Erik looked askance at Manfred. "How do you know this?"
Manfred grinned. "Francesca. We talk sometimes too, you know. Quite a bit, actually. She's a very clever woman. I was thinking of passing this on to Charles Fredrik. Come on, drink up. We can stop at Casa Louise on the way. I want to tell her about all of this."
Chapter 34 ==========
The marsh and the wind swallowed up sound, and the rushes closed them almost into a small room, which was just as well. Chiano howled with laughter, his eyes vanishing in his wrinkles; Marco prayed at that moment that lightning would hit him and reduce him to cinder. It would hurt a lot less than what he was feeling now. He tucked his cold, wet feet under him, huddled under his cotte, and wished he was on the moon. Or dead. Or something.
"Shut up, ye old bastardo--" Sophia scolded sharply, her face crinkling up in anger as she pushed a stray bit of gray hair under her knitted cap; Marco had brought her that the last time he'd come. "Have some pity on the boy. Maybe it's baby-love, but it hurts all th' same--and a young one ain't never been hurt that bad before." She turned to Marco, huddled on one corner of the raft. "Marco-lad, don't ye let him get to ye. I ain't saying ye did right t' leave--but I ain't sayn' ye did wrong neither."
Marco made a helpless gesture. To these two, his protectors and friends, he could tell everything--and he had. It had lessened some of the burden, at least until Chiano had started laughing at him. "I--Sophia, after the mess I got him in, I can't face Caesare, and I can't keep on being a burden to him, either."
"I thought you was working for the Casa Ventuccio. Real work, I mean, not make-work."
"I was."
"That don't sound much like being a burden t' me."
"I--" He hadn't thought of it quite that way. Sure, he and Benito had been living on Aldanto's bounty lately, but they'd been keeping watch over him while he was sick. And helping to get him out of the tangle that illness had put him in. And it had been his savings and Maria's that had bought part of the medicine that had kept Caesare alive. He'd bankrupted himself for Caesare's sake, and hadn't grudged it. He'd lost several more weeks' salary too, staying with Caesare to watch him and watch out for him, and hadn't grudged that either. Maybe he had been pulling his own weight.
"And who's a-going take care of them sick canaler kids if ye're hiding out here?"
That was one thing he hadn't thought of. Not likely Tonio would take them to some strange Strega--Marco was risk enough.
"Don' ye go slamming no doors behind ye," Sophia admonished him gently. "Now, getting out of sight 'til that aristo girl can forget your face, that's no bad notion. But staying here? No, Marco-lad; ye don't belong out here. Stay just long enough to get your head straight--then ye go back, an' take yer licks from that Caesare fellow. Ye learned before, ye can't run from trouble."
Sophia was right. That was exactly what he'd been trying to do--he'd been trying to run from all his troubles, and rationalizing the running.
"Yes, milady," Marco said humbly, feeling lower than a swan's tail.
She shoved his shoulder; but not in an unkindly fashion, "Get along with ye! Milady! Huh!" She snickered, then turned businesslike. "Where ye going park your raft?"
"I figured at the edge of Gianni's old territory, right by the path near that big hummock with the patch of thatch-rush growing out of it."
"Good enough. Get on with it. We'll keep an eye out for ye."
* * *
Chiano waited until Marco was off down the trail and into the reeds; out of sight and hearing. Then he slipped off the raft onto one of the "secret paths" of firm ground that wound all through the swamp. He generally moored both his raft and Sophia's up against one of these strips of "solid" earth--they weren't really visible since most of them were usually covered in water about a handspan deep.
"Where ye goin'?" Sophia asked sharply.
"Going see to our guest," Chiano replied. She shut up at that; shut up and just watched him with caution. Chiano had changed in the past months.
Yes, indeed, he had. Or rather, begun acting more like the person he really was--ever since the news of Gino Despini's death. The more news that trickled out of Venice, the more he was allowing the cloak of deception to slip. From his mind even more than from the minds of others.
He balanced his way along the narrow, water-covered trails, so used to following them he did it unconsciously, so used to the cold water he never noticed his numb feet. Yes, Chiano had been changing.
For the first time in years he was himself--Luciano Marina. Dottore Marina. Strega Grand Master. Grimas.