Hidden Voices (25 page)

“No, thanks,” says Salvatore, as if he had been offered some. “I don’t know why you spend your precious share on something that a grown man’s stomach will regurgitate.” He looks at Lydia, and she smiles complicitly. “Or a grown woman’s for that matter.”

But Lydia is acting coy tonight. She pats Pasquale’s hand.

“You children will enjoy it, I am sure.”

She stresses the word
children,
and I am once again quite certain that she knows about the child. I am determined not to grasp at these stray hints, however. For the longer that Salvatore is uninformed of my predicament, the safer I will be. Glancing over at him now, I wonder that I ever found him handsome. His chiseled features are quite unpleasant to me; his constant surly attitude has colored all my earlier impressions of him.

I am exhausted tonight as we trudge the distance to Campo Santo Stefano, where Salvatore thinks we may attract a fresh audience. And there are some new faces, but ultimately no new money. Salvatore blames my listless singing. Lydia thinks I have improved some under her tutelage. Pasquale chuckles at both of them, and tells me my performance was
bellissima.
In his eyes or ears, it is always
bellissima.

All evening I have been feeling less queasy, and when I tell Pasquale, he says that perhaps the worst has passed. Not knowing that it can be otherwise, I had expected to be ill like this until the birth itself. Where he discovers such oddments of information is a mystery, but I am grateful for it and pray to all the saints that it is true.

I
N MIDDAY, RIGHT AFTER
the noon meal, there is a great bustle in the front entry, a shuffling of objects along the floor, and the familiar clucking noises of Signora Mandano when she is trying to calm herself. I run down the stairway so quickly that my cap flies off and my hair floats free.

“Goodness,” says Signora when she sees me. “How unkempt you always appear, Anetta, as though you were more accustomed to wearing breeches.”

I could mention how disheveled she and Catina appear as well, but hold my tongue in my eagerness for news of Luisa.

“Have you a letter for me?” I ask before anything else.

“Settle down a bit, my dear,” says Signora, unfastening her bonnet and sighing as if to shed all the weary miles she has just traversed. She even removes her cloak and pats her hair before answering me.

“No, Anetta. There is no letter this time, though I did deliver yours. I can tell you that Luisa is well, and that the color has returned to her face a bit. Signora Ricci described her appetite as lately robust, something it has never been in all her years at the Pietà.”

“Did she send no words for me at all?”

This time it is Catina who answers in her authoritative little voice, which always surprises.

“She was on her way to collect the milk as I recall, just as we were leaving. I’m certain that she wishes you well.”

“And misses me?”

“Oh, yes. I’m certain that she misses you.”

“And will be home soon?”

“No,” Signora interjects. “She will be away at least another month or more. If only Catina could have benefited from the country in the way that dear Luisa has. She’s quite a different child.”

I look closely at Catina as she, too, removes her traveling cloak, and am struck by how spindly her little body beneath it appears, how thin her arms have become, how the cavities between her neck bones are so deep they look like large blue bruises. When she begins to cough, her small skeleton begins to shake so violently that I want to clasp her tightly enough to make the tremors stop.

“She should not speak at all,” says Signora, hustling her off to the infirmary. “It always starts a coughing fit like this.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“Oh, you couldn’t have known,” says Signora when Catina has rounded the corner and is on her way upstairs. “She’s so much worse than when she left here. It got so bad on our journey back that I almost expected the breezes along the canal to take her final breath with them.”

“Is there nothing to be done?”

“We’ll try the usual remedies and some that have worked well with the Red Priest. His presence always cheers her.

“And,” she adds, “we’ll pray for her.”

And do you pray for Rosalba? Does anyone else beside Luisa and me pray for her?

It is some consolation, of course, that Luisa is well, but how I would have loved news of her again in her own hand. How I had looked forward to sending a letter back, to tell her what has transpired since last I wrote.

Dearest Luisa,
I would have said.

And I would tell her, too, how Maestro Gasparini will soon leave his post and how it is taken for granted that Father Vivaldi will assume it, a situation that the strings, especially, will welcome.
As you will, too, I’m certain,
I would say.
His operas are becoming known and sung throughout all of Europe. Just think of it, Luisa, your opportunity to see the world and have renown now rests with our own dear teacher. Could we ever have conceived of such a thing?

After I place Signora’s additional parcels at her door, I go into the nursery, for there is still time between Latin and string ensemble in which to play with Concerta. She claps her hands whenever she sees me, and her smile is always one of purest happiness. Today, she crawls to me, pulling a tiny soldier with her as she goes. I sit upon a chair so she will try to stand, and I let her struggle till her golden head is even with my knee, whereupon her eyes search my face for my approval. At first I don’t express it, but wait until she squeals, and then I catch her up and lift her high into the air and tell her what a good thing she has done, how proud I am of her. Upon her feet again, she tries to hum a simple little tune, and soon is opening her tiny mouth and letting out the nearest sound to something like a song I’ve ever heard from her before.

