City of Masks (4 page)

‘It’s very beautiful, your city,’ he said at last.

‘Yes, that’s why it’s so rich,’ said Arianna, matter-of-factly. ‘Beauty is cash – that’s the Bellezzans’ motto –
Bellezza è moneta
.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Lucien.

‘We might as well take a look at the Scuola,’ said Arianna, shortly.

They walked across another small canal, through a passageway, and arrived on the pavement alongside a much broader canal. Across a stone bridge was a grand building with ‘Scuola Mandoliera’ written on it, carved into the stone above the entrance. In front of it bobbed several black craft and people were coming and going in busy groups as if something important were happening.

‘Mandoliers,’ said Lucien. ‘Those are the people who row the boats, right?’

Arianna gave him a withering look. ‘Scull, not row. And they’re mandolas, not boats. It’s because they’re shaped like almonds –
mandole.
It makes them very tricky to steer.’

‘Have you tried?’ asked Lucien, looking at the slender boats. He was thinking about how he’d been punting on the river in Cambridge with his uncle Graham, his mother’s brother. You had to stand on the stern of a punt too.

‘Of course,’ said Arianna impatiently. ‘We have canals on the islands too. And I’ve handled mandolas all my life on Torrone. Both my brothers are fishermen on Merlino.’

Her forehead creased.

‘I’ve got them into the most terrible trouble – and all for nothing! Our parents will be worried sick because they came back without me last night. I gave them the slip, you see. My parents don’t know where I am.’

Lucien said nothing but he was thinking the same about his own parents. ‘At least Arianna knows where she is,’ he thought. ‘Which is more than I do.’

Arianna clutched his arm. ‘It must be time for the selection,’ she hissed. ‘That’s the Duchessa’s mandola.’

An elaborately decorated mandola slipped smoothly through the water, sculled, Lucien couldn’t help noticing, by an extremely handsome young man. It had a covered section in the middle, hung with silver brocade. The mandolier brought his craft in skilfully to the landing stage and an official of the School, in an ornate uniform, handed out first a waiting-woman then an elegant masked figure, which could only be the Duchessa.

‘Quick!’ said Arianna. ‘Let’s go in.’

‘Is it allowed?’ asked Lucien. ‘Won’t we get caught?’

‘It’s a public selection,’ said Arianna defiantly. ‘And they won’t be expecting anyone to disobey the ban. I was banking on that. We’ll be all right as long as you don’t speak to anyone.’ Then she hurried across the bridge and Lucien had to run after her.

The wooden gates under the stone entrance were indeed wide open and Lucien soon found himself in a courtyard filled with smartly dressed people. He felt a bit shabby in his borrowed clothes but no one was looking at him. At one end of the courtyard was a raised platform. At that moment the Duchessa was ascending the platform and seating herself on a carved wooden chair. A queue of nervous-looking young men was forming to the right of the stage.

Arianna had pushed her way to the front of the crowd, no longer worried about being recognized. When Lucien had managed to squeeze his way through to her he found her enthralled, violet eyes shining and hair escaped from her scarf. This was what she had been waiting for for a year, even if it hadn’t worked out the way she meant, and she was thrilled to be here.

What was happening on the stage was a bit like a beauty pageant. The young men were led, one by one, for inspection by the Duchessa. She didn’t quite open their mouths and look at their teeth, but it was almost as bad. After each inspection, the Duchessa spoke to the School official and the unlucky candidates were led off the stage, while the successful ones were lined up sheepishly at the back.

It was clear where their families all stood in the crowd; groans and cheers greeted each decision. Lucien wasn’t at all sure that Arianna’s plan would have worked. No one seemed to have come without supporters. The eagerness of the families was causing the crowd to surge forward, pushing Lucien and Arianna closer to the stage.

Lucien found himself at the front, a few feet from the Duchessa. The line of hopeful mandoliers was coming to an end. Of the last two young men Lucien thought, going by the Duchessa’s previous choices, one was too short and one was distinctly bandy-legged. They were dispatched so quickly that Lucien was already turning to go when the Duchessa’s voice rang out.

‘That young man there. Bring him up.’

Heads turned, Lucien’s with them. Fingers pointed. At him. ‘No, it’s a mistake,’ he protested. ‘I’m not here to be a mandolier.’

But strong hands were guiding him up on to the stage. He looked round wildly for Arianna. He caught a glimpse of her face, looking absolutely furious. And then she was gone. He was pushed towards the Duchessa and found himself hypnotized by her presence.

Her eyes, glittering through the holes in her silver butterfly mask, were violet, like Arianna’s. ‘Must be common here,’ thought Lucien. Her voice was low and caressing and she smelt absolutely wonderful. Lucien, whose mother hardly ever wore scent, and who had had very little experience with girls, felt quite faint.

The Duchessa held out a hand to him, a favour she had bestowed on only one or two candidates. ‘Tell me your name, young man,’ said the Duchessa.

‘Luciano,’ said Lucien, remembering Arianna’s version.

‘Luciano,’ said the Duchessa slowly, savouring the syllables like a particularly delicious cake.

