The Venetian Contract (27 page)

Feyra was woken by raised voices.

The sun was high in the sky so it must be the hour of noon. She huddled into the well of the stair and recognized the clipped, arrogant tones of the Birdman.

She crept down two floors and listened at the door of her master’s solar. She had learned that as a servant she was invisible to company, so she laid her hand on the door’s handle and entered the room.

Sure enough, the physician was there in attendance. At her entrance the Birdman did not look round, but curved over her master on the bed like a scavenger that expects carrion and is frustrated to discover that his prey is still alive. Feyra stood close by, making small and unnecessary adjustments to Palladio’s bedclothes, listening.

‘Who has done this? Are you retaining another doctor? Is it Valnetti?’

Annibale was incensed, and his anger had made him irrational. It could not be Valnetti. He had only seen sutures like this once before, with a loop to each stitch, when a doctor from Persia had visited Padua. He got as close to the wound as his mask would allow. Even through the beak the bitter smell of grappa reached his nose; the physician had treated the thread, prepared a betony poultice, then sewn Palladio up as neatly as a Burano lacemaker. The wound seemed to have been cauterized too. Not Valnetti, then, for he had no more skill than a butcher. ‘If you are retaining another physician I cannot keep you safe.’

And if Palladio had admitted another doctor, what of
Annibale’s deal with the Camerlengo? If he did not have the care of the architect, would he have to give back his island? He had noticed as he entered, the smoke of frankincense in the small hall, the cleansing herbs underfoot, and that the windows were sealed with fat and ashes; exactly the measures that he should have put in place here himself. Guilt fuelled his anger even more.

Palladio spoke in conciliatory tones. ‘I am not retaining another doctor,’ he said, but his eyes went past the physician to the servant girl standing by the bedpost.

Annibale spun round to face her and saw a telltale blush stain her cheeks. He covered the ground between them and pushed his beak into her face. ‘Who taught you to stitch flesh like this?’ He tipped the bird head to one side as he examined her features. ‘Where are you from?’

The maid began to back away.

‘Wait, wait!’

But the girl did not. She turned and fled.

Chapter 26

P
alladio was at the house less and less.

He had engaged his masons, and a gang of builders, and his church was growing apace.

His and Feyra’s roles had now reversed. He would describe his church to her, how the foundations were laid, the pillars founded and the buttresses piled. He invited her to the site to see the walls growing from the ground, but she could not face visiting what would always be to her her father’s grave. She was further horrified to hear from Palladio that the builders’ gang were having trouble with hordes of visiting pilgrims who came in their droves with buckets and jurdens and other vessels to collect the water from the well, believing it to have miraculous healing powers. The legend had grown out of the story of Saint Sebastian the Doge had recounted and Palladio had been forced to hire guards for the site, to put an end to the nonsense.

Feyra caught his tone and looked at him sharply. ‘What will you do with the well?’ she asked.

‘Wall it in,’ answered Palladio briefly.

Feyra thought of her father’s bones, interred for ever at the heart of a Christian church. Her own heart a stone, she said instead, ‘Do you not believe in miracles?’

Palladio thought for a moment. ‘No.’

She thought of her mother, of her father. ‘Neither do I.’

The news of the fate of the well greatly depressed Feyra’s spirits. The danger and desperation of her escape from Giudecca had forced her to put aside her grief for her father, and it came upon her now, rushing in like
acqua alta
with a force to knock her off her feet. She felt the loss of him as an actual physical pain, located just below her heart. Her growing misery was compounded by apprehension. For as the week passed and the Birdman’s next visit neared, she began to fear the doctor’s retribution. With Palladio and Zabato away at the site, she felt even more fearful. And it was clear that the Birdman had the ear of the Doge.

Palladio stayed at the house every Friday for his appointment with his physician with an ill grace, for he was impatient to be at the site. When the next Friday dawned Feyra crept downstairs, dead-eyed as the mackerel Corona Cucina was preparing in the kitchen for breakfast. She breathed in a wobbly breath. Usually Friday – fish for every meal – provided a respite from the aromas of heathen flesh that the Venetians feasted upon. But today the sea-scent nauseated her. She skulked in the hallway at noon, hoping that someone else would open the door to the doctor and when she heard a rap at the door, and a commotion in the hallway as the Birdman came to roost at the house, she hid. Nearly doubled up with nerves, she tried to regulate her breathing, but her heart leapt to her mouth as she peered from the shadows of the hallway at the little party at the doorway.

For it was not the Birdman.

It was a stranger, with clipped tow-coloured hair, and he was not alone, but accompanied by a semicircle of guards in the half-armour she recognized from the Doge’s palace. The stranger had his back to her, and more terrifying than his escort was the insignia on his back, the winged lion, jaws agape, watching her. When the man turned, he smiled, but the smile did not reach the ice blue of his eyes, and he was scarcely less frightening than the lion. ‘Good
Dama
,’ he was saying to Corona Cucina who had answered the door, ‘would you be so kind as to gather all the persons in the household in your master’s room?’

