The Rossetti Letter (v5) (27 page)

She carried a taper across the room and in the candle’s light examined the desk. It was an intricate affair, with more than a dozen small drawers on the credenza-style top, and another long, narrow drawer beneath the parquet desktop. She tried the largest first, finding nothing but sheets of writing paper and a few fresh quills. The smaller drawers, too, held writing accoutrements: inks, wax, powder. Finally, a glint of metal: the tiny brass key fit perfectly into the locked chest.

She extracted the book carefully. It was compact in size, not much larger than her hands, and bound in a wine-colored morocco. With an eye on the slumbering marquis, Alessandra turned the pages. The book was written in Latin, but seemed to make no sense at all, being composed of random words, sentences, and quotations she recognized from Cicero, Virgil, Seneca.
Inhumani-tas omni aetate molesta est,
she read: Inhumanity is harmful in every age.
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit:
There has not been any great talent without an element of madness. What could it mean? How did the marquis use this book to formulate a code?

She started as a sharp knock sounded at the door. She dropped the book, scrambled to pick it up, then quickly tucked it inside the velvet purse she’d brought with her that evening, setting it on the empty chair with her shawl.

She cracked the door open slightly. Bedmar’s manservant, Pasquale, stood in the hall. “There’s a messenger here for the ambassador.”

“The marquis is sleeping.”

“But he insists—”

“He does not want to be disturbed.”

“It’s urgent.” From out of the shadows came a familiar voice. Antonio pushed past Pasquale, who slipped away into the dim recesses of the corridor. As he stepped inside, he brought the cool, damp air of the Grand Canal with him, along with the aromas of roadside taverns, horses, beds made of straw. Underneath, his natural scent was tangy and sweet, like apple cider.

“Sleeping?” Antonio said. He took in everything at a glance: the fireside table set for two, the remains of their dinner, the bottle of wine, Bedmar slumped in his chair, head thrown back, lost to the world. “Hard to believe.” His eyes roamed over her gown, cut low in the courtesan’s style, aureoles peeking over the lace neckline. “Especially as you’re such a fetching sight.”

The words were complimentary but his snide delivery was not. She hadn’t seen Antonio since Carnival, and he exhibited little of the charm she remembered; he seemed tense, distant, angry. For weeks, she had imagined that the viscount harbored intimate feelings for her, and many times she had wished for his return to Venice—but not now, she thought with dismay. Not tonight.

“I must admit, when I first saw your face at the door, I expected quite a different scene,” he went on in the same cutting tone. “Shouldn’t you be playing the lute for your lord, seducing him with your voice, delighting him with your…skills?”

She could see that he was travel weary, but what right did he have to be so contemptuous, so cruel? “The ambassador’s the worse for drink.”

Antonio walked closer to Bedmar and studied his slack-jawed face. “I’ve thought the marquis many things, but I never thought him a drunkard.” He looked suspiciously at Alessandra.

“The wine is strong.”

“Is it?” He picked up Bedmar’s glass and sniffed, then raised it to his lips.

Alessandra instinctively moved toward him, her hand raised in warning. “It is not very good.”

He looked at her levelly. “But it does the trick, obviously.” He slowly put the glass down. “Just what are you up to?”

“Nothing.” Alessandra picked up her purse and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. “I’ve had a note from Bianca. I must go home.”

“Why in such a hurry?” Three strides and he had crossed the room, blocking the door.

“It’s an urgent matter.”

“Ahhh.”

She stood before him, wondering if he noticed that she was trembling. “You must let me pass.”

“Tell me, what would I find if I looked in your purse? The marquis’s gold, his jewels, his silver?”

“You misjudge me.”

“So prove me wrong.”

They looked at each other solemnly. She wished she could unburden herself of her secret, but the viscount was a Spaniard in Ossuna’s and Bedmar’s service. Why should she imagine that their brief time together would overcome his devotion to duty? Surely catching a thief in the ambassador’s quarters would be a coup for him. She stole a glance at the sword hanging at his side, the dagger secure in his belt. And there’s another weapon, she remembered, a stiletto concealed in his sleeve.

“I cannot.”

“What will you do when the ambassador discovers your crime?” he asked, his voice low, confidential.

“There is nothing to discover.”

“Your lack of fear will be your death.”

She couldn’t tell if his words were a warning or a threat. Unexpectedly, Antonio stood aside and opened the door for her. “I’d take the back stairs, if I were you.”

I
N THE CLEAR,
early morning sunlight, against a backdrop of verdant garden and glistening lagoon, Andrew Kent stood half bent with hands on knees, breathing raggedly. He’d reached the end of the Riva fully six strides ahead of Claire—but then he was considerably taller than she was, and his Nike running shorts revealed well-defined legs, the sign of a dedicated runner. Still, when he had first appeared alongside her as she was bounding up the steps of the Ponte dei Greci, she’d imagined that she could leave him behind. At least, she had thought as she picked up her pace, he would get the idea that she’d rather jog alone. Instead, he’d run right past her.

