Francesca’s hair was now free of the dark dye, but wet. She ran to Bianca and hugged her hard. “Be happy, dearest sister!” Then she whispered, “He is quite outrageously handsome, Bianca. I don’t blame you.”
“I’m so sorry your wedding to Enzo was spoiled,” Bianca told her younger sibling. “If you truly love him, Francesca, do not settle for another.”
“I won’t,” Francesca replied. “But first I will make him jealous. Now go quickly before you get caught, and your prince imprisoned. The doge would love such a captive.”
The two women and the prince left the apartment and hurried downstairs to flee the palazzo. Francesca had been correct. The servants had been so busy drinking their master’s wine, and preparing for the wedding feast expected to commence shortly, that the fugitives had managed to come and depart without ever being seen. They entered the waiting gondola. Within a short time, they were rowed out of the Grand Canal and across the lagoon and hoisted up onto the deck of the galley. The gondolier, to their surprise, came too, for he was actually one of the prince’s men. The little vessel floated off.
Bianca and Agata were escorted to a large cabin, where Amir left them to change into their Turkish garments while he gave orders for the ship to escape Venetian waters before the precious cargo it carried was discovered. The clothing, while totally different from what they had worn all their lives, was beautifully made. They each pulled on pantaloons, which they sashed at the waist, a modest long-sleeved shirt, a sleeveless vest, and comfortable slippers. There was a single sheer silk veil for head and face that they quickly realized was for the younger woman. The clothing was exquisitely made, of the finest materials. One set was the shade of a ripe melon, and Agata had immediately realized it was for her mistress, as it was decorated with small jewels and gold fringe. The other, which she now wore, was plain but actually a very pretty sea blue in color.
When the two women ventured back onto the main deck, suitably clothed in their new garb, it was to see the shining towers and domes of Venice fading into the distance, and the open sea stretching ahead of them. A new life awaited them, and Bianca looked happier and more at ease than her servingwoman thought she had in months. Agata did not know what awaited them beyond the sea ahead, but Bianca’s joy was too potent to ignore. Whatever they faced, it would be good, the servingwoman decided.
Chapter 13
By midafternoon, all of Venice had heard the tale of how the Venier bride had been kidnapped on her wedding day and spirited away. It was suspected that she had been taken by some lawless Turk—a prince, it was said. Alessandro Venier’s servants were quick to gossip, and they said the girl had been saying for months that her prince would come for her. And she had made no secret of not wanting to wed the charming Enzo Ziani, while her younger sister continued to proclaim her love for the man.
How delicious, the gossips in the Piazzetta and Piazza San Marco decreed as they strolled up and down in the presence of the city’s best courtesans. The Ziani family was insulted by the bride’s kidnapping, but they could hardly blame the old prince for what happened. Still, they wanted someone to blame. Instead of building such an extravagant gondola in which to transport the bride, could not Alessandro Venier have made better security arrangements for his granddaughter? Yet they had taken Bianca’s words about her prince no more seriously than had her own family.
Alessandro Venier was himself shocked by what had happened. He decided to blame Francesca for the debacle. “You wished bad fortune upon your sister,” he accused her, “and this is the result of your wickedness!”
“I did not want her to wed my Enzo, it is true,” Francesca said, “but I would never wish bad fortune upon anyone,Nonno. This is your fault for insisting that Bianca wed a man she did not wish to marry. But you can redeem the Venier name by offering them me. I will be fourteen in less than seven months, and you said I should wed at fourteen.”
Alessandro Venier looked sharply at his granddaughter. “What do you know of what happened, Francesca? How did this infidel manage to get word to Bianca? And where is her servingwoman? I would speak with her.”
“I imagine Agata is with Bianca,” Francesca said sweetly. “She is very devoted to my sister,Nonno.”
“This kidnapping did not happen by chance! If the servant is with the mistress, then someone else in this house knew what was to transpire, and aided them,” Alessandro Venier said furiously. “Was it you, Francesca?”
“Nonno!How could I have possibly contacted some infidel I have never laid eyes upon and concocted such an event as transpired today? I had nothing to do with it!”
