The Girl Behind the Mask (33 page)

‘It felt like a lump of meat. And then I looked. Two of his fingers were gone and the rest were all shrivelled and stuck together.’

I shook my head.

‘And I shouted out in shock. I couldn’t help myself.’

She began to cry.

‘Whatever must he have thought?’ she said. ‘Poor man, I was so rude. But I’d never seen anything so awful. Not in real life. I couldn’t stop myself, it was such a horrible surprise. Oh Sarah. He’s the one without his fingers. I don’t have the right to cry. But I’m so embarrassed.’

I wrapped my arm around Bea’s shoulders.

‘I need to go and apologise.’

‘I’m not sure that will make it better,’ I said.

‘You’re right. Oh, I’m such a bitch.’

I tried to assure her that she wasn’t.

‘You’ll be more careful about grabbing a guy’s hand next time, that’s all.’

‘He said he was the gardener. You will tell him I’m sorry, won’t you? I’m such an idiot. Obviously it wasn’t Marco. I should have just left him alone.’

While Bea continued to berate herself, I began to wonder if she had been wrong after all. The library was the obvious place Marco would choose to wait for me. Was the burnt hand the extent of the man’s injuries or was there something else behind the mask? Was that the real reason why Marco Donato hadn’t been photographed since 1999? Was the rasping voice behind the fact we’d never even spoken on the phone?

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you go and get Nick to find you a drink?’

Bea gathered up her skirts and headed for the exit to the courtyard. Meanwhile, I retraced my steps to the library.

‘Marco?’ I stepped into the library and closed the door behind me. ‘Marco? Are you in here?’

No answer.

I walked over to the desk where I had spent so many mornings. Luciana’s papers had been tidied away, of course. It would have been foolish beyond belief to leave them out when the house was full of masked revellers. But what else had been put away?

I held my breath as I opened the top left-hand drawer.

The vibrator was not there. Which meant, unless Marco had lied to me and Silvio knew all about the sex toy, that Marco must have been in the library at some point since my last visit. How recently, was the question I needed an answer to now.

I walked the perimeter of the room. As I had noticed before, there was only one door into the library. At least, only one door that I had discovered. Bea and I had not noticed her masked stranger slip out while I was consoling her, which meant that either he was hiding in the stacks, or there was a secret exit. If there was a hidden door, who would know about it except the owner of the house?

‘Marco,’ I tried again. ‘It’s Sarah. I’m on my own.’

Still nothing.

‘Marco, I’m sorry I didn’t wear the beautiful dress you sent me. I thought it would be fun to let Bea wear it. I didn’t know—’ I struggled to finish the sentence. ‘I’m sorry, OK. I really am.’

The library remained silent. Ernesta’s portrait gazed down on me, but this time her expression seemed pitying.

As promised on the invitation, the ball at the Palazzo Donato ended with the first strike of the bells at midnight, when the guests were corralled towards the watergate and the gondolas that would take them home. The excess and debauchery of Martedì Grasso was over. Mercoledì delle Ceneri was beginning, marking as it did the start of the forty days of Lent. Of sobriety and abstention. Of quiet reflection. I was certainly doing plenty of that. Bea’s encounter in the library had left me almost as shaken as her. She felt she’d reacted badly to the poor guy’s burnt hand. I felt far worse when I considered the possibility that the poor guy was Marco.

Only Nick was reluctant to go home.

‘Amazing party,’ he kept saying. ‘A-ma-zing.’

He’d danced the night away with a girl dressed as Pierrette.

‘She’s from Denver. She got her ticket to the ball from a travel agency.’

‘How weird,’ said Bea, voicing my own thoughts. ‘To keep your house closed for years, then open it up to random tourists.’

‘Weird, too, not to show up to your own party,’ said Nick.

‘He must have been there,’ I said sadly.

‘He can’t have been there. Otherwise, he would have made himself known to you,’ said Bea.

‘Perhaps he did,’ said Nick. ‘And you didn’t recognise him.’

Or recognised him too late.

‘Do you want this?’

Nick offered me the
servetta muta
that had come with the dress Marco bought me. I’d passed it to him while I climbed into the gondola. Now I let it fall into the water and float away down the canal.

Chapter 49

1st July, 1753

The night after the Duke’s visit, I went to see Giacomo again. We talked about my predicament and the life I might have if I could only escape my father’s house once and for all.

‘How would I live?’ I asked. ‘If I can’t rely on the kindness of my father?’

‘That’s simple,’ he said. ‘You have everything you need within you.’

‘What? You think I should become a washerwoman?’

‘You have something far more valuable than your strong arms. You have your words.’

I had taken my diary to Giacomo’s house for safe keeping. He picked it up from the place where it lay beside the bed and waved it at me.

‘I will take your diary to a printer. I will have copies made and we will sell them. We will make a fortune. Your fortune,’ he added.

I laughed. ‘But you cannot print my diary. I am not a proper writer. Besides, can you imagine my father allowing it? He would have the printing presses stopped. He would have people killed for daring to print it.’

‘Only if he knew you were the author.’

We had little enough time to be with each other without wasting it on talk of my unsuitable suitor and how I could possibly support myself if I managed to escape his proposal. I stripped off my trousers and my grubby white shirt and skipped up the stairs to the chamber, beckoning my teacher to follow. He caught me up as we climbed the stairs and lifted me off my feet as we went into the bedroom. He tossed me into the middle of the cushions.

He ran a thoughtful finger along my body, from my shoulder, down my arm and across my waist.

‘You are so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I will never tire of looking at you.’

‘Even when I am a crone?’

‘When you are a crone, my eyes won’t be so good. We’ll be a perfect match.’

