Heart of Glass (21 page)

Roberto looks at the letter for what seems a long time. His face grows pale and his brow creases with … what? “I don’t understand,” he says. “The handwriting is mine, but the letter is not.”

Halim shakes his head. “Even now, you damn yourself with lies. I would have expected better.” He throws the parchment on the table in front of the judges.

My vision blurs as my eyes fill with tears.

“Are you all right?” the woman beside me asks as she takes my elbow and holds me upright.

I manage to nod. “Yes, I’m sorry,” I gasp. “It’s the heat.”

Up onstage, the judges are passing the letter among them.

“Do you have anything more to say?” one of them asks Roberto. “I taught you to read and write as a child. I would know your handwriting anywhere.”

Roberto looks bereft. “I’ve told the truth,” he says.

“Were you in Constantinople?” another judge demands, his face cold with fury.

Roberto nods. “You know I was. I supported the trade delegation but two months ago.”

The crowd erupts in roars and the judges exchange glances. They don’t even need to speak to one another; they already know what they’re going to say.

“No!” I cry out.

“Shush, child,” the woman tells me. “Don’t excite yourself.”

Roberto is looking at me now. My own eyes are fixed on his, unable to break our shared gaze across the stage that
stretches out between us. He is so close, yet totally out of reach. Tears are running down my cheeks. Roberto shakes his head, and I read the words that he mouths to me: “I’m sorry.”

The cloaked man steps forward again and the blow of his staff against the stage floor rings out. “The judges have come to a decision,” he announces. Low whispers travel through the crowd, but his eyes stay fixed on the balconies at the back of the square. “Silence!”

The voices fade away, and one of the judges stands up from his seat, clearing his throat. My fingernails cut into the palms of my hands.

“The prisoner is found guilty of the crime of heinous murder,” announces the judge. “He will be executed an hour after dawn tomorrow.”

The crowd erupts in a roar of thirst for blood.

I turn and push through them. I can hardly breathe. “Let me out, let me out!”

Everyone is shouting, and I keep running, pushing people aside. My bonnet is torn from my head, but I don’t stop to retrieve it. A voice rings in my ears, calling over the heads of the crowd. Unmistakable. It’s Roberto.

“Laura!”

But I don’t stop and I don’t call back. I plunge down a narrow street leading from the square, until I’m quite alone in a courtyard. Everyone else is at the trial, and I hear their distant hoots and catcalls. I pause for a moment, leaning against a wall to catch my breath. The sun beats down on my head, and white stars dance behind my eyes. My hopes, the prayers and sureties that had supported me, seem to have crumpled like some cheap stage trick. Judgment has
been passed. There’s nothing I can do. Nothing the Segreta can do. Nor the Doge. Roberto’s guilt has been signed by his own hand. He is to be executed tomorrow, at sunrise. The law has the final say.

I manage to walk on. Even the
words
of the letter sounded like Roberto’s. Like the words he used to speak to me.

I hear quick steps behind me. As I turn, before my eyes even take in the figure, a burlap bag is brought down over my head. I stumble and scream. It’s suffocating, and I can see only tiny squares of light seeping through the sacking. I hear the sound of feet scuffling against wood, and I am dragged inside a doorway. I kick out, but it’s hopeless. The arms that grip me are strong, and it’s all I can do to stay upright. We move farther into darkness and a cool interior. There’s another set of arms, a muttering voice I can’t make out. Then my legs are kicked away, and my rear lands on a wooden seat.

Someone pinions my hands behind my back, and I feel ropes on my wrists. I hear heavy panting beside my ear as a body leans over me.

“Who are you? What do you want?” I ask.

Nothing but a low chuckle of laughter. Rough fingers grip my wrists, and the ropes are pulled painfully tight. Footsteps move away from me, growing faint, and there’s the slam of a door.

Am I alone? My chest heaves as I struggle to draw in air through the coarse cloth. I feel myself gagging as panic rises within me.

Then there’s a soft noise from somewhere to my left. The pad of leather against wood. Someone else is in the room, approaching me.

