67.

11. Cartomancer

Venice, 1591

Ancilla had aged well in fourteen years.  Standing in the doorway of the dilapidated house in the shadow of San Samuele church, she looked at Filippo as though trying to place him. He'd been hoping he had the wrong house, for he had just walked across the campo, flanked by two magnificent palazzi, and around the church to suddenly find himself in this seedy neighborhood where two cheap whores had already flashed their breasts at him from their balconies.

"Do you remember me?" asked Filippo. "I am an old friend. I think your mistress is expecting me."

Her wary eyes squinted at him with suspicion, then quickly widened with recognition. "You're the man who rescued Circe! Of course, signore. How could I forget? Come in."

"I assume the cat is long dead."

"On the contrary, signore, she is alive and well. Much healthier than her mistress, I am sorry to say."

"Signora Franco is ill?"

"She suffers from a cancer that is wasting her away. But she does have a good day occasionally. I will check to see if she is well enough to see you. Prego, sit down." She ushered him into a foyer, not much bigger than the hallway, and sure enough, there was Circe, curled up on an old lumpy chair. "Look who's here, Circe," said the maid. As though in response, the old cat looked up and stretched. As soon as Filippo sat down on the sagging ottoman, she jumped with some effort onto his lap and started to purr. "She remembers you." He stroked her nose with a forefinger, feeling the horseshoe-shaped scar there.

"She has aged well—like yourself, signora," said Filippo. "A little gray in her coat, that's all."

"And arthritis in her bones. Like myself, signor.  She doesn't go out anymore. And no more balancing acts on the balcony railing. I will tell Signora you are here."

68.

Ancilla waddled back into the room. "She was languishing earlier today, signore, but as soon as I told her you were here, her face lit up like the fireworks. Come, I will take you to her. She rarely leaves her room now."

Filippo put the cat down and followed Ancilla. Circe followed them up the stairs, climbing with some difficulty.

Veronica was sitting in a wheelchair by the balcony. She was much thinner than he remembered her, and very pale, but her long hair, auburn streaked with gray, still fell gorgeously down her back and fragile shoulders. Her hands were bony but warm on his, and when he kissed her cheeks they felt like wax just beginning to melt in the summer sun. "Buon giorno, my dear Signor Nolano. Ciotto told me to expect you. He even lent me two of your books. I see you have been very busy these past, what? fifteen years?" She dismissed her maid with a nod and a smile. Circe jumped onto her lap.

"Almost, signora. And please call me Filippo."

"Prego, sit on my bed, Filippo." As soon as he did, the cat leaped out of Veronica's lap and into his. "She remembers you. You know she's almost seventeen, that's very old for a cat, isn't it my little micia? If only your mistress knew your secret." She sighed. "Remember our last night together, Filippo? How cloudy it was that whole week we were together, a damp drizzly, foggy November, and then it suddenly cleared up just in time for us to see the great comet. You told me it was alive, like all heavenly bodies, like all the innumerable worlds. But wasn't it still a bad omen, a sign of the times? My life has been a constant struggle since then. Without the kindness of my friends I surely would have perished well before this. The plague ended it all for us courtesans, you know, and everybody started believing Maffio Venier and others of his envious ilk, that we were always nothing but usurpers and whores."

"Ciotto told me the poetaster died of the pox."

She managed a feeble laugh. "Poetic justice, don't you think?"

"I distinctly remember you telling him his end would be ironic."

"Dea mia, Filippo, you do have a remarkable memory, just as reputed."

He grinned at her blasphemous reference to a feminine deity. "And you are remarkably intuitive."

"I'm erratic at best. I could never divine who robbed me. Not only when I was away during the plague but later too, things kept disappearing—silver, jewels, money—some of it from that very mattress. First I went to the authorities and reported the theft, but they could do nothing. Only after much coaxing did Ancilla come out and claim she saw the cook, Bertola, steal an antique pair of scissors that had a silver chain attached. No love was ever lost between those two, but I knew Ancilla enough to be sure she would never falsely accuse anyone, so I accused the cook to her face. She claimed that Rudolpho Vermitelli, that worm who was tutoring my son, put her up to it.  I finally resorted to magic to try to identify the thief. Hydromancy."

"I won them with my words, Filippo!" Her face seemed to take on some color. "And a little intervention from a patrician or two who remembered me fondly. But mainly it was the magic of my rhetoric. Just as I defeated Maffio years before with a poem, I vanquished Vermitelli with a speech, showing just the right amount of penitence for having stooped to a silly superstitious ritual, and just the right amount of wounded indignation at being accused of cavorting with the devil."

"Those bloodthirsty cretins are the real devils, Signora Veronica."

"They claimed I was bewitching men into falling in love with me. Why else would a king like Henri single me out among all the comelier courtesans of Venice?"

"I beg to differ with them on that, signora. You were the comeliest." He rose and feigned a courtly bow. "And the cleverest, of course. You beat them! How many accused witches escape their clutches? A precious few are so lucky. But with you, it was skill."

