3 - Cruel Music (28 page)

Blue Cap drew his truncheon arm back. “Here, this capon knows too much.”

I tensed in expectation of a blow, but Guido jerked his confederate’s arm down. “It doesn’t matter how much he knows.” The footman gazed at me, a smile playing around his brutish mouth. With a sinking heart, I realized that he was going to recount the murder scene—and that I wouldn’t live to tell another soul.

“Old Red Chaps had me on duty at the front entrance that night, but as no one was about, I decided to do a little scouting for a pretty trinket or two. Those hidden passages make it easy. All the servants know about them. How else would they keep ’em clean? But the passages are off limits for anything else, and no one breaks that rule for fear of being let go.”

“Except you and Gemma.”

He shrugged. “A fellow like me takes risks when he has to. Gemma had her own fish to fry. Anyway, when I saw the cardinal duck into the tunnel, I wondered what was up. I followed him. Gemma was waiting in the little garden house. I cracked the door open and listened from the other side. They were walking around—talking low—made it hard to hear every word. But I got the most important bit—Gemma wanted a hundred gold sequins to keep quiet about something she knew, and Fabiani was going to give them to her.

“Well, I could hardly let that go by, could I?” Guido stood and began pacing, warming to his sense of injustice. “I had cut her in on my deal. The gardener didn’t trust her, but I said we needed her. I told him, ‘Either she’s partners with us or I go.’ You see? I did right by her in the thieving business—so half those sequins were mine by right. I waited ’til the cardinal left, then came out and told her how it was going to be.”

I squirmed upright so I could watch Guido’s face. “She wouldn’t share.”

“It was pathetic.” His lip curled in a sneer. “She refused me because she was saving up for a dowry. Gemma thought that she could buy a marriage proposal from that custard-faced abate of hers. As if a Montorio would ever wed a serving maid.”

“There must have been more, though,” I said, observing the deep-seated anger that had bunched Guido’s shoulders and balled his hands into fists. “You weren’t thinking very clearly—leaving a dead body at the entrance to the tunnel where your gang shifted your goods was the work of a dolt.”

The footman stooped and stuck his face close to mine. Blue Cap was right behind him. “The little whore called me a finocchio.”

I raised a questioning eyebrow.

Guido shook his head vigorously. “Benito is a finocchio. I’m as much a man as they come. I just like fucking the finocchio.”

Before I could contemplate the distinction, Guido gave Blue Cap a nod, and my world went dark once again.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Wheels clattered. A fishy smell filled the air. Boatmen cried their distinctive calls. Had I somehow got to Venice? With a pounding ache in my head that felt like it had swelled to twice its normal size?

I opened my eyes and squirmed tentatively. The light was faint, filtering through seams between boards that encased me in a tight, uncomfortable ball. Despite the chill, I broke into a torrent of sweat. Guido and Blue Cap must have stuffed me in a crate and hauled me to the Ripetta. I nearly vomited when I realized how simple it would be to dump this crate from a boat once it was out on open water.

My hands and feet were still bound, and a gag that tasted of rancid oil covered my mouth. I made short work of that by scraping my jaw against the rough boards until the fabric loosened and I could wriggle it down my neck. With frantic energy, I went to work on my bonds. My captors must have tightened them as I lay helpless. I couldn’t do more than hunch my shoulders or draw my legs back a few inches. This I did, using my boot heels to drum a tattoo on the boards. I yelled at the same time, but my feeble efforts produced no effect.

I quieted when I heard the sound of several voices above my crate. Guido’s I recognized at once. The footman assured someone that “all would soon be taken care of,” and my prison was lifted aloft, rocked along for thirty paces or so, and deposited on a hard surface.

The voices of Guido and the others drifted away. Against the background clamor of the busy port, I heard water lapping against stone, very near, then the sound of rigging lines slapping wooden masts. My crate was on the jetty, ready for loading. If I couldn’t summon help within the next few minutes, I was a dead man.

Poor Gemma had been no match for Guido, but I wasn’t about to let a greedy street tough do away with me. I craned my neck to find the widest crack between the boards. Behind my left shoulder, a knothole admitted a circle of light the size of my pocket watch. By painful degrees, I twisted around until my mouth could reach that hole.

I shouted and screamed for all I was worth. My lung power was prodigious, but I might as well have been crying to the deaf. I was competing with haulers, porters, boatmen, and harbor agents—all raising their voices on urgent matters, all striving to be heard against the chaos of rattling drays, stamping horses, and casks rumbling over paving stones.

Tears of frustration wet my cheeks. I couldn’t end like this. Not when I’d just found Liya again, with so much to look forward to and so many triumphs before me. I beat my head on the boards, oblivious to the piercing pain. I had to sing again, to fill the opera house with my voice.

I inhaled sharply. Of course! There was one sound I could make that might cut through the din. If one note had the capacity to inspire rapture in an audience intent on dining, gossiping, and romancing, surely it could catch the attention of those who would never expect to hear such a sound emanating from a crate on the jetty.

