Chapter 23

Chapter 23

I was bobbing on Ca’ Chiaramonte’s landing with its silver-topped black-and-white poles, digging into my purse for the money to pay the motoscafo driver, when the palazzo’s massive front doors cracked open and Santoro emerged, my brother-in-law Fernando behind him.

“Diana,” Fernando said, his rich voice a balm to my jet-lagged and jangled nerves. “Janet. What a beautiful evening for your arrival.”

“She is here! She is here!” Santoro’s arms waved in the air.

Neither Janet nor I was the reason for the majordomo’s agitation.

“No bed made with her favorite linens. No clothes pressed and waiting in the wardrobe. No flowers in the piano nobile as she likes.” Santoro broke down in an unintelligible babble of Italian, Greek, and Arabic.

Vampires were famous for their composure—especially the vampires who served the de Clermont household. The cause of his distress emerged into the bright Venetian sunshine.

“My unexpected arrival may have been too much for poor Santoro,” Ysabeau admitted, an épée in one hand. She paused to adjust her Dior sunglasses, providing the passing tourists with an opportunity to admire her quilted fencing vest embroidered with black bees and slim black trousers tucked into thigh-high boots.

Alain Le Merle, Philippe’s former squire and still a venerated de Clermont retainer, slipped around her to help Santoro with our luggage.

“Janet,” Ysabeau said, bestowing a kiss on each of her granddaughter’s cheeks. “How was the flight?”

“Flawless and a bit cold. What you’d expect, really, flying on Baldwin’s jet.” Janet eyed Ysabeau’s outfit and accessories. “You look well, Grand-mère. The French musketeer look suits you.”

“If I look well, it is because of Venice’s bittersweet beauty,” Ysabeau said, dismissing the suggestion that clothes maketh the vampire.

“Permit me, Serèna Diana,” Santoro said, taking the Bodleian tote bag from my grasp. “You and Dònna Gianetta must go inside now with Ser Fernando and Dònna Ysabeau. The tourists…”

“I believe Ysabeau’s work is done,” Fernando said, dimples flashing. “She’s caught the eye of the curious, and set every vampire tongue wagging. Too bad we wasted Santoro’s time running a message to Domenico. We could have just waited for the gossip to reach him.”

Fernando’s responsibilities on the Congregation had changed him. There were fewer ghosts flitting through his eyes, and he carried himself with a renewed sense of purpose.

“There is no better place to be noticed than Ca’ Chiaramonte,” Ysabeau said, brandishing her sword.

“And so news of Diana’s arrival will be all over the Veneto by dawn,” Fernando replied. He offered his arm to Janet. “A drink?”

“Whisky would be heavenly,” Janet said, accepting his offer. “And do call me Gianetta from now on; I rather like it.”

Ysabeau and I followed, leaving Santoro and Alain to argue over which suitcase would be next to enter the palazzo.

“You’re very quiet,” Ysabeau murmured, steering me around the prow of the de Clermont gondola, which was in the entrance hall and covered in piles of stained rags and tubs of polish. It would gleam and catch light like the waters of the lagoon by the time Santoro and Alain were finished withit.

“Bad night,” I said, not wanting my mother-in-law to worry. Matthew had been subdued and distant when Ike picked us up to go to the airport, and the children had noticed. There were tears and pleas for me to stay. I was exhausted, anxious, and filled with guilt.

Marthe and Victoire, Ysabeau’s trusted companions, waited for us at the bottom of the grand staircase, ready to lead us to the piano nobile.

I greeted them both, and they bestowed sharp glances on me. They, too, knew something was out of joint.

In the light-filled chamber overlooking the canal, with its sweeping views of the busy Venetian waterways and the grand houses that lined them, I traced the inscription chiseled into the decorative band under the mantel: What nourishes me, destroys me. It had been Matthew’s motto long before it was Kit Marlowe’s. Today it made me think of Naomi, and my mother, and the higher magic that even now rose in my veins. Would it destroy me, too?

