Cross My Heart (11 page)

“I must meet with the Council,” my father mutters, smoothing down his hair. “I need to distance myself from this scoundrel Vincenzo.”

He leaves the room, and it strikes me that not once did he commiserate with me on the collapse of my marriage. I grin, feeling light-headed. Perhaps he always knew how much I loathed the prospect.

Once his steps have receded, Faustina and Bianca reappear at the door.

“Oh, my darling, you’re saved!” cries Faustina, her face flushed with happiness. I leap from my bed to hug her. Bianca throws her arms around us both.

“Saved for now,” I say. “Father will no doubt be looking for another suitable match when all this has died down.”

“Yes, but for now you’re safe,” says Faustina.

“You told me that marriage was for the best,” I remind her, arching my eyebrow.

My old nurse starts to pick up the broken chest and its contents. She looks up and there’s the hint of a smile on her lips. “Did I say that?” she replies, all innocence. “Well, forgive me. Anyhow, who knows what eligible bachelors will be vying for your hand?”

I’m sprawled among a pile of cushions in the salon downstairs, leafing through my mother’s book of Roman love poems. Faustina sits in a leather chair across the room, dozing, her embroidery half fallen from her hand. A rumble of shouts and cries breaks the afternoon peace, and I realize that crowds are lining the road that runs towards the harbor. I close the book, shake my skirts down and go to push one of the windows open and look outside.

“What is it?” asks Faustina sleepily.

“I’m going to find out.” I rush from the salon, towards the back door.

“Don’t, darling, this could be dangerous,” Faustina pleads.

“I won’t go farther than the rear gates,” I call back.

Faustina follows me. With an exasperated sigh, she wraps her shawl about her shoulders and tells me she’s coming too.

We hurry down to the gates, past Beatrice’s bench, our stone wall and the whispers of the cypress trees. The noise grows louder. Guards shout and jostle the spectators, swords glinting. People spit and roar.

“Stand back!” bellows one of the guards. “Make way!”

A carriage clatters down the road. A man bursts from the crowd and smacks his hand on the door, shouting “Traitor!” Others hurl curses and insults, their faces red with anger and excitement. I hoist myself up on the iron bars of the gate so I can see above the furious blur of people. When the carriage passes, I catch a glimpse of the occupant.

It’s Vincenzo. Even my brief flicker of a glance shows him ashen. He stares at me for a moment, eyes brimming with a deathly dismay.

I stand tall as I stare back at him. Power thrills through me as he turns away, eyes downcast in shame. Faustina is standing on her toes, and as we watch the carriage clatter away, I realize the truth of Allegreza’s words. In Venice, a secret is indeed more powerful than a sword.

F
or the first time since I have returned to my father’s house, I sleep properly. Deep and heavy and dreamless. When I open my eyes the sun has inched across my bed. I’m free of Vincenzo. And I know what I must do now. I’ll find out what happened to my sister. I’ll get to the truth.

The Segreta is as powerful as Allegreza promised. I feel like my veins have swollen inside my body. I think I hear the hot red blood rushing through them. I’m alert and wide-eyed. I can smell the air, picking up clues and hints in it that I have not sensed before.

Faustina flaps into my room.

“Sweetheart, there’s no time for snoozing! Count Raffaello will be here soon.” She rummages in my chest of clothes and pulls out a pale orange and cream dress.

Count Raffaello
, I remember.
Carina’s husband
.

“And Carina too?” I ask, climbing out of bed.

“Yes.” Faustina nods. “It will be nice to have her in the
palazzo again—she was such a good friend to dear Beatrice.”

I splash my face and neck in the bowl of water resting by the window. It is scented with roses, and a few red petals float on the surface. I dry myself with a linen cloth and Faustina helps me into the dress. She ties the silken threads that hang from the sleeves and gathers my hair onto my head, fixing it in place with a pearly clasp.

She brings me to the mirror again, where I’m getting used to seeing someone different. I tuck a stray lock behind my ear.

The front door creaks open in the hall below us, and I hear Bianca’s voice. “Greetings, sir.”

“They’re here,” says Faustina.

I hurry out of my room and along the passageway. The shutters of the palazzo are wide open and the rooms thrum with light. The dusty air that used to muffle and blanket everything has disappeared. It’s as if the building itself is celebrating my freedom. One of the few paintings my father hasn’t sold hangs at the top of the stairs; some plain ancestor with a beauty mark on her cheek. She seems to smile at me as I pass, and, foolish as it is, I smile back.

I slow my pace as I walk down the stairs. My father has emerged from his library and is bowing to Raffaello and Carina, Bianca hovering close by. Carina’s face melts into a smile as soon as she sees me, and her face flushes, matching the pale pink satin of her dress. She carries a basket in her gloved hands. Raffaello is elegant in his brown boots, white shirt and black velvet jacket. I feel a pang of tenderness towards my father, dressed in his shabby cloth coat.

“Laura, good day to you,” says Raffaello with a bow. “We are both so sorry about this unpleasant business with Vincenzo.”

I drop into a curtsy. “News spreads quickly,” I reply.

“Enough of that!” says my father. “The past is over. Ladies, perhaps you will excuse us?” He opens his library door, gesturing for Raffaello to go through.

Carina sighs theatrically. “Men are such gossips! Come, Laura, let’s you and I sit in the courtyard.”

Raffaello kisses his wife’s cheek and joins my father. Carina slips her arm through mine and we go outside. The air is thick with the sweet smell of yellow gorse and apple blossom. I take her over to the bench, shielding my eyes from the bright sun with my hands.

