The Four Horsemen Read online

  “No,” I said again. Then, feeling embarrassed by my curt replies, I added, “Siora, please don’t misunderstand. What happened between us was – was good, but . . .”

  “. . . but mustn’t happen again. May I offer some advice?”

  “Certainly.” It was a strange moment to be exchanging tips on amatory procedures, but I was so befuddled with exhaustion and strain that thoughts of appropriateness were the last thing on my mind.

  “You must tell her everything.”

  “Ye-es,” I said, a little unconvinced.

  “It is the only way. How did you explain the scene she witnessed yesterday?”

  “I told her the truth, ridiculous though it was. Wardrobe and all.”

  She shook her head. “But of course that wasn’t all, and she could see it wasn’t. Was it likely that I would have been standing there so calmly and unashamedly in my undergarments if there had been nothing between us?”

  I could see the truth of this. “No,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. I’ve lived long enough amid lies and hypocrisy to know what you can get away with and what you can’t. But go now. I’ll sit down and perhaps I’ll even say a prayer.” She moved over to the chair where she had laid the gun. She picked it up, placed it on the ground and then sat down, pulling her shawl over her hair again and wrapping her cloak about her. I decided not to tell her that in that half-light she could have been mistaken for a nun.

  33

  It all happened with surprising rapidity after that.

  The square was a little more lively by now, with a number of people drawing water from the well. The boy was nowhere to be seen. I soon found someone who could tell me where the Missier Grande’s real house was. It turned out to be a comfortable first-floor apartment which had a view over both the square and the Giudecca Canal, as I had first imagined.

  I had the strange experience of seeing him for once without his wig and official robes, after the serving-woman who opened the door to me had summoned him. Despite this more homely appearance he had lost none of his dignified bearing, nor his ability to grasp the essence of a situation remarkably quickly. He gave instructions for a servant to accompany me to the gondola, first to help unload the trunk of treasures and then to assist Bepi into the house, where he was made to rest on a divan while a doctor was sent for. The Buranello gondolier was paid handsomely, and he and his moustaches set off on the long trip back to his island.

  The Missier Grande then came with me to the storeroom, where we found Isabella Venier still sitting composedly beside the corpse of her husband. She rose and bowed formally to him, then corroborated what I had told him already. A message was sent to the Inquisitors, telling them that they would hear useful information on the events in the basilica of the previous evening if they should come to the residence of Sior Giacomo Carraro in Campo Sant’Agnese.

  Two hours later (during which time Bepi had had his ankle tightly bandaged, we had both consumed a hearty breakfast and I had been able to wash and make myself more or less presentable), Marino Basso, looking considerably harassed (I imagined that he too had not slept all night), presented himself at the front door of the apartment, in his role as trusted confidential agent of the Inquisitors. He presumably knew who Sior Giacomo Carraro was, and so his attitude was both supercilious and distrustful; sentiments, of course, which were only exacerbated when he found me in the front room. He refused even to bow to me.

  Then we showed him the treasures.

  They had been taken out of the trunk and displayed, in all their splendour, on the large table in the middle of the room. It seemed as if the sun had emerged at last with the sole aim of adding extra effulgence to this one moment; the Giudecca Canal glittered below the windows of the house, and shimmering reflections of this light danced on the ceiling above the silver and sardonyx chalices, the bejewelled reliquaries, the enamelled medallions, the gold monstrances and votive crowns . . .

  It was even better than the moment when I had revealed the presence of the Turkish ladies in Bepi’s gondola. Amazement, resentment, anger and finally relief passed in quick succession over Marino Basso’s features, and he was unable to utter a single coherent word for several seconds. Eventually, after some cursory explanations had been given, he made a deliberate effort to assume a respectful tone and declared that he would arrange for a suitable escort to take the treasures back to the basilica, where the Inquisitors would meet us.

  The Missier Grande then said a few words about the corpse in the nearby storeroom, and Basso promised that this too would be handled with all the necessary discretion.

  Only after he had left did the Missier Grande turn to me and say, “Thank you, Sior Marangon.”

  “Illustrissimo, thank you – for the encouragement.”

  “I don’t believe that I ever did encourage you,” he said.

  “Not in so many words,” I said.

  “I see that you understand me well,” he said. “I think we will continue to work together profitably.”

  “Sior Massaro will be immensely relieved,” I said.

