“Most pleasant, thank you.”
With that polite response, I became more sharply alert. Cleo was smiling, but her face was beaded with sweat and her eyes were big and troubled. She made her voice sound cheerful by a none too easy effort.
“I take it you weren’t able to help me,” I said. I meant less than that, and more.
“I found out what you wanted to know,” she answered, the forced cheer gone from her voice. Her eyes were cast down.
“Tell me, please.”
“Your mother had you get the two candles and put them side by side, only a palm apart. She took the parchment out of an iron pipe just outside her window that draws rainwater from the roof and flushes it into the reservoir below. It was rolled into a cylinder. She unrolled it and held it between the two candle flames. The flames licked it but didn’t burn it. She whispered something you couldn’t hear, but her gesture told you that the parchment was for you and you must not tell anyone. Then she rolled it again and put it back in the pipe.”
I heard her and thought upon her words without a trace of pain.
“It must have flushed out years ago. . . . No, the end of the pipe turns a little—if the cylinder kept its shape, water could pour through it . . . but it would surely rot away.”
“If it was of common parchment, yes.”
“By what wonder of wonders did you find out all this?”
“It was no great wonder. You remembered and told me.”
“Talking in my sleep?”
“You were between sleep and waking.”
“And you gave me no drug?”
“No, and you would have told me more than that, if I’d asked you.”
“I’ll go and look for the parchment. I don’t expect to find it, but it won’t trouble me any more. Here’s a lira grossa.”
“I can’t take it, young master!” To my amazement her eyes filled with tears.
“Why not?”
“I want you to give it to some beggar on the street, and tell him to say a prayer for the Black Woman of Martyrs’ Walk.”
“You’ve earned it. Why won’t you take it?”
“I may have helped you, but I’m afraid I’ve hurt you, and maybe I’ve killed you. It may be I’ve led you a step down toward Hell. Good fights with Evil in every soul, my master told me, but in your soul the battle is most dire.”
“How do you know? Tell me, if you will and if you can.”
“I heard wings of angels and whipping pinions of fiends.”
I considered how to go about looking in the water pipe by my mother’s death room. The insistence of my reason that it would be a fool’s errand must not and would not reduce the energy of my effort or the risk I was willing to run. I could not go nor could I stay until I knew.
This was the best chamber in the Casa Polo, so nine chances out of ten it was occupied by Nicolo. If he thought it was haunted by my mother’s ghost, he would be more likely rather than less likely to choose it. Surely he would want her to see the beautiful young girls who shared his bed, for if once she would have joyfully yielded them her place, thirteen years in a cold and rainwashed cell would teach her to envy them. He would leave a watch light burning when he entertained them, so her ghostly eyes could behold their frolickings, and he would fancy her in the doorway, her phantom ears hearkening to their cries of passion and whisperings of love. . . . I had better stick to my business. If Nicolo did not occupy the chamber, his brother Maffeo did so. And to climb the steep wall by rope or ladder and gain the balcony without waking him was out of the question.
If I could catch the brothers away from home, it would be difficult to guard against their unexpected return. Meanwhile I could very easily trip over one of Nicolo’s sons or a house wench. Obviously, the best time for the raid was when the family was assembled at meat, with a good share of the servants in attendance. If I provided some sight of interest, they would watch through the glass, and chambermaids would hang out the upper windows. Serenaders would cost only a silver lira. For two lire there could be duetists accompanied by a string quartet.
Then a thought came creeping out of my brain like a little gray, venomous snake and caused my eyes to sink into my head. For three lire I could provide a troop of jongleurs.
Would Nicolo go where he could not see and watch them? Not he, not Nicolo, not that lordly man who meant to be a king in Cathay!
It did not take me long to learn that three companies were at present in Venice, one of them down-at-heels. This last I followed and watched—a better lot than I had supposed. Their songs and tricks were a little too witty, not quite coarse enough, to please the street crowds. Their master was a juggling clown. He had a sallow nondescript face except for a nose like a Spanish duke’s. I marked the inn where he and his troop put up, and when he washed off his paint, I met him in the courtyard.
“What is your name, friend?” I began.
“Gregorini is good enough for the time and place.”
“Did you ever hear of Antonello, a jongleur from Perugia, who tossed his last ball eighteen years ago?”
“He said he was from Rome,” the clown answered. “It sounded better.”
“Then you did know him.” The back of my neck prickled.
“All of us know one another, well, not well, or scarcely, depending on one another’s prosperity. Even the dancing bears would have claimed to know Antonello if they could speak. He was the best of us all.”
“He was? How wonderful!”
Gregorini looked at me sharply. “Are you his son?” he guessed, the wildest guess I had ever heard a man make.
“I don’t think so. But I think he was my mother’s lover.”
“He was the best of our trade in Italy, one of the five best in all Europe. Sometimes a householder gave him wine with his own hand.”
“Was he your friend?”
The clown’s great black eyes wheeled slowly to mine.
“In the name of Thespis, he was.”
“Perhaps he boasted to you of bedding a highborn lady named Lucia. I hope he did bed her, and I wouldn’t blame him for the boast.”
“He never told me of it, but there was some such thing in his life. As you no doubt know, he was killed by a highborn hater.”
“That hater lives in Venice. I think he hates all jongleurs. I want you and your company to appear before his house at sundown tomorrow, and put on your best show. If you could call yourself Antonello the Younger, it would help out my jest.”
“It’s no jest, my friend. I see that in your face. As for my being Antonello the Younger, that’s easy. I’ve a dozen different names, here and about. It’s a common thing for obscure actors to call themselves after famous ones who’ve gone before. We would cry ourselves down the canal as Antonello’s Troop. But what would the signor do?”
“He may lose his temper. It may be in a way that won’t show, but it’s possible that he’ll hit you with the flat of his sword or call the watch.”
“He won’t use the point of his sword, will he?”
“He’ll do nothing that would make him stand trial, let alone go to prison. Just be sure that you don’t put yourself where you’ll be charged with theft.”
“You’re well acquainted with Antonello’s story,” Gregorini remarked.
“Why, yes.”
“Lucia was your mother, this man is your father, whom you hate. Why yes, I’ll do it, for anything you want to pay me, or no payment at all. It will be a small stroke of revenge for a member of my guild. Also—if I’m attacked without cause, the people will rally around me. I’ll show them they haven’t given their plaudits to a craven!”
With this last his voice rang, his shoulders squared, his nose rode high, and quite a noble expression graced his commonplace face. We are all showmen of a sort, I thought—only some of us are more transparent than others. I had no doubt that Gregorini would do his part well.
As the hour drew near I dressed in my very best, hired a gondola, and made for the rear of the Casa Polo by a little-used canal. There was no reason to believe that the postern door would be bolted while the servants were up and about, and the narrow quay on this side was largely screened by a bridge. A short distance up the canal I heard shouting, singing, and the shrill notes of a treble flute. The jongleurs were pausing only briefly at the smaller houses, doing a trick or two and picking up thrown coppers, but it would be in character for them to make a good showing before a mansion as extensive as the Casa Polo. Apparently they would arrive before the front entrance precisely on time.