The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story (25 page)

I could see the strain in Samuel’s eyes as we reached the part of the Merceria that expanded into a campo so filled with stalls overflowing with clothing, Christmas mustard, and boxes of mandorlato that it was a maze. We would follow the flow of the crowd only to come to a dead stop before one and then have to untangle ourselves to join another flowing river of people, only to have the same thing happen again. The campo seemed paved with crockery and glassware.

“Only the fish market left,” Nero said, sending an apologetic look to Samuel. “If she’s not there, we’ll go home.”

Fortunately for Samuel, we could not move quickly, or he would have collapsed long before we reached the fish market, where people stood in long lines waiting for eels to be pulled from barrels splashing with their writhing bodies and bled out.

“They’re a tradition on Christmas Eve,” Nero told me when I grimaced at the pools of blood. “Aunt Valeria buys them every year.”

Samuel had gone pale. He licked his chapped lips and said, “We should go back.”

“Just one more place,” Nero insisted.

But it wasn’t just one more place. We followed him from stall to stall as he gestured and shouted his question about his aunt, in return getting only shaking heads and shrugs and short sentences that even I could tell were negative. The day began to feel unreal—crowds and snow and Christmas shopping, that festivity that was at such odds with the three of us that it felt as if I’d entered a dream. With every passing moment, Samuel grew more strained; I grew more afraid; Nero grew more desperate. Whatever he had believed about his aunt’s whereabouts before, it was clear he now felt as Samuel and I did—there was something wrong.

“Nero,” I said finally. “She’s not here. We should return.”

He turned to me, his gaze sweeping past, searching the crowd beyond. “One more. Old Gio’s—just down there.”

Yet, just as he had each other time, Nero didn’t stop when Old Gio hadn’t seen Madame Basilio either.

“Calderario’s,” he insisted. “Just there.”

I glanced behind at Samuel, who leaned against the post of a stall. “Samuel’s going to collapse any moment.”

“Then go to a café. Wait for me there. I’ve only a few more places—”

“She’s not here, Nero.”

“She is. Somewhere. I’m sure of it.” His eyes burned with fear, and obsession now too—I recognized it. Like the patients at Glen Echo, who became trapped in endless cycles of compulsion, he would not stop until I stopped him.

He started to move off. I grabbed him again, pulling him back.

“What is it?” he asked impatiently.

“She’s not here. We need to go home.”

“Not yet—”

“Nero.” I gripped him harder, forcing him to look at me. “Enough. We’re only wasting time.”

He tried to pull away. “Just the jeweler’s—”

“To buy what? With what? Why would she have gone there? No one’s seen her. Please.”

Nero stilled. I saw when my words hit him, this terrible desolation.

“It’s all right,” I whispered. “She’ll be in her sala. She’ll laugh that we were so concerned.”

He stared at me searchingly. Then he glanced away, and I saw that his eyes were wet with unshed tears. “She won’t be. Giulia’s right. She would not have gone on her own.” He pulled me close, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m afraid to return.”

“Everything will be fine.” I said the words only to comfort; I did not believe them.

His fingers scrabbled at my waist, the barrier of my corset keeping him from anchoring me as hard as he obviously wanted to. “Everything’s a disaster. Let’s not go back.”

“Elena,” Samuel groaned.

I turned to look just as he collapsed to the ground.

Chapter 31

Nero and I sprang apart and rushed to Samuel, who lay in a heap at the edge of the stall. Nero reached him first, squatting in a pool of mud and eel blood that spattered his boots—as it had all of Samuel, so he looked bloodied and hurt.

“He’s swooned,” Nero said.

Even as he pulled Samuel into his arms, Samuel was rousing, blinking, disoriented. He put his hand to his eyes. “Christ.”

“Come on, amìgo. Let’s get you up.” Nero pulled Samuel to his feet, keeping a firm hold, which was good, because Samuel swayed, falling into him.

I dragged Samuel’s chin so I could look into his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m tired.” He jerked his chin from my hand as if he couldn’t stand my touch.

