The Wolves of Venice Page 10

  Slowly she moved on, thinking. Some claimed Barent der Witt was evil. But if that was evil, Paola thought to herself, it was better than any kindness she had ever known.

  *

  I never knew about the deal between my father and Aretino. Not until years later, and by then it was too late. It was all too late.

  What I did know was that I had been singled out by one of the most powerful men in Venice, a writer who scandalised and intrigued society at the same time. A man with unlimited ambition and a ferocious appetite for money and depravity. Did I wonder why he had selected me to mentor? I presumed it was to feed his homosexuality, but I risked his displeasure at once by saying I was a lover of women. He replied mockingly, promising me the most infamous whores in Venice instead of shop girls or kitchen maids.

  I could have told him then that I had lost my virginity to Cara, my father’s housekeeper. Yes, that Cara. She had been much younger, and not so fat, but lusty, my fourteen year old head resting between her full breasts after she had seduced me. Her love making had been all soft, moist flesh and kisses like a mother hen pecking a chick. For several months I worshipped her, until she left my bed for that of the coachman.

  We never spoke of it again...

  So I didn’t tell Aretino about Cara and instead I fell under his bewitchment. My father – I see now that his conscience had been temporarily pricked - warned me to keep my distance, but that only increased my interest, and having no other men in the family to advice me I fell under that rancid, sexual, deviant spell that so many courted. Because, you see, in being Aretino’s protégé my elevation would be meteoric.

  Only one person tried to intervene, my grandmother, Lavinia. She had me brought to her room by a servant and then rapped her stick on the table in front of her twice, making the dogs bark below.

  “You are behaving like a fool, and you will regret it.”

  “But was it not you, Contessa, who said only recently that the young should be allowed to be foolish —”

  “Foolish, but not reckless,” she retorted, white hair frothed around her face, her eyebrows faded away with age, her stick – ebony, with a sculptured silver head of a crown – striking the table. Again, the dogs barked below, and inside I was laughing at her, because she was very old and very angry and besides, she had been so disinterested in me before she could hardly demand obedience now.

  So I accepted Aretino’s next invitation to a gathering he was holding on the Grand Canal outside his palazzo. There were ten, maybe twelve gondolas, full of dazzling women and young boys, naked from the waist up. The youths were lying with the women and then with each other, the music of Andrea Gabrieli played by the orchestra on shore, dancers performing beside them. Mesmerised – yes, that is the word – I watched the parade, Aretino seated on the first gondola, myself beside him. At his feet, like a lap dog.

  But what a lap dog, what a pampered, indulged, spoiled pet.

  My wit flashed like a struck match, the clothes given to me creating a little prince, and the wine offered making the night float, the boats suspended under clouds as the moon seemed planted, fixed, in that indigo sky above us. A man does not need sex to be seduced. A man does not need an orgasm to feel elated… There were many hundred of petals thrown on the water that night. Where they floated near the lights you could see their colours, where they were sinking, or beached, they were in the darkness, their colour bled out.

  He bled us all, that weighty potentate who patted my shoulder and applauded my wit, signalling for Adamo Baptista to come over to him. A whisper passed between them and then I was summarily dismissed, taken from the vessel and abandoned on the side of the Grand Canal, watching the lighted boats, the whores, and the bare chested boys as they floated away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tintoretto’s studio,

  May 1548

  “Where have you been?” Tintoretto said, confronting Marco as he walked in. “I have seen nothing of you for days, and you sent no word. Were you ill?”

  He shuffled his feet, his tone flat. “Yes, I was ill —”

  “That is not what I was told when I sent for word at your home!” Tintoretto raged. “This is not good enough, you cannot treat me like this.” Grabbing Marco by the sleeve he hauled him to the back of the studio and into a closeted office, slamming the door behind them. The walls were slatted with shelves, small wooden boxes of wax figures, statues, a piece of armour jostling for space next to rolls of canvas and bottles of wine. Pushing Marco into a seat Tintoretto glowered at him.