  “Ah yes. I will make sure that he too is restored to his position.” Sior Giacomo Carraro did indeed take up his old position as Missier Grande, with Sior Massaro in the outer office. What had happened that night at the treasury never became publicly known, although rumours abounded. The corpses on the Venier island were swiftly removed; it is possible that they were, in fact, transferred quickly and silently to the nearby bone island of Sant’Ariano. The death of Nobleman Querini could not be treated quite so unceremoniously, but public scandal was averted by a declaration that he had been the victim of a hunting accident; when objections were raised that he had never been known to go hunting before, the response came back that it was precisely his unfamiliarity with firearms that had led to the tragedy. His grief-stricken widow retired to her property on the island of Cerigo, where, it was said, she devoted herself to good works among the poor. Her maidservant, Ariadne, accompanied her. The Scuola dei Calegheri never did reacquire its painting of Saint Constantine. The Querini family, meanwhile, drew a collective sigh of relief.

  Nobleman Sanudo quietly resigned his office as Inquisitor. It became very clear that it had been due to pressure on his part that Paolo Padoan’s investigations had been halted and his reports suppressed, all out of a misguided desire to hush up all possible scandals connected with the younger Sanudo’s exploits. Of course, he had had no idea of what the real Four Horsemen had been up to, nor what Querini’s hired killer had been doing.

  After continuous protestation on my part Paolo Padoan’s sister regained some of her lost property, including a number of Greek books, which she was happy to sell to Fabrizio, who gave her a good price for them. Padoan’s diary, however, never did resurface. (And no further news was ever discovered of the location of the tomb of Constantine XI.)

  My copy of Homer was eventually found among the various pieces of evidence retained by the magistrates, and I was allowed to retake possession of it. I had been worried that it would be damaged by bloodstains, which, however appropriate to the story recounted within its pages, would undoubtedly have spoiled my enjoyment of it. Fortunately this turned out not to be the case, and Pope’s couplets were preserved in pages that were only occasionally crumpled.

  Bepi was forced to take an unexpected holiday for a couple of weeks, while his ankle healed. He was helped in this by receiving a reward from the Council of Ten for his assistance in “recovering some stolen items”; along with the reward came a stern warning not to reveal anything of what had happened to anyone. Bepi, firm believer in the Inquisitors’ well-established custom of tearing out the tongues of garrulous revealers of state secrets, was happy to abide by this, even with regard to his mother. He spent some of his enforced holiday explaining the more intricate rules of dice to Fabrizio, who actually began to meet him regularly at a tavern in Castello for this very purpose. To the relief of Lucia, their stakes remained bagattini.
/>   One evening in the bookshop, when her father had gone to meet Bepi, I gave Lucia a fairly detailed account of what had happened on the island and then in the storehouse at Sant’Agnese. When I told her how Isabella Venier had saved my life by shooting her husband her face grew serious.

  “I knew that woman loved you,” she said at last.

  “That’s a big word,” I said. “She loved in the same way Konstantinos Komnenos and Andrea Sanudo.”

  “And did you all love her back?”

  “Obviously I can’t speak for Komnenos and Sanudo. I was dazzled by her. I’ll admit that.”

  “I see.”

  “And in the end I was – well, I was seduced by her.”

  Lucia began dusting a shelf of books at around waist-level, which meant her face was turned downwards. She said, “The passive voice is a very useful grammatical tool.”

  “Siora Lucia,” I said, “it happened after you had been angry with me – understandably so. I felt a little lost.”

  “I see.” She straightened up and looked directly at me. “And did she help you find yourself?”

  “She gave me the momentary illusion of having done so. It didn’t last.”

  “And in any case she has gone now,” said Lucia. “To the island of Venus.”

  I wondered if she had been doing some research of her own – and then remembered that her father had idly mentioned this legend that morning at the Rialto. Lucia had not forgotten it. I tried to make light of it. “She did play on the notion. It was a rather foolish one.” I shifted tone and tried to make myself sound more serious. “Siora Lucia, do you think . . .”

  “Don’t ask me, please.”

  “Are you already saying no?”

  “I’m saying don’t ask me. Not just yet.”

  “Not yet,” I repeated.

  “Exactly. Now if you’ll excuse me I think I should close the shop.”

  “Certainly. Siora Lucia, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Sior Alvise.”

  Not yet. It could have been worse, I thought, as I set off home.

  End note

  The Querini and the Venier were, of course, two of the most distinguished families in Venice. It would seem that the Venetian state managed successfully to eliminate all trace of this scandalous story from its records, since no reference can be found to a marriage between the two families in the eighteenth century, and neither Isabella Venier nor Marco Querini figure anywhere in the annals. The Querini family, perhaps because of the early scandal of their involvement in the Bajamonte Tiepolo uprising, would have been particularly keen to have any suggestion of treacherous behaviour on the part of one of its members expunged from the records. It is probable that Isabella Venier did subsequently live an entirely retired life on the island of Kythira; who knows, she may even have ended up taking holy orders.