“I’m sorry. We should have gone back earlier. I knew you were—”

“That’s not it.” He pushed away from Nero. “I’m all right. I can stand on my own. Christ, look at me. Fish blood everywhere.”

“You look like you came out on the bad end of a knife fight,” Nero said.

“A bad end would be dead,” Samuel said dryly. “And I fear I’m very much alive.”

“Can you get to a gondola?” I asked.

“I’m not helpless.”

But he was, mostly. Nero looped Samuel’s arm around his neck, and I lodged myself under his other arm, and even so, he was breathing heavily and sagging before we’d got a few yards. It didn’t help that the crowd jostled and pushed; none of us could keep our balance well.

Finally, Nero jerked his head toward a small gathering of tables and chairs near the door of a café. “It will take more than me and Elena to get you there. The two of you wait here while I hire a gondola. I’ll bring the man back to help.”

I was surprised when Samuel didn’t protest. We limped over to the café chairs, and he let out a loud sigh of weariness as he sank into one of them. Nero gave me a quick, worried look. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

“We won’t,” I assured him.

He hurried off, disappearing almost immediately into the crowd. The moment he was out of sight, Samuel straightened, his exhausted expression disappearing. He looked perfectly well, so much so that I exclaimed, “There’s nothing wrong with you at all! You swooned deliberately.”

He wiped at the eel blood on his trousers. “I think I ruined these.”

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“You could have done that back at the Basilio.”

“Could I have? Since he’s crawled into your bed?” He glanced away as if to assure himself that Nero was nowhere near. “He’s been stalling.”

“Not stalling,” I corrected. “He’s worried. He thinks something terrible has happened, and he’s afraid of returning to bad news.”

Samuel looked thoughtful. “Perhaps. He didn’t seem too worried about his aunt until Giulia said she was sending for the police. Do you believe him when he says he doesn’t believe in the ghost?”

“I think he’s afraid to believe in her. Otherwise he would have to acknowledge that she’s still unhappy. It would be painful for him. He cared for her very much.”

“Perhaps too much.” Samuel reached out, flicking a loosened tendril of my hair meaningfully, and I understood. My chestnut hair, so like Laura’s. “I think I should tell you something.”

My stomach tightened. “Please don’t.”

“You need to know this, Elena. That lover of Laura’s . . . she wanted to marry him, but her mother wouldn’t let her break her engagement to Nero.”

“There was a duel,” I said, irritated that he was telling me nothing new after all his intrigue. This was a waste of time. “He killed the man when he didn’t have to.”

Samuel looked surprised. “He told you? Well then, it seems my little act was all for naught, given how fully you know each other. And I’ve ruined my trousers for nothing.”

He lifted his face to the sky. Snowflakes splashed his cheekbones, his nose, melting into droplets. He blinked away one that landed on his eyelashes. “But you’re right about how much he cared for her, and you should remember it. When he returned from Venice to the news that Laura was dead, I thought I might lose him. I tried to cheer him up with every diversion I could find in Paris, but his despondency lasted for weeks. He told me he hadn’t the courage to take his own life, but the life he was living was suicide of a sort. Too many women, too much wine . . . but he took no pleasure from any of it. I thought he was punishing himself. I still think it.”

Something in what he said jarred. “You think that’s why he chose me, you mean? To punish himself?”

“I can promise that you remind him of Laura, Elena. I don’t want to think that’s the reason he’s pursued you, but you know I do.”

We fell into silence. I was angry with him for doubting Nero’s feelings for me, and sorry too, that he felt as he did. I was relieved when Nero pushed through the crowd a few minutes later, bringing with him a tall, muscled gondolier.

“Do you feel any better?” Nero asked Samuel, who had allowed his shoulders to roll forward, his chin to sink.

“A bit,” Samuel said.

Nero gestured to the gondolier, and the two of them lifted Samuel from the chair, and Samuel made a show of grunting with pain and limping as we all went to the gondola.

