Heart of Glass (18 page)

Across the room from us are some of Halim’s advisers. They kneel and sit around a low wooden table with a map spread across it. From the familiar curves of the coastline, I recognize it as the Mediterranean. Faruk goes to join them, and the men pause in their murmuring, watching as
Halim indicates a cushion to me. I tuck my skirts beneath me carefully, sitting with my legs arranged to one side. It is difficult to be a graceful Venetian lady sitting so close to the floor, but I take a tumbler of white liquid from a servant and sip it to hide my embarrassment. It’s sweet and sour at the same time, and I wrinkle my nose.

Halim smiles. “It is a yogurt drink,” he explains. “Traditional in our country, though I fear the Italian cows do not produce such rich milk as ours.” The smile falls from his face. “But I’m sure you’re not here to discuss dairy cows.”

My eyes flicker over to Halim’s advisers as I try to judge what I can and cannot say in front of witnesses. Halim notices my reticence and clicks his fingers above his head. “You can go,” he tells the men. Led by a grumbling Faruk, they leave the room, shutting the door behind them.

Now we are alone. Now I can say anything I choose.

“You are a brave woman,” Halim tells me. “Strong in spirit, too. It cannot have been easy, coming here today.”

“I heard that you buried your sister on the mainland,” I say.

I wonder if he knows why his sister came to Venice in the first place—why she felt the need to make contact with the Segreta. An answer to that question flashes across my mind, but I push it away for now, because it’s too painful to think about.

Prince Halim leans to light another cone of incense and I guess that he is playing for time, waiting for his composure to return. Finally, he looks at me through the clouds of frankincense and juniper.

“Do you want to know about Ottoman funerals, then?”

“I want to know how you are,” I tell him. If I want this
man to help me, I need to understand him. “I know what it is to lose a sister, remember.”

Halim changes before my eyes. Something seems to fall from his face, and he slumps back against the cushions.

“After my sister was born, my mother gave away the—how do you say it?—the ‘good-luck eyes’ she’d had since girlhood. Do you know what they are, Laura?”

I shake my head.

“Glass beads that ward off ill fortune. Mother always said that her beautiful daughter was all the good luck our family needed.” Halim laughs at the memory. “We all believed the same, until she ran away.…” His eyes cloud with darkness, and I move to sit on a cushion nearer to him. I daren’t reach out and clasp his hand in sympathy, but it doesn’t matter—he’s lost in a scene playing out in his head. “She ran away from home a month ago, and we didn’t even know why. She was the center of our family, and suddenly our heart was torn from us. When she disappeared, I truly thought …” He breaks off, and suddenly his eyes snap back to me, his gaze hungry for reassurance. “Why would a young woman run away like that?”

“I don’t know.” If she hadn’t run from me on Murano, she might be alive now. But my theory continues to take shape in my head, and this time it won’t be chased away. Roberto visited Constantinople. What if Aysim’s coming here had something to do with him? What if that is why she was in his rooms? “The whole of Venice grieves alongside you,” I say.

I realize immediately that this is the wrong thing to say. At the mention of the city, Halim’s face closes up. He gets
to his feet and walks around the map spread out on the table, pretending to inspect it.

“You haven’t told me. Why are you here?”

“Because I need your help,” I reply. There’s no time to dance around the truth.

His eyebrows lift with surprise. “Go on,” he says, after a moment.

The incense is thick in the air now, making my throat dry, and I struggle to say my next words out loud. “Roberto is innocent.”

Funny, I used similar words not an hour ago to my brother. So why do they now carry less conviction? No! I mustn’t let the rumors of this city infect me. Nothing has changed.

Halim closes his eyes, his brow creasing with pain. I know it must be difficult to hear me defend Roberto. I rise to my feet, moving to stand beside him. I place a hand on his arm and wait to see if he pulls away, but he does not.

“Whatever you believe, Roberto is not to blame for Aysim’s death. He is a gentleman, and I love him.”

At these words, Halim opens his eyes to stare at my hand, still resting on his arm. I take it away. My voice drops to a whisper, as I am suddenly aware of the advisers who left us and wonder if any of them are listening at the door.

“He could never have committed the crimes for which he is imprisoned,” I say. “He is the most honorable man in Venice.”

Silence throbs through the room. After a few seconds, Halim nods slowly, and hope flickers into life. But then he speaks.

“No.”

He walks languidly over to the doors and opens them. There’s no anger in his movements.
See how little I am affected by your story
, his actions say. The Ottoman prince has returned and Halim is lost to me. “There’s nothing I can do to help,” he says. “Simply nothing.”

I walk through the door and turn back to him. But his gaze remains fixed on the stairs—my invitation to leave.

“Halim …,” I say, sending out one last desperate plea.

He shakes his head and, finally, looks at me. His brown eyes scorch my face. “I have proof,” he says. “Proof of what Roberto has done. It’s you I feel sorry for, dear Laura. You stand loyal to the wrong man.”

And with that, the door shuts. I behold the varnished mahogany for a long, painful moment. Then I stumble down the stairs. The guards watch me step out into the sunshine, my eyes watering in the light.

“That was quick,” one of them says. There’s a sound from above our heads, and when I glance up, I see Halim standing on a balcony, watching me.

“You’ll see at the trial how right I am,” he calls. It’s as though he’s raining arrows on my head instead of words, and each one causes fresh pain.

I walk away, past the fountain and the bench.

I hardly see where I’m going.

25

“Proof?” I mutter as I walk through the streets. I don’t care if people hear. Who is he to talk of proof? What does he know?

I turn the corner and realize I’m beside the public entrance of the Piombi. Through this door, up near-endless stairs and corridors and above the heads of his family Roberto lies in a cell strewn with damp straw. Have the guards been at him again? I hardly dare think. My breath comes in shallow gasps, and I lean against the wall, its bricks warmed by the sun. A passing fruit-seller pauses and throws me a concerned glance, before hurrying on.

