3 - Cruel Music Read Online Free PDF

those foreign fellows. To improve on their theories, he adds a bit here or changes something there, so his efforts generally come to naught. A quiet, calm naught if we’re lucky.”
    “What does Senator Montorio think of these experimentations?”
    “When Zio Antonio is around, Zio Stefano keeps his scientific enthusiasms to himself. He knows where his bread is buttered. My uncle the senator would be furious if he knew how much time Zio Stefano spends in his workroom. After all, what could possibly be gained by blowing up glass vials or making sparks dance on a wire?”
    I nodded slowly, and Benito raised a knowing eyebrow. I fancy we shared the same thought: Tito Amato, virtuoso soprano, was not the only unwilling creature at the end of Antonio Montorio’s leash.
    ***
    The next two days brought calm seas and favorable winds that delivered us to Ancona in good speed. The port dated back to the Roman emperor Trajan’s time and had been built on a thumb of land that jutted into the Adriatic Sea well south of Venice. Though Ancona’s harbor was a marvel of ancient engineering, the silt and refuse of the intervening centuries had accumulated to the point that ships of greater tonnage than our small tartan could no longer cross the harbor bar.
    Several years ago Pope Clement had instituted the Herculean project of dredging out the channel and reconstructing the breakwaters. The news had caused an uproar on the Rialto. Venice was already losing valuable trade to cities better situated to take advantage of the expanding Atlantic commerce. Like the Montorios who sailed to the Levant to meet spice caravans that had crossed the desert from India, most of the great trading houses had fallen back on their traditional eastward trade routes. The restoration of a rival port that would cut precious days off a run to the eastern Mediterranean threatened the livelihood of nearly every Venetian. Never a city known to bend a willing knee to Rome, Venice’s senators had reviled Pope Clement in the Great Council, and her common citizens had staged a bloody riot before the residence of the Papal Nuncio.
    When our little party disembarked at the pier, Abate Lenci first produced papers for the customs inspector, then roused some porters drowsing beneath a canvas awning. Leaving the abate to negotiate fees, I strolled along the water. The town enjoyed a fine aspect. Green and brown hills snaked down from the rocky uplands to curl around a cuplike harbor of sparkling blue water. The day was pleasantly warm, so I decided to take a closer look at the scaffolds and cranes on the rubble-strewn dike that had caused such a stir. Before I’d covered three more strides, Lenci grabbed the back of my cloak and jerked me to a standstill.
    “No time for sightseeing,” he said. “A coach will be waiting for us at the Mercantile Exchange. It’s been arranged.”
    “Surely another hour won’t make any difference. I’d like to see how the breakwaters are progressing and have a look at the ruins of the Roman arch on the hill over the town.”
    The dogged abate pulled me in the opposite direction. “My orders are to convey you to the Villa Fabiani with all possible speed. I must do as I am instructed, Signore. Perhaps that is a lesson you should be learning as well.”
    Lenci located the Exchange, and while my trunks were being secured to the roof of the coach, he sat us down to a sloppy, hurried meal at a nearby inn. To further add to my humiliation, he sent the porters back to the ship to retrieve another gift for Cardinal Fabiani, a basket containing a prize ham that had been cured on a Montorio estate. When the coach set out for the highroad that led across the Italian peninsula to Rome, I was rubbing shoulders with a forty-pound hunk of pork that reeked of garlic and rosemary.
    Though the way was steep, we covered forty miles that day. Abate Lenci inquired about the cities I’d visited on my operatic tours but soon fell silent after receiving only