“Like all men before me, someday I’ll die,” Jacques said. “But before that, I’ll damned well live. What I’ve learned from life is that the only significant difference between an animal and me is that I know more personal pleasures.”
Francesco scowled. “Have you never once searched your heart for—”
“I say that a man who asks himself too many questions is an unhappy man.” Jacques smiled and resumed his
en garde
. “I live to satisfy my senses. Why should I deny myself pleasures?”
A female voice rang through the large room. “You’d better be playing, you two,” said Dominique, walking through the far door and stopping at a safe distance.
Without replying, the brothers renewed their feverish thrusts.
“
Et la
,” shouted Francesco. “And there.”
Jacques’ body braced. He stopped and looked down to watch the sword’s point pull away. He barely heard the gasps from Dominique and Petrine while he surveyed his chest. When a languorous course of warm blood seeped from his pectoral, he sank to his knees.
“To possess our own swords,” he muttered.
Petrine and Dominique helped Jacques stand while Francesco relieved him of his weapon, setting it next to his brother’s feet.
“Are you hurt?”
“I merit I am, ass.” Jacques opened his fingers cupped over his heart, and pulpy red blood bloomed from his chest.
Dominique swabbed Jacques’ wound with a handkerchief. “Monsieur, it looks horrible. Horrible. Make your peace. Now.”
“What, what?” Jacques cried with terror.
She turned back to Petrine and Francesco with a grin. “A wound, perhaps. But I would judge it only a prick.” She laughed.
Petrine bobbed his head in agreement. “Won’t be mopping up much blood from that wound.”
Jacques cautiously rechecked his upper body. “Not as wide as a yawning grave, I suppose, but it will do.”
Petrine scurried to the far wall and returned with two shirts, the sword case, cloth bag, and snuffbox.
“I might have died,” Jacques said in a barely audible voice.
“I only wounded you, libertine. Maybe I should have killed you.” As he extended his point, Francesco’s eyes glinted.
Jacques’ belly tingled with a queer feeling of alarm.
“I once again claim victory,” Francesco said. When Jacques huffed, he added, “Must not let the passions command. Is that not your precept?” He took his shirt from Petrine.
Jacques brimmed with humiliation. He seized his sword, but Francesco drew the hilt of his smallsword to his face and, offering a polite salute, ended the combat. Jacques had no choice but to do the same. Good manners demanded it.
The two brothers, following their personal custom, then faced Dominique and saluted with their weapons.
The woman’s eyes glittered like translucent gems.
Petrine produced a cloth, accepted Francesco’s smallsword, wiped clean the blade, and set it in the case while Francesco headed toward the loft entrance.
“Are you coming to bed soon?” he asked without turning around.
“No,” Jacques and Dominique said in unison. Dominique’s stately manner disappeared when she laughed.
“No,” Jacques repeated. “I’ll write late into the night, as is my habit.”
“I was speaking to Dominique, elder Brother. Good night, then.
See you on the morrow. I’ll keep the candle lit, wife.” He left.
Jacques examined his naked chest with intense consternation, paying little heed to Dominique. Petrine, who stood in a patch of moonlight shining through the overhead window, cleared his throat.
Jacques glanced at his valet. “Hang my shirt on that painting. Take my blade. Then place the sword case and gold snuffbox in my room. Wait there.”
Petrine nodded while Jacques’ attention returned to his wound.
“I think you’ve thoroughly mended,” teased Dominique. While Jacques stroked beneath his pectoral with a fingertip of saliva, she continued, “Your stamina is astonishing. You say you write tonight?” A brief smile played upon her lips. “What else do you accomplish late in the night?”
There was no response.
She shrugged her shoulders. “If you write late into the night, it would appear you possess a vigorous intellect,” she tried again.
“I continue working, madame, on the squaring of the cube. Many philosophers, as well as Messieurs Descartes and Newton, have labored ineffectually on this extraordinarily vexing problem, but I intend to find the mathematical solution.”
“You will, without a doubt, be successful with this
extraordinarily vexing problem,” Dominique replied with a smile. “You say you live
to satisfy your senses, yet your intellectual curiosity seems
paramount. Beyond your intellectual endeavors, have you other pursuits?”
