The Remedy (25 page)
I came to several swift epiphanies. I did not need to allow myself to be handed, passively, from one man to another. I need not allow Valentine Greatrakes to surrender me as a victim because he lacked the backbone to demonstrate his love.
None of these thoughts were visible upon my face or Mazziolini would not have acted as he now did, in a rare instance of carelessness.
Thinking me all but delivered, and lulled by my sleepwalking state, Mazziolini had pushed my gondola from the shore, but he had not accompanied me. For the sake of discretion, in Venice he seldom traveled in the same conveyance as I did, but always followed me closely. Now, I saw him distracted by an acquaintance at the shoreline. Mazziolini was from
terraferma
himself, not a Venetian of the floating city I saw him motion to his own gondolier to wait while he exchanged a few pleasantries. It occurred to me dimly
Yes, he too had a life.
From time to time he turned his head to make sure of my progress. I saw his eye skim to the shining cushion now floating toward the shore, and dismiss it.
A larger vessel, a fishing boat, now hove into sight, heading back to
terraferma.
I calculated that in about five minutes, at our
present progress, our paths should cross. Seeing the danger, my gondolier escalated his speed, and soon the fishermen were between us and the shore, blocking Mazziolini’s view of me.
Swiftly I crawled out of the
felze
and stood up, rocking the boat dangerously. I clutched at my belly. At the same time I cried out at the top of my voice in the direction of the fishermen, “Help me, I am taken ill!” I turned to the astonished gondolier, and whispered, “Pray continue your journey without me.”
I tossed him a large coin, which he caught dextrously. He had no idea that I had just paid for his certain discomfort at the hands of the Inquisitors. I selected just one valise, and told him that he might make a gift to his wife of all the others and their contents. Whatever mystery he thought to have stumbled on, the sight of the elegant luggage soothed any worries. He made me a happy salute and hoisted me up to the arms of the anxious fishermen.
In moments I was lying on my back in the dank cabin beneath the deck of the fishing vessel. Begging my pardon all the while, one of the fishermen felt my belly for the signs of a pregnancy. Finding none, his fingers rested on my neck glands and my wrists. I told him that I was feeling better now: the nausea had passed.
“Perhaps you would like to go on deck, my lady? It’s close in here.”
He did not exaggerate: The boat’s cargo raised up abominable fetid belchings with each new wave.
“The sight of the horizon would do me good,” I agreed, “but I am afraid to sit up there among all the men. Let me just climb the ladder till only my head is above the deck, and I may take some breaths of fresh air.”
And so I hid and yet allowed myself the gladdest of views: that of Mazziolini poling swiftly toward Venice in his gondola, and, if I turned my head, the shore of Mestre, fast approaching me in the other direction.
On landing, I told my rescuers that I was now fully recovered and that I required only their help in directing me to a coach that might take me to Naples.
“Naples, how I long to be there!” I sighed. For extra emphasis, I added, “It’s the only place in the world where I feel safe,” lest any of them forget what I had said during the interrogation, which they would shortly undergo when my pursuers caught up with them. I tried not to think of them being used hardly, and hoped it would not be so: They had thwarted the Council of Ten inadvertently and with only gallant motives.
I permitted them to help me with the single valise I had selected from the gondola, and to put me in a coach, which, with the greatest of good fortune, was due to leave within the half-hour.
At the first pausing place, I climbed down from the carriage, and joined another going in the opposite direction. For two days my progress scribbled a criss-cross of feints and doublings-back so dense as to lose any pursuer.
At last, when I felt dizzy myself with all these maneuvers, I made my first honest move, and joined a coach that headed north and west. At Torino I found a stationer who, for a ludicrous fee, prepared me some unimpeachable identity documents.
In two weeks I was travel-soiled, exhausted, barely able to speak. But at least I was back in London.
A Cardiac Infusion
Take conserve of red Roses 1 ounce; conserve of Borage flowers 2 ounces; candy’d Citron peel, beat to a Mash 6 drams; pour on them Borage water 9 ounces; Meadow sweet water 3 ounces; Damask Rose water 2 ounces; having mix’d all very well in a marble Mortar, and let them stand cold an hour, strain out the Liquor and add to it juice of Kermes half an ounce; juice of Lemon 1 ounce; Syrup of Raspberries half an ounce; and pass it all through Hippocrates’s sleeve, till it be pretty clear and fine.
It restrains the Fervour, and allays the impetuosity of the too inflammable Blood at the same time, it also clarifies and rouses up the Spirits, darkened and depress’d with atrabilarious Vapours. Tis a very grateful and comfortable thing in a burning Fever, especially if the Patient be inclinable to Hypochondriacism and Melancholy. You may give a large Wine glass full thrice a day.
Off he went to Venice without a word of good-bye.
As if I deserved that. As if I had not done everything to keep him charmed almost to convulsions these last weeks since my Pa died.
I was more than a little disgruntled.
All I got was a hasty letter with a quite nugatory quantity of apology in it. He scribbled that he was going to make some personal inquiries into the “tragedy,” and that he was meantime researching some vastly exciting new opportunity of a commercial kind. And that, moreover, he might well be bringing me a wonderful surprise when he returned, something that would make me a happier girl, and improve my life in oh-so-many ways.
