“Then why was he denounced but not the two of them?! Livia and Signor Russo! They’re both free! She in London, living as Rob’s widow, and he is here in Venice, with no blame at all! Why is it my uncle is under arrest in the well and they are free? How can I find him? And how can I get him out?”

He shook his head. “That you can’t do,” he said with finality. “I’m sorry for you, maid, coming all this way on a wild-goose chase. But you’ll never get him out. There’s no appeal against the Doge. Not in Venice. Once a man goes in, he never comes out.”

* * *

Sarah waited in the red-and-white checkered hall of the Palazzo Russo as Felipe’s mother came down the stairs and unlocked the inner door to the warehouse of statues without a word, without a smile, dour as her daughter. Guiltily Sarah wondered if they had discovered her identity, or seen her talking to Mordecai.

“Grazie,” Sarah said awkwardly from the statue-lined hall. The woman nodded and labored back up the stairs. From the first floor her daughter stared down at Sarah, and then followed her mother out of sight.

Alone in the warehouse, Sarah did not set to work at once but looked with fresh eyes at the shelves and shelves of statues, some of them wrapped, some of them polished and ready for sale, some of them chipped and dirty. Now that she looked carefully she could see that they were in very different styles, and some of them older and more worn than others. Now it was obvious to her that they were not all from the same collection, they must have come from many different sources. Irritated by her earlier naivety she walked down the line of the shelves on the back wall, seeing that there was no attempt at order—as there would have been if they had been properly collected and arranged for show; they were tumbled in, pell-mell, just as they had arrived. They looked as if they had been found, dug up, shipped at random, and heaped together, all waiting for sorting and cleaning and polishing. There were stains from different-colored earth, dark silt, red clay. A market of figures, like the market of feathers: a jumble brought together only to make money, severed, dirty, thrown into one place for the convenience of a buyer looking for profit, not for beauty. This was material newly found, with mud still drying on it.

Only on one side of the warehouse, where Sarah had been invited to make her choice, were the sculptures ready for examination. Here was a selection of statues of matching colors, cleaned and polished; here was a harmony of style that looked as if it could have come from the collection of a famous connoisseur.

The shelves of the warehouse ran the length of the house, beneath the high windows that overlooked the canal. The other side was shelved from floor to ceiling, piled with fragments of statues and some big single pieces. Sarah went all the way along, looking at the beautiful old stones, some of them chipped and dirty, some of them hacked from their bases, but all of them newly delivered to the warehouse, the dusty stone floor marked with tracks where they had been dragged in on cloths, or wheeled in on barrows. At the end of the row Sarah realized that some tracks led, not from the inner door to the house, but to a curtain of sacking at the far end of the warehouse. Sarah followed the trail to the curtain, and when she lifted it, she saw behind it another double door set into a circular stone tower, like a stair.

“Signora?”

Sarah dropped the curtain with a gasp and turned around to find old Signora Russo looking in from the door to the hall.

“Sí, sí!” she said, coming swiftly forwards, into view. She had been hidden, she thought, by the projecting statues, the old woman would not have known she was at the doorway at the far end of the warehouse. But she would certainly have seen that Sarah was at the opposite end from her workbench, in an area of the storehouse where she had no business to be.

The woman mimed eating, pointing at her mouth and at the ceiling above her head.

“It is time for dinner upstairs? I’ll come at once!” Sarah nodded, came quickly to the door to the hall and followed the signora up the stairs.

“I should wash,” she said, showing her dusty hands. She ducked into her bedroom, poured water from the jug into the ewer, and washed her hands, drying them on a piece of fine old linen. When she entered the dining room Felipe was not there. There was a place set for one and a glass of wine beside the bowl of soup.

“Just me?” She pointed at herself and the older woman nodded.

Awkwardly, Sarah sat at the table and spooned her soup in silence. Behind her the old woman left the room and came back with a bowl of pasta and a plate of freshly washed fruit. She put both down and left Sarah to eat alone. Clearly, Signor Russo was not coming home tonight, and in his absence the women ate in the kitchen and did not bother to entertain the visitor. Sarah wondered if she were in disgrace for going out so early in the morning, or if they suspected her of spying on them. But there was nothing in the silent service of the mother or the sulky behavior of the girl to tell her either way. The warm friendliness of the first two nights had disappeared; Sarah felt uneasily as if they were watching her.

As darkness fell, the old woman came with an ancient gold candelabra staked with wax candles, but Sarah did not want to sit in the echoing dining room with the statues like frozen companions around the walls.

“Signor Russo?” Sarah mimed beckoning, asking if he was coming home.

The old woman shook her head. “Domani,” she said.

She made a gesture to indicate prayer.

“Oh,” Sarah said. “At church. Christmas, I suppose. Oh well. Demain!” she said, as if she only spoke French. “Tomorrow! Ah well! So, good night, signora!” She took her single candle, lit it from the glorious candelabra, and went carefully up the stairs to her bedroom. Chiara, having dined well with her mother in the kitchen, was already asleep in the bed. Sarah undressed, slipped in beside her, and waited for the house to be quiet.

DECEMBER 1670, LONDON

A messenger came down the quay to the Reekie warehouse, disdainfully picking his way as if he might stain his shoes. “This must be for you,” Alys said to Livia as the three women in the parlor saw the cockaded hat go past the window.

Alinor looked up from the cheesecloth bags. “You can get it,” she said quietly, as Livia hesitated and then quickly went to open the front door before the man had even knocked.

“Nobildonna Reekie?” the man asked.

“Da Ricci,” she corrected him. “Yes.”

“A letter,” he said, and handed it over. It was franked by Sir James, with his name signed in the corner, so there was nothing to pay.

“I’ll read it in the kitchen!” Livia called through the doorway, not wanting to face them in the parlor, and went down the hall to the kitchen where Tabs was scouring pans. “Out,” she said shortly.

“Out where?” Tabs replied mutinously. “For I’m not going out into the yard; it’s freezing.”

“Oh, stay there then!” Livia said irritably. She glanced at Carlotta, nursing Matteo before the fire. “Isn’t it time he went to bed?”

“No, your ladyship.”

“Take him up,” she said irritably. She found she was shaking with apprehension. This should be an invitation to come to the distant house in Yorkshire. There should be a guinea under the seal to pay for her travel. Better yet, if it announced the carriage would come for her the next day. Best of all, if he was coming himself.