Then she collapsed in a fit of giggles and ran the few short steps to stand in front of Venier. He leaned forward eagerly, plucking at the laces of her gown. The other women gathered close, laughing and clapping with calculated amusement. As Venier’s hands stumbled, the brunette and redhead both reached to help, pulling loose Chiara’s stays, tugging down her camicia.
Gio knew a woman’s body—knew it well, in all its iterations. The rough pink spots some could get at the elbows or below the knees. How flesh tended to fold around the bones, how it would fold around itself if there were more fat on the muscle. We artists aren’t so different than butchers, we’ve seen it all, he’d say to his models, especially the new ones, to reassure them. No need to be nervous. But now here he was, watching Venier undress the girl, his veins pulsing as if she were the first.
Her silks had ended in a pile of ripples at her feet, so that her body rose from them like a stamen, her long necklaces of pearls and gold chain sliding into the hollow between her breasts. Lean muscles expressed themselves under curves of flesh; Gio caught a pink flush of areola as she turned, then a shock of downy dark. He willed himself to focus on her bone structure, to measure her proportions. Lazily, she extended both arms toward the ceiling again, arching her back, smiling up at the apostles with both eyes closed. Venus as coquette, drunk on wine and youth. In his mind’s eye, Gio saw portraits and sculptures—her form echoing for eternity in paint, in marble, in bronze.
Venier broke the spell with a crude grasp.
Spinning her around, he slapped her buttocks and pushed her toward the center of the room, the evidence of his palm still rosy on her skin. The girls squealed agreeably. Corvino glared out the window. Sashaying toward a divan, Chiara settled into place in one fluid movement—aiming her body away from Gio to reveal the long curve of her spine, the suggestive depressions at the base of her back. Then she turned, glancing coyly over her shoulder.
“Chiara, the breasts!” Venier demanded.
“No.” Gio’s voice burst out, surprising even himself. He held one hand up to keep her still. “This is better—it’ll allow for some imagination. The girl knows what she’s doing.”
Chiara failed at hiding her smile. Venier pursed his lips a moment, considering the pose, then conceded. “You’re the artist.” As though unable to stay after being contradicted, he stood. The servant girl emerged from the corner to push the heavy doors open, while Corvino darted to pluck Venier’s cape from the chair back. He shook it out with a flourish, then held it open for the statesman.
“I’ll look forward to seeing how it comes along.” Venier shot a meaningful look at Gio, then busied himself arranging his robes. “Chiara, Corvino will escort you to your appointments.”
“I can escort her.” Again, Gio surprised himself. Corvino narrowed his eyes. Still in position, Chiara tilted her head. Gio stumbled on, “I’m certain Corvino has more important duties to attend to. And my humors would benefit from leaving the studio more often.” A plausible excuse, but only just.
Venier hesitated. Gio held his breath. Then, it was decided. “Very well. See that you do.” With a small flick of his robe, Venier strode out the door, Corvino trailing three paces behind. Gio listened to the staccato of their boots retreat into echoes as the two men descended the main stairs and continued out into the courtyard.
He remained alone with the women.
* * *
Hundreds of miles away, sun glared brilliant on the Bosporus strait. From the decks of their boats, the janissaries could still hear the bells of the Hagia Sophia beckoning the city to prayer. The whole of Istanbul lay behind them, as if it were floating on the waterway: domes catching the sun, minarets stretching to pierce the sky. Masts of trading ships crowded the harbor, their holds heavy with spices, silks, and slaves. On the other side of the fleet, the horizon stretched out flat and endless.
Then the wind caught their sails, and a mighty gust propelled them west, toward war.
3
ROSE SAT AT THE TABLE in the brightly lit dining room. Joan had put out her seasonal centerpiece: three mason jars, lace doilies tied around their circumferences with raffia, stalks of cheery yellow daffodils crowded inside. That meant it was spring. In the corner, a red-headed five-year-old was happily removing his clothing—holding out at arm’s length first his sweater, then his undershirt, before letting them drop to the floor. One foot was clad in a neon blue sock, the other needed washing. From the living room came the strains of Bizet’s Carmen.
L’amour est un oiseau rebelle / que nul ne peut apprivoiser…
“Henry!” Joan strode in from the kitchen just as the boy was considering how best to tackle the issue of his pants. She crossed her arms and glared disapprovingly first at Henry, then at Rose. Rose shrugged.
“He seemed so happy.”
The boy beamed his best smile up at his mother, revealing a missing front tooth. Unconvinced, Joan rolled her eyes and shook her short red bob back from her face.
“Dinner should be done soon,” she said, bending for the clothes pile.
Normally, when Rose came across a particularly interesting document, she’d have rushed home to tell her father all about it. She’d have found him in his favorite chair by the fireplace, orange and blue checked wool blanket draped across his knees. Perching on the leather ottoman beside him, Rose would’ve described the palimpsest, speaking over the raspy white noise of his oxygen machine. They’d nicknamed the squat beige device “Asclepius,” after the Greek god of medicine. Her father had been a professor of classics, and even through the drowse of morphine he’d have asked all the right questions: how degraded were the pages, how legible was the undertext. Together they’d have speculated about the author’s milieu, her father no doubt recommending some obscure manuscript detailing late Renaissance Venice.
Instead she’d come home to an empty chair, the setting sun touching light to the far edge of the checked blanket, now folded neatly on the seat cushion. Rose had stood in her own entryway, feeling the weight of that silence—then before she knew it, she was knocking at Joan’s door, stepping into the swaddling comfort of a lived-in home, with Henry’s toys scattered across the carpet and a stack of dishes in the sink. The smell of pot roast and carrots and a rustling from the office down the hall, where Joan’s husband, Mark, was sorting papers, sending out one last email before dinner. Joan calling to Rose from the kitchen, excited to hear about her day, even if she had no clue what a palimpsest was.
Rose used to hate Joan. The first time they’d met, they’d both been on break from college, summoned home to Connecticut to have Thanksgiving dinner with their parents’ “new friends.” Rose had spent the whole meal staring at Joan. At the white barrettes in her hair, little bows molded into the plastic. At the collegiate sweater from her West Coast school and her iridescent pink nails. In the middle of dinner Joan had paused to put on lip gloss, using the wand from a pale tube with the word WINK printed in glitter along one side. The scent had wafted over to Rose, a sticky-sweet intrusion.