2 - Painted Veil by Beverle Graves Myers Page B

or sack bobbed into view. They rolled him onto the pavement just beneath our platform. The poor creature had drowned, but not during that afternoon’s festivities. He had been in the water more than a few hours. His skin was bloated and bloodless, as white and slick as a porcelain dinner plate. The fish had nibbled at him here and there, but enough of the man’s features remained for me to recognize him. I was staring down into the lifeless face of our missing scene painter, Luca Cavalieri.

Chapter 9
    “No, not a drowning.” The doctor sank his chin into the white neckcloth that topped his severe black coat and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “This man had the life choked out of him by human hands.” He poked at Luca’s neck with long, sure fingers. “Here, you see? The cartilage of the larynx is broken and, even with this amount of lividity, the deep bruising around the throat is evident.”
    We were gathered around a makeshift bier in a storeroom at the back of the Doge’s palace: the Savio alla Cultura, his Ministro del Teatro, Messer Grande, Maestro Torani, and I. Doctor Gozzi, the Doge’s personal physician, had been summoned to examine the body. When the discovery of Luca’s corpse had threatened to ruin the bridegroom’s reception, the theater’s performance had been swiftly curtailed. To draw attention away from the gruesome sight beneath our platform, the Basilica choir had been ordered back into song while the
sbirri
and the soldiers and a gaggle of minor officials scurried to restore order.
    Torani had slipped a hand under my arm as I had pushed through the crowded Piazzetta, so consumed with hurt and shame that I even forgot to look for Annetta and Gussie. I was surprised that the director found me. I was trying to slip away unseen, keeping my chin down and my tricorne low on my forehead. Luca’s corpse had provided a shock, but the more painful blow was the crowd’s refusal to hear me sing. I had been ready to offer them every pleasure my voice could bestow, yet they dismissed me like a clumsy footman who had dropped a tray loaded with the master’s best china. My one thought was to leave the capricious mob to its revelry and get home to my refuge in the Cannaregio, but when Torani begged me to accompany him in his sorrowful duty, I found myself unable to refuse.
    They had laid poor Luca out on a rough table. His bloated corpse had been stripped, then covered to the waist with a piece of well-worn canvas. The few dark, curling hairs sprouting from his blanched chest put me in mind of the pin feathers on the carcasses hanging in the window of the poultry shop. Luca’s clothing and a length of dark cloth that had been wound around his legs and entwined with the gondola’s scarlet train made a soggy pile on a barrel next to me at the foot of the table. Wanting to look anywhere but at the wreck of the man who had been so cheerful and charming in life, I squeezed a rivulet of water from a ragged edge of the heavy cloth and spread it out over my palm. It was velvet of a deep purple hue, a finely figured cloth that would once have been high quality.
    The Ministro, Signor Morelli, stood at my other side, covering his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. Cold water had delayed the body’s decay, but the smell was distinctly unpleasant nevertheless. The two palace servants holding lanterns for the doctor were turning a sickly shade of green that I feared mirrored my own color.
    The doctor noted Morelli’s squeamishness with a scornful glance. “Once they come out of the water, they do start to stink almost immediately. At least we don’t have maggots to deal with when the lagoon delivers them to us,” the medical man observed with a hint of amused superiority.
    Beside me, Morelli swayed slightly and I reached out to steady him. The muscles of his arm could have been tightly coiled springs. I thought he might bolt, but the nobleman kept his place at the table.
    “Come, come.” The Savio directed his