The Grand Tour Read online

  I remembered Thomas’s remark that last evening in Milan. “Scandalous memoirs,” I said in his ear.

  Thomas made a soft noise comprised of sleepiness and interest and murmured, “What about ’em?”

  “Is that what you think I’m writing in my commonplace book?”

  “Isn’t it?” Thomas sounded hurt. “Lord knows I’ve given you enough material.”

  “There can be nothing scandalous between husband and wife,” I reminded him.

  “Not if they have a little good sense and are lucky enough to be married to each other, no,” Thomas conceded. “All the same, you’ve been writing a devil of a lot. You’ll be out of pages soon.”

  I had concerns of my own about that. “I suppose I should try to confine myself to the essentials.”

  Thomas snorted. “Nonsense. It won’t be the essentials we’ll be interested in fifty years from now. It will be the details that seem unimportant, the things we will have forgotten. That dish of mussels I ate. The way I tie my neckcloth. This conversation. Blaze away, my tea cake. I’ll buy you another book tomorrow.”

  I had to ask. “Do you really think everything I write down is about you?”

  Thomas said, “Well, this next bit had better be. I insist.” It is very bad for Thomas’s character when he gets his own way all the time. That’s why I’m going to omit the next bit. If he has forgotten it in fifty years or so, too bad for him.

  I won’t have.

  It was not twelve hours later when I awoke, but Thomas was gone just the same. Reardon brought me another tray. I consumed the contents with enthusiasm, pulled up the coverlet, and fell asleep again. Somehow, the entire day slipped away from me. It was not until this morning that I had a chance to explore our splendid new accommodations.

  Thomas does nothing by halves. We have hired an entire palazzo on the Grand Canal. The terms seem ruinous to me, but perhaps we will not be here very long.

  For, indeed, Thomas has hardly let me unpack, so certain is he that we will be off on our travels again at a moment’s notice. He and James have worked with Piers to arrange a watch upon Eve-Marie’s hostelry. When she departs—or, at least, when Mountjoy’s carriage departs—we will know of it almost immediately.

  Because Thomas isn’t often wrong, and because he was kind enough to bring me a new bound book for when I fill the last pages of this one, I set down here a recipe for the dish of mussels he likes so much.

  Zuppa di cozze:

  Scrub a good supply of mussels and discard any that do not open when they should.

  Heat some oil and add garlic. Just before it has cooked too long, put in some parsley and stir.

  Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon; add a small glass of white wine, a small glass of water, and the broth made when you heated the mussels to see if they were good. You should have strained that broth before you added it.

  Put in the mussels. Cook until done. Serve piping hot in a well-warmed tureen.

  N.B. Where is my left best glove? It is not possible that I lost it. I packed them both with the greatest of care. I remember distinctly. I was thinking how lovely it will be to wear them when we go to the opera again.

  25 October 1817

  Venice

  Palazzo Flangini

  The inevitable has happened. I have fallen in the canal. Fortunately, we were not in any great haste. I was able to return here to repair my appearance without discommoding anyone else. Now that it has happened (I felt sure it would ever since the first time Thomas mentioned the possibility), I can stop worrying about it. It was extremely nasty, and I wouldn’t like to go through it again, but I seem not to have sustained any ill effects.

  It happened, as so many of my mishaps do, in the pursuit of pleasure. Thomas and James were off to the embassy to see if we had received any mail, so Cecy and I were left to our own devices. Everyone tells us that the fortunes of Venice are in eclipse, that the ruin of the Republic, the ill will of Bonaparte, and the machinations of Prince Metternich have made the city a mere chattel of Austria forever-more. I am sure the people we speak with know precisely what they are saying. All the same, if this is La Serenissima in eclipse, I can only marvel at what the city must have been in her glory. What wonders must have been taken for granted, to make this place a mere shell, a shroud for the ruined beauty that remains.

  Rushton may be flat, but flat has its advantages. I grew up under a marvelous sky. London was wonderful, but sometimes I missed the sky of Rushton. Venice is, in its way, a city as wonderful as London yet possessed of a sky to rival Rushton.