“She’s singing!” I exclaim to Sofia and the wet nurses sitting somber-faced along the wall, one with a
bambina
on each breast.

“Those stumbling little noises,” says Sofia. “If that’s a song, I’ll eat my best cap, lappets and all.”

“As well you may need to, for song it is, I swear upon my . . . my . . . friends.”

“Who are not here to testify and cannot hear what you hear.”

“But would if they were.”

Oh, Luisa. Don’t you see? It’s happening the way I’d hoped and prayed. Concerta will be just like you. She’ll be a
privilegiata
like both of us and charm her audiences. Father will someday write grand oratorios especially for her, too.

“And have you told your fine friends about the wealthy Duke of Viani, a pillar of the republic, a man with a fine wide forehead and grand nose?”

“The beak was his only good feature, Sofia.”

“Have you told them how you sent him away like some commoner, how you spoke up to him as if you were the duchess and he the orphan, how you squandered your best opportunity for a life outside these walls?”

“How do you know it was my best opportunity, and why do I need a life outside these walls?”

“Believe me, you will not want to stay here forever, as I have done. I was a
commun
girl once. Nursing was the only occupation besides lace-making that was offered me, and that only because I did not swoon at bloodletting and wasn’t squeamish at the sight of open sores. I was not pampered nor put on show and taught the finer things like you. I never had a chance to have a family of my own.”

“Or someone else’s. He wanted me to tend the many babes he’d fathered by another woman, who was so worn out she’d finally died.”

“Women die for many reasons that have nothing to do with the number of babes that they have borne.”

“And he did not wish for me to have a tongue within my head. At least not one to be of use in speaking.”

“And what else? What other frivolous reasons can you give for sending him away?”

“His calves bulged in their tight hose, and, like an elephant, his legs did not taper as they should at the ankle.”

“Frivolous indeed! Did no one tell you of his high position? Of his great wealth?”

“It would not matter to me if they had.”

Concerta pulls at my skirt, and a glance at the clock tells me I must run all the way to Father’s workshop if I’m to retrieve my instrument in time for the rehearsal of next Sunday’s concert.

“I have to go, now,” I tell Sofia while leaning down to kiss Concerta. I pull her little arms from where they reach around my neck, and she begins to cry.

“Go, then,” says Sofia, lifting her up.

“If I see the duke,” I tell her, “I will send him and all his children to you.”

“You’ll understand one day,” she says. “You will. You’ll see. But it will be too late.”

I
AM AWAKE
at first cock’s crow, knowing full well that Alessandro will not rise until the milking time for Evangelina. The wagons with the vineyard workers will soon be going past this window, some of the pickers half asleep and leaning against one another, some conversing so loudly it will sound as if I’m once again upon the Riva. The sky appears to lift itself with the sun, which burns pink streaks into the vast blue space that seems painted across an infinite ceiling. I lie upon my feather bed, hands behind my head and eyes upon the scene, until it feels as if I travel with my gaze onto the slopes and pastures. Soon voices in the kitchen will tell me that Signor Ricci and some of the workers are taking their breakfast. I will wait until their words fade and there is silence in the house again before I dress and make my way to the privy.

This morning I am slipping in and out of sleep when the word
Alessandro
surprises me. I do not know at first if it has come to me in a dream or has been spoken in the other room. But then I hear it once again, and it is clearly from the tongue of Signor Ricci. Rousing myself, I creep upon the cold tiles to the door and press my ear against it. It is minutes before I hear the name again and can distinguish any of the words that follow. This time it is Signora Ricci’s voice, and it is clearer than her husband’s.

“They are both so young,” she is saying. “I find it hard to believe there is any danger.”

Danger?

“I’m telling you what Felipe saw,” replies her husband. “The two together in the little barn. It did not look so innocent.”

I am so startled by this word,
innocent,
that the ones that follow are all the more distinct.

“But a chaperone? A chaperone out in the country? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Then keep her here. With you. Let her be of use.”

“I am not paid so she can do our chores.”

“If things get out of hand, you’ll not be paid at all. We returned the one child with her malady increased. We must return the other in the same state, at least, as when she came.”

“Alessandro,” I whisper to myself. “What can be dangerous about Alessandro? He is the most gentle person I have ever known.”

I hear the scraping of the chair legs against the floor, a clatter of plates one upon another. More muted voices. A door squeaking open and then slamming shut.

What am I to do with this new information? How am I to comport myself now that the sweet idyll of my days here has been poisoned by another’s thoughts? Does Alessandro think of me with the same joy with which I think of him? Is he, at this very moment, waiting for me in the barn?