The Fool's Girl (6 page)

He went where he wanted, but he was the Lady Olivia’s Fool, so came with her to the summer palace. He taught me to juggle and tumble, to walk a rope without falling and do magic tricks. He taught me how to whistle like a bird, hoot like an owl, how to make all manner of noises and sounds and use them for mischief and trickery.

Feste’s lessons were useful to me as a currency with the boys who had been sent by their families to my father’s court. In the winter months I took lessons with them. My father believed that girls should be educated like boys, and was happy to find that I had a quick mind and an aptitude for learning. I counted the boys my friends and became an honorary page. Feste had shown me the value of duplicity. I created pockets of freedom within my life as the Duke’s daughter. The palace was very large. Often no one knew where I was, or who was supposed to be looking after me; by telling one person one thing and something else to another, it was easy for me to pass under everybody’s notice.

My favourite among the pages was Guido, the son of an Italian duke. He was small, with a mass of curly brown hair springing out from under his blue-and-red cap. He was a handsome boy, with clear olive skin spattered with freckles, and large green eyes flecked with black. His friends called him Gatto, Italian for cat. He could usually smile and talk his way out of anything, no matter how stern the master, or how serious the scrape. He was wild and mischievous and now that Stephano had gone from my life, he was the perfect substitute. I taught him tricks, swearing him to secrecy. If Feste found out, he would be furious. A Fool does not divulge his secrets, and I was the Fool’s Girl. We would outdo each other in feats of daring: walking along the battlements and roof ridges, mounting raids deep into Count Sebastian’s territory, south of the Stradun, the wide thoroughfare that divides the city. We would go there to steal peaches, shout insults, steal buckets of blue wash to daub the Duke’s colours and his motto on their walls.

It was the end of August. I’d come back early from the summer palace. I’d missed Stephano. Without him there, I was expected to join the ladies. I was ten and no longer a child. I felt the adult world close in on me: sewing and poetry. I could not wait to get back to the city to be free.

When Guido suggested we went on a raid, I was more than willing. We collected a bucket of blue wash from outside a house that was being painted and set off through the twisting narrow alleys, steep flights of steps and hidden squares that make up Illyria town. We were safe enough in our territory, but more cautious after we crossed the Stradun. The alleyways often lead nowhere, or turn in on one another like a maze. It is easy to get lost in an unfamiliar district, possible to turn a sudden corner and be face to face with an enemy without any warning, avenues of escape limited, or absent.

The noise from the Stradun should have warned us, but we paid it no attention. We were right up the other end, and fights were always breaking out down by the market. Insults and name calling easily turned into scuffles and the flash of steel with stalls overturned, the fruit and vegetables used as missiles or crushed underfoot in the melee. We heard the shouts, the city guard running to sort it out, but we thought that we would be safe.

‘This’ll do.’ Guido stopped in front of a high wall. He looked up at the expanse of cream stucco, as a painter might eye a canvas. ‘I’ll get started. You stand lookout.’

He dipped his brush and daubed
VV,
short for
Veritas Vincit
, my father’s motto. He was just finishing the open triangle with a bar across the top, which had come to mean my father’s insignia, the eagle, when I heard men coming up the steps. Not just one or two, but a lot of them. I went to look. There must have been ten, walking five abreast, blocking the steps. They were talking loud, laughing and bragging, as men do when they have been fighting. Their black-and-white tunics and hose were torn; one or two were bloody.

‘Count’s men, Guido! Quick!’

I was already running. I expected Guido to follow me, but when I looked back he was standing at the top of the steps, laughing, with the bucket in his hand. He’d thrown the paint all over them. I heard their roar of fury, the stamping of their boots as they took the steps two at a time to get him. He hurled the bucket for good measure and took off into a tangle of little alleys that led up to the walls. This part of the town had been abandoned, the houses tumbled in an earthquake. There were plenty of hiding places in the ruins and overgrown gardens, so I wasn’t worried; besides, I had problems of my own. One of the Count’s men was following me, running swiftly and gaining. He was shouting my name. He’d recognised me. That made me run even faster. I didn’t stop to think how he knew me; I was in trouble enough. I hitched up my dress, but the skirts twisted and tangled round my legs. He would outrun me for sure.

