“Touch that boy again,” the mysterious attacker had warned, “and the next time you land in the canal we’ll see how well you swim without knees and elbows.”
* * *
“Katerina!”
Katerina looked up from the water, wary, startled. The last thing she wanted was to be recognized. It was that scamp, Benito. He had blood running out of his nose, and looked pale and frightened. Common sense said she should paddle away immediately. It was bad enough doing runs in daylight without extra trouble.
She stopped and he scrambled hastily into the boat. “Give me a lift a bit away from here. Please.”
She sculled steadily as he attempted to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. “You going to bring trouble on me?”
“No. Trouble just got itself beaten up.” Benito paused. “But—yes. You’d better let me off. Schiopettieri are doing checks of all vessels. You got anything . . .”
“We’re inside the cordon,” she said scornfully. “Don’t you know anything? Now where were you going?”
“Giaccomo’s,” he said, gratefully.
Chapter 49
One casual question to two independent sources—Jeppo at Giaccomo’s, and Barducci’s cook Katia—had given Marco one simple, and odd, fact. The cheapest place in town for spices wasn’t Badoero’s. To the contrary, their prices were, if anything, more expensive. It was, however, the place of choice for wealthy women of Venice to buy their spices.
Rafael de Tomaso had been Marco’s source on Capi Tiepolo. Marco had had plenty of reason to visit his new friend—his good news, for one: some seaweed you could apparently boil up and make a suspension medium for paints to achieve a marbling effect. It was one of those things Marco had picked up from one of his boat-people patients, when he’d mentioned painting. They claimed their father had done it, and he was a seaman from the far-off League of Armagh. That might be true. You could find blood of many origins on the waterways of Venice. But Rafael had been wildly excited by the idea, and begged him to find out more. So here he was with a bunch of dried seaweed. And while Marco was visiting, he’d asked Rafael if he could find out something about Capi Marco Tiepolo’s background. The Tiepolo were, after all, an aristocratic family.
Though the Accademia student had been a little puzzled by the question, he agreed—especially after Marco told him that if it became any trouble to find out, he wasn’t to bother. As things turned out, it was easy for him to resolve with a couple of casual questions to his own patron, carefully spaced out over several days.
It seemed that Capi Tiepolo was a bastard son of Count Badoero, who held large estates outside of Venetian territory in Padua. Padua . . . wooing—and being wooed—by Milan. The Badoero on Murano were cousins of the count, which meant they were allied with the Montagnard-leaning faction in Venetian politics—and friendly with the Pauline orders like the Servants of the Holy Trinity.
Yet . . . most curiously, Capi Tiepolo himself was apparently one of Bishop Pietro Capuletti’s protégés. Which in the tangled weave of Venice’s politics should have made him . . . an adherent of Rome and the Grand Metropolitan, as the Capuletti positioned themselves with the Brunelli Family. Bishop Capuletti, in fact, was the Doge’s representative at the Accademia.
This was all very complicated.
Well, that sure as hell explains the Badoero connection, if nothing else, Marco thought to himself, as he hurried to reach Della Elmo’s before the lunch-time crowd did. But it surely doesn’t explain this. There’s a connection here I’m missing, and it’s a Family connection, or politics, maybe. It’s not enough to give Caesare—yet—
He scampered in at the back entrance; Michelo Viero, one of the barman’s helpers, had agreed to let Marco take his place at noon for the next several days. It hadn’t been hard to persuade him, not when Marco had offered to split the tips for the privilege of doing his work for him. Michelo had no notion who or what Marco was; Marco let him think he was a student with some gambling debts to pay and a short time to pay them in. And Lord and Saints knew that a few of the patrons of the Della Elmo’s Trattoria were quite good tippers. It was close to the San Marco, and it was fashionable right now.