Valour and Vanity (30 page)

Jane gaped in astonishment. As he turned, she recognised the profile of Signor Zancani. The red hair had so distracted her that she had not recognised the young man in his disguise. Jane dropped the
Sphère Obscurcie.
“Here.”

He jumped and spun. “Oh, thank heavens.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Giving you an excuse for being in the house.” He handed her a bucket. “Your husband was certain that you could get out of the parlour on your own, but worried that you would be caught in the house.”

“The rescue is welcome, thank you.” She eyed the bucket. “We are watermen, here to quench the fire, I take it?”

“Just so.” He nodded to the stairs. “Shall we go fetch some more water? Outside?”

“By all means, yes.” It was a great relief to have someone else with her so that she did not have to creep through the halls fearing discovery. Even so, she was still so fatigued from her previous efforts that she was soon winded. When they reached the ground floor, the smoke was denser, which did not help. “Is that a real fire?”

“Mostly.”

“You there! What is happening?” Spada’s voice stopped them in the hall. He stood on the landing to the water entrance for the palazzo. Jane wished that she still had the padding on her belly. The itching of her whiskers became a sudden comfort as they stood between her and the swindler.

She tried to stand as though she were not alarmed by Spada’s presence. This close, with his hair dyed black, it was impossible to understand how they had mistaken him for an older man when he had been Signor Sanuto. He had lines at the corners of his eyes, yes, but no more than a man of thirty. The limp, however, seemed real. He leaned on his cane and stepped towards them.

Signor Zancani raised his bucket in answer. “The palazzo was struck by lightning, Signor. It is on fire.” His voice had risen and cracked like an adolescent’s. “We’re getting water.”

“Fire?” he exclaimed. He tapped his cane on the floor, in a gesture that Jane recognised as him thinking. With a sudden curse, he turned to Bastone. “The Vincents are likely in the house.”

“Surely not.”

“All of us out, save Denaro? Then a fire. Check the parlour.”

Bastone cursed and ran to the stairs.

Spada called after him. “Send Denaro and Coppa to me if you see them. I’ll watch here.” He leaned on his cane, frowning. From here, he could see the stairs and the front door. He also blocked the way to the water entrance.

Signor Zancani waved his bucket wildly. “We need to get more water, Signor.”

With a grunt, Spada stepped back. Jane had to brush by him on her way to the water entrance, but he was looking past her to the stairs. They had to hurry before Bastone reported the second fire upstairs. It would, perhaps, have been better if she and Vincent had not had
quite
so much the same idea. She hurried down the steps to the water.

Signor Zancani dipped his bucket in the water and handed it to Jane, taking hers from her. She repressed a groan as she lifted the bucket. Her limbs ached with fatigue from stringing the
bouclé torsadée
across the street. With luck, the grimace would make her look even more masculine.

She and Signor Zancani made their way, water splashing, up the stairs and past Spada. He watched them go past, and Jane could feel his gaze weighing them. She felt the loss of the padding now. With every step she took, Jane tried to project manhood. Aged manhood, perhaps, but manhood nevertheless. Though she had wished all her life for a graceful stride, it now seemed all she could do to avoid mincing down the hall. The bucket of water helped.

Then they were past the kitchen and into the courtyard, where there was a small fire in the remnants of Jane’s barrow. The flames had spread to the ivy covering the palazzo’s walls. A line of people stretched from the fire, out the gate, and to the canal, passing buckets full of water to throw on the fire. Signor Zancani handed his bucket to the nearest man. “It’s faster to go through the house to the water gate.”

“Good thought!” The man clapped his hand on Zancani’s shoulder and called instructions to the volunteer watermen who were working diligently to put out the fire.

Jane passed her bucket off, and in minutes the line reorganized itself to run through the house. In the midst of the change, she and Zancani slipped away.

Walking away from the palazzo, and from the apartment where the nuns waited, Jane finally allowed herself to take a full breath. “How did you set the fire? I thought it was glamour.”

