The Girl Behind the Mask (26 page)

‘It isn’t possible.’

‘Why isn’t it possible?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘You’re ridiculous. Don’t expect to hear from me again.’

Chapter 39

28th April, 1753

My teacher kept his promise. We were going to the Ridotto di San Moisè. And, it seemed, as he had also promised, he would make sure I was the most beautiful woman in the room. When I arrived at his poor house, dressed in my brother’s clothes as usual, I found a trunk waiting for my attention. It contained the most beautiful dress I had ever seen.

Oh, I had never seen anything quite so lovely. I clapped my hands together in delight as the frills spilled out. I snatched it up. Oh, oh, oh! It was just like the dresses I had admired from my bedroom window. So extravagant. Like the blossom of an exotic flower. Red and orange and all edged with gold lace.

‘It’s perfect,’ I said. I threw my arms around my teacher’s neck and smothered him with kisses of gratitude. ‘It will suit me wonderfully.’

‘It will suit me better,’ he said.

‘What?’

I was already slipping off my cloak, eager to get into these more colourful swags, when he picked up the dress himself.

‘Yes. It is just right for me.’

And with that, he stripped off his own shirt and stepped into the gown before I had a chance to protest.

‘Help me,’ he said. ‘I don’t have the faintest idea how I’m supposed to do this up.’

I was dumbfounded.

‘Don’t just stand there. We’re going out. Show me where this part goes.’

He was serious. I was not going to be wearing the red dress.

‘Then what am I supposed to wear?’

‘You keep reminding me how important it is that you must not be recognised. You’ll wear your brother’s clothes. If anyone is looking for you at all, my dear, they will be looking for a beautiful young woman, not a skinny boy who’s struggling to grow his first beard.’

He plucked at imaginary hairs on my chin and I gave him a clout for his trouble.

‘My love,’ he said. ‘You are more beautiful than the sun. Even in a boy’s clothes, you will outshine every woman at the Ridotto tonight. The danger is that you will burn so brightly that your identity will be the subject of gossip from the Giudecca to the Ghetto before the real sun rises tomorrow morning. People who know your father may be in attendance. We must be careful. Have this.’

He handed me a new mask. It was a hateful
servetta muta
with a button for my mouth.

‘Why have I got to wear this thing?’

‘Because your voice is as easily recognised as the nightingale’s song.’

‘But it doesn’t go with a boy’s costume,’ I countered. ‘A man would never wear such a thing.’

‘You have a point,’ said my teacher. ‘You may wear this instead.’

This time he handed me a
medico della peste
. A plague mask. I got it within an inch of my face before the smell of the herbs that must have been left in the beak since the last time the plague swept through the city made me feel nauseated. I handed it back.

‘I am
not
wearing that.’

‘Then the
servetta muta
it must be,’ he said.

Anything was preferable to the awful smell of long-dead roses and valerian. Ugh. Valerian. The smell of feet. It was bad enough on its own, but the association with those months when my mother was dying made it too much for me. I felt my eyes begin to water.

My teacher reached out to touch my hand. He let me put on the plain white half-mask I normally wore. ‘I’ll wear the
servetta
. I don’t need to eat tonight. Just don’t say anything stupid.’

The Ridotto di San Moisè was the last place on earth that my father would have wanted me to visit. As far as he was concerned, the gambling house in a wing of the old San Moisè Palace was a short step from Hell. But I was very excited to be going there. To me, the Ridotto was a place of unsurpassable glamour.

My teacher’s gondolier brought us to the watergate. We were both of us, my teacher and I, confused by our swapped garments, me waiting for a hand to help me from the gondola, my teacher jumping to his feet, only to be scuppered by his voluminous skirts. Fortunately, there was such a hubbub going on, I don’t think anyone noticed. The front of the house blazed with torches. Liveried footmen helped fine ladies from their boats. There was much excited chatter. A quartet played us into the hall. A glass of wine was pressed into my hand. I took one for my teacher too, but of course he could not drink it, wearing the hateful
servetta muta
as he was.

I offered him my arm and we made our way into the main room and the tables. We would not be gambling that night as between us we had precisely no money, so we took a couple of chairs at the side of the room and watched proceedings from there.

I was entranced by the Ridotto’s habitués. The many-layered skirts of the masked ladies flounced like the tail feathers of exotic birds. One woman in particular held my attention. Catching me looking at her, she pirouetted across the room to come to a graceful halt on the seat beside me, with her skirts deflating around her like sails without wind. She turned to me and smiled, warm and friendly.

‘I don’t believe we’ve met,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce yourself, young man?’

My teacher had warned me not to talk but how could I not respond to the woman’s polite enquiry? She would have thought it strange. I considered for a moment pretending I was mute, like the servant girl at my aunt’s house in Turin, but that would be ridiculous. So, I tried instead to keep my voice down in my boots as I gave her my brother’s name. It was the first male name that popped into my head. I’d have to sort out the damage to his reputation later.

The woman shook her head. ‘No. I know Amadeo Giordano. He’s taller than you. He’s broader here.’

The woman laid her hand on my bound chest (my teacher had insisted I be bound for this excursion even though, he said, I was so flat no one would normally notice). As she did so, her mouth widened into another smile and I remembered all at once where I had seen her before. She was the courtesan on the boat that sunny feast day. I blushed.

‘Your secret is safe with me,’ she murmured. ‘As is your friend’s.’ In a louder voice she continued. ‘Your “mother” and I are great friends, young man. Signora,’ the courtesan addressed my teacher, ‘It is getting very hot in here and I should like to step outside. Will you accompany us for the sake of propriety?’