  Its many little flights of steps deceive one into forgetting that Venice is built on the flat. Yet it is, and it is accordingly possessed of its own marvelous sky—pearly, at times opalescent.

  How glorious is Man, that his works can result, in a mere thousand years, in this remarkable mix of stone and water, where jewels are as common as glass and the glass itself resembles jewels.

  It was glass that caused my downfall, the quest for Venetian glass. Cecy and I were bent on a shopping expedition. Cecy had a list. There are times when her resemblance to her father is startling. Cecy with a list can be utterly relentless.

  Cecy’s list took us (and our maids, of course) into many, many shops. In and out of the gondola, in and out. Custom made me careless. For once I did not slip, nor trip. I simply stepped where I thought the gondola was. And it wasn’t. I went down feetfirst into the filthy water of the canal.

  My skirts buoyed me up long enough for me to catch at the gondola’s side. In temperature, the water of the canal was not much different from the pond at Rushton. Very different, alas, in smell.

  Cecy, as usual, was aplomb itself. She and the gondolier hauled me in before I could do more than utter a stifled shriek.

  Reardon helped me wring out my skirts, assuring me all the while that someday I may be able to wear that gown again.

  We went directly back to our palazzo. Reardon may or may not be right about salvaging the gown. Meanwhile, I have bathed and changed. As soon as my hair is dry enough to be presentable, I will leave off this entry and go see what Cecy is doing.

  Later

  For once my clumsiness may have been a good thing. While I was whiling away the time it took to dry off by writing in my commonplace book, Cecy was left to her own devices in the palazzo. I suspect her of planning something in connection with the construction of her focus. No matter her reasons, she had just emerged from one of the disused rooms at the back of the house when she surprised an unfamiliar figure in the corridor. Not unreasonably, she improvised a weapon, I believe a pair of fireplace tongs, before she asked the intruder his business.

  The intruder said, “What are you doing back so soon?” in Thomas’s most curmudgeonly tones.

  When Cecy described the scene to me, she sounded almost awed. “I knew it was Thomas. Even if he hadn’t spoken, I would have known. He didn’t look the least like himself, but I could tell it was him. I think I am making progress with my studies.”

  At the time, she looked Thomas square in the eye and told him I had fallen into the canal.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” said Thomas, most unreasonably, and came to me at once, plucking his false beard as he went.

  Cecy, always considerate of the servants, returned the fireplace tongs to their rightful spot before she followed. This was perfect, as it gave me a moment to assure Thomas of my safety before she joined us.

  When he was sure I was unharmed, Thomas indulged in a bit of scolding. “I’ve seen you fall in the duck pond at St. James’s Park. I’ve done all mortal man can do to keep you from falling in the English Channel. I bring you all the way to Venice and this is how you thank me? You fall into a canal behind my back? Kate, you are a monster of inconsideration.”

  “Yes, I know.” I continued to towel my hair dry. “It won’t happen again.”

  “See that it doesn’t.” Thomas went to his room to remove the last traces of his disguise.

  Cecy told me all about her
encounter with Thomas while I toasted myself dry beside the fire.

  When he rejoined us, Thomas was properly dressed. Cecy started in with questions. Thomas ignored her while he selected the plumpest cushion. He dropped it at my feet and sat on it so that he could lean against my chair as he basked at the fireside. After a few moments he tilted his head back to look up at me pleadingly. “Make her stop, Kate.”

  It is a wife’s duty to be honest to her husband. “I can’t, dear. No one can. Unless James is back from the embassy?”

  “Not yet, worse luck,” said Thomas.

  “Just tell us about it in your own time. That way, Cecy won’t need to ask any more questions. Will you, Cecy?” I gave Cecy a pointed look.

  Cecy’s eyes widened. “Of course not.”

  “Of course not. Oh, very well.” Thomas sighed. But once he’d given in, he gave us a full account. This is what Thomas told us:

  “Eve-Marie shows no signs of leaving Venice. On the contrary, she has kept regular hours since her arrival. Each day she leaves her lodging at midmorning and returns at midafternoon. She doesn’t always go to the same place, but she is always gone at the same time.”

