‘No,’ said Sarah, taking a step back. ‘No. No. It’s not true! My father is Dr Tedeschi! I was born in the Ghetto, brought up in the Ghetto. You are lying! Lying!’
‘I wish I were,’ said the Countess quietly. ‘Maffei, tell her.’
‘We disposed of mother and child separately,’ said the officer, looking at Sarah with his unblinking yellow stare. ‘It was safer that way. I killed the woman myself, but I hired a man to drown the newborn in the lagoon. I thought he had done as he was told. But now I recall there was a squeamishness in him, though he swore he
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would do it. The canal where I met him—where that fool of a girl saw us—was not so far from the Ghetto. He must have left the babe there.’
‘Like Moses in the bulrushes,’ said the Countess. ‘Except in reverse—Pharaoh’s child, left with Moses’s people. That’s what the witness saw, you see. Maffei and the other man and the baby. What’s the trouble, child? You stand like a statue. Is it that you still do not believe? I would force that traitor to tell you the truth, but I cannot, for he died many years ago and he never talked of what he’d done—cared too much for his own skin, I’d say. If I’d known that he’d not killed the baby . . .’ She smiled, showing all her teeth. ‘So the good doctor never told you of your true origins and that you were a foundling, eh? That’s another good joke.’ She began to laugh. ‘The stars have truly conspired against you and for me, have they not, girl? Is yours not a piteous and strange fate? For you are not Moses’s child, but Pharaoh’s. And you died twice—on the day you were born and today.’ She made a sign to Maffei. ‘Take her down you know where. We will finish tonight what should have been done sixteen years ago.’
‘No!’ shouted Celia, throwing herself in front of Sarah. But the officer just thrust her aside with a rough shove that sent her sprawling to the ground. In an instant, the Countess was on her, holding her down, while Maffei seized the unresisting Sarah and dragged her
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away, through the door into the little room nearby. Celia heard a creak, a thump, then silence.
At that moment, there was a commotion in the corridor outside: shouts, yells, the clash of steel. The Countess started and Celia instantly seized her opportunity. Scrambling up, she made a dash for the room where Sarah and Maffei had disappeared.
It was a storeroom, just as Dr Tedeschi had said. But in the middle of the floor was a trapdoor. And it was ajar, revealing a ladder underneath and a dark passageway.
But Celia didn’t get time to start down the ladder after them. Shrieking imprecations, the Countess was on her, a dagger in her hands, a mad look in her eyes. Celia fought desperately, knowing that the Countess would kill her without regard for the consequences. She could hear the clash of steel outside and knew that her friends were on their way. But the guards must be putting up a stiff resistance. Her friends might be too late to save her and Sarah.
Suddenly, the Countess got her hand free of Celia’s grasp. She lunged with the dagger, striking for the heart. Celia ducked, but not quite in time. The knife caught her hard in the left arm. Blood spurted out.
A terrible pain gripped Celia and she fell. She expected to die then and prepared to defend her life fiercely, despite the hideous pain of her stabbed arm. But the commotion was growing louder, closer.
The Countess must have decided she had no time. In
a trice she had scrambled down the ladder and disappeared, slamming the trapdoor shut behind her.
Celia tried to crawl to it, to open it again, to follow her. But the pain was too much. She fainted.
The next thing she knew was Ned’s agonized voice in her ear. ‘Oh, my darling, my darling, I’ll never forgive myself, never, oh, my sweet, I knew I should never have left you to—’
‘Stop it,’ she croaked, opening her eyes and looking into his terrified face. ‘I’m not dead yet.’
‘Oh, thank God, thank God,’ he cried. ‘Oh, darling Celia, I was so frightened! You’ve blood all over. I thought. . .’
‘It’s just a flesh wound, I think, but it hurts,’ she said, trying to sit up, with his help. She put a hand on her wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. Ned quickly tore a sleeve off his shirt and wound it around her arm to form a bandage. She tried to smile. ‘Your poor shirt, it’ll never be the same again.’
