Belladonna (3 page)

Siena flicked a quick glance over her shoulder. “I almost forgot.” She pulled a tiny cloth bag from her pocket and handed it to Cass. “Breathe through this.”

Cass took the sachet of herbs gratefully. Pressing the small bag up to her mouth and nose, she inhaled mint and rosemary. She skimmed the sea of faces for the blond man. Suddenly he was right in front of them, bidding on a fish. Up close he looked nothing like Cristian.
Idiota,
she thought. Still, she couldn’t make her heart stop racing.

Siena led her down the main row of stalls, slipping effortlessly through the minuscule spaces between other people. Cass felt huge and clunky trying to do the same, excusing herself repeatedly as she wobbled in her chopines and stepped on the occasional toe. She pressed one hand tightly to the fabric of her dress, imagining that each accidental touch belonged to quick fingers trying to extract the leather pouch of coins from deep inside her pocket.

A peasant woman dressed in plain muslin squeezed past her, adeptly leading her three daughters through the fray. The smallest girl reached out to stroke the soft fabric of Cass’s skirts as she wandered by. Again, Cass felt silly. Why was she afraid of a place where Siena came almost every day?

As Cass and Siena weaved their way deeper into the market, some of the vendors called out excitedly, holding up gutted fish or giant squid for Cass’s approval. It was rare, she supposed, to see a well-dressed noblewoman wriggling her way through the masses. She quickly averted her eyes from what Siena told her was a sea bass, filleted down the middle and folded open to display its slick white interior. Cass had never seen the inside of a raw fish up close. She hoped the cook was fixing chicken for dinner.

Siena pulled her past a stall where shrimp and clams were piled high in woven baskets. Cass swore she felt a hand close around one of her ankles. She lurched forward, knocking a few of the shellfish onto the ground. A plaintive yowl came from the direction of her chopines. Looking down, she saw an emaciated black cat flick its tail against her leg again before pouncing on one of the fallen shrimp. Cass muttered an apology and tossed a copper coin at the scowling vendor.

Finally, they were past all the seafood and into the far side of the market where the produce was sold. The smell here was almost as bad, but at least Cass was no longer in danger of being assaulted by the sight of a gutted fish. She had seen plenty of rotting fruit before. The servants would sometimes buy it just before it turned. Agnese did love a good deal.

Siena pulled Cass behind a stall selling grapes and pears. A beggar in a brown wool dress and a black cloak knelt next to a stack of empty wooden crates, her hood pulled low to hide her face. She had her hands clasped around a half-rotten pear that she had no doubt fished out of the bottom of one of the crates.

“I’ve brought Cass,” Siena whispered.

The beggar looked up at her, and Cass immediately recognized Feliciana’s bright blue eyes. She swallowed back an exclamation of joy and relief so as not to call attention to Feliciana’s presence. She could hardly believe it. There were so many things she wanted to tell her. So many things she wanted to
ask
her.

But then Cass took a closer look. The left side of Feliciana’s face was colored yellow with the remnants of a welt, and her lips were swollen and marred by black blood, having split open and scabbed over. How could Siena’s vibrant older sister have become this skeletal, bruised woman?

Feliciana ducked her head again as the pear vendor, an older woman with deep lines etched into her tan face, stacked another empty crate behind the stall. “You should find refuge at a convent,” the woman said. “It’s hard for the good Lord to take care of you out here in the streets.” Feliciana nodded without lifting her chin. Someone hollered from the front of the stall, and the vendor disappeared.

Cass fumbled in her pockets as if she were searching for a few coins, talking low under her breath as she did. “You’ll come back to the villa with us, of course. We can get everything sorted out once you’re safe.”

Feliciana nodded again. “But what will you tell your gondolier?” she whispered. “If anyone were to recognize me—”

“I’ll get rid of Giuseppe,” Siena said. “I’ll say we’re going to walk across the way to the weaver’s to order some cloth and then take a stroll down to Piazza San Marco. I’ll tell him he should return to the villa, that we’ll find our own way home.”

“Good idea, Siena.” Cass turned back to Feliciana. “No one will recognize you.” Even if she hadn’t been emaciated and bruised, in the hooded cloak and rough woolen dress, Feliciana could have just as easily been her aunt Agnese as a runaway servant.

“Stay with her, Signorina Cass,” Siena said, as if she were afraid her sister was a ghost who might vanish if they both turned their backs. “I’ll find us passage home.” Siena disappeared in the direction of the Grand Canal.

