32

Situated in Dorsoduro, between the Grand canal to the north and the wide expanse of the Giudecca Canal to the south, Atilo’s palace occupied half of what was once a small mudflat before it was reclaimed from the lagoon. The ankle-deep channel between it and the next mudflat had been dug out to make a usable canal. The edges staked with oak pilings, lined with stone and turned into fondamente, those inland quays that ran along many canals. Although the house was brick it was faced in stone. Elegantly open galleries overlooked a red marble fountain dominating its central cortile, the private courtyard beloved by patrician families. Fretted boxwork balconies hid its public windows from the world.

Marble columns, supporting arches carved with flowers and plants and animal faces, ran around the cortile. A narrower row supported the trefoil windows of the floor above. The whole effect was of an elegant lace knit from stone.

There were two porte d’acqua. An ornate one on the Grand Canal and a slightly less grand, but more often used, one on Rio della Fornace. While the land door was close enough to Dogana to be walked in minutes. Of course, everywhere in the city was within walking distance of everywhere else.

Since Atilo didn’t trade, which made him rare in Venice, his colonnaded cortile was empty and his servants few. He entertained in the piano nobile, a wood-panelled first-floor reception room with alternating black and white tiles, huge fireplace and long windows stretching from floor to high ceiling. Furniture was sparse but the walls had Murano mirrors. And a painting of Atilo as a young admiral, by Gentile da Fabriano, held pride of place among round-faced madonnas and anguished saints.

A huge Persian carpet covered much of the tiling.

Directly above one corner of the piano nobile were the separate chambers where Atilo and Desdaio slept. A strongroom and chambers for guests took up the rest of that floor. In one of these, Desdaio’s possessions waited to be unboxed.

On the floor above was the kitchen, with an iron range venting to the sky. That floor also had servants’ quarters, additional storage rooms and attic space never used by anything other than pigeons, mice and rats. When Atilo summoned labourers to dig a cellar in the weeks before Tycho joined his household, Desdaio was puzzled. No one had cellars. In a city like Venice they were an absurdity.

But the labourers arrived towards the end of spring.

They dug where Atilo ordered, and an intense young Sicilian with greasy hair, sucked his teeth and talked to himself, before sketching plans that he scrawled over and crossed out and scrawled over again. And though the men mocked his twitch and his accent behind his back, and sometimes to his face, they dug where he told them, dug as deep as he demanded, and built a double-skinned cellar without windows. The underfloor and the cavity between the first wall of brick and the second had to be filled with fiercely puddled clay to keep water from flooding the room.

In the Griffin and the Winged Lion and the Whore’s Thighs, which is what the labourers called the Aphrodite, men drank and squabbled and talked of the strange strongroom Atilo il Mauros was building. It was agreed it must be to house Lady Desdaio’s fortune. Since he’d never bothered with such a room to protect his own treasure. Had they looked closely, they might have noticed the clay they puddled with bare feet contained finely powdered silver. Enough of it to pay them all several times over. And they left before a door was installed at the bottom of a short run of steps leading from the cortile. Its handles, hinges and locks were also silver.

“Why keep him in a cellar?” Desdaio asked.

“For his own good.”

“In the darkness?” she said. “Locked in.”

Atilo took a deep breath, wondering what reason would convince her. He could say his new slave was so dangerous it was for her own good. But then she’d want to know why he’d brought Tycho into his household.

“It’s only temporary. Until he gets over his fear of daylight.”

Desdaio looked doubtful. “You’re not punishing him?”

“I’m helping him,” Atilo promised. And he was, in his way. The alternative to Atilo’s training was death. Duchess Alexa had made her position clear. Atilo had wanted this boy, not just as his apprentice but as his heir. It was up to Atilo to make him fit for both positions.

He had a year.

Atilo suspected the time limit was arbitrary. A way of reminding him he might share her bed but she still held his life in her hands. With Alexa it was almost impossible to know. “What are you thinking,” Desdaio suddenly demanded.

“Nothing,” Atilo assured her, wishing his thoughts had been about something else. She’d heard the rumours. The whole city had heard the rumours.

There was a distance growing with every conversation he refused to have. Already he could see unhappiness in Desdaio’s eyes. This was why he’d long avoided remarriage, bedding only women he would never love. Now he had a lover who haunted his dreams, and a wife-to-be who haunted his daylight thoughts.

“My father used to lock me in the dark.”

He looked at her, wondering. All he remembered was how cosseted she’d been. How surrounded with servants and toys and nurses.

“He’s not who you think,” she said. “He’s vain and ambitious and a coward…”

A dangerous mixture. The fact she could say it made Atilo take another look at the young woman he’d asked to marry him. She was as clear-eyed, attentive and gentle as ever. But he couldn’t shake his feeling that her wits were sharper than he first thought.

“We live in dangerous times.”

As they stood in the piano nobile, looking down from an arched window on to the cortile, where the artisan who fitted the cellar door was packing his work tools, Desdaio nodded to show she was listening.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to make difficult alliances.”

She went very still and he watched her glance from the corner of her eye. Her hand shifted and one finger touched his as if by accident, remaining there. Although she gave no hint that she was aware of this. “Alliances you might not make in other circumstances?”

“Yes,” Atilo said.

“I see,” she said. “I think.”

Picking up a small wooden box, Atilo opened it. Watching as she shook out an ornate collar and held it up, letting the last rays of that day’s light play across overlapping scales of filigreed silver tied with twists of gold wire. At the bottom, a heavy pear-shaped pendant was set with rubies, pearls and squares of mutton-fat jade.

“Silver?” Desdaio sounded surprised.

“I have one too.” Atilo opened his cloak to show a new chain where his gold one usually hung. “I know silver’s for cittadini here but in my country it’s lucky. And it suits you better than gold. Silver sets off your eyes and hair.”

Desdaio smiled. “I’ll put my gold away.”

“No,” said Atilo. “Wear it. But wear this as well.”

When he looked, her eyes were bright and her chin trembled with unspilt tears and unexpressed emotion. Taking her hand, he kissed it. Seeing tears spill down her cheeks as she turned away from him. A rustle of silks, and the click of a door handle said she was returning to her chamber.

She did so in silence.

Unquestionably more intelligent than people supposed. She’d understood instantly his comment about alliances, and believed his answer about their being necessary. Whether he believed it was another matter.