The Secret of the Glass (35 page)

“Do you really insist on this, Alvise?” Donato called out. “Would we not be better served to soldier on, to deal with matters as yet undecided but no less important to our people?”

Calieri stood, crossing his arms across his barrel chest.

“It is our right to ask for the vote.”

“He can’t possible hope for victory; the numbers are far against him.” Teodoro hissed to the young man beside him, growing impatient as the Doge heaved his own exasperated sigh.

Donato looked to his council members, pleading with them for help they could not give.

“But the voting will show
who
is against him,” Rinaldo replied.

Teodoro turned, surprised by his companion’s insight. Rinaldo Bassaro had achieved the age of twenty-five a few months ago and had little more than a smattering of experience as a member of the council, little familiarity with the backstabbing politics that took place, yet his observation was a keen one.

Doge Donato pressed his back against the chair and slapped his hands upon its arms.

“Chamberlain, prepare for the vote.”

The ever-silent, ever-vigilant sentinel standing at the back corner of the dais rushed from the room, returning within seconds with the
manino
in his hand.

“Remember, gentlemen, do not lower your hand until I have instructed you to do so; do not move about the room until the counting is complete,” the man announced with a nasal yet superior tone. “All those in favor, please raise your hand.”

Fabric swished as hands pumped in the air. The chamberlain held the pole out, using the carved wooden hand at its end to count each raised fist. The ceremonial device was most often used for counting the votes during the election of a doge, but more often of late it was utilized for the more momentous decisions made by the
Maggior Consiglio.

Already Teodoro felt the blood rushing from his fingers, quite sure they would be numb by the time the counting was done. He caught Alfredo’s eye from across the room; followed his friend’s insistent, pointed gaze to Calieri and those around him, Eugenio da Fuligna among them. Their hands remained by their sides, waiting to vote in dissent. They whispered furtively, while one in the middle scratched frantically away on a scrap of parchment in his lap, his inkpot on the floor by the chair.

Teodoro shook his head in disbelief. Rinaldo had guessed correctly and the men displayed little pretense about their actions. He saw one or two men put down their raised hands, having no wish to make the list, but only a few. Those in agreement with the Doge and his actions far outweighed those opposed.

“Thank you all,” the attendant announced as he lowered the
manino
, having counted the last of the dissenting votes. He made to mount the dais and make his report to the Doge, but stilled in the face of the man’s upraised hand.

“Thank you, signore, but I don’t think we need to hear the numbers. The difference was obviously in the hundreds.” Donato snipped the words out and put his nose in the air. “Don’t you agree, Alvise?”

Calieri stood and bowed, relinquishing but not without a venomous, pinched look upon his features. The snide question answered in kind.

“
Bene, molto bene,”
Donato clapped his hands as if relishing the moment but a slight quiver made the gesture seem more nervous than triumphant. “Let’s get this done. Call in the Papal Nuncio.”

The tension in the room crackled with anticipation, as if a storm crested on the horizon and rushed across the ocean toward them. The Papal Nuncio strode into the room, striding past the chamberlain before he was announced, his vivid fuchsia scapular and white vestments billowing behind him. Two other men, darkly robed, strode in his wake. The man’s bushy white brows sat high upon his wrinkled, age-spotted forehead, almost touching the round edge of his four-peaked biretta, as he stared down his long nose with supercilious superiority. Cardinal Taverna stood before the platform flanked by his small entourage and gave a small gesture of obeisance to the Doge and the men who sat beside him.

Donato stood and stepped to the edge of the dais, towering over the portly man, bestowing upon him an oddly friendly smile.

“We wish you to take a message back to Rome,” he said.

The ambassador tipped his head to the side and down an inch, with just a hint of an arrogant smile.

“Of course,
sua signoria
, it would be my privilege.”

“Perhaps. We shall see,” Donato said with a sideward tilt of his head. He clasped his hands together and dropped them down to his lap. “Please tell His Most Holy Pope that Venice has not changed their position, we will not abide by his orders. We stand fast in our decision to try the men as citizens of Venice, regardless of his threats against us.”

