6 - Whispers of Vivaldi (19 page)

“Did Rocatti show you these notebooks?” I asked quickly.

“He said they were packed away—in his trunk, deep in the Pieta’s cellars. I left him with instructions to send a porter to locate his trunk and bring it up. He was to notify me at the central guardhouse when he had the notebooks to hand.”

“How many days ago?”

Andrea held up five fingers, accompanied by a sardonic grimace.

“So he lied to you.” Gussie observed simply. “There aren’t any notebooks.”

“It would seem so,” Andrea replied smoothly.

“Aren’t you going to arrest him?” I asked, vexed at the constable’s seeming unconcern.

He shook his head slowly. “The evidence is contradictory. Yes, Rocatti is holding information back, but his whereabouts during the time of Maestro Torani’s murder are accounted for.”

This was new information. I twisted in my covers while Gussie again went to the heart of the matter. “Accounted for by whom?” he asked.

“By Oriana Foscari. The soprano swears that she was glued to his side—or to some other part of his anatomy—from the time they entered the salon to do their musical turn until the party poured into the card room to view Torani’s miserable corpse.”

I jerked the coverlet off, planted my feet on the floor. “You can’t trust Oriana. If she’s made Rocatti her lover, she would say anything to protect him. Truth is as malleable as warm candle wax where that guileful creature is concerned.”

Andrea chuckled. “I don’t doubt it. But when questioned separately, both she and Rocatti tell the same story. After the applause, they left the salon, strayed from the main party, and found their way into a side chamber that contained some comfortable furnishings and a tall armoire painted with scenes of the Battle of Lepanto.”

Gussie weighed in. “Not what you’d call inspiring artwork for lovemaking.”

“The salient point is that the armoire is exactly as they described—I paid a visit to the Ca’Passoni to satisfy myself on that point.”

I slapped both hands on my knees. “Be that as it may, Rocatti isn’t simply holding something back. He’s feeding you a ridiculous tale about
The False Duke
. The two opera scores aren’t merely similar. One wasn’t expanded from the other. They are exact copies.” I sat forward. “It’s much more likely that Rocatti purloined Vivaldi’s score during the time he studied under the maestro.”

“There is another possibility.” Andrea rose and explained as he made a musing turn around the room. “I’ve looked into Maestro Vivaldi’s journey to Vienna. He left our Republic like a hare with the hounds on his tail. No one knows precisely why—the best guess is that he was stung by what he considered unfair criticism of his latest opera in the gazettes. Since the Austrian emperor had welcomed him to Vienna in the past, Vivaldi apparently expected to find preferential treatment there. To finance his sudden journey, the prolific composer sold off sizeable numbers of his numerous manuscripts at paltry prices. My sources tell me that Vivaldi’s works still occasionally pop up at bookstalls.” The chief constable paused in his pacing and raised one hand. His gaze was level and direct. “Rocatti could have bought the opera, realized its potential, and simply waited until the time was right to present the highly innovative musical work.”

I followed Andrea’s reasoning, but one mystery loomed in the background. I voiced it thusly: “If Rocatti bought or stole Vivaldi’s handwritten score—then copied it into his own hand with a less inflammatory title—how did it end up secreted in Maestro Torani’s office?”

“Perhaps Vivaldi wrote out two manuscripts?” That was Gussie. “Or a copyist transcribed at least one other?”

“Unlikely in the extreme,” I observed drily.

“Or perhaps,” Andrea cocked his head, “Maestro Torani had ties to Niccolo Rocatti that you were unaware of, Tito.”

I found myself aching at the thought. I’d always sensed that Torani had been acquainted with
The False Duke
before I presented it to him, but I thought he’d been testing me, judging how strongly I would argue for my discovery and how thoroughly I would be able to translate it to the stage. I chewed on a knuckle. The alternative explanation appalled me. If my mentor had known that the opera was an early Vivaldi work…well, then he had maneuvered me into taking the risk. If someone else recognized
The False Duke
as the same opera as
The Noble Peasant
, I would bear the burden of blame for presenting a purloined composition. Was that what Maestro Torani had meant in his letter:
I have much to reproach myself with
?

