or businesses. They came in tears, in hope, even sometimes in elation. And, very often, they came with anxious questions about Balthazar Grattiano. They never noticed Bianca, sitting so quietly in the shadows, and she heard them all.
Balthazar was handsome, one of the most handsome men in Venice. That was obvious just to look at him, of course. He was rich, the only son of the fabulously wealthy and powerful Ermano Grattiano. He was also now nineteen, of an age to marry, to take on the responsibilities of a patrician gentleman. Yet he did not seem inclined to do any such thing, preferring to spend his time with courtesans, gambling, drinking, or, most shocking of all, watching the ships being built at the Arsenal.
Bianca heard all this, heard the whispers of his great “inventiveness” in bed, his mystery and elusiveness. Heard the blushing pleas—would he one day marry her? Make her his exclusive mistress?
But Bianca knew more than his good looks, his riches, his sexual prowess. She looked into his luminous dark green eyes and saw a longing to match her own. A deep, endless pool of vast sadness.
She did not have her mother’s gifts. The cards were just painted pasteboard to her, the future a blank. But from her infancy she had been taught about people. Had seen them come and go in her mother’s house, heard their deepest fears and wishes, their goodness and their malevolence. She could read them, in her own prosaic way. When she first saw Balthazar, first looked into his beautiful eyes, she saw not the smug satisfaction expected of such a privileged young man. She saw only that sadness—and that swirling pool of anger.
In her everyday life, she would not expect to meet anyone like Balthazar Grattiano. They were not of the same status, and their lives did not overlap. Her mother did not mind Bianca listening to fortune-telling sessions. Maria was open about the realities of life, but she was also protective. Bianca was not allowed to go dancing with young men, or even to leave the house at night. Especially during this season of Carnival. She heard only about the masked, wine-fuelled parties from her mother’s visitors.
But Balthazar’s father, the powerful and fearsome Ermano Grattiano, had recently begun coming to the house, seeking card readings from her mother. Maria sent Bianca away when he was there, but she heard from the maidservant that Ermano, who had buried three wives, wished to marry again. He was passionately desirous to have more children, and was convinced Maria could tell him the right lady to bear those babes, convinced the cards would reveal his wife, his destiny.
Balthazar sometimes came with his father to these sessions, always waiting outside on the walkway. That was when Bianca first saw him, one day as she came home from the market. He leaned against the peeling stucco wall, wrapped in a rich fur-trimmed cloak, a book open in his hands.
Bianca, too, loved to read, a strange accomplishment for a young woman. She also learned languages, English and Spanish, and account-keeping, to run her own business one day. A bookseller on the Rialto sometimes loaned her volumes, yet never enough to satisfy her vast desire for knowledge. Her curiosity as to what such a handsome, well-dressed man was doing reading outside her house overcame her usual shyness, and she asked what the book was.
He glanced up at her, and that was when she saw it—that great sadness, that barely leashed fury against she knew not what. He never seemed to turn that anger on to her, though. Instead, he smiled, and showed her his volume on navigation, surprised she could read the Spanish words. After that, whenever Ermano would come to discover more about his destined bride, Bianca would slip down to talk to Balthazar, to see what he was reading, to talk about the strange glories of the world outside Venice. The wonders of England, Spain, France, Turkey—even the new islands beyond the seas.
Bianca had never heard anyone speak of such things, and she was fascinated by this new vista of great lands. Fascinated by Balthazar himself, by this tiny glimpse of wishes and dreams hidden so deep beneath a glittering and careless façade. By this burning desire to run away, to soar free into some unknown fate.
But it frightened her, too, this view outside her narrow existence. This strange, wondrous young man.
“Why,” she asked him once, “would you want to leave Venice? You have everything here.” She could not imagine then that anyone could desire more than riches and fame, an old family name, which Balthazar possessed in abundance. Could not imagine someone would desire more than Venice, which was all the world and more, a sparkling golden place on the water. She herself would surely one day marry and raise a family, help run her husband’s business, and be bound to her home and duties. Her only consolation was that it would be here, in Venice.
Balthazar—he had no need really to go out and seek his fortune, as those who travelled to the New World did. It lay at his very feet, wherever he walked. Money, glory, love. How could he want to leave it all?
But he merely smiled at her, that sweet, sad smile, his beautiful eyes old. So very old. “Come with me, Bianca,” he said, taking her hand. It was the first time he had touched her, his fingers cool and strong over hers. She shivered at the sudden rush of pleasure, the joy even such a casual, innocent caress had on her senses. She held so tightly to him, not caring where he led her. She would surely walk into the very flames of hell, if it was with him.
But he led her not into brimstone, only to the edge of the nearest canal, where his father’s gondola waited. People hurried past them: maids with their market baskets; serious patricians in their black robes, intent on affairs of state; satin-clad courtesans who smiled and giggled at Balthazar. Bianca saw, heard, none of them. It was as if she was wrapped in a silent, sundrenched spell. In the presence of Balthazar, his warmth, his clean, seawater scent, that blocked out the noise and fury of the everyday world.
“You see this water?” he said, gesturing to the canal below them.
Bianca nodded absently. Of course she saw the water! She walked past it every day on her errands. It was like every other canal in Venice. Smelly, perhaps, but unremarkable. A way to get around.
“No, really look at it,” Balthazar said, tugging on her hand, and she glanced down. The water was still with no gondolas passing to churn its waves, an iridescent swirl of blue, purple, green, a greasy black. A few bits of flotsam bobbed about, bottles, scraps of vegetables, a dead rat or two. Winter was coming on swiftly, and the usual sweet-sick smell was muted.
“What am I looking at?” Bianca whispered, making him laugh.
“We see here only the surface of the city,” he said. “The beautiful churches and palazzos, the jewels and silks, the riches that are the envy of the world. But beneath that beauty…”
Bianca watched the slow swirl of the water, the blend of dark rainbow colours that concealed garbage and decay deep beneath. “Dead bodies? Chamber pots?”
Balthazar glanced at her, his brow raised. The sunlight caught on the fine emerald in his ear, dazzling green-yellow set in elaborate filigree. The jewel was also a concealment. Balthazar, too, was like the waters of Venice, like the city itself—beauty masking dark depths.
“Exactly, Bianca,” he said quietly. “Death and decay. Dishonesty at every turn.”
“But can you really run from such things?” she asked, thinking of his books of travel and adventure, of new lands. “They are surely always with us. We are only ourselves, no matter where we go.”
“True enough,” he said. “We can only try to make amends, to find truth. To purify our own souls. Only then can we be free of what lies beneath, what we never dare reveal to the world. We can only seek the truth, at any price.”
The truth at any price. Balthazar fascinated her more than ever at that
