The Mascherari: A Novel of Venice Read online

  The Mascherari

  A Novel of Venice

  Laura Rahme

  THE MASCHERARI

  Copyright @ 2014 Laura Rahme

  ePub - ISBN: 978-0-9872937-2-5

  Cover Artwork and Title Font

  Caryn Gillespie

  www.caryn.com.au

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, locations and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locations or events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any forms, or by any means, without the prior written permission of the Author.

  www.laurarahme.com

  To my beloved grandparents,

  Yves Candeau

  and

  Tran Thi Phuong-Lan

  CONTENTS

  The Mascherari

  Acknowledgments

  The Republic

  Character List

  PART I

  A Dream in La Serenissima

  The Mask maker of Santa Croce

  A Cry in the Campo

  Murders in Venezia

  The Testimony of Lorenzo Contarini

  The Third Body

  In the Prisons

  Carampane

  The Mascherari

  The Moor

  A Woman’s Secret

  Rolandino

  Catarina

  Angelo’s Flight

  In the Atelier

  To the Canal and to the Roofs

  Catarina’s Story

  The Milanese

  The Giudecca Gardens

  Esteban’s Story

  Catarina’s Torment

  Giacomo’s Diary

  Strega

  In the Library

  Magdalena’s Pendant

  Schemes in the Piazza

  The Pendant Maker

  Blanca’s Secret

  In the Cancelleria

  Non Scribatum

  The Deposition of Signor Vivaldi

  LA BEFANA

  Maffeo’s Lost Deposition

  The Hidden Message

  PART II

  The Art of Unmasking

  Death to the Janara

  Donna Laura

  Return to the Silversmith

  Whispers at the Loggia

  The Wells

  Maleficio

  Antonio’s Visitor

  Last Letters

  A Finder of Lost Things

  C.X.

  The Path to Evil

  The Minotaur

  Malek

  The Dark of the Moon

  La Torre

  Epilogue

  Aradia

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  The Mascherari is a work of fiction but it remains informed by some of the most fascinating historical research on Venice. I want to acknowledge the wonderful Peter Ackryod, Iain Fenlon, Associate Professor Ellen E. Kittell, Professor Thomas F. Madden, Professor Guido Ruggiero, historian Peter Burke, late historian Horatio Brown, Dr Sandra Sider, Professor Yadira González de Lara, Michael Rocke, the late historian Flavio Biondo, Richard Covington and Professor Faruk Tabak.

  I am indebted to archivist, Giovanni Caniato, from the Archivio di Stato in Venezia, who kindly assisted me during my research on the Council of Ten. I want to thank the Fundazione Musei Civici of Venezia for their excellent guide during my visit to the Palazzo Ducale and for answering my questions on the Council of Ten’s secret chancellery.

  During my research of Italian witchcraft, I cannot overstate the precious inspiration I drew thanks to the works of the late Charles G. Leland from the Gipsy Lore Society, Jules Michelet and Raven Grimassi. Finally, I want to acknowledge the elusive and most honorable late 14th century swords master, Fiore Dei Liberi whose contribution to martial arts has also aided this novel.

  A special thank you to novelist and Historical Novel Society member, Lisa J. Yarde, for dedicating time from her demanding schedule to beta-read this novel.

  Thank you also to beta-readers Joel Morris, Melanie Zanetti and Emanuele Gelsi.

  To French Armenian writer, the late Alex Varoux, my dear uncle who once told me I was capable of writing books, your words have carried me to this day.

  To my wonderful partner, Shane Krause, for believing in me and in witches, I am ever grateful.

  The Republic

  The reader may find these terms useful for understanding the different layers of 15th century Venetian society and the bodies that governed it.

  Patricians – the hereditary ruling class, comprising around 200 clans; includes such families as, Contarini (one of the most illustrious), Morosini (one of the oldest), Foscari, Canal, Loredan, Mocenigo and Vitturi. Together with the cittadini, they composed a tenth of the Republic’s population.

