The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

least bit of sheepishness or embarrassment at the obvious pilfering of the Basilio pantry. He spattered off a stream of Venetian, and Tomas laughed and touched the cap covering his straight dark hair, sweeping me with an admiring glance. Then he and the rest of his family disappeared through the gate.
    I hardly knew what to say. The kitchen door opened again, and Giulia came ambling out, a little girl on either side. She was jabbering away, smiling, until she saw me standing there with Zuan.
    “Zuan!” she snapped, and then a string of words I didn’t understand, though their meaning was clear enough. Stay away from her.
    He frowned. “Ciao, mamzelle,” he said as he turned away, but I grabbed his sleeve.
    “Please,” I said. “I came here to find you. Is there a bathing tub somewhere about? Even a hip bath would do. And I need some water brought up to the sala.”
    He paused, glancing at his sister, who came sauntering over. The little girls ran to the wellhead, which was so shrouded in draping fog that it looked as if they sat suspended on a cloud to chew on their hunks of bread.
    “Zuan is very busy,” Giulia said to me, and after he told her what I needed, “Oh, I am so sorry, mamzelle, but the stove is not working well today. No water can be heated.”
    I glanced at the smoke coming from the chimney. The stove was working perfectly well. I had no doubt there was hot water.
    “I don’t need much of it,” I told her. “It isn’t to be a warm bath.”
    “There are public baths,” she said. “You can go there.”
    “Unfortunately I cannot take M’sieur Farber to a public bath,” I said nastily and insistently. “I will need a bathtub in the third-floor salon, and water to fill it.”
    She regarded me coolly. “Ah, but Zuan is far too busy to bring water. And you do not wish for us to be in the way, yes?”
    “Giulia—” Zuan began.
    She gave him a look that silenced him.
    Zuan’s gaze dodged to me, and then away. He mumbled something beneath his breath and went off, disappearing into the receiving court wing before I could call him back.
    “There is a tub in the storage room,” she said. “And buckets.”
    Given how often I’d seen her flouting my directions, I was not inclined to release her so easily now. “I can hardly cart that to the third floor myself.”
    “You have said you do not wish our help.”
    “Yes, but surely you can see my difficulty. There must be someone else here to help me, as Zuan is so busy . Perhaps you. Or those girls. Or perhaps you could call back your brother and his wife, who I think owe you a favor given the amount of food they carried away. I see that the Farbers have been very generous. Perhaps more so than they wish to be.”
    She regarded me coolly. “For only a few centimes, you can live very well in Venice.”
    “I doubt the Farbers have been told that.”
    “I am just the housekeeper,” Giulia said, not a flinch in those stony eyes, not a bit of surrender. “I do not decide such arrangements. If you have questions, you should speak with the padrona .”
    “Perhaps I will.”
    “As you wish, mamzelle.”
    “Or I might be persuaded to ignore it. If someone can help me with M’sieur Farber’s bath.”
    She shrugged. “I am so sorry, mamzelle, but I cannot just conjure up someone when no one is here. Perhaps tomorrow.”
    Or the day after, or the day after that. I understood the unspoken words. She turned away with a smug smile, spoke sharply to the two girls on the wellhead, and then the three of them headed off in the direction Zuan had gone.
    I stared after them in angry frustration. It was all the more enraging because she was right; I had told her I’d wished for no help. I had half a mind to just let it go. There were other treatments, other things to try.
    But my father’s instructions had been very clear, and I could not afford to fail. I went in search of the storage room and the bathtub.
    It didn’t take long. The storage room’s door