She smiled. "I wish we could have had more time together, Filippo."

"We still could—"

She shook her head, her smile fading.

"I must confess I am now in awe of you," he said. "Escaping the clutches of the Inquisition through your wits."

"Penitent indignation. All it took. And bewitching them into thinking I'm not a witch. I am one, of course, just not in league with the devil. There is no devil, I'm convinced of that, Filippo. The only devils are human."

"And have the human devils left you alone?"

"Yes. But they would roast me if they knew what I have done since then. I have created a new kind of magic, Filippo. But now I am too feeble to make it effective. I no longer have the ability to concentrate for longer than a few minutes."

"Perhaps I can help you. I feel I owe you much, signora, for without your letter Henri would not have welcomed me so readily. He came to love and trust me so much he sent me to England on a mission to unite Catholics and Protestants there. It's true I failed and he no longer wanted to have anything to do with me, but you know how fickle a king can be, signora. He spurned me, dismissed me—but no matter. My mission failed because I did not realize at the time the ancient magic cannot be restored in a Christian frame. But it was in England I wrote the books that I will be remembered for—unless they are burned or banned forever—books for which you were my secret muse."

"You flatter me with style, Filippo." She smiled. "So you've given up hope of hermetically uniting Christendom. I'm disappointed."

70.

"Would that be true of Signor Giovanni Mocenigo?"

"Zuane? He seems to me an ass, and I believe he is as he seems. So he's the one who invited you to Venice? He wants to be your patron, does he?"

Filippo nodded. "Shall I wait outside so you can get dressed?"

"Normally Ancilla dresses me, but today I make an exception, for my Filippo." She got up without his help and removed her black silk dressing gown, under which she had on an old yellowing petticoat worn so thin it was translucent; he was shocked by the silhouette of her wasted, almost emaciated body in the late afternoon light. She walked over to her closet. "Shall I wear the dress that Henri wore? It's smaller than most of mine, and as you can see, I have lost weight."

"Prego." Filippo turned his back as she struggled with the dress.

"So you were at Henri's court. Is it true what I've heard, that he appeared in front of his deputies in a dress?"

"Her Majesty, as he wished to be called, pulled that stunt before I arrived. But I spent a lot of time with him and his . . . her mignons."

"So you saw him in his chamber, dressed in petticoats and things?"

Filippo nodded, saying nothing of the seduction Her Majesty had accomplished, making Filippo perhaps the only defrocked monk in history to have lain with a queen who was really a king. He even briefly thought Her Majesty had loved him, until Henri had made it royally clear that Filippo was just another minion. A minor minion.

"Could you lace me up, please?" asked Veronica. "But not too tight; I pass out easily these days."

"Si, certo, Signora." Filippo lifted Circe from his lap, placed her on the bed, and got up to help Veronica with her bodice.

"Is it true about Henri's self-flagellation?" she asked.

The bluntness of a dying woman, thought Filippo, standing behind her. "You have reliable sources, signora. But you know it is a common form of penance." He pulled firmly but tenderly on the laces of her bodice.

"Of course. At least when it's on the shoulders. Were you his confessor, Filippo?"

71.

As he helped her walk down the stairs, Filippo noticed Circe stalking behind. It struck him as odd that the cat, even with her advanced age, wouldn't just run ahead of them. She likes to follow, she likes to track. I'm sure she can help me with the spell.

Ancilla was not at all happy to see her ailing mistress dressed and ready for a stroll out of doors.  But she did notice a healthy flush in Veronica's face and knew that Filippo was the cause of it. "But where do you think you're going, Circe?" asked the servant. For the cat was still following them. No, not them, Filippo. When Ancilla picked her up she yowled in protest. She loves me, that will help.

"Ancilla, could you tidy up the sitting room for us and clear off the card table?"

As they walked out the door arm in arm, Filippo said, "I don't play cards, Signora."

"Neither do I anymore. It's not a game. You need my help, don't you? You've come to ask my advice about whether or not you should go ride that patrician ass. Should you go to live in a palace on the Grand Canal, is that what you've come to ask me, Filippo?" Before he could answer, she said quickly, while squeezing his arm, "Let's go to the church first. I'll light a candle. That way we won't get ugly stares or obscene remarks. Let people think I'm a penitent whore, at least until we go down to the quay."

They were nearing the campo. "I have come for your advice, it's true, signora. In my visions, when I leave my body and soar into immensity, your image is always there to guide me home."

"You're saying my astral body guides yours back to terra firma after you've been out exploring the island worlds?" She grinned. "I haven't noticed. Maybe it's happening while I dream, and I'm forgetting it."

"No, signora, my astral body; your bodily image. I conjure your phantasm, into which I have injected my memory of the direction home. But it only works because it is your image."

