Cross My Heart (10 page)

“Welcome to the Segreta,” Allegreza says.

The wound is nothing, an inconsequential stigma, but she reaches once more beneath her robe and this time takes out a lace-edged handkerchief with which she gently binds my hand. The woman wearing the fox mask steps forward, a shimmering mass of pearls and creamy feathers in her hands. It’s a swan mask. Sparkling beads of jet edge its eyes, and an elegant ocher beak follows a smooth line to where it joins the ghostly forehead.

Allegreza takes it. I raise my chin and she slowly lowers it over my face. She puts a hand on my shoulder, turning me round, then knots the satin ribbons together to hold the mask in place. It has the aromatic smell of another woman’s perfume, and I know at once I’m not the first to wear it.

“The meeting is concluded,” says Allegreza.

She walks me back outside, taking a different, shorter route than the way I arrived. A bluish fog rises from the
water, and I can see the first fingers of dawn touching the domes and towers of the city. She carefully arranges my cape around me, but her eyes flash fiercely behind her mask.

“We will keep our promise,” she says, “but remember yours. You’re one of us now. Breathe one word of the Segreta to anyone—and your life will be forfeit.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” I say.

She squeezes my hand before melting back into the shadows.

I stand alone on the giant chessboard, my hot breath caught inside the mask.

You’re one of us
. But who are the Segreta? Apart from Allegreza, I have no idea. I feel bile rise inside me as I imagine the plots and crimes they might be hatching right now, in this shrouded monastery. I’ve been a fool. I’ve undermined the most powerful man in Venice, and for what? They have taken my secret, weighed its value and, like a crooked merchant, deferred the return payment. I’ve nothing to show for my visit except an empty promise.

I untangle the ribbons behind my head, pull the mask from my face and cast it on the ground. I gulp at the cold air. The mask stares from the checkered stone, glowing like a specter. No—I can’t leave it for the Segreta to find. I snatch it up, shoving it under my cloak.

At the water’s edge, the gondolier is waiting.

“Your aunt not any better?” he asks, studying my face as he helps me into the boat.

I don’t answer. I pull my cape around me and we glide back across the shimmering lagoon.

I
t is almost daylight when I reach home. I tiptoe up the stairs, holding my skirts around my thighs to stop them from swishing. My father’s room is still closed and the palazzo silent. In my room I untie the handkerchief from my hand and see that a small scab has already formed. I quickly pull the mask from my cape and slip it inside one of the chests of drawers. I gather a pile of silk shawls that were Beatrice’s and arrange them on top. I rub my eyes, exhausted.

I throw off my cape and shoes and peel my dress over my head, thinking that I’ll pull my covers over me and not think about the Segreta until the morning. I’m just about to slip into bed when I see, with a start, that someone is sleeping there already.

It’s Faustina. I put my hand on her shoulder and shake her gently. She sits up and looks at me for a moment like I’m a stranger. And then her face crumples in relief.

“Thanks be to God!” she says, hugging me tightly and kissing my forehead. “Where have you been? Oh, I’m so cross with you.”

“I’m all right,” I tell her.

“Where on earth did you go, darling? I’ve been sick thinking about what might have happened to you. I almost woke your father.”

“I’m glad you didn’t do that,” I say. “Please don’t tell him.”

She looks at me with tired eyes. “You must get into bed. How late it is. Laura, you can’t simply disappear from the house. I was beside myself. Oh, the terrible prayers I’ve been offering to get you home safely.”

“Your prayers have been answered,” I say, giving her a squeeze. “I’m perfectly fine.”

Faustina smooths the crumpled sheets and I clamber in. When I was very young, she would pretend to daub my eyelids with enchanted honey just before I went to sleep. My eyes feel heavy, like they used to then. I want to sleep and find out that the monastery, Allegreza and the Segreta were all a dream, and that no mask lurks in the drawer.

But a sudden quiver from Faustina makes me sit bolt upright. She covers her face with her knobbled hands and a sob rises up from somewhere deep within her. I reach up, pulling her to sit down beside me, and wrap my arms around her plump shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps between sobs. “Not being able to find you made me think of your poor dear sister.”

“I’m the one who needs to say sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

She shakes her head. “It’s my fault,” she says. “All my
fault. Beatrice would be here now if only I had stayed with her.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say, kissing her wet cheek. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“You don’t understand,” she says. “You can’t.” She slips from the bed onto her knees and clasps her hands in front of her, her eyes turned up towards heaven. “God spare me!”

Her invocation seems to tear through her. I’ve not seen Faustina like this before. There’s a wild darkness in her, and it frightens me.

“Faustina, please … Beatrice drowned. God won’t pass judgment on you for her death. It was an accident!”

“No,” she mumbles. “It was not.”

A cold breeze seems to snake into the room and coil around me. I sit hunched in the bed, trembling.

“What did you say?”

Faustina turns towards me. Her kind old face is twisted and anguished, as if she too has been wearing a mask.

“Beatrice went somewhere that night,” she says. “And I was the one who let her go.”

“Go where?” I think the blood inside me has stopped flowing.

“I don’t know. You see, she begged me. She kept saying, ‘There’s something I need to do. Please, you must trust me.…’ And I … There was hope in her face—hope I hadn’t seen since her engagement. So I let her go. God forgive me, I let her go.”

Her voice cracks and she rocks back and forth. I push away the sheets and sit on the floor beside her. I take her hand.

“Faustina … do you think she had a secret lover?”

