The Venetian Heretic

by Christian Cameron

Genres: Renaissance; Historical Mysteries; Historical Romance

Synopsis

Venice is alive with the magic and bustle of Carnevale.

A city of mysterious masks and gorgeous palaces, of riches, patricians, intellectuals and artists. And amidst it all, something new is being born: magnificent voices are soaring above the spires, astonishing costumes are being crafted, and audiences are being transported, for the first time, by the power of the Opera.

And beneath it all: espionage, organised crime, and murder.

Swordsman Richard Hughes has arrived on the banks of the Grand Canal looking for a simpler life, only to be plunged - alongside Phillip de Chambray, a remarkable woman unable to show her true self - into the thick of the murkiest, most dangerous European politics, at a moment when someone is trying to destroy the opera, and Venice itself.

Rich with authentic detail, this is the story of a complex world not so different from our own, and Christian Cameron, the modern master of historical fiction, brings real history to life in a way no other author can.

Release date: April 24, 2025

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 400

Sample

acqua alta – a very high tide in Venice, which washes over the streets and alleys, and into the ground floors of houses and other buildings.

arsenalotto (plural arsenalotti) – a worker at the Arsenale, the naval dockyard.

assalto (plural assalti) – a structured practice for fencers, almost like a dance.

badessa – the mother superior of a convent.

bottega del caffè – a coffee house.

bragozzo – a two-masted fishing boat, common to the Lido and Chioggia, and seen throughout the Lagoon.

bravo (plural bravi) – a hired blade.

Briscola – A card game played throughout Italy but with dozens of variations.

calle – a narrow alley in Venice.

campo – an open area, often paved, usually with a wellhead, but sometimes not much more than the meeting of two streets.

capo – The head of a guild, a church organization, or a criminal gang.

casa – a house or a palace.

cavazione – a turn of the sword, usually under an opponent’s blade; a deception.

coronetto – The ensign or standard bearer in a cavalry or dragoon regiment.

corte – a courtyard or larger opening, or a house with a courtyard.

Cortigiana; cortigiana onesta – A cortigiana is a courtesan, a sex worker whose skills in bed and out allow her to limit her customers, and whose presence is acceptable in social situations. A cortigiana onesta is a woman whose non-sexual skills (like music, dance, poetry, or all three) give her entrance to society.

Domini di Terraferma – Venetian territory on the mainland of Italy; what is now known as the Veneto. The Terraferma was administrated differently from Venice proper, which included tolerably dry areas like the Lido and Chioggia.

faldetta – A hood or cape.

fondaco – a warehouse.

fondamenta – a pavement, usually along a canal. In 1650, unlike now, most canals were lined with mud or even grass.

forse – in Italian, perhaps, or maybe.

forte – The third of the sword closest to the hit; the ‘strong’ part used in a parry or an engagement.

galeazza (plural galeazze) – A type of warship, based on the largest galley hulls, meant to act as both an artillery platform, like northern European ships, and as a galley. They were very slow, and often had to be towed into action.

garde – One of the guards or positions of fencing.

Holy Office – the religious Inquisition. In Venice it was charged mostly with defending the state from heresy, but in Rome and Spain it had much wider powers.

imbrocatta – A fencing term that refers, in this case, to a very difficult descending thrust delivered offline.

Inquisitori di Stato – The office of the Venetian state that controlled the equivalent of police and civil law, and some espionage functions.

justacorps – a long coat.

libertini – a name for the freethinkers and intellectuals, mathematicians, atheists, scientists and homosexuals of Venice, and indeed all of Europe.

loggia – The lowest floor of a grand building on one of Venice’s canals.

Matins – A canonical hour or service of the traditional Roman Catholic church; a later portion of the vigil from 3 a.m. until dawn.

misura – measure, the distance at which a fencer can strike their opponent.

nones – A canonical hour, the ‘ninth’ hour or 3 p.m.

osteria – A wine shop that might also serve simple food.

pepian – the ground floor of boxes in an early opera house.

piano nobile – The main or principle floor of an Italian palazzo, containing the main reception rooms.

platea – the main floor of an opera house, where most of the audience stood or sat on rented stools.

portega – the front room of a great house.

prima – A guard in fencing of the period; with the hand thumb down and at or above the shoulders, where it comes naturally when you draw your sword. From this position, most thrusts are imbrocatti.

