In the Garden of Sin (5 page)

Lucy was complaining about Don Domenico’s “interfering in our love lives like some meddlesome old auntie.”

“Love lives?” Sibylla said. “These are all wedded men, Lucy, most with mistresses as well. ’Tisn’t love they want from us.”

“Is
he
a wedded man?” I asked. “Don Domenico?” The possibility had not occurred to me.

“Constanze say he have no wife and no mistress,” Bianca told them. Constanze was her older sister, who had had been among Vitturi’s first group of neophyte courtesans seven years ago and was now one of the most sought-after courtesans in Venice. “She say once he have many lovers, and a very beautiful mistress, but now he only bed his
cortigianas
. She say when he is young, the mothers of all the young ladies want him for marry the daughters, for he have much wealth, and fine family, and he write the
poesie di amore
. But then a bad thing happen …”

Besides already being a poet of some renown in his early twenties, Bianca told us, Vitturi had been an officer in Venice’s vaunted Navy. Nine years ago, during a battle in the Adriatic against “the Uscocchi,” whom I took to be pirates of some sort, he received such grievous injuries that he was no longer able to serve in the Navy.

Upon seeing him newly wounded, his mistress was so horror-struck that she vomited and cast him aside. He sought out Galiana Solsa, the wealthiest and most elegant courtesan in Venice, who had favored him in the past, but she hurled stinging insults at him and ordered him out of her palazzo.
When he lingered, thinking he might sway her with words, for he’d always been a silver-tongued charmer, Galiana had him dragged into the street and savagely beaten by three brawny footmen.

“She is a
demonio
, that one,” Bianca said.
“Una striga.”

“Striga?”
That was a word my Italian tutor had never taught me.

“A thing of great evil, a devil of the night. Galiana Solsa hunt the peoples in the dark, like the owl hunt the mice, and she drink their blood. She stay young very many years. Her… how you say,
preda
, those she feed upon, they vanish in the night. Still, the men, they cannot turn from her, so great is her beauty. She have a strange power over them.”

“Bianca, you superstitious little plebian,” Sibylla said. “You don’t really believe that.”

“Do you defy the Church?” Bianca demanded. “The
Folleti
, the incubus and the succubus, they visit the peoples at night, when they sleep, and violate them. Some of these incubi, the ones called dusii, they can change from man to woman, and back again. Is how they steal the seed from the mens and—”

Sibylla snickered.

“The fathers of the Church tell us these thing,” Bianca said heatedly. “’Tis not for us to question.”

Like Sibylla, I was far too scholarly to credit such tales, but I kept my mouth shut so as not to vex Bianca.

Addressing Lucy and me, but not the smirking Sibylla, Bianca said in a low, mysterious tone, “Constanze, she tell me there is much strange things at Grotte Cachée. There is a cave which make you feel drunk inside, and things happen there that cannot happen. And by this cave, there is a pool of water that is bewitched. What others in this water feel, you will feel. Oh, and she tell me one day she hear the old lord of Grotte
Cachée, Seigneur des Ombres, speak an
incantesimo
. I do not know the
Inglese
word for this.”

“An incantation?” I said. “A magic spell?”

“Sì, sì, magico
. And she say she think is incubi at Grotte Cachée, but she say they don’t hurt the peoples. There is a hermit who live in a cave who can take the shape of animals, or even make himself
invisibile
. And she say Inigo and Elic, the men who will teach us the arts of love, be no ordinary men. Inigo, the dark one with the beautiful smile, he have
il cacchio di uno stallion
. She say is like a pillar of stone. And Elic, this one is very tall and handsome, with golden hair, like Apollo, and he can take the womens again and again—ten, twenty times, with no rest between
orgasmi.”

“È ridicolo,”
Sibylla muttered as she gazed out at the passing trees.

Lucy cut off Bianca’s rebuttal with a gasp. “He’s coming!” she said, craning her neck to look behind them through the tied-back curtains draping their carriage. “He’s riding toward us up the path.”

“Don Domenico?” I asked.

