6 - Whispers of Vivaldi (15 page)

Aldo crossed his arms. “I was born on the mainland, in Ceneda. Ever heard of it?”

“Barely.” I knew of Ceneda only as a backward city of the hilly country to the north.

“My four brothers and I had the misfortune to lose our mother when I was only five. Our father was a tanner, and in his grief he gave us little heed. My brothers and I grew up wild and free, like the black savages of Africa.” He paused to chuckle. “The parish priest and the few neighbors who could bear the stench of the tannery tried to contain us, but it was useless. Under my brothers’ tutelage, I learned to scrounge and pilfer what I needed. I excelled in relieving men of purses and wallets. Small hands, you see.” He held one up for my inspection, wiggling its digits. “Eventually I made my way to Venice on foot, where the better dips were.”

A pair of sbirri passed, bathing us in their all-encompassing stares. Aldo kept silent until they had walked out of earshot. Then he continued in a wistful tone, “I thought I was brave, that I could get away with anything. Looking back, I can’t believe how rash and careless I was. I made an art of dancing my fingers into richer and richer pockets. One day, I chanced to dip into Maestro Torani’s pocket, and one of that bunch,” he said, jerking his chin toward the sbirri, “caught me red-handed. The old man was amazed—he hadn’t felt a thing. Before I was dragged away, he said, ‘You must be a clever lad. Why do you want to end your life at the end of the hangman’s noose? It’s not a pleasant death.’ I think I muttered something about starvation not being too pleasant, either. No need to gild the tale. Torani refused to testify before the
avogadoro
, so they let me go free. Then the old man gave me a job sweeping up at the theater. He checked on me every day to see how I got on, and he seemed to genuinely care.…” Aldo shrugged. “So, I stayed.”

“I had no idea,” I said quietly.

Aldo twisted around and gazed down at the sea-green canal as if it held the answer to an age-old mystery. “In this cruel life,” he said, “I’ve noticed that most men end as they begin. If it hadn’t been for Rinaldo Torani, I’d have been hanged long ago. Or worse, locked up under the Leads until the heat and confinement drove me mad.” He looked up, raised both eyebrows. “They put you in a closet, you know, not much more than a box. Even a man my size can’t stand up in there.”

I nodded, well aware of how the Republic treated its prisoners, but something he said bothered me. I replied, “It’s my philosophy that men can change if they embrace a new code and resolve to live by it.”

His lips pulled in a frown. “A man may walk a new path, but those around him put more faith in his past than his present. Many times the sbirri nab an innocent man. They don’t care. An Inglesi has his purse lifted and wants someone to take the blame. As long as someone—anyone—is punished, he doesn’t care, either.”

Aldo slapped his hands on his knees. “Maestro Torani was different. He saw beyond the obvious.
Allora
, if I can be useful in finding his killer, you have to tell me how. I know you well enough to think you must be on the hunt.”

I held his gaze for a breath, then: “Haven’t you heard the talk about how I must have removed Maestro Torani to advance my career?”

“Don’t waste my time, Tito. I have to get back to work.”

I detected no hesitation in his reply. “All right.” I licked my lips, nodding. “Has anything been removed from Torani’s office?”

Aldo dug in the pocket of his linen waistcoat and came up with a brass key that he displayed between thumb and forefinger. “As soon as I got in this morning, I did a sweep of the entire theater. The door to Maestro Torani’s office was locked—just as it’s been since the gondola accident. I let myself in and took a look around. Everything seemed in order.”

“Tedi hasn’t been in, perchance?”

“No, not for some time.”

I told him about her departure for an Alpine spa. The stage manager merely rolled his eyes and muttered something about “perfidious females.” Then he pressed the office key into my palm. “Perhaps you’ll see something I didn’t.”

“I need to look through Torani’s scores.”

Aldo whistled under his breath. “What? All ten thousand of them?”

I nodded. “I’ll need some time—preferably away from prying eyes and without danger of interruption.”

