Chapter 1 The Wedding in Venice: Robbed on the Way to the Wedding and Becomes...
"Hey! We have a special guest coming today, you bunch of pigs better be alert!"
A ray of sunlight shone through the crack in the door into the dark warehouse. Heinrich couldn't remember how long he had been locked up in this gloomy place. Perhaps three weeks, four weeks, or even longer—long enough that the wounds he had sustained in his fight with the robbers had scabbed over and healed, long enough that he had grown accustomed to the putrid stench in the air, long enough that he had given up hope that anyone would come to rescue him.
Where was he? Perhaps in Lido, perhaps on any nameless island in the Adriatic Sea, or even in Croatia. He fell into the sea after that battle. He thought he would die there, becoming a meal for sirens and fish.
However, someone pulled him ashore, but the person who came did not seem to be a passing merchant ship, nor did he seem to be a law enforcement officer patrolling the waterway. A portly man stripped him of his fine clothes, put heavy iron chains on him, and shoved Heinrich into the crowded cabin like livestock.
"Let me go! I am Heinrich Schmidl, son of Viscount Schmidl of the Holy Roman Empire, husband of the Knarro family, and fiancé of Miss Liliana!"
He glared at the other man with his deep blue eyes, trying to prove his identity, but was met only with sneers and merciless beatings.
"I can't hold that many people." The pot-bellied man sneered and spat at him. "If you're the husband of the Canaro family, then I'm the governor of the Republic of Venice. You better stay put, or I'll throw you into the water to feed the fish."
Heinrich gazed helplessly at the men and women around him dressed in coarse linen, realizing they were Slavic slaves transported from the Caucasus to Venice by human traffickers. And now, Heinrich was being treated as one of them.
When Heinrich signed the marriage contract on parchment with a quill pen and set off from Frankfurt for Venice with a grand wedding procession, he never imagined he would face such a devastating disaster. He still remembered the instructions from his parents and the priest before his departure, the arduous journey across the Alps, and the portrait of his fiancée sent by the Canarro family before the engagement.
The woman in the portrait had beautiful red curly hair and grey-green eyes like those of the Venetian lagoon on a rainy day. Heinrich had never seen such a beautiful woman—her name was Liliana, the illegitimate daughter of the Knarro family.
The Knarro family had produced four Doges of Venice, making them a powerful and influential force in this maritime republic. Although the family's fortunes had been severely weakened since the unexpected death of the previous head of the family, and the new ruler had proven incompetent, they still possessed a wealth far beyond what Heinrich, residing in Germany, could imagine. Even a Knarro daughter without inheritance rights was considered an excellent marriage prospect for Heinrich.
Therefore, he attached great importance to this marriage, and all the wedding gifts were carefully selected by him—a cartload of Byzantine silk with the latest patterns, a cartload of cotton-linen blend single-sided velvet, a bag of spices from the Far East, and a fine Egyptian emerald, which was cut into a pendant in Antwerp and delivered to Liliana as an engagement gift before the main group arrived. In addition, he used his pocket money to buy an Indian pigeon blood red ring, which he kept in his jewelry box along with his sapphire wedding ring, hoping to win his wife's heart at their first meeting.
The wedding procession traveled south along the Main River, crossed the Sprüngen Pass into Italy, and continued south to Venice. During the two-month journey, he instructed his entourage to communicate with him only in Latin, and even hired a Venetian-accented Italian tutor so that he could speak fluently with his wife in her native language upon their arrival. Although they had never met, the Canarro family had already arranged a proxy wedding in Venice before his arrival, making Liliana Canarro his legal wife.
"Nice to meet you. I am Heinrich from the Schmidl family. It's a pleasure to meet you..."
Day after day, the taciturn blond youth stood before the bronze mirror at the post station, rehearsing his opening remarks to his fiancée. He eagerly anticipated their meeting, and the grand wedding they would hold together in Frankfurt after Liliana's arrival. Of course, before that, he needed to negotiate matters related to the steel trade with the Cnarro family's bank in Venice. With ongoing wars in northern Italy, the demand for steel continued to grow. Opening new trade routes to transport German-made armor and weapons south of the Alps would be a sure-fire way to make money for both families.
Silks, spices, jewels, engagements, and dreams of a bright future—all were reduced to ashes in a sudden raid. On the night the Schmidl family sailed from Mestre to the main island of Venice, their ship was plundered by pirates. This was highly unusual—the waterway between Mestre and Venice was almost the safest route on the Adriatic Sea; to rob on this route was practically the same as committing a crime in front of the Doge's Palace in St. Mark's Square. But the unexpected still happened.
Several bandits wielding large knives leaped onto the small boat carrying Heinrich. They quickly extinguished the fires on board, and the sudden darkness terrified the servants, who were killed in the ensuing chaos. Heinrich drew his sword and fought back fiercely.
