Voice of the Falconer

by David Blixt

  Not wanting to mispronounce the man’s name to his face, Pietro cleared his throat as he approached. Looking up, Shalakh’s lively eyes radiated a slow amusement. “My my! Run through your funds already? Dear me, but you are a shining example of Christian charity!” He dropped his pitch a little as Pietro drew nearer. “Such a shame you must travel incognito, or else all of Venice would be singing peans to your largesse, since you are keeping so many ale-house keepers in work.”

  The tenor of the sarcasm was light, but Pietro was keenly aware that the scorn was real. “I didn’t know my movements were generally known.”

  Shalakh smiled broadly. “Are they? I merely assumed it was so. Reveling seems to be the nation’s pass-time. Venice is a city overrun with publicans,” he mused, playing off the word for both tavern-keeper and tax-collector.

  “I will attempt to be more frugal,” said Pietro.

  “O, not for my sake! Your credit is more than sufficient. I can draw on your funds here, or in Verona. Which would you prefer?”

  “Verona, please,” said Pietro softly. “It would be better if I can avoid leaving a trail.”

  “Nothing easier. I will draw on your master’s funds, and let the banks of Verona repay me at leisure. He has more than enough lodged with me. There are not many Christians who use us as their bankers – we are more often a last resort. But then, your master is hardly average. An exceptionally practical man, the Capitano. Don’t fret,” said Shalakh, seeing Pietro’s furrowed brow. “We are among friends. It is not the practice of my tribe to overhear the business dealings of our fellows. If we do, we are honour-bound to close our ears. Come.”

  They walked back along the street to Shalakh’s house, where the Jew produced a ring of keys and opened the massive oak door with a hearty push. The door was deceptively heavy, Pietro knew, having been to the Jew’s house twice before – once ten years ago, and again on his recent arrival.

  The interior was as spare as the façade, reflecting the owner’s parsimonious personality. Entering, Pietro was amazed to hear the echo of feminine laughter. It sounded out of place in such an austere establishment.

  At once Shalakh’s face grew grim. “Jessica!”

  Instantly the laughter stopped, replaced by footfalls on the stairs. A moment later a young woman entered.

  Pietro had seen Shalakh’s daughter on that first visit long ago, but then she’d been a child of four. Now nearly fifteen, she was a beauty. Hair as dark as a raven’s down, skin an exotic olive, she was dressed as modestly as the furnishings. Yet something sensual in the way she moved made Pietro blush.

  Behind Jessica ambled a young man dressed as a servant. He was as ugly as she was beautiful, covered in pimples and blemishes. He bore none of the marks of a Jew, either in his clothes or his person. Shalakh had a gentile servant? Fascinating!

  Shalakh looked at them both was distaste. “Jessica, this is a client. Fetch him some refreshment. Launcelot, since you are so fond of entertaining that you shirk your duties, you may stay with him while I see to his business.” To Pietro he said, “The same amount as last time?” Pietro assented, and Shalakh stumped up the stairs, not needing to hold onto the rail. Vigourous for his age, though what age Pietro couldn’t guess. He’d looked just the same ten years ago.

  Because her father had not named him, Jessica did not ask for an introduction. She merely curtsied and headed for the back of the house, leaving Pietro facing the servant. When he thought the old Jew was out of earshot, Pietro said, “I hope my visit hasn’t fouled your day. I didn’t mean to trouble you.”

  The servant shrugged. “No trouble. My mistress is fond of wordplay, and I amuse her while I go about my duties. Despite my name, I do not lance a lot, and have no pretensions to being a great lover. I believe my master hired me for my features, and has since repented that a mind came with it.”

  Already Pietro felt himself warming to the lad. “Launcelot?”

  “Launcelot Gobbo, after my father, who is Old Gobbo.”

  That explained it. Gobbo meant hunchback. Being the son of a cripple, this Launcelot was doubtless forced to take ignominious work. On impulse, Pietro said, “Perhaps you can aid me. I’m looking for a house – a certain house I have heard of.”

  The servant’s eyes twinkled under the folds of pock-marked skin. “Would this be a woman’s house?”

