Lucifer's Shadow

22 Rebecca receives a gift

Complications! Complications! Before the first evening concert when, nervously, we might try out our scheme, my dear sister, we found ourselves enmeshed in plots of my uncle’s making. The negotiations with Delapole continue. Leo decided we must join the Englishman on a boat journey across the lagoon to Torcello with a small party of musicians from La Pietà, Rebecca among them, to provide entertainment along the way.

A pretty group we made too: Delapole smiling benevolently as he handed out money right, left, and centre, to the boatmen, to the players, to just about everyone but Leo. Gobbo wore some shiny finery that made him look like a clown’s baboon. Rousseau fluttered about, still angling for a job. Rebecca, without her scarlet scarf, felt sufficiently brave to make her own way to meet us, joining three other female players, plain girls who looked as if they didn’t see the light of day much. She cast me a familiar glance and then set her eyes on the water. It was best, we both knew, to keep our relations private in such a gathering.

The summer heat receded the moment our ski f sailed past St. Mark’s and out into the lagoon. It was unusually clear. To the west lay the mountains, still capped in snow, to the north Torcello, and to the east the low, blue flatness of the Adriatic, with scarcely a wave on it, as if the ocean itself felt like dozing on this idle afternoon.

The musicians had struck up some of Vivaldi’s lesser stuff as soon as we set sail from the small jetty outside Ca’ Dario. Quite why, I don’t know, since almost everyone on board talked over them as if they were mere decoration. The priest would have had a fit if he’d witnessed it.

The city receded into the distance. The little band played and played, red Veneto wine flowed profusely, and the party settled into a lazy glow while lounging on the cushions in the stern. Delapole could not take his eyes o f the musicians, Rebecca more than any. It strikes me as odd that the Englishman, who’s a handsome, amiable fellow in the prime of life, appears not to own some mistress. Perhaps he does and keeps her out of sight. Perhaps there is in Delapole a secret to match Oedipus’s sad history. But he wasn’t the only one whose eyes were on stalks. Uncle Leo was at it, too, openly admiring Rebecca with something close to lasciviousness.

At around three we entered the narrow canal that leads to the centre of the island. The captain pointed our bow at the tall tower of the basilica. Torcello was the capital of the lagoon before Venice and lost its position only because of the malarial nature of the swamps. Now a handful of peasants and ageing clergy live there, both sets trying to swindle visitors for the odd ducat or two.

We disembarked close to the basilica and, as a group, inspected the place. Rebecca, being in her Gentile guise, was allowed through the door but did not loiter long, and I understood why. The west wall is covered with a vast mosaic depicting Judgement Day. It’s a spectacular thing and must make the bucolic locals positively quiver with fear every time they see it. Some very cross-looking devils are busy pushing sinners down to Hell along with every other race on the earth that is not pale-faced and Christian too. She looked at those Saracens and Moors all going to their doom through nothing more than an accident of birth, then excused herself and went outside. When, after a suitable interval, I followed, she was seated on a giant throne hewn out of rock, with some local crone pocketing a coin for allowing her this dubious privilege.

“Do you know what this is, Lorenzo?”

“A chunk of broken Roman stone, like most of the stuff around here, I imagine.”

“Don’t be so cynical. The good lady tells me it is nothing less than the throne of Attila!”

“Hmmm. And there was me thinking the Hun never did manage to conquer Italy.”

“Perhaps it is a prize of war?”

She was so taken by the thought that some element of history might hang around the thing I didn’t have the heart to tell her the likely truth: it was just another piece of trickery to bring in the tourists. “Perhaps.”

“Hah!” She waved her hand in the air. “I can feel the very power of this rock infect my veins! Behold, slave! I rule from the Caspian to the Baltic! They call me lord from Gaul to Constantinople!”

“Actually,” I felt it relevant to point out, “they call you ‘Flagellum Dei.’ The Scourge of God.”

“Then some part of Attila’s spirit has been reincarnated in me already! Kneel to your master, villein! For do I not own your very soul?!”

Grinning like a simpleton, I got down on one knee. “Naturally, and I do you honour, great lady. Or is it lord? But if you do not accept the existence of God, how can you believe in reincarnation?”

