Rare Traits (The Rare Traits Trilogy Book I) Read online

  Chapter 8 : 1517-1548

  As Stefano Crispi galloped north from Naples and the uncompromising forces of the Church bent on putting him to death, he realised that for the first time in his life he was completely alone. His son and grandson were dead, as were all contemporaries from his early life, while his wife, Francesca, had abandoned him for her faith. He was a ninety-year-old man with the body, health and mind of a thirty-year-old. Illness and ageing passed him by, although he was well aware that he would die as quickly as the next man if run through with a sword or burnt at the stake. He didn’t understand his ‘condition’ but he was learning to accept it.

  Walking his horse into some woods, he stopped by a stream. He threw away the bonnet he had worn for several years to hide his hair and stripped off his middle-aged-man’s clothes, replacing them with a stylish set of travelling clothes from his saddlebag. Finally, he shaved off the beard he’d been artfully tinting grey. When he emerged from the woods, he looked every bit as youthful as he felt.

  As he crossed from the Kingdom of Naples into the Papal States, he considered his options. Should he go to Rome? It was only a few years since Michelangelo Buonarotti had completed his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the city still buzzed with activity. Or should he head further north, putting more distance between himself and Naples?

  He decided against Rome and headed northeast, intending to cross the Apennines and work his way up the coast to the Po Valley. In a hostel one evening in the town of Todi, he struck up a conversation with a trader from the Republic of Venice who was heading for Rome.

  Without thinking, Stefano greeted the man in Neapolitan, but when the response was a frown of suspicion of a foreigner from the south, Stefano quickly moved into Tuscan.

  His peace of mind restored, the trader felt at ease to air his prejudices.

  “I find the south so alien to my tastes. It is very unsophisticated, so unlike the Republic where the influence of our superior language and manners is apparent even among the peasants.”

  He leaned towards Stefano and put his hand to the side of his mouth to prevent others from hearing, “Coming here is like returning to the dark ages.”

  He then leaned back and let out a huge guffaw.

  Stefano looked in mild amusement at this pompous but jolly man of around fifty. He was expensively dressed in a fine burgundy velvet doublet and white silk blouse with matching silk hose, his shoes soft light-brown leather. His greying hair was a mass of unruly curls.

  The trader was still talking. “But I have to make this annual trek. I have clients, very wealthy clients,” he pulled on the lower lid of one eye and winked, “who are desperate for my unequalled choice of rare and magnificent goods.”

  He gave a world-weary wave in the direction of his entourage.

  “The money pays their wages and keeps my wife and daughters in the finest fashions that their place in Venetian society demands.”

  There was another guffaw and he shook his head at the folly of women, failing to remember that the cost of his present outfit alone would have kept more than a few local families in food for several months.

  Stefano asked him more about Venice and for the next hour he was regaled with descriptions of fine palaces, sumptuous feasts, a cultured populace and a cosmopolitan atmosphere unparalleled anywhere in the world – all punctuated with gales of laughter.

  On hearing that Stefano was a portrait painter the merchant immediately adjusted his stance.

  “Are you any good?” he demanded forthrightly, guffawing loudly once again.

  Taken aback, Stefano thought quickly about an answer.

  “Well, when I was younger, I was apprentice to one of the finest artists in Naples and since establishing my own studio, I have had many commissions from the nobility.”

  As he was talking, Stefano took a sheet of paper from his bag and made a rapid sketch. No more than a few lines, it captured the man’s features perfectly. He handed it to the trader who slapped his hand on the bar in surprise.

  “My God, if your paintings are half as good as this, you’ll have people falling over themselves for your work. Some of them very pretty young things too.” He winked at Stefano and dissolved again into hoots of laughter.

  Having mopped his eyes with a huge embroidered lace handkerchief, the trader frowned. “If you had such a fine reputation in the city, no matter how barbaric the place is, why have you left it?”

  Stefano feigned a slight coyness.

  “It’s a little embarrassing,” he replied. “There was a certain noblewoman, a very attractive lady. Her portrait involved my often being alone with her and …” He paused and shrugged. “Unfortunately, her husband became suspicious and paid one of her maids for information that proved a little compromising. I had no choice but to leave.”

  The merchant laughed heartily and slapped Stefano on the back. “Ah, the pleasures of the flesh. So difficult to resist.”

  Bursting out laughing again, he banged on the table and called for more wine.

  “You should go to Venice,” he continued. “It’s attracting some of the finest of this new age of artists. You could do well. You’ve probably heard of this Tiziano Vecellio fellow, calls himself Da Cadore. Making quite a name for himself. Very fine painter. What’s your name, my young friend?”

  Stefano had been musing on this question over the last few days but so far had decided only upon a new Christian name.

  “Giovanni,” he said, and then wondered what should come next, but he could only think of his original Christian name. “Giovanni di Luca,” he stammered.

  “Pleased to meet you, Signor di Luca. Giacomo di Roberti is delighted to make your acquaintance. I’ll arrange some introductions for you in La Serenissima.”

  Venice was a city unlike any Giovanni had ever seen or imagined. Originally a group of more than a hundred islands in a marshy lagoon, it had for several centuries been a city on the water, its buildings, streets and alleyways never far from one of the maze of canals that crisscrossed and segmented it. All aspects of the city’s life revolved around the canals. Transportation of people and goods was largely by gondola, the sheer number of which all busily plying their way through the complex network of aquatic streets – some no wider than alleys – giving the impression of a colony of giant insects each working as part of a grand plan.

  In the richer part of the city, close to the Rialto Bridge, sumptuous palazzos vied for position along the canal edges, their owners keen to outdo their neighbours in the originality of design and decoration. Here were the homes and places of business of the traders and merchants whose family fortunes had for generations, like the waters of the lagoon, ebbed and flowed with the fortunes of the city.

  Giovanni found the Venetians to be a proud people, as proud as the Neapolitans had been of their chaotic city, but with a cultured edge that their centuries of trade with the East had honed into an aloof sense of superiority over not only the rest of Italy, but the entire world. Their language was closer to Spanish than Italian, making it as foreign to Giovanni’s ears as Neapolitan had been twenty-five years before. But Venice was a cosmopolitan city and he found his Tuscan dialect was easily understood by most of the locals. Even so, he resolved to learn as much of the Venetian tongue as quickly as his improving linguistic skills would let him.