Propaganda Fide – A Catholic organisation ostensibly for the propagation of the Faith.

provveditore – A Venetian office roughly equivalent to ‘Inspector’ but applying to almost every area of industry, maritime commerce, and war; Venice had a number of them and they were very powerful.

puttana – A sex worker.

rascona – A large boat for carrying heavy loads on canals, often seen in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Venice. Too big for the smaller canals, but essential for bringing big cargoes to the shops and warehouses.

rio (plural rii) – a small canal.

risi e bisi – Rice and peas, a traditional dish for the poor.

riva – a fondamenta that gives onto the Lagoon or a large body of water like the Grand Canal, and not a rio or small canal.

roq – A short, boxy coat, usually worn by soldiers; like a justacorps but shorter. Both garments came from the rough soldiers fashions of the 30 Year’s War.

rotella – A large round shield, usually iron or steel and the best were bullet proof.

salle d’armes – a fencing school.

sandolo – a flat-bottomed boat for transport.

sbirro – French cant term for a policeman.

Schiavona (plural Schiavoni) – Two different meanings in Veneziano; one, a Slav, or a person from Albania, Greece, or Dalmatia; the other, a type of basket-hilted broadsword.

sestiere – one of the six neighbourhoods in Venice. The word derives from the figure six, Venice having in effect been cut up into six sections: Cannaregio, Castello, Dorsoduro, San Marco, San Polo and Santa Croce.

soldo (plural soldi) – A Venetian coin of silver.

sopracomito – The commander of a Venetian galley.

storte – A short, curved cutlass or saber.

Terce – the last of the canonical hours.

topa – a rat. Also a kind of small boat.

volte – In fencing or dance, a rapid turn.

zecchino (plural zecchini) – Cant terms for small gold coins; literally, a ‘sequin.’

Snow was falling. It wasn’t a heavy snow, straight from the Alps, but a pretty snow, flashing in the light of the lanterns in the alley alongside the cathedral. The elderly man paid the swirling flakes no heed, unmoved by their patterns, because he was considering a mathematical query he’d received from a friend in France, and the beauty of the problem transcended all other thoughts.

Cesare Patino was well-dressed, if a little old-fashioned, in a long gown over doublet and breeches, his linens immaculate, the small cap of his academic rank proving a poor substitute for a warmer hat, but he walked briskly, his heavy stick tapping the wall as a warning to footpads. Thirty years of war to the north had filled the Veneto with broken men willing to rob, and even to murder, and the scholar was neither unarmed nor afraid.

He was considering whether it was actually possible that a column of air had weight when he heard the sort of movement that, on a dark night, suggested malfeasance.

Patino turned his back to the cathedral wall and put his hand on the long dagger, perfectly legal, that he wore across his back under his cloak.

‘Who’s there?’ he asked.

A man emerged from the snow, bareheaded, handsome, booted and spurred, although he wore a mask like a Venetian at Carnevale. It was red. Under the mask, the man’s mouth was smiling.

‘Don Patino?’ the man asked. His accent was faintly foreign, educated, genteel.

The other man relaxed. ‘Sior, you have the advantage of me,’ he said, and gave a slight bow.

Red Mask returned the bow. ‘Don Patino,’ he said formally, ‘you have been adjudged of crimes against Holy Mother Church—’

‘Ridiculous,’ Patino said. ‘Bring the charges.’ He had taken his hand off his dagger handle, and now he moved it back.

‘You have been judged.’ Red Mask stepped forward and drew his rapier with ruthless confidence.

Patino had time to think that swords were illegal to carry in Padua; students from his university tended to fight duels, which was bad for everyone. Then he was using his stick to parry the man’s weapon.

He parried the first blow, but as he drew his dagger, panic made him tangle it in the heavy wet wool of his cloak. He could remember the fencing master telling them to practise drawing their weapons – that they’d never survive a fight if they couldn’t get their swords out.

He cursed, turning, trying to rip it free as Red Mask deceived his walking stick with a simple cavazione and thrust at him. From Patino’s point of view, the thrust seemed to come towards him for a long time, and the knowledge of his failure was his last thought. The sword point entered his right eye and went through the back of his head, and he heard the other man’s grunt of satisfaction as he fell, but he was dead as he hit the ground.

Iawoke to a gentle knocking at my door. I have two rooms, which is rare enough for a man of my means in Venice; by the saints, I even have a fireplace, and a little Turk’s hat chimney …

You don’t care. So let me try again. I awoke to a gentle knock at my door. It was Lent; Venice was slow and cold, and my fire had burned low. There was no way a knock meant anything good.

