The Bellini Card (17 page)

It was not, after all, a very progressive republic, which is why it broke apart when Napoleon touched it, like a bubble of Murano glass.

Far from stopping the mouth of the terrible lion in the name of Liberty, the French had actually widened it: the anonymous denunciation became a tool of the revolutionary government in Paris, too.

And the Austrians, who were never the most zealous reformers, and preferred to leave things much as they had found them, soon took to regularly inspecting the
bocca di leone
themselves.

Naturally they didn’t turn up much. The people of Venice were generally reluctant to provide their foreign rulers with information.

But old habits die hard.

Venice was the first city in Europe to have street lighting, but the alley at the back of the Doges’ Palace was almost dark when a shadow slipped past the
bocca di leone
toward ten o’clock at night.

The shadow seemed to glide along the alley without a pause, but the lion was fed with a lozenge of paper, very small and tightly rolled.

P
ALEWSKI
watched as Maria licked a trace of ice cream from her upper lip.

A slow procession of barges with rust-colored sails was making its way along the Giudecca. Foreign, seagoing ships were rare; Palewski thought of the great three-masted schooners and the frigates that often crowded the Bosphorus at home. Here, the shipping was strictly local: flatboats
from the lagoon, island ferries rowed by four men with long sweeps, a huge, covered
burchiello
, or passenger barge, and a shoal of smaller craft—wherries, skiffs, and the occasional gondola—dotted the smooth blue water, sparkling breezily in the late afternoon light.

On the Zattere, the
passeggiata
had already begun. Couples strolled along arm in arm, their children zigzagging around them through the crowd; old men tapped their canes over the cobblestones, stopping now and then to admire the view or to hail a friend; knots of young men, with toppers tilted at rakish angles, lounged on the bridges; the ubiquitous gray uniforms of Austrian officers; a matron sailing by with two young women in tow, casting furtive glances at the loafers.

Palewski shifted his glance from Maria’s lips and observed a ragged girl with a tray of matches working her way through the tables. He felt in his pocket for a small coin.

Then he froze.

“Maria!” he whispered urgently. “Kiss me!”

Maria turned her head and smiled coquettishly. “Not here, silly.”

Palewski bent his head. It had been the most fleeting glimpse—he could not be sure. Compston in Venice? But why ever not? The young Byronist—it was exactly where one would expect to find him, with the British embassy in Istanbul in summer recess. At least—if it were Compston—he’d not been spotted. He hadn’t even met his eye.

Yet Palewski’s glance, however light, must have somehow left an impress, for seconds later a meaty hand descended on Palewski’s shoulder.

“I say, Excellency! This is too fantastic!”

Looking up with a grim smile, Palewski saw a shock of yellow hair crammed under a top hat, and beneath it the open, ruddy face of the third secretary to Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the Sublime Porte.

“Compston,” he snapped, in low tones. “I am not here. You didn’t see me.”

The young man blinked.

And then, to Palewski’s horror, there were three of them.

“Found a friend, George?” Another Englishman, also fair, slightly older than Compston: Ben Fizerly. Fizerly registered Maria’s appearance and goggled. “Er, friends, I should say—why, it’s Palewski!”

They shook hands.

The third member of the group was not an Englishman. He was tall and very good-looking, with sallow skin and the faint line of a mustache across his upper lip. His eyes, like his hair, were black.

“This is Count Palewski, Tibor,” Compston said. “Count, Tibor Karolyi. He’s with the Imperial embassy in Istanbul. Um.”

Tibor’s heels clicked together, and he bowed rapidly. Compston looked embarrassed. An inkling of the situation had finally penetrated his mind.

Palewski, for his part, was thinking fast. Curse his damned fond memories, he should never have walked down the Zattere at this hour! And curse his bad luck, too. Compston on his own he could have managed; even Fizerly too. But Karolyi? Karolyi was a Hungarian. He might sympathize—but he might not. The fact that he was at the embassy, working for the Habsburg monarchy, linked him straight to the people Palewski most wanted to avoid.

“Won’t you join us, my dear fellows? Maria will be delighted to meet someone of her own age.” He gestured to the chairs, playing for time. “On his lordship’s trail, Compston?”

Compston blushed. “Venice, you know. La Serenissima and all that,” he murmured, “and, well, ahem.” He glanced over at Maria, who was sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She had finished her ice cream.

Compston’s blush deepened.

“I know a man in Venice who claims he swam with Byron,” Palewski said. “Perhaps you’d like to meet him?”