Cass knew it must look strange to the people passing by, a noblewoman bent down over a beggar, but she didn’t care. “Are you sick?” she asked, kneeling to get a better look at Feliciana. The skin under her eyes was purple, and the fingers that protruded from the oversized sleeves of her cloak looked like twigs.

“Just sick of hiding,” Feliciana said with a wan smile. “And hungry.” She bit into the good side of the pear. She chewed slowly, as if it had been a while since she had eaten solid food.

“Of course. What’s the matter with me?” Cass made her way to the front of the stall, where she purchased a second pear and a cluster of grapes.

“Cass—Signorina Cass,” Feliciana corrected herself, when Cass returned. “I didn’t mean for you to—”

“I know,” Cass said, handing the fruit to Feliciana. “I wanted to.”

Feliciana finished the good part of her scavenged pear before beginning on the grapes. Each one brought a smile to her discolored face, as if they were the most exquisite food in all of Venice.

Siena returned, and Cass was overjoyed to learn they wouldn’t have to backtrack through the crowded marketplace to get to their ride. “I had to offer the return fare too, Signorina Cass,” Siena said apologetically. “You know how the gondoliers hate going all the way out to the islands.”

“That’s fine.” Cass would have offered her entire purse just to spirit her former lady’s maid to safety.

Feliciana kept her hood low as the three girls squeezed out the back of the market and headed for a gondola moored at the edge of the Grand Canal. An elderly gondolier helped them aboard. Cass instinctively checked his hands to see if he wore a ring with a six-petaled flower design. She didn’t know what the symbol meant, but she had seen it on a ring that Falco found in Liviana’s tomb and then again on the outside of Angelo de Gradi’s workshop full of body parts. Later, she had noticed Donna Domacetti, Venice’s biggest gossip, wearing a similar ring. Cass knew that the symbol heralded dark things—bad things.

It would look highly suspicious if they arrived home too soon after Giuseppe, so Cass commanded the gondolier to go slowly, saying she felt ill. The old man scowled, but slowed the rate at which he moved the long flexible oar through the canal water.

Cass reclined on the bench inside the
felze,
and Siena and Feliciana knelt on the boat’s stamped leather base, facing her. The three girls tucked their heads tightly together, speaking in hushed tones.

“What happened?” Siena asked, reaching out to push her sister’s hood back just far enough so she could see her eyes. “Did he hurt you?” Cass knew that Siena was referring to Dubois.

Feliciana shook her head and bit her lip. “No. Not like that. Joseph was . . . fond of me.” She avoided her sister’s eyes, and Cass wondered what Joseph Dubois had done to show his affection, and how Feliciana had grown so familiar with him that she would use his given name. “All the girls had whispered that he was fond of Sophia, too, and that she might be with child.” Feliciana faltered slightly over the words. “When she disappeared, I figured she had run away. Maybe gone to the Chiesa to live until the baby was born.”

Cass watched as the gondola passed the Chiesa delle Zitelle, which sat on the island of Giudecca, almost directly across from the entrance to the Grand Canal. It functioned as both a house of worship and a refuge for single women. Whether healthy or infirm, unmarried girls and prostitutes often sought shelter there.

Feliciana shuddered. “But then I overheard him speaking to a man I’d seen around the estate—another Frenchman—about what needed to be done about Sophia. Joseph told this man to make the problem go away.”

Cass’s throat squeezed shut. Cristian.

“Then I heard that her body was pulled from the Grand Canal. After that day, I began to cross paths with this man more and more. I was afraid maybe he’d seen me the day I heard him speaking to Joseph.” Feliciana’s eyes went dark. “I didn’t want to be next.”

Cass reached out and gave Feliciana’s hand a quick squeeze. “You’re safe now,” she said, hoping it was true. Once Feliciana was inside the villa, Cass would inform her about what had happened over the past few weeks. It wasn’t safe to talk about it further here. In Venice, even the water had ears.

Siena was staring at Feliciana. “So you and Signor Dubois were—”

Feliciana shook her head forcefully. “No. But it would have come to that.” And then, seeing Siena’s look of shock, she added, “Oh, don’t be naïve. No woman refuses that kind of request from her master, not if she wants to stay employed.”

Cass twisted around the edge of the felze to sneak a glance at their gondolier. The man was staring down at the lagoon, watching his oar move through the water.