I rolled out of my warm bed, pulled the bed curtains closed in a desperate hope of preserving the warmth in there, and padded in my bare feet to the door. I reached for my good dagger and realised it was at my salle d’armes.

‘Who’s there?’ I asked.

A firm, quiet voice said, ‘In the name of the Republic.’

I sighed. I’d been arrested before. And at least it wasn’t robbers.

Venice has several endearing traits, not least of which is the courtesy of its officials, especially those who knock at your door and arrest you. They don’t make a fuss; it’s possible your landlady never even knows you were arrested. Unlike, say, Paris …

Unlikely, but possible. Perhaps more accurate to say that your landlady can pretend that she doesn’t know you were arrested. A great deal of civility is pretence, I find – and more so in Venice. But I digress, which, if you stay for the entire tale, you’ll find I do too often.

I opened the door.

The steps up to my little lodging above the spice shop are very narrow, and my landing is a continuation of the steps and no more. A small man in a nice round half-cloak stood outside, and there were two more men behind him, all armed.

Well …

‘I was asleep,’ I said, still half that way, and stupid with it.

The gentleman, and you could tell from his clothes and the hilt of his sword that he was a gentleman, not a bravo like the two on the stairs, gave a little bow. He indicated my room with a wave of the hand that held his gloves.

‘May I …?’

‘Of course, Illustrio,’ I said.

‘Capitano would be nearer the mark,’ he smiled. ‘I’m prepared to let you dress, if you give your word to come along without a fuss.’

I returned his bow. ‘You have my word.’

He seated himself in my one acceptable chair, picked up my prized hollow poker, and began to make a fire out of my embers.

I got dressed.

When you are arrested, it’s essential to wear good, solid workaday clothes; who knows when they’ll let you change your shirt? So, I pulled on two shirts, both clean, over my rather bedraggled nightshirt, and I eschewed my good doublet and my excellent, almost new petticoat breeches, and instead donned a roq – a sort of military coat, made of heavy red wool, lined with more wool, and with a dozen interior pockets I’d put in myself.

‘I suppose I’d be wasting my time protesting that I have all the required licences …’ I began.

My guest waved a hand and continued to concentrate on my fire. He was doing well; I reckoned him an old soldier who knew how to start a fire and how to keep one alight.

‘Would you care to tell me …?’

He smiled thinly. ‘No.’

Well … I put on a neck cloth, if only to be warm in whatever cell I was sent to, and looked aimlessly at my little apartment without seeing anything.

This time, I knew I hadn’t killed anyone, and this time, I knew how to play the game in Venice.

‘Ready,’ I said. I left the good military rapier in its sheath; it was inside the bed canopy anyway, as was my illegal little pistol.

My guest nodded and rose without a word.

He led the way, and I followed down the stairs, his two bravi surprisingly quiet, and out into the night.

Night in Venice in Lent. Cold and damp and dark. You don’t have to be very drunk to fall into a canal, and my fondamenta has no wall. The canal is used for cargo at all hours, or the spice shop wouldn’t be there.

We walked a little way, crossed a bridge, and there was a boat – a small vessel for perhaps six oars. Only two pairs were manned, and the bravos sat in the bow as if pulling an oar was beneath them. They probably thought that it was.

But the two oarsmen were proper seamen and did a professional job, and the cox’n – or perhaps the timoneer, depending on your view of him – knew his business.

‘Navy?’ I asked him.

‘Silence, please,’ my captain said.

The cox’n gave me a smile. It was extraordinarily expressive, and I read it to mean that in better times he might have had a great deal to say about the navy.

The captain also had an expressive smile. The message was different.

After a few minutes, we crossed the Grand Canal and entered the labyrinth of canals east of the Rialto. I shivered, and not just at the damp air and the oppressive darkness. My thoughts spun like a wheel on an overturned cart – round and round, trying to imagine who I had injured and what might have led to my arrest. My initial calm gave way to the kind of anxiety that makes your guts churn and your hands tremble. And I realised that I had forgotten the single most important thing I should have brought – money. I had three silver soldi to my name; that would have been good for meat and wine in prison for three days.

I felt a fool. But then, I often do.

After our fourth or fifth turn, I saw without surprise where we were going, as even in the poor light I could see the Basilica of San Marco looming out of the fog, and the Gothic bulk of the Palazzo Ducale behind. I looked astern to make sure that the night and the darkness hadn’t caused me to miss my bearings, and then my suspicions were confirmed as we sighted the main watergate to the New Prison.

