“And I,” he admitted. “But you do, and I comprehend many of them.” He stepped back as Baltassare came into the room carrying a platter of broiled sardines and a glass carafe of pale wine.
“If you would, put those down on that table.” She pointed to one of two pillar-tables with round marble tops.
Baltassare did as she told him, saying, “The kitchen fires are banked for the night and all but the front door have been bolted. Do you require anything more, or will this suffice for the night?”
“You may all retire,” said Pier-Ariana.
“Sta bene, Signorina,” said Baltassare, and left them alone.
“He listens at doors,” Pier-Ariana confided when they were alone again.
“That is not surprising,” said di Santo-Germano. “I would be more troubled if he did not.”
She blinked and stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“He can report nothing to your discredit if he listens at doors, not without lying,” said di Santo-Germano, raising his voice enough to have it carry. “And anything put in a Lion’s Mouth must be signed or it is ignored.” These imposing information-boxes were posted in various places in the city, for the benefit of the Collegio and the two Consiglii.
“At least so they claim,” said Pier-Ariana. “Besides, of my servants, only Baltassare reads and writes, though not very well. He could not make an accusation that anyone would regard with attention.”
“You would have to do worse things than write music for either of the Consiglii to consider you a danger.” Di Santo-Germano touched her arm. “The Minor Consiglio has already investigated me, so it is unlikely that they would proceed against you, no matter what your servants might say.”
“I pray you are right,” she said, and went to eat a few of the broiled sardines. She washed them down with a glass of the straw-colored wine. “I do not know what I would do if I had to leave Venezia.”
“You have no reason to think you might have to, not on my account,” said di Santo-Germano, hoping it was true. “But if it should come to that, I have ships that can take you to any port you desire.”
“But I desire no other port than this one,” she exclaimed. “I speak only the Venetian tongue and enough Latin to satisfy the priests. Where could I go that I would not have to … to sing in a brothel?” She chose his phrase carefully.
“I will make arrangements for you, if you are worried.” He thought while she poured herself more wine. “I have an old associate who would probably be willing to help you. I will contact her and see what she suggests.”
“When you say old what do you mean?” Pier-Ariana stared hard at him.
“I mean that she has known me for a very long time,” said di Santo-Germano. “A very long time.”
“Capizolo,” she said in the Venetian dialect, nodding decisively.
“It is a good thing you understand,” he responded. “I will tell you more once I have her answer. Then you can make arrangements that suit you, and my old friend as well.” He decided to send word to Olivia in the morning; a courier could be hired to carry his letter to her estate at Nepete on the Via Cassia, and get a reply in return in twelve days.
Pier-Ariana ate another sardine and stared at the nearest oil-lamp. “I hope it will not come to that.”
“I truly doubt that it will,” said di Santo-Germano, and busied himself latching the shutters over the windows. “A pity to have to close up the house on such a warm night, but—”
She nodded. “But thieves are everywhere and an open window is an invitation to steal.”
He looked around the room. “You would not like to lose any of your instruments.”
“Or have them broken,” she said, and took a step toward him. “I have been a trial tonight, haven’t I? I ask your pardon for my excesses.”
“You have done nothing deserving pardon, Pier-Ariana; you have expressed your affection and concern for me: what can I be but flattered?” He offered her a quick smile.
“With worries for myself larded on,” she said self-effacingly. “For that alone, then, I ask your pardon.”
“If you must have it, then know that you do, though there is no need,” he said, and opened his arms to her, enfolding her as she reached him.
“You are so elusive, Conte. You are at once the most generous lover and the most equivocal.” She turned in his arms, but only to be able to kiss his lips more easily; the remnants of sardines gave them a fishy savor. As she broke their kiss, she said a bit unsteadily, “I was afraid that you were tired of me, or had come to dislike my work.”
“Why should I?” he asked, kissing the corner of her mouth.
“Because I am a turbulent woman—or so my father told me I would be,” she said, fingering the narrow ruff of pleated lace along the edge of his camisa’s neck.
“Fathers often worry that their daughters may not be the perfected creatures they expect, and their fears make it inevitable that their daughters will disappoint them,” said di Santo-Germano, his lips lingering, feather-light, on hers.
“And how many daughters have you had, that you know this?” she teased, and then fell silent at the haunted expression that crossed his attractive, irregular features like a shadow; she wished her words unsaid, but dared not speak again.
“I’ve had none,” he said softly. “But I have known other men’s daughters.” Their faces flickered through his memory, each woman distinct and precious, all but one lost to him now, through mortal death, the True Death, or deliberate estrangement. He regarded her without speaking for some little time, then lifted her into his arms as if she weighed no more than her virginals, and made for the door.
“You are very strong,” she murmured. “I have noticed before.”
“I trust others are less observant,” he said, climbing the stairs that led to her bedchamber half a floor above the music room without any effort or lessening of speed.
A single lamp shone in the gloom of the bedchamber, just above her kneeling bench with her rosary laid across a leather-bound copy of The New Testament, illustrated with handsome wood-cuts done by Lindo Guardin, with a frontispiece in three colors. Her bed was curtained in red-and-tan bargello-work hangings, all but one of them just now closed. Two clothes-chests stood against opposite walls, both with painted scenes on their doors and panels, so that the shine of reflected water on the house-front visible out the window seemed incongruous. The walls had murals of espaliered fruit trees on rustic stone fences, so that the small benches under the windows looked as if they might be countryside amenities, and the ceiling was pale blue with clusters of blossom-like clouds gathering in the four corners.
