2 - Painted Veil (14 page)

I ran my hand over the pebbled texture of the leather binding. Did I want to look at the rest of Gussie’s drawings? I didn’t think so, yet I found my thumb slipping between the pages. I drew a few quick breaths, my back pressed into the gilded moldings on the wall. With the candles hissing softly at my ear, I flipped the book open to Gussie’s last sketch. The figure was drawn with graceful legs and swelling breasts peeking through the flowing robe, wanton tresses tumbling to a trim waist, and a wide, welcoming smile. There was no mistaking what this drawing represented.

“Gussie!” I cried. “You’ve drawn Annetta.” It was my sister as I had never seen her, but it was most definitely Annetta. My friend fancied my sister!

Gussie sprang from his chair and joined me under the light. He looked down at the drawing with the besotted pride of a mother cat for her litter. “By Jove, Tito, isn’t she lovely? That’s exactly how I imagine Annetta’s hair would look if she would just take it down from that tight braid she wears.”

Signora Morelli halted in the act of gathering her things. In just a few minutes she had infused the box with her presence by strewing fan, scent bottle, sweetmeat tin, and se;eral handkerchiefs in various corners. She cocked her head. “Annetta? Who is Annetta?”

I showed her the drawing. “My sister, Signora. Anna-Maria Amato. We call her Annetta.”

“This sister of yours. Is she on the stage as well?”

“No, Signora. She is neither singer nor actress. She keeps house for me and my brother in the Campo dei Polli.”

“Umm… now I understand.” She chuckled deep in her throat. “For a moment I thought my judgment had deserted me. I rarely make a mistake about men’s tastes, but I suppose even I can’t be right all the time.” She pulled a copper ringlet across her cheek and regarded Gussie through half-lidded eyes. “Signor Rumbolt, an artist requires more than one muse lest his work turn boring and stale. I know just the thing to inspire your pen and convince you that you still have… what did you call it? The knack. I am receiving guests at the Palazzo Morelli on Sunday afternoon. I will expect both of you.”

Gussie started to refuse, but I put a cautionary hand to his back. I had my own reasons for wanting to learn more about Morelli and his household. I was tolerably confident that the Ministro was feeding the Savio damning reports about the theater, and I wanted to know why. I also had not forgotten that Morelli had been Luca’s drinking companion on several occasions. As Signora Morelli adjusted her skirts to pass through the narrow doorway, I bowed and said, “You are too kind, Signora. We accept with pleasure.”

Chapter 14

“Look here, the chief magistrate of the Piovega reports another well gone bad.” A melancholy-looking man with pockmarked cheeks raised his voice above the din of the coffeehouse. His finger coursed a line of the latest gazette and he continued to speak as it moved back and forth across the page. “The well is in the parish of San Rocco. Yesterday morn, a housewife went to fetch water for her washtub and found it foul and brackish. The magistrate has put a guard on the well.”

“Fat lot of good that will do,” drawled a bedraggled dandy with coffee stains down his front. “Why post the guard on a ruined well? Dispatch the soldiers to protect the other wells, or Venice will end up as dry as a bone.”

His neighbor slurping coffee from a shallow dish chuckled and spoke up. “Who needs water when we can drink Peretti’s coffeehouse dry?”

The dandy was quick with a reply. “Ass! How do you think coffee is made? They steep the roasted beans in boiling water. The purer the water, the sweeter the beverage.”

The noisy coffee drinker was affable if not particularly keen-witted. He simply smiled and replied, “We could always switch to wine.”

I was listening to their conversation from a table under the arcade in front of Peretti’s, a favorite gathering place of musicians. Earlier that morning I had followed Luca’s funeral gondola to the cemetery island of San Michele. Only two attendants rode in the gondola that bore the black coffin draped in tasseled red velvet: a priest displaying a disconcertingly jolly countenance and Silvio, Luca’s brother from Padua. As I stood at the open grave with Torani, Emma, and a handful of others from the theater, I searched the field of iron crosses and budding plane trees for a red-kerchiefed figure. I knew Liya would be barred from the service within the church, but I expected she would find a way to witness her lover’s final reunion with the earth. I was wrong. Perhaps the rituals of mumbled Latin, flickering candles, and sprinklings of holy water insulted her Hebrew beliefs and she preferred to avoid them and honor his memory in her own way.

The funeral had put me in a somber mood that boded ill for my performance in the second
prova
that would take place that evening, so I headed for the lively atmosphere of Peretti’s in an attempt to lighten my melancholy. There, for the price of a steaming cup and a pastry, a fellow could spend the afternoon dissecting the latest opera, gossiping about other singers, or catching the attention of impresarios looking for new talent. The décor of the place was shabby, but comfortable, with tables spilling out under the arcade and onto the Piazza when weather permitted. The billowing, gray clouds had given the priest a respite to bury our murdered painter but, around noon, the showers that had been soaking Venice resumed to cause Peretti’s waiters much scurrying back and forth with chairs and tables.

