The Wolves of Venice Read online

  The gates had been manned by two black slaves dressed in startling yellow, an opulent fruit garden leading towards the studio. Look the building seemed to say, see how rich I am, how successful my owner must be. And yet here you come, with your worn breeches and your dyer father, hoping to be accepted here...

  “You must be polite, my son, you hear? Titian is the greatest painter in Venice, in Italy even.” His father had hissed into his ear, both of them staring at the figure which approached.

  A little below six feet in height, Titian had been wearing breeches and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His burly arms were clean without the usual paint spots seen on most artists, his face refined, the short trimmed beard a dark auburn, his eyes unexpectedly blue. His appearance was a surprise to Tintoretto; he might have been a wealthy merchant, a banker at the Doge’s palace, even an elegant cardinal. But not a painter. Not the usual kind of unkempt, pre-occupied artist that ran a frenzied studio and touted for business across Venice with their portfolio under one arm.

  “Welcome,” Titian said graciously, his voice autocratic as he explained that he was occupied with commissions for the Doge and for the court and he had no need for more apprentices.

  “But, signor Titian, my son has talent —”

  “I do not doubt it, but talent alone is not enough to succeed in Venice.” The artist had replied, flicking through the drawings handed to him. “There are many competent painters in the city.”

  Tintoretto’s father had not been willing to cow to anyone. Even the Republic’s premier artist.

  “He is very quick, we call him Il Furioso because of his speed. He can paint a wall in the time another man would struggle to reproduce a child’s head. People come to watch him.” he nudged his son, “Show the Maestro what you can do. Show him!”

  “Show him?”

  Sighing, Tintoretto’s father handed his son a piece of charcoal and a sheet of paper. “Draw something boy!”

  The apprenticeship which followed had been a matter of triumph for Tintoretto’s father. He was a dyer and considered his son’s success as a badge of honour for the family. But it didn’t last, the association coming to a bizarre and sudden halt. And this time Tintoretto’s drawings did not work in his favour.

  He remembered the day, white and hot, the sea without its usual horizon marker. As ever he had arrived at Titian’s studio soon after dawn, exchanging a greeting with the cook newly returned from the market. With his drawings under his arm, Tintoretto had glanced into the mirror in the hallway leading to the studio. His curly hair had looked dusty, his eyes challenging, almost hostile. Surprised, he had tempered his expression, then moved onto the courtyard, crossing the cool marble flags and pushing open the wrought iron doors to the studio.

  The smell of paint had been strong, mixing with the odour of stale wine and perfume over laden with oleander and orange blossom. The previous night the scent would have been lyrical, but it had become jaded, almost sour. As his eyes had adjusted to the shuttered light, Tintoretto had tripped over a small dog, almost colliding with a black woman carrying a bowl of fruit. Keeping her eyes averted she had guided past him, the painter suddenly aware of laughter coming from a curtained alcove.

  “How clumsy you are,” a man said, pulling back the curtain and then opening the studio shutters to allow the daylight to enter.

  Tintoretto had flushed, his awe of Titian obvious, his palms sweaty as he laid the drawings down on a table under the window, aware that there was someone else in the studio behind the alcove. A woman? Maybe, but not likely, Titian, unlike many of his Venetian cohorts, was faithful to his wife.

  “I brought the drawings you asked for, maestro. And others, a number of others.”

  Titian had looked at the work, his shrewd blue eyes alert, his knife-shaped eyebrows rising. “So many? Why so many?”

  “I wanted… I just…” Tintoretto had trailed off. Was quantity a sin? Were his master’s words a comment or a rebuke?

  “I was excited —”

  “Over excited.” Another voice had said suddenly, the barrel like figure of Aretino coming into the light. “How very busy you have been.” He had looked over to his friend, Titian staring at the drawings in silence. “And how are they? Is this avalanche of expression worthy of praise? Or has our little dyer been too busy and too fast for his own good?...”

