The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [299]
Venice at night dispelled the illusion that he might be in Bruges, or any homely place of his boyhood. Tonight, he was glad of it. Seeing nothing, he still saw with his mind pictures that would always be linked with tonight, and with Marian, and with the last thoughts he shared with her. He had left her letter behind, to read again when he could bring himself to do it. At least, in some things he hadn’t failed. Over his head as he walked, lamplight shone from strange rooms, with carved, painted beams for their ceilings, and on their walls glimpses of paintings, tapestries, sculptures. Lit windows patterned the night: windows pillared; windows gothic; windows fretted by grilles or by balconies. Lamplight drew shadows on steps and on mooring posts and the ceiling vaults of a passage. Lamplight glowed on a sheet of speckled mosaic, with a sacred painting indecipherable, a blemish in darkness. Lamplight followed a gull as it beat like a moth down to the rippling water, where it tossed as if on a bough, watching boat passing boat.
The canal. Leaving Simon’s house with the girls, he had suddenly remembered his purse, and the casket he had brought. It was still there. He had thought of Tilde, the eldest; but after all, he had gone a long way to find the right colour. And so he had touched Catherine’s arm, and put the little box into her hand, with the worked gold and fine lapis in it, the blue of her eyes. She had opened it, standing at a bridge just like this, and turned to him a face suddenly convulsed, and then snatching the necklace, had made to fling it into the canal. And then she had thought better of it, and lowered her hand and walked on, the box and the jewel clenched out of sight.
She was probably right. But if she was right, he wished she had thrown it.
The door his present escort took him to, in the end, was not his own, but he didn’t point it out, for he had already seen the coat of arms over the archway. When they turned to leave, he gave them the necessary silver, and they thanked him. Then he was alone, in a doorway belonging to the house of Zeno. The door opened. He said, “Which of them told you?”
“The priest,” she said. “He said, tonight you need someone you despise. My husband is not here. But I shall tell him tomorrow that you have been. Pietro might cry, but his nurse will see to him.”
“Pietro?” he said. She had closed the door behind him.
“My son,” said Violante of Naxos. “He is three years old. Come this way. Undress, if you like, as we walk. What I am wearing is only a bedgown.”
“How fortunate,” Nicholas said, “that you opened the door to the right person.” The long passage stretched ahead of them both. He tossed his hat deliberately on the floor as he walked, and began to unbuckle his belt.
She looked round, smiled, and led on. She said, “My servants told me.”
“Camilla the Volscian,” Nicholas said. He took off one shoe and then the other and, walking on, nearly bumped into her.
She said, “What made you say that?”
“Amazons,” Nicholas said. “You are an Amazon? You should have seen what John le Grant devised for the island at Kerasous where the evil birds used to live. You know. The ones who killed with their feathers. Feathers and emeralds. The Turks wouldn’t go near it.” She could hear, presumably, the way he was breathing. If this was what she wanted, then she had achieved it. He spoke in the bitter, clear Tuscan he used when he wanted to be heard.
“I know,” she said.
“I’m sure you do,” Nicholas said. He pulled his doublet over his head, dropping it in the first antechamber she took him to, and set hands to the buttons of his pourpoint on the threshold of the bedchamber. His fingers stopped obeying him, and so did everything else.
She said, “Let me do that,” and turned; but got no further.
The priest had warned her. Even so, all her formidable strength