  Pietro had no trouble looking embarrassed. “It would. The only mark I know is a three-faced masque, over the door.” Pietro described it as well as he could. “I’ve spent two weeks wearing out my boots looking for it, without any luck at all.”

  Launcelot tilted his head, quivered, and Pietro thought the fellow was about to sneeze until he burst out laughing. “Oh my lord! Forgive me, but – you do not understand Venice! You are looking at doors leading out onto our paved streets? I confess, in any other city that would be the logical kind of door to examine. But not in Venice! Here in the Serenissima, the most serene city, the real streets are the canals! The doorway you’re looking for most probably leads to water, not pavement.”

  Launcelot had not come right out and said Pietro was a fool, but the implication was there. And he was right! Hadn’t Borachio said his abductors had trundled him into a gondola and punted to the courtesan’s house?

  Pietro thanked Launcelot just as Jessica returned with a cup of wine – rather good, Pietro noted. At once he changed the topic, asking politely after Jessica’s mother.

  The girl dipped her head, and Launcelot supplied the answer for her. “The lady Leah died two years gone. A tremendous sadness for us all.”

  “Oh no. I’m so sorry.” He’d met Shalakh’s wife long ago, and knew that Jessica inherited her looks from her mother. Certainly she looked nothing like her father – except about the eyes, bright with intelligence and scorn. But where Shalakh’s guile was obvious to anyone, Jessica worked to tamp hers down. Probably why she spent so much time with her head lowered.

  Shalakh returned with a draft for a hundred Venetian ducats. Given the current exchange, this was slightly better than the same number of Florins, but not much. Pietro knew that he wouldn’t cash the draft in gold, but in silver, a more every-day coinage. Yellow money was extravagant, memorable. Black money, copper or bronze, was next to useless, only good for gratuity or cheap labour. White money – silver – was the most generally accepted.

  But it wasn’t the banker’s draft tucked in his doublet that had Pietro whistling as he departed the Yellow Crescent. It was the thought that he had a new avenue of inquiry. Or rather, new canals.

  After withdrawing enough white money to survive, he leapt into the nearest gondola for hire. “Show me all the famous courtesan houses of Venice!”

  Grinning, the driver tugged his forelock and used his long pole to shove off. He was soon bemused by the fact that his passenger only wanted to look, not stop at any of them. To each his own!

  On the second day of looking he saw it, just as Borachio had described. On a narrow twisting side ‘street’ was a small quay with three stone steps leading up to a door. Above the door were three faces, all attached. One laughed, one screamed, one wept. The shutters on the windows looked oriental, and on the house just next to this one was a trellis covered in pink roses.

  Pietro turned to his gondolier, a different fellow from the day before. “Whose house is that?”

  “Ah!” cried the driver, leaning on his punting stick to slow their progress. “That is the casa of Donna Dolfino. Unless you are a rich man, she is not for you. And perhaps not even then!”

  “Exclusive, is she?”

  The driver misinterpreted Pietro’s suppressed excitement. “It is said that perhaps God has enough gold to tempt her, but not for more than an hour.”

  Tipping the gondolier well, Pietro returned to his lodgings and paid the due. He then returned to that curved canal and hired a new room just across from Donna Dolfino’s house. He made sure his window faced the short flight of steps that led to the door under the three faces – the same door Borach
io had been ushered through three months before.

  Setting up station in that window, he wrote a quick note to Antonia describing both his discovery and intention:

  Simply, I mean to wait. If the man who blackmailed Borachio is indeed Venetian, he will likely visit here at some point. Especially if the place is as exclusive as my gondolier hinted. If that plan doesn’t work, I will pretend to be a client, though I don’t think I am adept enough at dissembling to maintain the guise for long (Oh, are you blushing? Your own fault! You set the tone!).

  Sending the letter off to Shalakh for posting, Pietro opened his single saddlebag and removed the manuscript of Maestro Mussato’s play. Sitting beside the window so he could see the comings and goings of the courtesan’s casa, he settled in, looking up at every gondola that passed. It made for choppy reading, but also ensured he would not finish the famous screed against Cangrande too soon. He was determined to enjoy it.

