Valour and Vanity, page 10
Jane averted her gaze, finding a sudden need to examine the horizon. He laughed. “She blushes! Oh, well done, Vincent. Well done. I like a woman whose feelings are not hidden behind artifice.”
He began to recite:
I like the women too (forgive my folly!),
From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze,
And large black eyes that flash on you a volley
Of rays that say a thousand things at once,
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.
In spite of her best efforts, Jane’s gaze was drawn irresistibly back to the celebrated poet. Had he just invented that verse while swimming in the Grand Canal? Based on what she had heard of him, she would not put it past the man.
Vincent cleared his throat. “Please recall that you are speaking to my wife.”
“I have not forgotten.” Barely slowing his pace, he splashed the water and sent some spray at Vincent. “Why do you think I am flirting? There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman, some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them, and a married woman comes without complications. But my apologies, madam, for the manner of our meeting, as well as for my manners. Come to call, and I shall be on my best behaviour.”
In this moment, Jane was at once strangely charmed by him, and also quite grateful that they were staying with Signor Sanuto. “Not your best behaviour, sir. How should I recognise you then?”
He laughed, not at all offended. Looking ahead, he pointed to a gondola moored at the end of the Grand Canal. “That is the finish line. Once there, we shall go back to my apartments together. You can send for your things.”
Vincent hesitated and looked back to Jane, who gave a minute shake of her head. “I think … that we may be settled with Signor Sanuto. We have business in Murano, and that is where he lives.”
“I suppose that is just as well, as I am leaving town in the next day or so. Whenever I can make up my mind to actually go, which is so difficult sometimes to put into action. In this case, however, there is a young lady who has quite caught my attention, and I feel compelled to pursue her.”
He had no shame in his nature, it seemed. Jane asked, “To La Mira?”
“Heavens, no. That affair was over last month, when the lady threatened to jump into the canal and then did.” He shook his head. “No, this young lady is in her appearance altogether like an antelope. She is a famous songstress—scientifically so; her natural voice (in conversation, I mean) is very sweet, and the naïveté of the Venetian dialect is always pleasing in the mouth of a woman. Now, if you will excuse me.” He lowered his head and began to swim in earnest, moving away to the gondola marked as the finish line.
Vincent drew back into the cabin and whispered, “When he gets out of the water, do not stare at his feet. The right is a club, and he loathes having attention drawn to it.”
Do not stare at his feet? The man was without clothing. Jane had no intention of watching him at all when he emerged from the canal. She resolutely kept her eyes on her gloves as he hoisted himself out of the water and into the gondola.
Vincent leaned closer to her. “It is safe to look now. He has a blanket wrapped round him.” That made her blush even more deeply, yet Jane lifted her eyes. Lord Byron sat in the prow of his gondola with his feet out of sight. Bending down, he lifted a bottle of champagne from a bucket of ice. “Look what I have won. Join me?”
* * *
The interior of Lord Byron’s apartments was in better condition than the walls outside had suggested. Tall ceilings with friezes and gilt murals surrounded moth-eaten carpets, which lay over vast marble floors. In places, the walls had been replaced by glamour to mask crumbling plaster. Other holes had been papered over to keep draughts and rats out.
Yet the rooms were comfortable and had clearly been designed to be lived in rather than simply viewed. Lord Byron had set his own stamp upon the space with his collection of oddities picked up in his travels. Key among these was his ménagerie of animals. Dogs roamed the palazzo freely, lounging on sofas or curled in front of the hearth. A monkey sat perched atop the valance spanning a great window overlooking the canal, and another hopped on to Lord Byron’s shoulder the moment they entered the palazzo.
The little grey creature remained there as they entered the drawing room, and Lord Byron reached up to scratch the fur under its little chin. He walked with a slight roll that nearly masked the lameness in his right foot. As much as he collected animals, the poet appeared to collect people as well. He nodded to several individuals as they passed through the palazzo: a man in a gondolier’s uniform read with his feet up on a coffee table, an odd young man in a fez fiddled with a lock on a door, a young woman in half dress ate bonbons on the balcony, and another man wrote at a desk.
