Love and Lucia

Chapter One 1824-2

At the same time, he had not been optimistic that new interests abroad would engage his mind very much more fully than it was engaged in England.

Various of his friends had talked so much about Venice that he decided he would go there first, and make it his main objective.

He therefore travelled through France to inspect the ravages of war, sending his yacht ahead so that it could be waiting for him when he arrived in Marseilles.

The journey did not interest him particularly, except for an amusing week in Paris.

In fact, he found the sunshine of the Mediterranean and the enjoyment of trying out his new ‘plaything’ in the shape of his yacht the Sea Horse more to his liking.

Although he regretted to some extent that he was not accompanied by Alastair or some of his other friends, he had learnt in the past that a party was constraining and that even the most congenial people began to pall if one saw too much of them.

“I am better off on my own,” the Marquis said.

He found that assumption was particularly true when he reached Venice.

He had sent his secretary ahead of him with a very experienced Courier to rent a Palazzo where he would be at least housed in comfort.

People who had returned from visiting Venice had said there was a large number of Palazzos belonging to Venetian aristocrats available, whose owners were only too glad to receive a large rent for Palaces which they themselves found increasingly expensive to maintain.

The Palazzo which the Marquis found waiting for him on arrival was certainly impressive.

It had belonged to the same family for five generations, but the present owners were willing to move into very much smaller and cheaper premises while the Marquis was their tenant.

Although parts of the building were undoubtedly shabby and in need of repair, he was impressed by the excellent taste of the ancient furnishings.

Also, the large number of servants whom his secretary had engaged on his behalf soon gave the place the perfection the Marquis expected wherever he stayed.

In the dimness of the huge room where he now was, he could see under the beamed and painted ceiling the heavy brocade curtains which covered the long windows and which reached from ceiling to floor.

The same brocade draped the large bed in which he was lying, which was surmounted by a carved and gilded canopy like that which stood above the Doge’s chair, and made anybody lying beneath it feel important.

Then, as if the lack of air and the somewhat pungent perfume which came from Francesca’s hair was too much for him, the Marquis very quietly slipped out of bed.

He walked across the room and into an adjacent one in which his valet had hung his clothes.

As he closed the door behind him he drew in a deep breath, as if searching for fresh air.

Then after stretching himself and flexing his muscles in a manner which betrayed his strength, he washed in cold water before he began to dress.

At the moment he had no wish to summon his valet or any other servant. He just wished to be alone.

Perhaps the saturation of a long night of love-making, or perhaps the pale sun creeping up the sky and dispersing the haze which hung over the canal outside, made him want silence.

Ever since he had come to Venice he had been fêted, entertained and, as he thought now, encroached upon by people.

Now all he wanted was to escape and be by himself.

Because he was used to being self-sufficient, the Marquis dressed himself and tied his cravat as skilfully and as quickly as if he was being helped by a valet.

He had long ago made up his mind that anything a servant could do he would do better.

Although he seldom put it to the test, he knew a feeling of satisfaction that no amount of help could have ensured his being dressed more quickly than he was at this moment.

It was still very early in the morning, and although perhaps the servants were stirring in the kitchen, there was no one in sight as he walked from his dressing-room.

He descended the wide staircase which led to the lower part of the Palazzo and finally to the entrance on to the canal, which in the winter was often flooded.

The Marquis, however, did not go to the front of the Palazzo, where his private gondola was waiting.

Instead he let himself out at the back on to a narrow passage between high houses, most of them still shuttered and barred.

The passage itself was empty, and only when he had walked a little way and come to a bridge did he look over the small canal beneath him, and see a man propelling in a leisurely fashion a gondola heaped with vegetables and fruit.

He knew he was on his way to the morning market, where most of the food consumed by the City was brought in from the countryside.

He walked on, and now the sun was sweeping away the last mists from the water, creating as it did so the translucent light which Turner had found so irresistible that he had tried to immortalise it on canvas.

The Marquis was, however, at the moment not thinking of the exquisite architecture or the fusion of man-made and natural beauty, but of himself.

He had been in Venice for ten days, and was already wondering, although it seemed absurd, how soon he should leave.

Francesca was certainly an inducement to stay, but although she attracted and excited him, he was already beginning to think it would be a mistake to let her become anything but dispensable.

It was almost as if he wanted to regret leaving her, to need her, and yet to go while he would still wish to stay. ‘Alastair was wrong,’ he told himself as he walked on. ‘I have learnt nothing on this trip except that I prefer riding to walking, and the English to foreigners!’

