my chest might help our case. But there was no need to use my wiles, for a voice hailed me from the back of the shop. “Luciana!”
Now we had never been close companions, but the service Signor Cristoforo had rendered me in Venice had made me his friend for life. I shot into his arms, and he kissed me on each cheek, clearly as delighted as I was.
“I never thought to find you here!” I gasped. “I thought you had gone to sail the seas and map the world!”
He rubbed his bulbous nose. “Believe me, I am trying. I came back home to petition our own doge, after Venice’s doge, or rather the dogaressa . . . removed me from your city.” He smiled ruefully.
“She did not harm you?”
“Not a hair on my head.” He ruffled the matted red mass at his crown.
Once again I marveled at my mother’s weathercock nature. She gelded the boatman that was to sail me away, but the man that planned the whole thing was sent home in safety because he was my friend.
Brother Guido was still as a sculpture beyond me, and the look with which he greeted Signor Cristoforo was as frosty as a mountain blast. He was soon disarmed as the sailor clasped his shoulder. “And this is your friend, whom you went to seek? Well-a-day! I am right glad you managed to escape at last. And Nivola?”
I thought of the poor sailor, rotting without eyes or balls in my father’s prison.
“He lives,” I whispered, bowed down with guilt. I did not lie, could not share the truth lest Signor Cristoforo refuse to help us.
“I am glad of that too.” He smiled; Brother Guido smiled. Signor Cristoforo introduced Signor Bartolomeo, a fellow as ill-favored but pleasant-natured as he, and we all smiled at each other. Then Signor Cristoforo made it even easier by repeating his brother’s question. “What do you here? Can we help you?”
“We need you to read a map.” I looked at Brother Guido and he gave me a tiny nod, license to share our confidence. “We think the star denotes the site of an attack which will come tomorrow.”
I unraveled the silk from my bodice. He bent in to look at the landmass depicted, and I saw his smile die.
“Where did you get this?”
“In Venice. I found this.” I showed him the wooden roll. “And we, well, printed it in Milan.” I did not trouble him with the facts that we had used a Bible page for parchment and communion wine for ink—the story was incredible enough, and the map spoke for itself.
He took the thing from my hands, weighed it in his. “A rotogravure. A roll with the design of a map etched into it—we make them here as you can see.” His gesture took in the similar rolls upon the walls. “Maps are often transported this way on long and perilous voyages; they are not damaged by wind or rain as parchment may be, nor can they be torn. And if the ship is wrecked, they bob to the surface and float with the jetsam, to inform those that come after.” He turned the roll in his hands. “Let us just be sure—I’d like to make another print, for you did not use the best materials”—he grinned his lopsided grin—“and the design is as clear as a February fog. Con permesso?” He asked our permission, and the monk and I nodded as one.
Signor Cristoforo took us to a flat wooden block and pinned a clean square of parchment in place. He spun the rotogravure in a tray of sticky black ink and rolled it once, cleanly, across the virgin sheet. Printed expertly as this, we could now see the detail as never before, and the star that we had seen at the left upper side of the unknown country now revealed itself to be a cross, with four short arms. Signor Cristoforo seemed thunder-struck and I followed his glassy gaze to the inky roll in his hands, which stained his fingertips with ink that he seemed not to notice.
I thought I guessed the reason for his dazzlement. “Is this one of yours?”
“No.” He peered closely at the top end. “Very like. But there is a snake etched into the wood. We have a cross, the cross . . .” he said, “of Genoa.” He plucked one of his own rolls from the wall shelf and showed me.
“It’s the cross from the map!” I said slowly.
“Four arms of