Before Compston could reply, Fizerly leaned forward. “To be honest, sir, I’ve had about as much Byron as a man can take. Tibor too, I’m sure. Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow, nine o’clock.”

“For Istanbul?”

“That’s right.”

“What a pity. Your last evening in Venice.” Palewski cocked his head. “But this is an occasion, gentlemen! Perhaps—if you’re not engaged—you will allow me to entertain you all? I have an apartment on the Grand Canal and some very good champagne.”

“I say, sir! But really, we can’t intrude—”

“No intrusion, Compston. It would be my pleasure. Waiter, hi! Grappa, if you please. Now, gentlemen, I propose a toast.” He paused, holding up one finger like a bandmaster, while the waiter set the bottle and five small glasses on the table. “For you, my dear, and for you fellows … and so: Stambouliots together!”

They drank. Palewski refilled the glasses and gave them La Serenissima, then Byron’s swim, and finally a toast to the evening that lay ahead, before the bottle was empty.

“To the gondolas, my friends!”

They walked to the landing stage, the young Englishmen flushed and animated; even Karolyi’s eyes were bright, as he cast them at Palewski’s escort.

“Maria,” Palewski said, when the two of them were settled in the leading boat. Venice, he realized, had one advantage over Istanbul, at least. “Maria, I will drop you at the Rialto.”

She gave a disappointed pout.

“But I want you to come along in an hour or so.”

“I see.”

“With a couple of your friends.”

“My friends?” She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

“Maria, my dear. I am asking you to arrange a simple, traditional Venetian orgy.”

P
OP!
Pop!
Corks flew. The boys were in ecstasies.

“I say, Palewski!” Compston’s eyes shone. “I say!”

“To Venice,” Palewski proposed.

They drank again. Palewski filled their glasses.

“And what is Venice, gentlemen? The city of pleasure. Masques, balls, the Arabian nights reborn—a place of love and squalor, of high art—and low desire.”

The young men tittered.

“I daresay you’ve been to the Doges’ Palace? To the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni? And the Accademia? Of course, of course. To art, gentlemen! To the glory of Bellini, and Tiepolo, and Titian!”

“To art!” they chorused enthusiastically.

“Tell the truth,” said Compston, “I’ve seen about as much art as I could want.”

Fizerly nodded. “Writing it all up for the ladies at home, too. Bit grueling, Palewski.”

“Karolyi?”

But Count Karolyi, too, seemed to have flagged beneath the deluge of Venetian art. “It is all very old,” he said. “Nothing new.”

Palewski nodded. “You are right. It’s all old. Wonderful but frozen. To frozen Venice!”

They drank.

“‘S’all very well for you, Palewski,” Compston declared with a wink.

“I think you are right, Mr. Compston,” Karolyi said. “Count Palewski’s
Venice does not appear to be all frozen.” He gave his host a thin-lipped smile.

“To which end, gentlemen, I have arranged for you to meet some charming young friends of mine,” Palewski continued smoothly. “I believe I hear them now on the stairs.”

He went to the door and pulled it open.

“Here they are. Please consider my home as your own.”

He stepped out onto the landing. Maria tapped him with her fan and smiled.

The three young men stood, unsteadily, as Maria and her friends entered the room, laughing.

Avanti, sorelle!”

I
T
was shortly before eight o’clock that Palewski returned to his apartment from the hotel where he had spent the night.

He found three puffy-faced young men already struggling into their underwear.

“Got to get back to the consul,” Compston croaked, shading his eyes. “To get our things.” He fished up a pocket watch and stared at it, a look of horror spreading across his flushed features. “Oh my God! Fizerly! We’ve only got half an hour left!”

“All taken care of,” Palewski said crisply. “I had everything sent to the ship.”

Compston’s eyes filled with tears. “Palewski, old man. I—I don’t know what to say. You’re the most capital fellow I ever met.”

T
HE
stadtmeister shuddered. A head on a plate? A drifting gondola with a severed trunk inside? It was outlandish, warped—like everything in this dreadful town, wreathed in mist, drifting on its horrible flat lagoon. Ach, for the mountains, where the water was clear and you tramped the forests with proper rock under your feet! And where a former stadtmeister in the service of the emperor was a figure of respect and awe.

He frowned and pulled back his shoulders slightly.

“I have not lived among these Latins for so many years, Herr Vosper, without gaining some useful insights into the Venetian mind.”

Vosper drew his heels together and gave a short nod that might have been a bow.