Book One
The Puppet Master
‘Do not be afraid;
Our fate cannot be taken from us;
It is a gift.’
Dante
Life is a toy made of glass; it appears to be of inestimable price, but in reality it is very cheap.
Pietro Aretino
Prologue
Venice, Italy 1548
A whisper is as dangerous as a trumpet call, they say, and in Venice a whisper remains within the Republic - for eternity. It shifts amongst the wooden poles that hold our city afloat. It clings to the agued steps and laps its tongue against the wet stonework. Sssh, it says, speak nothing, only whisper. Whisper it into the ears of the fish and the carcasses of drowned men.
I didn’t discover the truth until many years later; it was a matter about which my father never spoke. But I knew he hated me for it, for the scandal that clung to his heels, the murmurings that faded, but never completely ceased. My mother was eighteen when she gave birth to me and eighteen when she died. A week between giving birth and losing life. She was found hanged, her chemise stained with afterbirth blood. Her feet were only a hand span from the floor, the window open, church bells effusive in their Easter welcome as her eyes stared open, the whites blood spotted, her body swinging slightly in the draft. Milk that should have fed her son oozed through the cotton chemise, making plate sized orbs, and around her left wrist there was a bruise, indigo, darkening to the colour of molasses.
This is what they told me.
This is what I believed.
The physician said my mother had suffered a brain fever; ‘milk fever,’ some call it, a temporary madness. She had been so troubled that she had committed self murder and alienated herself from God whilst bringing disgrace on the Gianetti house. They said that she had regarded suicide as a blessing, a release from pain.
But in my dreams I hear her choking, see her hands scrabble at the cord around her neck, watch her feet jiggle and shudder, doggy-paddling in dry air, her bladder loosening as she suffocated.
It was my fault. Had she never given birth she would not have killed herself. I was the worm in her belly, the wasp in her head; I was the cause - and my father reminded me of it every day of my life.
Chapter One
St Mark’s Basilica,
Venice, 1549
The rest of his relations with the great is mere
beggary and vulgar extortion.
(Burckhart, on Pietro Aretino)
He was walking splay-footed, his gait typical of an obese man, his arms swinging at his sides like the oars of a boat, churning up the hot air as he crossed St Marks. Pietro Aretino, mountebank, confidante of Titian, whoremonger, literary pornographer and known across Europe as ‘the Scourge of Kings.’ As he entered the church he sensed someone behind him and, dipping his porcine fingers into the Holy Water, turned.
“Signor Baptista,” Aretino greeted the man, making a flamboyant show of crossing himself. “I heard you were away in Florence.”
“It was a short visit.”
“To see your family?”
“My family is Florentine, yes. But I was there on another matter.”
Aretino glanced at Baptista’s side, his sword’s gilded pommel catching the light from the high windows above.
“Did you find use for your ‘friend’, Adamo?”
“My friend is seldom lazy for long.” He replied, his oval face perfectly composed, clean shaven, the sloe eyes unreadable.
Cunning bastard, Aretino thought, waddling to his seat as the choir began singing. Immediately Aretino’s gaze moved from Baptista to the young boy soloist, then his attention passed to a stern faced man in one of the front pews. Almost as though he was aware of being watched, Barent der Witt glanced up, curtly returning Aretino’s effusive bow of the head.
“You said you had news for me?” Aretino whispered to Baptista as they took they seats at the head of the congregation.
Knowing that he could be seen by seen by everyone, Aretino’s presence worked as a reminder to those who feared him, which numbered hundreds in Venice. Every lie, every secret, every insult, Aretino took care to hoard. He had made his own personal abacus of sin; rows of petty spites, their numbers increasing into slanders, crimes, depravity, even murder. Blackmail was his peculiar skill; holding knowledge that was so damaging - that a man, or woman – would pay to keep such matters quiet. With impunity he bled the coffers of the nobility. And those of kings.
But now Aretino was adjusting his clothes, the damson red of his cape voluminous against the black garments beneath. It irked the writer that Baptista was so well muscled and lean; seemingly incapable of gaining poundage from the sweetmeats and the glacied fruits that Aretino ate so greedily. He was envious of his imperviousness to heat too; in the midst of a Venetian summer Baptista remained composed, his clothes never marked by sweat patches. The same sweat patches Aretino would struggle to conceal under layers of the finest linens from Egyptian merchants.
People might go in fear of Pietro Aretino, but Mother Nature remained unimpressed.
“You have news for me?” Aretino repeated. “Is it concerning the Dutchman being back in Venice?”
“No, this is not about der Witt.”
“Then whom?”
“Gilda Fasculo.”
Aretino shrugged his thick shoulders, his head almost touching Baptista’s otter sleek hair as he bent to reply. “Who is Gilda Fasculo?”
“A usurer in the Jewish Ghetto.”
Aretino blew out his lips, his eyes fixing on the priest for an instant before moving back to the solo choirboy. “Usury is forbidden in Venice.”
“She does not call it usury.”
“A cat is a cat if it meows.”
“Unless someone has taught it how to bark.”
Aretino laughed, a low sound, at the back of his throat. “A woman, you say?” He thought for a moment; the ghetto - which had been established in 1512 – had not initially interested him, but as the Jews had become more established Aretino was curious to know more about their legendary business acumen. “So have all the Jewish men suddenly become eunuchs to let some hag run their business?”
“Gilda Fasculo is very skilled and she has support.”
“Not from the Republic —”
“The Republic, signor, is as supple as a new whore.” Baptista replied.
“And this new whore, who are her protectors?”
“Her sons, Federico and Angelo—”
“Children!”
“Men in their twenties. Newly come from Florence with their mother...” Baptista’s voice rumbled underneath the singing of the choir, Aretino following every word as he continued. “... Their father died and they came here – to the ghetto - for sanctuary.”
“Was the father a usurer?”
“A merchant who died suddenly —”
“And left his family penniless?”
“He owed money and goods, that was why they fled Florence to escape their creditors.”
Aretino tapped Baptista’s knee; an action his knew the younger man detested. “And you, my dear Adamo, do you know who these creditors are?”
“I believe I do.”