“Tito…” Andrea repeated.

I could feel my cheeks flaming, but I forced my tone to remain mild. “If that’s the way it is, I’ll never understand what was in my maestro’s heart—Torani’s lips are sealed for good.”

Neither of my companions could raise an argument to that. Andrea nodded resignedly and changed the subject. He asked, “What was it that you wished to see me about in the first place, Tito?”

I recounted my tale of following Tedi as the soprano slipped away from Maestro Torani’s funeral. Tedi’s presence in Venice didn’t surprise Andrea. With his usual thoroughness, the chief constable had set his men to combing all the quays for a boat that might have taken the statuesque woman and her trunks to the mainland on the date in question. Despite Tedi’s stated intent to take the waters at a mountain spa, the sbirri had found no evidence whatsoever that Tedi Dall’Agata had left our island.

I did manage to surprise Andrea with the news that Tedi had climbed into a sedan chair belonging to her lover’s arch enemy. Andrea’s eyebrows flexed up and down, and his gray eyes turned to ice. “You’re certain?”

“Oh, quite,” I assured him.

After a distracted expression of hope for my continued recovery, Messer Grande prepared to depart. The maid, who’d been hovering in the hall, brought his cloak and tricorne. He offered one more comment before he made his ceremonious bow of leave-taking. “Tito, your news nearly caused me to forget the other eunuch who might have been the bearer of the angel card.”

“Eh?” Gussie stroked his chin pensively.

I took the hint immediately. “Signora Passoni’s devoted cavaliere servente.”

Andrea nodded. “A man who would go anywhere Giovanna Passoni asked, perform any duty she required.”

I returned his nod.

“Of course,” Gussie whispered under his breath. “Franco.”

***

It wasn’t long after my visitors had departed that Liya opened the front door and bustled into the sitting room fussing about my catching a chill. After she’d smoothed my tangled blanket, I brought out the angel card that Messer Grande had discovered under our door knocker.

“What more can you tell me about this image?” I asked.

My wife didn’t answer at once. She decided that damp had entered the house to the point that a
scaldino
was required to keep me from relapse. I protested, but for naught. Liya ordered the maid to prepare the charcoal pot. Because Venice’s climate is mild during eight months of the year, fireplaces and warming stoves are scarce except in the great houses. In the homes of modest folk, the winter chill is often kept at bay by a glazed pot filled with smoldering charcoal that can be moved from room to room with an attached handle. I didn’t care for the fumes from the scaldino, but once its gentle heat had permeated my bones, I slipped down a notch on my couch and began to relax. Surrounded by warmth and softness, I couldn’t have felt more safe and secure than an infant in its cradle.

Assured that I was well, Liya ceased her fussing and folded into the capacious armchair on the opposite side of our Turkish carpet. The sun had set behind a bank of fog, so she’d drawn the drapes and lit the candles. Holding a glass-fronted candle lamp closely, she studied the card for a brief moment. When she looked up, her dark eyes registered a wistful melancholy. “There’s nothing much to tell, Tito. This is the fourteenth trump card—Temperance and Harmony—similar to the one from my own deck.”

“Trump card?” I repeated from my drowsy, warm cocoon.

“Yes. You know the usual suits: cups, coins, wands, and swords.…” She continued at my lazy nod, “You might say that the trumps make up a fifth suit—though that suit doesn’t contain pips or court cards. Rather, it tells…a story.”

“What’s the story about?”

“It tells the tale of a fool’s journey—really, an infinite variety of journeys. Each time the deck is shuffled and the cards spread, the Fool treads a different path.”

I ran a hand over my face, forcing my consciousness back from the brink of sleep. I needed focused facts, not endless fairy tales. “Liya, just tell me this. The card in your hand is printed pasteboard—quite cheap and utterly common—from a tarocchi deck like those displayed in many shops. Correct?”

She smiled. “The cards are of common material, true. The value lies in the hidden meaning of the symbols.” Her smile abruptly faded. She lowered her voice. “To those who have the ability to decipher them.”

“Does the card picture a particular angel?”