  The story began with a mother talking to her two sons, describing the hour of their conceptions:

  ADELHEITA

  Was there a mighty, blood-stained star ascendant

  In the north, whose baleful rays struck me alone

  When I conceived you wretched boys in that

  Accursed marriage-bed? Now shall I reveal

  The wiles of your deceitful sire, distraught

  Mother that I am. The earth refuses

  To hide for long a crime. Secrets will out.

  Now hear your lineage never to be denied,

  Children of doom…

  Adelheita then began to relate how, sleeping beside her husband, Satan came and impregnated her. But she fainted in the middle of the telling, and her older son, Ezzelino da Romano, demanded she awaken and finish the tale. Ezzelino’s eagerness to hear the Devil’s part in his heritage damned him from the outset.

  In keeping with the Senecan style, Mussato’s description of Adelheita’s rape was vividly explicit. It wasn’t just the graphic nature of the violation of Ezzelino’s mother that disturbed Pietro. The description of an earthly upheaval, of an angry sky echoing the roar of a growing sulfurous chasm below, brought to Pietro’s mind another night.

  He had not been present, nor had he ever heard a full account. But the night Cesco had been born there had been several portents – the greatest being two stars crossing in the night sky. One boded ill, the other good. Unconsciously the play evoked a picture of that fateful night. Was it indeed a mighty, blood-stained star ascendant? Or was the second star more powerful?

  Pietro read at the window all through the day. At night, when a light would make him conspicuous, he closed the manuscript and sat in darkness, watching the rainbow procession of painted gondolas below. He went to bed at dawn, hoping the customer he waited for was not an early riser. Early riser. Dropping into sleep, he chuckled. A pun worthy of Cesco…

  The next afternoon, the sixteenth of October, Pietro was in his perch with the second act of the play, reading a really delicious description of Verona as Hell-on-Earth, the enemy of Peace. Most of the story was told through messengers and the chorus, not through action. Pietro was amused to see several references to Mariotto’s family, the Montecchi – though, in the text, it was Monticulti. And there was the heroic Count of San Bonifacio, grandfather to the Count that Pietro had struggled against long ago.

  So engrossed in one passage, he almost missed a rich gondola angling towards the quay. This was only the second visitor of the day, and the first had not matched Borachio’s description. Setting aside Ecerinis, Pietro squinted across the canal. Nor did this one. He was certainly fashionable, and the masque he wore to protect his identity was obviously expensive. But not even in his boots could he be called tall.

  Pietro returned eagerly to the play. Ezzelino and his brother were rapacious conquerors, quite unrepentant. Indeed, in just about every speech Mussato had them reveling in their lineage, claiming it to be higher than Mars, the father of Romulus and Remus. In one shocking passage, Ezzelino himself repudiated Christ. A few pages later he claimed to be God’s instrument to bring divine justice to the earth. Pietro could see why Cangrande had been so upset by this play. As an allegory for his own person, it was quite vicious.

  In the late afternoon light, things began to unravel for Ezzelino. Amusingly, his undoing began in Venice, where a great force marched out to meet him. One of Ezzelino’s soldiers, Ansediusis, arrived with ill tidings delivered in a series of short, staccato lines, powerful in the plain Latin:

  ANSEDIUSIS

  Padua’s lost. Our enemies hold it.

  EZZELINO

  Lost by force?

  ANSEDIUSIS

  Lost by force.

  EZZELINO

  What force?

  ANSEDIUSIS

  The sword, and flight, and fire. The way all cities fall.

  EZZELINO

  But you survived? Your face, unscarred,

  Shows me an enemy! It demonstrates

  Your guilt. Away with you! To punish you

  With death would be too easy a penalty!

  This section resonated, perhaps because the punishment was exile. An exile himself, Pietro understood the pain of never returning home. Feeling a tear welling up, he winked it away. You’re ridiculous! Imagine, weeping over a play!

  Just then he noticed another gondola poling up to the steps of the courtesan’s palace. This one had several men in it, and for a moment Pietro was shamefully speculative. But only one alighted. He was tall and graceful. And though his masque hid his hair as well as his face, Pietro recognized him at once. That bastard!

