Cross My Heart (20 page)

I almost scoff and Paulina flushes. “Well, I … I …”

“No matter,” Grazia interrupts. “There will come a time, I’m sure, when we can help you.”

Paulina regains her composure, and the women break away to talk among themselves. I draw close to her side. “Congratulations, Paulina.”

I can see her eyes widen behind her mask. “Laura?” There’s a sliver of dismay in her voice. “Is that you? You never …”

“Shh,” I interrupt. I lean towards her, so that only she might hear my words. “Be careful. The Society isn’t what it seems.”

“But
you’re
a member,” she replies. “What do you mean?”

Allegreza is suddenly beside us, like an apparition. “Paulina, excuse me, but I need to have a word with Laura.”

She gestures for me to come to the edge of the gathering and I do as I’m bidden.

“You seem troubled, Laura. Is something wrong?”

“Why, should there be?” I reply.

She takes off her mask, and looks at me directly, so I do the same. “Venice is a dangerous and frightening place,” she says gently. “We must trust one another.”

Who is she trying to fool? She must think I’m as stupid as Giacomo does. I see Paulina chattering to the women the way she does when she’s at any party. They’ve lured my friend into their web, and they spin the gossamer around her.

“I don’t believe you,” I say.

Her face flinches as though I’ve slapped her.

I move towards the door. “I have to go home. Carina will be calling soon, and I don’t want to let her down.”

Allegreza doesn’t try to stop me. She follows me up the stairs and unlocks the door to let me out. “Be careful,” she says. Her voice is deep and concerned. “Remember, Laura, how I said you are bound to us? Well, we are bound to you too. If ever you’re in danger, come to me.”

I nod and walk off into the afternoon sun, but I can’t imagine ever asking for their help again. When I glance back, she stands there, a tall shadow in the doorway.

C
arina is waiting for me in the salon, a pale and thin version of herself. Bianca is laying out a jug of lemon juice mixed with water and sugar. She pours it into two goblets.

“Where have you been?” Carina asks.

I go to her and take her cold hands in mine. “I’m so sorry. I …”

She’s started to cry, so I fold her in my arms. “Bianca, leave us, please.”

I take Carina by the hand and lead her to a soft chair. I offer her a handkerchief.

“I feel so lost without him,” she says after a time, “and if I could find …” She looks at me, and there’s fear within her. “Can I trust you, Laura?”

“On my dear sister’s memory,” I say.

She takes a deep breath and glances towards the door.

“Bianca has gone,” I say.

Carina nods. “They have spies everywhere.”

“Who?”

“You know,” she whispers.

Her look implores me to utter the word, to break my vow to Allegreza. But even now I can’t.

“The Segreta!” she finishes.

I take a sip of juice. In all likelihood, Carina doesn’t know of her own mother’s involvement with the Society.

“I think they killed Beatrice too,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve given voice to my suspicions, and saying the words strengthens my conviction.

Carina sits up, frowning. “Do you have proof?”

I shake my head, and relate as well as I can the evidence I have seen with my own eyes. I omit my own involvement with the masked women but the gaps in my story are obvious, and Carina reads the empty space for what it is.

“My God!” she says. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” She begins to stand, but I beg her not to go.

“One of them in name, but not in nature,” I say. “They tricked me, with the promise to break my engagement to Vincenzo.”

She sighs deeply. “If what you say is true, then you—then we—must tread carefully.”

“I swear on my mother’s grave, on my sister’s too, that I’m not lying. There must be someone we can tell—someone on the Grand Council, perhaps.”

Her face is hard. “No! Raffaello knew of them too, and Beatrice, and look what happened to them. We must keep this to ourselves, until we’re sure.”

“I am sure,” I say.

“Until we are sure it’s safe.”

I wish I could talk to Carina about Giacomo, about the
gnawing sensation like hunger in my stomach. But I still feel foolish for believing his sugared words, and my hurt seems nothing while the shadows of the Segreta loom over our conversation like squatting vultures.

After she’s gone, having first extracted a promise that I won’t behave rashly—“and under no circumstances talk to your father”—I kick off my shoes and throw myself onto my bed. In the convent I would be heading for evening prayer about this time. Back then my life was so ordered that every moment of each day was accounted for; now I feel like a gondolier who has left the safety of the canals, steering through twisting currents and trying not to be swept out to sea.

There’s a little rap on my door. I snatch up my mother’s book of love poems from under my pillows and pretend to be absorbed in its pages.

It’s Bianca. She looks like she’s trying not to smirk.

“That man has called again,” she says.

“What man?”

“You know, Giacomo. The painter.”

I scramble from the bed and stand on the cold floor. “Well, you must tell the
painter
to go away this instant, and not to come here again.”

Bianca opens her mouth to interrupt, but I hold up my hand.

“You must tell him that I won’t sit for him today, or any other. Make sure he gets my message. And come back and tell me when he’s gone.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s already gone. He just came to deliver the painting.”

“Deliver it? It isn’t finished.”

“He says it is,” says Bianca. “He left it in the atrium.”

He can’t possibly have finished it. Only yesterday it was just a ghostly outline. There were supposed to be at least two more sittings. Bianca must be mistaken.

“Give me a moment,” I tell her.

As I find my shawl and put on my slippers again, I smile perversely at the thought of my father’s anger when he sees Giacomo’s shoddy workmanship, when he’s brought back in disgrace and forced to explain himself. It will be no less than he deserves. I expect to hear my father’s roar of fury with each step.

I pad down the corridor to the atrium and find Father already there. Between us is a stand, on which I can see the back of the canvas.

“Father?” I say.