Nero was nothing but tension as we headed back. I reached for his hand, weaving my fingers through his, and he gave me a grateful look and brought my hand to his mouth, kissing it, drawing me closer into his side.

The very air in the cabin felt heavy with dread; hard to breathe in. We were all aware, I think, that we were heading to a place where the news could not be good, no matter how much we wished for this feeling to be nothing but imaginations run rampant, a dream that had somehow followed us through the day, nothing but a dream.

And so I was not surprised when we disembarked to see the police boat moored before the palazzo, black with a green box of a cabin.

Zuan met us at the door; he had obviously been waiting. He had been crying, and I knew.

Nero stopped short, tripping Samuel, who was close behind him. I grabbed Samuel’s arm to steady him. Zuan spoke. It was very short.

Nero staggered. He looked over his shoulder, searching for me. “They’ve found her.” His voice was only a harsh whisper. “She’s dead.”

After that, the rest of the evening passed in a daze. The police were waiting in the courtyard, gathered around a body covered with a sheet that was so damp with melting snow it molded to her contours, making her look like a statue carved of marble—how exquisitely the artist had managed the cloth; she seemed to be wearing a veil, so beautifully diaphanous, how had he done it?—while all about her were gathered puddles from melting snow. I wondered why they’d put her on the cold, wet stones rather than somewhere dry and sheltered, and then I realized that it wasn’t just the snow that made the sheet cling that way, but the fact that she was soaking wet; she had been found floating in the canal between the Madonna dell’ Orto and the Basilio, caught beneath the bridge we had crossed so hastily hours before—had she been there then? How had we not seen her?—and all I could think was how glad I was that she had not drowned in the dyer’s canal, where her daughter had died.

“They think she slipped from the bridge on her way to see Father Pietro,” Samuel told me after a quick conferral with Nero, who was now secreted away on the piano nobile with the police. One could see their figures through the windows, silhouettes against the drawn curtains, pacing and gesturing. It made it hard to leave the courtyard, because I could watch him from where I stood. He might need me; at any moment he could pull aside the curtain and look out to see me standing there, the reassuring presence I hoped to be.

“Planning another exorcism attempt, no doubt,” Samuel went on.

“I don’t think that’s what it was,” I said. “I saw her face that day. Whatever she saw gave her the answer she was looking for.”

“What answer could that be?”

“I don’t know. I planned to ask her that this morning.”

Samuel glanced up at the window and frowned. “Come. Let’s go somewhere warm.”

“There’s no place warm here.”

“Someplace else then. There’s a café in the campo.”

“We can’t leave. The police asked us to stay.”

“Then the kitchen.” Samuel took my arm. “You’re shivering, Elena. They can find us there if they need us.”

“But Nero—”

“He’ll know to find you there too.”

Gently he pulled me with him, and I had to admit I was glad once we stepped into the warmth of the kitchen. I had not realized just how cold I was. My hair was wet too, from the snow, dripping down my neck and into my collar.

Samuel sat on the bench with a sigh, but I could not be still. I pulled my cloak more tightly about me and paced. “Do you remember anything from the exorcism?”

“I barely remember the day.”

“I want to know what Madame Basilio understood. I want to know what she saw. Tell me what Laura’s ghost has shown you. Everything you remember.”

“Umm . . . the woman drinking and falling. The man with the pistol. Blood on the walls . . . Christ, will you stop pacing? It’s too hard to concentrate when you’re playing Lady Macbeth.”

“What else? What do you remember about Laura?”

“She’s angry,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “But you know that.”

“When she possessed you, I saw jealousy too.”

“Perhaps she knew what would happen between the two of you when Nero showed up,” Samuel said. “It wasn’t so hard to predict.”

“She didn’t love him anymore. Why would she care? There’s something more. Something we’re not seeing.”

“I don’t know what else that could be.”

