I take him at his word.” He pushed past Signor Cristoforo so roughly that the sailor fell to the ground. I started forward, but Brother Guido pulled me back. He knew where I was going, of course.
“No,” he said.
“But . . .”
“No.”
“I’m not going to fuck him. I just want to talk to him. He said he wanted a whore, and he’s going to get one.”
He held my arm hard enough to hurt. The guard was almost past us, and I didn’t have time for this. “If you’re worrying about my maidenhead, I said good-bye to it long ago. Or is it my soul that concerns you? I thought you were done with piety?”
He recoiled, and I recognized with shock real pain in his eyes. “I’d rather die than let you bed another man.” He caught himself, too late.
I looked into his face, heart thumping, and saw all I’d ever wanted writ there, just as it was too late to do anything about it. I pulled my sleeve free. “Die then,” I said, but softly. “For if I don’t go, we all will.”
I ran after the guard, biting my lips and pinching my cheeks as I went, and pulling my bodice right down to the raspberries. Plucked his sleeve just before the dark streets of the stews swallowed him. “Please, sir, I couldn’t help overhearing. Let me go to the doge and I’ll save a little sugar for you.” I leaned in and gave him the full benefit of my tits, pushed up like two glorious plump partridges on a plate. Chi-Chi was back. There was little light, but it was enough. I must have been like a cup of wine in a desert for this fellow, clearly too ill-favored to get many women.
He put a filthy hand under my chin. “Very nice,” he said, licking his lips. “All right. But remember, when he’s pissed his noble seed, it’s milking time in the guard house. Just ask for Salvatore.”
“Salvatore,” I cooed, willing myself not to flinch at his breath. “That was my father’s name.”
He held my arm all the way to the doors and smacked my arse to propel me through.
I was in.
47
“An attack? At dawn? An alliance of seven city-states?”
Doge Battista of Genoa didn’t believe me, and I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have believed me.
He lounged on a scarlet velvet couch, in a strange bed-chamber striped, as the rest of the city, in black-and-white marble. He was younger than I expected, chubby, as over-stuffed as his couch, moonfaced, with a pink and white complexion so smooth it seemed he could not yet grow a beard. He had the pale blue eyes and the strawberry-blond hair of a northerner. He could have been the Cupid of the Primavera all grown-up. But even if he were Cupid’s cousin, it was clear he knew nothing of the plan. By his naked left thumb I knew him to be innocent. I also knew him to be clever—his little eyes were penetrating and his questions searching.
“And you know this, how? Yes, tell me, how does a common jade find out these lofty matters of state?”
It wasn’t going to work. I took a deep breath and threw away my alias. “Because I’m not a common jade. I’m the dogaressa’s daughter.”
“Of Venice?” His pale brows flicked upward into twin fish-hooks. “Come closer.”
The light was low in the room. I moved to the window to catch the dying day.
He looked at me lazily, considering like a cat. “You do have the look of her, ‘tis true. Like a lion’s daughter. Giovanni Mocenigo is your father? The Doge of Venice is your father?”
“Yes. And I have lately been, in my mother’s train, to the kingdoms of Bolzano and Milano where both Archduke Sigismund and Ludovico Sforza have joined the alliance. Il Moro is even now heading through the mountains with a thousand horse and ten thousand infantry. In company with him are my mother and father, and my . . .” I choked on the words. “My intended husband, Lord Niccolò della Torre of Pisa.” These names, and the extent of my knowledge, tempered his mockery a little. But not entirely.
“Prove what you say.”
For a moment I was stuck, then remembered the money belt. “Here.” I reached below my skirts. “Venetian ducats of the Mocenigo stamp. And here too,” I said, “the dogaressa’s mask.” I pulled it from my sleeve.
He raised himself from his cushions by no more than a handspan. “These things tell me no more