  “She gives the servants a chance to turn out her room,” Cecy ventured.

  Thomas quelled her with a look, or tried.

  “That wasn’t a question,” Cecy countered, undaunted.

  “She goes out for luncheon,” I said. “What then?”

  “Then nothing. But today I made it my business to be among the visitors to the hostelry between the time Eve-Marie left her chamber and the time she returned.”

  “You disguised yourself and went there by yourself to spy on Eve-Marie.” Cecy was careful to keep her words a declarative sentence, but the accusation in her words was plain. “Without telling anyone.”

  “James knew. He insisted Piers accompany me. We debated telling you, and before you start, James wanted to tell you. I overruled him.”

  Cecy didn’t have to speak. Her expression made her low opinion of this high-handedness all too clear.

  “If we hadn’t come home early and surprised you, would you have mentioned any of this?” I asked.

  Something in my tone made Thomas turn hastily and take my hands in his. “Of course I would. As soon as James is back, we must have a full council of war. I’m not sure of the significance of what I learned and I don’t know what to do next.”

  “What happened?” Cecy asked. “What did you learn?”

  Thomas kissed my hand and let it go. “I left Piers outside and went in the servants’ entrance. I took the precaution of casting a spell to make myself difficult to see.”

  “An invisibility spell?” Cecy looked intrigued.

  Thomas answered Cecy as one enthusiast to another. “Not exactly. I’ve never encountered an invisibility spell that didn’t carry the unfortunate side effect of temporary blindness.”

  “Oh, that sounds most unpleasant,” Cecy said.

  “It is, so don’t let yourself be taken in by any promises of easy invisibility,” Thomas cautioned. “I arranged matters so that I was difficult to look at directly. Someone might see me out of the corner of his eye, but he would look away and take no notice. It’s less showy but easier to sustain.”

  “I’ll remember,” said Cecy.

  “I’m sure you will. Remember to tread lightly, for anyone can hear you coming, even if they’d prefer not to see you.” Thomas abandoned the magic lesson to return to his story. “I found my way to Eve-Marie’s room by trial and error. I think you must be right about the housekeeping, Cecy, for that is certainly what was going on when I found it. When the room was finished and the servants had moved on, I went through Eve-Marie’s things.”

  “The trunk!” Cecy and I said in unison.

  “You searched the trunk?” I asked Thomas. “What did you find?”

  Thomas had turned back to look up at me, eyes bright with mischief. “Nothing.”

  Before we could begin to pepper Thomas with our questions, James came into the room carrying a substantial parcel of mail.

  “There you are,” he said. “Our luck is in. The mail has come.”

  From the deposition of Mrs. James Tarleton, &c.

  While Thomas brought James current on his disappointing adventure at Eve-Marie’s hostelry, Kate and I fell upon the mail. There was an assortment of rather late congratulatory notes on our weddings that had been sent on from London, a brace of letters for each Thomas and James from various acquaintances, a small package from Paris for Kate, and letters for me from Papa, both my aunts, and Oliver.

  Having distributed the bounty, we each took a comfortable chair and settled in to read. I turned to Papa’s letter first, as I felt it was most likely to be of interest. I must confess that I also considered it likely to consume the greatest amount of time in deciphering, for in addition to the difficulties normally posed by his handwriting, the letter was unusually fat.

  Upon unsealing the letter, I was slightly disappointed to discover that although it was indeed three pages, the second sheet comprised a list of names and directions, and the third was a general letter of introduction. I glanced quickly at the list, then proceeded to the first sheet in hopes of discovering what Papa meant by this unexpected response.

  “Cecy?” James said a few moments later. “What do you find so compelling?”

  “It’s a letter from Papa,” I replied. “Why?”

  “Nothing much—only that I’d twice asked whether you would care to visit the Basilica San Marco without getting a response.”

  “It can’t possibly live up to the Duomo in Milan,” I said, “but at least it will be finished. I suppose that we ought not to slight it. When did you have in mind? Tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll have to do some checking,” James replied. “I believe the tides are such that the piazza is currently accessible only for a few hours a day, so a visit to the cathedral requires careful planning. Hence my question.”