Lord Byron patted a bulldog who rose to meet him with stumpy tail wagging. “Moretto, were you a good boy today?”
“He only ate one of my papers, but he also made off with il dottore’s shoe.” The man at the desk rose, setting his quill down as he did. He was a compact man with an aquiline nose and dark hair brushed forward around his face.
“He did bring it back, to be fair.” Il dottore, the man with the fez, continued to examine the lock. “How did the race go?”
“I won, of course.” Lord Byron flung himself down on a sofa, putting his feet up on the cushion. “Mingaldo was miles behind and hallooing for a boat. Utterly knocked up. He says he was undone by bad shellfish yesterday.”
The man by the desk hmmed, and then crossed the room to Jane and Vincent. “I am John Hobhouse, at your service.”
Vincent made the introductions, since Lord Byron seemed disinclined to do so. Jane offered Mr. Hobhouse a curtsy.
“Oh—introductions. So tiresome.” Byron tilted his head back and called to the young woman. “Marianna, are you not going to kiss me, my sweet?”
“You did not kiss me.” She continued to watch the water, fanning herself peevishly.
He shrugged and scratched the monkey again. “How are you finding Venice?”
Jane sank on to the nearest sofa, shooing a cat away to make space for Vincent. “To be honest, we are spending most of our time in Murano, but what I have seen of Venice is lovely.”
“The view of the Rialto—of the piazza—and the chant of Tasso are to me worth all the cities on earth.” He paused, considering. “Save Rome and Athens. Perhaps. And the women. God help me, but I love the Italian women.”
Mr. Hobhouse settled in a chair across from them. “And how was your journey in?”
Vincent smirked. “Unpleasant, to be honest. We were set upon by corsairs.”
Various exclamations resulted from that statement, ranging from a simple “Good Lord” to “Inconceivable,” and finishing with Lord Byron’s “Stap my vitals!” Byron had sat up with the monkey clinging to his collar. Face alight with interest, the poet leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and hands steepled in front of him. “Corsairs, you say. I thought you were coming from Trieste.”
“We did. Mind you, your directions on where to find the glamural were not as clear as they could have been.”
“What care I for that? Tell me of the corsairs.”
Vincent’s face coloured and he rubbed the back of his head. “To tell the truth, I took a blow to the head and remember little of the events. Jane saw them, though.”
“Unlucky that.” Lord Byron turned his burning interest to her. “Well, Lady Vincent, you shall have to be my muse, then.”
She darted a glance to Vincent. “I am not certain I am equal to the task.” Her husband was glaring at Lord Byron, but broke off when she laid a hand on his knee. Jane affected a manner lighter than she felt. “They were much like the corsairs that appear in Punch’s illustrations. Long moustaches, winding turbans, and striped trousers like a commedia player’s.”
Vincent put his hand on hers and squeezed. “Show him.”
She bit the inside of her lip, but nodded. Jane had not wished to remind him of his difficulties with glamour by being free with it. It was, however, well suited to the task. With quick strokes, Jane drew the captain of the corsairs in front of her. It was not a fully realized rendering,—more like the sketch that a dressmaker would create to display an idea for a new gown. She had him brandish his curved scimitar, and gave an added flourish by having his long moustaches blow in the breeze.
Byron frowned as he stared at it. “Is this accurate, Vincent?”
Her husband nodded. “While much of my memory was victim to the attack, I had the opportunity of some minutes to stare at the captain. Jane’s rendering is precise in its detail.”
“Off Trieste, you say? What happened in the attack?” Lord Byron turned his attention back to Jane.
“I did not see any of the attack itself, as I was below deck with the rest of the passengers. They brought us above deck to ransom us later, but the fighting was done by then. They put us in the ship’s boat and then sent us back to land.”