I felt so happy. I was so sure I had avoided a bad marriage. If only I could think of a way to be free to be with my teacher for ever. If he would have me.

I fell asleep in his arms. It didn’t happen often. Ordinarily, I would be so anxious about getting back to my own bedroom before sunrise I would be unable to relax into dreams, but that night was different. I was so very happy. If only I had known how fleeting that happiness was to prove.

I drifted into sleep gently. I was woken roughly.

It was the most unfortunate of coincidences. The Duke told my father he had gone to see Giacomo regarding the matter of an unpaid debt. He and his henchman had visited in the middle of the night to ensure they weren’t given the slip. And whom should they find in the dreadful wastrel’s bed? It was obvious from his expression that the Duke could not believe his luck. Two birds with one stone.

I hung my head. There was nothing I could say. Nothing. Nothing at all. Everything the Duke told my father was true. I had crept from my bedroom in the middle of the night. I had been found with a lover. Not just any lover, but one of the most notorious men in the city. Of course, my father understood there was no possibility this side of Heaven the Duke could take me for his wife now.

‘She is worthless to the good men of Venezia,’ the Duke told my father. ‘When this gets out, all chance of a good marriage will be gone. If I were you, I would send your whoring daughter straight to a convent.’

‘I didn’t think you minded the company of whores,’ I spat in the Duke’s direction. I earned myself an open-handed slap across the side of my face. My father did not attempt to defend me.

The Duke left.

My father and I were alone. I tried to find some crumb of comfort for him but I knew he would never understand. Even as I tried to tell him about my education, I could see I had crushed his dream of raising his family from the merchant class to the aristocracy. He stared at me as though I were a stranger. He’d raised me so carefully. He’d gone to such lengths to keep me from bad influence and I had ended up in the bed of the city’s most notorious Lothario. Giacomo Casanova. Eventually, he looked down at the papers on his desk.

‘I cannot bear to look at you,’ he said. ‘I will arrange for you to be taken somewhere else in the morning.’

‘“Somewhere else?” Where?’ I asked. ‘Are you sending me back to Turin?’ I added hopefully.

‘News of this kind will quickly reach Turin,’ was my father’s conclusion.

Maria escorted me to my bedroom. She didn’t speak to me. To speak to me kindly now might besmirch her own spotless reputation. No doubt she would have to confess her ungenerous feelings towards me the following afternoon. But I felt sure my father would soften overnight.

Papà left for Genoa in the morning. I was right, he had softened his feelings towards me during the night. He was unable to bring himself to make a decision about my future. Possibly, given enough time, he might have reached a compromise that allowed me some measure of freedom. We had relatives in the Dolomites. Surely bad news wouldn’t get that far? Unfortunately for me, my father left my fate in the hands of someone far more inclined to judge me harshly. My brother had been apprised of the situation and told he should deal with me as he saw fit.

My brother saw fit to send me to a convent.

15th July, 1753

‘Vanity,’ muttered the ancient nun. ‘Such vanity has led you astray.’

And yet there was something approaching tenderness in the way she combed out my long brown hair. Unhappy as I was, I closed my eyes and remembered a time long, long ago when someone had combed my hair just as tenderly. I remembered my mother, singing to distract me as she yanked out the knots.

The old woman found a knot but she was not so tender or careful now. She didn’t carefully hold a skein of hair above the tangle so she would not tug on the roots as she tried to loosen the mess. No, she just pulled, and tugged, until I was sure she would rip the hair straight from my head.

‘Ow!’ I protested. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Vanity,’ she muttered again.

‘Give me the comb,’ I commanded, but my commands carried no weight in this place.

‘I have to do it,’ she said as I clutched at my scalp to try to lessen the pain. ‘Sit still. You’re making it worse.’

‘You’re being ridiculous. I can comb my own hair.’

While I was arguing with the horrible old hag, another nun came in. When she saw I wasn’t happy with the way my hair was being dressed, she looked concerned. But not for me. She held me down on the stool by my shoulders and before I knew what was going on, the old woman had gathered the length of my tresses into a single tail and slashed it off.

I gasped. Both women laughed. They let me stand up but it was too late for me to run from the room. The old woman held my hair in her hands and stroked it. Then she held it up to the nape of her own neck.

‘What do you think, Giulietta? Would Casanova make a pass at me?’

‘Let me have a go,’ said the other woman. She took my hair from her abominable colleague’s hands and held it to her own head.

‘You are a princess,’ the old woman assured her.

My mouth was full of curses. ‘You witches. Why comb my hair so tenderly when you knew you were going to cut it off?’

‘Because your hair belongs to us now and by this time tomorrow it will belong to someone else. It will fetch a fine price, this tail will. It’s nearly red in places.’

They were going to sell my hair! I put my hand to the back of my neck, naked for the first time I could remember. They had taken my hair to give it to a wig-maker. By the end of the week, some bald-headed old hag could be wearing my hair to a ball.

‘My father will hear of this,’ I warned them.

‘I should think your father will approve,’ said the younger woman. ‘After all, he sent you here to learn the error of your ways. He knows it’s your looks that got you into this mess. Don’t get so much trouble with a plain girl.’

We were interrupted. The Mother Superior who had welcomed me on the dock had arrived with two more of the
figlie
.

‘They cut my hair,’ I protested.

‘I know,’ said the Mother Superior. ‘You’ll get used to it. In fact you may find there is liberation in being freed from earthly measures of beauty.’

‘But they said they’re going to sell it!’

‘That’s right. I can’t say I approve of the falsification of God’s natural gifts with the use of hairpieces, but we are not a rich convent, having no musicians to charm the coin out of the pockets of the wealthy like the Mendicanti or the Pietà. We have to support ourselves in other ways. Think of your hair as a gift to us in return for our hospitality.’