“Nay. Well, aye,” she whispered as she pinched her cheeks and patted her hair. “He’s coming, too, and some of the others, but I meant Master Knowles.”

“What ho, ladies,” Jonas Knowles said as he walked his horse past the carriage, sweeping off his wide-brimmed, luxuriously plumed beaver hat with a low bow.

Lucy made sheep eyes at him as she returned his smile. “Master Knowles.”

Next came Elle, riding astride in a billowing blue satin skirt that was split in front, revealing matching breeches and hose— a shameless style of dress unique to Venetian courtesans, which the Frenchwoman had adopted as a riding costume. She
wore a mannish hat very much like that of the English courtiers, only perhaps with a few more plumes. The effect was actually quite fetching.

When Elle told us that we were but a few miles from Château de la Grotte Cachée, all four of us raised a cheer. Ten days in that jolting, rattling carriage had left us woozy and aching. Like the other noblemen, Buckingham usually rode, surrounded by his yeomen and retainers, although he did have a very elegant carriage in which he retired from time to time, often with Knowles for company. As Buckingham’s gentleman of the bedchamber, it was Knowles’s responsibility to keep the duke well dressed, well fed, and supplied with devoted and genial companionship.

Domenico Vitturi, who rode by next, not only greeted us warmly, but touched his heart as he bowed, a courtly gesture of which I had grown quite fond. His traveling costume consisted of a black doublet, breeches, and hose, with a buff leathern jerkin and tall boots folded over at the tops. In contrast to the Englishmen, he wore a flat, brimless, Venetian-style felt cap. To my mind, his attire—the cap in particular—bespoke a restraint and self-assurance that was more attractive by far than the peacock ostentation of his companions.

“We few shall be riding ahead to the château to ensure that all is in readiness,” he said, meeting every pair of eyes in the carriage save for mine. He often appeared to be subtly dodging my gaze, just as I dodged his. I wasn’t quite sure why this was. He didn’t seem to harbor any mislike toward me, and I certainly felt no animosity toward him. In fact, the more I saw of him—of his gallantry toward the novices, his easy camaraderie with his fellows, and the evenhandedness and quiet authority he displayed with his staff—the more I admired him.

Bringing up the rear of the little group on horseback were
two stalwart yeomen of the Duke of Buckingham, followed by the duke himself, who was widely regarded as the handsomest man in England. Dressed in the dashing cavalier style favored by King Charles, he had wavy chestnut hair, a pointed beard, and deep blue eyes that were uncommonly striking. Yet for all his beauty, and his reputation for charm and wit—he was the courtier’s courtier, after all—he rarely smiled, or engaged in good-natured banter with the other gentlemen. Indeed, there was an aura of melancholy about the man that evoked my pity despite his aloofness and his baffling accusation against my uncle.

“Your Grace,” Lucy said to him with a little duck of her head.

The duke did not so much as glance in our direction as he rode past the carriage. Like Knowles, he was a married man with a child. This was the only reason I could fathom for his attitude of studied indifference toward the wanton beauties with whom he was traveling—that and perhaps his glum spirits. Buckingham’s purpose in visiting Grotte Cachée was primarily to hunt wild boars in the woods and moorlands surrounding the castle, which were said to be teeming with them. French boars, Elle had told me, were known to be far superior to their English counterparts.

The duke was surrounded at all times by burly attendants charged with preventing anyone from getting close to him without his leave. Several times I had tried to speak to him, only to be rebuffed in no uncertain terms. Yeomen even stood guard over him while he slept. I prayed that he would be more approachable once we were at Grotte Cachée. If not, I would have to concoct some ruse to breach the fortification he had established around himself.

When he was just out of earshot, Lucy lowered her voice and leaned forward. “He thinks he’s Lord God himself, being
the favorite of two kings, first James and now Charles, but he very nearly got yanked down off that high horse of his after that wretched business with Spain.” After half a year spent living with a mistress to a member of the king’s inner circle, Lucy knew all there was to know about English court intrigue.

“What business with Spain?” Bianca asked.

