by Laura Rahme
As I entered the palace, I cast a glance toward the Basilica and scrutinized the loggias overhead for any guards and witnesses. My gaze traveled across and up to the far right where I knew the Doge’s apartments resided. Aside from the flickering of flambeaux filtering through the loggia upstairs, I saw nothing to cause alarm. I moved to my right and proceeded into the Eastern wing via the entrance hall.
In the dim glow of the encroaching darkness, I saw a figure advance toward me at the top of the steps. The notary greeted me, raising a torch in my face.
“Signor Donato, you have returned!”
The sudden light blinded me. I raised my gloved palm to my face to avoid recognition. If chance favored me, my manner would not raise suspicion given the intensity of the flame.
“Signor Donato, have you forgotten something?” frowned the notary.
Blanca’s art was commendable. I made a note of the emptiness in the hall and waved my hand as though to express impatience. It was important that I appeared in haste so that the notary would not question my reluctance to speak.
“It is nothing. I’ve misplaced something,” I grumbled. “Where are the Capi?” I added, slightly out of breath.
“They have retired, Signore. Tomorrow promises to be a long day at the Collegio. The Doge still resists speaking with the Florentine ambassadors. For now, they are yet to arrive but you know well how these discussions fare, especially with Foscari. Dios mio. I fear you may have to delay the session if Mocenigo persists.” He reached for my shoulder. “I will have someone take your coat, perhaps. Si?”
I waved him away with two fingers taking care to appear as superior as Almoro would.
“I shan’t be long. I shall need a moment in the cancelleria,” I murmured, shuffling away from the light.
“It is rather dark, in there. At least take this with you.”
He reached toward me with his torch, causing the flame to light the traits of my face. I flinched and lowered my face, seizing the torch. There was a pause as he observed me.
“You are not well, Almoro. Would you like me to fetch the files myself?”
To be so close to him was dangerous. Blanca’s pomade was effective but it would soon melt under the light. I shielded the flame with my palm and moved aside, still under the notary’s insistent gaze.
“That will be all, Grazie,” I mumbled.
He stared long at me as I shuffled to a narrow staircase which I knew led to the cancelleria.
“You forgot to take the keys,” said the notary. Though he had merely stated this omission, which in all evidence Almoro would never have committed, the notary’s voice resounded like a question. I felt my pulse quicken. I knew that my behavior surprised him and that if I uttered a word wrong, he would soon suspect I was not who I pretended to be.
It had not occurred to me that the cancelleria inferiore would be locked at night. “Si, si,” I muttered, turning around. “The keys...” I patted myself in absent minded fashion, searching for keys that I might have presumably carried with me but lost without my knowledge.
“Are you not well, Signore?” The notary had frowned at my confusion. I felt a chill as he bit his lips. It was impossible to tell what thoughts raced through his mind and whether he had at all recognized the wax upon my face.
“Hmm?” I sought to appear old with my sharpness of mind depleted by the late hours. I hoped it would convince him of an oversight from my part.
He remained fixated where he stood, still staring at me with an odd expression. I swallowed hard, wondering where I were to find these damned keys. My hesitation would give me away. Perhaps if I trusted my instincts… I decided to try.
“Well?” I blurted out with sudden impatience. It was at least certain that he had never given the keys to me.
The spell was broken. I watched him slowly dig into his mantle pocket. I breathed a sigh of relief and took the keys with my free hand. He hesitated, still staring at me. A grave light passed across his face.
“If you could return these to me in the morning, Signore.”
I nodded.
“Si, of course.” I held my breath.
The notary moved into the darkness. I heard him pace across the room and into the entrance hall.
I ascended two short flights of stairs to the cancelleria. The old wood creaked underfoot. I paused. I heard footsteps in the adjacent rooms. I knew there would be guards attending the prisons on the third floor. They would remain until at least midnight when the palace would finally be near deserted. Aside from the pacing, there was no one in sight. I turned the key twice in the chancellery door and pushed. Two waning torches gleamed along the back wall, giving off a diffused light across the wooden floor. I discerned wooden cabinets and desks with two rows of tall back chairs. In this room, the illiterate clerks worked hard by day to copy documents they did not understand. Only the notary could read and he was paid a hefty yearly salary for his silence.
I was about to step inside the cancelleria when I heard the notary call out from downstairs. I stared through a window in the ante-chamber and saw him wave from below.
“Bona notte, Almoro,” he called out. I heard his footfalls cross the portico before the great doors finally shut again.
Alone. I entered the cancelleria and moved toward the registers.
It did not take me long to find, listed in the register, the files I was looking for. To my astonishment, a number of military contracts were indeed held here. I found it curious that they had not been placed elsewhere as all documents longer than six months were often relocated to other buildings.
Before long, I had found the filze I sought. It was a signed parchment, written for a certain Signor Gaspar Miguel Rivera and above, crowning the page, was the seal of his naval compagnia. It listed all the compensations to be given to the condottiere upon his retirement. There was mention of a Castello mansion with a large water door that had to be passed on to Rivera at the end of his tenure, together with a certain two-masted brig and finally, several thousand ducats which were to be paid at his sixtieth year.