And then we ghosted past it. Somewhere off in the darkness, a dog howled like a lost soul.

I said, ‘This isn’t the way to the state prison.’

‘We’re not going to the state prison,’ the captain said. It was the most information I’d received so far.

Lights shone through the night fog, and the world reeled about me. We were gliding down the rio di Palazzo in total silence; the oarsmen had stopped rowing, and I could see the old Santa Teresa entrance to the basilica …

… across from the other gate to the prison.

I’m an English heretic, and I live in Catholic Venice, and I live in fear of the Catholic Church. And the gentle, polite captain wasn’t a captain of the Inquisitori di Stato, the deadly and efficient enforcement arm of the Dieci, the Council of Ten which governs civil life in Venice. He was an officer of the Sanctum Officium. What we might call, in English, the Holy Office.

I’d been arrested by the Inquisition.

The boat rowed me silently alongside the Holy Office’s wharf, and the captain led me, with silent courtesy, all the way through several layers of guards and down a very narrow passageway to a room. A room, not a cell. It was whitewashed, and the last acqua alta had not been kind; it was dank, and the water from the high tides had ruined the plaster about a foot up the wall, but at the moment it was dry. The floor was stone, and I was given a chair.

I was afraid. There was a great deal to be afraid of. In fact, the Inquisition of Venice is a pale shadow of the same Holy Office in Rome – or, worse yet, in Spain. But it has wide powers, and no one likes to be taken in the middle of the night. It’s not like being taken for debt. Someone was serious. Men like my captain are not sent on midnight missions for small things.

I am a veteran of many arrests, let us say.

Good Christ, I was afraid.

After a very short wait, by the standard of prisons, a man came in. He was large, and fat, and his face wouldn’t have won any prizes anywhere; his beard was sparse and his eyebrows the opposite, and his tonsure wasn’t well done.

But his white robe was clean as new-fallen snow. He wasn’t wearing the black capa but I knew instantly he was a Dominican.

I rose and bowed. You do, to friars, in Catholic countries.

He smiled. ‘Bless you, my son,’ he said, and sat. The chair creaked.

Here we go, I thought.

‘You are Richard Hughes, an Englishman?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

‘Are you a citizen of Venice?’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘I have my papers at home—’

He raised a hand – almost the same gesture he’d used to bless me.

‘You are a master of defence? You teach the sword?’

I shrugged. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. That is, I had a dozen students, some of whom even paid.

He nodded.

‘You teach in a warehouse in Castello,’ he said.

‘You seem to know a great deal about me,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘You are a heretic Protestant.’

I sat back. ‘It is my understanding—’ I began.

He waved. ‘Please. Help me understand.’

‘It is my understanding that as La Serenissima is so closely allied to Brunswick and other Lutheran states …’ I let the rest hang in the air. Some things in Venice are better unstated. But suggested. Venice was just barely surviving a major war, and she needed Protestant troops.

He nodded. ‘I take your point. On another occasion, I may not.’

It was my turn to nod.

‘I believe you have been arrested before,’ he said, looking at a document that had to be the state paper regarding my arrest and trial.

‘I killed a man in a brawl,’ I said flatly.

He nodded. ‘With his own sword.’

There was nothing I could say that was going to make this better, so I shrugged, a habit I’d learned as a child, and was often punished for. And the friar was no better pleased than my mum had been.

He looked up. ‘How did you come to kill a man with his own sword?’ he asked.

Now, I’m fair at reading men. And women. I don’t view women as aliens. And despite everything – the arrest, the hour, the night, the fog and damp, the Inquisition … Despite all that, I found the friar … almost agreeable. He had a light touch with his interrogation – and he’d already passed over my status as a Protestant with a shrug towards the state. In Venice, the state is more powerful than the Church. He knew it, and I knew it, and so …

I had no idea why I was there, but I vouchsafed a little humour.

‘Take my classes, sir, and I’ll teach you to do it,’ I said.

He leaned back and laughed. It was a genuine laugh, and I doubt many belly-laughs are heard in the dungeons of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, but there we sat, and by God, his laugh sparked my own.

We looked at each other.

‘And you became a citizen just how?’ he asked. ‘As you are a foreign heretic.’

I nodded. ‘I was a galley slave,’ I said. ‘But you must know all this.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘I was a soldier for my king. The King of England. Later, I went to France, and there I was arrested. I was a galley slave for his Most Christian Majesty, the King of France. I rowed for them for almost a year, and then … our ship was taken by the Turks in a fight.’