  Cittadini – citizens of the Republic, either by birth (per nazione) or granted through certain conditions (per privilegio or per grazia), such as tax contributions over ten to fifteen years; a middle class that was permitted to vote.

  Popolani – the non-citizen majority who could not vote; comprises some merchants, artisans, glassworkers, shopkeepers, fishermen, gondoliers, servants and slaves.

  Government and judicial bodies:

  Doge - the figure head of the Republic; symbolic prince appointed for life; representative head of the Great Council, Senate, Collegio and the Council of Ten.

  Signoria - figuratively, the term employed to designate the ‘government’; is the highest level of government and consists of the Doge, six councilors and the three heads of the Quarantia.

  Maggior Consiglio (Great Council) - a large group of patricians who met regularly to vote on constitutional laws and who elected the Senate and the Council of Ten; entry was restricted to those families in Venice’s Golden Book which contained records to ascertain hereditary privileges.

  Quarantia (Council of Forty) – an assembly electors, chosen from the patrician class, who could nominate a Doge; a body with both political and judicial functions.

  Collegio - an executive branch which directed the daily functioning of the government, including passing information to the Senate; consisted of the Doge and his councilors.

  Consiglio dei Pregadi (Senate) – diplomatic and administrative body of the Republic which dealt with foreign relations; composed of the ‘wisest men’ of the city.

  Consiglio Dei Dieci (Council of Ten) – a powerful judicial institution operating as an internal police force; a secretive body appointed to oversee the Republic’s security and serenity, its coinage, and morality. It was headed by three judges, called the three Capi.

  Procurator of San Marco - second most prestigious role after the Doge; oversaw the administration of the Basilica di San Marco and its extensive treasury, dispensed charity and attended to wills.

  Character List

  *Historical figure

  Antonio da Parma - a Tuscan, schooled in law; highly skilled as an inquisitor

  Almoro Donato - member of the Council of Ten

  Francesco Visconti - a Milanese artisan in his late fifties

  Magdalena Visconti - wife of Francesco Visconti

  Giacomo Contarini - a reputed merchant from Castello, late forties; schooled in Padua university

  Catarina Contarini - wife of Giacomo Contarini, late thirties; member of the Santa Maria Formosa parish

  Lorenzo Contarini - son of Giacomo and Catarina Contarini, enamored of Daniela Moro

  Giovanna (Zanetta) Contarini – sixteen year old daughter of Giacomo Contarini and Catarina Contarini

  Ubertino Canal - a reputed broker


  Guido Canal - a reputed broker, brother of Ubertino Canal

  Rolandino Vitturi - a wealthy merchant in his mid-thirties, partner of Giacomo Contarini

  Balsamo Morosini - an adept negotiator, mid-thirties

  Esteban del Valle - part Catalan, part Ghanaian; a swordsman who lives by commission

  Gaspar Miguel Rivera - Catalan condottiere hired by the Venetian navy

  Doge Tommaso Mocenigo* (1343 - 1423) - Admiral and merchant; named Duke of Candia; served the Venetian Republic for many years – first in the Council of Ten, later as Procurator of San Marco, then in his eighties, as Doge

  (Leon) Battista Alberti* - a young banker who helps Antonio da Parma

  Blanca Canal - a prostitute

  Daniela Moro - a Jewish young woman; sweetheart of Lorenzo Contarini

  Laura Rivera - wife of Gaspar Miguel Rivera; an Aragonese from the Kingdom of Sicily

  Abram Elia - a Jewish physician

  Malek - a mysterious sword master

  Maffeo - an Armenian slave and gondolier appointed by Francesco Visconti

  Luca - a Slav gondolier appointed by Catarina Contarini

  Angelo - friend of artisan, Francesco Visconti, who regularly cleans the Visconti atelier

  Margarita - a prostitute from Ca’ Rampani

  Other historical figures mentioned in this novel:

  Anselm Turmeda (1355 - 1423) - writer from Majorca who studied in Bologna and later migrated to Tunis, where he became vizier (political advisor); he wrote in both Arabic and Catalan.