Of course she hadn’t,her grandfather thought. He was grasping at straws in an effort to salvage a bad situation. The truth was that even if they managed to regain custody of Bianca, the Ziani family would not have her now. By running off with her infidel, she had embarrassed them publicly. Even if Enzo Ziani were madly in love with her, he could not accept her back. Francesca interrupted his troubled thoughts with an even more troubling question.
“What will you tell my parents of this day?” she asked her grandfather.
“Go to your room,” he said. What was he going to tell his daughter? That she had raised an impossible and disobedient child? The truth was that Bianca’s first marriage was at the root of all this trouble today. If Orianna and her husband had not allowed themselves to be frightened by Sebastiano Rovere, God curse his soul, Bianca would have made a happy Venetian marriage and there would have been the end to it.
But they had practically forced the girl into the arms of that decadent monster, and now a second marriage had caused the foolish girl to rebel. This situation was not his fault, Alessandro Venier decided. It was the fault of Bianca’s parents, and he intended to lay it at their door.
He would, of course, have to mend fences with the Zianis. Bianca’s dowry was of necessity forfeited to them as a penalty. Then he dangled Francesca’s larger dowry before them. He had added to his favorite granddaughter’s dower portion himself. The family demurred. He pressed the issue. Enzo Ziani was publicly mourning his loss before all of Venice, drinking and whoring every night until he was the talk of the city.
“He is not of a mind now to wed again,” the Ziani patriarch, Piero Ziani, told his old friend, Alessandro Venier. “The family wishes to allow him to indulge his grief and his embarrassment, but he must wed again soon. We need an heir. I will be frank with you, Alessandro. Francesca is beautiful and accomplished. But she is too young for my grandson, Enzo. Carolina was fourteen when she married him, and see how that turned out. No, we must seek an older woman, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, who will have a better chance of bearing a live child for us. Bianca was perfect. I regret what happened on what was to have been their wedding day.”
“No more than I do, Piero,” his companion said.
“Do you know for certain who took her?”
“It would appear that her kidnapper was Amir ibn Jem, the grandson of Sultan Mehmet. She knew him slightly, for he was her neighbor when she stayed at the Pietro d’Angelos’ villa,” Alessandro Venier said, telling but a half-truth.
“Enzo told me that he said he would come for her,” Piero Ziani murmured.
“The words of a romantic fool. Who could believe such words but a romantic and even more foolish girl? And who would have thought he would actually come?”
Piero Ziani nodded in agreement. “Certainly he was just more than a neighbor to love her so,” he said. “If it were not my family who has been embarrassed, or my grandson whose heart has been broken, I should be admiring of such a feat of daring. Enzo asked the doge to complain to the sultan and demand the girl back, but of course the doge said no. The scandal will die, and we cannot endanger our relations with someone as powerful as Sultan Mehmet over a stolen bride. Besides, no vows were spoken.”
Alessandro Venier nodded in agreement, but in truth he was infuriated by the Ziani family’s attitude. Then he realized that his friend was correct. In the grand scheme of things, Bianca was an unimportant girl. Venice was not going to war with a powerful trading partner over her. What was done was done. “If Enzo is not in any hurry to reconsider my granddaughter Francesca,” he said to Piero Ziani, “remember that her mother birthed a healthy son nine months after her marriage. Marco is almost twenty now, Piero. Orianna wasn’t much older than her daughter, Francesca. All my daughter’s children have survived infancy and early childhood. Seven children. All healthy. All living.”
“Let us see what happens in a month or two,” Piero Ziani said.
Alessandro Venier had to be satisfied with that. He wrote to his daughter, Orianna, telling her everything that had transpired, cleverly shifting any blame for Bianca’s escape onto Orianna’s and Giovanni Pietro d’Angelo’s shoulders. The Venier family had been made the laughingstock of Venice, and it was their fault. They should have kept Bianca in Florence until she had rid herself of her obsession for her infidel. And if she hadn’t done so, then she should have been incarcerated in a cloistered convent where she would not bring shame upon their two families, as she had by running away. They must now consider her dead to them. Her name must never be spoken within the family ever again.