The maestros called it a
messa di voce
. I had never performed that vocal marvel from such a cramped position, but I had to try. Pushing my knees against the opposite end of the crate to make as much room for my ribcage as possible, I took a deep breath.

I covered the hole with my mouth and sounded a soft, clear tone. Slowly, with exquisite control, I swelled that note louder and louder until it throbbed with the majesty and power of an organ pipe vibrating in a vast cathedral. Many a lady in a sixth-tier box had been driven to a swooning frenzy by my messa. With the accuracy of a marksman, I projected this one straight toward the sounds of the thickest activity. Surely someone on the Ripetta would hear and come to investigate.

I sustained the height of my crescendo until black spots danced before my eyes and I slumped down, lungs utterly spent. For a moment, I thought I had failed. Then, as welcome as Saint Gabriel’s trumpet, a very British voice called my name.

“Gussie,” I shouted through the hole. “Over here.”

The crate shook. My brother-in-law continued to call my name, along with another voice that made no sense. The sounds of a fight erupted: fists pounding flesh, Guido snarling oaths, a woman screaming, yelps of pain and anger. Through it all, I could only kick at the boards and pray in helpless, barely coherent anguish.

Suddenly, the lid of my crate was ripped away. Blinking in the bright sunshine, I was overjoyed to see Gussie and Liya reaching in to pull me to freedom. I added my clumsy efforts to theirs and was soon rising to my feet.

I emerged from the crate to face an audience, a crowd of onlookers packing the Ripetta. When they saw that I was unharmed, spontaneous cheering and clapping broke out, then several cries of “bravo.” A grin split my face—never had applause sounded so sweet to my ears.

Gussie sprang to my back to work at my bonds, and Liya threw her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. In the excitement, I had barely noticed my third rescuer, a man whose bearded face was hidden by a handkerchief stanching a wound over his cheekbone. Who was this?

He lowered the bloody cloth.

“Alessandro!” I gasped. “How in Hades did you get here?”

***

Magistrate Sertori had not been far behind my rescuers. As I later learned, he had set his most intelligent constable on my trail the moment he heard about my part in Gemma’s watery burial. I had been watched as I kissed Liya in the alley behind the cookshop, as I mixed with the pilgrims in the street, and as I hovered at Benito’s bedside. Only the fact that I’d been too busy to visit Gussie’s lodging had kept Sertori from discovering that my brother-in-law was in Rome.

When the retrieval of Gemma’s body set my arrest in motion, Sertori was furious that I couldn’t be found at the villa. I can imagine how he must have raged and fumed, but all he could do was put a guard on the place he most expected me to turn up: Liya’s cookshop.

The dawn appearance of an English stranger who swept Liya away in great excitement signaled his men to summon their master and give chase. They hung back as Gussie and Liya hurried to his lodging and entered the building. When Sertori arrived, he and his band of sbirri waited in anticipation of an easy arrest. They were puzzled to see Gussie and Liya leave and proceed toward the Ripetta, not with me, but with yet another tall stranger.

The magistrate created quite a stir when he waded into the appreciative crowd on the jetty. Recognizing a person of authority, Alessandro pointed out Guido and Blue Cap, who were being restrained by some boatmen. While my brother accused them of kidnapping me and attempting to murder Benito, they yelled stout denials and identified me as “the vicious capon who had killed poor Gemma Farussi.” Liya took great exception to this and pulled at Sertori’s sleeve to induce him to listen to her. Magistrate Sertori had no interest in conducting an open-air interrogation. Brandishing his walking stick, he barked orders for the lot of us to be taken into custody.

Thus it was that we were carted to the building that housed the magistrate’s court and lock-up. The constables sat us down on hard wooden benches lining a gloomy hallway and took up positions at each end of the corridor. Liya, Gussie, Alessandro, and I faced Guido and Blue Cap as Sertori paced the floor between us. He fingered his lower lip as he regarded us from between lank curtains of hair. Like a cat with some captive mice, he was keeping us in suspense. I had the feeling he enjoyed every minute.

When Sertori paused to take a folded missive from one of the constables, I took the opportunity to question Alessandro in whispers.

“When did you arrive?”

“Just this morning. I came straight to Gussie’s address.” He stroked his beard, answering from behind his hand. “I couldn’t think where Gussie would have gone so early, but he and your lady soon showed up and let me know what was going on. It gave them quite a jolt to find you’d disappeared.”

“How did you find me?”

“The torn watercolor that you left on the floor. We started at the oil warehouse and were told the cart had just left. We fanned out looking for it and its driver.”

I nodded with a great exhalation of breath. At least my anger had served one good purpose. If I hadn’t ripped up Gussie’s sketch, they would never have found me in time.

I leaned close, my chin nearly resting on my brother’s shoulder. “But how did you get out of prison? You must tell me.”

Alessandro kept his gaze trained on Sertori, who was having an increasingly agitated conversation with his officer. “Later, little brother. Right now, we need to finish rescuing you.”

Sertori sent the constable away with a stern shake of his head, then came to stand before me. “Tito Amato, we know you murdered Gemma Farussi. Did your confederates assist you or were they merely conspiring to help you escape?”

