The Color Storm by Damian Dibben

Author:Damian Dibben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2022-07-14T15:03:51+00:00

* * *

“Follow me,” the footman says. He leads Zorzo up the rear stairs, across the hall and down the steps Sybille indicated last night.

“It’s Johannes, isn’t it? You came to my house.”

At once the youth looks terrified. “That’s right, sir.” He nods and reddens. “Careful of your head.” They get to the end of the corridor and Johannes hesitates. “I’m sorry, sir, but—”

“What is it?” Zorzo has noticed the boy’s hand is shaking.

He drops his voice to a whisper. “Our going to your studio, sir, and to San Zaccaria, was not—the master of the house had not been made aware of it.”

Zorzo immediately realizes his mistake. “I’m so sorry, of course. Of course. We have not met.” He clutches Johannes’s shoulders, to reinforce he can be trusted. He wonders what Fugger would do to the boy if he found out. From now on he must watch everything he says.

Johannes nods and opens the door. “This is the chapel.”

It’s a startlingly bright room. A rectangular box in which everything—floor, walls, altarpiece, pediments and arched ceiling—is marble and also white, or rather white with gray, and occasionally red, occasionally black veins lacing through it. There are arched windows on three sides, high up, and though gray October murk sifts through them, once it has rebounded off the walls and floor, it seems to find new strength, creating a brilliant luminescence.

“We brought this table down for you, sir,” Johannes says, setting Zorzo’s case on top of it.

“The room is older than the rest of the house, no?” He nods at the left-hand wall where various ancient sculptures are set in recesses: medieval effigies, long-ago knights, some lopsided by time.

“Quite possibly, sir.”

“The surviving part of a former building, maybe. It’s a quirk of Venice. Newer buildings consuming older ones. Perhaps the palace was all white once. That would explain its name.”

“You may be right, sir. If there’s nothing else you need, I’ll tell the mistress you’re here.” He bows and goes.

Zorzo listens to the footsteps recede into the building, and exhales. It takes him a moment to realize his hands are also shaking. He’s got what he wanted. He’s here, in Fugger’s house. He’s beaten everyone to it. He has a commission and is surely now closer to prince orient than ever. Yet along with the exhilaration there are still ungraspable fears, that he’s passing a point of no return, entrapping himself. For a decade, like everyone in Venice, he’s heard stories of ocean-crossing explorers. Their tales percolate ever more through the city: the strange, dangerous lands discovered, inhabited by cannibals, fantastic creatures and carnivorous plants. Whenever he hears them, he wonders what it would be like to travel there. Now he’s entering just such an uncharted territory, the world of Sybille and Jakob Fugger: a realm that will be fascinating and, he hopes, lucrative, but one where he must not only scrupulously guard what he says but have one eye over his shoulder always.

He puts up the easel and fastens the canvas upon it, then opens his case and takes out the tray of pigments.

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