The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen (20 page)

At that point, we were nearly three-quarters of the way around the piazza, and I was beginning to lose hope. After all, there were myriad alleys off the piazza; if Julietta was truly in the vicinity, she could be up any one of them. And perhaps, despite his good intentions, Bartolomeo had been misinformed. As we passed another wine cellar and a run-down café, I heard a strain of music wafting from an open door down the nearest alley. I stopped and cocked my ear, for this particular music was actually being played in key, and not badly. It was a lute and a violin. I tapped Luther’s arm and led him up the alley. The open door was down three steps. There was a thin curtain immediately inside, and beyond it men’s voices, tinkling glasses, and the music. It was another wine cellar, but of a higher quality, apparently.

Pushing the curtain aside, I saw a dimly lit room with maybe four dozen men drinking wine at metal tables. Indeed, they were better dressed than other men I had seen in the piazza. And they were drinking bottled, not barrel, wine. Against the wall, a young man in a brown suit was playing the violin. At first, I could not see the lutist. Then the young man shifted slightly to his right, and there was a girl on a stool playing the lute. She was wearing a white shift. She had long brown hair and downcast eyes. It was Julietta.

I turned around excitedly to Luther. “That’s her,” I whispered, and he looked even more surprised than me. “I’m sure of it.”

We went in and sat down at the nearest table. Luther kept his composure, signaling a barman for a bottle of wine. I saw there were two tall boys at the bar watching Julietta. I tried to catch her eye, but she never looked up. She was pale and thin, and her hair was wild. Her face was so taut, her expression so grim, that it was difficult to reconcile with the girl I remembered.

When they finished playing the song, no one clapped or even seemed to notice. Only then did Julietta look up slowly. For a moment, she glanced in my direction, but showed no sign of recognition. With my hair short, and wearing Luther’s coat, I didn’t expect her to. There were other boys my age present, but none was sitting with a man like Luther, who, dressed like a farmer, with his healthy tanned face, truly looked out of place. For whatever reason, she looked back at our table, and after a few seconds her eyes widened. I nodded vigorously, and hesitating briefly, she inclined her head toward the boys at the bar. I knew she must be there against her will, and that these boys were keeping a tight rein on her.

Luther picked up on all of this. “Go to her,” he muttered in German, “and take her outside. I’ll deal with those two. Go now.”

I stood up and wended my way among the tables. The two boys had picked up on things, too, and were watching me. I strode right up to Julietta.

“Julietta, come with me.”

“It’s really you?”

“Please, get up.”

“I can’t. You don’t know—”

I took her arm and pulled her off the stool. “Hurry!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw those boys rushing toward us, and then Luther heading them off. I made for the door, squeezing Julietta’s hand tightly. She was still clutching her lute. Some of the customers cursed at us, but none tried to stop us. Those boys were shouting after us now, and as we pushed the curtain aside, I heard a crash and a loud cry. I turned just as Luther lifted the second boy in the air and threw him against the wall, where his partner was already sprawled out.

We ducked out the door and up the steps. “I have a coach nearby, Julietta. You’ll be all right.”

“Aldo is here,” she said breathlessly. “Those boys are in his gang.”

Luther emerged from the wine cellar, where pandemonium had broken out. “Come,” he said, and we ran down the alley to the piazza.

“Aldo?” I said to her, and at that moment he appeared before us, like a ghost, three other boys close behind him. He was wearing a long coat and carrying a cudgel. Two of the boys were clutching knives.

“Going somewhere, Julietta?” he said.

“Get out of our way,” I shouted.

He cocked his head, his blank eyes cast upward. “Am I hearing right? Can that be you,
Nicolà
?”

“Yes, and I could kill you for what you’ve done to her.”

“Kill
me
?” he laughed. “You have it backward. And this little whore will get what’s coming to her.” He turned toward his companions, who were describing to him what they saw.

Luther was having none of this. He stepped in front of me, put his fingers to his lips, and whistled so loudly that Aldo jumped back.

