Cross My Heart (16 page)

“What do you mean?” I say to her.

“She didn’t tell you? Of course, she wouldn’t have. So trustworthy. So loyal. So good at keeping her promises.” She plays with the stripped foxglove stalk like it’s a little whip. “Stay away from the Segreta. Stay well away from those women. They’re not what they promise they will be. They take your secrets and they do favors in return, but that is never the end of it. Think about your poor sister. Laura, I don’t want to upset or frighten you. But there are things
you don’t understand, and it’s best not to get tangled up with such people. Their webs of control are beyond your wisdom.”

She continues away from me. Her words chime so readily with my own fears about Allegreza and the others that I hurry after her and take her arm.

“Wait! How do you know Beatrice was in contact with them? What did she tell you?” I know that I’m trembling.
If Beatrice told her, she broke the oath—she broke their first rule
.

“Most people come in contact with them sooner or later.” Her tone is lighter now and she’s smiling again, but there’s a troubled feeling in my stomach. “Did they make you wear one of their masks?” Her smile turns to a grimace as she looks at her wrist. “You’re hurting me.”

I look down and see my nails are digging into her flesh. I let go at once. “Sorry, I—”

Carina’s eyes dart upwards and I turn. Allegreza is standing just a few paces away, under a bower of bay laurel. How long has she been there? I shiver. Her sudden arrival feels uncanny.

“Good evening, Contessa, Signorina della Scala,” she says. She wears her usual muted gray tones—this time a deep pewter dress with a silver belt hanging from her waist. She clasps our hands between her gloved palms as we greet her in turn.

A servant girl is stuffing a large bunch of long-stemmed lilies into a high vase.

“No!” Carina shouts. The girl looks up, startled and round-eyed. “Look at the way you’re squashing them. They’ll be destroyed.”

Allegreza turns her head sharply to Carina, who walks
over to the table, where the nervous girl stands holding her hands away from the flowers. “I’ll show you how to do it,” Carina says more gently, “and then you’ll never forget.”

Allegreza nods, then drifts away.

As Carina cuts the bruised and broken stems of the lilies with a sharp table knife, I try to drive a terrible image from my head: the gold-toothed man pushing Beatrice into the canal, while in the shadows Allegreza watches.

T
he table at which we dined was so inviting and lush at the beginning of the night. Now it is strewn with debris from the meal. I look at my father and will him to get up. He’s slumped on one elbow and drooping, but still engaged in conversation close to the top of the table. I know he’ll not even dream of leaving until the important people have started to move off.

The rhythm of a whole lifetime seems to have been squashed into these few strange hours. The excited, high-pitched, horn-blowing sounds of their beginning have descended into a low, general hum.

Nicolo, the Doge’s youngest son, jumps up onto the table and strides through the debris, his boots leaving smears of black mud on the linen. He stumbles and clears his throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I ask for the indulgence of your attention, please?”

Apart from me, none of the diners even look at him.

He takes his dagger from his belt and throws it. It spins
around in the air and drives its tip deep into the table. It wobbles and stiffens, wedged into its place the way I think Nicolo wanted it to. Everyone stops talking, and a few shocked gasps rise into the air.

“I will have
attention
!” he shouts.

“Get down from there!” someone yells back.

“I’m sorry, but this is important,” Nicolo slurs.

“Well, say your piece, and have done with it,” calls the dissenting voice.

Nicolo strides forward and plucks his dagger from the table. “Paulina di Moretti and I are going to be married,” he says.

“Ahh!” say the guests in delight, and Paulina lets out a little shriek. The women rise from their seats to gather round her. The Duchess smiles proudly, nodding graciously to her congratulators. Nicolo leaps athletically from the table, and the men shake his hand and slap him on the shoulder or on the back. People’s faces glow in the low light of the huge candles, which once stood as tall as the jugs of wine but now are molten masses, sliding and mixing with discarded food.

“What was the knife-throwing act all about?” mutters a woman in blue under her breath.

“Oh, it’s the animal in them,” replies another. “They’re always like this when they come back from the hunt.”

Suddenly I see Paulina’s face, open and sweet. I catch her eye and smile, mouthing “Congratulations” to her across the room. She blows me a kiss in return.

I see that Allegreza is looking at Paulina too. With a jolt, I realize how my friend must appear to her—young, yes,
but with an engagement to the Doge’s son, also powerful. Her fine forehead crinkles thoughtfully.

Allegreza’s eyes flick er and I follow the direction of her gaze. She’s staring at Carina and the count. Raffaello lifts a lock of his wife’s hair and strokes her cheek with his finger. It’s a simple, caring gesture, and a reminder that not every relationship in Venice is guided by necessity or ambition. I feel a rush of warmth towards them both. Carina’s stern words of caution about the Segreta stemmed from concern, nothing more. There was no spite or malice in them.

Raffaello leans over to kiss her on the neck. Then his eyes seem to stare far off, and he rolls forward, his face pushed against Carina’s breasts.

A young man thumps the back of Raffaello’s chair. “You haven’t spent enough time in bed, Raffaello … that’s the problem!” he laughs.

“He’s looking for something he’s lost!” cries someone else, raising his glass in a toast to his own words. Bellows of mirth lift the room. Still the count’s face is pressed against Carina’s bosom.

She says, “Raffaello, enough!”

The joke isn’t funny anymore. Raffaello looks like he’s in a drunken slump, not an amorous embrace. Carina tries to ease him off her. He’s completely still.

She shakes her husband, gently at first, then more firmly—and then frantically.

“Raffaello! What’s wrong?” she whimpers. She casts glances at the other faces at the table. “Why won’t he move?” she asks them.

