Belladonna (2 page)

A large thud made Cass jump. It sounded as if the soldiers were hacking Luca’s belongings to pieces with their clubs. With all the noise, Agnese was almost certainly awake now. Cass knew she should go to her aunt’s bedside, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave Luca.

As Cass watched, Narissa broke away from Siena and strode purposefully toward Luca’s chambers, undoubtedly to make sure the soldiers weren’t stealing anything or destroying the furniture. Cass knew Agnese would be hobbling her way into the chaos the instant she heard of the transpiring events. Ideally, Narissa could control the soldiers
and
her aunt, who was too weak to deal with something like this. Agnese’s latest bout with imbalanced humors had required a large bloodletting, and the doctor had recommended bed rest for a few days.

“On what charges do you arrest my fiancé?” Cass asked again, directing her words to the group. When no one answered, she focused on the nearest soldier. His beard was flecked with gray, and several medallions glimmered on the breast of his doublet. Perhaps he, not the man leading the ransackers, was the leader. “You. Answer me.” The soldier looked pityingly at Cass but said nothing.

Cass turned to Luca. “This is madness!”

“They can’t tell us the charges.” Luca pressed his hands to Cass’s shoulders, steadying her. “They probably don’t even know. They’re just following orders.” He touched his lips to her cheek, then angled his mouth toward her ear. “Be strong,” he murmured. “And stay away from Signor Dubois.”

“Does he have something to do with this?” Cass knew that Luca had been to see Joseph Dubois only yesterday, and every shady dealing in Venice seemed to lead back to the Frenchman. A few weeks ago, he’d ordered Luca’s half brother, Cristian, to “dispose” of a maid from his estate. The girl’s mutilated body had surfaced in the Grand Canal, and now Siena’s sister, Feliciana, another servant at Palazzo Dubois, was missing. Cass prayed to San Antonio every night for Feliciana’s safe return, but privately she feared the worst.

Luca didn’t respond. The remaining soldiers filed into the portego, having apparently completed their search. Between the two groups there must have been close to twenty men. Did the Senate really think it would take so many soldiers to subdue a single man?

“Did you find anything?” The soldier with the graying beard lifted his torch so that the faces of his companions were illuminated.

“Nothing,” one of the soldiers barked in reply.

The brigade surrounded Luca and Cass, separating them from the rest of the household. The heat from their torches made the room go blurry. Cass blinked hard, but golden spots floated in the air, melding with the ocean of scarlet fabric, reflecting off medallions and sword hilts. She braced herself with one hand against Luca, trying to keep her knees from folding beneath her.

“Signor da Peraga must come with us now,” a soldier said. He detached a coil of rope from his belt and looped it around Luca’s wrists, cinching his hands behind his back.

“No!” Cass threw her hands around Luca’s neck, pulling him close. She fought back a sob, but a tear escaped, trickling down her cheek before she could brush it away.

“Everything is going to be fine, Cass,” Luca said. He leaned down to brush his lips against the tear. “Don’t cry.”

One of the men took Cass by the shoulders and wrenched her away. She stumbled backward, unmoored. Siena materialized at her side, reaching out, helping her regain her balance. The soldiers engulfed Luca and dragged him toward the stairs.

The front door of the villa slammed, and Cass ran to the window. The sky had gone from silver to blue. The soldiers doused their torches in the water as they forced Luca aboard the sturdy wooden ship. White sails snapped in the breeze as the boat pulled away from the dock. The waxing daylight wasn’t enough to see clearly by, but Cass swore Luca turned to look back at her as the ship bobbed out of sight. She touched one hand to the window, her breath condensing on the glass.

Luca was gone.

Cass heard Narissa’s voice before she saw the handmaid helping her aunt down the corridor. “One step at a time. Excellent, Signora. Slow and steady,” Narissa said, supporting Agnese as the old woman struggled toward the portego.

“Aunt Agnese!” Cass cried out, wiping at her cheek with her hand. She did not want her aunt to know how terrified she was. “You should be in bed.”

