Summary

When Chapter 29 begins, Crivano is waiting in the antechamber outside the senator’s private quarters. He flips through Cardano’s De Varietate Rerum that he finds on a table while he waits for Marco to finish speaking with his father. He hears the distant sound of a song he recognizes as a boatman rows by the palace.

When the door opens, Crivano sees Verzelin, “stumbling forward on dead legs, his sackcloth shroud overgrown by eelgrass, his eyesockets picked clean by crabs” (213). Crivano recoils in horror before realizing that the figure is merely Marco. Surprised, Marco asks Crivano what is wrong. Crivano says that he has lingering food poisoning and that it is nothing to worry about. Marco tells him to reconsider staying with him and his family. Crivano politely declines. Marco narrows his eyes and says that he hopes his cousin did not...