Then he told himself he was being reprehensibly insular, and that he should rather try to have a child-like appreciation of everything that was new and different.

And yet was it so different?

What of the conversations he had listened to at the dinner-parties that had been given in his honour?

Were they not very much the same as those he had heard round his own table in Berkeley Square, or at White’s Club?

And was not Francesca, when it came down to facts, very much the same as the Incomparables who threw themselves into his arms in London, or the social Beauties who enticed him with an invitation in their eyes, and a provocative pout of their lips?

“What do I want? What the hell am I looking for?” the Marquis asked and found to his surprise that he was already in the Piazza San Marco.

He had walked quickly along the narrow calletes behind the Palaces, over the bridges which spanned the small canals, up the steps on one side of them, and down the steps on the other automatically.

He had been so deep in his thoughts that he had reached the end of his walk almost before he was aware he had started it.

Now in the Piazza San Marco there were people, women and men, hurrying to work or to the markets, and a few well-dressed gentlemen coming either from a casino, or from a warm bed on their way back to their own houses.

Others, like the Marquis himself, were walking across the great Square for exercise or in search of coffee at one of the cafés which were to be found under the arches on either side of it.

The Marquis hardly looked at them, any more than for the moment he was interested in the noble proportions of the buildings forming the sides of the Piazza.

The heels of his Hessian boots seemed to echo as he walked in between the pillars and down two steps on to the pavement.

Facing the San Marco with its blaze of gold mosaics, its four superb bronze horses set above the central door, and its bubbling cupolas, he walked into the centre of the Piazza.

The pigeons strutted ahead of him and then when he seemed to move quicker than they did, took to their wings and flew with a flutter a few feet further on.

It was then that the Marquis saw waiters putting the tables and chairs into place outside a café and decided to have a cup of coffee.

Now he thought about it, his mouth felt dry, either from the wines he had consumed the night before, or what was more likely, the airlessness of his bedchamber.

Unhurriedly, he sat down at a table, having a wide choice at such an early hour of the morning, and instantly a waiter came for his order.

He gave it in Italian, knowing enough of the language to make himself understood, even though he could not converse at any length.

Then he surveyed the beauty of the Piazza, without really taking it in.

He was still thinking about himself, of what he should do, and whether it would be wisest in his own interests to return to London, if not next week, then certainly the week after that.

He could, of course, visit Naples or Rome, but he had no particular desire to do so and felt it might prove even more boring than returning to what Alastair had called the ‘monotony of England’.

The waiter brought his coffee, and the Marquis poured it out, realising as he did so that he had chosen Florian’s, the oldest café in Venice, having been opened as long ago as 1702.

Now he thought of it, he remembered that Venice’s hostility to her enemies and new overlords was exemplified on the Piazza.

The Venetians frequented Florian’s and boycotted Quadri’s, which was patronised by the Austrians.

Where an Austrian Band played, no Venetian ever applauded, and they never looked in the direction of the flagpole in front of the San Marco which carried the Austrian flag bearing the double-headed eagle.

It was this attitude, the Marquis thought, which made Venice so endearing, like a petulant child who continued to rebel however severely it was punished.

Then, as the sunshine increased, and the San Marco seemed to dazzle almost blindingly behind the flag which to the Venetians was a continual reminder of their humiliation, he became aware that somebody was standing at his side.

Without even turning his head he assumed it was a beggar and merely made a gesture of dismissal with his hand.

It was impossible to sit for any length of time at Florian’s or any other café without being pestered for money, or having something offered for sale.

This was traditional, and it was at Florian’s that Guardi had attempted to sell his paintings before he became famous.

As whoever was importuning him did not go away, the Marquis turned his head slowly, wondering if he had a small coin in his pocket to ensure his peace.

He then saw it was a woman who was standing by his table.

She was very slight, and he supposed she was in fact a beggar, until she said, to his surprise, in English,

“May I speak to you, my Lord?”

Her voice was quiet and well educated and the Marquis saw that although she wore a shawl of some black material over her head, she was not in fact the sort of beggar he had expected.

As he looked a little more carefully at her he saw that her face was dominated by her eyes, which were very large and not, as he had somehow expected from her English voice, blue, but the grey of the pigeons strutting about on the Piazza.

“You are English!” he exclaimed.

“I am English – my Lord, and as an English woman – I need your help – desperately!”

There was no doubt that her clothes were poor and, the Marquis suspected, threadbare, but her voice was too cultured to belong to anyone but a Lady.