Liya’s shoulders trembled a little, as if she were forcing herself to gather her wits, and the candle flames in her lamp wavered. “Yes, it’s Michael the Archangel.”

Hmm. I closed my eyes. Saint Michael occupied the pinnacle of the Heavenly Host, right above fellow archangels Raphael and Gabriel. I pictured the many paintings on church walls that depicted a fierce, steely-eyed Saint Michael decked out in armor. The archangel had contended with Lucifer and vanquished him soundly. Cast him into Hell, hadn’t he? I pushed up on one elbow, now alert and perplexed. “Isn’t it odd that a warrior angel would represent the soft graces of Temperance and Harmony? And if the white-robed angel on the card is Michael, where is his sword and shield? Why does he wear such a mild expression?”

Liya placed both lamp and card on the side table. She sat forward, as if she meant to instruct me in a very important matter. “The Archangel Michael has many aspects. Did you know he is worshiped as the Hebrews’ special protector? Some scholars say that he delivered the nation from the Babylonian captivity.”

“I’ve never heard that,” I replied, shaking my head. “Is that why Saint Michael is on the card?”

She gave a hollow laugh. “The rabbi at Papa’s synagogue would burst a blood vessel if anyone so much as suggested a connection. No, I think it has to do with the belief that the Archangel Michael carries deceased souls to Heaven after weighing them in his perfectly balanced scales. If the trumps are put in perfect order, the card that comes before Temperance is Death, and the next one is the Devil. Moderation is to be cultivated if you want to avoid both, you see.”

I wasn’t at all certain that I did see, but I was willing to take my wife’s word for it. At any rate, I’d decided that my unknown messenger attached no deep mystical significance to the cards he’d tossed through the opera house window and posted on my door. He was merely using the angel card as a device to force me to consider Angeletto as Maestro Torani’s killer. Still, to be complete, I asked, “Does this fourteenth trump perhaps hold a more esoteric meaning than Temperance and Harmony?”

Liya glanced toward the card but didn’t seem to see it. On a sigh, she answered, “The full meaning depends on many things, Tito—the information sought, the card’s position in relation to the other cards in the spread, whether it faces up or down. Even the phase of the moon can influence the meaning.” Liya pulled a few pins from her hair and twisted her neck as if the burden of those massed tresses had grown too severe.

Then all at once, my wife was on her feet. She ran to my sofa and sank down on the rug beside me. She buried her face in the blanket.

“What is it, my love? What’s wrong?” I stroked her hair, now falling from the remaining pins.

After a muffled gasp, she raised her chin and looked me in the eye. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“But you’ve answered all my questions—you are helping me.”

“No, no.” Liya spoke in a wobbly, uncertain voice that I didn’t know she possessed. “The old magic has forsaken me, Tito. Only six months ago I could have consulted my cards or my glass and told you who killed Maestro Torani—at least given you some special awareness or an important detail to investigate. But now…I look and…and there is nothing.”

I could have swum in the depths of those glittering black eyes. “But you’ve not gone blind,” I cried. “You see me, don’t you?”

“It’s the cards!” Liya grasped my arms so tightly they throbbed. Her words tumbled out on a moan. “They used to come alive for me. Now I see only dead pieces of pasteboard. It was the power of Diana that allowed me to peer through the ink and paper—straight through to a place between our world and hers. The goddess granted me the privilege of discerning their true meaning. And now…”

Liya dropped her hands and used them to beat mine away when I attempted to embrace her. In the night-darkened room, her face had paled to a bluish white. Despite the warmth of the scaldino, an icy shiver, worse than any I’d suffered during my fever, traveled the length of my spine. My mouth was dry as I repeated, “And now?”

“The goddess has abandoned me.” Liya’s strained whisper hovered in the air. My heart gave a lurch as she covered her face with her hands and wept.

Chapter Nineteen

At last I understood what had been causing my wife’s hints of distress over the past several months. Her distracted silences. Those blue shadows under her eyes. The increased sharpness of her tongue. The more frequent visits to her family’s Ghetto home.