“I’ll not be hinting more, dear Pevenche, on account of otherwise you’ll be second-guessing me, perspicacious as you are,” he added. He loves a four-syllabled word, does my Uncle Valentine. And when he finds a new one, he carries on with it as if he had discovered hot water! Yet it’s impossible not to be fond of the fellow. Even my Pa loved him. My Pa, who didn’t have any love to
spare, who’d fight with the nails of his own toes, and was always ready to use the heel of his fist on anyone at all, even young innocent persons, just for asking a little favor of him.
While Uncle Valentine went a-gallivanting, I was to content myself with Dizzom for my requisites. Risible little Dizzom, with his pantaloons forked so low it seemed like he had four equal limbs. It was an embarrassment to me when he came to the Academy. I gave him dog’s abuse when he did so, only to discourage him, not to be personally hurtful.
If I needed him, I would go to surprise him at the depository, a thing I loved to do. I always hoped to happen upon Dizzom in the act of smelting the Venetian glass daggers out of the tallow candles in which they arrive at the warehouse, and to beg one from him. The pretty little things are never delivered to the ultimate clients still embedded in the wax because the secret mode of their smuggling serves to increase their price. Like every good scam, it is head-smackingly obvious once explained, but delectably arcane when not. My Pa would never let me have one and got quite irate when I asked.
Deprived of my treats and excursions on the arm of Uncle Valentine, every day passed slow as a wet week inside the Academy I was not happy about any of this, and I intended to make my displeasure felt in all the ways open to me, chiefly of a melancholic and hypochondriac nature. Abandonment will certainly ruffle a delicate girl’s constitution, sometimes dangerously. And this behavior had galled, piqued and hurt me until my every feeling was perforated with a thousand tiny rips.
Uncle Valentine would be hearing of my afflictions, my fevers, my weaknesses, and my depression, and they would rend his heart with guilt, and bring him back to London all the sooner.
I had my suspicions about his “wonderful surprise.”
Venice, January 1786
Take powder’d Male Peony root half an ounce; Human Cranium, Cinnabar of Antimony (or rather Native) each 2 drams, candy’d Nutmeg 1 ounce; Syrup of Peony compound 2 ounces; or as much as is requir’d. Oil of Rosemary and Sage, each 4 drops, mix.
It cheers and roborates the Brain, depurates the soul, and fixes the too Volatile Spirits.
All the way to Venice, Valentine tells himself that the woman comes second. Or even third.
No, he’s
not
whimpering after her. No, he’s going to find out what happened to Tom, and to avenge his death. Forthwith. In fact, he is amazed that he has not thought to do so before now. How could he even hope to resolve matters remotely, from London? Tom’s death has festered unavenged too long for anyone’s animative well-being. A body should always have a just, swift revenge and not merely a gesture toward it.
Otherwise the insulted heart will continue in its aching.
And, to sweeten the dolors of this expedition
(something perfectly
possible without the company of the actress) Valentine is going to research the idea that was, by purest coincidence, born as he lay in her arms. Once he has dealt with Tom himself, then he will proceed as Tom would have wished, to business. He is going to orchestrate a symphony of hard goods and sweet relationships that will in the end bring forth his quintessential Venetian nostrum, which the denizens of Bankside will be lining up to buy.
He is eaten from the inside with ambition on both fronts. He sees himself in Venice, busy about the town, attending to both
matters with scrupulous attention and flair. If he happens to fall upon Mimosina Dolcezza while striding up an artisans’
calk
near the San Luca theater, well, that will be a pleasant surprise, of course. He might see if he can catch a performance of hers. If he has time, naturally. Which is doubtful.
Why, he has to source the bottles and make sure they are of appropriate splendor (the whole true worth of the package reposing in them, in fact, as the nostrum itself will be a masterpiece of nothings), and he must find the brandy distillery that will be prepared to bottle its wares in such unusual containers. He has already contrived the scam to pay for these expensive items.
English wool, whose export is outlawed on pain of death, is the most prized of all raw fabrics among the Venetian clothsmiths. Surely one can be found who will take free-traded English sheepskins, paying not Valentine himself—the ways and means must as ever be carefully blurred—but the local Venetian distillery in cash or kind, all the while preserving the utmost secrecy about the whole procedure.
The intricacies of this plan, and the text of his new handbill, keep Valentine occupied as the coach pounds down the icebound road to Dover, and during the lonely hours while he waits in his inn for the next packet to Calais, a high wind preventing today’s crossing, meanwhile negotiating the stages of his outbound journey with various agents. By morning, Dizzom has arrived, having followed on the next post-chaise with trunks, wool samples, waybills, coins, not to mention a snowy mound of clean linen for Valentine.
He brings one more thing: an offer to accompany his master although Dizzom is a highly domesticated creature and hates to travel, and he moreover feels a fearful antipathy to foreigners. Tom’s murder in Venice has merely served to confirm Dizzom’s suspicions of all Italians as vile assassins. He loved Tom, albeit warily: He cannot bear to lose his adored master in the same way. If only Valentine were going somewhere other than Venice! Worse, he knows the man is deranged lately by romantic love, an unruly emotion that has never touched his own plain heart. And having beheld the object of desire, he tremblingly knows her worth all manner of wild acts. Dizzom fears that in this condition Valentine
is far too vulnerable to set sail for that fatal city where the mystery of whoever killed Tom remains unpenetrated, and where therefore the same violent danger quite possibly awaits his master. Although Dizzom has never met his Venetian counterpart, Smerghetto, he has always thought ill of the man, an opinion embittered by undeniable jealousy.
