Chapter 16: Che Sarà Sarà

Guido and the pistol carrying Carlo left the room, and I heard the key turn in the lock. I was once again a prisoner in my room, but now with Giuseppe di Campania as a fellow inmate. He was seated at the table with his head in his hands, a picture of absolute dejection.

“I cannot believe Giovanni has betrayed me. He has been my trusted lieutenant for over five years.”

“Obviously his fear of Cleopatra far outstrips his loyalty to you,” I said.
“But forget about him and think on how we can escape before Cleopatra’s Nubians arrive.”

He was still shaking his head in disbelief at the perfidy of Giovanni, so I took hold of him shook him.
“Snap out of your despair, Giuseppe, and think of a way out. I have my knife; we could overpower who ever unlocks the door in the morning and then take our chances...”

“Up the chimney.” He said, still staring unseeingly into the middle distance, his attention fixated on the treachery of his ‘trusted’ lieutenant.

“Up the what?”

“The chimney flue from this room connects with the flue from the kitchen. We will climb up to where they meet, and then climb down to the kitchen. We will need to wait until after the kitchen fire goes out, which will about four in the morning. We have plenty of time.”
With that he lay on the bed, wrapped a blanket about himself, and promptly fell asleep.

I was amazed at his sang froid. Climb up a chimney flue, and then climb down another flue, in the pitch dark, with soot, smoke and possibly heat?
I shivered at the thought. One of the recruits to the 69th Foot at Lincoln had been a chimney sweep, and had a fund of horror stories. Young boys getting stuck in a flue, or lost in a maze of interconnecting flues, being burned, or falling to their deaths when overcome by fatigue or smoke, or any one of the many dangers inherent in the trade. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and tried to sleep.

I must have dozed off, and awoke when Giuseppe closed the cover of his Hunter timepiece with a snap.

“We have half an hour to wait until four of the clock, but before we start, Colonel, there is something I must settle with you.”

“What would that be?”

“You accused me of making you sister an addict. I have not had an opportunity to give you my side of the story.”

“Very well, Giuseppe, I am listening.”

Giuseppe’s story.
In June 1819, Giuseppe travelled to Venice with a batch of ‘recently unearthed artifacts’ from Pompeii, which in reality had been made in a pottery in a low life area of Naples. He was looking for gullible English on the Grand Tour, those who had already visited Naples and had expressed a desire to own some of those previously buried house goods and small statuettes now being uncovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
He discovered most of the English had decamped to Ravenna, following Milord Byron.

Giuseppe had met Byron in Naples, and thought to reintroduce himself and gain access to Byron’s retinue. He arrived in Ravenna and made his way to the Hotel Imperial, where Byron was staying.
In the foyer of the hotel Guiseppe came face to face with Becky, and fell instantly in love.
Becky had been involved in an altercation with Byron, overheard and reported, by Lady Windermere, and was now sitting quietly sobbing in a corner when Giuseppe encountered her. He asked what the matter was, and Becky replied. ‘Lord Byron is the cause of my distress, kind sir. If you are to see him then please tell him how distressed Becky Sharpe is at his cavalier conduct towards her.”
As soon as Giuseppe met Byron, he gave him a piece of his mind for treating such a beautiful girl so unkindly.

Byron had laughed. ‘If you think so much of Miss Sharpe then I wish you well of her. She has the temerity to think herself a writer of my stature, whereas she is no more than a scribbler of inconsequential tittle-tattle.’
He handed Giuseppe ten English sovereigns. ‘Take these, and Miss Sharpe, back to Naples with you and I will be forever in your debt.’
He then gave Giuseppe a wrap of White Lady. ‘She will also have need of this.’
After leaving Byron Giuseppe returned to Becky and asked if she was really an author.
She had nodded. ‘But sadly one who is yet unpublished in the Kingdom of Lombardy – Venetia.’
Giuseppe informed her he knew a publisher in Napoli who would be delighted to publish the work of a friend of Giuseppe di Campania.
Alvarez Domingo was the manager of Cleopatra Publishing, and Giuseppe knew he would have to allow Cleopatra’s Palace a good deal on the next cargo of imported females to enable Becky to be published, but so besotted was he that a financial loss was a small price to pay for such a prize as she.
They returned to Venice, where Becky packed her belongings, and then the pair took ship to Bari.

“So Becky was using White Lady when you first met her?” I said.

“No. She said she had been in the thrall of the substance, but when she realised her creativity had not enhanced by its use had ceased taking the powder.”

“Then why did Byron give you a wrap for her?”

He shrugged his shoulders, in a similar manner as the French express bewilderment.
“Who knows? Perhaps she had been using the substance when he last saw her. He had been in Ravenna a month before Becca, realising Byron had left her for Teresa Guiccioli, followed him there.”

“Then when did she become addicted?”

“About six months ago. Until then we were blissfully happy, or at least I was. I knew she did not love me with the same vigour as I loved her, but I had enough love for the two of us. I have had other females in my life, but can truly say never anyone like Becca. I basked in her approval and shivered in her disapproval. She railed against me for shipping in young girls for the brothels of Napoli, including Cleopatra’s Palace, and to please her I stopped the trade. I took to smuggling weapons to the Greeks to make up for the loss in income, a much more hazardous business than importing opium and females, but I was willing to change my trading habits to please the woman I loved.”
Giuseppe paused, and I saw the pain on his face as he remembered his time with Becky, and compared it to how his life was now she had gone from him.I knew that feeling, but I could look forward to the future, while he was still stuck in the past.