  Titian had said nothing, just continued to flick over the drawings, one by one, then once again. Tintoretto could see the charcoal images activated in front of him, women moving, embracing, men on horseback leaping and falling, and several shifting figures of Jesus swept up in the shuddering melee.

  “... So is industry akin to talent?” Aretino had continued.

  Still Titian had said nothing.

  “… Or should talent be weighed and measured like a precious oil?” Smiling, Aretino had taken an orange off the fruit platter and begun to peel it, staring at Tintoretto. “Are you trying to impress your master, little dyer?”

  “I was just drawing –”

  “Just drawing?” Aretino had repeated, “Of course, I see that you wish to be as good as Titian.”

  “I could never be that —”

  A sudden noise had made him jump as Titian slammed the leather portfolio closed, one corner of a drawing trapped like the broken wing of a bird.

  “I can teach you nothing.”

  “But I am your apprentice!”

  “No longer, Tintoretto,” Titian replied, “There is nothing I can teach you. You are not in need of my tutoring.”

  Aretino had paused with the half eaten orange in his hand, his sly gaze moving from Tintoretto to his friend and back again.

  “You think this little fellow has nothing to learn?” he asked mockingly. “Titian, you must show a little mercy, Venice will not support a painter you have dismissed as your apprentice.” He had dropped the sucked orange onto the platter and wiped his hands on a serving cloth. Mischief had flickered like a light inside him. “Is Tintoretto an indifferent painter?... Or a great one?”

  Titian had not answered. Not in words. He had simply turned his back to indicate that Tintoretto had been dismissed.

  The doctor was losing his patience, his fretful voice dragging Tintoretto back to the present. “Are you coming? Come on!” Norillo whined, opening the metal studded door beside the anatomy theatre. It was a place well known to Tintoretto, a narrow ante room off the morgue in which was one central stone slab. At the base ran a trough to catch the blood, a table with old dissecting instruments set against the wall.

  Fifteen years had passed since Titian had so summarily dismissed Tintoretto and, as Aretino had predicted, Venice had made its judgement. The Doge and the nobility had not welcomed the little dyer, his lack of polish and courtly manners had alienated him almost as much as his talent had ostracised him from his master. Titian had been Venice’s glory; Tintoretto was merely the brilliant upstart. And so it remained; Tintoretto admiring Titian’s genius, Titian wary of Il Furioso and determined – in collusion with his cohorts - to deny him access to the patrons and the court.

  “Good God, what happened to her?” Tintoretto said, glancing over to the grotesque torso of a woman lying on the stone slab and putting a cloth up to his nose. “She has been dead a while.”

  The doctor shrugged. “I called you yesterday. If you had come, there would have been no smell then. This is summer, ice is expensive. Next time go to Padua.” He moaned. “I do my best for you. If I was caught, I would be punished, I’m risking my reputation for you, Tintoretto, I have done for years.” He mewled. “ But do you thank me? And how do you repay me for my kindness? With a painting!”

  “A painting of your wife.” Tintoretto retorted, walking around the mutilated corpse. “Surely, Norillo, you are not disappointed with my work?”

  “Nature didn’t make her handsome, but you managed it.” The doctor replied grudgingly. “The bitch let me into her bed last night for the first time in years.” He looked at the corps
e and then folded his arms. “It’s a while since you’ve been here. I would have thought you knew enough about the human body by now. You’re famous all over Venice now. Although some say that’s only because Titian’s away and you’ve got an advantage. Some say —”

  “Some say anything,” Tintoretto interrupted. “I need more light, hold that lamp up for me.”

  “Titian is in Germany now, working for the King —”

  “He is a great painter.”

  `“And he admires you,” Norillo said, holding up the lamp. “Or he wouldn’t have thrown you out all those years ago. Titian doesn’t like competition.”

  Tintoretto turned back to the old doctor. “He has nothing to fear from me —”

  “Liar!” Dr Norillo replied, rearranging his glasses and shrugging. “No one comes to Venice to fail.”

  “I didn’t come here, I was born in Lombardy and that’s part of the Republic.”