Pushing on his knees, Aldo rose from the stone wall. His last words were low and pointed. “Come to the theater tonight then—Ziani has been burning the candle at both ends, but he should be out of his workshop by eleven at the latest. I’ll be waiting at the stage door.”

I didn’t move right away, merely watched Aldo saunter up the pavement with his usual bantam rooster strut. Had my old enemy really become my friend?

***

I eventually scrambled to my feet, dusted off the tails of my jacket, and directed my steps toward home. But not before wiping my neck with my handkerchief as a cover for sending a discreet look in every direction.

At several points during my conversation with Aldo, I’d had the uncanny sensation of being observed, that prickling at the back of the neck that forces you to turn and scan the scenery behind you. Scarface hadn’t followed us, and I’d identified no one on the canal or the pavement who didn’t seem to be going about his day-to-day duties. Besides, the stage manager and I had been talking softly in the open air. No one could have possibly overheard without giving his presence away. But as I entered the Cannaregio, the feeling of being watched returned emphatically.

My neighborhood consisted of long, straight canals bordered by wide pavements, a gondolier’s dream. Connecting these main thoroughfares were slender threads of water crossed by bridges of wood, stone, or iron. I stopped in the exact center of one of the crooked bridges that doglegged into the intersection of two calli. The surrounding three-story houses rose straight up from the water, framing a rectangle of sky. Against that pale canvas, gray clouds scudded in shifting layers. I propped my back against the bridge’s iron railing and gazed upwards as if assessing our chance of rain.

I feigned that pose for some minutes, keeping my expression unconcerned but my muscles expectant and tense. If any lurker had business with me, I was handing him—or her—a very tempting invitation.

No one responded—and it really did look like we were in for a storm.

Pushing more deeply into the Cannaregio, I decided that one of Messer Grande’s spies must have been detailed to keep a discreet eye on me. My foray into Peretti’s coffee house had proved disconcerting in more ways than one: it was obvious that at least some of my musical comrades were taking it for granted that I’d killed Torani and would soon be arrested. I had to wonder exactly where I stood on Andrea’s present list of suspects.

Fat raindrops bounced off the pavement just as I came in sight of the house. I ran the last few yards. Liya heard me jiggling the latch and came to open the door herself. A strand of her long black hair had escaped her chignon, and her eyes looked weary.

“Where’s Benito?” I asked. Since my manservant was no longer needed to care for my costumes at the theater, he had taken on more responsibility around the house. Minding the door was one of them.

“Come into the sitting room, Tito.”

One candle burned there, on the table where Liya had been studying her cards. Instead of being laid out in their usual neat array, the brightly-colored rectangles were scattered across the tabletop as if a child had been playing with them. One had fallen to the floor. I returned it to the table—a winged angel pouring water from a pitcher into a chalice of wine. From previous discussions I knew this card represented Temperance and Harmony.

I could use some of that.

My wife clapped her hands for the maid, and the girl stepped in from the hallway. Liya told her to bring wine, and after a sharp glance at me, a plate of bread, olives, and cheese.

“Liya…” I began uneasily. I craved the normalcy of home, but the atmosphere in the house felt decidedly wrong. Even the shadows gathering in the corners seemed to harbor some somber secret. Where was Benito?

“He’s gone,” Liya told me, once I’d flopped down on the tapestry-covered sofa.

“Gone?”

“He packed a bag and left around noon, not long after you did.”

“But…where did he go?”

“I asked him, of course, but he insisted on being mysterious. Benito absolutely refused to explain where he was going or why—only stressed that I’m to tell you that he pledges to return with information you will find beneficial.”

“How can he make such a pledge?”

Liya shook her head. “His last words were, ‘I will find answers for my master or die trying.’”

Dio mio! My heart became a tiny hammer, pounding my ribs with a staccato beat. It went on as the maid crept in with her tray and Liya pressed a glass of Montepulciano into my hand. First Tedi, now Benito. While Tedi’s desertion struck me as a betrayal, Benito had obviously formulated some misguided, spur-of-the-moment, overwrought plan to help my situation. What and where, I couldn’t immediately fathom. Oh, Benito, I thought, what kind of trouble have you started? I bowed my head and mumbled a prayer for his protection. What else could I do? Sending after him would do no good. He’d been gone for hours, and his trail would be cold.