“What’s that?” he said.

I had never heard such a whistle, which carried clear across the piazza, though his brother was not nearly so far away.

“Stay back,” Luther commanded me in German.

“Who’s your Austrian friend?” Aldo said, advancing toward us, brandishing the cudgel.

“Come to me,” Luther said, standing his ground and beckoning to the three boys. “Come to me.”

They were obviously aware of how he had handled their comrades inside, and they hesitated—just long enough for me to hear a coach approaching on the cobblestones of the piazza.

“Now what?” Aldo said to the boys.

The horses’ hooves were echoing loudly. One of the boys turned toward the piazza, the others began circling toward Luther, brandishing their knives before them.

Fritz pulled up at the foot of the alley, leaped from the coach, and ran toward us. He decked the boy beside Aldo with a single punch that broke his jaw, and then pulled down one of the boys
with a knife from behind and kicked him in the ribs. Luther made short work of the other one, grabbing his arm and twisting it so hard that, before his knife hit the ground, we heard his wristbone crack like a stick.

“What the hell is going on?” Aldo cried, hearing his companions howling in pain, spinning this way and that, flailing wildly with his cudgel.

“This is for you,” I said, grabbing Julietta’s lute and swinging it as hard as I could at Aldo’s knees. The wood cracked, his legs buckled, and he fell to the street.

“You bastard, I’ll kill you!” he shouted as the four of us ran to the coach.

Fritz took the reins with Luther beside him, and Julietta and I jumped inside. As we sped away from the Piazza Castello, I wrapped my jacket around her shoulders. She was shaking. She looked into my face in bewilderment.

“My real name is Nicolò,” I said.

She burst into tears. “How did you find me?”

“I’ll tell you everything. But, first, I need to know if Adriana is here, too.”

“In Padua—no.”

“She set out to find you here.”

“She’s in Venice.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I overheard Aldo say so. His gang has been looking for her. Those other boys are just a part of his gang. They all come out of San Benedicto, the orphanage where he was sent. He enlisted a gang of the worst, most violent boys—so bad they either escaped or were expelled from the orphanage. They steal, they
kidnap, they blackmail people. Aldo kidnapped the other girls from the Ospedale, Lutece dal Cornetto and Silvana dal Basso. It sickens me to think where they must have ended up. They kidnapped me the same way.”

“From the wine cellar.”

“Yes. I’ll tell you what happened to me in the last year. I only pray it never happens to Adriana.”

“Bellona and Genevieve tricked me,” Julietta said. “They took me to the wine cellar, saying one of the other girls was in trouble. I should never have believed them. The moment I entered, Aldo and a man in a greatcoat threw a blanket over me, and then tied a rope around the blanket, and carried me out. I put up a fight, but then I felt other hands on me, and suddenly I was in the bottom of a boat. I heard oars dipping into the water. It seemed I was in that boat forever. Then we stopped and they carried me again, and laid me down, and undid the rope. When I threw the blanket off, I found myself in a small, windowless room. It was filthy. Just some straw on the floor where I could sleep, though I barely slept. I was there for several days. Every night someone opened the door and slid through a plate of food with a fork and a pitcher of water, picked up the plate and pitcher from the previous night, and shut the door again quickly. All I saw was his hand. One night I kept the fork. I waited all day, sharpening the prongs of the fork on the stone wall. I stood close by the door, and when it opened and the hand came through, I brought the fork down on it as hard as I could. There was a terrible scream, for the fork went clear through the hand. I yanked the door open, and there was a boy Aldo’s age, skinny but tough-looking, clutching his hand. I pushed past him, and for an instant he grabbed hold of my hair, but I pulled free and ran down a corridor, hearing his screams as
he pursued me. I heard other voices responding from within the house, and then footfalls as they ran to join him. Suddenly there were two doors before me, on the left and right. I opened the left-hand door and felt a cold wind in my face and saw that I was in an alley. At the near end, I saw people passing on a busy street. I ran there as fast as I could, turned the corner, and was in the Campo Santa Marina, in the Castello. I kept going, in and out of alleys, into the Cannaregio, until I reached the Rio della Sensa. It was the supper hour, there were many people about, but still, I stuck out, wearing only my nightdress from the Ospedale. I followed the canal westward and never stopped. You see, I knew where I was going, Nicolò. Prudenza once told me that the convent at the Church of San Girolamo offered shelter to homeless girls. The nuns there are truly pious and will protect any girl who is honest with them about her circumstances. They listened to my story and gave me a bed to sleep in. Their dormitory is not luxurious like the Ospedale’s, but it is clean and safe. I was given certain duties, in the kitchen and the laundry, to earn my way. And then, knowing of my musical abilities, they gave me that lute with which you struck Aldo—and I’m glad you did!—so that I could play for them, in the church and in their own dining room. I so feared Aldo and the criminals who employed him that I did not leave the grounds of San Girolamo. Never. But after a year, my fear ebbed somewhat, and I grew restless. I thought I would lose my mind if I didn’t go out once in a while. I started by taking short walks. Then I ventured out to the food markets on the Fondamenta San Girolamo with some of the other girls.

