The Rossetti Letter (v5) Read Online Free Page A

tomato sandwich in hand, she went into her office and sat down at her desk. She glanced at the nearest bookshelf, filled with reference books and the two previous volumes on the Spanish Conspiracy. Both had been written in the late seventeenth century. Except for some scholarly papers published in Italy and Spain, the Spanish Conspiracy had not been explored in depth for a few hundred years. Until now, she thought ruefully. What would happen if Andrea Kent published before she did? Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised her that someone else was writing about her chosen subject. After all, the Spanish Conspiracy was one of the more exciting episodes in Venetian history, full of intrigue, espionage, and murder.
    In 1617, the duke of Ossuna, the Spanish viceroy who ruled Naples, and the marquis of Bedmar, the Spanish ambassador to Venice, concocted a scheme to violently overthrow the Venetian Senate and make the Venetian Republic a dependency of Spain. Their attack was planned for Ascension Day 1618—the day when all of Venice would be celebrating the Serenissima’s marriage to the sea. They intended no less than the complete sacking and pillage of Venice. One source credited Bedmar with charging his band of soldiers to “cut off the limbs of those senators who resist.” Those who didn’t resist would be held for ransom. The considerable loot and ransom money would be divvied up among the conspirators, a group of mercenaries that included French corsairs, English privateers, and the Spanish viscount of Utrillo-Navarre, Antonio Perez, a notorious assassin in the service of the duke of Ossuna.
    Known for his recklessness and dissipated habits, Ossuna began a campaign of hostility toward Venice after assuming the viceroyalty of Naples in 1616. He built a squadron of galleys that attacked Venetian ships in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, but apparently these spoils were not enough for him. Soon he set his sights on Venice itself, and found in the Spanish ambassador a willing accomplice.
    The marquis of Bedmar was an intriguing figure; every source Claire came across revealed a new, often contradictory, facet to his character. His reports to the Spanish king were sharply observant and laced with an acerbic wit; he was described as “cultivated and charming in society,” but also as “one of the most potent and dangerous spirits Spain ever produced.” Like Ossuna, he was implacably dedicated to the conquest of Venice. They were matched in ruthlessness only by their adversary, the Venetian senator Girolamo Silvia, who was equally determined to thwart the Spanish threat.
    But Claire was most captivated by a person who, in previous chronicles of the conspiracy, had been relegated to a footnote. Alessandra Rossetti was a young courtesan who wrote a secret letter to the Great Council exposing the plot. Known as the Rossetti Letter, it was mentioned in most accounts of the Spanish Conspiracy, but was never fully examined, as Alessandra’s role had remained a mystery. No one knew how Alessandra had learned of the conspiracy; with the exception of the Rossetti Letter, there was no documentary evidence linking her to it.
    Claire hadn’t found any evidence, either, but she believed it existed somewhere—most likely in Venice’s Biblioteca Marciana, which she hadn’t yet been able to visit. She suspected that past historians had overlooked it simply because they didn’t consider it important enough. They’d written about Ossuna, Bedmar, and Silvia at length, but Alessandra’s life and contribution to history were largely ignored. A few had even stated that the Rossetti Letter was incidental, that the Spanish Conspiracy would have been discovered without it, but Claire thought they were missing the point. As soon as she’d learned of the young courtesan, her imagination had been captured. Who was this woman? How did she become involved? No previous historian had looked at the conspiracy from Alessandra’s point of view, had