The Long Sword(107)

            I suppose I flushed. I’m a redhead with a vicious temper and my face often gives me the lie.

            ‘Well, be back by tonight,’ he said. ‘Remember Juan!’

            Which made me feel a guilty fool, a bad friend. We had all decided to throw Juan a little feast before he was knighted – Nerio thought it would be amusing to make the Spanish boy drunk.

            ‘I’ll be back,’ I insisted. In fact, I was too fond of Juan to want to make him drunk and foolish.



            In the end, I had to ask Sister Marie for help. It was she who provided me with the visiting hours of the convento, although she did so with a wry look that told me that I’d intrigued her a little too much. Or that she saw right through me.

            It cost me six solidi I could ill-afford to get a gondola to the island, but my gondolier was young, tough, talented, had a fine singing voice and new many of the newest songs. I gave him wine from my canteen and we had a fine trip out from Saint Mark’s.

            Landing at the convent’s brick pier gave me pause. But Jean-François rescued me from a sense of sacrilege by greeting me like a long-lost brother. Escorted by a silent sister, we walked past the great convent church to the two dormitories as I regaled Jean-François and Bernard with my doings.

            I invited them to join me – and my brothers – for a dinner.

            ‘We’re all of us ready to die from boredom,’ Jean-François allowed. ‘I went to Mass three times yesterday.’ He rolled his eyes, and our escort glared at the brick walkway.

            Bernard smiled his soft smile. ‘What brings you, messire?’ he asked.

            I produced the doll, and both men clapped their hands. ‘Par dieu!’ Jean-François said. ‘Perhaps we’ll have some quiet out of miss yet! Where’d you find such a treasure?’

            I was part way through my story and had got to the tale of the search for Juan’s surcoat as we reached the dormitory receiving room. I must explain: this was a convent for well-bred Venetian girls, and most of the sisters were from the best families of the lagoon. No one was sworn to silence, and some novitiates wore fashionable clothes and had servants. Each dormitory had a fine parlour with good oak panels and paintings or frescoes as fine as the piano nobile in a Venetian palazzo for receiving brothers and fathers – and lovers.

            Our escort blushed and didn’t look at me, but she bobbed her head for my attention. ‘Perhaps my lord has been led here,’ she said. ‘My sisters and I make ecclesiastic vestments. Indeed, we have just made a chasuble for the new Bishop of Aquila, even though he is no friend of ours.’

            I unlaced my own and the nun sat down and turned it over. She wrinkled her nose, but smiled, and I imagined her as someone’s sister.

            ‘You wish a line of gold edging the cross, perhaps?’ she asked.

            ‘It is for his formal knighting,’ I said.

            Emile came in through a barred door. I felt her enter the room, turned, and bowed.

            ‘So,’ she said. With the smile for which I would die.

            She was happy I had come. What more did I need to know?

            ‘Are you the same size?’ my nun asked. ‘Oh, my lady countess, I did not mean to intrude.’

            I grinned – Emile was so prettily confused. ‘Countess, this pearl among Christ’s brides thinks that she and her sisters might solve my pressing duty to have a surcoat made for my friend’s knighting.’ Emboldened, I said, ‘It is on Christmas Eve, at Saint Mark’s. You should attend!’

            Emile laughed. ‘Indeed, my people would accept an invitation from Satan to get off this island, although we have been treated with every courtesy.’