Raffaello slides in a strange, slow movement onto the
floor, like a puppet whose strings have been severed. Chairs scrape, some of them toppling over as people rise from their places. I rush forward too. Raffaello lies on the ground, eyes horribly open, staring at nothing.

“Stand back. Please, everyone, give him air to breathe,” begs Carina, but no amount of air will make a difference now. A man puts his fingers to Raffaello’s throat and announces, with a look of bewilderment, that he’s dead. I want to go to Carina and comfort her, but it’s all I can do to stay upright, so deep is the terrible feeling that swirls inside me. A young man does not simply die in the arms of his wife at a party. I don’t know what has happened, but I am certain Raffaello’s death was not natural.

Carina kneels beside him. She looks around the room, but I don’t think she sees very much at all. Her blue-green eyes seem coated with a kind of glaze. She holds out her arms like a blind woman begging for alms.

There’s a buzzing in my ears. People are openmouthed, their faces twisted like gargoyles. Others are so drunk they won’t remember this tomorrow or they’ll wonder if it was just a hazy dream, until someone sober tells them that it’s true. The decay of this night seems to have accelerated with a frightening swiftness.

I glance at the place where Allegreza was sitting, but she has vanished.

The lodge, which earlier felt like a palace, now feels like a cage. I must do something. This is my fault. Allegreza and the Segreta, they have killed Raffaello. I’m sure of it. Raffaello, with all his power in the Grand Council—that male power, which the wild, jealous women of the Segreta spoke of. I saw him galloping off earlier today, and then we saw
him coming back, invincible and triumphant, and surely unassailable by any weakness or illness. It makes cold, terrifying sense to me. When she was trying to warn me, Carina bad-mouthed the Society right in front of Allegreza. Their faces, I see them still, masked and flickering in the firelight, talking about how much they disapproved of the rising of men’s status, and the wielding of men’s power, and the vanity of men’s ambition.

As the body is carried from the room, I elbow my way towards Carina.

“Move back, please. The contessa needs some space.” Amazingly, the crowd obeys me. “Carina,” I say. “Come with me.”

She takes my hand and her fingers feel hot around mine. She looks at me, a network of tiny veins in the whites of her eyes. Her face is smeared with tears, and the more I think that I’ve had a part in her horrifying predicament, the tighter I clasp her hand.

“Come,” I repeat. “Over here.”

It’s like I’m leading her through a dark forest. Some of the faces leer and pry. And even though others are kind, everybody wants to glimpse the impact of the tragedy on her face. They gather up the drama as if someone has tossed gold coins out into the crowd.

My father sits at the center of a cluster of men. They are hunched like vultures, already engaged in some debate about what all this means for the redistribution of power.

I take my friend into a room where only a single candle burns and sit her on the couch. Carina, normally so self-assured, starts to sob.

“It must have been his heart. Are the doctors here? I must see him again. Take me back to him.”

She tries to pull away, but I hold her firmly. For a second, I see myself holding the Doge that day in the convent. Carina’s mouth opens in a similar kind of twisted, tearless grimace, and she puts her hands in the air, curling her pretty fingers into rigid bent claws. I persuade her that she doesn’t really want to go back. I manage to coax her to lie down, and I loosen the bodice of her dress.

I can sense someone standing silently beside me. “Do you have a fan?” I ask.

The figure hands one to me. It’s black with gold roses etched upon it.

I leap to my feet and curtsy. “Oh, Duchess, I’m sorry!”

“Go on with what you’re doing,” she says, holding up her hand. “Please don’t apologize; there’s no need.”

So I take the fan and I start to wave it slowly in front of Carina.

“Perhaps she might have something to drink?” the Duchess whispers.

I search my memory of the infirmary at the convent, picturing the bottles and jars on the shelves.

“What about grappa?” I suggest. “I’ve heard that’s the thing for shock.”

“Quite so,” replies the Duchess, and she goes to the door to beckon someone.

When she comes back, she’s holding a key in one hand and a small cup in the other. Together we sit Carina up. After she’s taken a sip, we pick up a blanket that’s covering a chair and together we lay it over her.

“I’ve told the guests to disperse,” the Duchess reassures me.

I stroke poor Carina’s head. Her face is passive now, expressionless but for the eyes devoid of hope. There’s nothing I can say that won’t sound hackneyed. I can’t pretend the loss of my sister compares to this—I’ve never known the love a wife has for her husband. But as the rush of my blood slows, my mind turns to darker thoughts. I remember Allegreza’s standing still as a garden statue in the bower, watching us with hooded eyes. I remember Carina’s warning about “those women.” Gradually the threads are coming together, and I’m more afraid than ever to look at the tapestry they form. My breath quickens once more.

“Are
you
all right?” asks the Duchess.

She’s Allegreza’s cousin. Even if I could give a coherent account of my suspicions, telling her might be pointless. At worst, foolish. The Segreta’s tentacles reach everywhere.

“It’s just the shock,” I lie.

Soon, Carina’s eyes close, and miraculously, I think she’s asleep, her burst of grief spent like a sudden summer shower. Then the Duchess and I speak together in whispers. I tell her I’m not long out of the convent, but of course she already knows.

“You know the Abbess is a friend of mine.” She leans closer to me and lowers her voice, even though there’s no one else present except Carina.

I glance away. “It’s probably best not to ask the Abbess about me. I wasn’t exactly her favorite.”

The Duchess laughs. “Oh, I don’t take much notice of what the Abbess says. Anyway—to be perfectly honest,
friends as we are, I always thought she was a wizened, sexless old crone. Shriveled up like a raisin. I think you were meant for a bigger world than the one she presides over.”

I talk with her as though we’re old friends. I’ve almost forgotten I’m speaking to the wife of the Doge. For a little while, at least, the Segreta’s hold doesn’t feel as tight, and for once my father will be delighted.