“Explain to me,” Agnese wheezed, “why those savages thought they could destroy my home.” She pointed in the direction of Luca’s room. “It looks like the End of Days in there.”

“They said they had orders to search Luca’s chambers,” Cass said.
But search for what?

“
Orders,
” Agnese scoffed. “Don’t worry, Cassandra. They’ll be taking
new
orders soon.” She clutched at her chest, as if the mere act of speaking were taxing. “Narissa, I’d like to return to my room. Bring me wax and parchment. I’ll be sending several letters immediately.” As she tottered back down the hallway on her handmaid’s arm, she added, “And someone put that room back together immediately—there’s nothing more debased than an overturned armchair.”

Siena touched Cass on the shoulder. “I’ll go straighten in there.”

A strange protective feeling welled up inside Cass. She didn’t want anyone else going through Luca’s private things. “I can take care of it,” she said quickly. “You go to the market. Keep your ears open. Maybe you’ll hear someone talking about the arrest.”

Siena curtsied. “Whatever you think is best, Signorina Cass.”

Cass had already turned away. She held her breath as she crossed the threshold into Luca’s room, afraid of what she might find. The four-poster bed was still standing, but barely. The armoire and washing table were also whole, but overturned. All of Luca’s fine clothing had been yanked from the armoire’s shelves and dumped in a heap on the floor. Books and stockings were strewn about in front of his trunk.

Cass’s cat, Slipper, was pawing at a fur-lined collar that protruded from the mess of clothes. “Shoo,” Cass said, bending down in front of the armoire.

Slipper bounded off to explore the tangle of stockings. Cass began to refold Luca’s breeches and doublets, placing each piece of clothing back onto the shelves. She caught a whiff of his scent—citrus and cinnamon—from a tailored gray doublet and had to restrain herself from beginning to cry.

She reminded herself that crying would help no one.

Next, she went to work on his chemises. The linen fabric had creases at the chest and shoulders. Luca even folded his underclothes. Cass took her time, matching her folds to the creases, trying to put everything back just as it had been. She told herself that it was all a mistake, that he would soon be home, that he would want his clothes as he had left them.

Slipper had found a scrap of lilac ribbon from somewhere and was parading around the room with the treasure hanging from his teeth. Cass watched him for a moment and then moved to the mess outside of the trunk.

She paired the long stockings as best she could and placed them gently into the back of the trunk. She stacked the books into a pile, scanning each cover as she did so. Most of them were related to law and government—subjects Luca had been studying at university—but one of the leather-bound volumes was the same Shakespeare story that Cass had been reading when he had first returned to Venice several weeks earlier. Luca had never been one for stories, especially love stories. Cass couldn’t help but wonder if she had changed him the way that Falco had changed her.

Already, the room was looking better.
If only people, and lives, were as easy to fix,
she thought. What was Luca doing right now? Was he scared? Where had he ended up? Was he being held somewhere clean and well lit, with hot water and fine food, or in a rat-infested, watery prison? She hoped Siena’s errands would be speedy. Surely some of the servants at the market would be gossiping about the arrest of a nobleman. Once Cass knew more about the charges, she would go to the Palazzo Ducale and demand to speak on Luca’s behalf. While she was there, perhaps she could bribe a guard to let her see her fiancé for a minute or two.

She placed the stack of books into Luca’s trunk and rose to her feet. As she headed for the door, her lily pendant came unclasped and slipped down inside her bodice.

Cass fished it out, pausing for a moment to admire its beauty. Four silver flower petals framed a circular diamond in the center. She held the pendant up to the light and watched the way the diamond bent and reflected the daylight, scattering sunbeams across Luca’s room.

Slipper abandoned his ribbon and threw his tiny body at one of the dancing streaks of light, colliding instead with the wall.

“Slipper!” Cass said, nearly dropping the necklace. “Are you all right?”

As if he understood her words, the cat walked dazedly in a circle and then licked one paw and rubbed his face before launching himself at another rogue ball of light.

Cass returned her attention to the pendant. As she struggled to work the tiny clasp behind her neck, she thought about the day Luca had given it to her. She’d been in the garden, reading, when he had come around the front of the house, a pale lily cradled in his hands.