Well-covered by the vaulted ceiling of the arcade, I was watching the raindrops splash into tiny fountains out on the pavement and fielding various acquaintances’ questions about
Cesare
. As the opera’s opening was set for three days hence, interest was running high. Most of the questions concerned Florio, of course. What was his highest note? How many bars could he sing without taking a breath? How had he developed his excellent trill? I soon wearied of the inquisition and sent a waiter for fresh coffee and more gazettes. When the fragrant cup was set before me, I pulled it to the table’s edge and unfolded the first gazette. Encircled by a wall of paper, I could avoid questions about my rival and catch up on the news of the day.

The situation with the wells topped the columns of grimy newsprint. The San Rocco well was the fifth to go bad within the past week. The others had been scattered throughout the city, and the many households and shops that depended on their pure water had been greatly inconvenienced. The gazettes were rife with speculation about what might be causing this unprecedented occurrence. By far the most sensible theory was that the unusual amount of rain had caused a shift in the water level beneath the city and was allowing waste and sea water to seep into the cisterns. The officials of the Piovega, whose job it was to keep the canals free of accumulated rubbish and ensure a reliable supply of fresh water, were said to be taking measurements.

Unfortunately, many more columns of print were devoted to fantastical or preposterous theories.
L’Osservatore
blamed the phases of the moon allied with a hostile instability of planetary influences and called for the Senate to employ a renowned French astrologer to give advice on protecting the rest of Venice’s wells. A daring stance indeed. I shook out the folds of the second gazette, a paper known for its close association with the Bishop of San Marco. Rather predictably, it warned that further calamities would surely follow unless the populace attended daily Mass and mended their lascivious ways. My third paper laid the blame at the feet of an earthly agent. Without naming names, the popular
Mondo Morale
suggested that noxious substances were being introduced into the wells for unexplained but clearly malicious purposes. The Jews and the Turks were both hinted at as possible culprits. My perusal of the hysterical rhetoric was interrupted when the tip of a walking stick crumpled the top edge of my paper.

“Maestro! You surprise me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here at Peretti’s.”

“
Ciao
, Tito. I intended to nap before tonight’s
prova
, but I was much too restless for sleep. I thought a turn around the Piazza might do me good, but the rain drove me under the arcades.” Without waiting for an invitation, Torani seated himself at my table and beckoned a waiter. “Watching Luca’s box go into the ground reminded me of that eternity of solitude we all face. I found I couldn’t just lie on my bed wondering how close my time might be.”

“An eternity of solitude? Don’t you believe in what the church teaches—that the angels carry the righteous up to heaven after death?”

Torani sucked in his cheeks, then declaimed in a flat voice, “The church is full of fairy tales for fools, my boy. If they would pay attention to the words you sing, people could learn more truth from our operas than from any churchman’s rant.”

I looked around uneasily. I saw no one that I did not recognize as being connected with Venice’s musical world, but anyone could be a government informer. My city, that mercantile oligarchy that called herself a Republic, reveled in her role as Christian defender. She discouraged unorthodoxy with a number of unpleasant procedures that usually began with denunciation by an anonymous, but well-paid informer.

To my relief, Torani did not continue with that line of talk but instead turned to extolling the young man we had helped to bury that morning.

“What a waste, Tito. Luca’s talent was superb. No theater artist could best him in creating illusion. He could transform any surface—canvas, plaster, wood—into anything he wished. If he had lived he could have been another Tiepolo.”

“Artistry must run in the Cavalieri family. Luca’s brother designs illustrations for a printer in Padua. Did you speak with him?”

“Silvio, younger than Luca by two years,” the director observed, staring into space as if he was remembering events that had occurred long before that morning’s funeral. “Yes, I spoke with him. The poor man was overcome with remorse. He told me that as boys he and Luca had been as close as two brothers could be. After their father died, their mother returned to the stage to earn their keep. She found work with a troupe that plays Italian comedy all over Europe, and though the boys were very young, she found a printer who took them on as apprentices. She sent money regularly but rarely visited. As the brothers reached manhood, they went their separate ways. Silvio was content to stay in Padua, but Luca wanted to expand his artistic talents and craved the excitement of Venice. Tears streamed down Silvio’s cheeks as he told me the tale. Only thirty miles separate Padua from Venice, yet he had not seen his brother for almost two years.”

“What a shame,” I murmured, thinking of my own brother abroad in distant lands, then continued, “Silvio looks very like Luca. It gave me a moment’s shock when I saw him in the funeral gondola. It was almost as if Luca’s ghost had materialized to shepherd his own coffin to San Michele.”

Torani nodded in agreement. “I saw you talking with Silvio, too. Did he tell you anything that could help find Luca’s killer?”

