The Mirror Thief(70)
The Contarini palace rises on the intrados of the Grand Canal’s southward bend, its imposing fa?ade flush with those of its neighbors. As they approach, a sleek gondola rowed by a tall Ethiope in rich livery pulls away from the water-gate, and Crivano wonders how many others have been invited to dine.
Marco, the senator’s youngest son, greets him with an embrace beneath the gate’s broad tympanum. We’re honored that you’ve come, dottore, the young man says, guiding him to the stairs. We’re blessed with fine weather today, so my father has chosen to hold the banquet in the garden.
One of Marco’s nephews, a chubby boy of around seven, takes Crivano’s hand and leads him up two flights to the great hall on the piano nobile. The furnishings he knows from previous visits—suits of armor, shields and bucklers, sunbursts of swords and spears, all framed by tattered banners bearing emblems and devices he recalls from his childhood—are now clustered at the hall’s far end, and the nearby walls are lined with folded wooden screens, rolled black curtains, and partly assembled scaffolding. Before he can make a closer inspection, the boy tugs him into the blazing atrium.
A long table shaded with parasols stretches between two neat rows of almond trees, their branches already sagging with green fruit. A dozen or so servants—twice the usual retinue, temporary help hired for the Sensa—set places across its oaken expanse with goblets and flatware. Crivano recognizes a few of the milling guests from state banquets and earlier introductions, but most faces are strange to him.
The senator himself stands at the edge of the grass, looking well-rested and magnificent in a lynx-trimmed velvet robe. He claps his big hands warmly on Crivano’s shoulders. I am gratified to find you well, senator, Crivano says.
Contarini’s response is spoken in the language of court, not that of the Republic; foreign visitors must be present. I give credit to you and to your physic, dottore, he says. It has restored me so completely that I am scarcely able to recognize myself.
The senator turns to the man on his right, a gaunt and balding Neapolitan of sallow complexion. This is the heroic personage of whom I spoke, my friend, he says. Dottore Vettor Crivano, a child of Cyprus like myself, who suffered years in infidel bondage, who made a daring escape from Constantinople and helped restore the remains of the valiant Marcantonio Bragadin to the hands of the Republic. Devoted in equal measure to wisdom and to brave deeds, he graduated from Bologna with distinction, and has come our city to commence his career as a physician. Dottore Crivano, I don’t believe you’ve met Signore della Porta.
Crivano and the Neapolitan exchange polite bows.
Dottore Crivano’s father, Contarini continues, was chief secretary to my kinsman Lord Pietro Glissenti, the last chamberlain of Cyprus, and served him faithfully until they were both massacred at Famagusta. Were that sacrifice insufficient to place the Contarini family in his debt, Dottore Crivano has recently cured me of a sleeplessness that has troubled me since well before Lent. You really should seek his council about your own ailments, Giovan. He is the best man to help you.
You are unwell, signore? Crivano asks.
The Neapolitan’s voice is quiet and crisp, like a shuffle of documents. It’s nothing at all, he says. I’m fine.
Contarini leans toward Crivano, lowers his voice. He coughs, he says. At times I imagine his heart will leap from his jaws like a toad, he coughs so much. It’s worse after he eats, which is why he refuses to dine with us. One hesitates to believe, dottore, that such terrible noises can come from the lungs of such a small man.
I pray you will forgive my discourtesy, senator, the Neapolitan says, but as you have no doubt noticed, the sun nears its zenith. With your permission, I will see to the children.
Della Porta takes his leave across the peristyle, entering the great hall. Contarini claps Crivano on the arm with a conspiratorial wink and turns to greet another guest. Momentarily at a loss, Crivano fades into the crowd, seeking faces he knows, pondering the Neapolitan. Della Porta, he thinks. From Naples. Why is this familiar?
The servants have begun to seat the guests. Crivano winds up between a sullen and heavily veiled maiden and an elderly gentleman called Barbaro—a procurator of San Marco, quite deaf—who loudly denigrates the glassmakers’ guild until the first course arrives. The glassworks of the Medici, old Barbaro shouts, makes lenses of quality, but it has no prayer of competing with the factories of Holland. And where do their finest craftsmen come from? They come from here! We treat our guildsmen like merchant princes, and they conduct themselves like roundheeled whores!
Crivano wants to raise a polite dissent—a pointless impulse, since the procurator is certain not to hear him—and he’s sifting his brain for what little he knows of optics when recollection comes. I beg your pardon, lady, he whispers to the veiled girl. The Neapolitan gentleman who was here a short time ago, the one called della Porta—is he not Giambattista della Porta, the author of Magiae Naturalis, and the famous book on physiognomy?
Beneath clouds of gray lace the girl’s eyes are riveted to his own, but she makes no reply.
Or perhaps, Crivano says, you know him as a playwright, and not as an eminent scholar? As the author of the popular comedies Penelope, and The Maid, and Olympia?
The girl’s voice is a contralto murmur, each word precisely formed. I grant that Signore della Porta is eminent, she says. And he is certainly a scholar. I suppose we may therefore speak of him with justification as an eminent scholar.