Winds of Folly Read Free

Admiral of the Fleet, youngest of the Council of Ten, the man who would be Doge if Caterina had her way.
    She greeted him with a smile and advanced to meet him, still with her arm on the Ambassador’s. She had no eyes for any other, though she was vaguely aware that others were there. The gondolier, of course, and a servant or bodyguard who had stepped ashore after his master. The musicians who had been assembled here, providing an accompaniment to the fireworks,and were now packing away their instruments. A few spectators, still loitering at the water’s edge, pushing and shoving at each other with loud voices and laughter. Caterina felt a slight unease but no sense of threat, none at all. She was still smiling, up to the moment of the attack, and even then she did not recognise it as such. She thought one of the spectators had staggered into Dandolo’s path, or been shoved in that direction by one of his companions in their horseplay. She frowned and was about to utter a rebuke when she saw the glint of steel and uttered a cry of warning instead. Too late; they were all around him, lunging with their stilettos, and she heard a scream like a rabbit taken by a fox. She thought later that it was like the scene in
Julius Caesar
, which she had performed once in Verona, and perhaps it was intended as such, for theatre played an important part in the politics of the Republic. Later she remembered the masks, too, though she was not taking any particular note of them at the time. The assassins moved in on him as swiftly and mysteriously as ghosts and then, like ghosts, they vanished, melting into the crowd and the shadows. And then there was just the gondolier and the servant and the musicians. And Dandolo, lying there on the steps, in his blood.
    He was still alive when she reached him but he had been stabbed many times. In the chest, in the neck, in his beautiful face. She tore off his mask, shouting for a surgeon. There was blood everywhere. She tried to stop the flow with her hands but there was too much. His eyes were open, gazing up at her, but there was no recognition in them. Then more blood came gushing from his mouth and she knew he was gone.
    She felt hands pulling at her, trying to lift her to her feet. Voices urging her to come inside the convent. She resisted. It occurred to her to say a prayer for Dandolo’s soul, but the dominant emotion in her breast was one of rage. But thensomething made her look up and across the water, and her eyes found the exact spot where he was standing, as if she had known he would be there. And she saw the mask of Pedrolino, the simpleton, in the lamplight.
    She stood and pointed like some demented creature from the Greek chorus, pointed and screamed, the blood of her lover on her hands and arms, on her face, on her chalk-white mask.
    â€˜Assassino!’
    And she cursed him, a curse that was also a prayer – that the Avenging Angel would come out of the sea and destroy him: the man who had destroyed her dream.
    â€˜Assassino!’
    The word echoed back to her from the walls of the surrounding buildings, like laughter.

Part One
The Tramontana

Chapter One
The Captain of the
Unicorn

    C aptain Nathaniel Peake of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy was not normally given to the sin of Avarice. Lust had been a problem at times and Gluttony was not unknown to him, but Avarice, he would have thought, stood low on his list of moral propensities; so he was a little surprised to find he had been lounging against the stern rail of the frigate
Unicorn
for a not inconsiderable time gazing with some complacency at the four vessels sailing in her wake whilst calculating how much wealth they represented and how much of it would accrue to him personally.
    Three of the vessels were blockade runners, caught sneaking along the Ligurian coast with munitions and supplies for the French Army currently fighting the Austrians in the mountains. The fourth was a French privateer of eight