Advent Calendar – Day 20 – The Darcys and Lord Byron in Venice, Part 7

The two signore di notte were busily occupied placing shackles on Wickham’s ankles and wrists. He did not struggle, but arrogantly remonstrated with them. “Surely you see this is unnecessary. Take your hands off me, you need not bind me like some common thief, I am a gentleman…Darcy, you will not permit this treatment, surely?”

The two Venetians paid no attention, and Darcy shrugged. “You see I can do nothing,” he coolly told his brother-in-law.

“Byron! Dear Byron,” cried Lydia, clinging to his arm. “Surely you can? You know these Italians. You have influence. Save my husband, I beg of you! You can do it with no trouble to yourself, I am sure.”

“My dear Mrs. Wickham, I wish I could,” he returned, gently disengaging himself, “but they have caught him dead to rights. Why, that ruby parure alone…I wonder how he can have done it? Was he ever in that habit of this sort of behavior in England? Presumably not so, or he would have been transported to Australia long ago. It is very strange.”

“Of course it is strange. My husband is no thief, I promise you that!” she said indignantly.

“To state truth, Wickham has never been a model of probity,” Darcy observed, “though I don’t believe he has ever resorted to the practices of outright filching and pickpocketing before, and I confess myself rather surprised at it.”

“There are no boundaries that a dishonest man will not cross,” Elizabeth commented.

Just then, a handsome figured woman with red hair piled high on her head and an elaborate satin costume sailed up to the group, peering at them through her half-mask.

“Excuse? What is this? What is doing to my beautiful friend Wickham?” she inquired, in strongly Italian accented English.

“Your Wickham? What do you mean, madam?” cried Lydia.

“Oh, are you the wife? Well, I give you the honour to know I have long acquaintance with your husband, and – What is that signore, that official, doing with my necklace?” she demanded of the guard who had tucked Wickham’s haul under one arm while he held the prisoner with the other.

“La tua collana, Signora? I rubini?”

“Yes, the rubies belong to me, I tell you!” she said emphatically.

“He stole them from you?”  exclaimed Darcy.

“No, no, certainly not. Mi caro Wickham is no thief, I tell you! I gave him my precious collana di rubini myself!  It is the ruby necklace that my late husband, my dead husband, gave to me.”

“Di questi?” asked the guards holding up the little bag of money, and other trinkets.

“Yes, what are those?” asked Byron curiously. “Do you mean to say you gave him all that money  – and those rings?”

“Yes, yes, all for my desired Wickham, I give them all. He need money, so I give him what I had with me.” She shrugged.

“But when could you have done it?” asked Darcy in amazement.

“Only a little while ago. In one of those little rooms,” she waved vaguely at the stairs.

Lydia screeched and rushed at her, pulling down her ornately arranged crown of red curls and knocking aside her mask, revealing the face of a woman in late middle-age, who yet retained considerable claim to beauty. “Liar!  Whore!  I will kill you!” she screamed, as Byron and Darcy pulled her off.

“Why, it is La Grassini, by all that is holy!” exclaimed Byron, getting a clear look at the woman’s face. “I’ll be damned.”

“Grassini – you don’t mean the opera singer, Byron?”

“Yes, yes, this is Signora Giuseppina Grassini herself. Once the toast of Europe. Famous for roles created right here at Teatro La Fenice – though I believe she has been appearing at La Scala lately. A bit on the down slide by now.  She must be forty. But she was mistress to both Napoleon and Wellington, once upon a time – gossip that must have penetrated even to country neighborhoods in Derbyshire, has it not, Mrs. Darcy?” he nodded at Elizabeth.

Giuseppina Grassini

“Yes, I have heard of the lady,” said Elizabeth startled, “but what on earth is she doing with Wickham?”

“We are have been friends this long time,” explained Wickham. “I met La Signora in London, back in ’05 or ’06, when she played Cleopatra.”

“That is right,” affirmed the singer, nodding flirtatiously at Wickham as she settled her curls. “At the King’s Theatre. And then last year, when I was at the Haymarket, for the premiere of the new Pucitta opera – do you remember, my darling carissimo?”

“Who could ever forget any time spent with you, Signora, with your beauty and your voice – oh! that velvet contralto – and your generosity.”

“And how happy was I, now you come to Venezia! I give him la gioielli, the jewels, so he may get away from his wife, and afford to stay with me for a time. Ufficiali!  Soldati, polizia – whatever you are – give my property back to Mr. Wickham, rapidimente, I command you.”

The signori di notte inquired how they might know the jewelry and money were really hers, and after a long expostulation about the word of the famous singer never being doubted, she gestured to her maid and manservant, who were standing by in the crowd, and they promptly confirmed her statement.

“Besides,” she said, opening her cloak and exposing her pearly bare neck above the wine red satin gown that exposed her bosom, “no one could ever doubt that the ruby collana di rubini was made to go with this costume!”

That was self-evident enough to satisfy the guards, and they handed over the objects to the singer, who then handed them immediately back to Wickham.  While they guards were engaged in packing away the shackles, Wickham smiled over at Lydia, and beckoned to her. “You know I had to say all that,” he said confidingly, “in order to make them let me go; but be assured that I have always been true to you, my little wife, in my heart.”

La Grassini sniffed, and looked away.

“But, Wickham, you were in one of those little rooms, with that opera singer!”

“Well, and what of it? Were you not in one of those little rooms, my dear, with that poet?”

Lydia tossed her head. “If I was, no one would ever know it. I have some idea of being discreet, Wickham, which is more than you have. Look what you have done, making a scandal, and in front of my family. What do you suppose they will say?”

The crowd that had gathered to watch the excitement, seeing that there was to be no arrest and no fight, began to drift away.

“You had better come back home with us, Lydia,” said Elizabeth, reluctantly.

“Yes, to the Palazzo Mocenigo,” agreed Lord Byron easily. “I will take care of you.”

“But – is Wickham not coming with us?” asked Lydia, confused.

“Yes, I will be back at home later, my dear,” her husband assured her, in reassuringly commonplace words. “Do not wait up for me.” And he vanished into the sea of costumed figures with La Grassini.