“No, we spoke mainly of his mother, Theresa Cavalieri. She is currently appearing in Bremen, too far away to have returned to Venice for the funeral…” I hesitated, remembering Silvio’s bitter comments about his mother’s long absences, then added, “even if she had wished to.”

Torani regarded his coffee cup with a pensive stare. He ran one finger around the rim, pausing in each circle at a chipped depression in the china. There would be no better time to ask a question which had been on my mind.

“Maestro, where were you on the night Luca was murdered?”

The director slowly looked up from his cup. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled and puffy. “Why do you ask, Tito?”

I met his gaze squarely. “On the night he disappeared, Luca was overheard having an argument with someone in his studio. I only wondered—if you were in the theater, you might have heard or seen something of it.”

Torani arranged his lips into a casual smile, but his eyes watched mine carefully. “I wasn’t there. I left the theater directly after rehearsal. I had other business to attend to.”

“Oh. I see, other business.”

“Yes.” His voice sounded unnaturally thick in the damp air. “Who told you about the argument?”

“At present, it doesn’t matter who.”

“Must I remind you that you are working under my auspices?” His smile didn’t waver. “I have a right to know whatever you have discovered.”

I inclined my head toward the older man. “And so you shall, Maestro. When I have woven my slender strands of information into a recognizable pattern, you will be the first to examine it.”

I knew that Torani was not pleased with my answer, but he didn’t press me. The director simply nodded, then collected his walking stick and tricorne as he bade me be on time and in good voice for the
prova
.

***

The rain had settled into a light, but steady drizzle that showed every sign of continuing throughout the afternoon, but I had the good fortune to find a covered gondola to carry me home. I was mounting the slick steps at the bottom of the
calle
that led to the Campo dei Polli when a cloaked figure darted toward me from under the awning of a nearby shop. My hand sprang to the pocket that had housed my small stiletto ever since I had first interested myself in murderous doings. Unnecessarily. I relaxed when the figure lowered her hood.

“Please, Signore, my grandmother said I must find you. I’ve been waiting for hours. I thought you would never come.”

“Mara,” I exclaimed. “You are soaking wet. Come with me to my house. My sister will find something dry for you to put on.”

The girl could have wrung water from the hood of her cloak and her dark hair clung to her cheeks in wet tendrils, but she managed a shy smile. “You know my name?”

“Of course, I heard your father call you by name the first time I visited your shop.” I reached for her hand. “Come, my house is on the
campo
down this alley.”

“No, no.” Her eyes widened in distress. “You must come with me.”

“Why?”

“My grandmother has something to tell you.” Mara pulled anxiously at my hand. “Mama took my sisters to visit Aunt Esther and the men are at synagogue. We have to get home before they return.”

The gondola with the protective covering had departed, so I followed Liya’s sister down the pavement that ran along the canal to the ghetto. It was Saturday, the Jew’s Sabbath. All the shops within the walls were shut up tight, and the twisting alleys that led to the Del’Vecchio’s
campo
were deserted. Even so, Mara rushed me past her family’s clothing shop and into the shadowy tunnel by its side. She stopped at a recessed door, pressing her ear to the crack. Apparently satisfied, she drew me inside with her finger to her lips. In silence, we navigated stairways, halls, and storerooms that were as dark as the inside of my pocket. Finally, she led me into a corridor that I recognized from my previous visits to the Del’Vecchio home. The door to the sitting room stood open. I hesitated, but Mara resolutely hustled me into the room made overly warm by the crackling stove.

“At last! You certainly took your time, child. When I was your age, my legs could have outrun yours by a mile, especially if I’d been given an errand of trust.” Despite the smothering heat, Liya’s grandmother was nesting in layers of blankets and shawls. She flicked a long, bony finger in Mara’s direction. “Close the door. You know what to do. I don’t want your mother surprising us.”

To me, the old woman croaked a more pleasant welcome. “Take your coat off, boy. Hang it there. It will dry. And sit, sit. Warm yourself at the stove.” She reached forward in painfully slow jerks and took up a thin bamboo cane that leaned against the wall. She tapped at a three-legged stool before the stove. “Sit, warm yourself. I don’t want you catching a chill when you have important work ahead of you.”

“Right before the premiere of the new opera would be the worst possible time for a head cold,” I agreed, moving the stool a few feet back from the stove’s fire.

She shook her head, eyes bright and black within a frame of wrinkled skin that seemed as fragile as old parchment. “I am not speaking of your opera. I am speaking of what you are going to do for me, and for my granddaughter.”

Intrigued, I held those bold, bright eyes with my own. “Why have you called me here, Signora Del’Vecchio?”

My question disturbed her. Her thin shoulders trembled beneath the shawls, and her cane tapped peevishly on the floor tiles. “Never call me Del’Vecchio. My name is Filomena Gallico. My daughter may please herself to ally with the Del’Vecchio clan but I am not one of
them
.”

“
Scusi
, Signora Gallico, I meant no disrespect. I didn’t know.”