As Liya moved about the room lighting more candles with a tightly twisted length of paper, I calmed gradually. The hiss of the wicks catching fire melded with the patter of rain sounding on the shutters. I took a sip of wine and let its warmth fill my mouth before swallowing.

“Your face is so gloomy,” Liya said, as she kicked off her shoes and settled beside me with her legs drawn up under her skirts. “Are you in pain?” She touched my chest lightly. “I must redress your wound.”

“It’s all right.” I moved her probing hand away.

“Is it Benito? You mustn’t worry. He knows how to take care of himself.”

She was right. My manservant had shown himself to be resourceful in a number of ways—God had given him the gift of dancing between raindrops without ever getting wet. Perhaps I was needlessly anxious.

“Well, did you discover something upsetting while you were out in the city?” Liya asked. Her black eyes, slanted sidelong and illuminated by candlelight, gave off an eerie gleam.

“You be the judge,” I challenged and began to recount my afternoon’s activities. When I reached the part where I entered Maestro Torani’s study, I remembered his letter that I’d stowed in my pocket. I quickly retrieved it, then broke the seal on the outermost paper that had been folded around three inner pages scrawled with my mentor’s loosely sloping hand.

Wine glass abandoned, I read Torani’s last letter aloud with Liya’s head snuggled into my shoulder. He must have written it while I was away in Milan, because it began thusly: “My dearest Tito, My heart is heavy and my head confused. Whether you return with Angeletto or not may matter little. Powerful forces are arrayed against our Teatro San Marco, forces that a tired old man can no longer gather the strength to fight. If you are reading this, I am gone—to a happy place far from Venice, or more likely to the dark and mysterious fate that we will all face in time. I have much to reproach myself with and hope you will not despise me if my actions have led to the demise of our beloved opera house. Forgive me, my boy.”

I glanced up with a puzzled grunt.

Liya stirred beside me. “What does he mean, Tito?”

“I only wish I knew, my love.” I heard my own voice tremble as I considered which forces he could have been referring to.

Settling back down, she murmured, “It’s almost as if he had a presentiment of his own death.”

I nodded, scratched my cheek where Liya’s hair was tickling it, and turned to the next page. It was a list of instructions Maestro Torani had set out in the event that the San Marco survived. My mentor clearly assumed that I would don his director’s mantle. I sighed. What would he think if he could know that Rocatti was now in charge of the enterprise he had tended for over a quarter of a century?

The third page held a more personal message. “Heed me well,” I read. “Tedi calls me an old fool. She speaks the truth. I’m vain, exacting, and over full of pride. Ambition bedevils me—I may as well be honest. Many times I squeezed and pinched you like a boot a size too small. Or otherwise held you back by tying myself to your coattails. You must forgive all this, too. I cannot change my nature. This is the important thing I want you to remember: Although I have no father’s claim to you, indeed, I love you as my true and only son. My dearest wish is that you recall our shared years with happiness.”

He’d signed it with a flourish and an embellished Rinaldo Torani.

“Oh, Tito,” Liya breathed.

I stared at the words on the page so long that they ran together and became as meaningless as chicken scratchings. Then I hugged my wife with both arms and tightened my grip as if I were girding us both for battle.

Chapter Fifteen

Liya had extracted a promise that I wouldn’t go to the theater alone. She had never liked Aldo any more than I had and didn’t trust him. With Benito gone, there was only one person for the job of helping me search Maestro Torani’s office: Gussie. My brother-in-law was always ripe for an adventure, and there had been precious little excitement in his life of late.

I arrived at the house on the Campo dei Polli—the house that had been my and Annetta’s childhood home—just as my sister was taking the children upstairs to bed. Isabella squealed when she saw me. She wiggled out of her mother’s grasp and fastened herself onto my leg. Now I had two more females to convince of the necessity and gravity of my mission to the theater.

