The Bellini Card

88

“I’m sorry about your hand.”

“I doubt it.”

She laughed. “You were better than me, Yashim Pasha. I thought-I hoped I would learn something about you. Less than I imagined.” She paused, lowering her lids. “You never attacked. Perhaps I should have let you take that saber.”

“It was stuck to the wall,” Yashim pointed out.

“But that’s not it,” she went on, in a fascinated voice. “You hid yourself. How did you do that?”

Yashim shrugged. “I was lucky.”

“Don’t condescend to me.”

Yashim paused. “Perhaps I used you.”

“Used me? How?”

“I’m afraid you were almost too good, Contessa. I’m no expert on foil, or fencing, but I saw how you moved your feet. The way you advanced to attack. It looked faultless. Only you didn’t concentrate on your opponent.”

“I hope you don’t think I underestimated you.”

Yashim shook his head. “That’s not it. It’s rather that you didn’t estimate me at all. Afterward, you think I hid. I’d say-you didn’t really look.”

Yashim could see her blush. She bit her lip.

“You’re saying that I was showing off?”

“You’re conscious of your power,” he said evenly. “And you are beautiful, of course.”

“And beauty makes me weak.”

“No. It’s thinking about it that unbalanced you.”

“Unbalanced me! Anything else I should know, maestro?”

He hesitated. There was, in fact, something else he had discerned about her movements: but then, he had never fought a woman before.

“Why don’t you kill me, Yashim Pasha?”

She said it so suddenly that Yashim had no time to react.

“How can you be so sure of me?” he said.

“Ah! So sure?” She laughed again, but without merriment. “Thank you, Antonio. That is all.”

She poured the coffee into two tiny luster cups. Her hand barely shook.

She picked up Yashim’s cup and brought it to him, with a little bow.

They were very close.

“Eletro,” she said. “A man called Popi Eletro.”

She sauntered back to the tray and picked up her own cup.

“Then I knew,” she added, taking a sip. “Boschini was drowned. Count Barbieri was killed, leaving my house. But they were my people.”

“Your people?” Yashim was confused.

“Like pashas, Yashim.” She smiled. “But Eletro was one of-the reaya.”

Sheep: the reaya, nonbelievers whom the sultan was bound to rule. A common man.

“And then, of course, I knew,” she said. “The Fondaco dei Turchi. You can see it from this window, Yashim Pasha. Come.”

A ragged cheer went up outside as she flung back the window and leaned out. The contessa raised a slender hand.

“You see that ruin? In centuries past, Yashim Pasha, the fondaco was your caravanserai in Venice, the han of Ottoman trade. Secure and secluded-but magnificent, of course. That’s where we held the party.”

Yashim looked out. The barges had gone; a few gondolas bobbed on the gentle waters of the Grand Canal. Still the people were there, crowding the pontoon almost opposite the Palazzo d’Aspi.

“Cement the union!” a gondolier suggested, his voice lost in the laughter of his friends.

Yashim withdrew his head.

“I know the fondaco,” he said. “What’s left of it. Someone’s been using the hammam as a prison. A private prison.”

She shrugged. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“The party, Contessa?”

For the first time she looked wary.

“Eletro owned the building. That’s why he was there.”

“Eletro?” Yashim sounded incredulous.

She shrugged lightly. “The fondaco is a ruin. And Venice is cheap.”

Yashim said nothing, studying her face.

She returned his gaze. “Whatever you see, Yashim Pasha, it is not fear.”

“No,” he admitted.

“Boschini and Barbieri were the other players. And when Eletro was murdered, then I knew.”

“But why have a party in that ruin?”

She shrugged. “Com’era, dov’era.”

As it was, where it was. Yashim had heard that phrase before.

“I-we-wanted to pretend, for a moment, that nothing had really changed.”

“We?”

“The duke and I.”

“The duke?”

“The Duke of Naxos. Our guest, in Venice.”

Yashim’s head was spinning. “But the Duke of Naxos-” he began.

“Died three hundred years ago, yes. Joseph Nasi, a Jewish financier. Sultan Selim the Sot made him Duke of Naxos, for his assistance in the seizure of Cyprus.”

“So this duke-your guest-was an impostor? And you knew it?”

She gazed at him appraisingly. She held out her hands. “Perhaps you really have come to save me,” she said.