“Insolent slime! Do you think the human spirit so flimsy it cannot disperse itself a little from generation to generation without some arrogant push from the sky? Why, we’re all a witch’s brew of everyone who’s gone before us, man and woman, mixed together like wine and flesh in a stew. We inhale the humours of our ancestors with every breath. I have the temper of Caesar, the cunning of the Hun, and the vocabulary, on occasion, of a Russian fishwife. Look to your manners, cur, or you’ll hear it!”

“And the face?”

She paused over that one. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

The words just tumbled out of my mouth. “Helen of Troy. No other possibility.”

Suddenly she wore an expression that told me I had destroyed the game. Oh, dear sister! One day I must find the strength to speak out loud the contents of my heart.

I have no idea how your own a fairs go — you scarcely mention them in those scraps of paper that are supposed to pass as letters. I don’t know whether to wish you this exquisite torture or pray for your deliverance to a saner, more even-tempered life.

“They’re coming, Lorenzo.”

The party had left the basilica and was ambling back to the ski f, Rousseau twittering away like a canary and stabbing the afternoon air with that long, thin index finger of his.

“Then we had better join them.”

There must have been some accidental tone of regret in my voice. Watching carefully, to make sure she wasn’t seen, Rebecca extended her hand and, for one short moment, touched my cheek. “Never despair, Lorenzo. Soon we venture out into the city like thieves in the night. This is no time for the faint of heart. Besides…”

She drew herself up to her full height, like some ancient Roman empress surveying her empire. “I have sat upon Attila’s throne. Fortune is on our side. We are invincible!”

I set this down now, sister, not knowing whether any will ever read these words after your eyes have scanned them: I doubt I shall ever see Rebecca look so magnificent again. On Torcello, with the golden tower of the basilica and the jumble of rose-tiled roofs behind her, arms folded across her chest, eyes blazing with determination, she looked like a goddess. I could have thrown myself at her feet then and begged for her hand. Instead, I cast a wary glance at the party nearing the boat, who were now becoming interested in our absence.

“We must go, Rebecca,” I said with a note of caution in my voice I wished I could remove.

She was right about the good fortune, though. They played for us most of the way back, and Rebecca threw her entire soul into the business, sawing away at that rough-hewn piece of wood to make sounds that by rights should never have issued from such a cheap and unworthy instrument. Slowly, even Delapole’s party, now well in its cups, began to realise something was up. The chatter ended, even from Rousseau, and as our ski f zigzagged, chasing the soft breeze across the lagoon with the fiery ball of the sun beginning to touch the mountains to the west, they fell into silence and listened, at last, to the music.

When we rounded the great bulwarks of the Arsenale, so close we could see the fires of the workmen behind the gates toiling on new warships for the Republic, the other players whispered to Rebecca. Modestly, she moved her chair forward in the boat, and as we sailed past La Pietà, she tore into the same exercises and études I had heard her play when she auditioned for Vivaldi.

The power and virtuosity of her performance left us all breathless. We passed Salute and I saw a priest who had come out of the church stand on the edge of the stone jetty, straining to hear the tempest of sound that enveloped those of us fortunate enough to be on the water. Even Uncle Leo seemed moved, though I could not help noticing that while the rest of us seemed entranced by Rebecca’s art, it was her face and form in which he seemed most engrossed. He had drunk more than any, and it does not make him more pleasant.

She ceased playing as we pulled into the berth at the front of Ca’ Dario. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I heard such hurrahs and applause that I thought the acclaim must come from all around us, from the gondolas on the canal, from the windows of the palaces, the streets and jetties, not just our own party. It made me both proud and nervous.

Delapole stood up in the stern of the boat, a little unsteadily, walked forward, and shook her by the hand in a formal, fatherly fashion.

“You are the very wonder of the day,” he said. “Those mosaics and that cathedral are quite gone from my head now. All I hear is your fiddle. What is your name?”

“Rebecca Guillaume. Thank you, sir.” She glanced at me, and I could see she realised the possible danger of this kind of recognition. The day was failing too. We would have to hurry to be back at the ghetto before nightfall.