“Do sit, Diana. Have some prosecco. Or tea, if you insist.” Ysabeau held a silver goblet grand enough to have once graced the doge’s table. “You will not bring your destiny closer by standing up to greet it.”

Victoire disappeared to fetch a fresh bottle of wine and I rammed my hands into the pockets of my linen trousers to keep them from visibly shaking. The cards hopped to attention, shifting underneath the gauzy fabric.

Marthe and Ysabeau pitched forward, fascinated by the movement.

“The black bird oracle,” I apologized. “It peeps when it wants my attention.”

It was my attempt at a joke, and I smiled. No one else did.

“It has mine,” Ysabeau murmured.

I drew out the silk bag and sat in the Savonarola chair by the fire. I hesitated before opening it, unsure how the cards would behave in a strange place surrounded by so many vampires. But the black bird oracle was as eager to see and be seen as Ysabeau. One tug on the silk cord and it took flight.

“Birds,” Marthe said, wonderstruck at the sight of the flapping cards.

Marthe was right, as usual. How had I not seen the similarity before?

Ysabeau extended a regal, clenched fist as though she were on a hunt with Emperor Rudolf. Two cards settled on the back of her hand.

The Queen of Vultures. The Key.

Another card perched on Marthe’s head. Breath. She chuckled at the card’s tickle in her hair and another card came to rest on her knee. Earth.

A murmuration of cards surrounded Fernando. They dove toward his heart, then flew out to a slight distance, then dove again like hummingbirds seeking nectar from a flower. Fernando gasped. Then he laughed.

I was used to Fernando’s chuckles, his warm smiles, and his indulgent grins whenever Jack or the twins were around. His laughter was new to me, light and rich, full-throated and full-hearted, too.

The cards of the black bird oracle winged their way back to me, except for two that continued to buzz and hum around Fernando: The Phoenix and Spirit . When they’d taken their fill of Fernando’s mirth and returned to my outstretched palm, I replaced the oracle cards in the bag for safekeeping.

“Do they always do that?” Ysabeau wondered, flushed with excitement.

“Fly? Yes,” I answered. “But not like they did just now. I think they were identifying you, so that I could recognize you if The Phoenix, or Earth, or The Queen of Vultures appeared—though to be honest, Ysabeau, I had you pegged as The Queen of Vultures all along.”

“I am delighted,” Ysabeau remarked, glowing at the dubious compliment. “Vultures feed on what others leave behind in the mistaken belief that it is of no value.”

Marthe rose, responding to an unspoken cue from her mistress, and dumped a basket filled with paper onto the gleaming table set in the window recess where the light was strongest.

“Goddess above,” Janet murmured. “Are those floor plans?”

“Some,” Ysabeau replied, gliding toward the table. “I removed them from the rubbish on Isola della Stella. Most creatures do not appreciate the importance of such things, but I love a good map. There are always forgotten things to be found there, for those who wish to remember.”

“Shouldn’t they be in the Congregation archives?” Fernando said as we followed Ysabeau toward the light.

“Perhaps.” Ysabeau waved a hand in the air, unconcerned with something so insignificant as legal custody.

Maps, diagrams, and charts unspooled over the table in all directions, finding the edges and draping down to the floor—a treasure trove of knowledge about the development of the Congregation’s headquarters in Venice.

Victoire returned with a tray of glasses filled with golden, sparkling liquid. She distributed one to Janet and Fernando. I needed to remain clearheaded and refused.

“It seems you know where all the bodies are buried on Isola della Stella, Granny Ysabeau,” Janet said, looking over the table in amazement.

“Corpses? They are in the plague cemetery by the old landing,” Ysabeau said promptly, rummaging through the paper and vellum. She unrolled a 1483 floor plan that showed the changes that had been made to the island’s monastery to transform it into Celestina, the Congregation’s base of operations. I recognized notes in Matthew’s hand, and Philippe’s decisive scrawl. The central meeting chamber and cloisters were unmistakable, and other ranges of rooms were assigned to daemons, vampires, witches, and their personal servants. It was easy to forget that the vast, sparsely occupied buildings had once housed a multitude of witches, daemons, vampires, and even a few humans.