Claudio burst in, drawn sword in hand. It was covered in blood too—but not his. His face was grim as he took in the situation. He said, ‘ Sarah. ’
‘Down there,’ said Celia, pointing to the trapdoor. ‘There’s a ladder. Maffei and the Countess, they’ve taken her. I don’t know where it leads.’
Claudio didn’t say any more, but threw open the trapdoor and disappeared at once down the ladder.
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Celia said, ‘You should go with him, Ned. I would, but I can’t, not like this.’
‘I don’t want to leave you,’ he said. ‘The Countess . . .’
‘Is gone. She killed the Count. Poisoned him.’
‘But why? Did he confess?’
‘No. It wasn’t what we thought. Sarah . . . Sarah’s his natural daughter. Verona—that’s where she came from.’
Ned was understandably bewildered. ‘What? Who?’
‘Sarah’s mother. Her real mother. Who had an affair with the Count, years ago.’
‘Then Dr Tedeschi. . .’
‘Is her adoptive father. Yes.’
At that moment, Henri burst into the room, followed by Lucius and another of Claudio’s friends. ‘We’ve routed them all,’ he declared, then checked himself when he saw Celia. ‘What did they do to you?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Celia. ‘Ned’s here. You go down there, Henri. Claudio’s going to need you. The Countess and Maffei have got Sarah.’
‘They won’t get far. The Duke’s men are coming, at last,’ said Henri. ‘I saw them coming down the canal. They should be here any moment.’
‘A little late to hear anything,’ said Celia, stricken, as the young Frenchman went down the ladder after the others. ‘Oh, Ned! The Countess confessed everything to us—the piracy; the murder of her husband; the murder of his mistress, long ago; the attempted murder of
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his child; even the murder of some poor anonymous witness who came to her for help. She’s a monster, a monster! And now they’ll have heard nothing and she’ll get away with it!’
‘She won’t get away with much,’ said Ned quietly, ‘not if Claudio has anything to say about it. And there’s your wounding to explain, Celia . . . and the Duke will listen, I’m sure of it.’
Celia was about to protest that the Countess had always had the Devil’s own luck, when suddenly they both jumped out of their skins as a frightful shriek tore the night. Ned jumped up. ‘It’s from outside!’ he cried. ‘Outside, on the canal! The Duke’s men! I told you, Celia!’
He helped Celia to her feet and together they hobbled into the next room, to the window that looked out onto the water. And there, in the light of the flares of the landing-stage, they saw something they would never forget.
25 3 ->>■
Nemesis
A dripping-wet creature emerged from the canal, a tall, ghostly figure with hair that shone with an unearthly glow in the light of the flares. With another of those inhuman shrieks, it sprang onto the landing-stage, straight in the path of the two figures who stood there frozen for one fatal instant. The Countess and Maffei had clearly been about to jump into their waiting boat, but just for that instant, they fell back. Maffei shouted something, a command to move; the sodden figure stopped, turned, stared at him, its eyes wide, anguished, mad.
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Then without warning, it leaped for the man’s throat. Taken by surprise, Maffei stumbled, tripped, went back against the side of the landing-stage. Even from the window, Ned and Celia could hear the crack of his skull. And then he fell off, tumbling into the water. He did not come up again. . . .
There were some boat
s on the water, fast approaching; people shouting. The Duke’s men. But they were still a little distance away. Out of the corner of his eye Ned saw someone jump from one of the boats and start to swim towards the landing-stage . . .
. . . where the Countess was struggling with the figure. Celia saw her dagger flash, saw it come down. The Countess’s assailant staggered, shouted, ‘Beatrice, oh Beatrice, wait for me!’
The Countess laughed. Her laugh was as inhuman as the shriek had been. They saw her bend down and whisper something to the madman. Then she brought the dagger down again, to finish him off. But suddenly, the madman sprang up and grabbed her hand. The dagger clattered harmlessly on the landing-stage. Then the madman sprang, with the struggling Countess in his arms, straight from the landing-stage and into the water.
