The Bellini Card (36 page)

Yashim remembered. It was a long time ago: in 1570, Ottoman troops had swarmed across the richest jewel in the diadem of islands that linked the Venetian empire through the eastern Mediterranean. A year later the Venetian fleet, backed by Spain, had destroyed the Ottoman navy at Lepanto.

“Cyprus—and the battle of Lepanto—changed the meaning of the symbol. It came to stand for dominion and war. After that, I suppose, both sides developed a style of combat based on the Sand-Reckoner’s diagram.”

Their eyes met.

“Joseph Nasi helped Sultan Selim to finance the attack on Cyprus,” Yashim said. “In return, he was made Duke of Naxos.”

“Go on.”

“So when Abdülmecid chose the name for his disguise, he was sending some sort of signal. A hostile one.”

Carla shrugged, and the shadows slid across the hollows of her shoulders. “Close. I think—not altogether hostile. Only realistic. Venice is an occupied state for now, and so our relationship with Istanbul cannot be
com’era, dov’era.”
She gave a small, secret smile. “But your new sultan has a romantic streak, too. And a certain—curiosity. That’s why he came.”

She touched a finger carelessly to her lips, and Yashim knew immediately what the contessa did not say.

“And the Bellini? The portrait of the Conqueror?”

Carla laughed softly.

“It was something sentimental. A link—the last link—between the Aspis and the throne of Osman.”

“You didn’t think—it might be something dangerous to possess?”

“It belonged to me. It was no one else’s affair. Until now.”

“May I see it?”

She gazed into his eyes. Yashim felt his head swim: the contessa was beautiful, but by candlelight she seemed ethereal.

“Of course,” she said. “Come.”

S
HE
walked ahead of him, with an aching grace, holding the candelabra in her right hand and the train of her skirt in her left.

They entered a corridor, where she paused at a door.

“This is my room,” she said.

The candlelight filled the room with shadows. On one side stood a magnificent bed, with richly carved posts and hangings of figured damask. At the end of the bed was a broad, low sofa, covered in tattered silk, which Yashim guessed had come from Istanbul. The floor was covered in a soft Turkish carpet.

On the wall opposite the bed, between two full-sized portraits, hung a small curtain.

The contessa gestured to the portraits. “My parents.”

Yashim’s heart was thumping.

Lucia d’Istria had been a very beautiful woman. Her daughter had inherited her fair hair and even her smile, but Carla’s eyes belonged to the count. They were blue, steady—and a little hard.

Yashim’s own eyes flickered to the curtain.

The contessa put a hand to his shoulder. “Do you want to see it very much?”

“Yes.”

“Ask me, then. Say it.”

He turned his head and regarded her curiously. “I want to see the painting very much,” he said.

She gave a crooked smile, reached out, and tweaked the curtain pull.

“There.”

Y
ASHIM’S
first feeling was one of relief, as he saw that the panel was much larger than the painting Palewski had been shown.

It stood framed in a simple band of gold, about twenty inches high and sixteen inches wide. Inside the frame was another, a painted arch that framed the portrait of the aging sultan like a window, its sill draped with heavy brown damask embroidered with pearls, florets of rubies and emeralds, and a silver threadwork crown. There were six crowns, in two columns, on either side of the frame. Mehmet was the seventh sultan.

Yashim peered up at the portrait. The arched brows, the long slender nose, and the pronounced chin were all traits he recognized: when Abdülmecid was old and sick, he too might look like this.

“Mehmet the Conqueror,” he murmured.

“An English milord might pay for it,” Carla said. “Or an art dealer from America, even. To them it would be—what? An old master, with a curious tale behind it. Better than the rich man’s Vivarini, but scarcely equal to his Titian, or his Veronese.” She tossed her head. “It deserves better.”

“You want to observe the pattern, don’t you? Not step out of it.”

“Precisely. You are an Ottoman, Yashim. I know that. Perhaps you are not a pasha, but you are from the palace. You understand the pattern: not to explain it, maybe, but to use it. If anyone is to return the painting to Istanbul, it must be you.”

“You said it was your pride to be the last of the Aspis, Contessa. What did you mean?”

“They say a good captain goes down with his ship, Yashim Pasha. So it is, with families like mine. The old families, who lived for the Republic. I took a vow—and I was not alone.”

“A vow to be celibate—like a nun?”