“Poor old Vincenzo,” she says as we sit down together, our knees touching, in a sisterly huddle. “He’ll no longer stride along the Lido being saluted to.”

“Where do you think he’ll go?” I ask.

“Milan, if the rumors are true,” says Carina. “He has a substantial fleet of ships, mostly out of port at the moment. He’s lucky, really—the Doge has already impounded two of his vessels, and would have taken all of them if they’d been in Venice.”

“I feel sorry for him,” I say, remembering his gray face in the carriage.

Carina laughs, her eyes bright with astonishment. “Really? Well, you’re far more charitable than I. I think I’d throw a ball in celebration.” She squeezes my arm. “You
are
bursting with relief, aren’t you?”

Her candor is infectious, and I let my mask slip away.
“Carina, I feel like a prisoner at the gallows, with the noose round his neck, when he hears that he is to be spared after all.”

She smiles. “Well, this better not tempt you to spend more time with the painters of Venice!”

The memory of the painter’s deep eyes makes me blush.

“Of course not! But now I know what Beatrice’s last days were like,” I say. “She must have dreaded what her life was going to be like with that man as her husband and master.”

Carina takes my hand and smiles sadly. “At least you’re free and Beatrice is at peace.”

I pray that this is true. Faustina’s description of Beatrice’s billowing skirts will be forever burned on my inward eye. For a moment I want to tell Carina everything—Faustina’s terrible story of the night Beatrice died, and the dark certainty that sits inside me that she was murdered. But I remember the man with the metal teeth, and decide I had better keep it all to myself.

“I’ve brought you a gift.” Carina smiles. She reaches into her basket, which rests on the bench beside her, and takes out two colored headpieces, both made of tightly twisted straw—like wide-brimmed hats, except with a hole in the middle of each. One is a bright orange and the other is dark purple. She puts the purple one on her head and gracefully, with a kind of weaving movement, pulls her long silken hair through the hole. It shimmers in the sunshine like twists of copper and gold, spread out over the brim.

She passes the orange headdress to me. “Here—one of
Venice’s great beauty secrets,” she confides. “Look, the color goes perfectly with your dress.”

“What does it do?” I wonder.

“It’s just a little trickery to put some gold in your hair,” she laughs.

She helps to fit it on top of my head and I pull my hair through just as she has done. I feel her fingers arranging and spreading my locks. “There. All you need to do is sit out like this every day and let the sun do its work. A bit of lemon juice will help lighten the color as well.”

“Thank you,” I say. “You’ve no idea how much your kindness means to me. I adore Faustina, but it’s so lovely to have someone my own age to talk to. Especially now. Father’s in a crisis.”

“Men always are,” says Carina. “The higher they climb up the tree of power, the weaker the branches become.”

I can imagine her words coming from Allegreza.

Loud, angry shouts burst from the house and we both sit up straight. It’s my father’s voice, and then Raffaello’s. I can’t make out any words until my father bellows “Soon!” I look to Carina and see that her face has darkened. She tosses her headdress into her basket, stands up and strides towards the house.

“What’s happening?” I ask, hurrying after her, my own headdress in my hand.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing important,” Carina says, though her face is still stern and serious. “In any case, it’s best to ignore the skirmishes of male affairs.”

The door to the palazzo flies open. Raffaello bolts out like an enraged bull. He stamps down the steps towards us, seizing Carina’s arm. “Come. We’re going.”

Carina pulls herself free and takes his hand instead. As he almost yanks her down the path, she calls to me over her shoulder. “I’ll see you soon—very soon.”

“Goodbye!” I reply. But she and Raffaello are already through the gate.

I drift back inside. The cool of the hall seems chilly, and the lurking darkness makes me feel blind after the warmth of the sun.

My father sits in his library, slumped and deflated. His elbows rest on the desk and he combs his fingers through his limp hair.

“Father, are you all right? What happened?”

He begins to talk, but for a little while, I’m not sure he even knows I’m there.

“First Vincenzo, and now that
snake
Raffaello … Is there a conspiracy to keep me from the halls of power?” He looks up and waves me away as if there’s an insect pestering him. “Anyway, it’s none of your concern.”

“But I thought you and Raffaello were friends.”

My father gives a short, joyless laugh. “Laura, there are no friends in Venice. Leave me alone.”

M
y father spends the morning striding around the house, his boots squeaking and stamping on the floor. I eat alone while he takes his meal in the library. I peek in to see if he wants anything, and he’s scribbling a letter. There is a pile of letters on his desk, scrolled and sealed with red wax. He asks me to call for Bianca and he gives them to her, dispatching her hither and thither across the city.

“I’m not a messenger,” she grumbles as she flounces past me and out into the streets.

He corners me in the salon, where I’m continuing my mother’s book of love poems.

“Right,” he says. “This is what’s going to happen now. You’re to get to know Paulina.”

“I know her already, Father.”

“Well, you’re to get to know her better. If I’m right, and I
do
have a nose for these things, she’s soon to be
married into a powerful family. God knows how, as the uncle who keeps her is an imbecile. Do you understand how important it is for us to foster such connections, especially now?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good. I’ve arranged for you to meet her this afternoon. At the Piazza della Angela.”

He makes it sound like a business meeting, but the thought of seeing Paulina again, and of getting away from the tense atmosphere of the palazzo, is a welcome one. There’s much to tell her.