“The duke headed up an absolutely disastrous naval expedition in October,” Lucy said. “He tried to capture Cádiz and botched that up, so he mounted an assault on a fleet of Spanish galleons full of silver from the New World—only they took a different route than they were supposed to, and slipped the noose. It was a humiliating defeat for us. All fingers pointed to His Grace as a bungler, and there was a movement to impeach him as chief minister, but King Charles thinks he walks on water, so last month he disbanded Parliament.”

“Disbanded…?” Bianca said with a little shake of her head. “My English…”

“Told them to pack up and go home, and that he’d call them together again when he felt like it—when he needs money again, most likely. Meanwhile, the duke has been saying he didn’t bungle anything, that the mission only failed because Spain was warned about it in advance by a traitor, an English emissary to the Spanish court named Guy Goodbody.”

“Goodchild,” I said.

Lucy gave me a dubious little scowl. “Are you certain?”

“Quite.”
I should know my own uncle’s name
.

“Guy Goodchild, then,” Lucy said. “He’s been locked up in the tower for months, all the while proclaiming his innocence, although the duke says he has unassailable proof against him. It’s probably true, because it’s come to light that he’s secretly …” She lowered her voice, as if to prepare us for something shocking. “… a papist.”

Bianca and Sibylla, both openly Catholic—they were Italians, after all—exchanged a look of amused forbearance. I kept my expression carefully neutral.

“A Catholic would naturally harbor sympathies with Spain, would he not?” Lucy said. “And it doesn’t help that it was the Duke of Buckingham himself who accused him. Everyone knows that Goodchild and the duke were close. After King James died, when His Grace was most in need of a friend, ’twas Master Goodchild he turned to. They fenced together, hunted together… Why on earth would the duke accuse his closest companion of being a traitor to the crown if it weren’t so?”

That was the very question that I had come here to answer.

Lucy said, “Parliament was dissolved before they could hold an inquest to try Master Goodchild for high treason. They’ll try him when they reconvene, whenever that may be. ’Tis all but certain he’ll be found guilty, and then he’ll be executed as all traitors are, by drawing and quartering.”

Sibylla shuddered.
“Barbari Inglesi,”
she said.
English barbarians
.

Just as I had feared, Bianca asked Lucy what she meant by drawing and quartering.

With cheerfully gruesome relish, Lucy described how the condemned man was to be drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, then hanged by the neck, choking and writhing, until he was almost, but not quite, dead. After being taken down from the gibbet, his belly would be sliced open and his entrails pulled out, to be roasted before his eyes, often along with his privy members. The torment would finally end when he was beheaded, with the remainder of his body being cut into quarters.

“They take the four quarters and the head, shove them
onto stakes, and put them on display as a warning to others,” Lucy said. “They’re left to rot there till the flesh drops from the bones.”

Bianca sat with a hand pressed to her mouth, ashen and wide-eyed. Sibylla yawned.

I stared out the window, eyes stinging.

Guy Goodchild, my mother’s kind, funny, generous younger brother, had been like a father to me all my life. At forty years of age, he had never been married. He had no wife and no children to come to his aid. He only had me. I could not,
would
not let him end his days in such agony, especially for something he didn’t do. Uncle Guy was fiercely loyal to his king, and to his friends, as well. He’d always spoken of the Duke of Buckingham with the greatest respect and affection. Once or twice, he’d even slipped and referred to him in my hearing as “George.” Their friendship had meant everything to him.

What could this “unassailable proof” possibly be? Buckingham hadn’t revealed it publicly, nor, apparently, did he mean to do so until the inquest, which would likely be brief and decisive, with the ghastly sentence carried out within days. The inquest would take place when Parliament reconvened, and since there was no way of telling when that would be, it was imperative that I establish my uncle’s innocence as soon as possible. My plan was to do whatever it took to coax Buckingham into revealing his “proof” so that I could challenge it. If that required me to employ my womanly wiles, I would do so. All that mattered, all I cared about anymore, was saving my beloved uncle. I would gladly forfeit my modesty, my reputation, even my virginity if it came to it, in order to rescue him from such a hellish and undeserved death.