My teacher nodded, and though he kept his mask firmly in place, I could tell from what little I could see of his cheekbones that he thought the idea of doing anything for propriety’s sake very funny indeed. I did my best to play my part and bowed low, as I had seen my brother do, sweeping both of the ‘ladies’ ahead of me with my three-cornered hat. The courtesan giggled and swatted my shoulder with her fan as she passed.

The party was very grand and well-populated and there were plenty of people in the garden that evening, but eventually we found a space well away from the rest of the crowd. The courtesan laid her mask in her lap and my teacher unmasked himself too. He gasped for air.

‘That thing!’ He flung the
servetta muta
to the floor. ‘I don’t know how you women cope with them.’

‘Exactly,’ said the courtesan. ‘It is a cruel punishment to inflict upon the creatures you profess to love, don’t you think?’

I agreed with her. ‘Terribly cruel.’

‘This young man would never expect such a thing of his companion,’ she continued. I nodded enthusiastically, keeping up with the game.

‘If that young man had any balls,’ said my teacher, ‘I’m sure he would.’

We all laughed. The courtesan smiled at me encouragingly but still I kept my mask on. I would do so until my teacher told me it was safe. The courtesan turned back to him and tapped him upon the knee with her fan.

‘Madam,’ she continued the charade. ‘You have been most remiss. I have not seen you in my salon these past six months.’

‘Not since that filthy Duke tried to run me through with a sword. The company you keep, dear Ernesta, really has been going downhill. I’ll come back when you get rid of that clown. He’s an absolute idiot.’

‘But the Duke is a very generous man.’ The courtesan fingered the string of pearls around her neck. I noticed my master’s mouth twitch in disapproval as the courtesan tugged the string out of the bodice of her dress to reveal at the end of it a single pearl the size of a blackbird’s egg. I had never seen anything quite so magnificent. No wonder she didn’t want to send the Duke away.

The courtesan saw me admiring her jewellery.

‘You may try it on if you like,’ she said.

‘I don’t think it will match his costume,’ said my teacher.

‘It is indeed a very modest outfit he’s wearing. He must be from the north.’

Did she know I was from Turin?

‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’

‘Take your mask off, little brother,’ he said to me.

I obeyed.

The courtesan smiled widely.

‘Oh well done. Well done indeed. What a clever disguise. But I think I know where you found this one. You have your brother’s nose, my dear. And your name?’ she persisted.

‘Luciana Giordano.’

‘And I am Ernesta Donato.’

It was a name I had heard spoken in whispers.

I had never seen my master quite so nervous as he was in the presence of Ernesta Donato. There was something about her that seemed to bring out the little boy in him. I could not imagine ever teasing him quite as wickedly as she did. I could never have imagined him accepting it. It was like seeing a big cat, which has just torn a rabbit into pieces as a game, curling up in the lap of its mistress and agreeing to be treated like a kitten. She persuaded him that we should leave the Ridotto and accompany her back to her house.

When we arrived, I was absolutely dumbfounded. Raised as I was in the bosom of the church, I’d lost count of how many times I’d been told that the wages of sin is death. The Palazzo Donato suggested otherwise. In Ernesta’s case, the wages of sin were keeping her very nicely indeed. Oh, what a beautiful house. It was lit so brightly. In anticipation of her return, every lamp in the house was blazing and the light was made brighter still as it bounced off gilt frames and magnificent mirrors and even a string of diamonds that hung from the back of a chair, where Ernesta had obviously tossed it as she left the house as a child might discard a string of clay beads.

Ernesta saw me looking at them.

‘They were in competition with my new pearl,’ she explained, as she picked up the diamonds and held them towards me. ‘Try them,’ she said.

I had heard it was possible for courtesans to amass a certain degree of wealth thanks to their generous patrons, but how rich must Ernesta’s patrons have been to lavish her with such incredible gifts? And the house! Even the most successful merchant my father knew could not have afforded a house as wonderful as this. And Ernesta had earned all this while lying on her back.

‘Heavens, no,’ she said, when I was bold enough to ask. ‘I earned all this precisely because I don’t just lie on my back. And because every gold coin, every pearl that is pressed into my hand, I can make into two.’

‘When Venezia next goes to war, they’ll come to Ernesta to fill the war chest,’ said my teacher.

‘And I shall lend them everything they need at a ruinous interest rate. A woman needs to know about money,’ she told me. ‘When your natural assets finally fade, you must be certain you have less ephemeral assets to keep you warm at night. Wine?’

Ernesta rang a small golden bell and a manservant appeared, before leaving with his instructions.

While the manservant was backing out of the door, something else was creeping in.

‘Oh, my little angel!’ Ernesta cried, as the monkey I had seen on the boat came skittering across the room and climbed her body as if he were climbing a tree. He came to rest on Ernesta’s shoulder. He was chattering away, as though angry he had been left behind while we were all at the Ridotto. Ernesta laughed at the monkey’s remonstrations.

‘That wretched monkey!’ exclaimed my teacher.

‘Giacomo, my monkey loves you. You can keep him company while I have my bath.’

‘If he comes anywhere near me, I’ll throttle him.’

‘Miserable man. Come with me,’ she said, taking me by the hand and leading me into her bedchamber. ‘I want to talk with
you
more.’

I followed Ernesta upstairs. Once we were inside her chamber, a maidservant appeared as if from nowhere. She informed Ernesta that her bath was ready. Ernesta expressed her gratitude but then continued to converse with me as the maidservant began to unfasten her dress.

Ernesta breathed out in obvious relief as the maid loosened her corset. ‘Hateful thing. Whenever will fashion be comfortable? Perhaps I should dress like you.’

‘Perhaps I should leave,’ I said. Ernesta was now stripped to her underclothes.