“Is this the Labyrinth?” I asked Janet, pointing to a small, meandering path surrounded by buildings outside the range marked Casa delle Streghe.

“No, that’s just our wee maze,” Janet said. “The Labyrinth is much larger. It was constructed later, too.”

“The floor plan will be useful in case you need to make a quick escape from Celestina, but it will not help you find a way into the memory palace. For that we need another map.” Ysabeau rummaged through her papers once more. “Here is the initial concept for Isola della Stella that Philippe laid out with Signor Lombardo before Matthew and his men broke ground.”

The bird’s-eye depiction showed orchards, gardens, a repair yard for boats, a place for small craft to unload cargo, and the aforementioned cemetery.

Adjacent to the Casa delle Streghe were courtyards and walled gardens that led down to the edge of the lagoon, one bearing the name il Sentiero Oscuro— the Dark Path—and another Lo Stregozzo, or The Witches’ Processional. My third eye winked with curiosity about the history and purposes of these spaces.

I noticed something else. Floating in the shallow water of the lagoon off Isola della Stella was another tiny island. Venice’s waterways were studded with these minute outcrops, some too small for even a single sheep to graze upon.

“ Il Memoriale delle Streghe, ” I said, reading from the marginal note. “The Witches’ Memorial. Is that the memory palace?”

“That’s Isola Piccolo.” Janet pointed to a spot in the water between the drop of land and Isola della Stella. “The memory palace is here.”

“It is now,” Ysabeau said. “It was supposed to be on Isola Piccolo, and consists of only a three-story tower with a single room on each floor. Then Roberto Rio came to Venice, with his visions and strange philosophies, and the witches abandoned their first site and decided on something more ambitious.”

Ysabeau pulled out a rendering of an elaborate structure studded with ornate architectural details.

“Roberto’s plan was very ugly, but the witches liked it,” Ysabeau commented, handing me the drawing. It was made with pencil, the delicate shading giving it depth and dimensionality. “Philippe made the witches enchant it so that none of us would have to see it.”

Roberto Rio. I stared at the drawing, not believing my eyes.

“You mean Robert Fludd!” I exclaimed. “The English daemon devoted to the arts of memory.”

“You have heard of him, Diana?” Ysabeau’s delicate brows rose. “ Incroyable, for he was an eminently forgettable creature. Philippe kept Roberto from ruining the meeting chamber with his bizarre frescoes, but only by encouraging the witches to employ him.”

“ Incroyable, indeed,” I murmured, studying the fa?ade of the witches’ memory palace. Fludd had employed a raking view to give a sense of the layout of the witches’ extension into the lagoon as well as how the elevation would look within the existing architecture of Celestina and against the backdrop of Venice. Fludd’s memory palace on Isola della Stella resembled one he’d included in his massive encyclopedia with the equally monumental title of Utriusque Cosmi historia, or The metaphysical, physical, and technical history of the two worlds, namely the greater and the lesser. No wonder Philippe had required the use of a disguising spell before he permittedit to be built.

I’d known that Fludd traveled through Europe and into Italy at the turn of the seventeenth century, and long suspected he was a daemon, but never surmised that the journey was connected to the Congregation. Now that I did, Fludd made historical sense for the first time. The daemon was charismatic, pugnacious, and stubborn, with a creativity that verged on madness—a classic expression of daemon power. His contemporaries had not known what to make of him, and the intervening centuries had not always been kind to his intellectual reputation.

Ysabeau rummaged through the papers on the table once more.

“It was Roberto who proposed moving the witches’ most valuable treasures here, to take some pressure off their overburdened storage,” she continued. “He assured Philippe it would be straightforward to construct, only requiring posts driven into the mud to hold up a stone platform on which the building could rest.”