His penetrating gaze slid down the bench. Liya gave a startled gasp and sent me a wide-eyed look. Gussie set his chin defiantly.

“I didn’t kill Gemma,” I said. “The man who strangled the life out of her is sitting right behind you.”

I listed to one side and flung my words at the footman. “Guido killed her and was about to get rid of me, as well.”

“He’s lying!” The footman erupted in fury. “We had him all trussed up for you, Magistrate. You know me, I let you in the door at the villa last night. I saw Tito on the Ripetta this morning. You can thank me and my cousin for blocking his escape.”

“And the crate?” Alessandro sneered. “I suppose you stuffed Tito in there to—” My brother broke off as a regal figure appeared at the end of the corridor.

“I believe I can be of some help in this interrogation, Magistrate.” Cardinal Fabiani approached with the air of an avenging angel clad in scarlet and lace. His voice was dangerously smooth. “Surely your man must have misunderstood when he said you wished me to wait outside in my carriage.”

Sertori drew himself up in a defiant column. “Your Eminence must have many spiritual duties to attend to. There’s no need for you to waste your time here. Leave this to me—it is a matter of law, after all.”

Fabiani floated to a halt an arm’s length from Sertori. “Do you forget, Magistrate? I’m the Cardinal Padrone. Until a new pope is elected, I am the law.”

Sertori ground his jaw back and forth. The power of the constabulary and the power of the Church faced each other in an unequal duel. Very slowly, never breaking the magistrate’s gaze, Cardinal Fabiani extended his hand. Even in the dim corridor, his ring of office seemed to concentrate all the available light. It twinkled on his forefinger like a miniature star.

Sertori was beaten. In the seconds it took for him to bow and kiss Fabiani’s ring, the man changed from a rod of granite to a piece of half-boiled spaghetti.

“Now, Tito,” Fabiani said after Sertori had released his hand, “explain yourself. How did you manage to get boxed up on the Ripetta?”

I told my story, beginning with Gussie’s watercolor sketch of the cart that had ambushed Benito. I admit to being intentionally vague about how Gemma expected to obtain the money that Guido claimed as his right, but it wasn’t my evasion that drew yells of protest from the footman. Guido strongly denied he had ever stolen anything from the villa.

“Prove it,” he demanded, jumping up from the bench, only to be shoved back down by a constable.

I remembered the footman’s guilty glance when I had inquired where his gang stashed their ill-gotten baubles. “Eminence, send someone to check the casks in the little storeroom at the warehouse. They should fetch us the ones that clank when they’re shaken.
”

Within an hour, the casks had been broken open to reveal a treasure trove of rings, bracelets, watches, gold tableware, small carvings made of ivory or precious stone, silk garments, even several unmated dueling pistols. Some the cardinal was able to identify; he sent for his housekeeper to look through the rest. Once the proof of their thievery lay before us, Guido and his cousin shut their mouths as tight as clams. They were jailed in Magistrate Sertori’s lock-up to await further questioning.

There still remained the matter of my role in disposing of Gemma’s corpse. Magistrate Sertori could have chosen to have me locked up as well, but he wisely decided not to press the issue. I foresaw a time when the statutes of a state might overrule the Church, but that time was not now, and I fancied that neither I nor Magistrate Sertori would live to see it.

The sun rode high in the sky when we left the magistrate’s court. While my loved ones clustered around me, cheerfully arguing over the quickest route back to Venice, Cardinal Fabiani laid a light hand on my shoulder. “Tito, I hold you under no obligation, but I wonder if you would consider a request.”

“What is that, Your Eminence?”

“No other singer’s songs have eased my wakeful nights as completely as yours. Is there any chance that you would stay on in Rome? Make no mistake, you would be well paid for your serenades.”

His request required little thought. I shook my head firmly. The cardinal’s nightingale had burst through the bars of his cage, never to return.

***

My bride wore a green satin gown of her own design. In the mellow summer twilight, in a garden of flowers and pomegranate trees, Liya and I pressed forearms together and a wise woman bound them with a silver cord. Thus we were “twined as the vine as long as love shall last.” What matter if the Christian world that surrounded us would never acknowledge our marriage? Liya and I had found true happiness that could not be extinguished by doctrine or convention.

I admit to first petitioning the new pope for dispensation to marry in the traditional manner—lifelong ways of thinking die hard. I was summarily refused, and not really surprised. Though Pope Benedict was an amiable man and a tolerant pope, he was known for his bookish theology and had no love for opera or eunuchs. My petition might have stood a better chance with either Montorio or Di Noce, but the man who took the name of Benedict the Fourteenth was neither of these.

The Sacred College had gone into conclave with fifty-four cardinals split into several parties. I had released Fabiani from his promise, but for reasons of his own, he remained in support of Cardinal Montorio. The opposing Di Noce contingent was strong enough to force weeks of tedious debate and corridor intrigue. As spring turned into one of the hottest summers Rome had ever seen, a completed election seemed no nearer than it had in February.