Page 108 of Dark Tides
Every street led to water, every pavement ran alongside the smooth surface of a canal, or headed to a wooden bridge to connect one tiny lane to another. The canals were crowded with the little boats of traders going into the markets of the city carrying fruit and flowers and fish, local people ferrying their goods and delivering their products, and threading through it all, the sleek pitch-black gondolas with the gondoliers standing carelessly beautiful, high in the stern and propelling themselves and their passengers steadily forward, poling their craft through the canal traffic like needles through patchwork, calling a warning at every corner like the cry of a strange seabird: “Gondola! Gondola! Gondola!”
Every house had a tiny door on the narrow street for tradesmen or servants, but the grand door, the front door for visitors, residents, and guests, faced onto the water and opened to the lapping canal, so a boat could enter the house like a horse going into a stable and visitors could disembark on the private indoor quay. Sarah, peering through the open water gates, could see one or two gondoliers waiting for their masters, dressed in the house livery, straw hat in one hand, the other hand on the rearing prow of his craft, like a groom holding a horse. Someone jostled Sarah and she stopped staring and walked on.
The boys went through lane after lane and up and down over bridges and finally came to a great square with a central domed stone well in the center, caged in a heavy iron grating, surrounded by tall buildings. The little boys pointed to one with a small dark doorway and RUSSO carved in the stone over the arched door.
The boys closed on her, hands out again, Sarah gave them each another farthing, and made a shooing gesture that they should leave her. They did not argue as London urchins would have argued, they each made a little bow and disappeared in a moment down an alleyway. Sarah straightened her bonnet and strode to the door, knocked, stood back, and waited. There was a long silence and she knocked again, wondering what she should do if Livia had misled them all, and this was the house of a stranger, or an empty house. Then she heard the sound of bolts being shot back inside, the door creaked open, and a handsome man in his early thirties waited silently in the doorway. Sarah, with her keen judgment of men, honed by her apprenticeship in the millinery shop, scanned him from his expensive shoes, up his well-made suit of velvet, to his dark handsome face. She took in the gold signet ring on his finger and the slight scent of bay and vanilla. She noted the dark eyes and the slow, almost unwilling smile, which seemed to warm as he saw her, as if he were glad to find her on his doorstep. She found she could not stop herself smiling in return.
“Well, signorina!” he exclaimed, opening his door wide, speaking English. “I am Signor Russo at your service, and how may I help you?”
Sarah, dropping a little curtsey, realized that this was certainly not the elderly steward who had loved Rob like a grandson.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I am looking for Signor Russo.”
He bowed. “You have found him.”
“I am looking for Signor Russo the elder.”
“I am the oldest of my line,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I am Bathsheba Jolly, from London,” she said. “Nobildonna da Reekie’s maid. How did you know I am English?”
He shrugged. “Your hat,” he said. Sarah sensed this was not a compliment to English style. “Your perfect skin.”
Now, she blushed. “I have brought a message from her ladyship.”
He hesitated for a moment as if he were thinking rapidly, and thenhe opened the door. “Forgive my surprise. You come with a message from the Nobildonna? Of course you do! Then you must come in, come in. Forgive the state of the entrance, mostly my guests come by gondola to the water gate. Only the English would walk in Venice. Nobody else uses the street door.”
“Of course, I am too English,” Sarah said, speaking at random. “My lady laughs at me for it.”
“She is well?” he asked, leading the way across the hall, which was floored with red-and-white pavers set diagonally, empty but for two giant statues one either side of the hall, glaring at each other with sightless eyes. He led the way up a set of wide marble stairs. Sarah followed and they came out to a first-floor salon where the grand windows looked over the greenish lapping canal.
“She is very well, extremely well,” Sarah enthused, taking in the marble floor and the large marble table surrounded with weighty dining chairs of mahogany upholstered in golden velvet. The room was lined with statues, and hanging behind each one, on the silk-lined walls, were beautiful gold-framed mirrors to show every side of the polished marble figures. Sarah blinked at the opulence and looked up to see a magnificently painted ceiling and a glass chandelier reflected in the shine of the table, the glass blown into flower-like shapes in radiant colors. “Oh! What a beautiful room.”
He bowed in acknowledgment. “May I take your box? Your cape, Miss Jolly?” He hesitated. “A handsome hatbox. ‘Sarah’ is the name of your milliner?”
She let him take her cape from her shoulders and felt the light touch of his hands. “Yes, I mean, no!” she said. “That is—I don’t have a milliner—that’s where I used to work.”
“It is your first time in Venice? You must find it all very strange.”
“I cannot stop staring. Every way I look there is something more lovely.”
“The English love our city,” he agreed. “Some for its houses, some for its people. But you have an eye for beauty.”
She made a little gesture at the statues that lined the room. “You have beautiful things in your sight all the time.”
“But I never take them for granted,” he assured her. “It is an art tolearn—don’t you think? To be surrounded by beauty and never become blind to it. The art of a good husband? To never become dulled to something precious?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sarah. “Of course, you must get used to it, but sometimes it strikes you anew.”
“And what do you love most?” he asked, as if her reply mattered to him. “I have a warehouse, you know, of beautiful things. What should I show you to strike you anew?”
She laughed and thought to herself that she sounded affected. She tried to be more sober, but his intense attention made her feel giddy. “I worked as a milliner,” she confided. “I was surrounded by lovely fabrics. But the thing I loved best were the feathers.”
He laughed aloud. “You love feathers?” he said. “Allora!I shall take you to the feather warehouse and you shall see every feather of every bird under the sun.”
“You have feather markets here?”
“In Venice, you can buy anything in the world as long as it is expensive and beautiful,” he told her, and smiled at the brightness in her face. “I will take you to the feather market and to the velvet warehouse, also to the silks markets. There is a lace market and some beautiful cloth from India for saris. But I am wasting your time, forgive me. You will be here to work. Did the Nobildonna send you to me?”