She smiled at him. “I would say more precisely, a vow never to marry. The Austrians could take La Serenissima—but they could never take us. The blood of the Republic.”

Was it true, Yashim wondered, that these old families were the blood of the Republic? They had directed its course for centuries, certainly: but where had it run? Into the sand, at last. Surely the blood of Venice flowed in the veins of the sailors who manned the ships, the oarsmen, the soldiers? Wasn’t Venice as much a speechless painter, or a cheeky gondolier, as an Aspi or a Gritti? Wasn’t Venice a place for the living rather than a bitter memory, frozen for all eternity?

The contessa had made a choice: but for her, perhaps, it was not too late. For Yashim, the choice was already made.

“Are you not afraid,” he said gently, “that you have abandoned Venice?”

She was very still: only the candlelight caught a misting in her eyes.

She shook her head. “I made a vow. And Venice will not rise again.”

Their eyes met. Then:

“Yes,” she answered very softly. “Yes, that is my only fear.”

H
ER
arms moved out to him.

“I haven’t been afraid to love,” the contessa said. She slipped her hands around his chest.

Yashim looked down. “I think, madame, you do not want—”

“I want, Yashim. I really want.”

“I am a eunuch.”

She laughed softly. “A eunuch? Why not? I’m not waiting for a man, or a woman—or a eunuch, Yashim.” She smiled a secret half smile. “I’m waiting for a lover.”

But later, much later, he saw the tears run down her cheeks.

“Don’t stop,” she breathed softly. Her face gleamed in the candlelight.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I only—”

“Shhh.” She touched his head. She threw herself back in a slender arch, stabbing her fingers into the sheets, her wild golden hair flying across the pillow.

“Tell me,” she said later. “Tell me how it happened.”

Yashim was silent for a time. His glance moved around the room, seeing the louvered shutters against the windows, the patterned damask of the curtains around the bed, the paneled walls glimmering pearl gray, the dark spaces where the portraits hung.

“How is nothing,” he said slowly. “It is done as it is done. By the knife.”

He dreaded her next question: even now, after all these years, he had no complete answer. Men’s motives continued to surprise him. Women’s, too.

“Why?”

He shook his head. “Who knows? Whether a thing is done from duty, or desire.”

Their eyes met.

“Once,” she began, “I—I went to Istria. I had a son.”

She said it so abruptly that Yashim blinked.

“A son,” she repeated through gritted teeth.

Yashim was still.

“I was so young. So—so resolute.”

“Resolute?”

“The vow I made, Yashim.”

She shuddered and covered her face with her hands. “I gave him away,” she said tonelessly. “I wouldn’t come back to Venice with a baby. So I gave my baby away.”

Yashim said nothing: there was nothing he could say.

“I have spent my life trying to forget him.”

She drew up her face and stared at the wall, her fingers to her temples.

“And there is not a day I do not think about him.”

Her breath hissed between her teeth. “I have never told this to a soul. I wonder why I’m telling you?”

Invisible Yashim, the lover who leaves no mark.

“Perhaps I am telling you because I think you will not judge me.”

“No one can judge but God.”

She stood up, erect and graceful, and poured a glass of wine.

“He would be twenty-four,” she said. “A little peasant boy from Istria.”

“Would you—would you look for him?”

She shook her head. “I tried. Two years ago I went back to the convent where he was born. They understood, Yashim, those nuns. They understood, they prayed with me—but they couldn’t help. They said—they said that my son was a blessing to a woman who had lost her child.” She clenched her hands. “And I have become that woman, Yashim. Not by the will of God, but by my own. My own!”

She picked up the glass and drained it, and with a wild laugh she flung it into the fireplace.

“Why should I ever be afraid, Yashim? You can be frightened only when you have hope, and I have none.”

But later she curled up to him: “I want you to take me again,
caro.”

But Yashim only shook his head and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

Then he got up, silent and weary, and went to the room that had been prepared for him.

H
E
dreamed Palewski’s dream that night: of a never-ending search beneath the stones of Venice, and each stone had to be turned, one by one, by hand. But there was nothing underneath: only earth and water. And there was a woman, wringing her hands beside him.

He could still hear her groans and cries when he woke up, in the dark, and lay there listening against his will.

Muttering a prayer for her soul. A prayer against the darkness of the night.

He rolled swiftly aside and leaped to his feet.

That scream—was it really the sound of a woman mourning?

Or the sound of danger?

After the scream, silence.