He gave a shake of his head, and then continued.
“It was my smuggling of weapons which caught the attention of Prince Alexander Mavrocordato. He thought I was doing it for the furtherance of Greek independence – the silly old fool – but thanks to him I increased shipments, and charged a higher rate. The drawback was I had to attend meetings, and listen to his speeches. It was at these meetings when Becca and I first met Byron with his mistress Teresa Guiccioli. Surprisingly, Becca and Teresa struck up a friendship, and would often spend their evenings together, while Byron and I had to listen to Prince Mavrocordato, going on about the revival of Athenian society, and Socrates, and Aristotle, and all those other boring, bald headed Ancient Greeks.
Byron and Teresa often visited Naples, and Becca would swoop on Teresa and carry her off, leaving Byron and I to meet Prince Mavrocordato, and the rest of those voluble, and verbose, supporters of Greek independence.”

He stared at the floor deep in thought, either reliving pleasant memories of life and love with Becky or pondering on the colloquy between the Greeks on their ancient history and heroes. Probably the former.
“Now I think on it, Becca began using White Lady, or White Paradise as it known in Napoli, not long after the last time we met Byron and Teresa, which was at a meeting addressed by Prince Mavrocordato.
The noble Prince had bored us to tears, and we had gratefully retired to the dining room for the buffet, where Becca and Byron became engaged in a heated argument.”

“What about?”

Giuseppe pursed his lips. “I have a strong suspicion as to what caused the altercation, but you may not wish to hear it.”

“Try me.”

“As you wish. I believe Becca mocked Byron, imputing he was not man enough to keep his mistress under his control.”

“How do you mean?”

“Becca intimated Teresa was having an affair.”

“And was she?”

“You do not want to know any more, Colonel, believe me.”

“On the contrary, Giuseppe. I want to know the reason for the disagreement, the obviously heated disagreement, between my sister and Lord Byron.”

He gave a great sigh of resignation. “Very well, on your own head be it. I believe Teresa and Becca were conducting a Sapphic relationship.”

Time was if anyone had voiced such a thought I would have killed them instantly, but hearing Zinnia’s tale, and knowing how determined my sister was in pushing her sexual boundaries, all I said was.
“Other than your suspicion, have you any proof?”

He went to the bookshelf and brought back a book, opening it to an illustration of two females tipping teach other’s velvet.
“This story is called ‘Girls Together, ‘ and I believe it an accurate account of Teresa and Becca’s relationship. During the argument at the buffet, I saw Becca hand Byron a book, who flung it away with a curse. I think it was a copy of this book, and Becca was taunting Byron with her affair with Teresa.
A few days later Becca began using White Paradise, and not long afterward, she joined Cleopatra, and started to write the books, which are best sellers, but drag the reader into the very depths of degradation.”

“Why did she return to using the powder? Had you done anything to upset or anger her?”

“On my mother’s grave, Colonel, I did nothing to cause her to take that vile substance. I loved, and still love her, and I tried with might and main to get her to desist, but to no avail. I was forced to watch the woman I adored sink into a morass of filth and degeneracy, aided and abetted by that feral female Cleopatra.”
I believed him, and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Very well Giuseppe. I completely withdraw any accusations I made, and as a sign of my good faith I think you should address me as Jack, as did my sister.”
The smile on his face said it all, and he shook my hand warmly. I was pleased by his restrained, somewhat English response, as a garlic flavoured kiss on my cheek would have been too much to bear in the circumstances.

For a while we both sat and thought our own thoughts, which I would wager were about the same person.
Giuseppe then looked at his watch. “I have time to instruct you in the art of chimneying before we start the adventure.”

‘Chimneying’ turned out to be the method of climbing up or down a chimney flue.
One’s back is pressed hard against one side of the flue while the feet of the climber’s bent legs lay flat against the other. By walking up, or the more difficult descending, the chimney sweep is able to progress in the desired direction of travel.
It is a sight more difficult than it sounds, and after only five minutes of climbing I was sweating like a pig. Soot and ash clogged my eyes, nose, and mouth, and lay thick on my head and face. It was pitch black; the bricks of the flue still gave out heat, sometimes burning my hands, which were used to balance and help move in the required direction. I was underneath following Giuseppe, and anything he dislodged fell on my head.

Eventually we reached the point where two flues joined. Giuseppe tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed to a slightly wider flue to our left.

“That one leads to the kitchens. Follow me, and try not to fall on top of me.”

Down we went. Descending was only slightly less hazardous than ascending, although the kitchen flue was certainly hotter than the one we had just climbed. Eventually the flue widened out too far for us to chimney.
Fortunately, there were iron hand holds fastened into the brickwork, and we clambered down into the still smouldering hearth of the kitchen fireplace.
I was exhausted, and slumped down by the wall.

“Here, take a long drink of this, then tip the rest over your head.” Giuseppe handed me a ewer of water.

I did as suggested, and the cold water revived me, and washed layers of filth off my clothes, face, and hair. Giuseppe refilled the ewer from a barrel of water and gulped down the refreshing liquid. After tipping the rest of the contents of the ewer over his head, he shook himself like a water spaniel.
He looked a villainous, black faced, staring, white eyed, monster, and no doubt I looked the same.