Read Online Death in the Palazzo by Edward Sklepowich - Free Book Online Page B

he didn’t laugh this time, although the ghost of a smile twitched at the edges of his mouth. A few moments later, when he was raising his glass of my father’s finest merlot, his hand slipped and the ruby-red liquid stained his starched white shirtfront.
    Luigi neither looked in my direction nor said anything, but it was clear that he believed he himself had been the indirect agent of Lydgate’s accident.
    My mother had been growing more uncomfortable. To smooth things over, she started to tell a story from her childhood in Naples. It was about a tribe of gypsies and their stealing of a beautiful little boy—one of a set of twins—from a neighboring family. I had heard the story many times, and so had my father, who had become increasingly less patient with it over the years.
    After my mother’s recital, one of our cousins from Milan matched it with a tale that somehow also managed to involve both gypsies and twins. From then on the pattern was set for the rest of the evening as many of the guests recounted stories, which soon began to take on a distinctly ribald flavor when we passed from the dining room to the salon overlooking the Grand Canal.
    I couldn’t help but be reminded of Boccaccio’s ladies and gentlemen killing time in the countryside while the plague ravages Florence.
    Half an hour after we retired to the salon, Bambina, looking even more lively after what must have been a good cry, returned. Renata was finishing a story about a sailor and a mermaid, which despite its risque elements, she had delivered in a listless way. In fact, as the story had progressed she seemed to lose more and more energy and become paler and paler. No sooner did the thought occur to me that Luigi might have had some mesmeric influence over her than I quickly banished it as ridiculous.
    When Renata finished, Lydgate indulged in a story of even more dubious taste about a coal miner from the north of England and his two daughters.
    After I had acquitted myself by telling an innocuous anecdote about the rivalry between Giorgione and Titian, Bambina, who was becoming increasingly restless, made her contribution.
    It was about the peacock brooch of gold and precious stones my mother was wearing. Most of us knew the story. It was part of the history of both the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families, but Bambina told it as if to an audience hearing it for the first time. She made the most of its mystery and high adventure—the Turkish assault on old Constantinople, Venetian merchant ships sailing defiantly through the Bosphorus beneath the cannons of the Turks, near escapes from barbarous forms of death, and the rivalry between the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families.
    Throughout the account our attention was divided between Bambina and the brooch sparkling on the front of my mother’s Fortuny dress. Of everyone there the most fascinated by the brooch seemed to be Signora Zeno, who considered it with her dark eyes slightly narrowed.
    It wasn’t perhaps the wisest choice of a tale because of the bad blood that existed between our families due to the brooch, but Bambina carried it off in such a light, amusing spirit that even my parents didn’t seem offended.
    No sooner did she finish than Renata emitted a loud cry. She had become even paler and a slick film of sweat coated her face. She stood up abruptly and seemed dizzy, but she strode to a far corner of the room and pulled Gemma and her doll out from a shadowed recess.
    When Renata asked her how long she had been there, the frightened child said that she had come down with her aunt Bambina. Whereupon Renata turned to her sister and started to berate her for her stupidity in not only having dragged Gemma from her bed at such an ungodly hour but then making it worse by having Lydgate go on with his story when she knew that Gemma would be all ears.
    Although I had to agree with Renata, I sympathized with Bambina, who, for the second time that evening,