The gauntlet had clearly been thrown, so Claire turned on the juice and dashed ahead of Andrew Kent. That was all it took to ignite a flat-out race, one that didn’t end until the Riva did, at the edge of the public gardens.

Andrew was clearly winded, but Claire wasn’t doing much better. She wondered if the confetti-like spots she saw when she closed her eyes meant that she should sit down, but damn if she would let him see her falter. The man was just too competitive. When he finally raised his head and opened his mouth to speak, she was fully expecting him to gloat.

Instead, he said:

“Pirates?”

“Pirates?” Claire repeated, surprised.

“Pirates.” He paused for a few deep breaths. “You said…you were working…on Adriatic…pirates.”

“And your point?”

“Yesterday I asked to see the Rossetti Letter”—he was breathing more normally now—“and I was told that you have it.”

“You were checking up on me?”

“No, I simply wanted to see it again. But in doing so I reached the inescapable conclusion that you are also researching the Spanish Conspiracy. Why you felt compelled to lie about it I can’t possibly begin to imagine, and I don’t really care, but I would like to see the letter.”

“You want to see the letter.”

“Not for long. I just need to check something.”

“I’ll trade you, then—the letter for the diary.”

“Alessandra’s diary?”

“Of course.”

“I haven’t finished with it yet. I’m leaving Venice on Saturday, though, so you can look at it next week.”

“I’m leaving on Saturday, too.”

“In that case, I suppose we could trade for a half hour.”

“Half an hour? How extraordinarily generous of you.”

“I’m not fully awake yet, but I believe I detect a strong note of sarcasm in your voice.”

“I can’t read the entire diary in half an hour.”

“That’s the most I can offer. I’m under a lot of pressure to produce a book outline by next month, and I haven’t been having an easy time of it; in fact, it’s not going very well at all.”

For a moment, Andrew Kent looked the way he had prior to his lecture: unsure of himself, even vulnerable. Maybe, Claire considered, he was human after all.

“The truth is,” he went on, “I have book offers, but what I don’t have is a book. I don’t know what the problem is; maybe it’s because I haven’t written on Venetian history before, or maybe it’s the sophomore curse, or maybe it’s”—he stopped short, suddenly self-conscious. The kinder, gentler Andrew disappeared as quickly as he had appeared, and the one who invariably raised her hackles returned in full force. “The thing is, that diary could provide the key to—well, to everything, and I can’t just hand it over to you indefinitely. My work is too important.”

“You really are a
fondamentum equi,
aren’t you?”

He looked at her as if a second head had suddenly sprouted from her shoulders. “Did you just call me a horse’s ass in Latin?”

“I can say it in Greek, if you prefer.”

“I don’t understand why I deserved that.”

“Because it didn’t once occur to you that perhaps my work is important, too. Maybe I don’t have publishers waiting breathlessly for every word I write, or prize committees lining up to give me awards, but I can assure you that my work is just as important to me as yours is to you. For you, it’s just another book, but this is my dissertation. Everything else that happens in my life depends on this one thing. So unless you’re willing to loan me the diary for a day, I don’t think I’ll show you the letter.”

“First of all, there’s no such thing as ‘just another book,’ as you shall quickly discover should you ever attempt to write one. And second, I only want to see it for a moment.”

“No deal.”

“That’s just unbelievable,” Andrew sputtered. “You’re ridiculously competitive.”

“I’m competitive? I’m not the one who nearly gave myself a coronary trying to outrun a girl.”

“I didn’t
try
to outrun you, I did outrun you. By at least twenty meters.”

“Twenty meters? I don’t think so.”

“When I reached the end, you were way back there.” He pointed to a spot farther back on the Riva, then began walking toward it. Claire followed him.

“I wasn’t there,” she insisted, “I was over here.”

“I distinctly recall that when I turned around, you were right here, by this bench.”

An elderly, black-clad widow slowly hobbled past, and briefly considered the strangeness of foreigners. She was of the opinion that all of them were lunatics of one sort or another, but these two were more barking mad than most: each was yelling at the other and pointing quite vigorously to a spot on the ground.

“…lessons with the music master Signor Alberigo proceed apace. He says I must practice much more if I am to learn Spinacino’s
Ricercai…”

Claire looked up from Alessandra’s diary, put down her pen, and briefly rubbed her eyes as Gwen appeared at her side and hopped up to sit on the edge of the reading-room table.

“In a chair, please,” Claire said automatically.

“Francesca is so cool,” she said as soon as she was properly seated. “She just taught me a whole bunch of Italian swear words.”

“Told you this would be an educational trip.”

“And a couple of gestures, too.”

“So you can offend the hearing impaired as well?”

“I don’t think you have to be deaf to understand them,” Gwen said earnestly. She scrunched her eyes as she considered further. “Or even Italian. She also told me how to get to that store with all the fake designer stuff.”

“Hmmm,” mumbled Claire, turning her attention back to the diary.

“Don’t you want to buy something new to wear on your date with Giancarlo?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t wear the same clothes you’ve been wearing.”