“Not everything needs to be. Sulphur matches.” He frowned for a minute as if he had omitted something from his conversation. “Vincent’s lightning sold it though. You should have seen it fork down out of the sky. Amazing.”

She must have misheard him. To have the lightning appear from the sky, Vincent would have had to run a line of glamour up to … the sky. Jane swallowed, feeling suddenly ill, and certain that she had not misheard. “How is Vincent?”

Signor Zancani paused—not long, but enough that Jane felt every twist of his thought as he considered his reply. “He was alert when I left.”

This was, Jane thought, not the heartening sentence that the puppet player must have intended, because it meant that Vincent had
not
been alert for some time before that. It took all of Jane’s discipline not to change her direction and run back to the apartment where her husband was. It would do him no good if she led Spada there. Vincent was alert, at least.

Twenty

Fire and Water

Jane and Signor Zancani took a circuitous route back to the small room opposite the palazzo. In response to her questions, the puppet player related the events leading to Vincent’s collapse as best he could. To get the sound and light of the storm to come from the right area, her husband had worked with the nuns to build a scaffold of yokes, atop which he placed his own glamour. Zancani was not well practised in the art, but he said that the nuns appeared shocked by its height.

Vincent had swayed after the second thunderclap. Sister Maria Agnes had stepped in to help, but the thread was so long that, even with it supported by the yokes, she had fainted after they performed the third thunderclap. For the fourth effort, he had worked the sound and light simultaneously, and fainted.

“Did he convulse?”

Signor Zancani shook his head. “No, but he was unconscious longer than I expected. Usually he wakes immediately.”

“Usually?” Jane raised her eyebrows at that. One of Vincent’s great advantages as a glamourist was that he had tremendous strength and stamina. He would have the occasional light-headedness at the end of a long workday, but that was common among professional glamourists. He had only passed out completely twice in Jane’s time with him. She had fainted more often, but, given the difference in their frames, this was not surprising. “How often has he fainted, to your knowledge?”

“A handful of times at most. Usually when it was hot out. And only for a few moments.” Signor Zancani guided her into a small alcove set back from the street. The back of it, which had seemed closed off, took a little zigzag through a courtyard and then led on to the street where the room was.

“And how long was he unconscious this time?”

“Ten minutes?” He shook his head and paused at the door to their building. “I was changing into costume, so it may have been less than that. He was alert after that, though.”

Something in the way he said that made Jane wonder. “Was he sitting up when you left?”

“Ah—no.”

Jane opened the door and ran up the stairs. On the second landing, she had to stop and lean forward to catch her breath. Here she was angry at Vincent for over-taxing himself, and she did not have sense enough of her own to remember how much she had exerted herself. Bosom heaving, she proceeded up the rest of the stairs to the third floor as quickly as she could. Signor Zancani was not far behind.

The little hall outside the room seemed to be filled with nuns. Sister Maria Agnes was seated in a chair by the door and waved at Jane. She, at least, seemed none the worse for wear. On the other side of the door, Lord Byron sat like a guard. She hesitated upon seeing him, which he seemed to interpret as concern for Vincent.

Lord Byron rose as Jane came up the last few steps. “He is resting.”

“How bad is it?” Jane kept her voice low.

“The Reverend Mother tended to him while he was sick—” He broke off, as if understanding that she had not known. The poet’s concern for Vincent was so evident in his voice that it was difficult to believe that he had aligned himself with Spada. And yet, the swindler had also evidenced concern for her husband while impersonating Sanuto. “He only vomited, I think from acute dizziness. I have been in worse condition from drink, so I think he will be well if we can convince him to sleep.”

Jane had no doubt that Lord Byron had indeed been deep in his cups on frequent occasions, but that was quite different from the toll too great an exertion of glamour could wreak on one. If Vincent had vomited, that meant he had been severely overheated. “Where is the Reverend Mother?”

“Here.” The Abbess had been standing in the hall, lost among the crowd of black and white. “Lord Byron is correct. Your husband is stubborn, but should be well if he will rest and—”

The door opened. Vincent stepped into the hall and swept Jane into his arms. “Muse—thank God.”

