The Dark Lady's Mask (27 page)

In a canalside tavern, they sat beside a roaring fire and drank dark wine with their rabbit stew. Laughter and singing reverberated inside the packed room. There were ostensibly no respectable women here, only men and a few courtesans. Yet, as Emilio, she lounged with her legs carelessly sprawled and drank the cheap good wine and none gave her any grief for it.
Liberty,
she told herself.
This is what liberty is.

“Do you think I would abandon my friend?” Will asked her.

She'd never seen him so expansive, so utterly at his ease. The fire's golden light played over his soft brown hair, his dark eyebrows, his cheekbones, the gentle curve of his lips.

“Besides,” he said, “you promised to show me the cities of Veneto. And what about our plays?”

Our plays.
A warm flush spread through her body as she raised her glass to Will, her perfect collaborator—not just in writing, but the most faithful friend to have ever graced her life. In spite of herself, Aemilia felt a welling up of regret that they could never be more than friends—even supposing he desired her, she could never again allow herself to become entangled with a married man.

“To poetry!” she said, staring into the depths of his hazel eyes.

“To the Muse!” he said, with an answering spark in his own gaze.

Clinking her glass to his, she laughed, half delirious at the freedom and adventure awaiting them both. “After Bassano, we shall see Verona and Padua.”

She realized how relieved she was that Jasper had left. Nothing held her back from the journey before them.

 

UTUMN MIST CLOAKED THE
Brenta River. Aemilia stood at the prow of the
burchiello,
a boat with a small cabin that was being towed upstream by a team of oxen. As ever, it proved she was traveling against the stream, in the opposite direction as everyone else. The patrician families that had summered in their riverside villas in the cool uplands now returned to Venice, their
burchiellos
flowing easily downstream, as did farmers' barges heaped with grapes and cheeses, wine and olive oil, heading for the Venetian markets.

It seemed that only Aemilia and her companions were heading upriver. With every mile, the current grew unrulier, but she would not budge from the prow. Each painstaking mile took her closer to Papa's lost home. His voice echoed in the chambers of her heart, telling her of the family villa, of its walled garden of peach and pomegranate trees. She remembered how, as a seven-year-old girl, she had solemnly vowed to Papa that she would become a great poet and earn enough gold to buy back his house. Closing her eyes, she stretched out her hand to grasp his ghostly one, but her fingers enclosed warm flesh.

With a cry, she opened her eyes to see Will carrying Enrico.

“Did I startle you just now?” he asked. “You were lost in reverie.”

She smiled. Back in England he had been the distracted one, lost in a dream, but here in Veneto they had switched places. Attentive and cheerful, he drew her back to earth.

“I wish the fog would clear so we could see the mountains,” he said. “In faith, I've longed to see the Alps from the moment I first learned of Hannibal crossing them on his elephant. Near Bassano, I hear, they brew the most potent aqua vitae.”

Aemilia's thoughts again strayed to Papa. How much of her story did she dare tell her friend? It seemed she owed him some explanation, seeing that he had accompanied her this far.

“We shall be visiting a kinsman of my late father's,” she said, her eyes on the vineyards and orchards, spectral in the mists. “Jacopo Bassano knows nothing of me. I shall introduce myself as Emilio and he shall be none the wiser.”

“You settle into your new role well,” said Will. “Emilio Bassano has become the most accomplished player I have ever seen.”

“You think I'm play-acting?”

“Are you not?” he asked her mildly. “Deceiving your own relations?”

She grew hot in the face, for up until now Will had not challenged her right to live as Emilio.

“All of us are players,” she told him. “Putting on one mask or another, pretending to be what we are not. In truth, I dissemble far less as Emilio. Poor Aemilia was forever having to lie and make excuses for herself.”

T
HE MIST CLEARED
to reveal snow-crowned Monte Grappa towering in the stark blue sky. The Brenta ran wild, foaming pale green. As the
burchiello
swept round a bend, Aemilia caught her first glimpse of the walled town of Bassano with its ruined fortress and covered wooden bridge crossing the Brenta. Beyond here, the river was practically unnavigable.

“How different this is from Venice,” Will said, as they stepped ashore. “Are we even still in Italy? Look at that snowy peak. Listen to those cowbells. See those shepherdesses with their flocks on the verdant banks? This is rustic Arcadia.”

A lost idyll,
Aemilia reflected. Papa had always spoken of it that way.

“Why did your father leave this enchanted place?” Will asked. “Was there a war? A famine?”

Aemilia glanced down, wondering what to say, when Winifred voiced her opinion. “Bless me, this place is even more foreign than Venice, but at least it doesn't stink as much, mistress.”

Aemilia gave her maid a pointed look and cleared her throat.

Winifred sighed. “I mean Master Emilio, sir.” Each word sounded as if it had been dredged from her throat with a rusty meat hook.

T
HE TOWN WAS NOT
large. Once they passed through the gates, Aemilia found her way to the Casa dal Corno in no time at all. The villa was even grander than she had imagined, its façade rising three stories. Autumn sunshine shone against the frescos her father had described with such tender remembrance. There were the stags and rams, the goats and apes, the musical instruments that had been the Bassano family's trade. The dancing nymphs were rendered larger than life in exquisite detail, as though Aemilia could practically touch their naked flesh.

Drawing a deep breath, Aemilia rapped the brass knocker. The door opened to reveal a manservant who gazed at her quizzically before glancing at Will, the Weir sisters, and the squalling child. From his puzzlement, it appeared that the residents of the Casa dal Corno were not used to receiving strange visitors at this blustery time of year.