  “What is the matter with you?” he asked, slapping him on the shoulder. “Why are you whoring with Aretino?”

  “He is a friend of yours!”

  “He is an acquaintance! He commissions paintings from me, he does not invite me into his home or to his orgies.”

  “But he champions you. The four paintings you did for the Scuola di St Marco he applauded publicly —”

  “No doubt he realised that his praise would reach Titian’s ears abroad and cause further coolness between us.”

  Marco was not backing down. “Aretino commissioned you to paint the ceiling in his house, and then to paint his portrait.”

  Tintoretto smiled to himself. Yes, the writer had hired him to paint his portrait, but Tintoretto had never been gulled by Aretino, or cowed by him. When he had taken his subject’s measurements he had not used a tape measure, but a stiletto. A subtle reminder of Aretino’s previous hostility.

  “You must stay away from him, Marco —”

  “Aretino is cultured. Well read, he can speak on any topic with confidence. As for orgies” Marco replied drily. “I have seen no orgies.”

  “You will. And you will see dwarves set to fight with animals and the most famous whores in Venice tie ribbons and bells around little boys’ cocks. So Aretino can hear them – even if they are out of his sight. Hear them and salivate as they approach.”

  Marco shifted in his seat. “This is all hearsay. You are jealous because Aretino and Titian have never included you in their circle.”

  Stung, Tintoretto shook his head. “So now you insult me? Idiota! Do you know nothing? Do you hear nothing? Aretino is a blackmailer, a pederast —”

  “As are many in Venice.”

  “You are defending him!” the painter replied, slapping Marco on the shoulder again. “You are the son of Jacopo Gianetti, of one of the most honoured families in Venice, and you chose to mix with this mountebank?”

  “Titian is his friend, the Doge is his friend, Aretino is invited to every palazzo in Venice – and beyond - his talent applauded, his wit quoted endlessly —”

  “And his merda? Do people celebrate his taking a shit? Is it gold? Does it smell like fresh linen?” Tintoretto stared at his apprenticeship. “You are a fool! You are intossicato, drunk with him. You think he will raise you up for nothing? No, there will be a price —”

  “He has asked nothing of me.”

  “Yet.” Tintoretto snapped. “Yet. But he will, Aretino does nothing for nothing. He will bleed you like a calf, he will pull on the string he has woven around you and then cut you loose.” Marco thought of his humiliating dismissal the previous night and looked away as Tintoretto continued. “It is a game for him. He will entice and repel, entice and repel, until you are only able to think of one thing – how to please him.”

  “I am not an idiot!”

  “Neither are the Kings that Aretino has enthralled. Neither are the boys he corrupts, the men he blackmails, the women he debases.” Tintoretto leaned towards him; although there was only ten years in difference in their age, the painter’s tone was paternal. “These are deep waters, Marco, too deep for you. You want to bask in his power? Become a fixture at the Doge’s palace? Take a seat beside him whilst Ludivco Agostino plays? I understand, who would not want such luxury, such glamour – but it is false.” He pointed to one of the cardboard boxes, with its little wax figures arranged inside. “This is what you are to Aretino,” he grabbed one of the figures and
crushed it in his hand. “A toy. And all children grow tired of their toys in time.”

  *

  Gilda Fasculo took a seat at the table, her two sons sitting opposite. Federico and Angelo, both heavily built, wide shouldered, with the fairer eyes and hair colour of the Russian Jews. Inherited from their late father. And both quick to anger, another legacy he had passed on. Since their arrival in Venice, Fredrico had worked on the boats, unpacking the goods brought in by the merchants, lifting carpets and furniture and the occasional bronze figure brought from Persia and beyond. All bound for the Rialto, the economic heart of Venice. The work was gruelling, but away from the industrial factories, it was at least clean.