Perhaps Liya been confiding her troubles in her favorite sister, the lovely, loyal Fortunata. Or in her father, Pincas? Probably not Pincas, I decided. Ever since Liya and I had returned to Venice some years ago, that worthy Jew had drawn firm boundaries around discussion of any matter related to his daughter’s faith in the Old Religion. I heartily wished that Liya had revealed her worries to me sooner—or, digging more deeply into my soul, that I hadn’t allowed the Teatro San Marco’s plight to drive a thin, but sharp, wedge of estrangement between us.

If only I’d removed my ignorant head from the business of
The False Duke
just long enough to take the trouble to inquire what was ailing my wife.

I reproached myself with these thoughts while I cooled my heels in a corner of Gussie’s studio the next morning. I’d arrived by gondola. Though a bright, brave sun had risen from the eastern sea to scatter the fog and dry Venice’s rain-soaked domes and towers, I was feeling far from robust enough to make the usually pleasant walk from my house to the portrait studio on a shabby old square near the Madonna dell’Orto.

Gussie had consigned me to a tattered armchair, a cast-off I recognized from the house on the Campo dei Polli. Around me, morning light streamed through an undraped, demi-lune window to illuminate canvases in various stages of
completion. Paintings were everywhere, stacked on cabinet shelves, heaped against every vertical surface, and displayed on walls of smoothly dressed stone. In their midst, my artist brother-in-law was deeply engaged in the work of his heart. Wearing a brown smock freckled with dried paint and humming an off-key tune under his breath, Gussie sketched at his easel.

It was quite a process. First, he would crane his neck around the board that held a large rectangle of drawing paper. Then he spent some minutes taking grave account of the young castrato who stood on a dais in the center of the workroom. His model comprised my entire reason for visiting the studio. With one elbow supported by a stone plinth, flawless features set in a heroic expression, Angeletto posed before a looped-back drapery of bottle-green velvet.

Once Gussie had made the required observations, he ducked back behind his easel. There, he wielded his charcoal stick with quick, confident strokes, moving up and back, almost dancing before his sketch. Eventually he would feel the need to contemplate his muse again before repeating another burst of artistic activity. As soon as Gussie indicated that he’d completed the sketch depicting one pose, his apprentice—Paolo—halted his work of grinding paints and affixed another large rectangle of drawing paper to the board.

Then Gussie instructed Angeletto to turn his head thusly…rest a hand on his waist…no, not like that…he must bend his elbow like the handle of a caudle cup, let his fingers curve just so. Excellent! Perfect! Maintain that stance, if you please.

So it went for well over an hour, plenty of time for my thoughts to range over Liya’s problem, then to switch onto bringing Maestro Torani’s killer to justice. An idea that seemed to fit the facts of what I knew about Maestro Torani’s death and the purloined Vivaldi manuscript was shaping itself in my mind. More correctly, the ghost of an idea, with wavering outlines and ephemeral reckoning. It was too soon to share my suspicions with anyone, even Liya or Gussie, and certainly not Messer Grande. I required further conversation with this ghost—a prolonged
tête
-à-
tête
in which it would either fully explain itself or vanish like a wisp.

Eventually, I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. The combination of my fanciful ruminations and the pungent fumes of binding oils and turpentine had set up a throbbing headache.

“Signor Amato?”

I looked up to see Angeletto approaching. His lace neckcloth was as tightly knotted as ever, and his high-boned cheeks had been enhanced with powder and a subtle application of rouge. His blond wig—sporting a triple
bouclé
on each side, a silk bag behind, and smelling sweetly of pomatum—was a marvel of the perruquier’s art. And yet, amid all of this artifice, Angeletto’s brown eyes held an unmistakably genuine expression—they beamed tender concern that rested on me as lightly as a moth’s fleeting kiss.

I sincerely hoped that Angeletto had had nothing to do with Maestro Torani’s death. There were other, far less pleasant people I’d rather see under the Leads.

“Are you quite well?” The singer continued in fluting tones, “Signor Rumbolt told me of your recent illness. Perhaps it was too much for me to ask to see you this morning.”

“No, not at all.” I rose from the low chair and made my bow. I knew why I had made the effort to come to Gussie’s studio, but I was curious as to what Angeletto wanted of me. “I am at your service, Signore.”