I want to call out,
Who are you?
But all that comes out is a strangled sob.

Suddenly, I sense the warmth of another body beside my cheek. Someone is very close, I can tell. The panic is almost overwhelming now. I wait for the sensation of cold metal against my throat.

“Hello, Laura.” No blade, just a voice. But a voice I know all too well, even if the words are slurred.

A ghost from my past has returned.

“Carina?” I gasp.

29

The hood is ripped from my head, and I stare around. An anonymous room; I could be in any apartment in Venice. Empty flagons are piled in a corner, and the fireplace is stacked with logs, waiting to be lit. The chair I sit on is in the center of the room. There’s no other furniture, barring a low wooden sideboard.

Carina stands behind me, the evil of her presence filling the room. I crane round to try to get a glimpse of her, but the ropes cut into me. She kicks the back legs of my chair, and I nearly tip onto the floor, but she catches the chair and rights it. To my shame, I cry out in fear.

My old enemy laughs. “What a sniveling fool you are,” she says. A corner of her cloak swishes out to one side of me, then I spot the hem of a skirt, and finally she comes to stand before me. The cloak’s hood hides her face, but there’s a dull flash of silver from deep inside its folds.

“Show yourself,” I say, sounding bolder than I feel.

“Gladly.” She tears back the hood. Before me stands the person I thought was dead. Carina, my sister’s oldest friend
and the woman who betrayed me. She’s wearing a silver mask, behind which flow red locks of hair. The mask seems to be made of some kind of filigree, light enough to wear, but sparkling with curling threads of silver on which are threaded tiny jewels. How long has she been following me around the city, watching from behind her mask?

“You were in the church, weren’t you?” I ask.

She dips her head in acknowledgment. “You made such a beautiful mourner,” she says, her tone of voice mocking. “Almost worth Nicolo dying, to see you looking so wan and pale.”

My lip curls in disgust.

“What would your father say?” she teases. “To see you like this?” She once asked me the same question when she caught me talking to a lowly painter. That was before I knew he was the Doge’s son, and before I realized how deeply evil ran in Carina’s veins. Now, I know better. She reaches out a gloved hand, and I flinch away. But she doesn’t strike me. Instead, she strokes my cheek gently. “Such beautiful skin,” she says.

“I thought you were dead,” I say.

Carina walks around my chair in a tight circle, her skirts brushing against my legs.

“Sometimes I wish I were,” she says. Her voice is light. “It would suit many people if that were the case. Wouldn’t you agree?” I daren’t respond, but it doesn’t matter—she barely catches a breath before continuing. “After the accident on the boat, I often begged God for my pulse to still. The pain … You can hardly imagine. I yearned for death!” Now her voice turns darker. “But no one was listening.”

She smacks a hand against the back of my chair, and I
can’t help jumping. Carina bursts out laughing. She leans over to whisper in my ear. “Calm yourself, little bird.”

I shudder to feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. “How did you survive?”

She straightens up again. “God saw fit to spare me,” she says.

I think about screaming, but with every other able-bodied Venetian at the scene of the trial, would anyone hear? I flex my hands. The knots don’t budge. It was a man, perhaps two, that brought me here. They could be waiting outside.

“What do you do with yourself?” I ask.

She casts out a hand to indicate the window looking over the bay. “I watch! People come and go. You wouldn’t believe the gossip that takes place beneath my windowsill. I watch from afar and laugh at Venice’s pride. Your petty longings for wealth and beauty. Following around handsome fiancés in the hope that they’ll bring you happiness.” She stares at me, her head cocked. “Don’t feel sorry for me. My life has new purpose, now that my face counts for nothing. Would you like to see?”

She reaches up, and, in a single, shocking movement, the red locks fall to the floor. The candlelight plays over a shining, scarred scalp. The skin seems stretched and rippled with channels like the sand of a beach when the tide has receded. A few wisps of her old hair grow in short, crinkled tufts.