He couldn't see anything clearly, only able to determine the enemy's location by the clanging sound of metal clashing. When his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, he glimpsed a dark figure slashing towards him. Fortunately, Heinrich dodged in time; the blade merely grazed his skin. But as he gripped his sword to retaliate, the boy, unfamiliar with naval warfare, lost his footing and fell backward into the water.
His body continued to sink in the sea, almost losing consciousness. Bitter seawater filled his mouth, choking him and nearly suffocating him. When he finally managed to catch his breath and surface, he saw on a small boat in the distance that the bodies of his entourage were being thrown into the sea one by one. The robbers had stolen all their wedding gifts.
Later, after struggling in the sea for an unknown amount of time, he was pulled out by slave traders and sold as a commodity.
The shop assistant pushed open the warehouse door, letting sunlight into the dark, damp interior so the overseer of the slave trader could inspect the goods. The bald overseer walked up to Heinrich, roughly grabbed his chin, looked him up and down, and then pried open his mouth to check his teeth. He noticed a glaring scar on Heinrich's left eyebrow.
"She's quite good-looking and has a great figure, but her face is all slashed. Otherwise, she could definitely fetch a good price."
The gatekeeper made his own comments, only to be glared at fiercely by the bald man in charge.
"Some high-ranking officials and dignitaries prefer this style. Don't forget, the person coming to see the goods tonight is 'that lady'."
"She's coming again? She's really been one of our biggest clients for the past six months!"
"Her methods of making money are anything but ordinary," the bald man muttered viciously. "Everyone in the business is saying that this young lady is secretly running a loan sharking business!"
"Loan sharking?! That's a crime that lands you in hell!" The shopkeeper was startled, his mouth agape in surprise.
"Shh—just pretend you don't know anything. She specifically asked to see high-quality goods this time, so hurry up and get these things ready so they can catch the young lady's eye."
A glimmer of hope flickered in Heinrich's heart. Although he didn't know who the moneylender was, if he could be "bought" by a noblewoman, he would have a chance to reconnect with Venetian high society and have the Canaro family—even if it was a disgrace—ran his freedom. At this point, he no longer cared whether that high-ranking Venetian family was still willing to honor their marriage agreement. His first priority was to escape this filthy place, to survive, and to live freely.
He was washed, his hair combed, and dressed in clean, coarse cloth clothes. His eyes were blindfolded with a black cloth, and he was led in a cold, dry little room, chained up. His feet felt the soft velvet carpet beneath him, and the air was filled with the scent of woody perfume. He felt as if he had finally returned to the world he knew—in a humiliating way, like choosing a pet dog for a noble lady, being led in on a chain and forced to kneel before the buyer.
"I said it before, I hate the smell of this cheap fragrance, it suffocates me."
The high heels made a muffled sound on the carpet, and Heinrich heard a lady enter the room accompanied by a servant.
"Please calm down, Miss... I'll go and have someone replace the perfume with rose fragrance right away..."
The slave trader's tone was extremely obsequious and ingratiating, but the woman merely snorted coldly, decisively interrupting him.
“Hey, stop. How can you address me as an unmarried woman? If my husband in heaven heard this, how sad and heartbroken he would be.”
"Oh dear! Look at my foul mouth! It's Madam, Your Excellency. Please forgive my rudeness and foolishness..."
"She's been nitpicking ever since she stepped inside; she must be a difficult person to please," Heinrich thought to himself. Judging from her voice, this widowed lady seemed quite young. To be choosing young slaves for pleasure so soon after losing her husband, and then putting on an act of marital bliss—how utterly shameless…
"Enough with the nonsense. If you dare to try to fool me with the same kind of stuff as last time, I'm really going to get angry."
“My little darling, who would dare to fool you! Look, he’s the best one in this batch, look at those muscles, that physique, he speaks fluent Italian, he’ll definitely make you happy.”
"Oh? Why are you blindfolding him?"
"Uh... actually, it's because he has a scar on his face, which is a minor flaw in an otherwise perfect piece of jade..."
“So what if I have a scar? I thought you were a male Medusa who would turn me to stone with just one look.” The woman laughed contemptuously. “Untie me.”
The moment the black cloth was removed, Heinrich finally regained his sight. He saw a red-haired woman in a black dress and a black veil leaning against a velvet sofa in front of him. A large emerald necklace hung from her chest, and in her hands she held a white skull, with a sapphire—the face of Heinrich's ring—set into the skull's eye socket.
“Wow, he is indeed quite good-looking, I like him very much.” The red-haired woman lifted the black veil hanging in front of her, revealing a sly smile and a pair of gray-green eyes. She lowered her head with great interest to examine Heinrich.
"From this day forward, I am your master. My name is Liliana Knarro Schmidl, but the people of Venice like to call me Lilith the Moneylender."
A note from the author:
----------------------
Thank you so much for clicking in! [Let me see]
This is my first story on Jinjiang Literature City, and I'm very happy to be able to serialize it here. I hope you all enjoy it! Heinrich and Lilith are the main characters of the story, and I also treat them as my original characters (OCs), so I will be commissioning some related illustrations. Readers are welcome to check out my column!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
