Cross My Heart (15 page)

Depending on the way the light falls upon it, my dress shimmers as light as a pale new violet or as dark as a rich amethyst. I’m grateful for my broad hat as we cross to the mainland of the Veneto on a sailing barge, one of a small fleet that has been sent by our hosts. The sun pours down, bright but merciless, making the faces of the young even more youthful and the faces of the old more aged. Once we land on the other side, we are brought by simple carriage to Raffaello and Carina’s hunting lodge on the banks of a small lake. It’s a resplendent place, tall and turreted, and the gates receive us like the open arms of a grand relative. The big news, and I hear it from at least three
mouths, is that the Doge himself hasn’t been able to come, due to illness. But I see his wife, the Duchess, and his son, Nicolo. I wonder, guiltily, if it’s the illness I couldn’t keep secret. No one seems unhappy by his absence—if anything, the mood lifts at the thought of being unsupervised, like we are boys in a schoolroom without a tutor.

Gloved fingers are gripped by manly hands as ladies are greeted. Men’s cheeks are brushed with puckered lips. Ribbons of blue and yellow flap festively from every tree and pillar, and seem to grow so that by the time we’re at the door, they flop gigantically, great wreaths of fabric largesse, hanging in celebration of the noble family to whom these colors belong.

My father can’t stop smiling. It looks like he has a cramp in his face. He wears his hunting gear, faded and thinning in places, but good enough, he resolved last night, for another outing.

We arrive just in time. Men in brocade coats, black trousers and big-buckled boots are rounding everyone up, getting ready for the hunt. Two men rake a wide, dusty, tree-lined path. The horses have purpose in their eyes. Smoky air tumbles from their nostrils and soft thuds echo as they hit the ground with their hooves, snorting impatiently. One of them tosses its head in agitation. I reach out to it and put my hand on its long nose.

“Calma,”
I whisper.

It’s then that I feel someone else’s hand on my own shoulder and I jump. Giacomo stands right beside me. I breathe in sharp and full. He smells like paint and apples. He smiles in his soft clothes: his black cotton trousers, sandals that show his toes.

“Hello, you,” he whispers, and I turn to him, his face right next to mine.

“You’re here,” I say. It’s hard to tear my eyes away from his face, but I must in case anyone is watching. “I mean, I didn’t expect it.”

Giacomo pats the horse’s back, and makes comforting little humming, clicking noises to soothe it. “I’ve been commissioned to sketch the hunting party and I’m behind on it already. Too many distractions.”

“Is that what I am?” I ask.

“A welcome distraction,” he says.

“Thank you for your gift,” I whisper. “It was kind of you, but …” I’m suddenly aware that we’re standing very close. He’s even taller than I remember. I see my father, between handshakes, casting his glance around.

“But what?” he asks.

“Well, I just think it would be better if you didn’t send me anything like that again. My father would not take kindly …”

He looks crestfallen. “Very well, Laura.”

“It’s not that I didn’t like it,” I add hurriedly. “It was beautiful, it’s just …”

“I’d better go,” he says. He bows his head and backs away from me, and then he turns and disappears into the bustle of servants, noblemen, stable boys and silk-dressed ladies. I watch his loose white shirt and his black curls weaving through the crowd.

I rummage fiercely in my velvet bag for my fan. I open it in front of me. It’s purple too, with silver threads stitched around each boned section. I move it over my face to cool my skin.

Carina emerges from the door of the lodge in a yellow dress. Raffaello holds her arm, and the guests flock to the hosts. Men drink wine from silver goblets. Some of the hunters have already started to clamber up onto the horses. Colored birds screech in the trees, heralding the dramatic departure of the hunt. My father looks a little unsure as he steadies his foot on the stirrup. Perhaps his riding prowess has deserted him. I see Paulina standing close to a young man in gold, who, from the radiant look on her face, I guess must be Nicolo. Servants wind their way through the clusters of guests, filling glasses, offering tidbits and napkins. The hunters’ hounds watch their progress, slavering and whining hopefully.

I wish I had thanked Giacomo more for the present. How spoilt and how haughty I must have sounded.

Someone puts their hands over my eyes, and my heart skips. I turn around.

“Oh! It’s you, Carina. H-how are you?”

“What a welcome!” she says, smiling.

“I’m sorry, I thought …”

“You thought I was that painter boy,” she says, with a thin smile. “I saw you having quite a chat with each other.”

She must have been watching through a window. “Don’t be silly,” I reply, feeling my face getting hot again.

“Aha, I see it now!” she says, pointing at me. “It doesn’t take much to get the truth out of you!” She sounds like she’s only joking, but tiny hairs of alarm bristle along the back of my neck. Her smile has gone, and she draws me closer, her hand on my elbow.

“You should be more careful. It’s terribly easy to get a
bad name, you know, and very difficult to regain a good one when you’ve lost it.”

I try to smile. “Really, Carina, you’re assuming something that’s not the case. We were just passing inconsequential remarks. There was nothing in it.”

“I see,” she replies, but her voice is granite hard—and I know that she’s not convinced by my protestations at all.

A
horn sounds, high and shrill. There are hoofbeats and shouts, and a haze of dust rises. The rest of the hunters clamber up. Raffaello leads the group to the gates and down the tree-framed track. All the others follow, trampling away in a cloud of frantic hollers and whoops.

