Cross My Heart (6 page)

“Is that who I think it is?” I hear a man hiss behind me.

“They shouldn’t have come,” says a rotund woman in a green silk gown.

The crowd parts at the far side of the ballroom and I see another figure making his way towards the new arrivals. I only glimpse his profile and then his back. His doublet is purple and edged with gold, and the ruff around his neck is very white. Two guards follow close behind, swords hanging at their sides.

“The Doge is going to speak to them!” says the woman.

The Doge? I remember Bianca’s excitement. Now that I’m in the same room as the most powerful man in Venice, curiosity burns inside me. The other guests move towards him, jostling to see what will happen next. This room of well-heeled socialites exchanging pleasantries is undergoing a strange metamorphosis, and the transformation is an unpleasant one. Or perhaps it was always like this—not a group of civilized citizens, but a reeking mob. It makes my blood quicken.

I slide as close to the front as I can, standing on tiptoes
to see over the wigs and headdresses, my balance supported by the press of the crowd.

The Doge stops in front of the black-clad couple. They face him with hard, sad faces. Who are they? Why would they challenge the most powerful man in Venice? The Doge shakes his head, then turns to the guards behind him.

It cannot be.

With that first view of his face comes the realization that I’ve seen this man, the Doge, before. I want to hide, but there’s nowhere to go. I’ve felt breath from his nostrils on my skin. I’ve held his arms and struggled with him like we were wrestlers, or animals.

The Doge of Venice is the crazed man from the convent. And, in this room, only I know his secret.

T
he Doge beckons his guards towards the couple.

“Turn around and leave by the doors through which you’ve entered,” he orders.

If his words are meant to intimidate, they only half succeed. The woman’s face trembles, but the man stands straighter still.

“We have as much a right to be here as any of the families of the province,” he says. “Asserting that right is what we have come to do.”

A gasp ripples across the room.

“You have no rights to be asserted,” says the Doge. “This is a private gathering and you have not been invited. How dare you come here?”

They don’t have the chance to answer him. He raises his arm, strong and firm—that very same arm that I held to stop it thrashing and flailing. The guards seize the couple, dragging them towards the door. The woman screams and
the man bellows, “You will not insult the name of my family. The de Ferraras will not be humiliated.”

“Stop. Enough, Julius,” his wife says. Her face twists with some inner pain.

The guards release them and they walk together towards the door. The woman tries to take her husband by the arm but he shrugs her off.

The doors clang shut. The moment is over, and the music begins once more. The Doge moves back among the crowd, his power exercised, and a retinue of male guests follow, their faces grim. I pray he won’t come this way. I was wearing my habit the last time we met, and he was in a daze when we spoke, but still, he looked right at me.
“I’m a weak man. Weak and yielding. No one in Venice can find out what I suffer.”
His words that day in the convent make a new kind of sense to me. If Venice knew what I know, would its people still grant him such loyalty?

My thoughts must be playing across my face, as the woman with the green dress I saw earlier takes my arm and pulls me into her circle.

“Oh, my dear, don’t look so startled!” she says.

I smile gratefully.

“Do you know what that was about?” a woman with feathers in her hair asks, her eyebrows raised.

“No,” I say, “I’ve no idea.”

The women laugh, delighted, I guess, to have an ingénue to tutor.

“That was the de Ferraras—Julius and Grazia,” says the woman in green. “They have a feud with the Doge and his family.” She pats my arm playfully. “How could you live in Venice and not know that?”

“I’ve been … absent,” I say.

“Perhaps you were too young when it all started. It must have been ten years ago now. The Doge executed the de Ferraras’ only son, Carlo, when he was just a young lawyer,” she continues. “On charges of conspiracy, apparently.” She stops to cross herself, her plump hand moving rapidly across her bosom.

The woman wearing the feathers continues. “Julius took the only revenge he could. His men killed Roberto—the Doge’s son. So tall and handsome that boy was. Only eleven.”