Jacques looked up, then stepped close. “None as important as the one who stands before me.”
Dominique drew a sudden breath.
“You may have to teach me,” he said.
Spellbound, Dominique whispered, “Teach you?”
“Yes, teach me.” His words lingered while he brushed away a lock of hair on Dominique’s cheek and leaned forward.
She blushed deeply.
Jacques smiled at his thoughts; unhurriedly, he withdrew from her. “Yes, you may have to teach me the lunge, the fencing move which gave your husband victory.”
A gush of silver moonlight overwhelmed the loft for several moments, enough time for Jacques to catch Dominique’s emerald eyes swell large and bright.
“Besides the squaring of the cube,” he said, turning away, “I’m
also expanding my old doctoral thesis: ‘Any being which can be
conceived only abstractly can exist only abstractly.’ For devout
religionists, it’s a dizzying concern.”
“Your sarcasm puzzles me,” Dominique replied. “You puzzle me. Shall I take it that you are a good member of the Church?”
Jacques picked up his linen shirt and slung it over his shoulder. He began to leave but abruptly spun back.
“Madame, I was not born to be redeemed.”
Then and there, Dominique decided she’d much to teach this man.
WITHIN A DAY, DOMINIQUE FOUND
herself sitting on a grassy knoll face-to-face with her houseguest, listening to a tale that some in Europe already knew: Jacques’ escape from I Piombi.
Jacques tented his fingers around his knee and leaned back,
resting against a tree. Shining just over his shoulder, the sun was preparing its departure.
“I don’t know why I’m telling this,” he said.
“Because,” she smiled, “I asked you. I’m interested.”
Jacques laughed. “I should’ve been interested in the warning my
patron, Senator Bragadin, gave when he advised me to leave
Venice.” He looked into the distance. “Three years before that, you see, I’d saved the senator’s life, and I soon convinced him that I possessed profound occult powers. Now, know this: Senator Bragadin is no fool. On the other hand, there isn’t a man in Europe, including me, whose mind is entirely free from some superstition.
“Most men carry many such mindless notions: belief in gnomes,
undines, and sylphs of the mystical cabala; a yearning for the
philosopher’s stone to cure all disease or to transmute base metal into gold; the conviction that some astrologer can make known a
man’s destiny; a faith in magic elixirs, in alchemy, in … the list goes
on.
“Like all men, Senator Bragadin wanted to believe in something. This I knew. So my knowledge of the occult helped me cement the role of—more or less—adopted son. It was a position that placed me in the upper chamber of Venetian society with gentlemen’s clothes of silk and sufficient funds for endless gambling and the procurement of the most delicate treasures. Signor Bragadin was generous and tolerant, even while insisting that someday I would pay the price for my perilous behaviors.
“You can understand why it was wholly inconceivable when this
evenhanded man came to my room to explain the Inquisitori’s
methods
and to feverishly pronounce the warning to me: Leave Venice this minute.
“I chose not to listen. The very next morning, my lodgings were
invaded by three dozen Venetian policemen. Looking back, I
suppose it pleased my pride—that the Secretary of the Three deemed me dangerous. Or so I thought.”
In the telling, Jacques’ voice was soft and simple. He thought he saw in Dominique’s eyes a question:
Do you seek to lead me astray?
He laughed at his notion and let the spring air warm his lungs.
Dominique bade him continue his story.
“On the first day of my sentence, I remained in good spirits while entering the Doge’s palace and the prison within it: I Piombi, the Leads. Spirited was I—even while I passed the garroting machine, the torture instruments used for tearing out teeth and tongues, and the tool for skull crushing.
“But …,” he paused. “I hadn’t been informed of charges nor
been told the length of my sentence. I crouched in that cell—lower than
my full height—feeling utter confusion.” Jacques bent his head
forward.
“All was dark except for one corner of the room that had an
undersized window that offered some dingy light. Rotting in a cell, you don’t tire of living, you tire of slowly dying. Deeply frightening, I assure you. It speaks to my fear that I didn’t have a bowel movement for half a month.