Silence reigns after the pounding of hooves. It takes a few minutes before a new, softer set of conversations begin. Inside the lodge is sparsely furnished, and the women bustle around the table and instruct the servants in laying out the cold platters and plates. The women are smiling and busy and chatting. Some take off their shoes and elaborate hairpieces and gasp with a temporary relief.

As the hours pass, there’s talk of childbirth, illnesses of older relatives, marriages and romances, the threads and turning points of human connection. Although I’ve little to add, the conversation is comforting, familiar. Now, among all these courtly women, I realize that I miss Giacomo.
What if he should be injured by a charging horse, unseen by its rider? Will he return for the evening, or will he go back to the mainland?

I’m happy to be apart from the others, and I find a quiet bower beside the kitchen doors, away from the bustle. Some of the other women toss a ball between them like children. Beatrice and I used to play like that, and I can almost hear her happy shrieks.

I’m called back inside to help lay the feast along with the servants. We’re playing as if involved in some rustic idyll, pretending to be country wives. The real servants hardly know how to behave with this inversion of the natural order. For them, it’s not a game, but a nuisance. Carina rushes in: “They will return soon.”

It’s the signal for us to be ready. Those who have taken off shoes and hairpieces put them on again. Maids brush some of the other women’s hair and powder their faces.

We hear the baying hounds first and assemble in the courtyard. Late afternoon is drifting towards evening, and the sun has dipped behind the trees. The men are sweating, shouting, calling for wine. My father looks flushed, and a little tired as he lowers himself from his steed. Another man has broken his arm in a fall but carries the injury lightly in a sling. There’s no sign of Giacomo, and from a groom I learn that a boat has already left for the mainland once more. The attendants parade the kill: two deer, savaged at their throats, their eyes already turning translucent. The butchery happens right there in the courtyard, and scraps are tossed to the yapping hounds as the men regale us with the triumphs and disasters of the day.

The lodge is half open to the elements, and the great table becomes gaudier and more bountiful as each dish is brought from the kitchens into the fading light. There are delicate yellow discs of polenta arranged in a curved pyramid and speckled with fresh green herbs and black pepper. Vast platters of lobsters, shrimps, mussels, octopus and clams are carried out proudly. The main focus, though, are the deer. The poor creatures slain today have been taken away, and one that has been hanging for some days is set to roast over an open fire pit. The men are still changing from their hunting gear.

Carina comes over. She holds a fat grape and bites into it. A little dribble of juice escapes and trickles down the side of her mouth for a second before she wipes it away.

“I’m sorry about the way I spoke to you earlier,” she says. “I was only worried for you.”

“I know,” I say. “Thank you.”

“I’m so glad you were able to come,” she continues. “This must be your first hunt!”

“It’s all so lovely,” I say, relieved to talk about something different.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she agrees. “It’s very important for everything to be perfect. This is my first time organizing the hunt as Raffaello’s wife. The whole of Venice will know what we ate, and who said what, and what everyone was wearing. So tell me,” she says, and I’m afraid she’s going to interrogate me about Giacomo again. “Now that you’re free, and a lady of leisure, what are your plans? Your head must still be reeling from Vincenzo’s exile.”

“Every morning I wake and I feel the weight of that
burden lifted,” I say. “Though of course, I don’t revel in anyone’s misfortune, not even old Vincenzo’s.”

Carina’s face stiffens again. She leans a fraction closer, rearranging a vase of flowers minutely, then tilting her head to survey her efforts.

“I don’t imagine fortune had anything to do with it.”

She tosses out these words as though she’s trying to sound lighthearted and casual, but when I look at her eyes, I see she’s anything but. I wish I could steer Carina back to the mood that she’s usually in. The way she’s acting now—it makes me tense.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I say quietly.

“Don’t you?” she asks.

I lift my eyes up to her again. Her brow is arched.

“Walk with me,” she says.

We leave the tables and walk into the grounds. The water of the lake is silver and completely still. Carina clutches her long pink fan and whacks it into the palm of her hand from time to time, like a soldier with a baton.

“There may be luck in other parts of the world,” she says, “but not in Venice. When some great stroke of fortune falls across someone’s path, then the first thing I always do is look to see who threw it there. What was the chain of events? To whom is that person connected? And what actions contributed to their so-called luck?”

Her shoes crush the grassy verge on which we walk, and we have to bend from time to time to avoid the low-hanging tendrils of bindweed that dangle from the orange trees above.

“Well, in my case, I’m sure it was plain old good fortune.”

“We are either puppets, or we are puppeteers,” she says.
“Always strings attached. Always someone pulling them. That’s how Venice works: it’s how sailboats move; it’s how the curtains in the theater are opened at the beginning and closed at the end. It’s how some people become rich and how others become poor. It’s how promises are made and kept,” she says with a smile, “and broken.”

Our walk brings us by a looping path back towards the lodge. Carina takes a few moments to issue instructions to a girl drawing water from a well. Then she lowers her voice and says something that makes me go cold.

“I know, Laura. I know who you’ve been in contact with.”

If I try to deny it, I know that I’ll give myself away. My breathing quickens, and the bones of my dress dig into my waist and chest.

“I know that the Segreta have approached you,” she continues. “Just as they came to Beatrice.”

I stop walking. She takes a few more strides ahead, pulling a strand of foxgloves out of the ground, picking each of the little bells off and dropping them on the ground. She turns around, and the look she gives me feels like a stern glare.