Pulling at my cloak, my niece begged to come along so she could view the kitten that soon would be hers. Isabella was easily put off by a sugar stick that I’d tucked in my pocket for just such an emergency. Not so Annetta.

As Gussie donned cloak and tricorne, my sister crossed her arms and fixed me with a stare. Her brown eyes held a stubborn look I knew well. Once she’d absorbed the details of my suspicions about
The False Duke’s
true composer, she said, “Let me see if I have this right. You’re going out into a dark city filling up with all manner of scoundrels bound for Carnival, trusting a man who’s been jealous of you for years, and crossing a patrician who would see you thrown under the Leads without batting an eyelash. Correct?”

“Annetta, I have to—”

“I know,” she cut me off and heaved a sigh. “Don’t forget that I was around when you first sang on Torani’s stage. I know how you felt about the old man. Just…please…don’t allow your zeal to cloud your judgment. “And,” she paused to run a possessive hand over Gussie’s shoulder and arm, “take care of my husband.”

“You have my promise, Sister.”

Annetta saw us off with kisses. A peck for each of my cheeks, and a long, deep one for Gussie.

***

Venice never slept. Well, perhaps you could argue that my city drowsed during the worst of the summer heat, when the wealthy made their annual
villeggiatura
to cooler mainland estates. But a deep, snoring, head-buried-in-pillows sleep? Never. Gussie and I had plenty of company on our walk to the theater.

We began by circling the Campo dei Polli, where the bright, three-quarter moon shone on several men smoking long clay pipes around the central well that supplied the square with drinking water. They were bundled in cloaks against the chill, picking over matters of the day, their heads wreathed in gossamer threads of pale smoke. Above, several women murmured from balcony to balcony. Gussie and I didn’t speak until we were hurrying along the Cannaregio’s canal-side
fondamenti
where I advised him of Maestro Torani’s gambling debts and their consequences.

Gussie had been minding the uneven paving stones; now his gaze slewed to me. “That rather widens the field of possible killers, doesn’t it? I’ve heard that many of the private casinos are owned by cash-poor second and third sons of patrician stock—men with little to fear from the authorities and plenty of bravos at their disposal.”

“You’ve heard correctly. But Torani’s valet reported that Tedi had paid the old man’s debts with money raised by selling her jewels.”

Gussie pulled a face. “Tedi must be frightened, though. What else would drive her from Venice before Maestro Torani has even been laid to rest?”

“I’m thinking her sudden journey may have something to do with the object of our search. I don’t know how or why—every time a piece of the puzzle comes into focus, another piece becomes blurry—but I also believe that
The False Duke
somehow bears on the murder.”

We paused on a wooden bridge to watch a large gondola lit by lanterns, fore and aft, slip by. It was headed toward the heart of Venice, but the feathered masks of its chattering occupants and the mist rising off the water lent the pleasure boat an air of a barge bound for fairyland.

As we started down the bridge’s steps, Gussie changed the subject. He spoke with uncharacteristic tartness. “Tito, I know Benito is devilishly clever and capable and all that, but disappearing on this impulsive jaunt without securing your permission…” He trailed off and shook his head disapprovingly.

“Italian servants can be unfailingly loyal, but they’re not nearly as stuffy about it as your English ones.” I had this on firsthand observation. I’d spent one exceedingly damp and dreary London season singing at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Never again! “Italians have considerably more imagination and a definite independent streak. Benito must believe he’s doing me a service.”

“But you didn’t tell him he could set off on his own? Even by implication.”

“No.” I scratched my head as our long legs ate up the pavement. “At least I don’t think so. This morning seems like ten years ago. We talked of the murder, of course, and we both had our pet suspicions.”

“Suspicions of whom?”

“Majorano, Angeletto, Caprioli. You mark my words—Benito will return one of these fine days, having inveigled a deep, dark secret about one of them. Perhaps the secret will be useful. Perhaps not. But it will be true.”

