“I wouldn’t think of it,” he assured her.
She gave him a quick and dismissive nod, then addressed the smallest of the six would-be Greeks. “You may light the torches. You all know where the buckets are, in case of mishap?”
Six hands instantly snapped out to point at their nearest fire-buckets. Linda nodded, peered up and down the Canal in satisfaction, turned—and gave Holmes a surprised look, evidently having expected him to be on his way to report for duty. She slid her arm through his in a manner both friendly and decisive, moved him into the damp ground-floor portego as far as the workaday, non–ceremonial staircase, and launched him on his way. He continued upwards, smiling to himself. He liked Linda Porter, but as seemed to be the rule amongst Cole’s friends, thought it wise not to cross her.
He found Cole in one corner of the huge ballroom, wearing an open-necked shirt, twill trousers, and soft shoes over his customary white socks. The piano had been moved in and now sat on a low stage, along with an assortment of band equipment, from banjo to megaphone. Porter was playing a tune Holmes hadn’t heard before, jaunty on the surface but with an intriguing thread of melancholy. He paused, frowning at some technical problem Holmes couldn’t begin to guess, but when he reached for his cigarette, he noticed he wasn’t alone.
“Hey! That’s a dashing outfit.”
“So I am told.”
“Linda will love it.”
“I saw her downstairs, making certain the torches were lit. I think she was going upstairs to dress.”
“Lord, that time already?” Porter mashed out his cigarette and stood. “I won’t be long, go ahead and get a feel for the room.”
The sun was nearing the horizon. It was an hour at which Holmes (to himself if no other) would admit a grudging admiration for the centuries of communal effort that had gone into shaping this peculiar city—especially when the view was filtered by the watery effects of eighteenth-century glass. He gazed across the red-tile roof-tops for a time, then turned to the wishes of his current employer, undoing the clasps on the case and tucking the violin under his chin. He moved about the room, his gaze rising to the frescoed ceiling, twice the height of the other rooms on the piano nobile. There, the chariot of Phoebus battled the dimming glaze of two centuries of smoke from fires, tobacco, and candles—a touch ironic, considering that the god’s name meant brightness.
The old violin began a cantata—the piece that had been the subject of his aborted studies in the Reading Room, a mere two weeks ago. The notes were Bach; the words addressed the question of good art versus bad, with Phoebus and Pan arguing their respective cases amidst a whirlwind of supporters and critics. As he walked up and down the ballroom, the instrument found certain spots where some combination of architecture and decor caused its voice to sing, brightening the dusk and giving polish to the stained frescoes. He was not surprised that the best place of all was where Porter had located his piano.
At the whisper of motion behind him, he edited the Phoebus aria to bring it to an end. A pair of hands began to clap, and he swung into a bow of acknowledgment.
“Good old John Sebastian,” Cole said.
“Did you know the librettist for that cantata was a lawyer?”
“Picander? No, I hadn’t heard that. I was at law school myself for a while, before I fell in with that old seductress, music.”
“Were you?”
“Yes indeedy. Nearly killed my grandfather when he found out I’d left the straight and narrow. Just think, I could be running the business today if I’d just played my cards right.” His homely face broke into a grin.
“A great loss to the world of commerce, I’m sure.”
Porter’s garment was similar to that of the muscle-men at the palazzo’s entrance, although while theirs had been coarse cotton in the brief servants’ length, his came to the ankles and was of a luxuriously heavy silk, subtly woven, with a geometrical border of rich golden threads. It also covered more of his upper body, which was just as well: the pianist’s muscles were no match for an Australian stevedore’s.
As the young man crossed the ballroom, Holmes noticed that the border of his tunic was echoed by a golden aura around his dark hair: a laurel wreath, crafted from exquisitely thin gold leaves, so light he seemed to have forgot he had it on. The delicate shapes shimmered with his every move. It should have looked ridiculous, atop such a physically unprepossessing figure of a man: it did not.
Although it did stretch his dignity nearly to the breaking point when he dropped onto the bench and began to warble, “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” not waiting for Holmes to catch him up. At the end of the chorus, he shifted into C minor, and with the darkening of keys, his words shifted as well.
Yes, we have no girls for you,
We have no girls for you today.
We’ve nice lads and ladies
And old tarts with scabies—
The words grew ever more suggestive and tinged with shades of blue, although typical of the man, they never descended to raw obscenity. They also broke off the instant Linda appeared in the doorway, returning to the more prosaic chorus of Greeks and bananas followed by a triumphant piano crescendo and violin glissando. The two men held…then cut off.
Linda clapped politely, then swept into the ballroom, followed by three guests who wore the awkward expressions of people realising they’re the first at a party. Porter instantly leapt to his feet to welcome them, and somehow ended up making them feel as if they’d done him a special favour by coming before the rabble descended and robbed him of the chance to talk to these, his true friends. Holmes, meanwhile, gritted his teeth into a smile and settled into the task of playing as background texture to the sounds of people having fun. He had resigned himself to Rossini arias and Verdi melodies, along with some girls’ school music from Vivaldi. Once the noise rose he might get away with a motet or two from Monteverdi.
Twenty minutes later, the windows were dark, the ballroom was filling nicely, and the noise level had rendered the violin all but redundant, even from its position of greatest authority near the piano. Holmes had seen several familiar faces, enough to be glad for the wide don’s hat which, together with the status of Paid Entertainer, rendered him invisible. When he came to the end of his current slice of Vivaldi, he ended with a flourish—and no one noticed.
Except Linda. She materialised from the crowd with a glass in her hand, holding it out with a smile of exceptional warmth. He transferred the bow to his left hand, took the glass, and raised it in a gesture that incorporated both thanks and a toast.
She leaned forward to have a word, a curiously intimate gesture from this formal woman. “The band is just finishing their dinner; you can have a rest.”
“It has been a pleasure.” And the champagne was not only proper Champagne, it was perfectly chilled.
“You are very good, Mr Russell, for an itinerant musician. I couldn’t think what Cole was doing, inviting you to play, but I should have trusted his judgment. Why aren’t you in an orchestra somewhere?”
“Oh, Mrs Porter, I am naught but an amateur.”
“A gifted one. But if you weren’t professional, what did you do?”
“This and that, and some of the other.” Linda Porter was of the class who did not expect a man to have a profession. “A bit of consultation, from time to time.”
“One of those clever devils who look at a business and see how it would be run better?”