Delapole picked up her fiddle. “I know enough about these things to realise this piece of firewood isn’t worthy of you. Tell me, Rebecca, in an ideal world, what instrument would you choose?”

“One that is most unfashionable these days, sir. A Guarneri, but not by Pietro of this city, though they are very fine. He has a cousin, Giuseppe del Gesù, in Cremona, who makes big, bold instruments that the crowd deem ugly. I played one once in Geneva. It has the bravest, strongest tone you will ever hear in any fiddle.”

“Then you will do a rich man a favour, Rebecca Guillaume. It’s off to Cremona in the morning, Gobbo. Speak to this Giuseppe. Tell him we have a marvel of a musician here who thinks his big, ugly fiddles are just the ticket, then haggle the fellow to the brink of death.”

“Sir!” Rebecca’s hands shot to her face. “I cannot possibly accept such a gift. It is more money than our family might make in a year.”

“Money, money.” The Englishman wafted his hand nonchalantly in the air. “What’s it for if you can’t throw a little at art and beauty once in a while?”

Leo’s eyes positively glared at that. I suspect our uncle thought the cash he’d expected by way of a printing commission was now going in the direction of Rebecca’s fiddle.

“No,” she said most firmly. “It isn’t right.”

“Then I shall merely have the thing delivered to you, dear girl, and you can place it on your mantelpiece as a parlour decoration if you wish. Come. We must celebrate inside! Drinks! Tidbits! And I shall demand a song of you, Rousseau, a pretty Parisian serenade.”

I made sure she caught my eye then. The sun was half down over San Marco. We needed to be heading swiftly back to the ghetto.

She managed to extricate herself from the party with little difficulty. They were fast on the way to becoming decidedly drunk, except for Gobbo, who was mouthing curses about his mission in the morning. Before we left, Rebecca strode over to him and issued one final instruction.

“There are fakers in the city,” she told him. “Make sure you deal only with Giuseppe himself and buy an instrument that has his label on it. There should be the cipher IHS and the inscription ‘Joseph Guarnerius fecit Cremone, anno…’ and the year of manufacture.”

“Anything else you want while I’m there?” Gobbo replied with an ugly smirk. “The odd dress or two? Some nice scent? I bet you’d know how to use ’em.”

Quite rightly, she turned her back on him, and we made for the door, followed all the way by Gobbo’s beady eyes.

I used what little coin I had to find us a gondola that took us straight to San Marcuola. Then we walked hurriedly for Cannaregio, where, close to the ghetto, she took hold of the collar of my jacket and gently dragged me into the half light of a narrow alley. We stood there peering into each other’s face.

“Lorenzo,” she whispered. “I will have a Guarneri! I will have a proper instrument for the first time in my life!”

I thought of Attila’s throne and wondered if perhaps there was indeed some fairy-tale power hidden in the grey and ancient rock. “You deserve nothing less. But we shouldn’t forget there is danger here. For us, and for Jacopo too. We must be cautious.”

“Yes, and die of old age in our beds, never having tried to touch the sky! Oh, Lorenzo. There’s nothing won in this world without risk. But I promise. I shall be modest and unobtrusive from now on. A quiet, obedient girl.”

I laughed. She snorted. I stifled the urge to take her in my arms and said simply, “I think that’s wise.”

“But I wish the concerto I finished writing last week to be published and performed, Lorenzo. It is very good, I think. Leo may be just the man.”

In that dark, musty-smelling alley, the entire world turned upside down and spent a good interval that way before righting itself again.

“A concerto? What are you thinking? They will see through our game at La Pietà immediately if you make yourself more public than you are already.”

“I merely said I wished my work performed and published. Not that I should be the one whose name is attached to it. To begin with, anyway.”

With that she reached forward, held me very gently, and kissed my cheek, once. “There is much to talk about. And much to teach you. But if we do not get past my jailer soon, it won’t matter a damn anyway.”

Then Rebecca Levi, also known as Guillaume, brushed past me back into the street. Incapable of rational thought, I raced after her.