Cross My Heart (5 page)

My dress fastened, Bianca brushes my hair until the tresses are completely free of knots. Annalena would be proud. Faustina cleans and shapes my fingernails and rubs a tiny drop of olive oil into my palms to soften them. Bianca murmurs for me to lower my head and fixes two bone combs, embedded with precious gems, into my hair.

They stand back to study their work. Bianca nods approvingly and Faustina pushes me gently into the anteroom, standing me before the mirror.

“Look at you,” she whispers.

I’ve spent years in shabby brown and black and gray, my hair hidden under a headdress, my hands rough with work. Now I’m looking into a dream. The girl reflected in it is nothing like me at all. She never appeared in my secret shard of mirror at the convent. My hair is so shiny that it almost glistens. My nails are white. I’m smooth and sparkling. I can’t stop looking at myself, and feel a crinkle of excitement shudder through me.

Faustina holds me by the shoulders, looking at the mirror with her old cheek pressed against mine. “Sweetheart, you’re perfect.”

Bianca doesn’t agree. “Hmmm,” she says, frowning. “Almost, but not quite. I know what should be the finishing touch.”

She rushes from the room, returning with a dark wooden box that I recognize. It’s where my mother’s jewels are kept.

“No!” Faustina shouts at Bianca, and she hurries over, trying to pull the box from her hands. “You don’t have permission.”

Bianca holds the box high, out of Faustina’s reach. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, her day is here: she should have the rubies. They’ll be perfect with the dress. She’ll look like royalty and her father will be so pleased.”

“Bianca, do
not
open that box,” Faustina says. There’s a strange tone to her voice—not authority or annoyance, but panic.

Bianca whirls away, laughing, from Faustina’s clutching hands. She holds the box in front of me, quickly flipping the hinged lid over. Her smile turns to dismay.

There’s nothing in there at all. Not a single ruby. Not a stone.

“They’re
gone
!” shouts Bianca. She tosses the empty box aside and it clatters on the marble floor. “We must tell Signor della Scala. There’s been a robbery!”

With a sigh, Faustina runs her fingers through her gray hair. She sits heavily on the bed, her shoulders slumped.

“No, there has not been a robbery,” she says firmly.

I sweep my skirts over my arm and stoop down to rescue the box. Closing the lid, I hand it to my nurse. I know something is wrong.

“Faustina,” I ask. “What happened to my mother’s jewels?”

“Your father sold them,” she said. “His income is not what it was. I had hoped”—and she glares at Bianca—“to explain it to you more gently.”

Faustina sends her to see that the carriage will be ready to take me to the party. I sit on the bed and Faustina tells me that my father has been stripping the palazzo of its treasures. This is what the empty spaces on the walls mean. I don’t really care. The greatest treasure is lost to me already, her body lying in her coffin.

The carriage awaits. Bianca walks beside me to the door, beaming.

“Are you excited about seeing the Doge, signorina?” she asks.

I cling to the stone banister as I move down the wide, curved staircase, fearful that I might trip over the folds of red fabric and tumble down to the marble floor.

“Are you?” Bianca insists. There is a tinge of sadness in
her voice, and I realize that many girls in this city would envy me tonight.

I squeeze Bianca’s hand. “If I meet him I’ll tell you every detail.”

My father emerges from his library, looking twice his normal size in fine hose and great padded shoulders of tan velvet. When he sees me, he smiles and his face softens.

“My sweet Laura,” he says, and I blush at the unfamiliar praise. “How wonderful. You’re just the thing.”

He takes my arm and we step out into Venice.

A
s the carriage clatters along the cobbles, my father pats my hand and tells me what I’m to do and how I’m to behave at the Doge’s palace.

“Vincenzo will be the center of attention, of course, and so will several members of the Grand Council.” He leans forward to brush an invisible speck of something or other off my cape. “Remember, Laura, that you’re not a child anymore. You’re on show this evening. Our future depends on it.”