Without a second thought, I retrieved the original filze and slipped it in my leather case. Esteban was a wealthy man. It no longer astounded me that he chose to live so comfortably on credit. He knew his own worth and what he was capable of repaying.
I wondered what it must be like to know with certainty what one could possess. I had, for years, abandoned any desire for material comfort. I longed for something else… And this, even when she, my wife, still lived.
I started. My introspection had been spurred by Esteban’s earlier questionings into my life. But contemplation had no place here. I still had much to do.
I moved out of the cancelleria inferiore and turned the key. I heard a series of clicks upstairs with what sounded like the echo of a slamming door. Holding my breath, I listened. There was a sound of felt in the room downstairs but this did not deter me. I knew who he was. He was one among the young clerks hired by the Council of Ten. His appointment would not compromise the documents since this clerk, could neither read nor write. Tonight, I would find him at his post, keeping an eye on the cancelleria secreta. Yet I thought I had heard a door slam shut on this very floor. Perhaps the evening draft? I could not say.
I followed the corridor toward the stairwell. After the first flight to my right, on the second floor, I knew I would find the secret chancellery. If my intuition was correct, this room would contain all I sought to uncover about the Contarini. The only thing I ignored was what, precisely, I was looking for.
Strange at it seemed, with each of my steps, I could now hear a series of footfalls crossing overhead. As though someone had followed my course and was now directly above me. Perhaps a prison guard upon hearing the notary, had thought it best to visit the cancelleria. If he discovered that I was in the forbidden room below, I could very well be revealed. I paused, waiting for the noise to subside. Now it seemed that another noise came from downstairs on the first story. A ray of light filtered into the r
oom below. I heard whispers. Someone was in the Sala Gradenigo! Again, I heard a door shut. Decidedly there was more activity in the palace than I’d hoped for.
Now the sound of footsteps above had ceased. I swallowed hard.
I followed a corridor and descended two steps to behold a closed door. The cancelleria secreta lay before me. I advanced, slowly, my hand upon the door latch. My breathing was still. I was deciding upon whether or not to reveal myself to the clerk.
The room smelt of dust and old parchment.
I glimpsed a tuff of red hair and a pair of felt shoes behind a large writing cabinet.
“Bona notte,” I pronounced in a hoarse voice.
A youth of no more than five and twenty stepped from the cabinet behind which he had been standing. I could see the knot on his brow as he peered ahead to ascertain who I was.
“Do not trouble yourself young man,” I said, in a weary voice, moving in the direction of the documents as though I knew exactly what I searched for. “I am here to put some order into a case. A very…very important case.”
The youth squinted. Recognizing my face, he drew a sigh.
“Signor Donato, so late.”
“The Council of Ten does not sleep,” I responded, eyeing him with an air filled with intent. It was almost amusing to watch him shudder under my gaze.
The youth seemed to recall something. He stepped toward a cabinet which I knew contained the deliberazioni. This was not a Council of Ten repository even though it found itself here among the protected files. It was a large body of documents, most of them from the Senate. This towering cabinet contained hundreds, maybe thousands of files encompassing pacts and treaties, instructions to ambassadors, foreign policy agreements, deliberations on Venezia’s relations with Rome and all dispatches sent by Venezia’s foreign ambassadors. Everything was carefully and meticulously recorded.
“I have filed these as you instructed, Signor Donato,” declared the young clerk proudly. “I took all the dispatches sent by ambassadors outside Venezia, those marked with the seal that you showed me and I filed them separately in the “relazioni” section. I am nearly finished, if you care to peruse my work. You shall see how well we are progressing.”
The youth’s evidently complex project was more than I could grasp. From the little I understood, foreign reports were to be filed under a new “relazioni” section. A little out of my depth, discomfort robbed me of my voice for a moment.
I must not appear overwhelmed by his words, I told myself. He would soon see if I faltered and showed signs of unfamiliarity. I quickly regained my composure.
“Yes, this is all very good,” I pronounced waving my gloved hands in his face as Almoro would. “But not now, young man. I am looking for…” No. There was a way to make use of this overly conscientious clerk. An idea had crossed my mind. “In all evidence, you have shown prodigious talent and efficiency. That is all good. Now. Let us see how well you have remembered your formal training. Your performance hinges on your understanding of the Council’s work. I will ask you to demonstrate this understanding.”
To my relief, the youth stood alert, awaiting my next question. His black eyes shone with naïve intelligence. He licked his lips, in preparation for my grilling him. I wondered whether he had ever stopped to question his work.
I wondered if at all, he had understood that the documents he perused may have dealt, here, with a prosecution, there with an admission under torture or even a denunciation. Probably not.
While he waited, I looked askance, hoping to determine where I might find the Council of Ten documents among the various files. There was, it seemed, more cabinets than I had envisaged. Where, in this room, could—
A smile drew itself on my lips.