Her eyes glisten as she speaks, but not with tears. They brim with histories, backgrounds, stories, reasons, accounts of old scores.

“Oh yes, such an awful business that was!” exclaims the woman in the green gown. “The noblest among us are always those in most danger, isn’t that what they say?” The women nod, and she sighs. “But young men are such a worry. So full of passion and principle.”

“I always advise my boy not to take life so seriously,” says another. “Take things with a pinch of salt, that’s what I say. I mean, goodness, we have quite enough to worry about, what with the Turks and pirates ruining my husband’s business. Honestly, I can’t keep my daughters in silk these days.”

They laugh. The big woman drips with gold, her green dress stretched over her vast bosom like a yawn of satin. I wish that Annalena could see, or that I could tell her everything. I want to sit in the window of our cell with the white curtain dancing in the breeze and see her eyes widen.

Their laughter fades as they stare behind me. I turn to a handsome equerry, dressed in a livery of gray and red.
Beside him is the Doge and a finely dressed woman I guess must be the Doge’s wife. Jewels glitter from her ears and about her neck.

The equerry indicates me with a flourish and I step forward. “Your Grace,” he says to the Doge, “may I present Laura, Antonio della Scala’s youngest.”

“Ah yes,” the Doge says. He looks straight at me.

My breathing has lost its rhythm, and I stammer as I drop into a clumsy curtsy. “Your Grace.”

There isn’t the slightest glimmer of recognition in his eyes. His wife regards me with a quizzical smile.

“Make sure Vincenzo treats you properly,” she says to me.

They move on past to other people, all hungry for a kiss of the Doge’s ring, a shake of his hand or a single word from the most powerful man in Venice.

I step out of the path of a dancing couple, who are too wrapped up in each other’s gazes to notice me. The girl’s skirts brush mine as they whip past. Across the ballroom couples spiral and turn in time to the music. I’m amazed by the way hands openly rest upon bodies, cheeks press against cheeks.

A young woman with a bright face rushes across the room, skipping through the dancers. There’s something familiar about her: very pretty, high cheekbones, a slender neck. Her dress is cream, dotted with crystals, and her shoulders bare but for her tumbling black curls. The remembered taste of meringues sits on my tongue. I
do
know her—and her grandmama, with her
sospiri di monaca
. The last time I saw Paulina she was softer and rounder. An apple-cheeked little girl has been replaced by this grownup and willowy woman.

“Hello, hello, sweet Laura!” she says, kissing me quickly, once on each cheek. She hugs me close and I want to laugh and then I want to cry. Because she was, she
is
, my friend.

“How many years?” she asks. “How many since I last saw you? Four?”

“Six,” I say. “You look beautiful!”

“Not as beautiful as you!” she says. “You know that all the men are talking about you already. Have you been flirting?”

I blush. “I …”

“I see,” laughs Paulina, and she wags a finger playfully at my cheeks. “You can even bring rose blossoms to your face at will. Just like your sister.” The words fall from her mouth, and seem to drop to the ground as heavily as the statue in the hallway. Her smile vanishes. “I’m so sorry.”

“That’s all right,” I say quickly, desperately wanting to change the subject. “How are you? How’s your grandmama?”

“Oh, she died three years ago!” says Paulina. “I wrote to tell you, but you never replied. We all thought that you’d turned to God, after all.”

I remember the Abbess, holding sheets of parchment over a candle. Paulina’s letter would have been among them.

“I wrote to you all the time,” I say. “For the first couple of years. Sometimes every day. The censors were strict, though.”

Paulina squeezes my hand.

“Are you married?” I ask.

Paulina gives me a sly grin. “Not yet.” She lowers her voice. “I can’t tell you about it here—but I will. Now, what was it like in the convent? I’ve heard they have decadent
parties and that men visit, and mad nuns stick their bottoms out of the windows at passersby.”

Her laughter scatters across the room, drawing attention, but I don’t care and laugh too.