  “Why would anyone build a cathedral they can’t get to most of the time?” Kate asked.

  “Oh, you could get to it when it was built,” James said. “And you can still get to it any time you like, if you’re willing to wade knee-deep. The weight of the cathedral and the plaza together have sunk the islet it’s built on a few feet. Enough that when the tide is high, it makes for damp walking.”

  “I think we’ve had enough wading for today,” Thomas said with a glance at Kate. “What did your father have to say, Cecy? Anything to the point?”

  “As much to the point as Papa ever is,” I said. “Which is to say, there is a good deal of useless history about Sainte Chapelle and the Île de la Cité, but—” I stopped, frowning at the letter.

  “What is it?” Kate and James said together.

  “Papa mentions a monograph about the Île de la Cité, by one Monsieur Montier,” I said. “And I have just remembered—when I met Theodore in Paris, he mentioned the same monograph. He said it was the only thing Mr. Strangle had given him that was worth reading. And … no, let me just read you what Papa says.”

  This suggestion proved acceptable to everyone, so I began.

  “My dearest Cecy:

  “Having received your letter from Paris, I am delighted with your report of the Temple of Minerva Victrix, which was all I could have hoped for and more. I am of course pleased by your great happiness, and pleased as well to have acquired so estimable a son-at-law as Mr. Tarleton, for it is to his benign influence that I must attribute your newly acquired interest in history, though it is clear from what your Aunt Elizabeth says of her correspondence with you that you have not lost your taste for Society in the process. I therefore trust hopefully in your husband’s full and complete recovery by this time from the unfortunate indisposition you described, as well as in the entire likelihood of the remainder of your journey being without similar incident, highwaymen not being of such common occurrence even on the Continent as to trouble you twice.

  “I entirely comprehend your fru
stration at the closure of Sainte Chapelle, which prevented your viewing it, but you need not repine too greatly. Though the chapel and the stained glass are reported very fine, they are relatively modern, dating only from the thirteenth century. It is the location itself that is ancient, having been the sacred site not only of the Frankish kings, but of the tribal chieftains of the Gauls before Rome conquered them, and possibly even of prehistorical barbarians, though the earliest traces have naturally been obliterated by the constant passage of the later occupants, so that the truth or falsehood of the matter must necessarily remain speculative.

  “Monsieur Montier, in his otherwise enlightening and informative monograph on the subject, places great emphasis on the continuous nature of the site’s occupation; too much, I feel, to support the weight of his argument. His remarks on the ceremonies of the Gauls, the Romans, and the early Franks are comprehensive and, so far as I can determine, accurate, but his contention that the Bourbons lost the throne of France due to their neglect of the preeminent importance of the Île de la Cité and Sainte Chapelle in creating them true kings is, of course, nonsense. Such rituals may, perhaps, be enhanced and strengthened by being performed at a particular location, in the event there is some question as to the legitimacy of the claimant to the throne, but no such question has ever arisen about the rulers of France.

  “Prehistory and superstition aside, however, there is no question that the Île de la Cité is an ancient and sacred royal area, and it is a pity you could not have visited it. By this time, however, you will no doubt have seen even more ancient and wonderful places. How I envy you! The crypts in the monastery at the pass of Great Saint Bernard, the ruined baths in Westphalia, the shrine of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the temples of the Forum in Rome!

  “I can tell from the tenor of your questions that such background as I can provide, being little and, by virtue of the distance these missives must travel, too late to give timely enlightenment, will very likely be unsatisfactory. I must therefore refer you to others, should you have additional queries to which you require prompt attention. As you must be all too well aware, I have maintained a regular correspondence with a number of like-minded colleagues in France and elsewhere, a list of whom I enclose, along with a suitable letter of introduction, in hopes that no matter where this letter finds you, you may discover a useful source of information and intelligent discourse nearby. I regret exceedingly that I did not think to suggest it before you left England, but perhaps this tardy amends will serve the purpose.