“Anger seems odd for a suicide, don’t you think? Sadness I would expect, and hopelessness. Regret, perhaps. But I don’t feel those things from her, and neither do you. Not really. When you woke from your seizure the other night, you thought you’d drowned. You were certain of it. You remembered falling, and that you were angry and afraid. These are all her memories. What is she trying to tell us?”

Samuel stilled.

I went on, “When you were choking yourself—when you were choking me—you spoke in Venetian. Whatever you said meant something to Nero’s aunt.”

“Elena, be careful what you’re considering.” Samuel’s voice was very low.

“I don’t even know what I’m considering,” I said, but that wasn’t true. I did know. I felt it like a clenched fist in my chest, in my stomach.

“You think Laura’s spirit returned for vengeance,” he said. “You think it wasn’t a suicide, but murder.”

“I don’t think that,” I said anxiously. “I don’t know anything. Who could have murdered her? Why?”

Samuel’s gaze locked to mine. He said nothing. He didn’t have to.

“No,” I whispered. “He wasn’t here. He was in Milan.”

“He was,” Samuel said. “And then he wasn’t.”

I remembered what Samuel had said:
When he returned from Venice to the news that Laura was dead, I thought I might lose him.
The thing that had jarred. Dully, I said, “He told me he went straight to Paris from Milan.”

“Then he lied to you,” Samuel said bleakly. “Or he’s forgotten. He went to Venice in between. He brought me that book.
The Nunnery Tales.
We’d talked about it and he wanted to show me. He’d left it here, and he told me he’d stopped to get it. I didn’t think anything of it. By then, his anger with her was past. It never occurred to me that he would hurt her.”

“Because he didn’t. He wouldn’t have.”

“He’d taken care of his rival, so I thought it was over.”

“It was,” I insisted. “It had to be.”

He paused. “I think I understand.”

“Samuel, it can’t be. He can’t have done such a thing.”

“She’s showing me what happened, Elena,” Samuel persisted woodenly. “She’s demonstrating through me. You’re
her
in all these scenarios. I’m
him
. The jealousy, the anger . . . it’s what she saw in him. It all makes sense.”

“It doesn’t make any sense at all!” I could not bear to hear his words, each of which felt to be a blow, sinking deep and true. “You said he was despondent when he heard she’d died.”

“I also said I thought he was punishing himself.”

“I won’t believe it. I suppose next you’ll tell me that he’s responsible for his aunt’s death.”

“I don’t know.”

“You saw him, Samuel. He was beside himself.”

“He didn’t want to return. You’re the one who said that. He knew it would be bad news. He knew the police would be here.”

I felt sick with fear that it was true. “I don’t believe it. I can’t.”

“It makes sense though, doesn’t it?” he pointed out reasonably. “You say his aunt understood something. Perhaps she realized what had happened and she confronted him with it. He went to talk to her that night. The next morning, she’s gone.”

“But I heard her.” I grasped at anything, everything. “That night, when he came to bed, I heard her in the courtyard talking to Giulia. She was alive then, and he didn’t leave me the rest of the night. It couldn’t have been him.”

“Are you certain he didn’t leave you?”

“I’m certain. We . . . I’m certain.”

Samuel said thoughtfully, “Then perhaps it’s true that she slipped. But it seems coincidental, don’t you think?”

I felt near tears. “It can’t be him. He hasn’t lied to me. I know he hasn’t.”

Samuel looked down at his hands. “I don’t want to believe it either, Elena. He’s my closest friend. I trust him. But I know him too.”

“He loved Laura.”

“He was angry with her. You didn’t see him. I did. He was jealous and furious. He loved her and he felt betrayed. It was as if she’d crushed his whole life into nothing.”

What was it he’d said? That Laura had been something certain in a sea of uncertainty. One thing to cling to when everything else was falling apart around him.

But to kill her . . . it was so at odds with what I knew of him. His gentleness and his depth of emotion. A man who wasn’t afraid to show how upset he was at his aunt’s disappearance. Who wasn’t afraid to say
“
save me
.”

Save me.
From what?
“I’m not a good man.”