Taverna’s jaw dropped as if torn from his head. His head swiveled upon his thin neck. He looked to the men on each side of him for clarification, but found confirmation, not the hoped for repudiation.

“You cannot be serious?” The ambassador’s voice cracked with unfettered amazement.

Donato leaned toward him, dropping his tone down to a menacing octave.

“Oh, we are very serious. And until he wisely lifts this interdict from our shoulders, no representative of Rome will be welcome in our land.”

Taverna spun about to face the room; his head bobbled on his shoulders as if it had come unattached. In the faces of the hundreds of men who filled the room, he found few allies. His eyes narrowed menacingly.

“Then you are fools,” he hissed. “You will suffer—”

“We will suffer you no longer!” Donato yelled, his words booming in the enclosed space as large as a small
campo.
“Monsignor! You must know that we are, every one of us, resolute and ardent to the last degree, not the government alone, but the whole nobility and people of our State. We ignore your excommunication; it is nothing to us.”

Donato raised a stiff, accusing finger in the Papal Nuncio’s shocked, reddening face.

“Think now where this resolution will lead if our example is followed by others.”

Taverna opened his mouth, his jaw worked ferociously, expelling nothing but hot, empty air. Without another word, he stalked off, out of the room, his minions scurrying to keep pace with his quickly retreating form.

Donato heaved a sigh, his chin lowering to his chest in release, a small, satisfied smile playing upon his lips. He caught himself and set his mouth in a dour, determined line.

“Our work for today is done, gentlemen.”

He turned his back on the large assemblage, heading toward the back of the dais and the
Capi dei Dieci
. They rose and gathered round Donato, their muttered mumblings matching those of the many men of the Grand Council.

“That was brilliant,” Teodoro said to Rinaldo.

The young, inexperienced man nodded, his mouth gaping, captured in a posture of both astonishment and deference.

Teodoro clapped him on the shoulder with a faint smile. The work of the council had been a success, but he had found no one who resembled the man rushing from the scene of Sassonia’s murder. He could be one of the few members in absence today, though almost all had attended such a momentous meeting. Or he was nothing more than a hired thug, one whose name and existence had evaporated upon completion of his mission. But someone had filled the man’s purse; someone who could be in this room.

“Come, let us join the others,” Teodoro said. “Our work is just beginning.”

Twenty-eight

T
he taste of the fish soup upon his tongue was heavenly, as if he ate the grandest meal served for a king. Fra Sarpi’s hand shook as he raised the crude utensil to his mouth, but that he could feed himself at all was an accomplishment, and he cared little that most of the potage dripped from the spoon and back into his bowl. The two nuns clucked about his sick bed in the small chamber, trying to wrench the eating tools from him, to drip the broth into his mouth as they had been doing for days, but he would have none of it.

It had been three weeks since the attack, three weeks since receiving the stab wounds, two in the neck and one in the side of his head. A small piece of the stiletto remained embedded in his cheekbone and, more than likely, it would be there for the rest of his life, a permanently implanted reminder of his devotion to the cause, but his broken jaw had healed enough to afford him movement and he would avail himself of it with gratitude.

The heavy wooden door squeaked open on its rusty, blackened hinges and the priest’s small dark eyes sparkled with a smile.

“Upon my word!” Galileo rushed to his bedside, stroking his friend’s bruised and battered head with a tender touch of affection.

With a sigh of liberation, Sarpi relaxed back onto the pillow, accepting the warmth of this dear man.

“It is an answer to all our prayers.” Galileo smiled down into Sarpi’s face, then back to his companion.

“It is that,” Doge Donato agreed, taking the almost overturned bowl from the priest’s quivering grasp, handing it to one of the nuns, and shooing them away with a flick of his hand.

“I heard your prayers.” Sarpi’s voice was a raspy whisper; it had grown rusty in the long days since he’d last used it. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Your voices, I heard them, as if from a distance, but I couldn’t reach out to you.”

