Read The Rossetti Letter (v5) for Free Online Page A

rival a smug look as he helped her step down to the floor.
    Alessandra gathered her purse and started toward the doors. She was making her way through the crowd when the nobleman whom La Celestia had rebuffed grabbed Alessandra by the arm. Apparently the blow to his pride hadn’t been permanent. He wore a stylish blue tunic under his knee-length coat and a self-assured grin.
    “What’s this?” he said, smiling at her but speaking to the friend at his side. “A young miss out alone, without a veil?”
    “This is a pretty problem,” his friend said. He was not so well favored nor so fine, but his attitude was equally mocking. “Maid or matron, which do you think?”
    “Whether I am married or not is none of your concern,” Alessandra said.
    “The lady has a tart tongue,” the blue dandy said.
    “Matron, then, I’d wager, for maids are sweet.”
    “You are both very rude,” Alessandra said. “If you were gentlemen, you would let me pass.”
    La Celestia turned to face them. “What trouble are you two causing now?” she asked. A smile played across her lips, but her expression was kind. “Can’t you see the girl’s in mourning?” she chided her friends. “Leave her be.”
    “Thank you.” Alessandra headed toward the doors.
    “A moment,” La Celestia called. Alessandra turned around. The courtesan moved closer, seeming to glide toward her instead of walk. She cocked her head, eyes questioning. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere?”
    “No,” Alessandra answered without hesitating. Surely she would know at once if she’d met this woman before.
    “My mistake,” La Celestia said, turning away.
    The guards opened the doors for Alessandra and she walked outside. The crowd had dissipated, but a few gawkers still remained, craning their necks to get another look at the courtesan. Alessandra moved quickly past them, clutching her purse, thinking firmly of home.

Death
    22 April 1617
    T HE L ANE OF Broken Vows was a fetid back alley, perpetually cloaked in shadow and strewn with refuse, that burrowed between the tumbledown warehouses of the Cannaregio waterfront. In the most silent hour of the night, under the light of a half-moon, a boy slipped into a dark doorway at the end of the lane. He was a street urchin with pinched features, red-rimmed eyes, and a small, pointed nose that twitched, rodentlike, in moments of uncertainty. He appeared to be no more than eight or nine, but he had been on this earth at least twelve years; or so the nuns of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, whose meager charity had kept him alive, had assured him.
    His name was Taddeo da Ponte, and he was a spy.
    He sank deeper into the shadows as he heard footsteps approaching. Three men walked single file along the fondamenta, then crossed an arched bridge spanning the slender canal known as the Rio della Panada. Moonlight glinted off bobbing sword hilts as the men’s shadows flitted across the silvery surface of the water below. Two were French corsairs—Barbary Coast pirates—and one a Spanish bravo, a hired man-at-arms. Taddeo had determined at the tavern that they weren’t the usual sort of layabout mercenaries who frequented Agostino’s tiny pub; the corsairs were men of rank, and the Spanish bravo looked a cut above the common thug: tall, strong, with a stony gaze and a silver hoop that dangled from his left earlobe. Taddeo had even been close enough to the Spaniard to see the insignia on his sword hilt: a fox, the mark of Toledo steel and the emblem of the finest rapiers in the world. See where they go and come right back, Agostino had said, but Taddeo had a hunch that he might discover something Batù Vratsa would find worthy of reward.
    He wrapped his short cape closer to ward off the damp and glanced up at the mist-shrouded moon. He waited until the men had disappeared into the darkness on the other side of the bridge before leaving his sanctuary, then followed them, soundless as a ghost. Before Agostino had given him work at the