Gussie shook his head. “I’m just glad I don’t have to contend with such an unpredictable servant.” Once he’d settled in Venice, my brother-in-law had dismissed his severely correct valet and never hired another. Gussie actually seemed to relish dressing himself and didn’t mind that his yellow hair often resembled an untidy haystack.

He fell silent as a man and woman in concealing
bautas
passed by with their veiled hat brims nearly touching. Husky, amorous whispers reached our ears, then Gussie said, “I’ve thought of a service I could do you, Tito.”

“You’re doing one now.”

In the dark, I felt, rather than saw, his smile. “Something else,” he replied.

“What’s that?”

“I want to paint Angeletto’s portrait.”

“Why on earth?”

“There is no better way to know…him…or her, damn it. Over the time it takes to paint a good likeness, the artist becomes intimate with his sitter—whether the subject intends it or not.”

“You still believe Angeletto could be a woman? Even after Grillo as much as admitted that the story of their lovemaking was a whopping falsehood?”

We’d entered the Campo San Bartolomeo near the Rialto. The pavement was more crowded there, and I couldn’t hear Gussie’s reply over a large group of raucous Germans singing snatches of popular songs.

He raised his voice. “I believe my eyes, Tito. She’s pretending, using masculine gesture and stance, but not totally at ease with it.”

“I can think of at least ten men who naturally move with a woman’s grace—one of them is Benito.”

Gussie shook his head firmly. “As I live and breathe, Angeletto is a woman. She is! I’d like to prove it to you.”

“Until then, could you indulge me by using the masculine pronoun?”

“If you wish,” he replied stiffly.

We’d caught the Germans’ attention. They pressed close, hemming us in, all wearing identical white masks with rounded cheeks and blunted noses. Standing on tip-toe, their leader shoved his pig-snout into my face and demanded directions to a certain notorious casino. After we’d pointed the way, he tried to fill our hands with foreign coins. We tossed them on the stones for the ever-present facchini and went on our way. What did the ill-behaved foreigners think Gussie and I could do with their paltry thalers?

By the time we’d reached the campo on the landward side of the Teatro San Marco, I’d given Gussie permission to do as he liked about Angeletto’s portrait. Against my better judgment, I admit. His unshakeable belief was based in part on his attraction to the singer. Was it a good idea for him to be spending long hours of portrait-sitting with Angeletto? I’d acquiesced because Gussie was so keen. He’d formulated the idea of announcing himself to the singer with the news that an anonymous admirer had commissioned the portrait—not an unlikely event in a city which was still being swept by castrato fever. Public gondolas were now flying pennants devoted to their boatmen’s favorite singer, and on the Merceria, shops were selling ladies’ fans and garters adorned with miniatures of Angeletto, Majorano, and even Emiliano.

I’d said yes, also, because I truly doubted that the Savio would allow Gussie to even talk with the singer, and certainly not to have a sitting within the confines of the Ca’Passoni. Signor Passoni knew very well that Gussie was part of my family.

The theater square was deserted. With no performance scheduled, it would be unlikely to be otherwise. Balls and dinners and other entertainments had drawn the crowds elsewhere. As Gussie fell back to follow me down the narrow slit that led to the opera house’s stage door, a score of church bells rang out, tolling the hour. Eleven o’clock. We climbed the stairs, and I gave the thick planked door a double thump with the side of my fist. It creaked open.

A sigh of relief escaped my lips. I’d half expected Aldo to go back on his promise.

But there he stood in the lantern light filtering through the open door of his office cubbyhole. Frowning, he stroked the gray bundle of fur snuggled into the crook of his arm. Isis. I could hear tiny, plaintive mews sounding from his office. Aldo shifted the cat from one arm to the other. “You’ve brought Signor Rumbolt, I see.”

I raised my eyebrows. Surely the stage manager wasn’t going to object. “Two pairs of eyes,” I replied. “We’ve many scores to look through and only so many hours.”

Aldo nodded slowly. He looked haggard, with deep blue shadows dragging at the skin under his eyes. It must be difficult for him, I thought. Over his years as stage manager, Aldo had developed his own comfortable routines. Maestro Torani’s murder and the change in directors had thrown a wrench into his well-oiled machinery. He had much to contend with; no wonder he looked exhausted.