“
Salve,
” Aemilia said. Her mouth had gone so dry, it hurt to speak. “I am Emilio Bassano, son of Battista who was born in this house. I've sailed from England to visit your good master.”

She showed the servant Jacopo's letter that Jasper had passed on to her before he departed for home. The paper was emblazoned with the Bassano coat of arms shared by both the Italian and English branches of the family—the silk moths and the mulberry tree.

A jolt seemed to pass through the servant. “The English
signori
are here!” he shouted, in a voice loud enough to reach every room in the house.

Aemilia exchanged glances with Will as the servant ushered them into the entry hall. A large crucifix on one wall faced a statue of the Madonna opposite.

“You do not arrive a day too soon!” The manservant clapped his hand on Aemilia's shoulder. “My master grows ever frailer. We fear he won't survive the winter. Oh, it is good that you have come. So good!”

Soon the entry hall was bursting with four generations of men and women, boys and girls, appearing from every corner. If the Casa dal Corno was large, it also appeared to house at least two dozen souls.

“Welcome,
signori,
” a soberly attired man in his fifties said. “I am Francesco, Jacopo's eldest son. My father has been waiting for you so long. He will be overjoyed.”

The family resemblance was enough to take Aemilia's breath away. With his bottomless dark eyes, Francesco closely resembled Papa.

Francesco turned to Will. “And you must be Jasper Bassano.”

“No,
signore.
” Will's Italian was improving by the day. “I am no relation, but Emilio Bassano's sworn friend.”

“My cousin Jasper regrets that he had to return to England on the Queen's business,” Aemilia said, wishing with all her heart that Jasper had persevered to join her in this beautiful house where she was so warmly received. “But I have come with my son, Enrico.”

She gestured for Tabitha to step forward with the child in her arms. Soon her son was encircled by a swarm of women and girls who covered him in loud kisses, exclaiming how beautiful he was.

“Did you bring your wife?” Francesco asked.

Aemilia lowered her eyes. “I am a widower,
signore.
”

She had grown used to telling the same lie over and over until it became her new truth, each successive lie becoming easier.

“You must see him, see my father, as quickly as you can.” Francesco was already leading her up the white marble stairway.

“But he must be famished.” A plump woman, undoubtedly Francesco's wife, blocked their path. “Surely you must let the young gentlemen wash and change clothes. I shall show our guests to their chamber. I hope the two English
signori
don't mind sharing a room.”

Before Aemilia could say a word, the lady delivered her and Will to a chamber that looked out on the garden of Papa's childhood. Aemilia glanced furtively at the bed she and Will would have to share. As if noting her consternation, the poet folded his arms in front of himself and appeared vastly amused. But Aemilia knew she couldn't possibly protest this arrangement.

Meanwhile the
signora
shouted for servants to carry up water, soap, and towels, along with bread and wine, cheese, olives, and pears. Other servants escorted the Weir sisters to a room on the far end of the house. Winifred shook her head at Aemilia, as though to upbraid her mistress for the web of lies she had woven that had reduced her to sharing a bed with a married man.

Everything was unfolding very fast. By the time the lady and her servants withdrew, Will fell back on the bed and roiled in silent laughter.

Aemilia narrowed her eyes at him. “A pity I'm not a blond Earl.”

“Harry would find this capital sport! Shall I write a letter to him describing our new sleeping arrangement? Now just what did the courtesans say you and I got up to together?” He began making wild gesticulations.

“
Basta!
” she snapped. “Enough! Could you
at least
step out whilst I wash?”

“My good Emilio, you hiss like a snake!”

Still chuckling under his breath, Will headed for the door. But the room was so narrow, he had to squeeze past her. For a moment he stood as though rooted before her and stared at her in a way that left her slack jawed and mute. Even as his look burned her, it held her in its thrall. Wrenching her head, she pointed at the door. Quietly, he walked out. Trembling, she slid the bolt into place.

Plunging her hands into the basin, she splashed cold water against her face until her skin grew numb.

A
EMILIA FOUND FRANCESCO AND
his younger brother, Leandro, awaiting her in the corridor.

“Our father was troubled deep in his heart that your father and his brothers had to run away and seek refuge in a foreign land,” Francesco told her. “If he can speak to you of Battista, I think he can at least die in peace.”

Aemilia could think of nothing to say.

To reach Jacopo's chamber, they had to pass through his atelier with its long windows of leaded glass facing the square. Paintings, many of monumental size, hung on the walls while easels bore canvases in various stages of completion.

“You,
signori,
are master artists like your father.” Aemilia studied a canvas with a scene etched in blue chalk, awaiting its first touch of paint.

“We would never claim to match our father's genius,” Leandro said, with reverence. “Look at this,
signore.
”

Leandro directed her attention to a vast painting that drew her in as though the scene were unfolding before her—the figures were that lifelike. In a long pillared arcade that opened on to a view of Monte Grappa stood a lovely young woman in a gown of silver brocade. She resembled a wealthy Venetian
donna,
only her wrists were bound, her hair was uncovered, and her shoulders were hunched in shame. To her left, a fashionable young man with a falcon on his arm appeared to denounce her. Behind her gathered a throng of officious-looking men who glared at her in condemnation. But before her knelt Christ who traced Hebrew letters in the dust at her feet. The artist, Jacopo, clearly knew Hebrew.

Aemilia was familiar with the story from the Gospel of John, the tale of Christ saving the woman from being stoned as an adulteress.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Even as she stood in the atelier of the man who had appropriated her father's home, the painting seemed to echo the biblical message.
Judge not.
How she wished she could read Hebrew. The Gospel of John didn't reveal what Jesus had written. But she wanted to know what Jacopo had written.