The Girl Behind the Mask (14 page)

‘And since it must be a secret,’ I said, ‘I must not do the mending here, in the day room, where my brother might walk in and catch me at any moment.’

Maria agreed. I retired to my bedroom to stitch.

What luck. My brother had sent for mending almost an entire outfit. There was a shirt, and trousers, and three stockings. Perfect. I would wear two of the stockings and stuff the spare one down the trousers to make my disguise more convincing.

My brother, though he is two years older than me, is not so very much bigger. I could complete the costume with my own shoes. Naturally, my father forbade me from wearing any shoes of a design one might mistake for fashionable. Likewise, my black cape is just the same as everybody else’s, if slightly less well worn because I hardly go anywhere. All I needed was a tricorn and a mask. I knew my brother had several.

Getting my hands on them was easy. I told him I wanted to borrow them for drawing practice. After sewing, drawing was the only pastime I was permitted. My brother shrugged and let me have his oldest hat and a mask that smelled quite disgusting when I tried it on. How I would wear it for long enough to make my escape, I did not know.

Maria undressed me and helped me into my nightgown. Minutes after she left me, I dressed myself as a boy. For once I listened eagerly for the arrival of the priest. I heard him address himself to Maria, promising salvation for her soul. Heavens, how could anyone believe she had so much to confess when she never went anywhere but church? It seemed an awful lot of people were happy to turn a blind eye in Venezia. If they had but known I was right behind the door, with my eye to the keyhole! All I wanted was for them to fall into each other’s arms and get on with their sighing. Having observed them for the best part of a week, I guessed that once Maria’s door banged shut, I had three hours. Almost four.

Now for the part that had kept me anxious all day. It was easy enough to put on my disguise, but how would I get into the boat? I could see it, tied where it always was, but somehow the drop from my sill looked a great deal bigger and more intimidating than before. I leaned out of my window as far as I could, estimating the jump. At best I would end up in the water. At worst, I might well break my neck. I hesitated to see if my courage would build in me. It didn’t, but I was determined I would not miss my rendezvous. Using a twisted sheet tied to the bed as a safety rope, I swung my leg over the windowsill.

The canal was silent. Someone was smiling on me from on high with regard to that at least. There was no one to see my escape. I brought my other leg out and sat on the sill like an acrobat, waiting to grab the trapeze. Alas, there was no trapeze; I had to somehow turn round and drop to the next level as gently as I was able. There was a sort of ridge, an architectural embellishment, about five feet below me. If I could let myself down onto that, perhaps I could drop to the landing raft from there.

How did cats do it? By knowing they would be landing on four feet rather than two, I supposed.

Carefully, as quietly as I could, I inched myself over the sill. Was I tall enough that I could hang on while I waited for my feet to make contact? Only just. My arms were stretched to their limits. I thought they might pop out of my sockets, like the arms of the doll I’d once had as a child.

But for that moment, I was dangling from the windowsill. Anticipation was totally blanked out by fear. What on earth was I thinking? I was half ready to call out for Maria and get her and the priest to haul me back into the house. I truly was between the devil and the deep blue sea. Maria and the priest might save my life, but they would exact a heavy price for their assistance. Could either of them be trusted not to mention the incident to my father? I had to let go and jump. I edged my way to the corner of the house and fell like a sack of grain into the priest’s boat. I landed, thank God, if not like a cat then at least with all my limbs of a piece.

Such an adventure I had, getting to our rendezvous. How different Venezia is by lamplight. Normally, I should have been afraid, but my mission made me strong. I needed to see my teacher face to face without a grille between us. I had not time to continue my education in such a piecemeal fashion as I had been receiving it so far. Not if I wanted to pre-empt my father’s attempts to marry me off.

My teacher told me an old friend had lent him a house for the purpose of our meeting, since his own abode was too far from my palazzo to make it a reasonable distance for me to travel alone. Certainly, it did not take me long to get to the street my teacher had scribbled on a scrap of paper, but the environs were an education in themselves.

I had heard Maria and the cook whisper about the prostitutes in the
Carampane
, who advertised their wares as boldly as the fishermen showed their mackerel. I had not expected Maria’s whispers to be true. Some of them opened their dresses right down to the waist. It was difficult not to stare. They certainly stared at me and offered me all sorts of wicked distractions.

I had a further shock when I arrived at the address.

It was a poor sort of house. Half derelict. I wondered if I had taken a wrong turn. I hesitated to knock on the door, but no, it was the right place and he was there.

This was the first time I had seen him without a priestly garment. Though it was not warm that night, he was dressed merely in an undershirt and breeches. His feet were clad only in stockings. I immediately averted my eyes. I had not seen a man outside my own household in such a state of undress before. It made me embarrassed.

‘I have surprised you,’ I said.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I have been making myself comfortable in anticipation of your arrival. Come in.’

He relieved me of my hat and mask and we went straight upstairs to what I presume was the best room. The room for receiving guests. But it was unlike any kind of public room I had been in before. The whole was dominated by a bed – an enormous four-poster with thick velvet drapes. The blackened oak pillars of the bed were extravagantly carved. It was piled high with pillows. The coverlet was folded back, revealing the sheets beneath in a manner every bit as shocking to me as my teacher’s decision not to put on a jacket.

‘So you came,’ my teacher said. ‘You’ve passed the first test. You are clearly a woman of resources. And you look very good in trousers.’

I blushed. ‘They are my brother’s.’

‘Won’t he miss them when he goes gambling at the Ridotto?’

‘He has other pairs,’ I pointed out.

‘Of course he does.’

I felt like an idiot for saying so.

‘Sit down.’