“You have the key,” Aldo said. “I’ll stay here until you’ve finished in the maestro’s office.”

“There’s no need. I’ve put the theater to bed many a night. Rest assured I’ll lock her up tight. You go home and get some rest.”

“Well…” Aldo gently deposited Isis on the floor, and the animal ran to nurse her offspring. He moved toward the stage, rubbing his chin. Gussie and I followed. From around the edge of a canvas flat, the stage manager peered into the velvety, silent blackness of the auditorium. “I suppose everything is in order.”

I was more interested in the stage. The backcloth had been raised into the flies, revealing a deep forest of dangling ropes and sandbags partially obscured by a massive shadow. Before I could make sense of its contours, Gussie whistled appreciatively.

“I say, that’s a fine ship. It covers nearly a third of the stage!”

My eyes adjusted, and I began to discern the contours of the dark hulk. A pointed bow. A broad stern with a raised captain’s deck. And amidships, a mast that rose as straight and tall as the trunk of a hundred-year-old oak. Crossing the boards for a closer look, I burst out in admiration. “Ziani has spared nothing. This is twice the size of any ship he’s built before. Has he completed the mechanism’s overhaul?”

“Ziani certainly hopes so.” Aldo was suddenly at my elbow. His voice had changed. No longer hoarse with weariness, it held a new energy. “He demonstrated it for Rocatti just an hour past. Our new taskmaster seemed to approve. I hope the Savio will agree—he’s the one who must be pleased in the end. Would you like to see it in action?”

I was about to refuse—we had much work ahead of us—but caught sight of the excited glint in Gussie’s eyes. He loved these mechanical marvels almost as much as the Savio. “All right,” I said, “but be quick.”

Aldo pointed downstage. “You two stand there, by the foot lamps.” As Gussie and I complied, he disappeared behind the huge set piece. After a moment the stage manager’s head popped up near the steering wheel, and he clambered onto the deck. “Imagine the billows rolling in the background,” he called. “They swell higher and higher, tipped with white sea spume. The duke and his lady have lashed themselves to the steering wheel. A huge crack of lightning splits the sky. It actually seems to hit the mast. And…”

Aldo braced his feet in a wide stance and bent his back to the wheel. He cocked it right—once, twice—then left. With a groan I could feel through the floor boards, the great ship lifted several feet. When it seemed the ship could rise no farther, its deck gave a sharp, sudden creak and split directly in half. Each end hit the stage with a thunderous crash, raising a cloud of dust that swirled in the beams of light filtering through the wing flats. What a miracle of automata Ziani must have created below stage!

Gussie whooped. I applauded. From the sloping deck, holding tight to the wheel with one hand, Aldo bowed as if he’d designed the shipwreck himself.

The effect would be even grander once all the accoutrements were in place. A long wooden box filled with stones would be hauled up to a catwalk in the flies; when the box was tipped end to end by means of a block and tackle, rolling thunder would sound from the heavens. A boy would shake a smaller box filled with dried ceci beans to serve as pelting rain. The howling of the wind came from machines set up in the left-hand wing. Gianni, the burliest of the stage hands, would put his muscle to turning the crank attached to a barrel-like wheel loosely covered with canvas. The faster Gianni turned the crank, the harder the wind howled.

And the lightning! What a show, but so terribly dangerous. In my opinion, fireworks should be confined to the out-of-doors. There’d be fewer theaters destroyed by flame if they were.

As Aldo went below stage to reset the complex machinery, I dragged Gussie away, and we traversed the long corridor leading to Maestro Torani’s office. The brass key grated in the lock, at first stubbornly refusing to turn, then giving way all of a sudden.

I expected to be greeted by the smell of stale air and musty scores. Instead, a draft of cold air whistled past my ears. Shafts of blue moonlight falling through the casement windows revealed the source. One of the diamond-shaped panes had been broken out. Gussie located a tinderbox and candles, and we examined the damage by their wavering light.