Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

Here’s your light, dottore!

A torch bobs toward him, sweating fiery beads of pitch that vanish as they strike the pavement, clutched in the hand of a linkboy of about seven years. On the opposite side of the campo, under the star-sifted indigo sky, Crivano can make out the orange lights of more mooncursers, probably the elder brothers of this one.

I’m looking for the Morosini house, Crivano says.

It’s nearby, the linkboy says, then narrows his soot-rimmed little eyes. But it’s not easy to find, he says. I could show you.

Crivano sighs. He’s late, tired, suddenly famished, and he dips into his coin-purse to sprinkle dull green copper into the urchin’s upraised palm.

The Morosini house is on the Riva del Carbon, just north of the church of San Luca; it’s small, or seems so in the shadow of the looming Grimani palace two doors down. Candlelight pours from every window of every floor. Watching the bright and dark shapes that pass before those portals, listening the many-tongued chatter within, Crivano recalls a wicker cage of colored birds he once saw offered for sale by a wild-eyed Somali boatman, somewhere near Heliopolis on the delta of the Nile.

Two torches blaze in sconces at the open landward door, and Crivano brushes past the linkboy to walk inside. He wonders how he’ll manage even rudimentary exchanges with his learned peers given the disturbance he’s just suffered. Were it not for Tristão he would not have come tonight — yet even as he thinks this, he can feel his body disentangling from its shock, comforted by rote performances of salutation and gratitude.

A footman hastens from the water-gate to greet him, then disappears and returns with the steward, a muscular Provençal with a neat black beard and a stoical expression. Good evening, dottore, he says with a deep bow. The Brothers Morosini welcome you.

I apologize for my tardiness, Crivano says as he surrenders his stick and his robe. Has the banquet concluded?

With the sweep of an arm, the steward invites him upstairs. The staff is clearing the table now, he says. Tonight’s address is soon to begin.

A muffled catlike yowl issues from Crivano’s empty stomach. I see, he says. If there is any way I might be granted access to whatever esculents remain, I’d be grateful. I’m afraid unforeseen circumstances prevented me from taking a meal prior to—

Of course, the steward says as they emerge onto the piano nobile. I’m sure we can make some arrangement. Forgive me, dottore, but may I ask your name?

Crivano, Crivano says. Vettor Crivano.

The man snaps to a halt, clears his throat, inhales deeply, and his stentorian voice echoes from the beamed ceiling. Gentlemen! he says. Dottore Vettor Crivano!

There are nearly two dozen men in the great hall, divided into shifting groups of twos and threes and fours. A few look his way and nod. Crivano sees nobles and citizens, lawyers and physicians, scholars and friars; he overhears discussions in German, French, English, Latin, and the language of court, along with the Republic’s own tongue. Under the hum of voices he can hear a soft chime of plucked strings, but his sight finds no players. Neither does it locate Dottore de Nis.

Nearby, a pair of young patricians argues spiritedly with a third: slightly older, with an absurd plume of hair, attired in a busked and bom-basted Spanish doublet that even Crivano can recognize as outmoded. But Lord Mocenigo, one of the pair says, the ships of the Turk suffer worse than do our own the assaults of the uskok pirates. Surely blame must lie with the Hapsburg princes who ply them with weapons and gold?

So, Crivano thinks, this buffoon is Zuanne Mocenigo: the Nolan’s patron and host. He casts his eyes about the hall, trying to guess who the Nolan himself might be, until the elder of Mocenigo’s interlocutors disengages and walks toward him. Greetings, dottore! the man says, seizing Crivano’s arm. I must say, Tristão described you perfectly. I knew you at once.

If he erred at all, signore, Crivano says, it was no doubt from generosity. You, I gather, are one of my noble hosts, although I confess I know not which.

I’m Andrea Morosini. That’s my brother Nicolò there, in debate with Lord Mocenigo. Come, I’ll introduce you.

Milord, the steward says, forgive my intrusion, but the dottore has not yet taken his supper. If you’ll permit me, I’ll take him to the pantry now, and return him to you in a moment.

Yes. Of course. Go with Hugo, dottore. He’ll see you fed. Our Nolan friend is about to begin his lecture, but with any luck I can delay him. Oh, dottore?

Andrea takes Crivano’s elbow as he’s moving away. He’s somewhat shorter than Crivano. Athletic, poised like an acrobat, but soft. He leans in close and speaks.

You did a brave thing at Constantinople, he says. No one can dispute that. My brother and I are proud to have you in our house.

Before Crivano can consider what might have prompted this commendation, the steward is leading him through the huge room, past the long banquet table, now almost bare. The dark terrazzo floor is flecked by stone chips of mossy gray and blackbird-beak orange; its polished surface — like that of an underground pool — returns Crivano’s blurred image. As he walks, slow fireflies swarm before his drowned phantom self: the reflection of the candles on the brass chandeliers overhead.

To his right, through the door of a dayroom, he glimpses the musicians: a sturdy black-beaded man with a lute and a Servite friar wrestling with a massive theorbo. They’ve paused in their playing for a good-humored squabble. No, the one with the lute says, plucking a repeated note. Down, he says. Tune down.

Crivano has passed the dayroom by the time he hears the Servite’s response. Down? the friar says, twanging a bass string. You’re deaf. Listen to that buzz!

The voice is familiar. Why? Crivano pauses, turns back, and meets the eye of a second friar just outside the dayroom door. This one is dressed in a tunic and scapular of matching bole: the habit of no order Crivano can name. Sharp-featured. Splenetic. A patchy chestnut beard, and the frail physique of a sickly boy. He’s been conversing in Latin with a Hungarian baron while a bookish German youth looks on. Noting Crivano’s gaze, the friar’s eyes flash, his weak jaw snaps shut, and he counters with an insolent glower of his own.

Hunger has turned Crivano’s temper foul; he’s about to square his shoulders and call the man out when the steward takes hold of his elbow. Here, dottore, he says. This way. Before our hired girls depart with all the food.

Crivano permits himself to be led, and as they resume their course, realization dawns. The lean and quarrelsome friar, he thinks: that pompous little ass must be the Nolan.

The hirelings have removed the banquet to a storeroom off a nearby corridor; the steward dismisses them with handclaps and a few brusque words in Friulian. Let me set a place for you, dottore.

That’s hardly necessary, Crivano says, unsheathing the knife on his belt. You may leave me. I’ll only be a moment.

He sets in immediately on the hindquarters of a jointed hare, then moves on to a flaky piece of mullet in a black-pepper glaze. Consumed, these somehow leave him more famished, and he steps up and broadens his assault: a wedge of pigeon pie, a salad of rocket and purslane, a bowl of noodles with cinnamon and shaved cheese, the ruined donjon of a sugar castle, the thigh of a roast peacock. Across the room, a rawboned Moorish girl who’s stayed behind to dump bones into a stockpot eyes his progress nervously. After a moment she wipes her greasy hands on her apron and tiptoes away, leaving Crivano alone.

He presses on. The skin of his belly grows tight, so he limits himself to single bites as he moves from dish to dish, searching the cluttered table for whatever taste will collapse the void gnawing in his gut. Walnuts. Boiled squid. A soft yellow cheese. Poached quince. A purple candied rose. Fish jelly. A white-stalked herb he can’t even identify. He recalls the siege of Tunis: the door-to-door hunt through the medina for escaped Spaniards. Numbing, desperate, faintly ridiculous. What within himself wants so badly to be fed?