My mother-in-law made it sound as though this were an easy proposition. On our tours of the palazzos that had been shored up by this method, including Ca’ Chiaramonte, Matthew had convinced me it was fiendishly difficult, not to mention dangerous.

“The Labyrinth posed a far more difficult problem,” Ysabeau said. “There was not enough room on Isola della Stella to plant one that would suit the scale of Roberto’s petite folie while meeting the witches’ peculiar needs.”

Fernando coughed, tickled by the notion that Fludd’s three-story monstrosity could be called little, even though folly was accurate.

“Before, the witches only wanted to reach the center of their Labyrinth and return to their chambers,” Ysabeau explained with a moue of disappointment. “After they saw Roberto’s designs, they wished to pass through the Labyrinth and enter the folly on the other side. This required not only an entrance, but a separate exit—which is not found in a labyrinth.”

I closed my eyes against last night’s memories of the Proctor labyrinth.

“You seem to know more about the witches than I do, Ysabeau,” Janet said sharply.

Ysabeau ignored Janet’s remark. “But this has not always been the case with labyrinths. Roberto and I conferred on how he might solve this impasse. Et voilà! ”

My mother-in-law brandished a piece of paper. On it, in Ysabeau’s unmistakable hand, was a note in Italian: Here is the Babylonian maze. Accompanying the note was a sketch of an intricate labyrinth with an entrance on one side, and an exit opposite.

“The Labyrinth isn’t that intricate,” Janet said after looking at the sketch.

“How could it be, when the paths are made of water?” Ysabeau replied. “Still, it was a start.”

“Water?” I looked from Ysabeau to Janet, waiting for someone to explain.

“The Labyrinth on Isola della Stella, like the memory palace, was built in the lagoon,” Janet said.

“How do you get through it?” I couldn’t imagine a floating labyrinth, or a boat that could navigate its twists and turns.

“You row.” Ysabeau gave me a brilliant smile.

“In a wee mascareta no bigger than an eggshell, not some whacking great Viking longboat,” Janet added.

“But this does not matter.” Ysabeau’s smile widened. “You will not go through the Labyrinth, but around it.”

“That’s impossible, Granny,” Janet protested. “The memory palace has unscalable walls and no windows. There’s no way to get into it except through the front doors, and the only way to reach them is through the Labyrinth.”

“Then why did they build this?” Ysabeau’s delicate fingertip, with its exquisite French manicure, pointed to a place on the map where a small square was tucked against the side of the building.

We bent over the plan.

“Is that—a terrace?” Fernando squinted more closely at the tiny detail.

“It faces Venice. Maybe it’s a platform to view city celebrations like Redentore?” Janet suggested.

“It is a landing for a boat. Not a mascareta but something larger,” Ysabeau said, her expression triumphant. “See. There are four round posts on the corners.”

They looked like dots tome.

“The witches could not move everything from their old tower to the new palace through the Labyrinth,” Ysabeau replied. “It is one thing for a single witch to paddle a mascareta, but quite another to transport heavy objects and crates.”

“Wouldn’t we need to remove the disguising spell on the memory palace in order to locate the landing from the outside?” I asked. “Someone’s bound to capture it in a selfie, and then Baldwin will have an even bigger crisis on his hands.”

“After the fireworks start, there’s utter darkness beyond Saint Mark’s and Giudecca,” Fernando said. “I doubt anything would appear in a photo at such a distance. To reach Isola della Stella before night falls, you would need to be beyond the festival traffic in Saint Mark’s basin by late afternoon—”

“And past the pontoons by nine o’clock,” Ysabeau added.

“It might work,” Fernando said, cautious.

“But we’ll still have to get onto the terrace, climb the stairs, and wander inside,” Janet pointed out.

“No one in their right mind would build a mooring where there wasn’t an easy way to unload cargo,” I said, “not even Robert Fludd.”