Lucien felt himself blushing. What had Arianna said? Everyone knows what she does with the handsomest ones. He felt completely out of his depth. He didn’t want to be a mandolier or one of the Duchessa’s favourites. At the moment, he just wanted to be at home, with things around him he could understand. But even as he thought about it, he realised he
could
be a mandolier; he was strong enough, here, and it couldn’t be so very different from punting.

‘You remind me of a young man I selected many years ago,’ said the Duchessa, and from the sound of her voice, he knew she was smiling. ‘Yes, I think you will make a fine mandolier. Welcome to the Scuola.’

The crowd was quite silent. If Arianna was still there she made no sound as Lucien was led to join the other successful candidates and the Duchessa descended from the stage. Strong as he felt in this dreamlike city, he thought he might pass out.

All the young men chosen to train as mandoliers – and they all looked a fair bit older than Lucien – were shepherded off to their new quarters. The others all had families to hug them and give them tearful but proud farewells. Lucien even found himself hugged a couple of times by over-enthusiastic mothers and sisters.

At last he was alone in a little room with a wooden bed, old-fashioned carved wooden chest and a china jug and bowl. The friendly guide who had shown him in had said, ‘See you in the morning at first light,’ then left him. Lucien sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. He couldn’t begin to make sense of his situation and all of a sudden a great weariness overtook him. He swung his legs up on to the hard mattress and rested his head on the pillow. Trying to get comfortable, he felt something digging into him and, reaching inside his woollen jerkin, pulled the Venetian notebook out of his pyjama pocket.

Lying there with the notebook in his hand and wondering if he would ever see his own home again, he soon fell into a deep sleep.

Chapter 3

A Garden in the Air

Lucien returned to his body with a jolt. At least, returning to his body was what it felt like. He was immediately weighed down by his exhaustion. If he hadn’t already been lying in bed, he would have fallen. His throat was dry and sore. He put his hand up to feel his hair and met his bare scalp. Tears seeped under his eyelids; it was somehow much worse losing his hair the second time.

So it had been a dream. But an amazing dream. So real. And how could he have invented Arianna and the Duchessa and the whole incredible city, that was and yet wasn’t Venice? It still felt so much like the reality, and his life confined to bed like the dream, that Lucien almost believed he would still be wearing Arianna’s jerkin and trousers. But of course he wasn’t. Just the blue pyjamas in which he had been transported to Bellezza.

There was a knock and his father came in.

‘Morning, son. You’re looking a bit better. Got some colour back.’

Lucien was astonished. He felt like hell. But he had to admit that was in contrast to how alive and well he’d been in Bellezza. Perhaps he
did
feel a bit better than when he’d last been in this body. Or in this bed. Whichever it was.

‘Throat still hurting?’ asked Dad sympathetically. ‘You can write in the book, don’t forget.’

The book! Lucien slid it out of his pocket and wrote, ‘Tell me some more about Venice.’

Arianna’s parents were furious with her but she scarcely noticed. After the Duchessa had called Lucien up on to the stage, she had run, cheeks burning, back through the side streets to Santa Maddalena and the Piazzetta, where a few boats were moored. There she had bribed a boatman to take her back to Torrone, with the money she had saved to pay her entrance fee to the Scuola Mandoliera.

It took all of that to persuade any native-born Bellezzan to leave his city on the day after the Marriage with the Sea. He had grumbled all the way to the island, but Arianna hadn’t paid any attention to him. She gripped the side of the boat with one hand and stuffed the knuckles of the other into her mouth to stop herself from screaming with frustration.

It was so unfair. That boy, that Luciano, had thwarted all her plans and then coolly stepped in to take her place. She knew with a part of her mind that it had not been his fault, that he hadn’t deliberately set out to catch the Duchessa’s eye. He was such a simpleton, knowing nothing about the Duchessa, or mandoliering, or Bellezza even.

But another part of her brain was fiercely jealous of him. He, with his dark eyes and curly hair and shy smile, would soon be sculling tourists along the Great Canal, making his fortune, his future assured. She didn’t have a moment’s doubt that the Duchessa would have chosen him. Though he looked barely old enough to meet the Scuola’s entry criterion of fifteen and his build was slight, his looks would have assured him a place. And he wasn’t even Talian, let alone Bellezzan!

Arianna relaxed her grip and dipped her hand into the water, splashing her face with it. They were out in the open lagoon now, far from the brackish waters of the canals. Luciano said he was Anglian and that she believed, though he spoke Talian, but she no longer trusted the rest of his story. How could she? He said he was ill when he was clearly healthy, that he was bald, when— bah! She snorted at the thought. He must have been deceiving her. His story didn’t make sense. Perhaps he wasn’t simple, but very cunning.

By the time the boat pulled into the landing stage at Torrone, Arianna’s blazing fury had subsided into a dull, bitter misery. The lookout posted to watch the sea for her return hared off along the bank of the main canal after raising a hand in greeting and Arianna trudged homeward.

She knew better than anyone what turmoil her absence would have caused on Torrone. She was their
Figlia dell’Isola
– Daughter of the Island. The only child born there in the last twenty years.

