The Rossetti Letter (v5) (8 page)

“T
URN LEFT ON
Hollis,” Claire said to the airport shuttle driver. From her perch in the front-passenger seat, she watched Harriot’s sunlit, tree-lined streets pass by the windows and brooded a little. What in the world was she going to talk about with a fourteen-year-old? She couldn’t discuss Gwendolyn’s parents, obviously. The poor kid. Claire envisioned a sad-eyed, waiflike girl. How had Edward Fry described his daughter? Sweet and kind of shy, he’d said.

The shuttle stopped in front of the Forsythe dormitory known as Chesterfield House. Assuming that she would be meeting Gwen inside, Claire barely glanced at a girl sitting on a short stone wall facing the street. With a second look and growing dismay, she saw a suitcase on the ground beneath the girl’s dangling feet, a bulky backpack beside her on the wall, and knew that she could be none other than Gwendolyn Fry.

Perfectly normal? She wished Meredith were there to explain precisely what she’d meant by that. Claire hadn’t been around Forsythe students much, but she was pretty certain there weren’t any others who looked like this. The girl’s waist-length hair was dyed a color that didn’t occur in nature, burgundy with a purple cast to it, which covered a much prettier, light coppery red revealed by the roots at her scalp. Her green eyes were rimmed by so much liner and mascara she resembled a silent film star or a raccoon. She had a full but narrow mouth that Claire knew at once had an unfortunate tendency to hang open. A small silver ring pierced her left eyebrow and a matching hoop studded her navel, which was clearly visible above the pair of tight, bell-bottom jeans she wore. Her blouse—a diaphanous, pink and red paisley chiffon thing—gathered under her breasts and then was split right down the front, revealing her entire midriff.

The outfit was much too sexy for a fourteen-year-old; at least it appeared as if it were intended to be sexy. On Gwendolyn Fry it simply looked awkward, as if she were wearing someone else’s clothes. First of all, they were too small for her. Waiflike she was not; the blouse plunged past deeper cleavage than Claire would ever see on her own chest.

“Are you Gwen?”

“Yes.” Her eyes revealed a different response:
Duh. Who else would be sitting out here?

“Hi, I’m Claire.”

“Oh.”

No “hello,” no “nice to meet you.” Clearly the girl had no manners, but Claire was already, within seconds of meeting Gwendolyn Fry, thoroughly unsurprised by this.

“Where’s Mrs. Randolph?” Claire asked. The dormitory housemother was supposed to meet her with the final paper to sign, one stating that she would be Gwen’s legal guardian for the next week.

An almost imperceptible movement of the head. “Inside.” Gwen slid down from the stone wall and grabbed the waistband of her jeans with both hands and hitched them up, an automatic reflex that appeared to be a requisite part of wearing such low-cut pants. She was taller than Claire by an inch or two, which Claire felt was unfair somehow. It put her at a disadvantage. She’d been expecting a girl—no, if she were honest, she’d been expecting a child—and instead got one of those fourteen-going-on-twenty types. That Gwendolyn Fry seemed graceless, awkward, and (in spite of her risqué apparel) wholly unsophisticated did not in the least mitigate Claire’s negative first impression. Although it wasn’t very nice to dislike someone so much younger than herself, was it? It wasn’t very nice at all, she grudgingly admitted, at the same time acknowledging that there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about how she felt.

Claire knocked on the front door of the dormitory and turned to glance back at the girl. She’d been under the impression that Gwen had wanted to go to Europe to be with her dad and new stepmother, but now she wasn’t so sure. The teenager didn’t look like someone who was excited to be going on a trans-Atlantic trip, she looked like a kid who was being trundled off to a distant relative’s house because things were bad at home. Which was, Claire reflected, not far from the truth. For a moment she felt something like sympathy, and thought about the strange event that had precipitated their meeting: Why had Gwen’s mother shot her father? Why in the foot? On the Back Bay Golf Course? On the eleventh hole?

Claire felt a sudden, nagging sense of dread. It settled in her stomach, where she feared it would remain until the moment she handed the kid back to her father.

The seat belt light came on with a muffled, bell-like chime and the airplane’s engines throbbed. Claire looked out the window, where the long, slanted shadows of early evening stretched across the tarmac. Inside the cabin, the passengers were seated, and flight attendants cruised the aisles, checking seat belts and overhead bins in preparation for takeoff.