“Vincent? Have you nothing for me?”
He shook his head and spread his hands. “I remember sending Jane below. Then she woke me after the attack. Even that is full of dark holes in my memory.”
“He is the only passenger who stayed above.”
“I beg your pardon, madam.” Il dottore had abandoned his work with the lock and now stood behind the sofa. “Not pirates. You think you were attacked by pirates, but you were not.”
“I assure you, we were.”
The odd little man shook his head and tapped the fez upon his head. “Corsairs, excellent haberdashery choices, fez beneath the turban, but not for this captain of yours. Also, corsairs in the Gulf of Venice? And dressed like that? Not unless they were on their way to the theatre. To perform, I mean.” He looked suddenly as if he had said too much, made an awkward gesture with his hands and spun on his heel to return to the business of the lock.
Lord Byron nodded. “I must agree. When I wrote The Corsair, it was not without some research. I would not say that I spent time as a—enough. Suffice to say that what you describe is not a corsair attack. To ransom you, they would have taken you to a secure location and then sent a message. How should they have been assured of the funds if they let you go?”
Jane’s mouth worked without finding words. She swallowed, trying to make sense of what he said. “But we were attacked.”
“Were you?” called the Doctor, looking over once again. “A blow to the head? To the back of the head?” Vincent’s face paled, and his hand rose to his scalp. He had been attacked from behind.
Eight
A Ring of Intrigue
Jane looked from il dottore to Vincent, trying to grasp this new possibility. “Are you suggesting that the blow was on the back of his head because one of the crew struck him?”
“Was anyone else injured?”
She had not thought of it at the time, but there was a curious absence of blood in her memory of the deck. “Signor Sanuto—he was hurt when the pirates came down to where the passengers were. In fact, he was hurt defending me.”
Vincent started. “Defending you? Jane—you did not tell me they had threatened you.”
“I—you were ill and the danger was past, so I did not wish to worry you.” She blushed. “There is little enough to tell.”
“And yet I would very much like to hear it.” His expression confounded Jane. It was a mixture of hurt and anger, yet she did not think the anger was directed toward her.
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, she related the whole of what took place in the passenger cabin when the pirates had stormed in. Vincent became quite still; then he abruptly stood and walked away from the sofa to stare out the window. His hands were knotted in fists at his side. Lord Byron turned to watch him go, a brief smile colouring his face. He leaned closer to Jane. “He loves you very much, in case you were unaware.”
She coloured at his presumption, to comment thus on their marriage. “I—yes, thank you.”
“While he collects himself … It seems to me that if the pirate attack was indeed not real, then Signor Sanuto must know that.”
“But how could he? He was below with me.”
From the window, Vincent said, “Because he paid the ransom.”
Of course, if Lord Byron was correct about how the pirates worked, then Signor Sanuto would have to have been aware. “But perhaps … If we grant that these were not corsairs, might they not be a different sort of pirate? Perhaps the Venetian variety accepts ransoms in this manner?” But even as she said it, Jane could see that the method made no sense.
All previous elation about the Verres faded. The group spent some time debating and turning over the possibilities till Jane felt quite ill.
* * *
When they departed, Lord Byron put his gondola at their disposal, with the prompting that his invitation to share his lodgings still stood. The Vincents’ trip back to the palazzo was spent in silence.
When they arrived back at Ca’ Sanuto, the stairs to the upper floor seemed longer than they had before. Jane dreaded the conference they were about to have with their host. Vincent’s brow was pulled down very low, and his shoulders rode hunched within his coat. They found Signor Sanuto in his study with work candles pulled up next to his desk and his leg braced upon an ottoman with pillows piled beneath it. He looked up from a ledger when they entered and smiled. “How was your day?”
He seemed so happy to see them that Jane wondered how they could doubt him.
