Cross My Heart (21 page)

T
here’s a shriek and we break apart to see Faustina raising her hands in the air and then putting them over her mouth. She clatters down the steps towards us.

“Get away from her! Oh, Holy Madonna. Leave the poor girl alone. Don’t you know she’s a noblewoman? Laura, are you all right? What on earth has this man done to you?”

As she hurries towards us, Giacomo murmurs, “You mustn’t get into trouble. I won’t cause any shame for you.”

“You couldn’t do that if you tried,” I tell him. To Faustina, I say, “Nothing’s wrong—nothing at all!”

I hold Giacomo’s hand. I will not let him go.

Faustina looks down at his tanned hand in my pale one. Her face changes; her brow furrows and her lips purse. I haven’t seen her angry with me before.

“Dear God and all his holy saints! Your father chose badly when he picked Vincenzo, but do you suppose this servant boy is any better? Oh, Laura! If anyone had seen—
your reputation would have been destroyed, like
that
.” She clicked her fingers. “Beatrice will be turning in her grave to think of you throwing yourself away on this … this … 
scoundrel
.” She slaps our hands apart, and points her stubby finger at Giacomo. “And you! Playing with her affections. She’s only just out of the convent. She doesn’t understand. She does not know about such things.”

“Please, Faustina,” I say, but she narrows her eyes at Giacomo.

“Or did you really think she would cast her life out to sea with someone as lowly as you?”

“No, of course I don’t, Signora,” he replies, backing away.

“A painter! Thank goodness I came when I did.” With her old hands she starts to push Giacomo down the garden path and towards the gate.

“I’ll go,” he says, “but I beg just a brief word with Laura.”

“Laura?” she says, her voice high-pitched at the monstrous use of my Christian name.

He walks around a speechlessly incensed Faustina and faces me again. His brow is heavy and sad. “I’m sorry, Signorina della Scala, I’m sorry. It was quite wrong of me.”

I clutch his hands in my own.

“What’s all this racket?” shouts my father. He strides out into the courtyard.

Our hands drop apart.

“Oh, nothing,” says Faustina. “Laura has just paid the painter and he’s about to leave. Isn’t that right, Laura?”

I can’t look at my father, but from the way he sucks the air in, I know he saw Giacomo and me touching.

“You impudent dog. Get off my property this instant.”
His instructions squeeze out through the cracks of his gritted teeth. I dare to look and see that his face is as gray as stone.

“Please, Father—”

“Silence!” he bellows, and Faustina rocks on her heels.

“Sir,” begins Giacomo. “Your daughter is not at fault here. I take—”

“Get out,” hisses my father, “before I fetch my whip and beat you from here to Constantinople.”

Giacomo nods and backs off towards the gate. When he reaches it, he touches the tips of two fingers to his lips and looks at me. A tender, secret salute that pains and enchants me.

My father shouts after him. “You’ll never get another commission in all of Venice! Do you hear me, you insolent boy?”

They bundle me back into the house. I don’t know what will happen next, but I feel strangely safe.

“It was the boy’s fault,” Faustina says to my father.

“I know what happened. I saw the look in her eyes,” he snarls.

It’s like I’m not there. And in some way, I’m not. I feel that nothing can touch me. I hear Giacomo’s words, over and over. He said he loved me. And now, no matter how much they pull at me, I know that I’m standing on something solid.

My father drags me by the hand to his library, so that he can talk to me privately, but I see the familiar shadows at the crack under the door and I know Faustina and Bianca must be crouching there, listening to us. It’s like facing a bear in a cave, the way his voice echoes around the room.

“God in Heaven,” he rants. “What on
earth
were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking at all,” I tell him, which is true. Something else was going on in the courtyard—something new, and not logical.

“That’s perfectly clear,” he says, massaging his temples with his hands. “Because you, young lady, were on the verge of ruining your life. Do you even realize what could have happened?” They’re fatherly words: angry and fearful, but not completely malicious. “And with Bianca in the house—the biggest gossip in all of Venice! Have you no
sense
? Who will marry a
painter’s
hussy?”

He roams around me, striding like a miser whose treasure is at risk of being plundered. But I’ve had enough of being treated like just another currency in his chest.

“How can you lecture me?” I ask. “You, whose only concern is for yourself and your political ambitions? If I didn’t have any regard for this family’s name, the name of my mother and the name of Beatrice, then do you think I would still be here?”

He stalls, speechless. I press on.

“So don’t you take it on yourself to tell me how I should behave! Look at your own behavior. What kind of father marries his daughter off to an old skeleton just for the sake of a seat on the Grand Council?”

His mouth grows wide in amazement. I don’t care that his white-lipped fury has returned, or that the rest of his face looks like a swollen red pepper.

He draws his hand back and slaps my cheek. He isn’t a strong man, but still my skin burns as I stand my ground.

“Go to your room,” he says under his breath.

My own breath comes in sharp bursts as the heat across my face subsides. I stare at him, hoping he sees the fire of defiance in my soul.

“Go to your room!” he bellows.

“I heard you the first time,” I reply, turning from him and walking as calmly as possible to the door.

Faustina sits at the end of my bed, wringing her hands. I curl up among the pillows. Birds are singing through the open window and the heavy evening sun has started to trickle in like honey.

“I’m so sorry, Laura.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I say.

“I should never have made such a fuss,” she says. “If he hadn’t heard me, he would never …”

“I know. You were just worried about me.”

“I’ve told Bianca not to breathe a word of this to anyone,” she adds.

“I feel like telling the whole of Venice,” I say, raising my head from the pillow and giving a weak smile.

Faustina shakes her head. “Well, you’re certainly not to do that. And besides, your father has instructed me to make sure you don’t leave this room.”

