Cross My Heart (13 page)

“Laura!” cries Paulina, stooping to scoop them up.

But I ignore her. I feel a rush of bitterness rising inside my throat.

“Where did you get that ring?”

The woman’s smile has gone.

She steps away but I seize her wrist.

“Leave me be,” she mutters, struggling and pulling away from me. I snatch at her yellow cape. The edges of her face are haggard, older than the supple strength of her young body. Her brown eyes are hurt, but ferocity lurks there too.
As we tussle, her cape loosens, showing a blue silk gown. It’s torn and shabby, and reveals the curves of her breasts and the skin on her belly. She’s not just a beggar. She’s one of the Venetian women of the night.

“Why are you wearing my sister’s ring?” I cry, my voice high and hysterical. “What do you know about Beatrice?”

She jerks out of my clutches and backs away, pointing the ringed finger at me. “Keep away!”

The crowd that has gathered to stare hurries back to let her pass, as if she might draw a knife from the tarnished silk of her bosom. She disappears into the dark alleys and waterways, the panels of her cape flapping behind her like the wings of a giant bird.

“I
shouldn’t have indulged myself like that,” frets Paulina. “Chattering on about Nicolo, while you’re still grieving for dear Beatrice. Oh Laura, forgive me.”

I’m hardly listening to her as our gondola slowly takes us away from the drama, back towards my father’s house.

“Why has that woman got my sister’s ring?” I wonder, knowing that Paulina can’t possibly give me an answer.

“Laura, are you absolutely sure it was Beatrice’s?” She takes my hand and looks at my own ring. “It’s not that unusual a design. There must be hundreds of rings that look just like this. I don’t want to see you so upset for nothing.”

She speaks softly to me, her face gentle and concerned. I don’t know how to answer her.

We step off the boat and Paulina insists on walking me back to the palazzo.

“Really, there’s no need,” I say. “I’m sure you have so many things to do.”

“Don’t be silly,” she says.

We stop talking after that. She doesn’t believe that the beggar woman was wearing Beatrice’s ring. Why should she? She hasn’t gazed at its twin every day for six years. Though her arm is threaded through mine, what happened in St. Mark’s Square separates us. By the time we get to the front door, she might as well be looking down on me from the top of a mountain, so great is the distance between us.

My father quickly bids Paulina farewell, pulls me inside and closes the door. Through the tall glass panel I see her trotting down to the gate. She swings her closed fan around so that it looks like a colored ball spinning in her hand.

My father’s face darkens. “What took you so long?” my father asks. “Bianca and Faustina are waiting upstairs. Hurry!”

“But Father, what—?”

“Look at the state of your clothes,” he interrupts. I look down and see that my silk shoes and the hem of my orange gown are smeared with the dust of the Venetian streets. “Go!”

Confused, I stumble up to my room. Faustina and Bianca are laying out a cream dress with gold edging on the bed. Bianca sees my filthy shoes and lets out a little wail.

Faustina pulls me to her and goes to work on unfastening my dress.

“Paulina and I were at St. Mark’s,” I tell her. “I saw a woman there—a prostitute. She was wearing my sister’s ring, Faustina. I’m sure of it.”

Her hands still, and in a whisper that Bianca can’t hear, she says, “Sweetheart, how could that be possible?”

It’s like Paulina all over again. “I know what I saw.”

She puts her palm to my forehead. “You’re hot,” she murmurs. “It’s this weather. What happened to Beatrice is terrible—appalling. You must try not to upset yourself like this.”

She finishes unhooking my dress and it slides to the floor. I step out of it, tears of frustration stinging my eyes. I want to say more, but with Bianca here it’s difficult.

“What are we getting ready for?” I ask.

“The Doge,” Bianca says, pouring drops of rosewater into the washbowl. “He’s invited your father to visit him this evening.”

I’m stunned. “The Doge? Of Venice?”

“No, the Doge of the Moon,” says Faustina with a smile.

She holds back my hair while Bianca wrings a cloth in a basin of steaming water, sponging it over my face. They flap and scramble around me like doves fighting in a tree. They wash my hair, and enhance the natural waves with ivory tongs that tug at my scalp. They slip the creamy dress over my head and tighten it to my waist, and put a golden chain around my neck. My hair dries in curls around my face and on my shoulders. The skin of my face is untouched, but for my lips they prepare a mix of crushed carmine beetles and henna. When they hold up the mirror, there’s a glow coming from me that doesn’t reveal the jumble of things that I’m thinking. I look like a privileged woman, young and carefree, with nothing to worry about but keeping my velvet slippers clean.

The Doge’s face surveys the room while the Duchess swishes among the guests. We’re in a smaller, more intimate
chamber than where the ball took place, but it is no less ornate or impressive. Huge tapestries of war and feasting hang on each wall, vignettes from ancient times. I recognize some of them from my mother’s books. Here Aeneas flees Troy with his father on his back and young Ascanius clutching his hand. There the wandering hero presents himself before Dido, Queen of Carthage. Every inch of each of the broad tables around which people move is covered in dishes—spiralling patterns of delicate bread, fish and Tuscan meats. A whole suckling pig eyes me from the center of one table. Olives, green and purple-black, glisten in little terra-cotta pots. The men pick them up with their fingers and toss them into their mouths as if they’re devouring prey. The women use tiny silver forks and napkins, taking prim little nibbles between snippets of conversation. Even the servants are glorious in white and deep green.