Di Santo-Germano put her down beside her bed and pulled off his black damask silk dogaline, flinging it onto the bench under the nearest window. He touched the laces on the back of her corsage. “Shall I unfasten this for you?”
“I don’t want to call Merula just now, and it can’t be done without help,” she said, keeping her voice low, for her ’tirewoman slept in the small apartment on the far side of the large dressing room on the other side of this bedchamber. “If you wouldn’t mind?” She tugged the ends of the laces out from the top of her fine ruched-muslin gonnella.
Taking the ends of the laces in his hands, di Santo-Germano unfastened the simple knots that held the corsage closed, then loosened them until Pier-Ariana could shrug out of the upper part of her dress, revealing the sheer-linen guimpe beneath, and her corset. “How do women alone ever manage to dress themselves?” he asked the air.
“It is very difficult,” said Pier-Ariana, unfastening the two dozen little bows that closed the front of her guimpe, frowning as one of the bows became a knot. “Unless one wishes to dress like a peasant, some assistance is needed. These garments need a second set of hands to be worn properly, or undone without damage.” She broke the small ribbon of silk. “At least you don’t try to make love while undressing.”
“Why should I—since you dislike it?” He removed the fine gold chain from around her neck, and the polished aquamarine pendant that it held; these he set on the nearest chest and returned to assisting her out of her clothes.
“It’s all so im
prac
tical,” she complained, picking another knot of ribbon open.
While di Santo-Germano worked the ends of the broad bands holding her voluminous silk skirt and the gonnella beneath, he remarked, “A few centuries ago, noblemen wore shoes so pointed that they could not walk up and down stairs while wearing them.” He dropped her skirt so she could step out of it, then started on the gonnella. “In such weather as Venezia has had, it is unfortunate that we all must wear so much to be properly dressed.”
“You could do what Tiberio Tedeschi does, and dress like a Turk; he even attends meetings of the Collegio so attired,” she pointed out, half-seriously. “At least he is cool in the summer.”
“Tiberio Tedeschi is a man of impeccable Venezian lineage, with four Consiglieri for cousins: he could dress like a Chinese warlord and no one would say a word. But, as I am an exile, I must follow the strictures of Venezia while I am here.” He held her hand while she stepped out of the pleated froth of her gonnella, then tugged at the closure of his doublet; the scent of her jasmine perfume grew stronger.
“When you are in Bruges, you will dress in their manner, I suppose?” She pressed her lips together, not wanting to remember his coming absence; she used her silence to step out of her high-soled shoes.
“Of course,” he said, and started to work on the complex lacing of her corset.
“The same in London?” Her voice had gone up three notes.
“Oh, yes; and in Kiev and in Delhi, and in almost any place but Africa,” he said, and bent to kiss the nape of her neck.
“Why not Africa?” She was truly curious.
“Because I cannot change my skin, and there I am clearly a foreigner, no matter how I dress. There, I am completely exposed; I cannot alter my appearance sufficiently to disguise my origins, or to present myself acceptably, as I might in China.” He pulled her corset away from her body.
She turned to face him. “And you’ve been to China, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have.”
She looked up into his eyes. “And you could go there again?”
“I might, in time. But not just now,” he whispered, and bent to kiss her, following her arousal with his own. He did not move to touch her body until she took a last half-step nearer and wrapped her arms around his waist. Continuing the kiss, he slowly stroked her back, marveling in the texture of her skin and feeling the first stirrings of her arousal.
“You never remove your camisa, or your lower garments,” she said as she turned a little in his arms, addressing her remarks to the top closure of his camisa.
“No, and I have already told you that I never will.” He paused in his graceful caresses.
“It seems a waste,” she said, attempting to pull his camisa from the waist-band of his French barrel-breeches.
He stopped her gently. “I have scars, carina—you would not like them.” They extended from his rib cage to the base of his pelvis: broad swathes of porcelain-white, striated tissue which marked the disemboweling that had killed him, thirty-five centuries ago.
“So you tell me,” she said as she stepped back and went to throw herself onto the bed, facedown, her bare feet sticking over the side and through the open curtains. “Just when I begin to think I am vexed with you, I realize that you have done something out of your consideration of me.” She slapped the coverlet on which she lay. “I will take what you are willing to give me,” she said as if conceding a game of chance. “You are a most welcome lover, no matter how you are clothed.”
He went to her, stretching out beside her, where he began to touch her back and flank, making no effort to turn her on her side. His hands were adventuresome and playful, turning her body pliant. Gradually he worked his way from her shoulder to her elegant, trim waist, his kisses following the progress of his hands. Nothing he did was hurried; all his evocation waited upon her response and her pleasure. As he slid one hand around her to fondle her breasts, teasing her nipples into excitation, she gave a rapturous murmur, but remained prone, taking all his attentive exploration into herself, cherishing his magnanimity that placed her satisfaction before his own. Her breathing changed, and in a sudden movement, he pulled her on top of him to lie supine, her legs on either side of his. His camisa pressed into her back, but that hardly mattered to her as his hands went along her abdomen to the cleft between her legs, where his magical caresses continued. She was both utterly free and completely captivated by his embrace, and she felt a kind of rapture that was so wholly personal that she had no words to express it, only sensations.
Gradually she felt her body gather, and as the first of her spasms shook her, she felt his mouth touch her neck even as the fulfillment of her desire exalted her beyond the confines of her bed, her house, even her flesh, to that realm where she was deliriously enveloped in soaring melodies for what felt like hours. Finally she shifted off him, back in the world. “How do you do that?” she said at last, her breathing still a bit unsteady.
“It is your doing, carina Pier-Ariana,” di Santo-Germano murmured. “I do only what you seek for me to do.”