  At first his brother Angelo had wanted to train as a tanner, but the conditions of the trade had proved brutal. The exhausting scraping of the skins by hand, with knives that quickly blunted. And then there was the stink of the fetid water in which the leather was softened; an acrid stench that burned the mouth and throat and blistered the skin. Tanner’s throat had caused the premature death of many men, the bronchia and lungs affected, the stomach lining ulcerated.

  So Angelo had left the tannery and joined his brother on the boats, working together and obeying the laws of the ghetto. Neither of them intelligent, neither gifted. Both – even in their early twenties - under their mother’s control.

  “I will say this again,” Gilda said warningly, “let me handle the situation with Adamo Baptista.”

  “He threatened you,” Angelo interrupted, “I should challenge the bastard —”

  “No, you will not!” Gilda snapped. “You are to do as I say, do you understand? I have kept this family together, despite your stupid actions, despite your determination to start a fight with virtually anyone.”

  “If we are insulted —”

  “You look for insults!” Gilda replied, her tone hardening. “You look and you find. And God knows, there is always something to be insulted about. But that is our life, and violence will not help our cause.” She unclenched her hands, spreading them, palms down, on the scrubbed table. “I have this matter under control —”

  “How?” Federico snapped. “You’re being blackmailed.”

  “Be quiet and listen!” she hissed. “Baptista is working for that pig Aretino. We are forced into giving them money – that much we cannot change or we’ll be exposed and hunted down like animals. How Baptista found out about our past I don’t know. He comes from Florence, maybe he heard it on one of his trips.” She laughed coldly. “What I can give him is nothing in comparison to what Aretino is worth, but he would still squeeze me dry, make me a liar, a cheat, make me betray my own people. If you had seen Baptista; he had no mercy, just a relentless fixation on his goal. That bastard would see me in the galleys.” Her tone was bitter. “But I don’t intend to let him win.”

  Angelo leaned forward, aware of his mother’s cunning. “What are you going to do?”

  “What does anyone know about Adamo Baptista?”

  “He’s a mediocre painter, who goes from one artist’s studio to another, never stays long anywhere.”

  “They say he’s a spy,” Fredrico contributed. “and a gambler.”

  Angelo nodded, interrupting him. “Apparently a very good gambler. People say he cheats, but no one can prove it. And no one dares challenge him. He learnt to play in his home city, Florence.”

  “Why did he leave Florence?”

  Angelo shrugged. “No one knows.”

  “At the moment,” Gilda corrected him. “But that can change. Baptista is very confident because knows people are afraid of him. There are rumours all the time about his violence. But there are just that, rumours. Who truly knows what this man has done? And yet people avoid him because of his reputation.”

  Angelo folded his arms. “It works, no one will challenge him.”

  “But what crimes has he committed? A man like Baptista must have a past. Things he hides —”

  “And how are we going to find out what he’s hiding?”

  Gilda paused, thinking. “He has no family in Venice?”

  “He has no one but Aretino, and I doubt they are friends. Baptista is in Aretino’s pay.”

  “Exclusively?” Gilda asked. “No, I doubt it. He travels too much to be merely Aretino’s dog. And what of this young man who has suddenly emerged?”

  Angelo shrugged. “I don’t know about him —”

  “I do.” Gilda replied, leaning across the table towards her two sons. “News travels speedily across the islands and it all ends up in St Marks. Remember, some of our more prosperous Jews attend functions in the city and there they hear the gossip. The gossip they then pass onto me.” She smiled craftily. “The young man is Nikolas Volt, a German youth of nineteen. His appearance is strange, half Germanic, half Japanese. But the question is - where did this creature come from? And what is he to Adamo Baptista?”

  “His lover?”

  She shook her head. “No, Baptista only sleeps with women. He has a horror of homosexuality.”

  “But he works for Aretino.”