“I wasn’t going to steal it,” Gwen said for the fifth time.

“You were about to leave the store,” Claire replied, also for the fifth time.

“I was going to pay for it.”

They’d been browsing at an airport boutique when Claire had seen Gwen slip a pair of silver earrings into her backpack. “The next time you’re in a store,” Claire offered, “I suggest that you hold your items in your hands or place them on the counter until you’ve finished shopping.” Her voice sounded even more school-marmish than she had intended. She sighed and tried to lose the judgmental tone; it seemed to inflate Gwen’s sense of being wronged and misunderstood. “If only to stop having this conversation,” Claire continued, “I will accept that you had simply forgotten the jewelry was in your backpack. But if I had let you walk out that door, you would have been apprehended, and we would have missed the flight, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. So can we just drop this now?”

Gwen didn’t answer, but she was pouting so powerfully it charged the atmosphere around them. This was a good example of why she preferred to be alone, Claire thought; other people’s emotions could be so disturbing.

She turned in her seat and peered through the open curtains to coach. The plane was about half full. She and Gwen sat in business class, Claire in the right-side window seat, Gwen on the aisle, a luxuriously short row of two spacious, black leather seats that opened up like Barcaloungers, with small footrests at the bottom. It was clear that Edward Fry was not a parsimonious man. Two business-class seats to Italy purchased a week before the departure date? It must have cost a small fortune.

A female flight attendant stopped and leaned over to speak to Gwen. “All electronics need to be turned off and stowed away until after takeoff,” she said with a smile that included Claire, and a look in her eyes that discreetly assumed and conferred mother/stepmother/aunt status on her. That Claire was technically old enough to be any one of those just made it more objectionable. Gwen switched off her iPod and reached under the seat for her backpack, then sorted through the contents of her pack with the resolve of someone who knew this would be her only salvation from boredom for the next eight hours.

Claire reached into her tote bag for a pen and the books she’d brought along, taking out Marmont’s
History of the Counter Reformation.
She could read and make notes, at least. She wiggled her toes and thought about taking off her shoes. Once she’d finished reading, she could relax for a while, maybe even get some sleep. After all, the girl couldn’t get into any trouble on the plane.

15 September 1617

T
HE MEAT WAS
tough and the wine—malmsey, the Venetians called it—was too sweet, Bedmar groused to himself as he ate alone in his private rooms at the Spanish embassy. He was the ambassador, by Christ; why was he served the same fare given to his legion of
bravi
belowstairs? It was time to trade in the old Castilian who’d come with him from Madrid for a chef versed in the local cuisine, although these Venetians could sometimes take creativity to curious lengths. He’d been to a banquet at Ca’ Barbarigo the week before where all the food had been gilded—the fruit, the pheasant, even the bread had been covered in a thin layer of gold. It had occurred to him then that the only thing Venetians loved more than money was flaunting it. Odd as it was, though, it had been a better meal than this one.

He pushed his tray away and stretched out his legs toward the fire. At his feet, his wolfhound whimpered and turned in his sleep, firelight gleaming on his coppery coat. The sight of it calmed him, and the ambassador closed his eyes for a moment.

His apartment on the top floor of the embassy was the only place he could find any peace. Day and night, the embassy was swarming with Spaniards of every stripe, each of them desiring his attention, patronage, influence. Sometimes he thought it was the busiest place in all of Venice: the anterooms and corridors were full of slouching figures whispering together in groups, waiting for an audience with him. Even as a commander of Phillip III’s regiment, Bedmar had never felt so harassed in his life. He’d taken a villa in the country so he could escape it from time to time, but the crowd of hangers-on simply followed. He swore that when he was viceroy, he’d have an entire palazzo to himself.

Viceroy of Venice.
Most of the time, these were pleasant words that brought him a deep satisfaction. Venice was the only major power in all of Italy that hadn’t yet surrendered to Spain’s domination, and it would be Spain’s crown jewel; no other city could boast of the riches that Venice possessed. Once he’d taken Venice, a good portion of the city’s wealth would be his, and the king would surely reward him with a dukedom.

The conquest of Venice was the final step toward his lifelong ambition of restoring his family’s reputation and position. He’d spent three decades repairing the damage his father had done to the name of de la Cueva, to their lands, to their wealth. It had taken years to regain his place at court, but at last he was on the verge of getting everything he desired. No, Bedmar corrected himself, everything he deserved. But tonight he felt the strain of the plan that he and Ossuna had devised.