“We have been busy.” Vincent tucked his chin into his collar and took a seat opposite Signor Sanuto. Jane sank into the chair next to her husband. Her heart raced inside her stays as though she were managing a large fold of glamour. “We spoke with someone today who suggested, with reason, that the pirates who attacked our ship were not corsairs.”
“Not corsairs?” The signore sat back in his chair, face slipping out of the candlelight. “They certainly looked like corsairs.”
“Perhaps too much. Then there is the subject of the ransom…” Vincent’s voice caught. “How did they collect the money?”
“Ah.” Signor Sanuto twirled his quill in his fingers, staring at Vincent for a moment, and then at Jane. She could only watch with aghast fascination as their host’s face struggled with emotion. His jaw clenched, and twice he appeared to draw breath to speak. At last he sighed and sat forward, placing the quill in the inkpot. Lowering his leg, he began to rise and winced. “Sir David, would you be so kind as to shut the door.”
Vincent stood slowly, not taking his eyes off Signor Sanuto. “I will require some explanation.”
He nodded, not looking at either of them. “The door, please.”
Striding across the room, Vincent shut the door firmly and turned to face Signor Sanuto. Their host still sagged in his chair, but the sound seemed to recall him somewhat. Reaching to the side, he pulled open a drawer on his desk and extracted a paper. With his mouth in a thin line, he placed the paper on the table, sliding it toward Vincent. It was his promissory note. “This is why I did not want to accept your funds when you attempted to repay me. I stopped the deposit.”
Jane could find no other meaning. “You knew. Knew that they were not pirates.”
“I did.” He placed another item on the table. A small woman’s ring. Jane’s wedding ring. “And I could think of no way to return this to you without revealing that I knew.”
“And our other property? And those of the other passengers?”
“Some have been restored, where possible. Most…” He held his hands out helplessly. “It is the part of the—the cost that I most regret, because those paying it did not agree to do so. It was … necessary.”
“But why?” Vincent remained by the door, perfectly still. “Why stage a pirate attack? What could demand such elaborate measures?”
Signor Sanuto sighed and sounded old for the first time since they had met him. “There are things you ask me that I cannot answer. Stories that are not mine to tell.”
“We must have some answer, sir.”
He rubbed his brow. “Let me try. Let me try to speak of things that are common knowledge to see if you can draw the picture. Venice was a republic for one thousand years. Until only ten years ago, in fact, when Napoleon intimidated the council into disbanding our country. It should never have happened. Since then, we have been handed to the Hapsburgs as though we were nothing more than chattel. They have been trying to wring every drop of wealth that they can from Venice. They tax us heavily. For instance, the glassmakers cannot bring in the materials that they require for modern techniques. Their work stagnates.”
“This does not account for anything that occurred.”
Nodding, Signor Sanuto straightened the pages of his ledger. “What if … what if you knew of papers aboard a certain ship that could affect the fate of your homeland? What would you do?”
Jane frowned, feeling as though the conversation had taken a familiar turn. “Are you suggesting that you are a spy?”
He gave a dismal smile. “My answer to that would be the same if I were or if I were not.” Leaning forward, he tapped the promissory note with one finger. “Suffice to say that I had good and sufficient reason to decline your offer to repay me, and even more reason to feel guilty for your injury.”
Vincent snorted and rubbed his hair, in the gesture Jane recognised so well as an attempt to order his thoughts.
“It was … it was a surprise that not all of the passengers went below deck. The plan—I should dissemble, but—” He bit his words off with a groan. “I paid the captain to surrender without contest. The running, shouting, and gunfire was all feigned for the passengers. No one was to be hurt.” Grief seemed to add its weight to Signor Sanuto’s age. He rose painfully and limped to where Vincent stood. He held out the promissory note and the ring. “I had not expected such valour.”
Stiffly formal, Vincent took them both, turning the ring over in his hand. “It seems little valour was required.”
Signor Sanuto shook his head. “You were prepared to fight. I was prepared to lie.”