“It’s one of the duke’s arias. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t seem to get it right. Maestro Rocatti has been unable to direct me. I thought perhaps you would do me the honor of listening…and…” Angeletto dropped his gaze. His nerve seemed to falter, and his voice sank so low that the remainder of his request was inaudible.

It didn’t matter. I understood. The singer sought advice, even though he was embarrassed about needing it. Based on my knowledge of
The False Duke
, I thought I could even predict which aria was causing difficulties. “The second act conclusion?” I ventured.

“Exactly.” Angeletto exhaled in relief and nodded enthusiastically.

“I’ll be glad to listen to your rendition, but tell me this—is Signor Rocatti unable to help you because he is so busy or…on some other account?”

Angeletto gave me a curious look. After satisfying himself that Gussie and his apprentice were consumed in conversation at the other end of the spacious studio, he replied, “Maestro Rocatti has written a wonderful score.
The False Duke
proves his talent as a composer beyond a doubt, but our director is a master of the violin, not the voice. Actually, as a singing tutor, he is worse than useless. And then,” the singer interrupted himself for a dramatic roll of the eyes, “Signor Rocatti seems to spend a good deal of time in Oriana’s dressing room—purely to insure the success of the production, of course. The rest of us can only thank good fortune that Signor Balbi has been allowed to conduct many of the rehearsals.”

“Balbi is also a violinist,” I put in quickly.

“But Balbi has obviously managed to absorb the elements of vocal technique during his long tenure as head of the San Marco orchestra. He’s offered many helpful suggestions, but I’ve still been unable to bring this one aria up to my standards. It just seems…wrong.” He shrugged and added as an afterthought, “Signor Balbi tells me that he has also composed an opera.”

“Yes.
Prometheus
.” I was surprised at how remote the entire notion of Balbi’s masterpiece seemed. Had it only been a few weeks since I’d begged Maestro Torani to consider changing the performance schedule? I continued, “Signor Balbi’s opera was originally scheduled to open the fall season, but that was before I discovered
The False Duke
.”

“
You
discovered our opera?” His gaze widened.

“Yes. Who else?” I was unable to keep a faint tone of rebuke from my tone. “Rocatti handed me the first few pages of the score during a concert we were both attending. Let me tell you, I had to do a quite a bit of convincing to persuade Maestro Torani to accept it.”

“Somehow, I thought it must have been the other way around.…Oh, well. Signor Balbi speaks very highly of you, particularly of your ability to unravel a knotty musical problem. In fact it was his idea that I consult you.” His tone grew tentative again. “I realize this could be awkward…since Signor Passoni has banned you from the theater.”

Gussie and his apprentice boy wandered over. My brother-in-law clutched a fistful of brushes and a smelly cleaning rag. He shook his brushes at Angeletto. “The Savio has no power here, my friend. You are free to raise the roof with your song—if you can.”

Angeletto caught my eye and smiled.

“Very well, then.” I took my seat again. I settled back, crossing one knee over the other. “I’m ready. Let me hear it.”

Angeletto practically flew back to the dais. From that miniature stage, he warmed his throat with a few scales and vocalises. After a delicate cough behind his hand, he stretched tall, threw a commanding gaze over his audience of three, and commenced. Singing as if his life depended on it, the talented castrato rushed through the first section that established the melody without seeming to pause for breath. During the embellishments, he battered the studio’s stone walls with immense, swelling notes and overwrought
fioritura
. Even the strains of the relatively quiet close were annihilating in volume.

Gussie’s young helper had watched the performance with saucer-shaped eyes and open mouth, as entranced with the singer as Titolino had always been with the exotic animals at the annual Carnival menagerie. The boy broke into wild applause the second that Angeletto closed his mouth, though he quickly dropped his hands when he realized his master and I weren’t following suit.

My brother-in-law snorted out a chuckle. “Paolo has never been to the opera. He had no idea a man could make a sound like that.” Gussie then dismissed his apprentice with an indulgent ruffle of his wiry black hair, and the boy started down the iron staircase that spiraled downward from a hole in the floor behind us.