“Finally, just two weeks ago, I grew so bold as to take strolls alone along the Fondamenta di Cannaregio. I felt protected there
by the crowds, the food stalls, the boatmen milling on the piers. That was my mistake. One day, a member of Aldo’s gang was in the crowd, and he recognized me. Maybe it was the boy I stabbed with the fork, or one of the others who carried me off. Whoever it was followed me back to the convent. And the next week, when I went out again, Aldo and four others were waiting for me. They must have come round every day, waiting. They jumped me on the Calle Contarini when no one else was about, and held a knife to my ribs, and forced me into a boat on the Rio della Sensa. After blindfolding me and binding my hands, they rowed out into the Lagoon. After a long time, I realized they were taking me to the mainland. They dragged me from the boat and put me in a cart and brought me to Padua. Aldo beat me that first day and called me every foul name he could think of. He told me that if I ever tried to escape again, he would kill me himself.

“ ‘You see,’ he said, ‘even after a year, we found you. And we would find you again. Never forget it.’

“Once I was here, he told me I could make him money by playing the lute or by giving up my body,” Julietta sobbed. “And if ever there wasn’t enough money from the lute, he would sell me to the first man who asked. In fact, he had me playing in that place to show me off to those men. He was waiting for the highest bidder.”

“I’m so sorry, Julietta.” I hesitated. “Did he take you to bed himself?”

“No. He touched me as he liked, but not that. And he didn’t allow his boys to lay hands on me. He said he wanted me to remain a virgin because he would get more money for me then. And he would have gotten it very soon, if you hadn’t come.”

She started crying again, and I put my arm around her. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

Through the coach window, the city was flying by. I had already decided that we would leave Padua at once. I would pick up my things at the hotel and start out for San Giuliana. We could rest at an inn in Pianiga, halfway to Venice, where Julietta could bathe and dress comfortably, and then continue on at dawn.

“Do you have any idea where Adriana might be?” I said.

Julietta shook her head sadly. “I wish I did. All I know is that we must find her before they do. We don’t have much time. After tonight, they’ll be looking harder than ever—for both of us.”

She was right, and under the circumstances, I knew there was only one person who could help me.

From San Giuliana, Julietta and I hired a boat to carry us to Venice, and Luther and Fritz set out for Vienna. I thanked them for all they had done—above and beyond what they were hired to do—and rewarded them with a hefty bonus, as I had Gertrude. I was growing accustomed to being wealthy—fabulously so by the standards of my childhood—but I was also aware of my limitations in handling my finances. I had gone from having a few coins in my pocket, when I was lucky, to having a considerable bank account, without the opportunity to learn much in between. I had already been cheated once, and I was fortunate to have an honest man like Hoyer managing my affairs and schooling me in how to do it myself. I think he felt an especial responsibility, not only because of my youth, but because it had been one of his most trusted employees who embezzled from me.