It was not a question but an order.

Feyra was vastly relieved that she was not alone. Corona and she had to crowd into the
studiolo
behind all the other household staff, from the kitchen maids to the midden-men to the footboys.

In his customary oak chair sat her master, stroking his beard, Zabato standing fidgeting behind him. Palladio seemed outwardly calm, but Feyra knew that he was simmering with impatience. It was a measure of the man that had gathered them here that Palladio had received him at such a time, when his work was in full flow. Feyra was beginning to realize that everyone in this city bowed before the Lion.

Hiding behind Corona’s bulk, Feyra was no longer afraid that this strange meeting had anything to do with her. The stranger waited for the door to close, before he spoke. ‘I believe that most of you know that I am the Camerlengo, the chamberlain of the Doge?’ No one answered the question, nor was expected to. ‘I have received information,’ he
said in a low, musical voice, ‘that there is a fugitive among you.’

Feyra’s heart plummeted. ‘A Turk and an infidel was seen fleeing in this direction some time ago. A search proved fruitless, but in these last days we received a denunciation, posted through the Lion’s mouth, in an unknown hand, telling us the identity of the Turk that hides here.’

Feyra’s heart knocked against her ribs, and was met by an answering knock against the door outside. She darted her gaze around the room. All the household were here. The stranger must have posted another of his men outside the door. She was trapped.

‘I will not try your patience by questioning all of you here,’ stated the Camerlengo mildly. ‘All the menfolk may move to the fireplace.’

The crowd around Feyra thinned out as the men of the household moved to the left of the room. ‘And now every maid who has entered the household in the last month may stay where they are. The rest are to move to the fireplace.’

Feyra was rooted to the spot, unable to move as the others melted away from her. All the eyes of the household were upon her, but she only felt the single piercing blue gaze of the stranger. She could sense him appraising her amber eyes, her skin, the tawny curls escaping from her cap.

‘There’s no need to be afraid,’ he said gently, in a manner that implied the very opposite. ‘Just tell me your name, and where you come from.’

Feyra was dumbstruck. After her time in the house she could speak the Venetian dialect passably well, but in no way would her accent fool a native, and she was still careful to speak to no one save her master and Zabato, and a few words to Corona Cucina. She looked desperately at the two
elderly men who had sheltered her – one who knew her history, one who did not, both of whom knew her provenance. Palladio was utterly still but his eyes held a warning; Zabato twitched, wringing his hands.

The Camerlengo moved closer. She could smell the sweet woodruff scent that he wore. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Won’t you speak?’

Zabato stumbled forward, tripping and then righting himself. ‘She is my niece!’ he piped in a high, panicked voice. ‘She joined the household lately for our maid left us, when the pestilence came.’

The Camerlengo did not turn his light eyes from Feyra’s face for an instant. It was as if he had not marked Zabato at all, and yet he had clearly heard every word. ‘Is this true?’

Feyra had just opened her mouth to give herself away when she felt a painful shove at her back as the door opened and the Birdman came in.

He strode into the room with a force that almost equalled the Camerlengo. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he demanded, his tone amplified by the dreadful beak mask.

‘Just an interrogation, Cason. Calm yourself.’

‘Calm myself!’ The Birdman fumbled in his black cloak and brought forth a round plaque, which winked in the sunlight as he held it high. It seemed to be wrought of some kind of yellow metal. ‘What is this?’

The Camerlengo smiled. ‘Come, Cason, you know very well. It’s the seal of the Doge. I gave it to you myself.’

The beak nodded in a tall sweep. ‘And
why
did you give me this?’

The Camerlengo was silent.

The Birdman answered his own question. ‘So I could
protect this man here from pestilence.’ He pointed at Palladio with a black-gloved finger. ‘You came to my island, did you not, and told me that the Doge himself wished for me to visit this architect every day, and keep the pestilence from his door?’

The Camerlengo inclined his head.

‘Then how may I do my work when you have trailed half of the city into his
studiolo
, carrying the Lord knows what upon their breaths and clothes? The Lord Doge gave me leave to treat the architect. I choose to isolate him. I must ask you to all leave.’ The red glass eyes stared round. ‘
Now
.’

‘But …’

The Birdman held the seal high. The Camerlengo opened his mouth to respond, but in the end gave a jerk of his blond head that sent his
Leoni
guard scuttling from the room. The household followed, staring at Feyra as they passed, their eyes full of questions.

The Camerlengo paused for a second, as if he would say more; then he strode from the room. He did not look at the Birdman again but his gaze found Feyra in his shadow and he favoured her with a final, blue stare.