“Bah!” she said. “Forty years I have lived in this parish and never a fat gondolier have I seen.”

“He doesn’t get enough sleep.”

She shook her fist at me and waddled out, chuckling. I ate alone, reading everything known about digitalis.

I went to my room, bolted the door, and changed into shabbier clothes that I did not mind dirtying. My room is not the largest or grandest I could have, but I enjoy the view from its three big windows, which look out across a forest of chimneypots towards San Marco. Most houses are two or three stories high, so the churches, bell towers, and palaces stand up like islands in a stormy sea of red tile roofs. More particularly, my windows overlook the roof terrace of Number 96, and that scenery becomes spectacular on warm days, when the residents sun themselves there. They wear hats with wide brims and no crowns, spreading their hair out to bleach it without browning their faces. That day the terrace was deserted, except for some laundry drying.

The calle between the two buildings is very narrow and little used because it is a roundabout way of reaching the campo, while the wider one on the far side of 96 is straight and also leads to a bridge. Although my windows are about fifty feet above the ground, they are secured by stout iron bars. I opened the center one and peered out, provoking an explosion of pigeons. Three of its bars can be removed just by lifting them out of their sockets and leaning them against the sill-inside the room, of course, so they cannot fall out and drop like iron javelins to impale passing citizens. I wriggled through the gap and set my feet on a hand-width ledge just below, while keeping a firm grip on the bar that does not move. Then I made one long, death-defying stride to the steep tiles opposite, where I could sprawl forward and grab the rail around the altana to stop myself sliding off and making a nasty stain on the ground.

Yes, I could have gone downstairs, out the watergate of Ca’ Barbolano and in the watergate of 96-there is no real pedestrian fondamenta flanking the Rio San Remo, but there are ledges along both buildings just above high water and the manoeuver is not difficult for an agile person. I prefer my secret route, though, and like to think I am deceiving the Ten’s spies. Besides, a man must keep up his reputation.

I unlocked the trapdoor and trotted down several flights of stairs without meeting a soul. Number 96 is owned jointly by four ladies, although many more live and work there. Violetta occupies the best suite, in the southwest corner, and I have a key to its servants’ door. Peering into the kitchen, I found Milana struggling to iron a bulky brocade gown that probably weighed nearly as much as she did. Milana is small and has a twisted back, but she is fiercely loyal to her mistress and I have never seen her unhappy.

She jumped. “Alfeo! You startled me.”

“I do it just to see your smile. Is she up yet?” Courtesans go to bed at dawn, like the gentry. I also wanted to know if she was alone, of course, but that went without saying.

With a doubtful frown, Milana said, “Just a moment and I’ll see,” and disappeared. In a moment she returned, smiling again. “No, it’s all right. I told her you were here.”

I thanked her and went through to Violetta’s chamber, entering just in time to catch a tantalizing glimpse of bare breasts as she pulled the sheet up-her sense of timing would be the envy of any high-wire sword juggler. Her room is vast and luxurious, decorated with silk and crystal and ankle-deep rugs, plus gilt-framed mirrors and erotic art.

Other nations denounce Venice as the most sinful, vice-ridden city in all Christendom, claiming that we have more prostitutes than gondolas. Such talk is sheer envy. We are just less hypocritical about our follies, that’s all. Noble ladies see nothing wrong with a young blood squiring a courtesan to a ball or banquet-they would much rather he flaunt his current plaything in public than debauch their daughters in secret. Many noblemen never marry at all, supposedly to protect the family fortune from being divided between too many heirs, or else just to avoid the fuss and bother.

Harlots to suit every purse are available at Number 96. Violetta is not one of them. She is witty, highly educated, a superb dancer and singer. The stage lost a great actress in her, and it is tragic that Titian did not live long enough to immortalize her beauty. She is not available by the hour or the day, rarely even by the week. She accepts no money, only gifts-an emerald necklace here, a dozen ball gowns there-and the state treasury itself would not buy her favors for a man she did not fancy. Violetta dresses as well as any dogaressa or senator’s wife, and owns more jewels than the Basilica San Marco.

I am not and never have been one of her patrons, but we are friends. We are frequently close friends, especially during siesta, when we both have time to ourselves. Love was not what I had come for that day and I saw at once that it was not immediately available, for she was Medea, teeth and claws, green eyes smoldering. In truth her eyes were not, and never are, green. They are all colors and no color. They change all the time, but at that moment they had a greenish tinge, which is a danger sign. I seated myself on the end of the bed, safely out of reach, and smiled stupidly at her glare.

“Who was that slut I saw you with on the Lido two nights ago?”

“I wasn’t there,” I said. “It was some other man. I was masked, so you couldn’t have recognized me. And she is not a slut. Michelina Angeli. Her mother asked me if I would take her there as a treat for her fifteenth birthday. She will be betrothed soon and wanted to see Carnival on the Lido.”

“A virgin?” Medea asked with disbelief like a blast of Greek fire.

“I didn’t ask her. If she isn’t, then it won’t look like me. Besides,” I added, “how did you recognize me?” I had certainly not noticed her among the hundreds of masked revelers.

“I would know those gorgeous calves anywhere.” She laughed and melted before my eyes, becoming Helen. Helen of Troy, that is. Violetta does not play roles, as an actress does. She truly is several different people by turns. She says she cannot control her changes, they just happen, but I have rarely seen the wrong persona appear for any given situation. Medea’s voice is hard and metallic, Helen’s low and husky. Even her face is softer, more rounded. As Helen, she is the most beautiful, desirable, and skilled lover in the world. As Medea she is as dangerous in bed as she is anywhere else.

Helen held out her arms to me. The sheet dropped, of course. Encrusted in her finery, Violetta can be the cynosure of a ducal ball. I cannot begin to describe her appeal when she is still warm and drowsy and flushed from bed, still smelling of sleep, wearing nothing under a silken sheet. Her natural hair is middle-brown, but she bleaches it to a reddish gold. For formal affairs she dresses it in two upstanding horns, but then it hung tumbled loose in thick waves. I wanted to plunge into those waves and drown.

“Please!” I begged. “Business first.”

“You are not business, Alfeo Zeno! Don’t you dare be business! You are strictly pleasure. Every wife in the city has a cavaliere servente . Cannot I?” Her eyes were dark with promises of unimaginable delights.

I needed digitalis to soothe a raging heart. “Very soon, beloved, you will have the finest lover in the Republic all over you, but I do need some serious talk first. Noble Bertucci Orseolo died, did you hear?”

“And people are whispering that he was poisoned by your master to fulfill his own prophecy. I sent him a note yesterday. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Not directly. I was out shopping.”

“It’s absurd! An old man drops dead and everyone suspects poison.”

“It was poison.”

Helen sighed. Reluctantly she pulled the sheet up and straightened her legs. Her face and voice changed again. She become thinner, and I recognized the one I call Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom. The Greeks knew her as “Owl-eyed” or “Gray-eyed” Athena. Violetta’s eyes were gray and the mind behind them blazed. “That is terrible news. Can I help?”