  Ducking, Pietro waited until he was sure Donna Dolfino’s customer was within doors. Then he bolted from his perch and out of the house.

  He had to run three blocks before he found an arched bridge that would take him over the thin canal. He’d spent his evening hours considering how to enter the casa unseen. The only sure way, he’d decided, was to climb up the rose trellis on the next building over and from there leap into a window. Fortunately Venetian houses were jammed in beside their fellows, sometimes only a shoulder’s width between them.

  Reaching the rose trellis, he pretended to stop and smell the flowers, glancing covertly around. No one was watching. Ignoring the thorns, he gripped the wooden slats. Sturdy enough. Abandoning caution, he planted a foot into one square and began the ascent.

  Venetian architecture was much influenced by the returning Crusaders of the last few centuries. Eastern ornaments and pediments adorned many houses. Donna Dolfino’s windows bore the onion-top, the small crown favoured in places such as Constantinople and Jerusalem. Thin, there was just enough room for a man to pass, the onion-top being the right size for a man’s head to pass through.

  It was a cool day, but not cold – the oriental shutters were open. Reaching the right level of the trellis, Pietro didn’t hesitate. Stepping onto the sill, he turned his body sideways and slipped through the window into the courtesan’s house.

  Crouching low, he listened. Kitchen sounds from below, the usual background hum of a busy household. Then he heard a rich feminine burble of something like laughter, only more musical. A man’s voice answered it. A voice Pietro knew. I was right. It is him.

  The voices came from the next floor. Creeping up the nearby staircase, Pietro paused on the landing. At the top of the stairs a double-door of delicately carved wood stood ajar, leading to a room facing the canal.

  Blood pounding with a combination of exultation and anger, Pietro ascended to the top of the stairs. Now what? Listen at the keyhole? Hide and wait? What would Cangrande do?

  The answer was obvious. Steeling himself, Pietro rose from his crouch and, pushing the doors wide, strode into the room in his best imitation of nonchalance.

  On a canopied couch-area were two figures. One, the lady of the house, was in a state of undress. She was atop her visitor, her long blond hair falling down the length of her back, all the way to her bare buttocks. Hearing his footsteps, she turned her head. Still moving her hips,
she said without embarrassment, “And who might you be?”

  Ignoring her was difficult, but Pietro fixed his eyes on the man beneath her. He still wore shirt and doublet, though both were unlaced. His points were all undone and his hose lay pooled at his ankles. The bauta masque lay on the couch beside him, leaving the face of Francesco Dandolo as bare as his mistress’ backside.

  Breathless, Pietro smiled darkly. “Ambassador. Is this a bad time?”

  Then the world went dark.

  Forty-One

  San Bonifacio

  Friday, 1 November

  1325

  “We are forced to take a brief hiatus from your hawking,” Cangrande informed his young charge. Fingers stained with ink, the Scaliger had clearly been occupied with legal matters.

  Exhausted from a day of riding with Lord Montecchio, attacking targets from horseback, Cesco clumsily fetched a bowl of water for Cangrande to wash in. “Do you mean my training, or the rearing of my own little hawk?”

  “Both. Tomorrow we go to Mantua. Passerino is marrying the Estensi girl, and we must honour him. And it looks like the Bolognese might come out of their shell to fight for Modena once again. It won’t be much of a battle, just the right thing to cut your teeth on, my little puppy. Whoops! Forgive me, I forget – no dog nicknames for you.”

  Dead on his feet, Cesco was in no condition to match Cangrande’s verbal sparring. Instead he asked a practical question. “Who is Bologna fighting against?”

  “Really, us. But technically Ferrara owns Modena – the leading man in Modena is the father of the Lord of Ferrara, Rainaldo d’Este. Though no friend to me, Rainaldo is an ally of Verona and about to be tied in marriage to Passerino, another ally. I’m related to them both, through marriage.”

  Cesco had been trying to learn the family tree. “Your eldest sister, Costanza, was married to the bride’s grand-father, and then later to the groom’s brother.” Reciting this gave him an excuse to close his eyes.