“Paolo,” Gussie called after him. “Fetch three—no, four—chocolates from the
café
. And take care that you don’t spill any on your way back.”

Ah, chocolate. Didn’t I say that Gussie was the best friend a man could have?

I turned my attention back to Angeletto, whose rounded chest was still heaving in an effort to replace the air in his lungs. I crossed the floor to the dais, tinglingly aware of his intense scrutiny. It made me rather uncomfortable. I knew a performer’s mentality inside and out—he was hoping that I could work a miracle when all I could really do was offer observations and suggestions.

“Well?” Angeletto wheezed, raising a hand in an unconsciously graceful gesture.

“I stand in awe of your technique,” I replied. “But its very power is where you’re going wrong. Though written in heroic style, the piece is actually meant to be light and tuneful. The composer”—I couldn’t bring myself to say Rocatti, but neither was I ready to openly attribute the work to Vivaldi—“is having a joke on the audience, making a playful jab at staid conventions. The aria and accompanying action must be delicately handled if it’s not to become preposterous.”

He regarded me sidelong. “Do you really think so? Maestro Rocatti doesn’t conduct it that way. He doesn’t seem to find any humor in it at all. For that matter, neither does Signor Balbi.”

What to say to that? I shuffled my feet, pursed my lips. “Perhaps the director has other things on his mind,” I finally replied. “If you sing the aria as I’m going to ask you to, you may remind him of the charm of the piece.”

Angeletto made a willing pupil. While Gussie drifted back across the studio to study his sketches, I instructed the singer to ascend the opening strains gently and to sound each note with equal attention as the melody unfolded. I listened to his efforts, pacing to and fro with my eyes on the paint-pocked stone floor. Without the accompaniment of a harpsichord, the notes poured out of his throat in a solitary stream that allowed me to instantly spot the deficiencies. His original tutor must have schooled in him in nothing but embellishment, so determined was Angeletto to add trills and tremolos at every opportunity. Neapolitans! They wouldn’t recognize moderation if it smacked them across the face and challenged them to a duel.

“My dear Signor Vanini—” I halted my pacing, raised a forefinger.

“Carlo,” he urged.

“All right—then I am Tito.” I smiled to take the sting from my next words: “For the moment, you must forget what your maestro in Naples taught you.”

His handsome face registered sudden desolation. His frame sagged like a fallen soufflé. “You must not ask me to forget Maestro Belcredi. It’s…impossible.”

“Not the man.” I sighed inwardly. I could well understand loyalty to one’s first teacher, but we had work to do if the aria was to be a success. “Just his love of fioritura. If you value my expertise, tamp it down to almost nothing. Pretend that you’re a young student again, only beginning to learn the piece. Sing it simply, cleanly.”

After a bemused nod, Angeletto struggled to do as I requested. We worked through several repetitions, and with each one, he improved. I was amused to see Gussie keeping a rapt eye on the performance as he pretended to sort brushes into stoneware jars. I wondered if this morning’s posing session had changed my brother-in-law’s mind about the singer’s sex.

I still found it extremely doubtful that Carlo Vanini could be a woman who was hoodwinking a great many people with the full awareness of her nearest and dearest. But I granted that it was within the realm of possibility, perhaps with an element of coercion involved. I wouldn’t put much past Signora Vanini, as cunning a Neapolitan as I’d ever seen. Not all families were honest and loving. I’d encountered a few scoundrels who’d hand their sisters over to Barbary corsairs if they could come out a zecchino ahead.

I also realized that I might never be certain which sex claimed Angeletto; I’d actually ceased to ponder the matter, except for how it might possibly be linked to the angel cards that had been so pointedly brought to my attention. Man or woman, Carlo Vanini—Angeletto—had been the target of vicious gossip. Was he also a target of someone who wished to make him a decoy for Torani’s murderer? Someone who would love to see Messer Grande haul him away in chains? Or, almost unthinkable, was this gentle singer actually a killer?

Over a pot of chocolate ably fetched by Paolo, I tossed questions at Angeletto in a way I hoped would seem like idle chatter. We sat alone at one of Gussie’s cleaner work tables—my helpful brother-in-law had found urgent business for himself and Paolo downstairs.