When he and the Lark first came to the city they often heard discussion of the need for such a bridge—a permanent link between the Rialto and the Piazza befitting a great Christian power—but they gathered that such debates had been ongoing for fifty years or more, and it seemed that plagues, fires, war, and the opposition of foot-dragging reactionaries on the Great Council would delay its construction forever. Now, here it is. Ascending along the south balustrade, Crivano surveys burci and trabacoli unloading their cargo below: iron and coal on the left bank, wine-casks on the right. He stands in the apex of the pavilion and looks down at the Grand Canal, watching its dark surface play tricks with the rising sun. When the breeze shifts, he can make out the sharp tang of fresh-cut limestone through the water’s briny stench.
On his way down, he moves into the double row of shops in the broad central passage to browse the offerings of jewelers and goldsmiths. Toward the bottom he finds a glass vendor displaying beads made in imitation of fine pearls—better than perfect, in gorgeous and improbable colors—and as he looks up from them he’s startled to meet his own gaze in a flat mirror hung on the side wall. It’s a rectangular Del Gallo glass of very high quality, only a few inches long, set in a swirling calcedonio frame; Crivano would swear it to be a window were his own face not watching from the midst of it. He recoils, looks again. His lined skin, his jagged teeth, his jackal eyes. Reminded once more of who and what he is.
He locates Ciotti’s shop near the Campo San Salvator: the small wooden sign that announces it as MINERVA appears and disappears behind billowing red silks displayed by the mercer next door. Ciotti himself stands in the entrance, consulting in easy German with a man whom Crivano takes to be his printer. When Crivano approaches, Ciotti claps him on the shoulder and waves him inside with a broad smile.
A fine-boned boy of about thirteen stands in the front room; he greets Crivano warily. Behind him, over a low partition, two bespectacled proofreaders sit at a table by a widow, bent over a stack of unbound pages. One reads aloud almost inaudibly as the other checks the text. Both move their lips; Crivano can’t tell which one speaks.
He peruses the octavos displayed in the front room as he waits. Fifty or so titles stacked on two narrow tables: histories and biographies and volumes of verse. Most are printed in vulgar tongues, mostly local and Tuscan; a sizable minority are in Latin. The books in the tallest stack—an anthology of missionary correspondence from China and Japan—bear the shop’s own imprint. At the edge of the far table, Crivano finds two books by the Nolan. One is the octavo that Trist?o showed him over supper at the White Eagle; the other is a philosophical dialogue written in Tuscan, in the style of Lucian. Its front matter states that it was published here in the city, and this amuses Crivano: it was obviously bound by an English printer, perhaps jealous of the Aldine pedigree. He wonders if this deception was made at the Nolan’s request.
As Ciotti steps through the door, Crivano leans down to feign a close examination of the stacked books. I was just admiring the craftsmanship of this table, he says. It supports both these Jesuit letters and the works of the Nolan without tipping discernibly in the direction of either.
Ciotti laughs. I appreciate your attentiveness, he says. It is not always easy to strike such a balance. Especially in this neighborhood, where the very ground beneath our feet fairly often seems to shift.
Crivano rises to exchange bows and clasp hands with the Sienese. Were it not for the thick-lensed spectacles hanging by a chain around his neck, Ciotti might be mistaken for a prosperous artisan: a baker, perhaps, or a carpenter.
I was surprised to see your own device on the frontispiece of the Jesuit anthology, Crivano says. Your friend Lord Mocenigo must be quite pleased with that undertaking.
The bookseller’s smile cools into a perspicacious smirk. Judge not, my friend, he says. I’m sure you’ll agree that as narrators of voyages, the footsoldiers of the Pope are unsurpassed. My favored customers are always eager to learn of the customs of distant lands. Of course, all of our Republic’s citizens are interested to read news of Spanish activity at the far corners of the earth. And, naturally, those among us who hold with the Curia in matters temporal and spiritual are delighted to find printed accounts of the Society of Jesus available at this emporium. Yet you will note, Dottore Crivano—as I myself note with displeasure each time I open or close my shop’s shutters—that this stack remains quite tall, even as those around it diminish. Would you care to join me in my workroom? Dottore de Nis’s friend should be with us shortly.
Ciotti leads Crivano to a small cluttered office near the back of the shop, then closes the heavy door behind them. Crivano takes a seat beside a table awash in loose charts and unbound proofs; Ciotti sits opposite. The brick walls are laddered with oak bookshelves, each stacked to the base of the next.
I just crossed the stone bridge, Crivano says. Quite impressive.
Ciotti seems pleased and proud, as if he built it himself. Yes, he says. It was completed quite recently.
A single span, Crivano says. Surprising. Not very classical.
Ciotti shoots him a pointed glance. Not very Roman, I believe you mean, he says.
Who was the architect?
Antonio da Ponte. Aptly named.