The Doge’s wife with her black and gold fan seems to radiate good health, even more so than those who are younger and smoother than she. She smiles and touches people’s elbows when she’s talking to them. From time to time she glances back at her husband. She catches my eye and nods at me. I curtsy, wondering if she could guess that of all the people in this room, I am the one who is a traitor to the Doge’s secret.

I take a plump green olive from the platter a servant offers me. Across the room I see Allegreza, in a black gown with white slashes on the skirt, black feathers in her hair. She’s speaking intently to a group of older women. I imagine that she’s whispering the Doge’s secret to them. Then they will whisper it to others, until it spreads like the plague
itself into the homes and businesses and boats and barges of our city.

“Laura, stand up straight,” warns my father.

The Doge is approaching us. The rich purple of his doublet gleams in the candlelight.

I feel my cheeks redden. The olive pit is still in my mouth. I put my hand to my lips, pressing the stone into my palm and slipping it inside my velvet purse. I feel clumsy, unable to navigate the narrow straits of polite society. I’m sure that I’ll never learn the language of the Venetian party, so full of incomprehensible nuances, glances, mutters, postures and barbs.

“Your Grace,” says my father with a deep bow. I curtsy beside him.

“Antonio, Laura. So glad, so glad. Such a dreadful business with Vincenzo. Who would have thought?”

“Yes, thank you, Your Grace,” my father says with another bow. “I’m eternally grateful to you for expediting that matter so speedily on everyone’s behalf.”

“No need,” says the Doge. He holds his hand up and shakes his head slightly. His eyes pass to me, and he stares for a little longer than feels comfortable. I wonder for a brief, awful second if he’s trying to place me, to remember where he’s seen me before. But then he moves on into the crowd.

“God damn me altogether!” my father hisses. His fists are clenched. “I’m done for.”

“But the Doge was friendly to us.”

“Men in the Doge’s favor get two or three minutes of conversation with him. How long did he stand with us for?
It can’t have been more than a few seconds. Confound it. And you? You just stood there like a puppet, waiting for me to pull the strings.”

Anger stirs beneath the cream silk of my bodice. “And what did you want me to say?”

He throws his hands wide. “It wouldn’t have mattered
what
you said, if only you’d said something. Changed the subject. Talked about the weather. Been charming and witty like your sister always used to be.”

I want to snap at him—tell him I can’t help it if he feels the wrong daughter died. But my father holds my future in his hands and I don’t dare. I mumble an apology and walk away from him through the throng.

Allegreza moves towards me. I pretend not to have noticed her, and quicken my pace. What could she want from me? I’ve exchanged my secret for what the Segreta did to Vincenzo, and now I want nothing more to do with them. Their power frightens me.

But Allegreza tracks me across the room, like a spider closing in on a fly. She places a cool hand on my arm.

“Please don’t,” I say, trying to pull away.

She tightens her grip, her eyebrows arched above her almond eyes. “Why, don’t you know me, child?”

I can’t tell if she means to be reproachful or to tease.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I … I’ll always be grateful. But I’ve paid you for it, so please, will you leave me alone?”

She pulls me towards her and whispers quickly. There’s no escape in her words.

“I can’t do that, Laura. When you accepted our help you became bound to us. We’re gathering at the monastery
tomorrow night. You will be there. A boat will await you—look for the key.”

With a rustle of silk she drops my arm and sweeps away. The mark on my hand has almost healed, but I see now that it isn’t inconsequential at all.

I remember what I learned in the convent: the fee is never paid.

I
slip down a narrow staircase out to a formal garden, my hand pressed to my chest to calm my breathing. A cluster of lanterns on a low wall lights up clipped trees and shrubs in ordered lines and circles. Little stone paths thread through them, bordered with crowds of tiny colored blossoms. I take a deep breath of the cool night air. It feels good to get out of the palace with its cloying atmosphere of ambition and intrigue.

The garden wall slopes down to St. Mark’s Basin—the stretch of water that laps up against the Doge’s palace. I hold my skirts in one hand, raising the hem so I can follow the wall to the waterfront, but suddenly spot a figure silhouetted against the night sky. There’s a box of charcoal by his side, and from the movements of his arm I can tell that he is sketching.

The painter.

He seems so lost in his work that he doesn’t notice my presence.

“Hello,” I say.

He starts, and turns towards me. His red mouth breaks into a smile and his dark eyes shine. He scrambles to his feet.

“Hello again,” he says.

“Please, don’t get up.”

He settles back down and pats the space next to him. I hold up my dress and sit beside him, my legs curled under me.

“My father and I are here at the Doge’s party,” I explain.

“That’s a shame,” he says. “I thought you’d come just to hunt me down.”

I laugh, and perhaps it’s the light, or my imagination, but his cheeks seem warm with color.

He picks up a stick of charcoal. In his lap is a board with a piece of parchment fixed to it. He makes quick strokes over the surface.

“What are you drawing?” I ask.

He tilts the board towards me. It’s the scene I can see stretched out before us—the water, and the low buildings of Giudecca Island stretched across the horizon. I’m amazed that from just a few lines, I can sense the cool of the canal and the solid stone of the buildings.

“It’s perfect,” I murmur.

He smiles. “It’ll never be that.”

He rummages through the box of charcoal and selects a fine, delicate piece. In the foreground of the scene he sketches a slick black gondola. He adds a stooped gondolier, dragging his pole through the water, and then a seated passenger—a woman. The slant of her shoulders, the shape
of her neck and the way her eyes are downcast are instantly familiar.