wine. Mocenigo, he says. Zuanne Mocenigo? He’s with the Doge’s faction, isn’t he?
As I understand it, Lord Mocenigus does tend to favor Spain and the pope in matters of state.
But if the Nolan is, as you say, involved in the pursuit of secret knowledge, isn’t he unwise to have commerce with such a man?
Tristão shrugs. I would think so, he says. But perhaps what you or I regard as unwise the Nolan understands as fundamental to his project. Perhaps the Nolan believes that the new pope will be receptive to his teachings. And perhaps this is not impossible. After all, Picus Mirandulanus himself enjoyed the patronage of a pope.
Pico had the patronage of Alexander VI, Crivano says. Hardly a representative case. Is that what the Nolan advocates? A return to the age of the Borgias?
You can ask him yourself, if you like. Tomorrow evening he is to address the assembly of the Uranian Academy, and, as always, my patrons the Lords Morosini are to play host to the proceedings. They have asked me to extend to you an invitation on their behalf. These Uranici are powerful men, Vettor. Your presence among them would be greatly valued. I believe they hold the future of the Republic in their hands.
Crivano takes a spoonful of rice porridge—rich with beef broth and mushrooms—and chews it slowly, trying to imagine what Narkis would have him do. Recalling Ravenna, five months ago, the last time they spoke freely in person. The best way to conceal a conspiracy, Tarjuman effendi, is to cloak it in a lesser conspiracy. They met in a quiet tavern down the street from the old Arian cathedral. Narkis looked strong and self-satisfied, anything but diminished in his turban and simple caftan. Place yourself in danger. Give the authorities something to discover. You become like the gecko who drops his tail.
This, he gathers, is why Narkis directed him to seek out Tristão in the first place: to find a lesser conspiracy in which to cloak himself. And true enough, Tristão has been conveniently swift to enlist Crivano as his respectable envoy to the Murano glassworkers. His peculiar commission—suspect enough to interest the Inquisition, but far milder than the unambiguous treason of Crivano’s actual undertaking—has been a perfect blind, supplying a tailored pretext for furtive encounters with Verzelin and Serena. So perfect, in fact, that Crivano doubts Fortune delivered it without earthly assistance. He still has no sense of how much Tristão knows of his real purpose here.
I am greatly honored to accept your hosts’ invitation, Crivano says.
One of the Friulian girls arrives with a dish of candied lemonpeel and clears away their tableware; Tristão stops her with a light touch, leans close, and praises the meal in a heartfelt whisper. The girl’s lips purse, her eyelids flutter, and Crivano notices the plate in her white-knuckled hand: in it, the reassembled skeleton of Tristão’s devoured quail, a split artichoke scale substituted for its absent skull.
Oh, Vettor, Tristão says as they rise to leave—as if he’s just now remembered this, as if it were not the very purpose of their meeting today—how went your visit to Murano?
It was fruitful, Crivano says. I met with the glassmaker, who is prepared to begin work on the frame.
And what of the mirror itself?
Crivano keeps his eyes low—his walkingstick, his jar—betraying nothing. I saw the mirrormaker briefly, he says. The mirror is finished. The glassmaker has it now.
How does it look?
The question carries an undertone of anxiety, audible though unvoiced, like the drone-strings of a robab. Crivano smiles evenly. It’s perfect, he says.
He slips Serena’s sealed message to Tristão as they pass through the White Eagle’s fo
yer onto the darkening street. Perfect? Tristão says, tucking it into his own doublet. You are quite certain of this?
The glassmaker said it might be too perfect.
I do not think I understand you, Vettor. What does this mean, too perfect?
He says clear glass is susceptible to moisture. It might not last long.
Tristão’s face clouds. Its expression is nearer to confusion than distress, as if it meets impediments so rarely that it’s slow to recognize them. Then it breaks into its customary radiant grin. Ah, my friend, Tristão says. This is no great concern. After all, what lasts long in this world?
They embrace. Their cloaks are a momentary blot against the bustle of the crowd, black drupes amid wind-tossed bramble leaves. Tomorrow evening! Tristão shouts as he steps away. A banquet at sundown, and then the symposium! Be prompt!
Tomorrow evening, Crivano calls after him.
On his way toward the Street of the Coopers, Tristão stops to tweak the chin and inspect the décolletage of a fleshy harlot, then again to exchange familiar greetings with three yellow-turbaned Levantine Jews. The fearlessness that enlivens his movements seems born not of self-confidence, but rather absolute certainty regarding the ultimate fate of his soul. Looking on, Crivano considers that certain damnation could engender such boldness as easily as certain salvation. All too clearly he can see the light Tristão sheds, but as yet he has no way to guess its fuel.
Tristão vanishes around the corner to the north. The street is in deep shadow, and up and down its length most shops are closed, or closing. Crivano loiters for a moment, watching traffic pass before him until it becomes abstract and depthless in his sight: a chaos of colors, fabrics, gestures, faces. Then a gap opens and he steps into it, walking to the corner, following the Street of the Coopers south.
The apothecary’s shop is a short distance away, in the Campiello Carampane: the latest location on a coded list of rendezvous points that Narkis gave him in Ravenna before they parted ways. Crivano prays that Narkis—or one of his agents; surely he has other agents—noticed the curtain that he left trapped between his sashes as he slept. Henceforth their enterprise must move ahead quickly.