I shone my torch toward the back of the room, moving it from left to right. I craned my neck toward the newly lit shelves. In the obscurity, I discerned five more cabinets. There were rows and rows of parchment filze, bound into volumes and ranged neatly on shelves. I froze. There, at the top of each shelf, the gilded engraving, C.X., reflected the light of my torch. My heart leapt in my chest. The Council of Ten had marked its own papers well.
I began my motion toward the back, my head lowered pensively.
“Let us begin. Try to tell me what the purpose of the Council of Ten is, and when it was formed.”
“Signore, the Council was formed in 1310,” he responded, his soft voice echoing in the spacious room. “It exists for…for the protection of Venezia’s citizens, the protection of the State and the…the upholding of moral values.” He seemed jubilant.
“Moral values…yes, yes,” I muttered as he watched me. In a slow amble, which I emulated from Almoro Donato, I had left him where he stood and arrived to the back of the room. “Let’s see…” I declared. I rested my lamp beside one of the shelves. I grew tense, my gaze taking in all the documents around me. So this, was the meaning of the Council’s motto, ‘secretezza et iterum secretezza’–secrecy and then more secrecy. All I could see was the face of the evil; the great evil which Esteban had spoken of.
Despite myself, my eyes wandered, with a blend of revulsion and terror, at the numerous shelves where the Council kept all that it knew and which the cittadini of Venezia ignored.
“Excellent. Can you tell me… how one such as yourself, might sort through the different filze in this room.”
“If one cannot read, it is still possible to sort through the files according to the marking of each government department and the date.”
Something I knew already, I reflected. Except that I could read and I would have to wade through the different subjects mentioned at the top of those files. Not an easy task. Luckily I could use the registers to speed up the process. But even so… The number of documents before me was staggering, some of the shelves set so high that one required a ladder to access them. Was there ever any happenstance in Venezia’s homes that was not recorded here?
“Promising. Now, if one were a notary and one wanted to find a document about a certain family–let us assume that the Consiglio dei Dieci was interested in this particular family and that it had collected information about this family–where would one begin?”
The youth stared in bewilderment. He swallowed hard before answering. From the back of the room, I raised my lantern to his face.
“Signor Donato…that would very much depend.”
“What would it depend on? What if I were looking for a particular Ca’?”
“I come to it, Signore. For instance, if this Ca’ were a member of the military, or her members held a political role, one might look for the Ca’ file in the Consiglio dei Dieci papers, under the parti communi or the parti secreta. The parti communi would be the two cupboards to your left with the parti secreta being the one nearest to the wall.”
“Excellent, excellent…” I waited for more, holding my breath.
“As for a criminal Ca’ or any individual with a known criminal record, one could look to your right in the parti crimminali.”
“Good. Well spoken. Well…I, I shan’t take much of your time. And how far are you with the deliberazioni?”
“I can be finished by the morrow!” he prompted.
“Excellent, I shall leave you to it, then.”
This brilliant youth deserved an increase in his yearly ducats which I knew were meagre. I turned first toward the parti secreta. I found the registers listing the file names for the last decade.
I perused the first register. It was in good rough paper. Even if parchment was still the preferred mode for writing in many parts, and despite the Church’s insistence on paper being an evil art, the Consiglio dei Dieci employed the Mohammedan invention for years. The paper was smooth to the touch, while the Latin scrawl was compact and legible.
But Venezia had two hundred patrician families. Searching for a subject mentioning the name Contarini among this long series of names was too long a task. I had little time. The men, whoever they were, who had gathered downstairs in the Sal
a Gradenigo, would have soon retired from their secret meeting. If I were found, it would be hard for me to explain my presence in the cancelleria at this time.
I had to hurry.
I set myself to work, perusing through each register. Time passed. I felt a growing frustration. It became evident that I could not find the Ca’ Contarini. That is to say, Giacomo Contarini was not mentioned in any of the filze listed.
I looked up. The youth was still bent over folders and worked meticulously. He had almost forgotten I was here.
A question tormented me. If the Contarini file was not here… Then where was it? I stared at the other cabinet. It occurred to me that I had overlooked a recent event: Giacomo’s suspected crime. How simple it seemed. After all, the formation of the Council in 1310 had also been, as explicitly claimed by our youth, for the protection of moral values. And sodomy broke the Venetian moral code. It merited a criminal sentence. I had wasted time with the wrong cabinet.
The door downstairs slammed shut again. I froze. Footsteps traversed the Gradenigo, passing through the entrance hall.
My heart was pounding. I turned to the parti crimminali. Quickly, my trembling fingers flipped through the pages of this decade’s register. There was a mention of the Contarini, earlier in the document, but nothing recent. Nothing… No. There was a file. I had found it.
Or rather, I had found a reference to the Ca’ Contarini for the current year. 1422. And there it was, the illustrious name of Giacomo Contarini, with the location of the file. I stooped toward the cabinet. Seizing the volume from the bottom shelf, I frantically turned the bound pages until I had found the Contarini file.
I read, looking behind my shoulder at intervals to ascertain that the youth remained occupied. His long red locks dangled over documents and I could see the painful effort of sorting through files when one could not read. He was terrified of making an error.
