Bianca (25 page)

“Beloved!” A tall, handsome man hurried forward. He was dressed in full white pants sashed in dark green and a white shirt open at the neckline, which displayed in part a bronzed chest. His face was clean-shaven but for a well-barbered dark goatee, and his eyes were a gorgeous shade of dark blue. “Did I not say I would come for you, Bianca?” He lifted the veil covering her face, looked at her, and stepped back in surprise. “Who in Allah’s name are you?” he demanded. He whirled about, roaring, “You have taken the wrong woman, you fools!”

Francesca began to laugh as her fears evaporated with the knowledge of who this man must be. “No, no,
signore
, do not berate them. My sister and I exchanged places this morning, for I love Enzo Ziani and she insisted her prince would come.” Then without warning her belly rebelled and she vomited all over the toes of his dark boots.

“Who are you?” he asked her, signaling a seaman to clean the mess up with a bucket of seawater. “Let us walk the deck,” he said to the bride, “and you will tell me.”

“I am Francesca Pietro d’Angelo,
signore
, Bianca’s younger sister. I have been living with my grandfather here in Venice since I turned twelve a year and a half ago. I was being prepared for a Venetian marriage. Then our parents sent Bianca here, and
Nonno
decided that Bianca was to wed my Enzo.” Francesca went on to explain the whole plot to him.

Amir ibn Jem could not help but laugh when she had finished. His clever Bianca had been fortunate in having this younger sister who was willing, nay, eager to help her.

“Where is she now?” he asked Francesca.

“Hiding at
Nonno
’s palazzo,” the girl answered him. “If you wish to rescue her, you don’t have a great deal of time,
signore
. And you must escape Venice as well, for they will know it is you who has taken her. She has insisted for months to any and all who would listen that you would not fail her. Where are we now?”

“Anchored in the middle of the lagoon between the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Lido,” Amir replied. “How far is that from your grandfather’s palazzo, Francesca?”

“The little canal to his palazzo is towards the end of the Grand Canal just past Santa Maria della Salute. I can show you, for you will have to get me back.”

“I apologize for spoiling your wedding day,” Amir said.

“It wasn’t really mine,” Francesca responded. “I will marry Enzo one day, but when I do he will know it is me, and that I love him. I was foolish to believe otherwise. I think everyone is correct. I am too young to marry right now. But had you not kidnapped me,
signore
, I should not have had the time to realize it. There is a great deal more to marriage than just a beautiful gown and a flower-bedecked gondola, I am told. But we must hurry now or you will lose the opportunity to regain your own love.”

“I told my bargemen to keep everyone busy until my ship had a chance to make the open sea. They will do their best to delay the search for the stolen bride, but you are correct in that we must hurry,” Amir told the young girl.

He gave orders in a language that Francesca didn’t understand, and then she found herself being lowered once again into the small gondola. Amir swung himself down beside her, and then they were being poled away from the prince’s ship. The gondolier rowed very quickly across the lagoon and into the Grand Canal. Francesca directed him to the little side canal where her grandfather’s palazzo was located.

“The servants will all be busy preparing for the wedding feast, and drinking
Nonno
’s wine while he is not there to catch them,” the girl told the prince. “If we are careful and quick we can slip into the house easily.”

And they did, hurrying up the wide marble staircase and going down the hall to the apartment that the two sisters shared. Agata jumped with surprise when Francesca came into the room, but then seeing the familiar figure of Prince Amir she gave a little cry, which caused Bianca to come forth from her bedchamber.

Seeing her sister, she gasped with surprise, but then she saw Amir. Her aquamarine eyes widened, and then filled with tears.
“You came!”
she said, and the tears spilled down her pale cheeks.

He stepped forward, enfolding Bianca into his arms. “I came,” he agreed. “Did I not promise you that I would?”

“It seems as if it has been forever,” Bianca told him.

“We have not much time in which to make our escape, beloved,” he told her.

“Agata, come and help me get the dark color out of my hair,” Francesca said.

“Do not be long,” the prince warned the servingwoman. Then, taking Bianca aside, he explained to her the farce that had transpired as he kidnapped the bride and had her brought to his ship.

Bianca found the whole thing very funny, and laughed as she had not in many months. But then realizing that they were still in danger, she stood up. “What shall I take?” she asked him.

“Nothing but Agata, if she would come,” he said. “I have the proper garments for you both upon my ship, beloved. Your Venetian finery would not be at all suitable for the life you are to lead. Are you still certain you would come with me, Bianca?”

“Yes! And yes a thousand times, Amir ibn Jem, heart of my heart,” she told him.

“Agata, come! We have to go now or we risk being caught.”