“Not the one I was in.” I smile.

“I see,” says Paulina seriously, but her eyes dance impishly. “Is it true that they torture you with instruments if you do something sinful? And you have to make necklaces out of children’s teeth?”

“No,” I say, laughing as I shake my head. “Nothing like that. It was mainly very, very boring. Anyway, I want to hear about Venice, and parties, and dresses, and—well, everything.”

She smiles and draws a deep breath. I guess she doesn’t know where to start.

People who have been friends as children always find a thousand things to say to each other, no matter how long they have been parted. For the rest of the evening Paulina is there, if not right beside me, then hovering nearby. Now that I’ve found her, it seems that my new life is going to get easier. One day I’ll become as confident and self-possessed as she.

“Come.” Paulina beckons, putting out her hands to me. “Come and dance.”

But a man in a silver-threaded jacket steps between us and puts his hands around my waist. “I’ve been trying to summon the courage to talk to this lovely stranger all night.”

His eyes are kind. My heart flutters as I wonder for a moment if he is Vincenzo.

“I don’t imagine you’re ever short of courage, Pietro,” teases Paulina.

“Oh, but I am,” he replies. “Every time I ask a lovely girl to dance.”

No, he’s not my intended. But the way he smiles down at me makes my cheeks flush.

“So,” says Pietro, “I must know, this instant, who in heaven’s name is this wonderful woman?”

“I’m Laura della Scala.”

“Well, Laura della Scala, I’m Pietro Castellano, and I’ve discovered my purpose in coming tonight. It’s to dance with you.”

He leads me out onto the floor.

I stumble after him, trying to keep up. “I’ve never danced,” I tell him.

“Never danced? Where have you been all these years? In a convent?”

“Actually—yes.”

Pietro laughs—I don’t think he believes me. “Anyone can dance. Even a clumsy, awkward fellow like me. Let me show you how.”

He’s right. He spends a few minutes slowly taking me through steps that seemed so intricate when I was watching, helping me to learn the simple rhythm that lies underneath. Pietro grips my waist and my left hand, and as we speed around the floor I see our laughing faces reflected in one of the gold-encrusted mirrors. I, Laura della Scala, am dancing—with a man I’ve only just met!

A firm grip clutches my arm and we halt. It’s my father.

“Excuse me, Pietro. I need my daughter.”

“Yes, of course,” Pietro says graciously. He bows to me. “A pleasure, Laura, an absolute pleasure.”

My father smiles tightly and steers me across the room.

“It strikes me that you need a chaperone,” he says. “To teach you the way things are done.”

“Father, do you remember Paulina? I’ve just met her—”

“Yes, yes.” He isn’t looking at me anymore, but waves to someone in the crowd. “There’s so much you still need to learn.”

“Paulina can teach me,” I say.

My father smiles indulgently. “Paulina in many ways is more immature than you. It comes from having no father in her life.”

The person he was waving to comes through the throng towards us. It’s a young woman. Her face is very pale. She has red-gold hair and aquamarine eyes fringed with dark lashes. Her looks are striking. I recognize her as one of my sister’s old friends.

“Is that—”

“Carina!” finishes my father, opening his arms wide.

Carina kisses him on both cheeks, then turns her lovely gaze to me. She gives a sharp cry, raising a hand to her red lips, then sighs.

“I’m sorry,” she says, fanning her face with delicate fingers. “For a moment I thought … You remind me of her so much, Laura.”

Her words make tears start to my eyes. I take her hands and kiss her. “Thank you,” I say.

“Well, I shall leave you two to reacquaint yourselves,” says my father. “Laura, be advised in all matters by Carina. She’s the perfect guide for a young lady of Venice.”

If Paulina was my best friend, Carina was my sister’s, one of the many radiant girls who always seemed so aloof when I was little. When she reminds me of her name from those days—de Ferrara—I realize her parents are Julius and Grazia, the black-clad couple thrown out of the party.