Feliciana laughed bitterly. “Poor Sophia. One of her roommates told me that Sophia believed she was going to be transferred to Dubois’s mainland estate, into her own set of chambers. Instead she was transferred into the ground.”

“Why didn’t you come directly to San Domenico?” Cass asked. “Siena and I would have helped you. We would have protected you.”

Feliciana scoffed. “But what about your aunt? Was I to just show up and say, ‘
Scusi,
Signora Querini, will you take me on again?’ The old woman might have sent me directly back to Joseph. Even if she didn’t, how was I to know I wouldn’t be bringing danger to the villa?”

“You still should have gotten a message to me,” Siena said accusingly. “I thought you were dead. We both did.”

Feliciana reached out and gripped her sister’s arm. “I never should have left you. I thought if I did well at Palazzo Dubois, I could persuade the master to hire you on as well. I never meant for us to stay apart.”

The gondolier had crossed the lagoon and was now cutting between the Giudecca and San Giorgio Maggiore. They’d be at the northern shore of San Domenico in just a few minutes. “He said he would take us around to Agnese’s private dock,” Siena said.

“And then what?” Feliciana asked, dropping her hood low once more.

“Siena will enter the servants’ door while we wait on the side lawn,” Cass said. “We’ll keep ourselves tight against the villa so we won’t be visible from any of the windows. Siena can come get us once she thinks it’s safe to sneak you inside.”

After the gondolier had moored at Agnese’s dock, the three girls disembarked. Siena disappeared inside while Cass and Feliciana skirted the edge of Agnese’s property, staying out of view of the windows. After a few minutes, Siena returned, and the three girls crept in the main door of the villa and quietly up the stairs. The portego was empty except for Agnese’s butler, Bortolo, who was napping as usual. The girls proceeded quickly to the back of the villa, where Cass and Agnese had their bedchambers. The three of them squeezed through the doorway to Cass’s room all at once, and she closed the door with a click.

Feliciana shocked everyone by dropping her hood to reveal an almost-bald head. Siena whimpered, and Feliciana patted her sister on the hand. “It’s just hair. It’ll grow back. Though the sister who razored it all off did seem to take a cruel pleasure in the task.”

“So you actually joined a convent?” Cass asked incredulously. The vibrant Feliciana in a nunnery made about as much sense as quiet Siena becoming a courtesan.

“My options were limited,” Feliciana said. “I went to the Chiesa delle Zitelle and they found me a spot in a nunnery on San Giorgio Maggiore. But the nuns were hateful. They were always waking me up at all hours of the night to pray. Each time I was late or ‘insolent,’ they forced me to wear a garment woven out of goat’s hair under my habit. It rubbed my skin raw and kept me from sleeping. They also made me empty the chamber pots for the whole convent and scrub the floors until my fingers bled.” She glanced down at her cracked and swollen fingertips and winced. “And then last week I saw one of the Sisters speaking to a man who looked familiar. I was afraid Joseph had sent his men to find me. I escaped the convent after dark, and returned to the city. I passed the days at the Mercato di Rialto and spent my nights locked inside the Ghetto with the Jews, hiding in the back room of a butcher’s shop. I knew eventually I would find someone I could trust at the marketplace.”

Siena reached out to touch the fuzz of blonde hair that was left on Feliciana’s scalp. “I still can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered.

“Believe it.” Feliciana wrapped her bony arms around Siena’s neck, and the two sisters embraced. Feliciana turned to Cass next, gripping both of her hands and leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. “You saved me,” she said. “Both of you.”

Cass tried not to flinch. Siena’s sister smelled almost as bad as the marketplace.

Feliciana pulled back and held the end of her sleeve up to her face. “Ugh, I smell like rotten squid.” She looked pleadingly at Cass. “For the good of everyone here, would it be possible to wash up?” She turned her eyes on Siena.

“Absolutely,” Cass said. “Siena will get you anything you need.” She cleared her throat meaningfully. “Just be discreet.”

Siena scampered off. Cass still hadn’t worked out exactly where she could hide Feliciana. The servants were notorious gossips, and all of Venice would know of her reappearance by the end of the week if any of them spotted her. Cass wished she could stash her former handmaid in the butler’s quarters; she was in no danger of being spotted there. Bortolo was so blind that if spindly Feliciana stood holding out her arms, he’d probably mistake the girl for a coatrack.