At the edge of the Grand Canal we step out of the carriage and onto the barge. My heavy skirts mean that one of the young bargemen has to lift me over the side. His hands around my waist are broad and flat, almost like the oar that rests dripping over the water. He smiles as he places me on the deck, but quickly looks away as my father clambers on board and sits at the prow, his pale hands and his wrists folded in front of him.

I take my place beside him and the great whale of a boat
lumbers towards St. Mark’s Square. We pass the Rialto—that arch of dark wood linking the east side of the city to the west—and glide into more open water. My father doesn’t seem to notice, but I can feel it: the chill of my sister’s last moments. Where did she fall? It was somewhere near here. I lean out a little and look down into the inky liquid grave.

We pass the sparkling buildings and lights of Venice. The great tall houses cast their stretched reflections onto the water, where they mingle with that of the moon. Distant laughter bounces off the hard surfaces of stone.

My father’s expression is taut in the succession of shadow and light, and I realize that his face is powdered, to smooth the tired lines. I wonder if he is worrying about the impression I will make. There will be things he’ll want me to do and to say—rules I don’t know and rituals I’ve never had a hand in, patterns of talk that I’ve never been part of. I’m able to chant glories to God for hours. I can force oil of peony root into the mouth of a crazed man, breaking him like some restless colt. I can sit silent and still for hours in a cell, pretending to be at prayer. But I don’t know anything about parties.

The air seems to thicken as we get closer. I sit with my fists closed and my elbows pressed hard into my ribs, and my father laughs.

“Not so tense,” he says gently. “Not so rigid, Laura.” I laugh at myself too, and then he points and says, “Look!”

I see the palace like something rising out of the water. White and gold. Arches on arches, all flickering with the lights of the party. Other boats are converging, drifting near the jetty to deposit their flamboyant cargo. Already I
hear a hum of conversation coming from within the walls. And there’s music. Lutes, bells, flutes and harpsichord all tangled together. Nothing like the solemn purity of our songs inside the convent. Our turn arrives and the bargeman steers us expertly alongside the alighting point. The music makes my body move. I’m intoxicated already.

“It’s beautiful!” I say.

“Yes, it is,” my father replies.

A lush crowd throngs at the entrance to the palace. People dart jovial
hellos
and
how-are-yous
at each other. Just like the palace, the guests are shimmering too. Beautiful, colored, bejeweled. Footmen and maids weave between them, carrying scarves and capes and veils.

As I step onto solid ground and up the steps, my silken petticoats rustle along the stone. I shiver slightly as we pass into the shadow of the entrance.

Two footmen open the vast double doors for us and we walk into a great hallway. The walls are glowing marble and the ceiling is frescoed with laughing cherubs. In the center of the hall is a statue of a nymph, her hands clasped to her breast. I whirl around, seeing myself in every polished surface. Except it’s not me. I’m tall and poised and graceful. When I see my reflection on the wall my dress seems to be a ruby jewel, as bright as the missing gems of my mother. Other people are looking at me in a way that makes me want to smile. Their eyes rest a fraction too long, or their brows shift upwards as though I’m a long-forgotten friend now returned.

There’s a rumble of voices ahead and we walk through a sparkling encrusted doorway into the ballroom. Gilded mirrors and candelabras hang from the walls, the hundreds
of candles sparking pins of light that dance and tumble around like fireworks. A lute quartet plays a lively dance, the notes hanging among the chatter. I hold my father’s hand tightly as we move through the other guests. Glorious-looking women and handsome men enter the ballroom together and then slowly drift apart. The men smile at me with eyes as sharp as arrows. I let my own eyes meet some of the more brazen stares, and I see that these people aren’t all as beautiful as distance makes them. Complexions are powdered; flesh shows crinkles of laughter around the eyes and lips. Men with broad shoulders and red cheeks stand in leather shoes that shine so brightly they look wet. Gleaming buckles flash in the light. The women tilt their lace fans, silken gowns shimmering. Perfume hangs heavy in the air. But among the joyful crowd are those who seem apart from the scene; they chatter and flirt, but their eyes are hollow with hunger and desperation.