"I'm flattered. I think," she said, but then perhaps worried that her tone betrayed a hint that she thought him insane, she actually encouraged him: "So tell me, Filippo, what does it look like, our world, as you approach from the heavens?"

72.

On that blasphemous note they entered the church. Filippo enjoyed the familiar aroma of lingering incense from some earlier ritual. The smoke still revealed the slanting rays of the sun through the stained glass windows. As Veronica lit her candle and said her prayer, he thought of how he used to pray, saying his beads not for the message of the prayers but for the effect of the chant, the repeated phrases putting him in a trance, which was the stepping-stone to extra-corporeal travel. Eventually, he was able to reach the trance without the beads. Instead of clinging to the beads as talismans, he had tossed them away, quite beyond them now. He looked at the frescoes high up in the chancel and apse, seeing the usual representations of Christ and evangelists, but what were those intense female figures? Sibyls, of course. Not nearly as magnificent as Michelangelo's. But there they are, pagan visionaries who supposedly prophesied the coming of Christ. Sibyls in church. He always liked the idea. Deep down inside these Catholics know their pagan roots.

Outside again, they walked down to the quay and found a bench, where they sat for hours talking of the past fourteen years, and as the afternoon waned into mild summer evening, Veronica's pallor returned. "I was really hoping I would make it to the new century, Filippo. The new century when everyone finally believes you that the evening sun doesn't move down to the horizon but the horizon moves up to blot it out."

As soon as they walked in the door, Ancilla was there as predicted, scolding and shaking her finger at him. Circe followed them into the sitting room, and when Filippo sat down she jumped immediately onto his lap. Veronica sat by the coffee table and began fanning through a deck of cards. Filippo recognized the tarocchi deck; he had seen one quite similar in Milan. "I thought you said it was not a game, signora."

73.

"I created simple tableaux at first, and did readings for friends. They were so impressed that I soon got the idea that I might be able to use these cards to cast spells, perhaps even to ward off the disease that devours me." She managed a smile. "So far, obviously, it hasn't worked. Making spells with the cards is much more difficult than making predictions with them. For that I've worked out a system, and it seems to work quite well. I do believe I am the first to prophesy and to divine with tarocchi, but it has to remain a secret, Filippo. I couldn't take another brush with the Inquisition. They would win this time."

He was about to protest, but she added quickly, "I only read for those I trust, you understand, my best friends. The trump images can be very powerful. They got Ancilla to finally admit she lied about Circe. Bertola did push my poor little puss off the balcony. Just as I had always suspected. When I saw the truth in the cards and confronted Ancilla with it, she broke down in tears and begged me to forgive her. She said Bertola had actually convinced her that the black cat was an evil presence, but as soon as she saw the crone knock the cat into the canal with a broomstick Ancilla knew who the evil one was and who the victim, and she ran screaming down the stairs and out the canal door. And you were fortuitously standing on the bridge."

"Why didn't she tell the truth then?" Filippo remembered the broomstick but still did not mention it.

"She was afraid of Bertola. This was three years before she saw her steal my silver, mind you. By then, Ancilla had worked up the courage to squeal. The cards have also confirmed her story on that incident. Anyway, Filippo, are you willing to give them a try?"

"Certo, signora, it’s one of the reasons I have come."

"We'll try a fairly simple tableau. First, I'm going to separate out the twenty-two trump cards."

"Twenty-two? Is this based on the Kabbalah?"

"I know nothing of such mysteries."

"Then what is the basis of your divination?"

74.

When Filippo finished mixing the cards, Veronica took the thicker deck and dealt three cards down side by side on the table. "Situations and events," she said. Touching each card with her long forefinger. "Present, past, future." Now she dealt three cards from the trump deck, above the three suit cards. "These are the major influences of past and present"—touching the first two cards— "and this," touching the last card, "is the future. A probable future, I should say. What is augured. Pronto?" She turned over the suit cards one by one: the Ace of Swords (past), the King of Coins (present), and the Six of Swords (future).

"The King is upside down," said Filippo. "Should I right him?"

"No. Leave him alone. Bene, bene, the Ace with the sword represents the tri­umphs of your past accomplishments, your penetrating intellect and what it has achieved. But the reversed King of Coins shows that you are poor and unappreciated at present."

"Ah, signora, we need no carto­mancy for that revela­tion."

"Be patient, Filippo. The six is a tran­sition card, suggesting the need to move for­ward, but to do so rationally. The two pip cards are of the same suit, swords, reinforcing each other. In your case the sword is the intellect. Intellectual battle is very much in the picture, Filippo, but notice the pips add up to seven, in this context an unlucky number. Now let's turn over the trumps."

She revealed first the Tower (upside down), then Temperance, but she left the last trump face down. "Disruptions in the past as a result of your intellectual battle," she said as Filippo studied the Tower. Two courtiers falling headlong outside a burning fortress. Or were they rising, since the card was upside down? "My pedantic Oxford enemies," he suggested. "I vanquished them at The Ash Wednesday Supper."