Unless he obtained more money for arms and men, the success of their enterprise was far from certain. The French corsairs had been tough negotiators, and he would require a few hundred more recruits. For days he’d agonized over writing to the king, and he couldn’t put it off any longer. But how to proceed? An outright request wouldn’t do. Even if the king responded favorably, the duke of Lerma, the king’s powerful minister, would be loath to do anything to further Bedmar’s aims; their antipathy went back many years. But if he could compose it in such a way that the king felt compelled to act, in such a way that Lerma could not oppose it without opposing the king, he might be successful.

He stood up and crossed to his desk. A breeze rattled the windows, carrying with it the ever present stench of the canals and a presentiment of autumn. Bedmar felt his insides turn. From the pestilential marsh that surrounded it to the innumerable waterways that laced it together, the entire city was rank. Even within the grandest palazzi, he could smell the decay. It seeped up from the foundations into the stones and the mortar and the brick, into the filigreed plaster and the marble, into the mosaic tile and the ornate, gilded rooms. Not for the first time he wondered what had possessed men to build these opulent treasure chests on top of a swamp. Was it solely for the pleasure of their beauty? He’d never before encountered a people so concerned with appearances, with the surface of things.

“The entire city is dedicated to Venus,” he’d written to the king soon after he arrived. Even now, years later, Bedmar wasn’t certain if his words revealed condemnation or fascination. Was it possible to be simultaneously repulsed and attracted?

Since his posting to Venice, he sometimes had the odd sensation of being unsure of himself. At times he imagined that he looked different than he used to and was surprised to see his familiar face in the mirror. In outward aspect he was the same, but he felt himself a changed man. After years of soldiering, after decades of discipline and deprivation, how quickly he had discovered his appetite for Venice’s epicurean delights: food, women, and all the trappings of wealth, from the finest fabrics to the most luxurious furnishings. He never admitted it, but in Venice he felt a constant unease: it brought forth the half-buried knowledge that he carried within himself the same weaknesses that had contributed to his father’s disgrace.

The city exerted a hold over him that he was powerless to deny. At night, when he saw the light from gondola lanterns shining upon the water, or heard the tinkle of music and a courtesan’s contralto laughter, the fever would come on him again, and he would feel the need for a woman’s musky perfume upon his mouth and fingers, for a pair of limpid eyes that opened and closed with desire, for budding lips that sighed their satisfaction in his ear. Venice certainly had the advantage over any other city when it came to those particular pleasures, and La Sirena was the latest and most extraordinary example. Venice gilded its food and its women, Bedmar thought with an ironic snort. When he’d first set eyes on her, he hadn’t even realized that she was real; he’d thought she was a golden sculpture of the most perfect woman ever imagined. Now it was La Sirena more than any other who lured him out into the Venetian night.

Nocturnal Venice was a place unique to itself, a strange aquatic realm ruled not by Poseidon but by Morpheus, god of dreams and delusions. For only Morpheus could conjure the spell that transformed Venice into the shimmering, ethereal world it became once the sun had set: a place where flickering torchlight turned solid stone into rippling illusions of water and light, where bejeweled sirens on silently gliding barks exposed their breasts to the night, and the fevered moans of masked liaisons echoed from dark doorways. Only in the cool wash of dawn did reason return, and the truth become apparent: the real Venice was not so much a seductress as an eternal Narcissus reflected in a thousand watery mirrors, an aloof divinity made all the more vulnerable by vanity. The enchantment faded and he felt in possession of himself again, poised to pluck his prize. Becoming viceroy of Venice would be his greatest victory in a lifetime of victories. Neither Ossuna nor even Lerma could touch him then.

At his desk, the ambassador opened a slender drawer and withdrew quills, ink, and paper. In another drawer he found a brass key, which he used to open a small, lacquered
damaschina
-style chest, painted with intricate red, blue, and green arabesques. The chest contained only one item: an untitled book, which he also placed on the desk.

The morocco-bound book was rare, only one of two copies. The other was in the possession of Philip III’s secretary, who used it in the same manner as Bedmar did: to code and decode letters between the ambassador and the king. The method was a simple one: the words of the message were substituted with a numeric code consisting of the page number, line, and position of the corresponding word in the book. Simple, but effective; even the code breakers who worked round the clock at the Doge’s Palace could not decipher his letters without the book. First he would write the letter, then with the book create the encrypted copy.