“What else could it have been?”

What else, indeed? A smile pulls at the corners of my mouth. Despite everything, I am glad that old Vincenzo was not the only man Beatrice knew. I imagine her, eyes gleaming, darting into the shadows to share a furtive embrace and words of longing with some beautiful boy who made her heart flutter, who warmed her flesh with kisses.

“I waited for her at the Rialto Bridge, just as I had promised,” says Faustina. “She said she wouldn’t be late, and I was starting to worry. That’s when I heard her awful scream and that dreadful splash.” She twists the sheet that hangs over my bed and I brush hair away from her face. “It was a little farther up the bank. I ran as though my legs were young again, cursing my old knees and hips. When I got to her, she was still struggling. I see the bubbles and the foam around her in my sleep. Her dress, which I had put on her earlier, had become huge and full in the water. I flung down my shawl. I was at the canal edge, about to jump in to gather her back to me, and then … then …”

Faustina shuts her crinkly eyes. I put my hand on her shoulder.

“What happened?” I ask gently.

Her eyes open again with an anxious focus. “Somebody stopped me. A hand clutched my neck. Another seized my wrist and jerked my arm behind my back. It was a man, dragging me away from the canal. I screamed and kicked, but he pressed a knife to my throat.”

“Who was it?” My voice is hoarse.

“I don’t know,” she says, trembling. “Oh, I was so afraid. He leaned close to my ear and whispered, ‘Let her go, old woman, or you’ll join her.’ And then I could see, under the
shadow of his wide black hat that his mouth was full of gold. Little golden knives instead of teeth.”

She breaks into more sobbing and I pull her head against me chest. The image she has conjured is more like a monster than a man.

“He pushed me to the ground, and I shut my eyes. I was a coward, shivering there like a baby. When I realized he had gone, it was too late. A gondolier heard my screams and fished Beatrice from the water.”

My sister was murdered.

This man with golden teeth took Beatrice from me. It’s too much to take in. I find my own eyes are dry of tears, though they burn with anger. Who could do such a thing? And why?

T
he morning of my wedding day is just as it should be: cold and stark. My heart is as dead as a cold gravestone. This is the last time I shall sleep alone; tonight, Vincenzo’s withered body, shuddering with lust, will be beside me. I was a
fool
. How could I have been so naive as to think those women could help me? Would I visit one of the jewelry shacks in the artisan quarter and hand over my money on the promise of delivery the next day? Of course not! Yet that is exactly what I’ve done. I’ve betrayed the trust of a good man for nothing.

“You can’t lie there all day,” Faustina says, shouldering her way into the room for the third or fourth time that morning. She’s gathering the remnants of my mother’s life, long gone, assembling my trousseau. The large box of dark wood and gold that sits open in the corner, like the mouth of a monster, is filling up. She feeds it with folded sheets, ornate dresses, fragile twinkling veils, heavy linens. All I will need for my bridal bed. Faustina’s movements are
heavy and reluctant, as if she’s preparing me not for a marriage, but for an execution.

The old woman closes the overflowing chest before leaving the room. She seems to have recovered from the tumult of the night before, and her lack of curiosity riles me. If what she says is true—and I’ve no reason to doubt her—a murderer walks the streets having taken my dear sister’s life. I want to question every man, woman and child in Venice until I have him snared.

I sit up as I hear my father’s leaden footsteps outside and the door crashes open.

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” he bellows. His hair’s unkempt and his doublet unfastened.

“What is it?” I ask.

He stomps straight past me and opens my trousseau chest, packed so carefully by Faustina. He grabs the linen and garments inside, flinging everything out, their neat folds collapsing like blossoms ripped from the trees.

“Father!” I gasp. “What are you doing?”

Bianca lurks outside the door. To my amazement, the young maidservant seems to be suppressing a fit of giggles. Faustina clamps Bianca to her chest, muffling her, and mouths something at me.

My father lifts up the empty chest and hurls it to the floor. The wood cracks and splinters and Bianca lets out a snort from among the folds of Faustina’s dress.

“That traitor!” he roars. “He’s a spy! A damned
spy
!”

A tiny spark of hope ignites in my heart. “Who do you mean, Father?”

“Sneaking off to the Duke of Milan himself!” He paces past me to the other side of the room and pounds a fist
against the wall. “After all I have done to save the della Scala name.”

“Vincenzo?” I ask.

For the first time, his eyes light on me, and he sinks onto the bed. “Gone are my chances with the Grand Council,” he says, slapping his knee. “Gone!”

I pull a solemn, serious look over my face like a veil. “Vincenzo is a spy?”

“May he rot in hell!” my father spits. He glances up to where Faustina and Bianca stand staring by the door. “Get out, both of you!”

Faustina’s eyes twinkle as she pulls Bianca away.

My father sighs and buries his face in his hands, and the spark in my chest bursts into a flame.

He tells me that letters have been unearthed, witnesses called. They attest that Vincenzo has been acting as an agent for the Duke of Milan for at least two years, feeding him information from the meetings of the Grand Council. The evidence is, apparently, incontrovertible. Vincenzo attempted to flee the city with his money chests early this morning but was captured. His wealth, what the authorities can lay their hands on, will be confiscated; exile is a certainty.

Only halfway through my father’s tortured explanation do I see clearly who is responsible for my good fortune. My fingertips move over the rough scab on the palm of my hand. For it can’t be fortune at all, but the work of the Segreta. Allegreza has kept her promise.