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By Root 334 0

throat; its cool round weight a constant reassurance that she needed more than she knew. Her child squirmed beneath the ceinture of her dress, and its father's hand clasped hers. She looked replete; the oft-used term `blooming' could have been coined for her. Outwardly, she was as serene as the glassy lagoon under the winter sun. But beneath her surface there was darkness and turmoil in the depths. Two evils, from the past and present, were the tides that tugged at her innards. She doubted the fidelity of the man whose hand she held. And between her filling breasts lay the scratchy secret of the Ambassador's letter. She recalled her dream of the sunlit day when the three of them rode the gondola. Well, here they were - the child unborn but inside her belly. For the baby's sake she wanted resolution - of her quest and her relationship too. The past, as was fitting, should be dealt with first. She began to talk. She told Alessandro everything. Of Corradino. Of Roberto. Of the revelations in Il Gazzettino. She watched him carefully when she mentioned Vittoria, but he showed no surprise, no shifty glances or shamefaced blushes. He merely frowned.

Vittoria can wait. For now I want his opinion as a professional.

She went on to speak of Padovani, of her researches in the Sansoviniana. Leonora freed the much-read letter, and handed it to Alessandro. The shadow of the Bridge of Sighs dipped them in darkness and with a quizzical arch of the brow, he began to read, waiting only for the shadow of the bridge to pass.

CHAPTER 31

The Piombi

Giacomo walked over the Bridge of Sighs with the shuffling steps of terror.Through the fine lattice of the windows he looked what may be his last on the Riva degli Schiavoni, where Carnevale was in full swing. The passage was small and airless after the massive rooms in which he had been questioned with their magnificence of frescoed gilt. He knew that this was no mere accident but design. The condemned man leaving light and space and warmth to enter the crushing damp darkness of that most dreaded place - the Piombi prison. Named for the leads that slated the roofs, he knew as well as every citizen of Venice that no one left the fabled prison alive.

The perspiration of fear sat between the old man's shoulder blades. His terror had begun last night when they had taken him, and washed over him in waves all day as he had been questioned, relentlessly, by the same dark, masked figure. He looked through the last window with something akin to love for his lost city. But he did not sigh. Instead, a thin stream of urine trickled down his leg to the stone floor. The guard behind him cursed, and dropped a rag which he scuffed along with his boot, erasing the trail. The old ones always lost control at this point - they knew their days were numbered. Even a young man could quickly get lung fever from the damp of the Piombi, or be driven mad by the dark. For the old, it was assured. He gave Giacomo a vicious shove through the yawning mouth of the prison portal, and as he entered the dark a trick of memory recalled to Giacomo, word for word, the letter that they had read to him, the letter that had brought him here.

Most esteemed and excellent Doge, Duke of the Republic of Venice, Seneschal of the Three Islands and Emperor of Constantinople,

Lately summering, at your Excellency's pleasure, at the court of His Majesty Louis XIV of France, I have today made an unsettling discovery which may pertain to the security of one of our trading monopolies. This discovery touches on the mirror work which His Majesty has commissioned for the decoration of his new palace here at Versailles, where I am newly quartered.

I will tax your Excellency's patience no longer but say, in brief, that it is my belief that a citizen of our own fair Republic is assisting the French with their labours. Excellency, I must write that I believe the traitor to be one of our own Murano glassmakers (so fine is the work) who is even now unburdening the secrets of our Guilds to the foreign craftsmen.

I have had sight of the man whom