He made a face, to indicate that he might have some understanding of how little this changed our fates.

‘Less than a week later, a Venetian galley caught us and took us,’ I concluded.

‘It is the policy of the state to free any slaves taken in war,’ he said.

‘It’s a fine policy,’ I said. ‘I promise you, when you are a galley slave and you see the Lion of San Marco, it makes you consider your options.’

‘So. You were freed. And then?’

‘Then I served as a soldier for Venice,’ I said. ‘For two years.’

‘And you have killed some people?’

‘One,’ I said. ‘In Venice, at least.’

‘One proven,’ he said.

We looked at each other.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let us get to business. Sior Hughes, are you one of those who call themselves the libertini?’

I knew the libertini. Men – and women – who held that all religion was a method of political control. Who believed that the soul died with the body. They believed various other things that some people found shocking – about marriage and ritual. They were ‘free-thinkers’. I’d known some in England, and in France, and in Venice they were virtually a political faction.

‘No,’ I said. Sometimes short answers are the best answers.

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘You are, then, devout? I mean, as a heretic.’

Now there was a question. Was I devout? The galleys had wrecked the religious devotions of my youth, but I was not an atheist or a philosophe. I didn’t think telling him that I had once studied to be an Anglican minister at Cambridge was likely to win his favour, but neither would it be useful to respond that it was years since I had graced the inside of a church.

‘I believe in God,’ I said simply. ‘And I can recite the Credo without offence.’

He looked at me for a long time. I felt the chill return to my spine, and I began to wonder if the protection of the Duke of Brunswick was going to be enough. I had a protector in Venice; I began to wonder if it was time to play my trump card and mention his name.

But then he smiled. It was only a slight smile, and it said ‘We are men of the world’ without his uttering those words.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You are not a libertine. You are a citizen of Venice. And it would not harm you to be thought well of within these walls, eh?’

Where is this going? I thought.

‘I need a favour,’ he added suddenly.

Christ on the Cross, that’s about the last thing I expected a Dominican servant of the Holy Office to say to me. I took far too long to respond, and when I did, I might have muttered ‘unh’ or some such barbarity before I answered.

‘How can I be of service?’ I was very much on my guard; if a dozen footpads with old rapiers had all converged on me in an alley, I wouldn’t have been more on my guard.

He steepled his hands. They were big hands and had done real work.

‘I need someone to speak English to a prisoner,’ he said. ‘And I need that person to forget that he was ever here, or spoke to the prisoner.’

It was very odd, but his sing-song delivery suggested that, whatever he said, he meant the opposite.

‘I can most certainly speak English,’ I said. ‘But, you’ll pardon me, sir … I am not sure that you have my best interests at heart.’

He nodded. ‘You will receive a dozen soldi for an hour’s work and the trouble we put you to. And you will have my thanks, which are not worthless.’

Well. A dozen soldi was a month’s lodging and food – or two months, with no wine. And the thanks of the Inquisition?

Against that, they were, for all I knew, torturing some poor Englishman and I’d have to do the dirty.

I thought about it and looked at him. ‘I’m not an assassin,’ I said. ‘I don’t kill for money, and I won’t—’

He held up that same hand – the blessing. ‘And you’re the better man for it. Nothing like that. It will take you five minutes.’

They couldn’t torture a man to death in front of me in five minutes.

Could they? My school books had been full of the horrors of the Inquisition.

‘Very well,’ I said with some hesitation, fearing that a dozen soldi could turn into thirty pieces of silver all too easily.

He rose. ‘Good. I have heard good things about you from a … friend. Come.’

He got up and left the room, as if I was a free man and could follow or not.

The captain was still in the corridor, and he nodded.

The three of us walked down the corridor, and then down a flight of steps. The acqua alta had been even less kind here; these were damp cells, and no lie. Often, they would be half-full of water.

Nasty.

We went to the first cell, the closest to the steps.

A heavily accented voice said, ‘I tell you, I am English! You have no authority!’ It was a woman’s voice, and she spoke in English.

The captain opened the door.

The woman was short; not exactly beautiful, but pretty enough in a fine wool gown like a tradesman’s wife, except that her hair – a fine dark chestnut, almost red – was done, and well done. She wore a cross worth more than I earned in a year – pearls and a ruby or, at worst, a fine garnet.