The swimmer reached the place instants later. Too late. The Countess and the madman were lost in the murky depths of the dark water and there was nothing anybody could do.
Wearily, the swimmer dragged himself up onto the
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landing-stage, and Celia and Ned saw that it was Dr Tedeschi. He stood there with bowed head and dripping clothes as the Duke’s boats approached and the men clambered out.
Celia and Ned looked at each other; then with one accord they made for the trapdoor. Gently, he helped her down the ladder. At the bottom was a long passageway and then stairs leading down, down to the bowels of the palace. There was an open door at the end, and when they went through it there was a little room, where they found Sarah and Claudio in each other’s arms. Sarah was sobbing and Claudio was silent; his men were around them, standing guard.
Claudio looked at Ned and Celia over his beloved’s head. He whispered, ‘I let them get away, for it was the only way to save her.’
‘They didn’t get away,’ said Celia between stiff lips. ‘They didn’t, because . . . because your friend, he stopped them. He killed them, Claudio, by sacrificing himself. He brought Nemesis on them. He avenged his love.’
‘My friend?’ said Claudio, staring at her with his black eyes all aglitter.
‘Edmund,’ said Celia. ‘Poor Edmund, who longed so for his lost Beatrice. What happened to them, Claudio?’
‘He loved her long ago, when he was very young,’ said Claudio faintly. ‘Beatrice was the daughter of the steward of the da Piero family, who were close to the Duke. The Countess was a da Piero, you know, before
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she married Montemoro. Beatrice’s father did not approve of Edmund as a suitor, of course. Too poor, too foreign, too young. Edmund said they planned to run away from Venice together, for there was great danger for them here. He was never clear just what, but implied that they had seen something terrible one Carnival night, something that implicated someone very powerful. He thought it was the Duke, or possibly someone in his household. He didn’t know who it was, really. He had never found out. He never dared.’ He sighed. ‘Edmund and Beatrice arranged to meet at the Rialto bridge one night. He waited, but she never came. She sent word she had changed her mind and would never see him again. A day later she died in a boating accident on the canal. Accident, some said. But others said she had taken her own life.’
‘She did not,’ said Celia slowly. ‘She was murdered by a woman she thought was a friend. The Countess of Montemoro, who used to be a da Piero. The Countess, to whom in great distress she’d told what she’d seen at the canal. And tonight, somehow, Edmund knew that the Countess had murdered his lost love, his Beatrice.’
‘But why? Why would she do such a thing?’ whispered Claudio.
‘Because Beatrice was witness to a terrible deed committed by the Countess long ago. She was witness to the attempted murder of a newborn child, with the suggestion its mother had been killed too. Poor girl!
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How it must have preyed on her mind! She didn’t know who was behind it and must have gone to the one person she thought she could trust. She must not even have told Edmund she was going to do it.’
‘Poor Beatrice. Poor Edmund,’ said Claudio sadly. ‘He stayed away from Venice for years because of the memories. He got the mind-sickness only last year, after our last campaign. And he got it into his head then that he must return to Venice, that Beatrice had somehow miraculously escaped from her watery grave and that he must find her. I came back with him, because I could not let him go as he was. I tried to help him, to give him a home at my house, but he wouldn’t stay. He said one day he would find her, and she would explain what had happened, and they would be happy together for ever.’
It was the longest speech Celia had ever heard him make, and when it was finished he sat there silently, his arm around his weeping love, his black eyes fixed on the past. That sad, grim past that had so strangely and so tightly bound the fates of his friend Edmund and his love, Sarah; that had destroyed Edmund’s Beatrice and Sarah’s mother, together. Beside one canal the fates of the doomed lovers had been sealed; beside another, at last, justice had been done; and now those poor lovers might rest in peace, together for ever, just as Edmund had hoped. But if the revelation of that past had at last destroyed the wicked people who had brought so much suffering to so many, and brought peace to his friend
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Edmund’s troubled soul, it had also erased Sarah’s very sense of who she was. And Claudio felt the pain of that keenly, with every surge of his aching heart.