Francesca’s hair was now free of the dark dye, but wet. She ran to Bianca and hugged her hard. “Be happy, dearest sister!” Then she whispered, “He is quite outrageously handsome, Bianca. I don’t blame you.”

“I’m so sorry your wedding to Enzo was spoiled,” Bianca told her younger sibling. “If you truly love him, Francesca, do not settle for another.”

“I won’t,” Francesca replied. “But first I will make him jealous. Now go quickly before you get caught, and your prince imprisoned. The doge would love such a captive.”

The two women and the prince left the apartment and hurried downstairs to flee the palazzo. Francesca had been correct. The servants had been so busy drinking their master’s wine, and preparing for the wedding feast expected to commence shortly, that the fugitives had managed to come and depart without ever being seen. They entered the waiting gondola. Within a short time, they were rowed out of the Grand Canal and across the lagoon and hoisted up onto the deck of the galley. The gondolier, to their surprise, came too, for he was actually one of the prince’s men. The little vessel floated off.

Bianca and Agata were escorted to a large cabin, where Amir left them to change into their Turkish garments while he gave orders for the ship to escape Venetian waters before the precious cargo it carried was discovered. The clothing, while totally different from what they had worn all their lives, was beautifully made. They each pulled on pantaloons, which they sashed at the waist, a modest long-sleeved shirt, a sleeveless vest, and comfortable slippers. There was a single sheer silk veil for head and face that they quickly realized was for the younger woman. The clothing was exquisitely made, of the finest materials. One set was the shade of a ripe melon, and Agata had immediately realized it was for her mistress, as it was decorated with small jewels and gold fringe. The other, which she now wore, was plain but actually a very pretty sea blue in color.

When the two women ventured back onto the main deck, suitably clothed in their new garb, it was to see the shining towers and domes of Venice fading into the distance, and the open sea stretching ahead of them. A new life awaited them, and Bianca looked happier and more at ease than her servingwoman thought she had in months. Agata did not know what awaited them beyond the sea ahead, but Bianca’s joy was too potent to ignore. Whatever they faced, it would be good, the servingwoman decided.

Chapter 13

B
y midafternoon, all of Venice had heard the tale of how the Venier bride had been kidnapped on her wedding day and spirited away. It was suspected that she had been taken by some lawless Turk—a prince, it was said. Alessandro Venier’s servants were quick to gossip, and they said the girl had been saying for months that her prince would come for her. And she had made no secret of not wanting to wed the charming Enzo Ziani, while her younger sister continued to proclaim her love for the man.

How delicious, the gossips in the Piazzetta and Piazza San Marco decreed as they strolled up and down in the presence of the city’s best courtesans. The Ziani family was insulted by the bride’s kidnapping, but they could hardly blame the old prince for what happened. Still, they wanted someone to blame. Instead of building such an extravagant gondola in which to transport the bride, could not Alessandro Venier have made better security arrangements for his granddaughter? Yet they had taken Bianca’s words about her prince no more seriously than had her own family.

Alessandro Venier was himself shocked by what had happened. He decided to blame Francesca for the debacle. “You wished bad fortune upon your sister,” he accused her, “and this is the result of your wickedness!”

“I did not want her to wed my Enzo, it is true,” Francesca said, “but I would never wish bad fortune upon anyone,
Nonno
. This is your fault for insisting that Bianca wed a man she did not wish to marry. But you can redeem the Venier name by offering them me. I will be fourteen in less than seven months, and you said I should wed at fourteen.”

Alessandro Venier looked sharply at his granddaughter. “What do you know of what happened, Francesca? How did this infidel manage to get word to Bianca? And where is her servingwoman? I would speak with her.”

“I imagine Agata is with Bianca,” Francesca said sweetly. “She is very devoted to my sister,
Nonno
.”

“This kidnapping did not happen by chance! If the servant is with the mistress, then someone else in this house knew what was to transpire, and aided them,” Alessandro Venier said furiously. “Was it you, Francesca?”

“
Nonno!
How could I have possibly contacted some infidel I have never laid eyes upon and concocted such an event as transpired today? I had nothing to do with it!”

Of course she hadn’t,
her grandfather thought. He was grasping at straws in an effort to salvage a bad situation. The truth was that even if they managed to regain custody of Bianca, the Ziani family would not have her now. By running off with her infidel, she had embarrassed them publicly. Even if Enzo Ziani were madly in love with her, he could not accept her back. Francesca interrupted his troubled thoughts with an even more troubling question.

“What will you tell my parents of this day?” she asked her grandfather.

“Go to your room,” he said. What was he going to tell his daughter? That she had raised an impossible and disobedient child? The truth was that Bianca’s first marriage was at the root of all this trouble today. If Orianna and her husband had not allowed themselves to be frightened by Sebastiano Rovere, God curse his soul, Bianca would have made a happy Venetian marriage and there would have been the end to it.