‘Does she speak English?’ my friar asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

He looked at me with approval.

What in the name of Satan is going on here? I wondered.

‘How good is her English?’ he asked. ‘Speak to her. Talk about anything. I don’t care.’

I looked at the friar. I even glanced at the captain, who was impassive; he might have become one with the wall.

‘Madam,’ I said. ‘I am a poor Englishman, who has been brought in to speak to you in your own tongue.’

She looked at me for a moment. That woman had more intelligence in her face than half the Great Council all rolled together. ‘Forse,’ I admitted, Forse, which means ‘maybe’ is the most Venetian of words. It suits every Venetian situation. But I thought that her look was Italian, and those chestnut curls had never seen the Cliffs of Dover or any other part of England. Short, well-built, and with dark red hair – a courtesan or a musician. An actress. Something just on the edge of respectability.

In fair but accented English, she said, ‘I am the wife of the Chevalier Stuart. I am English, and these men have no authority over me.’

Now, I knew, in the vaguest way, that the Chevalier Stuart existed, and was in Venice, but our paths had never crossed. I had supported another Stuart and it had cost me. I had some idea what the Chevalier’s relation to the dead king was. But that’s another story.

‘Her English is good,’ I said. ‘She says she is the wife of the Chevalier Stuart, and you have no authority over her.’

I said this in Veneziano, the dialect of Venice, and I thought, from her face, that she understood every word.

Perfect, I thought. Am I the one being tested?

Well … Who am I to kiss and tell? She didn’t look like a stooge for the Inquisition.

‘She speaks good English,’ I said.

She said, very rapidly, in English, ‘Go to my husband and tell him where I am and I will reward you.’

Well, you may think less of me, but I’m not very loyal to the Inquisition, and she was, despite my first appraisal, a fine woman and much more attractive than the friar.

I said, ‘She insists that she is the wife of this Chevalier Stuart.’

The friar nodded. ‘I see,’ he agreed, as if this was just what he wanted. ‘It is as the good Lord wishes it to be. Very well. Ask her for her name and style.’

I did, and found that she was Francesca Stuart. I avoided telling her how unlikely Francesca was as a Scottish name; those cheeks had never seen the Clyde. Her accent told me she was local, or local enough.

I turned back to her. ‘As soon as I’m sure I’m not watched, I’ll go to your husband,’ I said rapidly, and in a Northern accent.

She smiled. ‘Good. Now tell them to fuck off.’ She said the last phrase in Veneziano.

She was confident.

She was in a cell in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and she wasn’t afraid. Christ, I was still a little afraid.

And then we went back to the whitewashed room.

The friar sat me down again, and the captain leaned in the doorway.

Not good.

The friar leaned across the table. It was only a very slight lean, and yet it told me that I was still safe.

‘This is a very delicate matter,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Incogniti?’

I did. I suspect that everyone in Venice did. They were the ultra-libertines, and they included among their number members of the highest patrician class, as well as most of the leading artists and musicians.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Hmm,’ he said. And then, after a moment, ‘A prominent member of the Accademia degli Incogniti was murdered a few weeks ago in Padua.’

I felt as if I was in bad dream. None of the things we’d discussed seemed to connect. The friar read my confusion. ‘People are saying he was killed by … elements within the Church,’ he said.

A sour expression crossed the captain’s face. Annoyance? Professional distaste?

On the other hand, I had heard something of this. Murder and assassination are, despite the rumours in England, incredibly rare in Venice and her mainland empire. Venetians believe in the law, and they obey it. But my landlady – of whom more later – had mentioned her shock at the killing. A famous man.

‘An academic—’ I tried at hazard.

‘Just so,’ my Dominican replied. He steepled his fingers. ‘It is a bad time for the Holy Office to be … aggressive towards the libertini here in Venice.’

Finally, the light dawned. ‘The lady is one of the libertini?’

‘Her husband is a backer of the opera,’ the friar commented. ‘They are birds of a certain feather.’ His tone indicated to me that in his eyes, anyone who supported the opera was an enemy of the Church. Not a surprise.

‘Ahh …’ I really did understand, because the opera, Venice’s fastest growing and most widely relished entertainment, was owned and run by the libertini. They wrote the scores and the libretti, and they owned the opera houses and the companies, and most of the artists involved thought of themselves as libertini.

‘So …’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ the friar said, and rose. ‘Go with God, Sior Hughes. And with the thanks of the Holy Office. None of this ever happened, a