“If I get done with this early enough, we’ll go.”

“Cool. So where is he taking you?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s going to leave a message at the hotel.”

“What did he say last night? Did he tell you he’s not engaged anymore?”

“All he said was that he wanted to explain and he asked me to have dinner with him. It was nice of Stefania to invite you to the movies so that we could go out,” she added.

“Yeah, she’s really nice. So when are you going to be finished with this?”

“Gwen—”

“Sorry. I know I’m not supposed to bug you, but I don’t have anything to do, and Francesca just left for lunch.”

“Isn’t there something in that backpack of yours to keep you occupied?”

“I left my iPod at the hotel. So what’s that you’re writing?”

“I’m translating this diary.”

“That’s the courtesan’s diary?”

“Yes.”

“Weird. It looks a lot like my diary. It’s the same color leather and it’s all beat up and stuff. She wrote this letter, too, right?” Gwen picked up the Rossetti Letter.

“Don’t touch that.”

“Sorry.” Gwen peered over Claire’s shoulder and read aloud from her notebook. “
…I have mastered many of the works of Canova da Milano, which Signor Alberigo says are more appropriate for performance by the fair sex. Apparently they do not rouse the senses as do Spinacino’s compositions…”
Gwen paused, puzzled. “Why doesn’t she write about something interesting, like her friends or her boyfriends or something?” she asked.

“I’ve been wondering that myself.” Claire sighed, feeling frustrated. The diaries seemed to be leading nowhere, and the Italian edition of Fazzini she’d had such high hopes for was not to be had. As soon as Claire had come into the library that morning, she’d requested it, and Francesca had given her the bad news: Fazzini’s
Diary
had been destroyed in a flood. That’s why, the librarian explained, she’d given Claire the English version in the first place; they no longer had the Italian edition. Francesca thought there might be another copy in a library in Rome, but the Marciana hadn’t had one since 1993. They’d lost a lot of books that winter, she’d said sadly.

“What does this have to do with the conspiracy thing?” Gwen asked, still reading Claire’s notebook.

“Nothing directly, but I was hoping it would tell me more about the kind of person Alessandra was. Then I might be able to figure out if she was acting on her own, or if she was spying on the Spanish for the Venetians.”

“I thought the English guy said that the Spanish didn’t do anything.”

“So you were listening.”

“Not by choice.”

“Yes, that’s what he said, but I think he’s wrong. Although I’m not going to prove it with this,” she said, shutting the diary. Claire swiveled around in her chair. Andrew Kent had his nose buried in some ancient tome, and his table was stacked with books that hadn’t been there the day before. What was he on to? She noticed with irritation that he wasn’t reading Alessandra’s second diary.

“Can’t spare it for more than a half hour,” she muttered, turning around again. “He’s probably ignoring it just to annoy me.”

“What’s the problem?” Gwen asked.

“Andrew Kent has Alessandra’s other diary. That’s the one I really need.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Francesca said something about that. I was supposed to ask you if you were using your…” Gwen thought hard for a moment, then said, “feminine power.”

“Not in the way she envisioned, I’m sure,” Claire admitted glumly.

Gwen glanced at the diary in front of them, then looked over at Andrew Kent’s table. “You need the little book that looks just like this one?”

“Yes.”

“Do you
really
want it?”

“Yes, I really want it, but he’s never going to give it to me, not now.”

“We could liberate it.” Gwen’s eyes had a curious sparkle to them.

“Are you suggesting that we steal it?”

“No, just borrow it for a while. If we switch it with this one, he won’t even know that it’s gone.”

“I beg to differ.”

“I beg to differ?”

“I beg to differ.”

“I don’t even know what that means, ‘I beg to differ.’”

“It means I disagree with you.”

“Then why didn’t you just say, ‘I disagree with you’?”

“Because I said ‘I beg to differ.’”

“No one says that.”

“I say that.”

“No one normal says that.”

“Be that as it may, Andrew Kent is most definitely going to notice that we took that diary.”

“Okay, but maybe not right away. In the meantime, you can read it. And if he does figure out that he’s got the wrong book, you just tell him that it was a mistake.” Gwen looked at her with enthusiasm, which Claire hoped sprang from a sincere desire to be helpful rather than from kleptomania. “It really does work,” Gwen added.

Claire sighed. She had only two more days in Venice, after all. “So what do we do?”

“You have to distract him. Stand on the far side of the table and talk to him, and I’ll switch the books.”

“Come on, then, before I lose my nerve.”

“Not so fast. You need to be a little more distracting.” Gwen rummaged in her backpack and took out a lipstick. “Put this on. And let me fix your hair. That braid thing is a little too Heidi, if you know what I mean.” She took the tie off the end of Claire’s braid and fluffed her hair around her shoulders. “And this.” She unbuttoned the top button on Claire’s blouse.

“What the hell are you doing?” Claire protested.

“Making you look more distracting. Be sure to bend over really low when you pick up stuff off the floor.”

“What’s going to be on the floor?”

“Everything.”