  Filippo di Bartolomeo Dardi (died 1464) - a fencing master who opened a fencing school in Bologna in 1412.

  Bernardino di Siena (1380 – 1444) - a Tuscan monk known for his inflammatory and homophobic sermons in Siena, during the early 1420s.

  Carlo Zeno, Admiral (1333 - 1418) - Venetian admiral and hero of the Battle of Chiogga.

  Fiore Dei Liberi (1340s – 1420s) - 14th century Italian knight, diplomat and fencing master.

  Francesco Foscari (1373 – 1457) - served as Venice’s Doge from 1423 until his death.

  Petrarch (1304 – 1374) - 14th century Italian scholar and poet; the “Father of Humanism”.

  Pietro Loredano (died 1439) - popular patrician and admiral, known for making Venice a dominant power in northeastern Italy; defeated by Francesco Foscari in the 1423 Doge election; later murdered, possibly by Foscari’s son.

  Rolandino Roncaglia - a Venetian man and self-confessed cross-dresser, known to have been charged with sodomy in 1354. He was burned to death.

  Sebastiano Ziani - Doge of Venice from 1172 - 1178; he built the second Ducal palace, also called the Ziani Palace, after the first was destroyed by a fire.

  Vide attraverso il mondo interno

  e il mondo esterno,

  a destra ea sinistra,

  sopra e sotto,

  prima di lui e dopo di lui.

  PART I

  Antonio

  A Dream in La Serenissima

  Journal of Antonio da Parma

  19 December 1422

  He dreams on a gondola as it glides in silence. Sound asleep he lies, beneath a fiery dawn, while the palace’s Eastern wing rises above and casts golden shadows upon his face.

  This is how I may have appeared to my guide as I drifted off, while he strained with the oar, drawing us closer to the Ducal stones, closer, beneath the towering Campanile, closer to this monstrous Republic of galleys with its islands and canals, into the heart of this lagoon fortress gilded by the sun’s first rays and past her mansions of Istrian stone, whose glorious facades looked on, across a sea of silk and glistening foam.

  Curious, isn’t it? How I saw her.

  I would see her differently now.

  Daughter of Venus, Venezia, you rose from nothingness. The memory of you…

  How could this not be my first diary entry? For it was that day, as I arrived in Venezia, that I experienced my first vision.

  She was standing on the Rialto Bridge. I write, standing, but now that I remember–and it is hard to recall after all that has transpired since–I think, yes... I think she was floating. I swear that I never once saw her feet touch the ground. I remember the fluttering hem of her gown and the way it thinned into a vaporous mist. I remember that I crossed myself and whispered the names of the saints upon seeing her face for the first time.

  She stood alone. She was watching me.

  And I, I saw only her.

  She seemed to have eluded the vanity of Venetian women. Perhaps she did not live in our times. She cared not for the blonde locks they coveted, had not shaved her forehead in the new fashion and wore no silk, nor jewelry. Her hair–I crossed myself again–for it was night, and her black locks were like the manes of a strega; insolence upon her shoulders.

  Oh, the dark beauty of that face.

  I saw, even from afar, the longing eyes beneath their sultry lashes and the parting of her lips as she whispered. She resembled those Southern women or perhaps those forbidden beauties of Constantinople into whose eyes one dares not stare too long, for fear of some lurking evil.

  It struck me at this instant. I ignore how, it struck me that this woman was a harbinger of some fateful event, one that I was soon to encounter, here, in Venezia.

  The sun rose, filtering light through the rios, casting flames upon her black hair. My gondolier’s vessel meandered through the lagoon. Light shone on the Canal Grande.

  Still in dream, I gazed at her form but she drew away. No, she floated away, vanishing to the other side of the bridge. And as the morning rays bathed Rialto Market, not a trace of her remained.