  “Then it’s your duty to succeed!” The medic snapped, his tone softening. “I saw your painting of the Miracle of the Slave in the Scuola di St Marco. There was quite a queue to see it. People were staring and wondering how you could paint the bodies to look so real, so solid.”

  “I use little figures, models,” Tintoretto admitted, flattered despite himself. “You see, I make them from clay and position them to see how they would look in a painting…” He picked up a scalpel and drew it down the length of the woman’s neck on the right side, from her ear to her collar bone. “… Then I put the little clay figures in a box and light them with candles to see how the finished picture would look –”

  “Like a child playing.”

  Tintoretto nodded. “Yes, like a child playing.” He bent further over the corpse and studied the exposed jugular vein, his forehead wrinkling. “But now and then I need to see a real body to remind myself, to assure myself that am right. There is always something more to learn.” He stepped back. “How did she die?”

  “Not of the plague.” The doctor replied, mockingly. He gestured to the mutilated torso, minus its arms and legs. “She was murdered. Her corpse dismembered, God rest her soul.”

  “D’you know who she was?”

  “Unknown to me and unclaimed by any family.”

  “And no one knows who killed her?”

  “No one cares!” the medic replied. “The body was found in the water —”

  “Like this?”

  Norillo nodded. “Like that. Four days ago and brought to the hospital’s anatomy room.”

  Tintoretto studied the torso. “The wounds where her arms and legs were severed are old, there are no new cuts.” He looked at the shoulders and thighs where the limbs had been removed, the muscles grey, the bones the colour of soured milk.

  “No, no new wounds. Apart from the one you’ve just made,” the medic agreed, nodding. “You know how it works. When a body’s brought here I let the medics know it’s available for dissection in the Anatomy Theatre —”

  “For a fee?”

  “Of course for a fee! Everything’s for sale in Venice. I’m an old man, I need to provide for my family. If anything should happen to me they need to be safe. We all know how the poor live in Venice, I don’t want them to suffer.” Norillo whined on. “But I take a risk with you. The bodies are only supposed to be used by doctors, not fucking artists.”

  “You get more from me than the doctors. That painting I did of your wife is worth good money, so don’t try and fool me, Norillo.”

  Wrong footed, the medic shrugged. “What’s all the interest anyway? D’you know the woman?”

  “She looks familiar,” Tintoretto admitted. “I think – maybe – she sat for me a year ago. I can’t be sure, she’s different —”

  “Everyone looks different without their arms and legs.” Norillo said snidely. “I can tell you one thing for certain, she drowned. But she was cut up first. Whoever killed her tortured her before they tossed her into the water.”

  Tintoretto flinched, then looked back to the corpse. “And no one came to see her?”

  “No one.”

  “In four days, no one came to claim her, or view the body?”

  “I’ve told you, no one claimed her.” Norillo hesitated, the rush light flaring as a draft entered the dank chamber.

  The pause was enough. “Who came to see the body?”

  “It’s not my position to say.” Norillo whinged, moving from foot to foot.

  “Who came to see her?”

  “Why does it matter —”

  “Who?”

  “He thought it was a woman he knew, but it wasn’t —”

  “Who thought?”

  “Baptista. Adamo Baptista.”

  The name curdled in the damp air; it sent a shudder through the old medic and made Tintoretto pause. Adamo Baptista, artist, gambler and Pietro Aretino’s spy; a Florentine who moved around Venice untouched. A man suspected of a dozen crimes, about whom rumours flourished in the dark like mushrooms; a man who escaped the authorities by stealth -shielded under the protection of the dissolute Behemoth, Aretino.

  In silence Tintoretto took out a small vellum pad and sketched the woman’s mutilated torso, then her face. He took great care over the details, making hurried notes about the colour of her lashes, the chip off one of her front teeth and the faint indentations on either side of the bridge of her nose. When he had finished he turned back to the medic, who was tapping his foot impatiently by the door.

  “See to it that she gets a proper burial.”

  Norillo shrugged. “The girl’s bound for the Autopsy theatre tonight —”

  “Can you not stop it?” Tintoretto asked.