He caught me at the top of the steps that led down to the gates, where I knew I would be safe, grabbing me from behind and pulling me back. I had no weapon, but I thought I could take him. He was a page, not much bigger than me. Feste had taught me how to fight, and fight dirty. I kicked back and felt my heel connect with bone, then I jabbed him in the midriff. As he doubled over, I planned to grab him and pitch him down the steps. I caught hold of his collar, twisting so he couldn’t breathe, and got ready to push and kick him on his way.

‘Violetta!’ He wriggled to get free of my grip. ‘It’s me!’

I let go of him then, looking down the long, steep flight of stone steps. He could have broken his neck.
I
could have broken his neck. It was Stephano. I hardly recognised him. I hadn’t seen him for a year and more and he looked different. Older. I’d never seen him in his father’s black-and-white livery before.

‘We have to go after the boy who was with you,’ he said.

‘Guido? He can look after himself.’

‘My father’s men – they took a licking on the Stradun. They will be after blood.’

‘There’s plenty of places to hide up there,’ I said. ‘He’ll be all right.’

‘You don’t understand!’ He looked around. ‘My father has had the buildings blocked up to keep out beggars and people living there without a permit. The alleys lead nowhere – they are just dead ends.’

We found him in a small square surrounded by tall tenements, their doors blocked with stone, their windows roughly bricked up. He was propped against a well surrounded by the Count’s men, their black-and-white livery flecked with blue splashes. They were taking their time with him. His mouth was swollen. Blood glistened on his hair and ran in a thick streak down his face, dripping on to his tunic. The fun was nearly over. One of them drew his stiletto. Another was easing his sword from his scabbard. Guido was looking up at them, death in his eyes. The Cat’s luck had run out. He’d used up all his lives.

Stephano started forward, dagger drawn. He would likely be thrown aside by his father’s men, but he would not stand by and watch Guido butchered.

A sudden shout of command held his step. The Count’s men turned, disconcerted, as the first shout was answered by another. Then came the tramp of marching feet, the sound of men approaching the square from all directions. The Count’s men stepped back from their quarry. Their leader reached down, his stiletto angled for a quick thrust up into the chest, ready to gut the boy like a fish, but a loud command stayed his hand. He turned. The rest of the square was deserted. The shouting seemed to come from nowhere. The marching feet were getting closer. New orders rang out, although there was no one to be seen. The Count’s men crouched, swords drawn, standing back to back, ready to strike out. The echoing shouts became too much. It was as though an invisible army of ghosts and spirits was coming for them. They turned tail and ran.

I looked about, trying to work out what had happened, and then I saw Feste, seated cross-legged on the balustrade of a balcony, wiping the tears from his eyes. When I looked again, he had gone.

I saw him. ‘Here. Through here.’ Feste was pushing loose bricks from a window. He beckoned to us.

We carried Guido between us, and Feste took us through the ruined house and out into a garden hard against the city wall. The garden was cultivated, with fig trees, orange trees, flowers and herbs. Broken steps led to a little door that opened directly into the wall.

We followed a winding staircase up to a long, narrow room. On one side, pointed windows opened on to the sea; on the other, they showed a jostling tide of terracotta roofs. Swallows and swifts flew in and out, swooping up to nests high in the rafters. The room was loud with their shrilling and chirruping. I looked about in wonder. There were birds perched about everywhere: some drab little sparrows, others far more exotic with bright plumage. Not all of them were real. Some were carved from wood, cloaked in feathers and painted in artful imitation of their living counterparts. The room was full of carvings: birds, animals, human figures. Puppets hung by their strings from the rafters. Saints and angels, devils and Madonnas stood grouped in corners as though whispering one to another.

Richly patterned fabrics covered the rough stone walls. A loom stood at one end, and from a corner came the sound of a spinning wheel. The spinner looked up as we stumbled into the room.