She wags her finger and furrows her eyebrows in playful mockery of him. I laugh; at least Faustina and I are friends again.

“You’ll have to stay here until he calms down. I’ll bring your dinner up.” There’s a knock at the front door and she bustles out.

I don’t feel like eating. I don’t want to sleep. I can’t think of anything except what happened in the garden.

From being forced to marry a man I could never have loved, now I love a man I can never marry. I go to the window and lean out, catching my breath again, because it’s at that moment I realize: I love him. I understand for the first time why people carve their names together on the trunks of cypress trees. I realize that love needs to be announced. And yet I can’t announce mine. If my father has his way, I might never even see Giacomo again.

Faustina scurries back in.

“Allegreza is here,” she says.

“Again? What does she want?”

“Your father has asked her to take you to confession.”

“I have nothing to confess,” I say, indignant hackles rising.

“He’s told her all about the painter.”

I snort, imagining Allegreza, of all people, sitting outside the confessional on cushions of hypocrisy while I pour out my sins within. But I know that this isn’t really why she’s here.

Faustina smooths out my hair with her hands and then draws it up into a tight knot, tying it fast with a ribbon so that I’ll appear serious and repentant. After she’s left the room, I take out my mask and slip it under my cape. After what’s happened, I feel wild and reckless, I have nothing to lose. Allegreza stands waiting in the atrium, her features dark and shadowed.

“Laura,” she says gravely, nodding at my father. “Come with me and all will be well.”

T
he sun finally vanishes over the horizon as Allegreza brings me to the cluster of gondolas at Mazzini.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You’re a member,” she says simply, “and there is a meeting.”

We sit in silence as the gondola takes twists and turns down back canals I have never seen before. When we climb out of the boat, we are somewhere that I don’t recognize—in the east of the city and near the boatyards, if the singing sailors are anything to go by. We walk quickly through the narrow alleys and reach a small, angular gray chapel. Dozens of candles dance inside, and the masked women murmur quiet greetings to me. Others touch my hand or my shoulder in welcome.

I grow calmer. This has all the rhythms and sounds of an ordinary meeting of the Segreta. Perhaps that’s all it is.

Allegreza walks slowly to the altar and the women settle
into silence. She can always quieten a room with a single gesture.

Two other women coax a small, pale, pretty girl to the center of the glimmering chapel. She has smooth fair hair and large brown eyes. She is timid and trembling.

“Welcome, Cecile,” says Allegreza. “This is the Society of Secrets and you must tell us yours.”

The women are still. I want to comfort this girl who looks so frightened. In a lyrical, throaty voice, and a faltering Italian softened and liquefied by an accent that I half recognize, she speaks.

“And you will help me?” she asks. “I was told you could help with my beloved. He’s no soldier, and shouldn’t be made to fight.”

“If your secret is worthy, we can arrange his exemption.”

“My secret is worthy,” says Cecile. “It concerns the Doge of Venice.”

Murmurs ripple around the room. They must be wondering, like me, if this is a secret they’ve heard before.

The girl holds her head up and raises her voice a little. “Well, it’s really a secret about his son.”

I feel Paulina stiffen at my side. “A secret about Nicolo?” she asks anxiously.

“Not Nicolo,” says Cecile. “The other son, Roberto. The one who’s supposed to be dead.”

Supposed?
There’s no more murmuring, and the silence is profound, although some of the women throw glances in Grazia’s direction. Her eyes flick er behind her cat’s mask, but she doesn’t speak.

Cecile looks nervously over at Allegreza, who nods slightly. “Go on.”

“I wish to tell you that the Doge’s firstborn son is alive.”

The women break out in a disbelieving chorus.

“She lies to the Segreta!” shouts one.

“She plays us false!” cries another. “It’s not true.”

“I’ve seen him with my own eyes,” Cecile insists, raising her voice about the hubbub. “In Paris.”

Allegreza strides up to the girl, and the masked women fall silent again. “This is a serious declaration,” says Allegreza. “The boy’s bones rest in a tomb in this very city.”

Cecile’s face creases. “What can I say? He spoke to me of his childhood, and of the vendetta that drove him away. He was injured with a sword and spent many weeks recovering.”

Though she’s still frightened, her tone is forthright. She holds out her palms to show that she has nothing to conceal. There is no hint of guile in her eyes.

Many of the women rush to gather around Grazia, who leans heavily on one of them. They fan her, while someone runs to fetch a stool for her to sit on. “He’s alive?” she mutters. “My son’s killer lives? And in Paris?” She sounds disoriented, made almost drunk by the news.

“Not in Paris anymore,” says Cecile. “He’s returned to Venice.”

Grazia wails and slumps against her neighbor in a faint. Allegreza calls for silence. “We can’t know yet if this is the truth. I’ll question Cecile further, and we shall reconvene.”

Paulina tugs at my arm and pulls me into a corner. Behind her mask, her eyes have widened with fear. “It’s not true,” she says.

“This girl has no reason to lie,” I say as gently as I can.

“Do you see what this means?” she says.

My attention is on the women reviving Grazia, and I shake my head.

“If Roberto is still alive, then my Nicolo is no longer the first son.”

My head snaps round to her in shock. “Even though he’s not the heir, he’s still a fine husband.”

“He’s not the man I thought he was.”

“But you told me you loved him—with or without his fortune.”

She sighs. “Well, yes, but it’s not as simple as that.”

She’s deflated, and walks towards the door. Grazia has risen from the bench, waving away the supporting hands of the other women.

“Allegreza, may I talk to the girl?”

Allegreza nods, and Cecile looks terrified as Grazia moves towards her, the skirts of her black mourning gown swaying.

“There’s no need to fear us,” Grazia says, “as long as you’re telling the truth.”

“Please … I only … I can’t tell you any more.”