The Fool's Girl (13 page)

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14

‘I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you!’

VIOLETTA

I was taken from Illyria, loaded like a slave on to a galley that flew the winged lion of Venice. The galley rode the waves in the outer harbour. Broken spars and bloated corpses, wreckage left from the recent sea battle, rolled in the waves. Smoke from my city brought the bitter, choking stench of defeat on the freshening wind. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help gazing up at the broken towers, the breached and blackened walls. As I did so, a woman reached for the amulet that I wore round my neck and tore it from me. I thought she would rob me, but all she said was, ‘They will take that from you, madonna. Keep it safe. Hide it in your clothes.’

I thought that I would be herded below with the others, but I was taken aft and locked into a small cabin. The galley rose and fell, the banks of long oars clicking together. Malvolio kept the captain waiting. I heard him complaining that we were missing the tide. Eventually he arrived, along with Lady Francesca and crates of baggage. He likes to keep people waiting. He likes to make them think that he’s an important man.

The oars fell into the water and the ship began to move, slowly at first, then faster, rocking and bucking as we hit open water. I watched from my tiny porthole as the ship left the harbour. This was the last of Illyria. I did not know if I would ever see my homeland again.

At first we hugged the coast. Waves crashed against the rocks at the base of the great cliffs that reared above us. Then the cliffs gave way to steep hillsides patched with forest trees and marked with the black strokes of single cypresses. In between them lay little squares of green, scraps of cultivation. The tang of burning came on the salty wind. The destruction had spread out from the city into the country around. Plumes of smoke rose from the scattered villages and homesteads and drifted down towards the sea, and I wondered who would be left to tend the fields and man the fishing boats pulled up in the little bays.

The ship began to steer away from the coast and out through the offshore islands. The channels here are treacherous with strong, contrary currents and full of hidden rocks and reefs. Depths were sounded and directions shouted. The voice issuing the commands had a local accent. The pilot was native to Illyria. I turned away as the islands slid slowly by, turned ghostly by the shrouding mist of evening. How many had been in the pay of Venice? I thought on how deeply we had been betrayed.

On the evening of the second day I was summoned from my tiny berth and emerged on to the deck. We were out of sight of land. The sleek vessel hissed through the oily swell, propelled by a light wind that ruffled the long red pennants flying fore and aft and filled the slanting lanteen sails. I was taken to a much larger cabin, spacious and luxuriously appointed. From the rolled navigational charts and various instruments lying about, I assumed that this belonged to the captain, but it seemed that he had been forced to vacate his quarters to make way for another, who sat waiting for me, a chessboard in front of him, the pieces carved from red and white gold, the board made from black onyx and marble. I recognised the set as belonging to my father.

He smiled, showing large teeth, the long yellow canines gleaming like fangs, and waved a hand, inviting me to sit opposite him.

‘What else have you stolen from us?’ I asked.

‘You should treat me more civilly,’ he answered, careful not to let his smile slip.

‘Why should I be civil to a thief and a villain?’ I asked.

‘Your fate is in my hands.’

‘I do not care what you do to me.’

The light from the swinging lamp shone on the black silk of his cassock and glinted off the large silver cross that he wore on his chest. Malvolio might have risen to greatness, but I knew him as Lady Olivia’s steward. He left her service before I was born, but I had been brought up on tales of his pomposity, his pride, his preening self-love, as bottomless as it was baseless. All this had made him the butt of Feste and the other servants. Why should I respect such a one? He had left the court spraying impotent curses, swearing revenge. They had laughed and then forgotten him. Now here he was: the instrument of our nemesis. His smile said that he had waited a long time for this. Time had brought him what he wanted. He had betrayed us, connived with our enemies who had destroyed my city, killed my father and despoiled our household. He beckoned and another stepped forward out of the shadows.

‘You know my companion, the Lady Francesca?’

‘Lady,’ I said, barely nodding in her direction as she took her place to the side, from where she sat watching us with her colourless, pale-lashed eyes. Whether she was there because she wanted to return to her home city, or because she had cast aside one lover for another, I neither knew nor cared. I stared back at her until she lowered her eyes and commenced stitching at an embroidery frame she had on her lap.

‘Do you play?’ he asked, indicating the board in front of him.

‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘But I do not see the point of it.’ I stared him in the eye and kept my hands still in my lap. I despised him and was determined to show no fear. ‘You have already won.’

‘Nevertheless,’ he said, pushing one of his pawns forward, ‘indulge me. You have nothing better to do.’

I had been taught to play by my father. I frowned, studying the board. Perhaps it would help to pass the time. However uncongenial the company, I did not want to go back to the cramped confines of my cabin. What he said was true: I had nothing better to do. I pushed my pawn forward to counter his move.