I crane my head back to observe the swallows darting in the sky above us. The thought that wormed its way into my mind is festering there. Has Roberto lied to me? I twist around and slam my palm against the wall. It cannot be.

I try to think things through logically, linking one event with the next. Aysim should never have been in Roberto’s room. She planned to meet with the Segreta. I hurry on, my skirts bunched up. A street actor calls out a joke after
me and his audience laughs to see a noble lady embarrassing herself in this way. I don’t care. I need answers.

A servant accompanies me into Allegreza’s private quarters and announces my arrival. My mentor stands beside a gilt sideboard that supports a bird stand with two doves cooing on their perch. She indicates with an open hand towards a seat, and I settle on the damask.

“Your hair has come loose,” she says. My hands dart to my temples, smoothing my curls back into place. “You must not make a habit of unsolicited calls. But as it happens, I’m glad to see you this time. I have news.”

“Oh, thank goodness! Will it help Roberto?”

Allegreza reaches inside the folds of silk at her bodice and pulls out a key. She leans over to a table with an empty plate on it and unlocks a drawer. Then she places her hand inside, pulls out a roll of parchment and reads it. “You must not let that man rule all your thoughts,” she says.

I feel my features twist. “I’m betrothed to be married to
that man
, and he languishes in the foulest prison in the city!”

Allegreza shakes her head. “If you want to help Roberto, you must learn patience and diplomacy. You display neither at the moment.”

My insides shrivel. “Please, tell me what you know.”

She watches my face. “You must move carefully, Laura. We all must. These affairs are grave and the repercussions will be felt across the city. Have I taught you nothing?”

“You have! You have!”

Allegreza’s face softens. “Well, then.” She reads the final lines of spidery writing on her scroll, then places it back in the drawer. With a single turn of the key, it is locked
away. She slips the key back into her bodice. “Three nights ago …”

“The night Aysim was killed,” I whisper.

Allegreza nods. “Three nights ago a dark-skinned young girl went to the convent of Saint Susanna in the early hours, begging charity from the nuns.” She sees my glance darting to the locked drawer. “My correspondent tells me that the girl barely spoke a word during her time there, but yesterday she asked to be moved on. Now she resides in your former convent.”

“The House of Mary and the Angels?”

Allegreza’s mouth twitches. “It might just be a coincidence.”

“But it might not.”

Allegreza’s eyes dart towards mine. “I know what you’re thinking, Laura, but I forbid it. You’re not to go anywhere near your old convent.”

Doesn’t she understand? I have the perfect alibi! “But I know a girl there called Annalena. I can call on her—I can go and find out more.” I can’t believe Allegreza is even thinking of stopping me.

“I said no,” she says, her voice firm. “What has happened to you, Laura? Where is the measured girl I first met on San Michaele Island?”

I’ve changed so much since that night I pledged myself to the Segreta. I’m stronger, less innocent. But still I’m trapped. Once I was a prisoner in my convent cell, now I am constrained by the rules of the very society that freed me.

“As you wish,” I mutter, dipping my head out of respect—and to hide the glint in my eyes. If Allegreza
won’t allow me to visit my old home under the orders of the Segreta, I’ll go on my own.

Allegreza places a hand over mine. “Thank you, Laura.”

I look down at our fingers curled together in my lap. Allegreza’s skin is scattered with age spots and fine wrinkles; my own hands are still youthful. What can she know of love? Each decision she makes is a move in a larger game, a jostling of positions for the greater good. She would sacrifice a pawn to keep a queen, because the ends justify the means.

“I’ll do everything you ask,” I say.

I never would have believed that deceitful words could fall from my lips so easily. Not to Allegreza. But these are desperate times.

I won’t let Roberto be a pawn. I won’t take orders if my heart tells me they’re wrong.

Here, in my years of torment and incarceration, I was once called La Muta—the Silent One. As I stand and regard the walls of the convent, I remember the grilles and bars, the Abbess Lucrezia and my lay sister and friend, Annalena. Will she have changed? I know that I have, from that timid girl who sat in the gardens, making lace and keeping her head bowed. What would the Abbess say if she saw me sparring with Roberto, a man at the point of my blade?

I step up to the heavy, studded door, carrying my gift for Annalena. It’s a box of sugared almonds wrapped with a ribbon of pink silk. Decadent, by the convent’s standards, but I’m allowed to bring gifts for my friend, surely. I rap my knuckles against the ancient wood, and a small window,
cut into the door, slides open. A woman’s eyes, framed by a cowl, widen in recognition.

“Laura’s back!” she calls to someone. Her glance drops to take in my scarlet dress and the little window slams shut. A moment later, the door creaks open and a hand gestures for me to step inside. Looking over my shoulder, I hesitate. Then I walk into the darkness.

Annalena stands at the end of a covered walkway. She hasn’t changed, and for a moment she watches me with a cold stare. Does she even know who I am? Then, as if to dispel my fears, she breaks out into a joyous run and throws herself into my arms.

“Laura, Laura! I knew you’d return, one day. Oh, my heart, are you here to say your prayers?” She laughs excitedly. But we both know I’d never enter these doors again without very good reason. I am one of the lucky ones—I escaped. The other women here, the unwanted second daughters of Venice’s gentry, will spend their years watching their lives diminish as they lie in narrow beds, with only their rosaries and their matins for company. Their families don’t want to pay their dowries, so instead they are banished as wives of Christ.

Annalena pulls me over to one of the many stone benches where I once sat learning scripture. Everything seems smaller than I remembered.

“For you,” I say. I give her the box of sugared almonds, and she cries out with delight, before hastily hiding the gift beneath her coarse habit.