“I refuse to pay a gondolier ever again,” a woman in a blue dress complains. “I prefer to walk until the soles of my shoes wear out.”

“You need to be a criminal to survive,” says her companion, flicking her fan in annoyance. “Those wretched Turkish wars have ruined everything for the honest businessman.”

Great bursts of laughter ring out from time to time, as if they have been planned ahead—as if there’s some hidden conductor of mirth directing these eruptions of studied delight. I’ve heard these sounds before. They’re the echoes of my childhood—the noise of the glamorous, the privileged, the powerful—the tinkle and the clash of the rich.

My father nudges me towards the two women. “Say
hello. Head up. Smile.” When I do, they dip their heads and curtsy. My father bows to them and we move on to the next cluster of guests. “You’re causing quite a stir! Keep it up,” he says.

I’m not exactly sure what he’s praising, but somehow I don’t even have to try to be sociable. There is a festive air that makes me want to smile and nod and greet people. Some of the men run their eyes down me as though there’s a message scrawled from the top of my head to the tips of my shoes and they’re trying to read it. I imagine the Abbess’s disapproving stare and tingle with pleasure.

A tall woman in a silvery dress stands talking to a large group. Her hair is coiled around her head, its gray streaks gleaming like the steely fabric of her gown. The skin on her face and neck is etched with delicate lines, but it’s as clear and soft as a young girl’s. And although she laughs and chatters with her companions, her green eyes are fixed on me.

I dip my head in greeting and she smiles, a mixture of bemusement and approval. I smile back, and she takes this as a signal, excusing herself and moving through the other guests towards me. My composure leaves me at once. I look to my father, but suddenly he is no longer at my side and I turn to see him with a group of men. What should I do? I’m not ready to—

“Hello, Laura,” says the woman, her voice clear and deep. She takes my hand, her movements graceful. I wonder how she knows my name.

“I’m Allegreza di Rocco. And you, Laura, are a della Scala, are you not? Poor Beatrice’s sister.”

“Yes,” I say. “I am—I mean—I was. I mean—I always will be.” A surge of blood sets fire to my cheek.

“You’re quite right.” Allegreza’s elegant face softens. “Alive or dead, once a sister, always a sister.”

An old woman steps close to her, her face pinched with worry. She mutters quietly to Allegreza, who nods.

“Excuse me, Laura. We will talk again—soon,” she says. She puts her arm around the old woman and gently maneuvers her away.

I stand alone for a moment. This woman, Allegreza; she knew me. Or of me, at least. But what does she wish to speak to me about? Surely a girl just released from a convent couldn’t be of interest to her.

“Signorina?” A servant with a tray of glasses appears at my side.

I take one, cradling it carefully so as not to spill the clear golden liquid. I hear my father shout with laughter. He’s still huddled with other men at the far side of the ballroom, and the task of reaching him, of negotiating the other guests without being detained, seems as impossible as crossing the Hellespont on foot; I might be caught up in the undercurrents of innuendo, or dashed on the rocks of jokes I can’t understand. So I stay where I am, and take a sip of wine. It tastes of syrup and summer, and, after the plain water of the convent, like ambrosia slipping down my throat. Almost immediately, the sweetness seems to rush to my head. Annalena once told me the Abbess kept a bottle of wine, fermented by the monks on the island of San Michele, in her chamber; she’d disturbed her once and heard the bottle clinking as the Abbess hurriedly hid it away. I can’t believe it was true, for how could her face always have been so sour?

The musicians lower their instruments and the room
hushes. One by one, I notice the heads of the guests turning in the direction of the main doors, their faces concerned. A couple around the same age as my father stand there—both handsome, upright, solemn. Their clothes are black, and, among the gaudy costumes and luxurious materials of the revelers, seem like some sort of reproach. The man looks straight ahead while holding his wife’s arm firmly, like someone holding a tiller to steer a boat. Her eyes are on the floor, and she’s rubbing the beads of a black rosary between her long white fingers. They walk slowly but deliberately through the guests.