Everyone on Torrone was old. Arianna had no playmates except her parents and her two much older brothers. There were few families left on Torrone at all. Arianna’s father, Gianfranco, had lived on the island all his life and was now curator of the tiny cathedral museum. The cathedral on Torrone was the most ancient building in the whole lagoon, built centuries ago while Bellezza was still a swamp. Tourists came from all over the world to see it and the magnificent silver mosaics it contained.

But there were no shops and no school. Arianna went by boat to a school on Merlino, the big island where her brothers worked and lived in their cottage by the shore. There, too, were markets, selling food and luxuries from the mainland. And every day in summer traders came to Torrone from the smaller island of Burlesca, bringing cakes and wine and lace and glass to sell to the tourists. But in winter Torrone had only fish from Merlino and whatever it could grow itself. It was through the winter months that Arianna had dreamed most of her escape.

Arianna’s mother, Valeria, rushed out of their little whitewashed house near the cathedral and embraced the runaway roughly, crying and laughing with relief that soon changed to scolding and threats. The lookout had gone on to the cathedral to find Gianfranco and give him the news.

‘Where have you been?’ Valeria kept asking. ‘We were worried sick. Tommaso and Angelo are out of their minds. They should be enjoying a good holiday today but do you know what they are doing? They’re out in their boat getting as close to Bellezza as they dare.’

Arianna mumbled something about having needed to answer a call of nature and then getting lost in the crowd. She didn’t really expect to be believed. She could have begged a ride on any boat going back to any of the islands, if she hadn’t been able to find her brothers. The imperative was to get out of the city.

She hadn’t really thought about what to tell her family if she had been accepted at the Scuola. Her plans had all stopped at her admission to the school. Perhaps, once she had been trained, she would have taken off her disguise and the Duchessa would have been forced to agree that girls could train in future. But, if she were honest with herself, Arianna would have to admit that she hadn’t expected that the school would be flooded with applications from girls after her. Her plans were all for herself.

The scoldings poured over her and went on all day, added to by her father, rushing home, and her brothers when they came back in the middle of the afternoon, hungry and upset. Neighbours, too, dropped in to see that she was safe then shake their heads in sympathy with her parents over her wickedness and disobedience.

Arianna was heartily sick of being the centre of attention and wished, as she had so often before, that there were other children on Torrone, to take some of the pressure away from her.

‘... and no one knows how long it can survive,’ finished Dad. ‘The water is rising every year and if the flood barriers aren’t built, the whole city could disappear under the sea – like Atlantis.’

So it wasn’t Bellezza. Lucien was sure that the city of his dream hadn’t been sinking, though he didn’t know how he knew it. Bellezza was as unlike a doomed city as it could be, bustling, prosperous, full of its own importance. And he couldn’t see the Duchessa, from the little he knew of her, letting the sea take her city from her.

‘Are you interested in Venice?’ asked Dad. ‘I could get you some books from the library.’

Lucien nodded, and wrote, ‘Have you ever been there?’

Dad looked a little embarrassed. ‘Only once,’ he said. ‘Before I met your mum.’

Lucien immediately guessed Dad had been there with a previous girlfriend.

‘Did you visit any of the islands?’ he wrote.

Dad looked at him oddly. ‘How did you know about the islands? I didn’t think I’d mentioned them. Yeah, we went to them. I mean I did. The one where they make the glass and the one where all the houses are painted different colours and the one with the old cathedral and the gold mosaics.’

‘Torrone?’ wrote Lucien.

‘I thought that was a sticky sweet,’ said Dad, puzzled. ‘But it is a name a bit like that. I’d better get you those books.’

When he had gone, Lucien’s mum brought him breakfast. He managed a few spoonfuls of soggy cornflakes and half a cup of tea, then sank back exhausted on to his pillows. He heard the door click as she took the tray away, then dropped into an uneasy doze.

And woke, sweating, from a dream in which he stood at the end of a sleek black boat, holding a long oar. The Duchessa sat far away in the other end, making notes in a book as if she were marking his performance.

‘If you don’t beat the record,’ she was saying, ‘I shall take my mask off.’

In the dream this had been the most terrifying threat. Lucien had forced himself awake rather than confront the horror he knew lurked behind that mask. But as he lay there, hot and damp with fear, a curious certainty settled on him. If this had been a dream, then the other hadn’t. This was ordinary B-movie nightmare stuff, with none of the logical reality of his night-time visit to Bellezza. The city where Arianna and the Duchessa lived was real; he was sure of it.

Now all he had to do was to find out how to get back.

The next day was Sunday and, though her parents were now not talking to Arianna, they didn’t deny her the annual visit to Mass in Santa Maddalena. The whole family rowed over to Bellezza early in the morning, mooring their boat at the Piazzetta, along with many other lagooners.

Inside the hushed cathedral, Arianna let her gaze wander up to the gallery that led to the Loggia degli Arieti, where she had spent the night before last so uncomfortably, with the rams. A brown-robed figure caught her eye, on one of the many wooden walkways that criss-crossed the cathedral just beneath its roof. She realized that she had seen the same figure, or one just like it, as she had climbed up to her hiding-place.