Reign of the Favored Women Read Online Free PDF Page A

with the stone nymph.
    “Well done, lad!”
    Andrea looked helplessly down at the bloom of wine on his new lace ruff. A hurried abandonment of the Turkish in his costume upon his return to Venice had led to this ostentatious and brazen style. And now it was ruined with wine caused by a slap on the back and the hearty greeting of Messer Foscari, his future father-in-law.
    I am not meant to be a Venetian fop, Andrea scolded himself.
    The older man, who ignored the damage he had caused, was accompanied by Andrea’s father, Agostino Barbarigo, the Republic’s stern-faced proveditore.
    Andrea shifted nervously under his father’s gaze, feeling like a child, his elopement with Sofia thwarted again in Ca’ Foscari. He felt the cut under his arm itch as it sloughed its scab. He remembered the eunuch.
    It hardly seemed possible that the two beings were one and the same, the eunuch in Constantinople and the masked figure in Foscari’s hall. They were so disparate in time and space. And in Andrea’s mind, the masked destroyer of happiness had gained in stature over the years, haunting his hopes and dreams like something supernatural.
    Well, Andrea was not about to let anyone, especially a ghost from the past—a demon from hell, rather—thwart him now.
    Besides, it was too late. He’d tossed the dice amongst the uprooted cobbles of the Arsenal’s workyard. They must fall where they fell.
    Andrea strained his attention over the rather rhythmless music of the madrigals, out into the sultry night, for one single thump that would change the evening’s rhythm all together.
    By God, what time was it? Surely the bells had already rung midnight and he had missed them with all this revelry. But how could that be, when any such communal sound made him jump since his return to Christendom? He missed the muezzins.
    “In truth, young messere, what do you think?” Foscari laid a confidential arm about Andrea’s shoulders.
    What do I think about his daughter? The thought left Andrea at a loss for words.
    “What do I think about what, sir?” he managed to get out before he said something more foolish.
    “I mean, what do you think about Chios?” Foscari said.
    “Chios?” Andrea repeated with a gulp.
    “Do you think we can take it?”
    Because his son failed to give an opinion, Agostino Barbarigo stepped into the breach. “This close to the end of the season, the Turk will not be expecting a new offensive.”
    Sofia had all but promised that if he were successful—
    Foscari said, “No. And if the Genoese cannot hold such a prize, gateway to the East, the Republic surely stands to inherit.”
    “The chances of the success of our fleet seem fairly good, don’t you think?” Andrea’s father said.
    Andrea tried desperately to determine where east might be, the direction of Chios, the island that was the hushed topic of conversation. East was the direction, too, of the Arsenal where, as he had seen that afternoon, the outfitting of the fleet for this enterprise was progressing apace. Because there was no telling east from west now in the dark, he feared his own plans, as opposed to the Republic’s, might have miscarried.
    Suppose Giustiniani—that Genoese Chian who had no desire to see Venice take what he considered to be his own—suppose he were discovered. Suppose he were already taken by the night watch. Although rash enough, Giustiniani’s was not the sort of bravery that would stand up to the first hint of torture. He might be confessing his accomplice’s name even as they stood there chatting among the roses and oleanders.
    Andrea thought he could hear the patrol’s gondola slipping down the rancid waters of the Grand Canal, over the madrigal, over the echoing night songs of the gondoliers. Any second now, any second, they’d be pounding for admittance at the Foscaris’.
    “Andrea, answer our kind host,” his father hissed.
    “A young man.” Foscari laughed. “His mind on my daughter.”
    “You must have