Celia and Ned left them then and went out of that room and through a low door that led, as they’d half expected, to the Watergate and the landing-stage. Henri was out there with Dr Leone, Celia’s father, and the Duke’s men, all talking in low voices about what had just happened. When Dr Ashby saw Celia and Ned he came towards them, crying, ‘Thank God you’re both safe! Thank God!’
But Celia looked around for the other man who should have been there—the stooped, dripping swimmer who had come too late to stop Edmund wreaking a terrible justice on Maffei and the Countess. She saw him at last, slumped in a dark corner, his head in his hands. She went over to him and touched him gently on the shoulder, saying, ‘Dr Tedeschi—your daughter is safe too. I can take you to her.’
He looked up at her, his eyes red with tears, and said, ‘I am guilty. I have done wrong all these years. I have lied, because my poor departed wife and I loved her as soon as we found her, abandoned under the bridge that night, so many years ago.
‘It was not a lie,’ said Celia fiercely. ‘You are her father. Your wife was her mother.’
t
‘No,’ said Dr Tedeschi. ‘Tonight. . . Edmund—he told me. He was lucid, almost normal. He told me what
■<-<- 25 9■>>*
he saw that long-ago night on the canal. He and his Beatrice. And I knew then—I knew who Sarah must be. I knew why the Countess was looking for her and why the Count was in such a state of nerves. I could not help it; the Montemoros’ name escaped me then, in my distress. Then later he heard that was where Claudio had gone—and when we . . . when we set out in the boat, he insisted on coming. It was impossible to stop him. But oh, how I wish I had!’
‘No, Dr Tedeschi,’ said Celia gently. ‘It was better he came—for he avenged his Beatrice in the end, and he avenged Sarah too, without knowing it.’ And she sat down and told him all that had passed between the Countess and Sarah.
When she had finished, she took his hand, and said, ‘Will you let me take you to her? For I think she needs her father more than ever now. And you are her father, in heart and soul. And that’s what matters, Dr Tedeschi, even more than blood.’
He looked up at her, without speaking. Then he nodded and straightened his shoulders and got up. Only then did he seem to catch sight of the bandage on her arm, for he drew his breath and whispered, ‘You are hurt, Celia.’
‘Only a little, Doctor,’ she said, smiling at him, ‘and nothing that a good doctor like you won’t make better very soon.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, faintly, and allowed himself to be led away.
2 6 0
The lovers of Venice
I he scandal of the Montemoros was one Venice would talk about for many years to come. The revelation of their corruption and wickedness shocked even the supposedly unshockable Venetians. The Council of Ten and the Duke decided, however, that only some things should come to light, so people got to hear about the dealings with Gamboretto and most things connected with that. It helped that no one in the present Council or in the present Duke’s entourage had benefited from those crimes, so the house could be put in order without
■<4- 2 61 -H"*
too much distress. Much of the Montemoro estate, including their Venetian palace, was seized to pay reparations to the victims of their piracy. But their neglected daughter, Isabella, was allowed to continue living in her uncle’s house in Verona, which she had always regarded as her own home anyway.
The poisoning of the Count was hushed up as well: that was for the sake of Isabella, an innocent victim of her parents’ machinations. The truth was too terrible to put on her shoulders. After the funeral she returned to the only family she knew, to build a new life and forget about the past.
Edmund’s funeral was very different to the quiet, almost furtive ones of the Montemoros and Maffei. There was a brilliant ceremony in the church where he’d loved to shelter, with the angelic music playing, to sing him to his rest. The church was packed with mourners, including Beatrice’s remorseful family; and he was laid to rest in the cemetery near her, so that in death, if not in life, the cruelly parted lovers could be together.
As to the revelation of Sarah’s true parentage, and the lengths the Countess had gone to in order to hide it, this was kept completely quiet, at the express request of people to whom the Venetian state owed a good deal, and had indeed showed their gratitude by a rich purse of gold and precious stones. As there was nothing to be gained from such revelations, the request was granted.
The Madman of Venice Page 18