  The loss of her wounded me. Abandoned by the unsettling vision, I rose from my slumber. I awoke to the stern Ducal Palace looming over our gondola. It lay still. As silent as its secrets.

  Later that morning, I spoke of my vision to Almoro Donato, member of the Consiglio dei Dieci. He told me what I did not want to hear.

  “Antonio. Antonio, you grieve, my friend. But it must end. Yes, don’t you see? You must find a new wife, si? With so much beauty in Venezia, a man like you—“

  “Basta. I am already past the fourth decade. I care not for another wife. It was not her I saw in the dream. The woman, there was something about her—”

  But he interrupted me. I think he has studied me carefully over the years. I suppose his position demanded it. It was under his recommendations that Venezia had appointed me, a Florentine, for the second time. The Consiglio dei Dieci had a well-earned reputation for respecting nobody’s secrets and my employer was a master spy. He gave me that look of wariness, that short disapproving glare which I remembered from years before.

  “Ah, Antonio, see how you drift again. Your preoccupations always lead you into visions. But remember your place, avogadore. I will ask you to prepare for your future role within the commune, yes? We will have none of that in the Republic, will we?”

  He looked at me again.

  “Will we, Antonio?”

  I may have shrugged my shoulders but the foreboding manner of his words taunted me, even then.

  As we crossed inside the palace’s entrance hall, I waved away my unpleasant feelings. I cast aside my dream. Already Venezia tugged at my soul but I attributed my ill-feeling to his sermon.

  “Tommaso Mocenigo is very ill,” he explained, gesturing gravely toward the Doge apartments to our left. “He has been confined to bed for weeks already. When the New Year commences next March, do not be surprised if the patricians are called upon to appoint a new Doge. It is not known how many months Tommaso has to live but I feel his time is near. And between you and me,” he whispered, “our young procurator, Francesco Foscari, would want this time to be nearer still.” He cleared his throat. “Antonio, the Consiglio would prefer it if you remained in Venezia until then.”

  I started. “Until March?”

  His eyes narrowed. I understood that I had little choice.

  I calculated that I would remain in Venezia until at least the commencement
of Lent.

  And the realization struck me.

  Carnivale is upon us; diabolic days where madness surges and unfolds, unrelenting. Where the masses of Venezia, the popolani, forget themselves into debauchery and descend ever deeply into the odious core of their fettered being. Carnivale, a season of obscene songs and erotic dance, when the masked rival for attention while making believe they are free.

  I never long so dearly for the rolling hills and scented valleys of Tuscany as when I find myself in the Republic during the infernal period of Carnivale.

  I refrained from sharing my thoughts and moved inside the Consiglio dei Dieci gathering room for my briefing.

  It was after my visit to the palace, when my gondolier had led our boat through the nation of Santa Croce, that I encountered the first abomination.

  The Mask Maker of Santa Croce

  I think it is where it all began and at the time, I saw it as yet another manifestation of the baseness of Carnivale. I did not heed the veritable meaning of what I saw.

  My gondolier had followed the Canal Grande and entered into the San Polo sestiere. We skirted the already buzzing Campo San Polo to our right and turned into the rio just prior to Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio. I was eager to arrive at my lodgings which thankfully were only a few blocks away. But as we passed one of the wooden bridges in nearby Santa Croce, I noted a curious gathering.

  The first thing I saw was that there were five princely gondolas moored in the canal at the foot of an old two-story edifice. Those gondolas of the sort that shame the doge, or if you like, those that brave sumptuary laws, with gilded framing and billowing awnings– the entire structure decorated in the most ostentatious manner so as to announce to all those less fortunate that wealth and power are parading by.

  I squinted. In the center of the nearby campo, a curious scene unraveled before my eyes. The proprietors of these alluring vessels stood around an old man with long gray hair. Furious shouts carried to my ears. I gestured to my gondolier who oared with renewed fervor toward them.