“You like it?” she asks in a mocking voice. I force myself not to look away, even when she raises her hands to the mask that covers her face. My throat goes dry as she carefully pulls it away.

Now I cannot look, and lower my eyes.

“You don’t want to see your handiwork?”

I take a breath and raise my gaze. Carina’s brow appears half melted, the skin drooping at the corner of one eye. Her mouth twists in an unnatural grin, and the skin across one cheek blossoms with scars and broken veins. This face, once so beautiful, is now a distorted version of what Carina once was.

“More to your taste?” she asks.

Pity plunges through me. How could it not? Carina is still a young woman, trapped behind the face of a corpse. One of her eyes is weeping, and she lifts a square of linen to wipe away the tears that flow from the red swollen rim. But as I remember glimpses of the past, my feelings quickly disappear. This woman lunged at me with a dagger on the boat. If she’d had her way, I would have died that night. Roberto too.

“You tried to kill us,” I say. “Whatever happened to you, it’s your own doing.”

I expect her to lash out, but instead Carina titters. “My dear Roberto,” she says. “I hear he too will suffer for his deeds tomorrow.”

She reaches into the deep pocket of her skirts and pulls out a stiletto knife. Involuntarily, my hands strain again. The narrow blade makes it perfect for sliding between ribs, puncturing deep into the flesh. One movement, one twist, and a heart can be stopped in seconds. The handle is made of mother-of-pearl, and there’s a golden guard and pommel. They glint in the weak light as Carina brings the knife closer, closer to my throat. I catch my breath and wait for whatever comes next, not daring to move.

She draws the blade through the air, a hairsbreadth away from my neck, in a slow, luxurious movement.

“Tomorrow the executioner will take Roberto’s head and place it on a lance,” she says. Then the twisted smile drops from her face, and her voice turns low and angry. “You wouldn’t remember the execution of Grand Councilor Luciano Braccia, I suppose? You were in the convent still. Well, I remember. I held my mother’s hand as the old fool put his head to the block, his lips muttering a useless prayer. Some say he hadn’t bribed the executioner to make it quick. Others that the axman was drunk. Anyway, it took half a dozen blows before he was dead, and the ax handle broke after the third. It was almost funny as they hunted for a replacement, and all that time he lay there twitching.”

I feel the bile rise in my throat, and my chest heaves as I struggle to contain the gagging sensation. Carina claps her hands in delight, turning around on the spot like a child at a party.

“Oh, good! The great Laura is human after all. Have I turned your stomach, dear heart?”

“What kind of animal are you?” I spit. Any sense of treading carefully has evaporated. “What is it you want?”

Carina places the knife in my lap, tantalizingly out of reach of my bound hands, then bends down to retrieve her mask and wig. She places the red locks on top of her head, tugging at them until they sit in place. She looks laughable, like a gaudy puppet. Then she ties the mask in place and straightens her shoulders, as though retrieving what little dignity she has left.

Finally, she answers me. “I want nothing more than to see you and the Segreta suffer.”

She snatches up the knife again, and moves behind me. Every sense seems on fire as I wait for what must surely come. Will it be quick, or will she leave me to bleed to death in this lonely room? I close my eyes and try to think of Roberto’s face, but even that offers me no comfort now. I think instead of Lysander, the brother only recently returned to me. I think of Emilia, and hope their life together is a happy one. I even feel a long-forgotten fondness for my foolish old father.
Beatrice, I shall be with you soon
.

The knife is cold as she places it along the top of my ear.

“Do you know how it feels to be disfigured?” she whispers.

I feel a sharp tug, and pain. Then there’s a pressure on my wrists, and suddenly they’re free. My hand goes at once to the side of my head, but I can’t find any blood. I climb from the chair. Carina stands by the doorway. In her hand she trails a few locks of long, curled hair. “I could have killed you, Laura, or I could have made your face like mine. Perhaps one day I will. But for now, I want to see you suffer. I want you to wake each morning and feel the pain I do, never knowing when your end will come, when I will appear to you again.”