I looked around me for a place to settle. There was nothing else in the room but a couple of leather-backed chairs and a small table. Nothing else in terms of furniture, that is. Everywhere I looked were books, piled as high as the windowsills. There were books on the table, beneath the table and under the bed. It was the room of someone who cared little for anything but reading and sleeping. As I perched upon one of the hard chairs, I wondered again to whom this little house belonged.

‘I’ll get you a glass of wine.’

‘Don’t you have servants to do that?’ I asked him.

‘Of course I have servants. You have met my gondolier. But I thought tonight you would prefer to have privacy. Just you and me alone. We have much to talk about. We won’t wish to be interrupted.’

He was right. There was so much I wanted to tell him and so much I wanted to ask. I had brought the latest book he’d left in the confessional. It was a treatise on economic policy. I did not understand the half of it, but I wanted him to think otherwise. I had been trying to come up with intelligent questions all day.

‘This was very interesting,’ I said.

‘Oh that,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get on with it. I don’t think the author has a clue.’

‘I thought you gave me this book because you believed in the theories inside?’

‘Perhaps I just wanted to see if you could spot horseshit too.’

I put the book down on the table.

‘I must admit I didn’t agree with everything the author said,’ I said carefully.

‘Good. Then you really are learning.’

‘I think so. In fact, at dinner the other evening, I had to try very hard not to interrupt my brother,’ I explained. ‘He was telling my father about a deal he struck with a Spanish silver merchant and I saw at once it did not work in my brother’s favour. But he would not listen to me. What man will?’

‘I will listen to you.’

‘You have already changed my life,’ I told him. ‘Though I have not moved from my tiny world between the palazzo and the church, I feel as though I have sprouted wings.’

‘You are very much outside your tiny world now, are you not?’

‘Indeed.’ I let my gaze wander around the room, but dropped my eyes to my hands again when my teacher and I both looked at the bed at the same time.

‘I have something a little different for you today.’

‘You do?’

‘Philosophy, politics and economics, while they may make the world go round, could leave one rather lacking. What the politicians and businessmen of our day fail to understand, time and again, is the effect of emotion on all things. For that reason, we should also read poetry. Luciana, this book is entirely for your pleasure.’

He handed me a slim volume. I peered at the title. It was a book of poems by Veronica Franco, the most notorious woman ever to have lived in our city. I had heard of her of course. If only as the heroine of a cautionary tale. She had lived wildly. She was a courtesan. She charmed the great and the good and counted dukes and kings among her lovers. But she died in unhappy circumstances, of the plague, which robbed her of her looks before it sent her to her grave.

‘That is what happens if you are beautiful and vain,’ Maria had concluded.

I opened the book.

‘Why don’t you read some to me now?’ my teacher asked.

‘Shall I start at the beginning?’

‘Perhaps. Come closer. That way we can move the candles together and you will be better able to see what you are reading.’

I did as I was instructed.

‘Read aloud. Read this one.’

Blushing, I began.

So sweet and delicious do I become when I am in bed with a man who, I sense, loves and enjoys me, that the pleasure I bring excels all delight, so the knot of love, however tight it seemed before, is tied tighter still.

The mention of bed brought great heat to my cheeks, but it was not just the poem that affected me. I had been feeling most strange from the moment I moved to sit next to him. Though we were not touching, I could feel the warmth of his body flowing into me. The fire in the grate was low and needed stoking but I was suddenly getting so hot I had to loosen the cravat at my neck. I couldn’t do it. I had tied it badly – in an approximation of the way my brother did – and now that I tried to untie it, the damn thing became thoroughly knotted. My teacher noticed my struggle. It made him smile.

‘I’m feeling a little constricted,’ I said helplessly.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me help you. Turn towards me.’

I turned so we were face to face. Our eyes met and he regarded me with such an intensity I had to drop my own eyes to my lap again for fear of crying out. I sat very still. His hands, with their long fingers, were at the knot in my cravat for quite some time. It seemed I was well and truly bound. But eventually he was able to free the knot and slide the silk from my neck. He did it slowly, so that I felt every inch of the material glide across my flesh, awakening my senses and making me hotter still. I closed my eyes and let out a little moan. Next thing: I must have fainted. When I came to, we were on the floor and I was lying across his lap. He had his arms round me to keep me from the dirty wooden boards. He brushed my hair back from my face.

‘My poor dear,’ he said. ‘It’s too hot for you. Perhaps you ought to lie down on the bed.’

The bed. That bed! I had been determined I should stay away from it, but right then it seemed a far better choice than staying in his arms. I thanked him and got to my feet. I would lie on the bed for just a moment to recover myself. After that, I would ask to read some more economics. But he stood just as I did and caught me again.

This time he kissed me.

I did not resist him. I knew I should, but I did not. Before he took me, I had already been possessed by a spirit so daring and devilish I wanted everything he promised to give. Now I found myself opening my mouth to him so that his tongue could roam deep inside. Meanwhile, he removed my boy’s shirt with far greater alacrity than he had removed the cravat. I was wearing nothing underneath. At the same time, he took off his own shirt, so that suddenly his bare flesh was pressed against mine.

I had never been naked before except in the presence of women. I did not know whether my body would be considered beautiful by a man such as I stood before now. He was certainly beautiful to me. Though he had shown himself to be a man of letters, his body was that of a man used to vigorous exercise. His muscles were well-formed and spoke to me of strength and agility. Of power and domination. I tried to read the truth of my own beauty or lack of it in his eyes. He walked me backwards to the bed and pushed me down onto the mattress. He stood above me, looking down on me. His eyes were different from any time before. There was a curious distance in them. Unfocused but desiring.