Galileo leaned in to study Sarpi’s face in the dim light of the chamber. No more than three candles were lit at one time, and only those of bayberry and the rare and costly beeswax; none of the smoky, foul-smelling tallow candles were allowed. Any brighter illumination was painful for the priest’s swollen and bruised eyes. Dimly lit or not, it took all of Galileo’s control to keep the fear from showing on his features, continued concern sparked by the sight of his friend; Sarpi’s face and neck were so battered and misshapen by his wounds, he was almost unrecognizable.

“Has Acquapendente been to see you today?”

Galileo had fetched his own surgeon, considered one of the most eminent on the peninsula, from Padua within hours after the attack. The physician had remained in Venice, living in the austere conditions of the monastery, and caring for his beloved patient, along with a few more of the land’s best healers, those summoned by order of the Doge himself.

Sarpi began to nod his head, eyes clenching shut at the effort. “He has. He has high hopes for my recovery.”

Within the confines of the purple, swollen skin, the priest’s gaze shifted from scientist to Doge and back again.

“Tell me.” His words were garbled from between distended lips, but understandable. “Everything.”

Galileo and Donato shared a look, one filled with hesitancy, but neither tried to argue. With a heavy sigh, the Doge sat in the small, rickety wood framed chair by the bed.

“There were witnesses that claim they saw two or more masked men boarding a ship anchored off the coast, but no one could say who they were.”

Sarpi turned to Galileo, who gave a curt, almost sorrowful nod.

“Whose ship was it?” the priest asked.

Donato slapped his bear-like hands upon his knees, bowing his head to look between his spread legs at the gray and chalky stone floor.

“The Papal Ambassador’s.”

If able, Sarpi would have laughed, but the certainty of just how much the act would hurt, held him back. He felt acidic tears burn at his eyes and he chastised himself with silent admonitions. Why he should be hurt, or surprised, that the attack came from Rome, he did not know. He would not have been the first to shed his last drop of blood for the glory of the Vatican, nor the last. This was the work of man, not God; he would serve himself better to remember that than anything else.

“There is more.” Galileo sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, fussing like a grandmother at the wrinkles of the roughly hewn blanket. “They, the miscreants, must have gotten information from someone close to you, someone you trust.”

Sarpi balked with a shake of his head, his throat pulsing with a deep swallow.

“Why…how do you know?”

“Your wounds…the other tears in your clothes…” Galileo floundered for words. “Knife marks were found only on your extremities; there were none on your torso. The
banditi
had to know you wore the mail.”

Sarpi’s mind raged. The vest of chain mail, the Doge’s gift—he had worn it that day, as he had promised to do more often. How many knew of its existence? Certainly no more than a handful, but his tired and traumatized mind could not think of who they might be.

“I want you to move into one of the
Serenissima
’s
palazzi
. I can fill it with armed guards who will assure me of your safety day and night.”

Donato rose from the small chair, casting an imposing, undulating shadow upon the wall behind him.

“No!” In the exclamation, there was a glimmer of Sarpi’s former strength and determination. “No, this is my home, as it has been since I was a young man. I will not be forced from it.”

Sarpi clenched the bed linens into twisted knots with his weak hands.

“Nothing has changed, Paolo. We are still raging against the Empire. You are still in danger.” Donato laid a large hand on one of Sarpi’s, stilling it with his touch. “If you will not move to a place where I can protect you better, then we must make this place more protective. I insist you travel by guarded gondola, never by foot and alone. And we will erect a covered walkway, from your door to the boarding dock.”

“But—” Sarpi began to argue.

“Listen to him,” Galileo intoned. “Please.”

The monk stilled, exhaling with resignation. “Perhaps you are right. To the most pious Paul V, I am the epitome of the enemy, the most dangerous creature of all, a Venetian patriot.”

Donato and Galileo shared a smile of relief.

“
Bene, eccelente!”
The Doge clapped his hands together, heading toward the door. Grasping for the tarnished handle, he threw the portal wide. “And you must, by my order, be accompanied wherever you go.”

With a roll of his eyes, Sarpi turned to Donato at the door, only to be confronted by the smug countenance of fra Micanzio standing in the threshold, the giant of a man whose menacing, rough features would become as familiar to Sarpi as his own.