She huddled in the circle of his arms, thanking providence. He was standing. His heart beat strongly against her cheek, even through her whiskers, with a steady and regular pulse. He would be all right. “I am quite well.”

“Good.” He stepped back and lost his balance. Vincent swung his arm out and caught the doorcase, steadying himself. All her relief fled. Vincent’s face was ashen, with dark circles under his eye. His hair was matted to his head with dried sweat, and he squinted against the light.

“Vincent, you need to rest.” Jane reached up to feel his brow. His skin was clammy to the touch.

“Later.” He walked into the room, bracing himself against the wall with one hand. “We have things to discuss.”

The Abbess exchanged a look with Jane that spoke clearly of her frustration and concern. Nodding, Jane followed Vincent into the room. It had the reek of someone’s sick, which no cleaning would quickly lift. She did not see how he could even be standing. “There is nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow. You need to rest. For that matter,
I
need to rest, and so does Sister Maria Agnes.”

Vincent gripped the frame of the bed and lowered himself to sit upon it. He kept his head level and his gaze fixed upon a point on the wall. “We need to speed up our plans. Their Lombardy-Venetia buyer is coming on Saturday next, and today is already Friday.”

Jane took a step closer to her husband. “How do you know this?”

He looked uncomfortable for a moment in ways that had nothing to do with his physical condition. Then he shrugged. “I heard them talking. You left the
bouclé torsadée
tied off in the parlour.”

A frisson of cold ran through Jane. She had forgotten to untie that one when she was trying to remove her other traces from the room. “Did Biasio see it?”

“Not yet. Though that is also a concern. For the moment it is fine, as I was able to untie it and change the spiral to carry sound instead of—”

“From here.” Jane gaped for a moment. He had lost his mind. He had completely lost all sense of proportion if he thought that untying her end of the
bouclé torsadée
from here approached reasonable. To alter such a long thread on top of untying it was rash. The risks that he took with his health were indefensible. She clenched her hands into fists and fought for a level tone. “Ladies, gentlemen. Would you give me a moment of privacy with my husband?”

The Abbess looked immensely relieved. With a significant glance to Lord Byron, she pulled the door shut and left Jane and Vincent alone in the little room.

Jane struggled to present a measured composure. As much as she wanted to shout at him for showing so little sense, he was clearly ill. “I know that your plan requires tremendous effort, but I agreed to it because I thought it had some chance of success, without too much risk. Now I am not so sure. You must rest.”

Vincent lowered his head to rest upon his hands. They trembled, as though palsied. “Jane, I will grant that I over-reached today, but going over our plan will not tire me any further. This is perfectly normal fatigue.”

“This is
not
normal fatigue. Your hands are shaking; you cannot stand; you were ill. The only time—the
only
time—that I have seen you in this state was right before your collapse at Lady FitzCameron’s. Do you think I want to watch you go into convulsions again because you are too stupid to admit that you have limits?” Jane would shake him, if she thought it would make him see reason. “You almost
died,
Vincent, and you have apparently learned nothing since.”

“You are exaggerating.” His voice was level, but he knit his fingers together so that the tremors were masked. “I have already admitted that I am tired, but the glamour I worked today was quite large, so that is to be expected.”

“You had a collapse.”

“I must tell you that it is extremely tiresome to have you constantly scolding me about my health when I am perfectly well.”

Perfectly well? He was asserting that he was well when he was so dizzy that he could not stand. “I would not need to scold you if you would stop lying to me.”

Vincent jerked his head back as though she had slapped him. Even that movement caused his face to pale. He closed his eyes and bared his teeth in a grimace. For a moment, Vincent breathed sharply through his nose, with his hands gripping his knees as though they were all that supported him.

Jane choked the urge to crouch in front of her husband to ascertain the state of his health. She already knew that it was poor, and the gesture would irritate him. And yet, watching him, she thought that this was something more than over-exertion. “Signor Zancani told me that you have fainted a number of times while performing. When you asserted that you had recovered fully from your injury, that was not true, was it?”