“ Exactement. At last, you see.” Ysabeau threw up her hands in relief. “Tomorrow morning, all eyes will be on Ca’ Chiaramonte, which will be decorated with flowers from the rooftop to the landing, just as it was when Philippe was alive. We shall string garlands on the gondola, too, and I will visit friends along the Grand Canal. Later, I will meet Domenico’s barge, and together we will process to the floating bridge for our passeggiata to Giudecca. You can make your getaway the day after, when I will lay flowers for poor maestro Titian and drink to the memory of Dònna Veronica. Perhaps I will be able to persuade Domenico to dry his tears long enough to read something from her verses.”

With Ysabeau’s cache of maps, Janet’s firsthand knowledge of the Isola della Stella, and Fernando’s Venetian connections, we soon had a plan for how to land on Isola della Stella and enter Celestina without detection. From there, we would commandeer a mascareta from the boatyard to take us around the outer walls of the Labyrinth to where we hoped the disused cargo dock was still in place.

“Honestly, it may no longer exist,” Janet confessed. “I’ve certainly never noticed it. Then again, I wasn’t looking for it.”

“Fernando’s right. Even if the landing is long gone, there must be some back or side way into Fludd’s palace,” I assured her.

“The only thing we haven’t discussed is what to do about Domenico.” Fernando poured a healthy glug of amarone into his glass. He had switched from fizz to something more fortifying. “He’s as slippery as a fish and as two-faced as Janus.”

“Leave Domenico to me. He may suspect my motives, and wonder about the reason for Diana’s presence here, but he will not discover why we came to Venice until after we burgle the memory palace.” Ysabeau’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

Our supposed intelligence operation had turned into a heist.

—

We picked up the delivery boat we would use in our criminal enterprise on the Santa Chiara Canal, at the far end of Dorsoduro by the train stations. Santoro piloted the craft through the traffic with the nimbleness of a salmon swimming upstream, darting in and out of the vessels taking passengers toward the festivities in Saint Mark’s basin. We rounded the western end of Giudecca, skirting the southern shore until we passed by the domed, white marble church known as Il Redentore. The gondolas had not yet lined up to form the temporary floating bridge that would extend from the main island to Giudecca, though Ysabeau would be on her way there any moment.

We’d left Ysabeau in the salon on the piano nobile, draped in Dior from head to toe. There had been loose talk that she might please the locals in Dolce & Gabbana or some other Italian designer, but Ysabeau wanted to be visible against the sea of black and red favored by the Venetian elite. She had decided on an elegant beige crocheted dress for her afternoon boating. An ankle-length tulle confection with a satin underslip waited in a bag near her chair. The skirt was embroidered with emblems from the tarot—an homage to the black bird oracle, Victoire explained—and Ysabeau planned on donning the ensemble in the church before the fireworks began.

Santoro steered from Giudecca to the neighboring island of San Giorgio Maggiore, where another Palladian domed building—this one a Benedictine abbey—marked the boundary between the basin, the Grand Canal, and the larger Venetian lagoon. It was just four o’clock, but the traffic was already making Santoro’s job impossible. We made slow progress as every conceivable style of boat from gondolas to pupparini entered the area to drop anchor for their evening picnics and the fireworks that would follow.

When we at last entered the farther reaches of the lagoon, I heaved a sigh of relief.

“I don’t think we were spotted.” Janet had been keeping a steady watch for members of the Congregation, while I scanned the waterways for a nudge, tingle, or icy touch that would indicate that a daemon, witch, or vampire was tracking our route.

“You should not worry so much, Dònna Gianetta,” Santoro chided. “ Dònna Ysabeau is a very fine distraction, and she has not been seen in Venice for some time. Every creature in the city will be transfixed by the miraculous vision of La Serenissima come home at last.”

Whether the lack of traffic outside the city was caused by Ysabeau’s magnetic presence, or the natural ebb and flow of a festive Friday evening, we soon reached Isola della Stella. Santoro shut off the motor and dropped anchor just outside the island’s protective wards.

It would be hours before the sun set. Only then could we set our plan in motion.

“Now we wait,” Janet said, tugging her hat lower over her eyes to shield them from the bright light playing on the water.