‘We need your help, Mother,’ Feste called.

She stilled the wheel, taking care not to break the thread, and came towards us. She was dressed like one of the wandering people, or those who came from the East: her headscarf fringed with little copper discs, the bodice of her red-and-purple dress heavy with rows of silver coins. As she walked the coins jingled together, and I had to plait my fingers behind my back to fight the temptation to cross myself. I knew her by reputation. Her name was Marijita and she was
vjestica
, a witch.

She smiled, as if she knew what I was thinking.

‘Don’t believe all you hear, my pretty.’

Feste called her ‘mother’, but there was no look of him about her. She was tall, her dark face lined, especially about the eyes, which sparked as dark and bright as those of the hoopoe that perched on her shoulder, its feathered crest erect, its orange head turned at the same angle as hers. Some whispered that her birds were so tame that they had to be the captured spirits of her enemies. She uttered a light trilling sound and the bird flew up to perch on a rafter, where it continued to stare down at us with beady black eyes.

‘Like I say,’ she said, looking at me, ‘don’t believe everything you hear.’

I began to introduce myself and her laughter chimed like the coins she wore.

‘I know who you are, little Duchessa. Does your father know you are here? Your mother?’ The gleam in her eye grew needle sharp. ‘Do they care?’ She took my chin in a firm grip. ‘You look like her. Lady Viola – she’s a strange one. From the sea she came, and the sea will claim her. And what about your father?’ She pinched my cheeks harder. ‘I don’t see much of him about you.’

Bunches of herbs hung down from the beams along with other things: dried and scaly, dark and leathery, the desiccated remains of snakes and lizards, toads, frogs and bats’ wings. Many came to her for charms, to ward off the evil eye, to guard against the sprites and spirits that haunt graveyards and deserted places, gather at crossroads, lurk under gateways or hover close to running water. Illyrians are a credulous people, ready to see malevolence everywhere, but she was no ordinary market charm seller or fortune-teller. My mother had never been to her, as far as I knew, but other ladies consulted her, including the Lady Olivia, who was of the country and as superstitious as any. Even my father sometimes summoned Marijita to find out which days were auspicious. My people keep the feast days and go to church on Sunday, but they are ever mindful of other forces at work around them and she was a mistress of that invisible world.

‘Let me see that wound.’ She examined the gash on Guido’s head, gently probing with her long, thin fingers. ‘Looks worse than it is. Boys have thick skulls. You, Count’s boy, fetch me some water.’

Stephano filled a basin while she went to a long cupboard set against the far wall. The shelves were crammed with different-coloured bottles and pottery jars. She took what she wanted and came back to Guido. She washed his face and swabbed at his matted hair, parting it carefully to find the long, jagged cut still oozing blood on his white scalp. She dabbed the wound with sharp-smelling liquid that made him wince. Then she threaded a needle and Guido did his best not to flinch as she held the edges of the gash together and sewed it as neatly as she would sew a seam.

‘There!’ She stood back to admire her handiwork. ‘That will heal clean and leave no scar.’

Feste leaned against a bench covered in carvings at different stages of completion. He whistled softly to himself and whittled away at a piece of wood, while above our heads the swallows whirled about like birds on a child’s stick.

‘Feste, stop whistling at my birds. You are confusing them.’

While she tended Guido I stood by the window, looking at a stone set on the sill: a milky white moonstone about as big as a man’s fist. I found my eyes drawn to it, to the different hues of violet and blue playing across its shining surface. This was the seeing stone that she used to tell the ladies’ fortunes. It was like looking up into the sky on a cloudy day. I began to see shapes there, and then something else in its depths: little dancing spots like agitated grains of sand. It was like being in that state between waking and dreaming when fancies take form. The spots began to come together and turn themselves into a fleet of tiny ships. I blinked, thinking it was a trick of the light, that an image had been captured from outside, like the pictures cast on to the wall in Father’s dark chamber, his camera obscura. I looked out of the window. The ships moving across the sea below were small carracks, coastal craft, nothing like the long war galleys that I had seen in the stone.