“
Grazie,
” she’d said when he rested the lily next to her on the bench. Her eyes had flipped back to her book. She didn’t mean to ignore him, but she was at a good part in her story.

“Cass.” He’d angled his head toward the back of the garden, where roses bloomed in the wooden trellis. Stuck among them was another pale pink lily.

Cass had arched an eyebrow, but then given in and closed her book. She and Luca had played this game when she was younger, both at his family palazzo and at Agnese’s. Luca used to hide little presents for her and mark the hiding spots with lilies.

A smile playing across her lips, Cass got up to look at the second pink lily that he had poked into the trellis. Behind the delicate petals, a gold box was tied to the wood. Inside it, this necklace. Cass remembered the soft touch of Luca’s hands and the tickle of his breath on her skin as he bent low to work the tiny clasp.

The wall clock chimed, and Cass was shocked to discover that she had been in Luca’s room nearly two hours. She slipped down the hallway and knocked quietly at her aunt’s door. No answer. She peeked in to find that Agnese was sleeping, her body propped up awkwardly in her bed with several embroidered pillows.

Agnese’s health had taken a turn for the worse after Madalena’s wedding. Sometimes Cass could hear her coughing well into the night. She watched Agnese’s chest rise and fall beneath the fabric of her dressing gown. Her breathing seemed labored, her exhalations shallow and raspy. One gnarled hand, fingers twisted and swollen, dangled off the edge of the bed.

Crossing the room to her aunt’s side, Cass knelt down and folded Agnese’s arm so that her hand now rested on her lap. The old woman didn’t even stir, and Cass couldn’t bring herself to disturb her.

As Cass retreated into the hall and closed the door to her aunt’s chamber, she saw Siena hurrying down the corridor. They both opened their mouths to speak at the same time, but Siena spoke first. “You have to come quickly, Signorina Cass,” she said, her eyes wide.

“What is it?” Cass asked. “What’s happened?”

Siena struggled to catch her breath. She tucked her trembling fingers into the folds of her dress. “It’s my sister,” she said, her voice catching. “I found her.”

Siena took Cass’s gloved hand to help steady her in her chopines as they threaded their way through the narrow streets of the Rialto, the main island of Venice. They emerged from an alleyway onto the wide path that ran alongside the Grand Canal. The area was crowded with peasants carrying paper-wrapped packages and sacks of vegetables. Siena headed for the arches of the Mercato di Rialto, where almost everyone went to buy food and herbs.

Peasant women and older children jockeyed for position in front of the stalls. Cass was reminded of the busy alleyway in Fondamenta delle Tette where she and Falco had gone to search for the identity of the dead body Cass had found in the contessa Liviana’s tomb a few weeks earlier.

That area had been full of brothels. To Cass, the marketplace seemed almost as bad, with Gypsies pushing trinkets outside the arches and fishermen hawking their catches inside. Anyone could be roaming within that crowd—con artists, pickpockets. Cristian.

“She’s waiting
here
?” Cass asked.

“Yes.” Siena yanked her forward impatiently.

Cass eyed the crush of people again. The back of a blond man, the ends of his hair reaching almost to his shoulders, melted into a cluster of brightly clothed peasant boys pushing and shoving each other as they headed toward the arches.
Cristian.
She stopped quickly, nearly pitching forward onto the damp, garbage-slicked cobblestones. “I’ll wait here while you go get her.”

Siena gave Cass a strange look. “She won’t come out, of course. She’s afraid someone will see her and report to Signor Dubois.”

Cass cursed herself for being such a coward. According to Luca, Cristian had left Venice for good. There was no reason for her to be seeing him in every crowd. “Lead the way, then,” she said.

Cass followed Siena into the market, her head pounding from the cacophony of vendors and customers trying to outshout each other. Her stomach churned from the stink of fish and sweat. She wished she could fetch her fan out from her pocket, but the peasants were packed arm to arm, as tightly as the seafood they were bidding on. Cass paused for a moment, covering her mouth with a gloved hand, trying not to retch.