“‘Why am I in prison?’ I asked myself again and again. ‘I’m blameless. Guiltless.’ Soon I did not so much wonder
why
I was there but
how
I would escape the place.” His eyes glistened.
“How … how
did
you escape?” Dominique’s lips were parted in astonishment, her eyes unblinking.
WHOMP! Jacques’ hands clapped shut.
Dominique immediately took up a defensive posture, her
expression vulnerable but not helpless.
“The slamming of that cell door scared me as badly as I scared you!” exclaimed Jacques.
The pair exchanged a silly laugh.
“Here—in brief—is my escape story: I donned a hat and walked out the front door of the Leads.”
Dominique showed a glimmer of glee that ended with a smile. “Tell me all, or you’ll get no dinner tonight.”
“For your pleasure, madame,” he said, straightening out his legs. “In the beginning, I was put in solitary confinement. Little did I know I would stay there ninety-seven days. In unremitting hell. Keeping company only with what thoughts I had. I, who thrive on the pleasures of social discourse, on the sweet joys of food and drink, on the … reduced to a dark, dank cell with rats as big as rabbits.
“By late autumn, I was given cellmates from time to time. The head jailer, Lorenzo, began to feed me decently and soon granted me an armchair. For reading material, I was given
The Mystical City of God
.” Jacques’ face screwed up into a graceless expression. “Interminably long and catastrophically boring.”
Dominique laughed.
“I knew these privileges of mine were granted only because of the entreaties of my benefactor, Senator Bragadin.” Jacques frowned. “But most everything, it seemed, added to my severe melancholia. Fortunately, better things were to come: eventually I was granted walks—for exercise—in the prison attic. It was there I discovered a piece of polished black marble and an iron spike the length of my forearm. Although at the time I’d no idea what good this might do, I secreted the spike and marble in my armchair. Then one dream-filled night, a plan came to me.
“Quite soon, I began to complain of chest pains and bronchia to Lorenzo. I persuaded the prison doctor that my cell must not be cleaned because the dust might kill me. I kept this up for some time, during which my difficult work started: In those periods when I was absent cellmates, I’d sharpen my iron spike by honing it on the
marble, using spit for lubrication. Stiff arms, a huge blister, and a month’s work—that’s what the pointed spike cost. Convincing myself that my jail cell was above the chamber where the Inquistori held
court—and my best bet for escape—I began to bore through the cell floor.
“Ever so slowly and painfully, I worked through the wood, the
marble terrazzo—using vinegar from my salads to soften the
terrazzo—then more wood.”
“They didn’t discover the hole you were making?” asked Dominique.
Jacques offered a sly smile. “My cell was not entered once, not cleaned a single time—for as you know, the dust would most certainly harm their prisoner.”
Dominique glanced away, rolling her eyes.
“It was the height of summer, blazing hot. A sweatbox. I worked naked, sweat pouring from me. One night, the bolt on the outer door squeaked. I hurled my spike in the hole, brushed the wood splinters in, all before pulling my bed over the hole and covering myself.
“A man entered. A new cellmate.”
Dominique gasped.
“Luckily, he stayed for only a week. After he was gone, I
continued my work. At last I punched through the floor. But …,” Jacques’ tone lowered. “But my secret breach was too close to a stout ceiling beam.
The hole could not be enlarged any further for my body to slip
through.
“Miserable, I nevertheless resigned myself to drill again, farther over, making sure that none of my scraps would fall into the Inquisitori’s chamber below and that my lantern’s light would not be
seen at night by a watchman. I planned to break out during a
Venetian festival in August, when no one would occupy the room below.
“By the twenty-fifth, my new escape hole was almost finished. It was then, three days before my planned exodus, that Senator Bragadin thought to make my incarceration easier; with his
influence, I was to be moved. To a better cell. One with
two
windows, more light, a view.
“Nearly fainting, I told Lorenzo, the jailer, that I couldn’t budge,
that fresh air was bad for a man with bronchia, that the feral rats
had become my friends. I pleaded to stay in my cell. Lorenzo
thought me mad.”