she’d been pronounced a girl nineteen years ago, she and her mother might be there among them. They would only have received a small dowry that wouldn’t have lasted long in view of her mother’s capricious spending.
Whores and beggars were rife in Venice since the French had sacked the city under Napoleon. By now the two of them would be huddled under the bridges like the rest of Venice’s poor. Though she might have somehow managed to find a way to survive, her mother would have withered under the strain and degradation.
Ahead, the bridge-dwellers stirred, calling to a well-dressed gentleman. “Signore! Signore! Look my way.”
She heard a noise behind her. Salerno? Turning back to look, she lunged forward…
And crashed into a human wall.
6
The golden hammer chimed eight times in the Campanile di San Marco as Raine strode down the steps of the lecture hall. He was surrounded by a half-dozen vintners who still discussed the lecture on phylloxera, which they’d all attended.
“What do you think of the French government’s increasing their 30,000 franc prize to 300,000 for anyone who can produce a cure for the phylloxera?” someone asked.
“Idiotic,” said Raine.
“I agree,” said one of the others. “The recitation of suggestions for a curative we were subjected to was a waste of four hours if you ask me. That blasted bug will go on its merry way sucking the sap and life from our vines with no hindrance from the French from the sounds of things.”
Someone else spoke up. “Still, I think the French should be the ones to pay for a cure, if anyone does. They’re the most desperate, since their grapes succumbed to the pest first.”
“It’s not the right way to go about things,” Raine insisted. “You all heard what stupid notions the offer of a reward has put rise to.”
One of his companions laughed. “And the ones the French official read aloud to us were supposedly thought to be the most viable of the lot. Considering that, I shudder to imagine what the rejects must have been!”
Just then, the bishop came running up behind the group, out of breath, causing a brief cessation of conversation. Catching Raine’s eyes on him, he blushed like a schoolgirl.
Raine had forgotten him until now. Surprisingly, the loquacious bishop hadn’t made his presence or his opinions known in the lecture hall.
“I believe my favorite was the suggestion that live toads should be buried beneath each grapevine to leech the phylloxera from the soil,” someone joked.
“What about the idea of bringing in Venus flytraps to snap up the pests,” another chortled.
“No! Are you forgetting the best of them all? That young choirboys were to be sent in to piss on our vines.”
Everyone save Raine and the bishop burst into gales of laughter.
“That was my suggestion, sent in to the French a month ago,” the bishop protested. “I firmly believe the acid in the urine would act as a deterrent.”
“Not to mention the stench,” someone else muttered.
“It’s an illogical suggestion,” said Raine. “They all were.”
“And have you a better one?” asked the bishop.
Raine shot him a stern glance. “Hybridization, as I described in the lecture.”
“Didn’t you hear?” another man piped up. “He was brilliant on the subject. Convinced me that the breeding of vitis vinifera with resistant species is the way to go.”
“I must beg your pardon,” the bishop demurred. “I took myself off at times during the lecture due to momentary indigestion. What was the gist?”
“Satyr posited that creating a resistant vine is the best hope for a cure,” someone explained.
“Oh?” The bishop raised his brows in a way that asked him to elaborate.
“Thus far, my experiments with cross-pollination of blossoms of different species of the same genus have resulted in a hardier vine,” Raine told him. “However the taste of the grape is still not satisfactory.” It was an unusually lengthy explanation for him.
“Well something must be done,” someone else insisted. “Two-thirds of Europe’s vines have been felled. Can you imagine? It’s only a matter of time until it reaches us. We all remain under a real threat until a practical cure is found.”
“Yet the Satyr vineyard has been spared,” the bishop said carefully.
Quiet fell. Raine could easily discern the direction of his companions’ thoughts. Everyone knew the rumors. His former wife had helped to spread them, claiming he and his brothers wielded some sort of magical force that protected their lands and them from harm. It was true.
Fortunately his ex-wife hadn’t convinced many. And rarely did anyone go so far as to bring up the matter in his presence. He and his brothers were wealthy and powerful, and it was wise to keep their favor.
“We had an outbreak,” Raine confessed, drawing all eyes.
“And?” someone prodded.
“The affected plants were routed and the area burned,” said Raine.
It was only partially true. The Satyr vineyard had in fact escaped an attack. A relation of Nick’s FaerieBlend wife, Jane, had intentionally brought in the pest. But it had been she who’d helped eradicate it before it had felled their vines. And them.
For the grapes were not simply a hobby or a means of earning a livelihood for his brothers and him. The sap that flowed through the vines was entwined with the blood that flowed in Satyr veins. Healthy vines would ensure his brothers’ children’s legacy. Healthy vines would allow his brothers and him to live on. Healthy vines would ensure that the secret aperture between ElseWorld and EarthWorld that was hidden on Satyr land remained secure.
The bishop hurled a proclamation. “Perhaps this plague was sent from the heavens as judgment for man’s sins of overindulgence. I also suggested that processions of the pious might weave through the vineyards of God-fearing believers slinging incense. Did the French consider that?”
“Men of science must scoff at such nonsense,” said Raine, uncaring that he might embarrass the bishop. “Offering a reward does no good. Better that the French turn their prize money to relieving the hardships that Napoleon caused the people of Venice. They now suffer from poverty as widespread as the phylloxera.”
He gestured toward the ragged beggars and prostitutes who loitered in the shadows of an adjacent alley. Mistaking his gesture for a summons, the desperate surged forward. Since the bishop was the closest to them, he bore the brunt of exposure.
“Be gone, you poxed creatures!” he cried, batting them away. Two passing constables joined in the fray, quelling those whose only crime was that of indigence.
In the confusion, Raine slipped away from the group. They’d been talking of attending a conversazioni in