Bedmar sat down and sharpened a quill. He considered an opening line, but quickly discarded it. No pleading, no begging, he reminded himself. If he could raise the king’s ire against the Venetians, however, the king might offer help of his own accord and Lerma would not be able to argue against it. The ambassador dipped the quill into the ink and began to write.

Bedmar stopped suddenly, surprised by the appearance of a servant who’d come in to pick up the dinner tray. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” he grumbled angrily.

“Pardon me, Your Excellency. I knocked, but there was no answer. I thought you’d gone.” He was an ungainly sort, with a pockmarked face, a scrawny neck, and a large Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he spoke. His eyes ranged over Bedmar’s desk.

“As you can see perfectly well, I haven’t. Announce yourself next time.” Bedmar looked at him more carefully. “Who are you? Where’s Pasquale?”

“He’s taken ill, Your Excellency. Tomás Esquivel, at your service, sir.”

“To whom do you report?”

“Don Rodrigo, same as Pasquale, Your Excellency.”

“Tell Don Rodrigo never to send up a new man without telling me first, you understand?” Bedmar didn’t wait for an answer. “Now get out.”

Bedmar’s gondolier rowed into the Rio di San Martino, heading toward the Grand Canal. The marquis leaned back against the gondola cushions and slowly ran his hand over his beard, as if his thoughts were far away.

“I’m looking forward to tonight’s performance,” Alessandra said, less because it was true than to break the silence.

“The baronessa’s entertainments are always diverting.” Bedmar looked at her as he spoke, but he seemed preoccupied. More so than her other lovers—of whom there were now five—the marquis was an enigma. Alessandra wondered what he thought of her and realized that she might never know. Bedmar was an intensely private man who seldom shared his thoughts. She suspected that he regarded her as a kind of pretty trinket, a possession, a china doll without a soul. Perhaps that was how he thought of all women—the ones who caught his notice, at any rate. With another man she might have felt resentful, but with Bedmar it felt safer to play the role he wanted her to play. Though he’d never threatened her with any harm, she sensed that he was dangerous.

Even though La Celestia had often told her that men were generally simple creatures, Alessandra suspected the ambassador was not. He could be charming or taciturn by turns, and at times she witnessed a brooding anger that made her uneasy. But then he was Spanish, not Venetian, and perhaps his foreignness made him more difficult for her to fathom. She felt an easier intimacy with her Venetian lovers than she felt with the marquis. They regaled her with their long-ago exploits in war and their more recent successes in business and politics. Bedmar deflected any personal inquiries with polite firmness.

But when Alessandra had expressed her concerns to La Celestia, the courtesan had breezily dismissed them.

“I know he does not flatter and give trinkets as much as other men,” La Celestia said, “but he has been more than generous with his purse. And does he not express his delight with you in other ways?”

She’d told La Celestia about that, too. Bedmar’s desire for her was fierce, and he was a skilled lover, with a sure touch that never failed to arouse her.

The marquis turned to his gondolier. “Take the Rio della Fava,” he said, and the gondolier responded with a flourish of his hand. He was a young man a year or two older than herself, thin but apparently strong, with deep-set eyes circled by shadows.

“Your new gondolier—is he mute?” she asked.

“Yes, thankfully. Paolo’s the one man in Venice who cannot reveal my secrets.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the name of the lovely courtesan in my gondola tonight.”

“Did you know that gondoliers take an oath never to reveal anything they witness in a gondola? The penalty for breaking the oath is death.”

“I have heard that. I’ve also heard that gondoliers have webbed feet, and that to a man they are born on a mysterious island during a full moon.”

They were getting closer to the Grand Canal and the Rialto. “There’s still time before we reach Palazzo Erizzo,” he said, drawing her closer. One hand cupped her breast as he brought his mouth to hers; the other slipped down under her skirts and slowly moved higher. He ran his fingers along the inside of her thighs, then pulled her underneath him. She felt herself acquiescing, her body rising to meet his. The marquis reached up and drew the curtains, enclosing them inside the
felze.

“I see you don’t believe in your gondolier’s discretion,” Alessandra said.

“I don’t believe in fairy tales. Gondoliers are men like any other. After all, this is Venice. There are spies everywhere.”