My father stares at the painting. There are no furrows in his brow and he seems quite calm. I think he may even be smiling.

“Come,” he says tenderly. “Come around here and see how the boy has captured you.”

My chest swells with nausea. I walk round, giving the painting a wide berth, to where my father stands. The whole world holds its breath with me.

I blink slowly, then open my eyes.

“How about it?” says my father.

I gasp—for it’s an astonishing thing that I see. The painting is radiant, and perfect in every detail. I step closer to examine every curve and nuance. My fingernails, the color and shadows of my collarbone, the blue of my eyes, the tumble of my hair. The shape of my eyebrows, the tilt of my head, the shimmer of the sunshine on my skin. How can
he have caught the colors and arcs of me like this without having me in front of him? The paint is still wet, unvarnished, and seems like some living thing. The bodice of my mother’s dress sits lower on my chest than I remember, and there’s a defiance in my look that must be an echo of my disposition when we parted. And there’s something else that’s impossible to explain, and I feel myself blushing angrily at the thought. Because anyone looking at this picture might suspect that its creator knew more about me than I do myself.

Faustina and Bianca scurry in to see as well. They clasp their hands together and gasp in delighted unison. They don’t see the insolence of the brushstrokes.

“Yes,” says my father, “it is indeed a good likeness. Faustina, go to the courtyard and give him this.” He hands her a puckered purse.

“But he’s already gone,” I say, taking Bianca’s word for it.

“No such luck!” jokes my father. “Workmen never forget what they’re owed. No, he’s waiting out there, on Beatrice’s bench.”

Before anyone decides otherwise, I’ve snatched the purse from a startled Faustina.

“Here, I’ll take it to him,” I say, and I march out to the courtyard.

My cheeks are burning. I will confront him. I’ll tell him that I never want him to come near this house again or to paint any more pictures of me or to send me misleading gifts of pretend concern and care.

He’s sitting where my father said he was, his arms stretched across the back of the bench, his leather-booted
feet planted firmly on the ground. When he sees me he stands up.

“Laura! Thank you. Thank you for coming out. Please sit with me. I very much need to talk to you.”

I don’t sit. My lips tremble no matter how much I wish they wouldn’t.

“Do not call me by that name. I’m Signorina della Scala, and you … you’re just a painter boy my father paid to do a job.”

I throw the purse on the bench.

He doesn’t even look at it. He stares at me.

“But Laura …”

“Stop it! You have no right. It’s wrong of you.”

“I’ve lost all sense of what is right and what is wrong.” He sighs.

“Then let me put you straight. I don’t want anything to do with you. I want you to stay away from here. The painting is finished, and you have been paid in full. There’s no reason for you to come back.”

“Yes, there is,” he says. “And it’s the best reason of all.”

I place both hands on my hips, as I’ve seen Faustina do with the drunken beggars who parade the streets. “Oh yes?”

“Laura, Beatrice and I weren’t lovers. I promise you.”

His broad smooth hand is splayed against his chest, crushing his soft white shirt. His eyes are candid, the color of burnished hazel. I can’t look at them, or I am lost.

The bells of St. Mark’s start to chime, and I feel like my heart is keeping pace with them.

“You have until the ringing stops to explain yourself.”

Dong
, goes the bell.

“She came to me. We’d met at the unveiling of an altarpiece in the church of San Marziale, by chance.”

Dong
. I press my lips together and look at the ground.

“I said I was a painter too, that’s all.”

Dong
. I stare at the strong lines of his shadow on the flagstones.

“She wanted to learn. I wasn’t sure at first—I warned her that people wouldn’t approve. But she insisted.”

Dong
.

“God, Laura, you must know how stubborn she can be!”

Dong
.

He looks down for the fraction of a second, “I mean, how stubborn she was.”

The sounds of the final chimes shiver above us, and he’s silent. I turn around, so that he can’t see the tears welling in my eyes. I
do
know how stubborn she was, and I remember her sketches as a girl. Of our mother, of the ships in the harbor, of me. The tears tumble out and slide down my face. I’ve been lied to so much, but the truth of his words shines brighter than the sun.

“I’ll go,” he says quietly. I listen to his footsteps move away.

“Once she spent two days searching the streets for an amber necklace she had dropped,” I say. “Everyone told her to give up. She sneaked out at night. When she came back she held it high above her head, like a trophy.”

He stops at the gate. When he turns towards me he grins. “That sounds like her.”

We are silent again, standing facing one another.

“You know, all she ever did was talk about you,” he says. “And in the end, before I’d even met you, you were all I ever talked about to her too.”

The wind whispers through the cypress trees. I think I hear someone crying, but it’s a turtledove keening high above us. I can’t speak.

“I think I was in love with you even before we met,” he says.

I stare at him. I don’t move. I wonder if I’ve imagined his words. “What did you say?”

“You’re all I think about. I’ve tried not to. But Laura, I can’t get you out of my head. I’ll never be able to paint another picture again as long as I live. Unless it’s a picture with you in it.”

His brown hands are splayed on either side of him in a kind of entreaty. The pendant around his neck flashes suddenly, and again it seems he might be an angel with speckles of paint on his arms.

We move towards each other. I reach up to his face and my hand looks pale against his brown skin. My fingers follow the subtle undulations of his deepening dimples, trace the prickle of his beard.

“Laura,” he says. The sound of his voice saying my name is like the taste of sweet wine—something rich and complicated that I’ve never had before. I tilt my face towards him and gently he touches my chin and moves me closer to him, in the same way he once, a whole day ago, moved it towards the sun.

He presses his lips up against mine, and they are parted, and he is kissing me.