Uriel accepted this, and relaxed slightly. “True. But I do not hold with too much wine drinking. And I want to tell Father Sachs about the death of the bishop. He was of course a soft Venetian, but open to Pauline persuasion.”
Manfred put a booted foot up on the bench. “Heh. But the Holy Saint Paul himself said: ‘Take a bit of wine for the good of your stomach.’ ”
Uriel brightened. Ecclesiastical argument and knowledge of biblical quotations was his weakness. “True, but . . .”
He made no objection to them pouring him a glass, which he drank as he talked at length, and he didn’t even notice them finishing the rest of the bottle before they left. Finding him and Von Gherens a gondola was by this stage possible, and Manfred kindly volunteered Erik and himself to walk.
* * *
“It’s August, Manfred. August in Italy. I sweat standing still. When we’ve finished going to visit Francesca, which is what you intend—I can tell—we take a boat. In fact we wait five minutes and we take a boat to Francesca.”
“Just exactly what I was going to suggest,” said Manfred.
Chapter 80
Marco pulled himself back into the middle of his bed, sitting on the handsome wool blanket cross-legged and pondering the silk-wrapped, sealed package that Petro Dorma had sent over by messenger. There was more than enough light from his tiny slit-window to read the inscription on the package.
By what means the dagger had been taken from the Signori di Notte and whisked to Ferrara heaven only knew. Heaven and Petro Dorma.
Marco opened the outer canvas, then the box wrapped in it, tipping out the package inside. Two hand-spans long, narrow, and heavy. A main gauche in the new Toulouse style . . . Marco knew that before he even opened the box. He’d hefted too many blades in his time not to know the weight and balance of a knife. Even with it well wrapped and in a wooden box, he could tell.
Silk cords twisted about the final wrapping inside the box in complicated knots; red silk cords in patterns Marco knew, patterns difficult to duplicate. The final knot had been sealed with a wax stamp, imprinted with the Dell’este crest.
Hazard, those knots said, and Be wary. You only tied a package coming out of Ferrara with those knots when you thought there might be a possibility the package would be opened by unfriendly hands somewhere along the way.
All of which meant that this was the very blade that had gone upriver to Ferrara and Duke Dell’este, the town’s iron-spined ruler.
The knife that had slain Bishop Pietro Capuletti. The Ferrara blade, a signed blade with the intaglio crest etched proudly on the pommel nut for all to see, pointing straight to Valdosta—and another clan, a Venetian clan.
House Dorma. A new Power, and rising, which made their situation more precarious than if they had been established movers-and-shakers.
Guilt by association implicated Casa Dorma; and most especially Petro Dorma, who had taken in two long-lost Valdosta boys and had tied silken cords of tighter binding to Marco, and so to the steel of Ferrara.
Someone had used a Ferrara main gauche to sever more than Pietro Capuletti’s life. Someone had gone to expensive lengths to bring a signed Valdosta knife down-river to assassinate the pro-Pauline prelate.
Marco rested his elbows on his knees and stared wearily at the thing, bright on the dark wool blanket of Dalmatian weave.
I didn’t expect an answer so quickly. Maybe I ought to put off untying those knots. My life’s complicated enough as it is.
But the knots, and the message in them, did not permit any such evasions. Particularly not now, not when Petro Dorma needed any scrap of information, however hazardous, to counter the attack on their houses.
Slowly, reluctantly, Marco reached for the packet; slowly broke the seal, and gave the cords the proper twist that freed them.
The silk fell open, falling on the open oiled canvas that had contained the box. Marco pulled the silk away and the knife slipped free of it. The knife, and a tube of closely written paper. But it was the knife that held the eye: shining, beautiful in its way, like a sleeping snake.