  “But doesn’t sleep with the fat maiale.” She retorted sharply. “In the past Baptista was always alone. No one ever saw him with anyone – apart from Aretino. So this Nikolas Volt must be important to Baptista for him to suddenly become his companion. That’s a very public statement, and Baptista doesn’t like anything in his life to be public – unless it suits him in some way.”

  Angelo was losing interest. “Well, what good is it to us? What does it all mean?”

  Impatiently Gilda tapped her fingers on the table, her eyes shrewd.

  “It means that Adamo Baptista is not the only one who can root out secrets. He would see me in the galleys, would he? We’ll see who ends up there.” Her gaze moved back to her sons. “You must listen to everything and everyone. Whilst you work, you listen to people gossip. Because people gossip in Venice all the time. People coming from different countries, with their stories, with titbits of news that might prove valuable. Do not ask questions, that would be too obvious, but listen.” She banged her hands down on the table, making her sons jump. “As for me, I have my own methods... We must find out about Nikolas Volt and about Baptista’s life in Florence. Something that we could use in our favour.” She explained coldly. “If Adamo Baptista has an Achilles heel, I want to find it. I want to find it and sever it. And I want to cripple him.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Rialto

  Venice

  The tumblers were performing their routines, four Spanish jugglers working on the lush grass of the square, the crowd pushing forwards and applauding as one of the tumblers completed a double summersault and landed perfectly, with his arms outstretched in triumph. Having bought a selection of seafood in paper wrappers, Marco handed one to Ira, then sat on the stone wall beside him.

  “Feast days,” he said, his fingers picking into the food. “The players always come out on feast days. And night.” He frowned. “I only like the soft shelled crabs, not the ones with hard shells.”

  Ira was eating both, swallowing as he looked at his friend. “Who is the feast day in honour of?”

  “I don’t know,” Marco replied, picking out the hard shelled crabs and throwing them over his shoulder. “There are too many to remember. Do Jews have many saints?”

  `“We don’t have any.”

  “How sensible,” Marco replied, pointing over to where a girl was entering the garden with a bear and two handlers. The animal was not yet fully grown, jerking its head against the ring through his nose. “Caterina Zucca has a new slave.”

  Ira was surprised at the comparison which had occurred to his companion. “You look at a performing bear —”

  “It hasn’t done anything yet.”`

  “ – and think of a woman and her slave?”

  “Have you met Caterina Zucca?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Marco, you know I haven’t.”

  He looked crestfallen. “I only asked—”

  “
I know she’s a whore.”

  “Courtesan.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Indeed there is!” Marco replied. “A Venetian courtesan is welcomed in high places and courted by intellectuals —”

  “And bedded by them too.”

  “ – naturally. You cannot judge her, she is remarkable. Very lovely, of course, but beauty is not her only gift, she would impress you with her knowledge.” He sneaked a look over to Ira. “You must love women.”

  “I admire them.”

  “But you must have loved a woman once. Surely?”

  Ira stared ahead, watching the woman and the bear, the handlers keeping close to the animal as it resisted performing. On his right he could see that the tumblers had finished and were collected in a group, their costumes stained with sweat, one wiping his face with the back of his sleeve.

  “I did love someone very much. A long time ago, in Florence.”

  “What was her name?”

  “That’s not important.”

  Marco sighed, lying back against the stone wall. “If you must be mysterious, very well. But answer me this – what was she like?”

  “Like land to a drowning man.”

  Marco had not expected such a response and was unsure how to reply. Normally he would have made a joke, teased Ira, but something warned him against levity. “What happened to her?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “But you lost her?”

  “Do you see her with me?” Ira countered bitterly, finishing the seafood and screwing up the paper into a compressed ball. “She had a great heart, she was kind, loving. Generous with everyone, but she developed tuberculosis and died... I didn’t expect it, no one did. But she was weaker than we thought and...” he stared ahead, trailing into silence. “I would have married her if she had lived.”

  Marco nudged his shoulder. “You will find someone else.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You must! You’re a man, you need someone to – ”