But they had practically forced the girl into the arms of that decadent monster, and now a second marriage had caused the foolish girl to rebel. This situation was not his fault, Alessandro Venier decided. It was the fault of Bianca’s parents, and he intended to lay it at their door.

He would, of course, have to mend fences with the Zianis. Bianca’s dowry was of necessity forfeited to them as a penalty. Then he dangled Francesca’s larger dowry before them. He had added to his favorite granddaughter’s dower portion himself. The family demurred. He pressed the issue. Enzo Ziani was publicly mourning his loss before all of Venice, drinking and whoring every night until he was the talk of the city.

“He is not of a mind now to wed again,” the Ziani patriarch, Piero Ziani, told his old friend, Alessandro Venier. “The family wishes to allow him to indulge his grief and his embarrassment, but he must wed again soon. We need an heir. I will be frank with you, Alessandro. Francesca is beautiful and accomplished. But she is too young for my grandson, Enzo. Carolina was fourteen when she married him, and see how that turned out. No, we must seek an older woman, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, who will have a better chance of bearing a live child for us. Bianca was perfect. I regret what happened on what was to have been their wedding day.”

“No more than I do, Piero,” his companion said.

“Do you know for certain who took her?”

“It would appear that her kidnapper was Amir ibn Jem, the grandson of Sultan Mehmet. She knew him slightly, for he was her neighbor when she stayed at the Pietro d’Angelos’ villa,” Alessandro Venier said, telling but a half-truth.

“Enzo told me that he said he would come for her,” Piero Ziani murmured.

“The words of a romantic fool. Who could believe such words but a romantic and even more foolish girl? And who would have thought he would actually come?”

Piero Ziani nodded in agreement. “Certainly he was just more than a neighbor to love her so,” he said. “If it were not my family who has been embarrassed, or my grandson whose heart has been broken, I should be admiring of such a feat of daring. Enzo asked the doge to complain to the sultan and demand the girl back, but of course the doge said no. The scandal will die, and we cannot endanger our relations with someone as powerful as Sultan Mehmet over a stolen bride. Besides, no vows were spoken.”

Alessandro Venier nodded in agreement, but in truth he was infuriated by the Ziani family’s attitude. Then he realized that his friend was correct. In the grand scheme of things, Bianca was an unimportant girl. Venice was not going to war with a powerful trading partner over her. What was done was done. “If Enzo is not in any hurry to reconsider my granddaughter Francesca,” he said to Piero Ziani, “remember that her mother birthed a healthy son nine months after her marriage. Marco is almost twenty now, Piero. Orianna wasn’t much older than her daughter, Francesca. All my daughter’s children have survived infancy and early childhood. Seven children. All healthy. All living.”

“Let us see what happens in a month or two,” Piero Ziani said.

Alessandro Venier had to be satisfied with that. He wrote to his daughter, Orianna, telling her everything that had transpired, cleverly shifting any blame for Bianca’s escape onto Orianna’s and Giovanni Pietro d’Angelo’s shoulders. The Venier family had been made the laughingstock of Venice, and it was their fault. They should have kept Bianca in Florence until she had rid herself of her obsession for her infidel. And if she hadn’t done so, then she should have been incarcerated in a cloistered convent where she would not bring shame upon their two families, as she had by running away. They must now consider her dead to them. Her name must never be spoken within the family ever again.

As for Francesca, he would do the best he could for her.

Reading her father’s letter, Orianna was both furious and heartbroken by turns. To have been so defied by her own child angered her. To lose her eldest daughter brought her to tears. Still, her father was correct. Bianca’s name must be forbidden to them. Her memory expunged. By choosing her infidel prince she had put herself beyond the pale of polite and respected society. Bianca was now dead to them all.

But sailing down the Adriatic coast, Bianca could think only of how happy she was once again. There being no real privacy upon the ship meant that any intimacies between her and Amir would have to be postponed for the interim, but she didn’t care. They were together once again. A pavilion had been set up for the two women at the farthest end of the ship’s stern. There were a silk couch and several leather and wooden chairs upon which to sit, and two small tables inlaid with tile. They spent most days here beneath a blue-and-gold-striped awning, which protected them from the direct rays of the sun. The ship’s crew was not allowed near. Only Amir could join them.

The voyage they would make would give them time to grow used to several changes in their lives. Their clothing was but the start. Bianca would no longer wear the beautiful gowns she had grown up knowing, nor Agata her practical skirts. Turkish garb was, to their surprise, very modest. They wore pantaloons with a blouse and over it an embroidered sleeveless vest. A sash at the waist secured their garments. They were covered from neck to ankles. When they went up on the deck, each woman wore a pelisse with a hood that could be drawn up, and Bianca’s face was veiled. But the biggest change of all was that Bianca would now be known by a different name.

