have to wear my all-enveloping long cloak, which would not permit any quick draw-and-lunge.
Meanwhile, I made cunning plans. On the second day of vigil, I wrote a note, most carefully drawing the characters in my schoolboy hand: “Will he be at both the Funeral and the Installation?” I regarded that critically, then underscored the he so that there should be no mistaking whom I meant. I painstakingly drew my name underneath, so that there should be no mistaking the note’s author. Then I did not entrust it to any servant, but carried it myself to the casa muta, and waited for another interminable time until I saw the he leave the house, dressed in dark mourning clothes. I went around to the back door, gave the note to the old hag doorkeeper, and told her I would wait for a reply.
After another while, she returned. She bore no reply but beckoned me with a gnarled finger. Again I followed her to Ilaria’s suite of rooms, and found my lady studying the paper. She looked flustered, somehow, and neglected to give me any fond greeting, saying only, “I can read, of course, but I cannot make out your wretched writing. Read this to me.”
I did, and she said yes, her husband, like every other member of the Venetian Grand Council, would be attending both the funeral rites for the late Doge and the installation ceremonies of the new one when he had been selected. “Why do you ask?”
“It gives me two opportunities,” I said. “I shall try to—accomplish my service—on the funeral day. If that proves impossible, I will at least have a better idea of how to go about it at the next gathering of nobles.”
She took the paper from me and looked at it. “I do not see my name on this.”
“Naturally not,” I said, the experienced conspirator. “I would not compromise a lustrìsima.”
“Is your name on it?”
“Yes.” I pointed with pride. “There. That is my name, my lady.”
“I have learned that it is not always wise to commit things to paper.” She folded and tucked the paper into her bodice. “I will keep this safe.” I started to tell her just to tear it up, but she went on, sounding peevish, “I hope you realize that you were very foolish to come here unbidden.”
“I waited to make certain he left.”
“But if someone else—if one of his relatives or friends was here? Listen to me now. You are never to come here again until I summon you.”
I smiled. “Until we are free of—”
“Until I summon you. Now go, and go quickly. I am expecting—I mean, he may come back any minute.”
So I went home and practiced some more. And the next day, when at sundown the pompe funebri began, I was among the spectators. Even the least commoner’s burial in Venice is always dignified by as much pageantry as his or her family can afford, so the Doge’s was splendid indeed. The dead man lay not in a coffin but on an open litter, dressed in his finest robes of state, his stiff hands clasping his mace of office, his face fixed by the pomp-masters in an expression of serene sanctimony. The widowed Dogaressa stayed always beside it, so draped in veils that only her white hand was visible where it rested on her late husband’s shoulder.
The litter was first laid on the roof of the Doge’s great buzino d’oro, at the prow of which the gold-and-scarlet ducal flag hung at half staff. The bark was rowed with solemn slowness—the forty oars seeming scarcely to move—up and down the main canals of the city. Behind it and around it were grouped black funeral gòndole and crape-hung batèli and burchielli, bearing the members of the Council and the Signoria and the Quarantia and the city’s chief priests and the confratèli of the arti guilds, the whole retinue alternately singing hymns and chanting prayers.
When the dead man had been sufficiently paraded on the waterways, his litter was lifted off the bark and onto the shoulders of eight of his nobles. Because the corteggio then had to wind up and down all the
Meanwhile, I made cunning plans. On the second day of vigil, I wrote a note, most carefully drawing the characters in my schoolboy hand: “Will he be at both the Funeral and the Installation?” I regarded that critically, then underscored the he so that there should be no mistaking whom I meant. I painstakingly drew my name underneath, so that there should be no mistaking the note’s author. Then I did not entrust it to any servant, but carried it myself to the casa muta, and waited for another interminable time until I saw the he leave the house, dressed in dark mourning clothes. I went around to the back door, gave the note to the old hag doorkeeper, and told her I would wait for a reply.
After another while, she returned. She bore no reply but beckoned me with a gnarled finger. Again I followed her to Ilaria’s suite of rooms, and found my lady studying the paper. She looked flustered, somehow, and neglected to give me any fond greeting, saying only, “I can read, of course, but I cannot make out your wretched writing. Read this to me.”
I did, and she said yes, her husband, like every other member of the Venetian Grand Council, would be attending both the funeral rites for the late Doge and the installation ceremonies of the new one when he had been selected. “Why do you ask?”
“It gives me two opportunities,” I said. “I shall try to—accomplish my service—on the funeral day. If that proves impossible, I will at least have a better idea of how to go about it at the next gathering of nobles.”
She took the paper from me and looked at it. “I do not see my name on this.”
“Naturally not,” I said, the experienced conspirator. “I would not compromise a lustrìsima.”
“Is your name on it?”
“Yes.” I pointed with pride. “There. That is my name, my lady.”
“I have learned that it is not always wise to commit things to paper.” She folded and tucked the paper into her bodice. “I will keep this safe.” I started to tell her just to tear it up, but she went on, sounding peevish, “I hope you realize that you were very foolish to come here unbidden.”
“I waited to make certain he left.”
“But if someone else—if one of his relatives or friends was here? Listen to me now. You are never to come here again until I summon you.”
I smiled. “Until we are free of—”
“Until I summon you. Now go, and go quickly. I am expecting—I mean, he may come back any minute.”
So I went home and practiced some more. And the next day, when at sundown the pompe funebri began, I was among the spectators. Even the least commoner’s burial in Venice is always dignified by as much pageantry as his or her family can afford, so the Doge’s was splendid indeed. The dead man lay not in a coffin but on an open litter, dressed in his finest robes of state, his stiff hands clasping his mace of office, his face fixed by the pomp-masters in an expression of serene sanctimony. The widowed Dogaressa stayed always beside it, so draped in veils that only her white hand was visible where it rested on her late husband’s shoulder.
The litter was first laid on the roof of the Doge’s great buzino d’oro, at the prow of which the gold-and-scarlet ducal flag hung at half staff. The bark was rowed with solemn slowness—the forty oars seeming scarcely to move—up and down the main canals of the city. Behind it and around it were grouped black funeral gòndole and crape-hung batèli and burchielli, bearing the members of the Council and the Signoria and the Quarantia and the city’s chief priests and the confratèli of the arti guilds, the whole retinue alternately singing hymns and chanting prayers.
When the dead man had been sufficiently paraded on the waterways, his litter was lifted off the bark and onto the shoulders of eight of his nobles. Because the corteggio then had to wind up and down all the
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