  The doctor pulled down the corners of his mouth in a grimace. “No, I cannot stop it - and why should I? The doctors have to learn, you know that. Besides, you’ve never bothered about a corpse before —”

  Tintoretto looked down at the disfigured girl.

  “For pity’s sake, don’t let them cut her up. Hasn’t she suffered enough?” he turned back to the old man. “You know what will happen, they will leave after they’ve finished with her and then talk about it, describe what she looked like, what had been done to her. They’ll share the details all over Venice.”

  “That’s not my concern.” Norillo replied shortly, pulling the sheet over the corpse. “She’s passed feeling anything.”

  Tintoretto shook his head. “If you can’t stop the autopsy, promise me this. When they’re done with her, see that she gets a proper funeral.”

  “That will cost —”

  “I’ll pay for it!” Tintoretto said shortly. “And if Adamo Baptista comes back —”

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble with that man.” The medic retorted nervously. “No one does. I’m not getting involved.”

  Tintoretto tapped his arm. “Be calm, medico, I’m not asking anything of you. There is no danger. But should Adamo Baptista comes back, don’t tell him I was here. You understand?...”

  Norillo nodded.

  “...don’t tell him was ever here.”

  Chapter Three

  Signora Castilano was watching a pair of men talking on the street outside. Even though she had come from Spain and been graciously assimilated into Venice’s business life, she looked on all other foreigners as a lower class, fodder to her peculiarly luxurious mill. She could estimate from the opulence of the turbans and the silken flutter of the breeches that the merchants were Turkish and affluent; probably dealers in silks, tapestries and the gold threaded trimmings for which Venetian women had an insatiable appetite.

  The courtesans would pay generously for such exclusive fripperies, decking themselves out like show horses as they glided across St Marks. Much business was undertaken in the time it took to cross the famous Square. A whore could ensnare a protector, a man could undertake a business deal, and an opportunistic woman could net herself many a glossy fish.

  Hearing the door open, Marina Castilano turned to see a man enter. He was in his fifties, dressed in sombre, d
usty black clothes and wearing a large brimmed hat in the Dutch style. His face, buckled with lines, had retained its Northern pallour, a great dark birthmark on his left cheek. From his neck hung a small glass vial full of liquid and round his left wrist was a bracelet of dark hair, intertwined with gold.

  “Signor der Witt,” Marina greeted him, smiling at one of her infrequent, but lucrative, clients. “How can I help you today?” she glanced at his dishevelled clothes. “You have been travelling?”

  Der Witt took of his hat and turned the brim round in his hands. “You have many clients, Signora, I thought you might be the person best placed to help me.”

  “It’s true, I rent clothes and embellishments to many in Venice.”

  She smiled, her fortune had been made over the years in the business of pretence. Venice was a city of pride; pride in beauty; pride in money and the appearance of money. A man needed to seem wealthy enough to own an extensive wardrobe, and to know of – and wear - all the royal fashions come from the courts of Spain, France and Germany. Very few could afford to endlessly replace their clothes to avoid the indignity of wearing a garment twice and so the trade of garment hiring flourished.

  For the more adventurous young men of the nobility Marina was a willing and discreet supplier. Able to furbish them with more individual styles; transparent tunics and breeches for the homosexual partners of wealthy men: ribbons and gilded bells to tie around their genitals; and the open crotch silk pantaloons favoured by the courtesans. Venetians clerics favoured love making with a whore who pretended to be a boy, and a chemise that flattened the woman’s breasts and yet left her genitals exposed was considered a delicious pretence.

  All of Marina’s elegant and expensive stock was delivered by the merchants coming from Europe and the Far East, laden with goods for the prosperous and greedy Republic. China was a particularly inventive country for the sexually deviant. Marina had been doing business with a merchant from Hong Kong and another from Istanbul for many years, buying wares that she sold - not in the respectable shop with its refined and elegant outlook to the square – but in the atelier up the narrow back stairs.