“Bianca,” Amir said, “means ‘white’ and is indicative of your old life in Florence and Venice. From this day forth, you will be known as Azura, for your beautiful eyes of aquamarine.” Amir took her two hands in his and kissed them. “My beautiful Lady Azura,” he murmured to her.

I am Azura now,
she thought happily.
A new name. A new life
. It was good. To her surprise, she found it easy to slough off her old identity of Bianca. With it, she left behind all the darkness and misery of the past. But she did feel a certain sadness in leaving her family. Still, had they not as easily discarded her to Sebastiano Rovere in order to save her brother, Marco? Her only value to them had been how they might use her to help the family. Her happiness had meant little to them, but she had done the unthinkable. She had taken her own life in her two hands and made her own choice as to how she would live it. Gazing at Amir, she knew she had made the right decision.

Taking advantage of the autumn winds, their vessel raced down the Adriatic Sea towards the Mediterranean. They passed the islands of Corfu, Paxos, Cephalonia, and Zakynthos. Although his vessel was well armed, Amir found he was relieved to escape any attack by the very fierce local coastal pirates. An assault on his ship would have been beaten back, but he didn’t want the two women aboard to suffer such a frightening event.

As they rounded the Peloponnese, he pointed out the island of Kythira, birthplace of Venus and ancestral home of the Venier family. The days were warm, although now and again they faced a rainy day. But then they were in the Aegean Sea, passing between Lemnos and Lesbos, cruising into the straits of the Dardanelles and finally the Sea of Marmara early on a misty morning. Slowly, as they reached the fabled city of Istanbul, the fog was burned away by a bright sun.

Azura had stood watching the city take shape before her. It was, she thought, even more beautiful than Venice. The city was constructed on seven hills upon a high, narrow spit of land between the Marmara and a bay known as the Golden Horn. As their ship grew closer, Azura could see the streets and buildings tumbling in disorderly fashion down the hills to the sea. They passed palaces and gardens built along the edge of the water.

“The Russians call this city Tsarigrad, which means ‘Caesar’s City,’” Amir told her. “The Northmen who come call it Mickle Garth, which means ‘Mighty Town.’”

“It’s amazing to behold, my lord,” she told him. “Will we live here?”

“No. I will want my grandfather to know we have returned safely, but then we must make a three-day trip to my home. As I have told you, it is on the Black Sea. We will continue on this vessel, and while we are here you will remain aboard. It is unlikely the sultan will want to see you, beloved. If asked, he must appear ignorant of your and my actions. Venice is an important trading partner for us.”

“Men!” Agata snorted when he had gone. “I will wager the doge sent no one after you, mistress. Christian and infidel will cry religion when it suits them to do so, but neither will permit any interference between them with regards to their trade.”

Azura laughed. “You are correct,” she agreed, but as she spoke she was watching Amir as he left the ship and mounted a great white stallion that had been brought for him to ride from the docks to his grandfather’s palace. A coal black man, bare-chested and garbed in cloth-of-gold pantaloons, held the beast, which was beautifully caparisoned in a fine red leather saddle and a bridle of silver. There were six Janissaries who surrounded her prince as soon as he was mounted, and they rode off.

Azura watched him go, thinking that in three more days they would be at the palazzo she would now call home. No, not palazzo. Serai. The Moonlight Serai. Amir had been teaching her Turkish, and although she had never before spoken any language but her own, she found she was picking it up surprisingly easily. It would allow her to speak with his other two wives, which was important to making friendships with them.

Agata was not having as easy a time, however. “It twists my tongue,” she complained, but she nonetheless struggled on, discovering to her surprise that she understood more of the language when it was spoken than she herself could speak. That, she realized, could prove useful to her and to her mistress. If the new household into which they were being fitted thought she could not understand them, Agata could learn more information that might help them. She explained this to her mistress.

“That is very clever, Agata,” Azura told her. “Amir tells me that his two wives are ready and eager to welcome me, but I am no fool. I cannot be certain of that until I know them. Their servants will talk in front of you, and you will be able to keep me informed. I shall be the third wife, Amir says, but first in his heart.”

“These infidels are permitted four wives, I have learned,” Agata said. “I do not deny he loves you, mistress, but you will have to work hard to keep his favor.”

Azura nodded. “I know,” she said. “I have said nothing before, but I knew this before I decided to come with him, Agata. I knew back at Luce Stellare that if I followed him, I would have to share him with the others. But I have loved him almost from the first moment we met. I should rather have part of him than none of him.”

“You are a rare woman indeed, mistress,” Agata said sincerely.

“Or a fool,” Azura said with a wry smile. “Still, I am happier with him than I have ever been with another.”