  The palace near Campo Santa Maria Formosa is now the Querini-Stampalia Museum and Library. The decoration is mainly eighteenth-century but mostly from a period slightly later than the events recounted here. However, the grandiose family portraits that Alvise describes can still be seen there.

  My thanks go to Panayotis Ioannidis, who provided the rhyming couplet refrain for Komnenos’s kleftic ballad, and to Ernest Hilbert, who provided information on early editions of Alexander Pope’s translation of The Iliad.

  I would also like to thank John Beaton, my agent, for all his untiring work and his continual encouragement.

  Glossary

  (Words that are Venetian rather than standard Italian are indicated by V in brackets)

  altana (V)

  a wooden structure on the roof of buildings, used for various purposes (drying of clothes, taking of sun)

  arsenalotto (V)

  a worker at the Arsenale

  bagattino

  the smallest Venetian coin, worth 1/240th of a lira

  barene (V)

  the low-lying marshy terrain of the lagoon, often submerged at high tide

  barnabotto (V)

  a Venetian nobleman fallen on hard times and granted cheap rented accommodation in the parish of San Barnaba

  bauta (V)

  White face-mask

  Bondì (V)

  Venetian for Buongiorno (good morning)

  bravo

  a hired thug

  bricole (V)

  poles driven into the mud of the canals or the lagoon to act as markers or mooring-poles

  buranello

  native of the island of Burano; also the name for a local biscuit often taken with wine

  caigo (V)

  fog

  caleghero (V)

  a shoe-maker

  calle (V)

  a narrow street

  campo (V)

  a city square (in Italian the word indicates a field)

  campiello (V)

  a smaller city square

  canalazzo (V)

  alternative name for the Grand Canal

  casino (V)

  small room or set of rooms used by Venetian aristocrats for various leisure purposes, including gambling

  cavalier servente

  see cicisbeo

  cicerone

  tourist-guide

  cicisbeo

  married woman’s semi-official gallant, sometimes her lover; also known as a cavalier servente

  codega (V)

  “link-boy” (hired escorts holding lanterns)

  confidente

  a confidential agent

  cortesan (V)

  literally a “courtier” (cortegiano in Italian); in Venetian indicating a gentlemanly man of the world

  cospetto

  mild imprecation

  felze (V)

  the cabin of a gondola

  filippo

  coin, worth eleven lire

  fioi (V)

  Venetian appellation, corresponding roughly to “lads”

  fondamenta (V)

  road running alongside a canal

  fontego (V)

  (also fondaco); literally a warehouse, but also a residence and meeting-place for foreign communities in Venice

  forcola (V)

  the carved wooden structure on gondolas acting as a rowlock

  foresto (V)

  Venetian for foreigner

  furatola (V)

  a cheap tavern

  guagliò

  abbreviation of guaglione, Neapolitan for “lad”

  illustrissimo

  most illustrious or eminent; a term of respect generally used in Venice to address those not of noble rank

  Liston (V)

  in Saint Mark’s Square, the area between the clock-tower and the pillars by the water-front, used as a fashionable parade ground

  magazen (V)

  cheap taverns, not allowed to serve cooked food

  malvasia

  malmsey wine; also used as the name of taverns that served such wine

  marangon (V)

  carpenter

  Nicolotti (V)

  inhabitants of western Venice (around the parish of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli); traditional rivals of the Castellani, inhabitants of eastern Venice

  osteria

  hostelry or tavern

  passeggiata

  stroll, particularly the evening stroll along the Liston

  piano nobile

  the first floor of a Venetian palace; containing the principal rooms.

  portego (V)

  the central and most splendid room of a Venetian palazzo

  Ridotto

  the government-owned gambling house at Palazzo Dandolo (literally “the closed-off or private room”)

  rio (V)

  Venetian word for a canal

  Salizada (V)

  a broad street in Venice (one of the first to have been paved)

  salotto

  a salon, often understood to be a gathering-place for refined conversation

  salottiere

  one who attends a salotto

  sandolo (V)

>   flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, of a simpler build than a gondola

  sbirro

  officer of the law; often used derogatorily

  scudo

  coin worth seven lire

  scuola

  literally a school, but in Venice often used to refer to a charitable institution, a guild-hall, or a meeting-place for foreign communities, usually under the protection of a patron saint

  Sior/Siora (V)

  Venetian for Signor/Signora

  sottoportego (V)

  archway or passage under a building

  tabarro

  cloak

  zaffi (V)

  see sbirro; also often used derogatorily

  zecchino

  the principal Venetian coin, worth twenty-two lire (origin of the word “sequin”)

  zuechino (V)

  inhabitant of the Giudecca island