So it began. We played each day, while Lady Francesca sat, never speaking, working on her embroidery. He was good, but I was better, being more daring and impetuous. He was cunning and clever, but less inclined to take risks. I won more games than he did, not that it mattered. We were playing for more than the pieces on the board, but whatever the outcome, I had already lost. The games were a refined kind of cruelty. Sometimes he would let me win deliberately, just to watch and savour my elation, knowing it would soon be dashed.

He toyed with me, as a cat might play with a mouse, and just in the way he conducted the games, so our conversations were likewise barbed, laden with hooks buried in some innocent-seeming remark.

‘You have the better of me this time,’ he said, when I had beaten him fair and square. ‘You have your mother’s looks, but your father’s brain, I see. I hardly knew her, but she struck me as being a spirited young woman. Witty. Educated. Accomplished. I saw that straight away, for all she was disguised as a man. You are very like her. You should do well in Venice . . .’

The Lady Francesca smiled and nodded her agreement, as if to confirm that this was not a compliment, either to me or my mother. It was a warning. One of the possible fates he had in store for me was that of a courtesan, the mistress of a rich man. He owned me, as he never ceased to remind me, and would dispose of me in the best way he saw fit. He had thought to sell me off as a scullion, relishing the idea of a duke’s daughter working in a kitchen, but could see now that would not do. I was too fine for that, he would muse aloud to Lady Francesca as she worked her needle in and drew it out again. How I longed to stab it into her linen-white skin and see the blood bead red like the rosebuds she was stitching. Why throw a diamond away for the price of glass paste? He would say such things to tease and torture me. I tried not to show it. I strove hard to show them nothing, but to be spoken of like that, as though I was a commodity or an animal to be bought and sold, ate into my very soul. His eyes would take on an oily sheen as I stumbled in my game and my concentration wandered to what fate had in store for me, my mood corrupted to self-pity.

‘Checkmate, I think.’ He would smile and knock over my king. ‘That is enough for today.’

With that, I would be taken back to my cabin.

‘It does not have to be this way, you know,’ he said one day as he set the pieces out for yet another game. ‘All you have to do is tell me the whereabouts of the shewstone. Shall we begin? Your move, I think.’

I tried not to react, even though the pawn trembled in my hand.

‘Oh, yes, I know all about it. I sent some men to search for it, but they were surprised. Then, when I sent again, I was told her house was fired. When you were brought in, I questioned your guard closely. You were taken at her door, along with that rat Feste and Sebastian’s traitor of a son.’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ I swallowed the insults and pushed my next piece forward.

‘I think you do. The shewstone belonging to the witch Marijita. Lady Francesca had been to consult her the day before the fleet landed in Illyria. She had it then.’ His eyes slid sideways to where Francesca sat smiling as she stabbed the needle in and pulled the thread through. ‘A thing like that is not destroyed by fire. I’ve had men sift through every inch of ash in what is left of her hovel and there is no sign of it. I am losing patience! She tells me that you have the skill to use it. She’s seen you, girl! You cannot deny that!’

I studied the board and said nothing. I thought only of Marijita foreseeing her own death, weaving her shroud.

‘Such a thing is highly prized, and someone with the skill to use it even more so. Tell me where it is, show me its uses, and I’ll set you free.’

As if that was likely. I shook my head. ‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘I don’t have it. I have only what I stand up in, as you can see. Lord Sebastian made sure of that.’

‘You know where it is though, or at least who has it.’ He looked at me, his eyes as hard as onyx. ‘That wretch Feste.’

‘I thought he was in captivity. If he has it, you will find it. He can’t run far chained to an oar.’

‘I thought so too, but he escaped. I should have had him hanged from the balcony of his beloved mistress’s palazzo. Too late now. Still, I dare say he will come after you, like some faithful mangy mongrel hound. Then I’ll have him, the stone and you.’

The news of Feste’s escape was a glimpse of happiness, but I took care to hide it. I would show him nothing. Besides, his mind was following its own track.

‘I never forget a slight to me and I have a long memory. Feste did me great injury. He destroyed my reputation, my life, all for a cheap jest. When I find him, he will suffer mightily, but that will be as nothing to the punishment he will receive hereafter. May he roast in Hell for all eternity.’ He spoke the curse like a blessing. ‘And others with him. That sot Sir Toby and his trull Maria. I swore to be revenged on everyone who was there.’ He was silent for a moment, brooding on the past. ‘Your father, your mother, Lady Olivia . . .’ He marked them off on his fingers. ‘You and that whelp Stephano. Unto the second generation, and further.’

I could make no answer. His malice silenced me.

‘Only God can judge,’ I said eventually.

‘But I do God’s work!’ He stared at me as though I was an imbecile. ‘Don’t you see? I was accused of madness and dragged to the dark room, cruelly used and taunted by that devil Feste. He came to me in the guise of a priest, offering comfort and solace, all the while tormenting me further. I suffered, as Our Lord suffered. Then I saw a most holy vision. It appeared to float before me, a glowing light in the darkness, that most sacred of vessels presented as a gift to the Holy Infant. I was delivered from my tormentors, my soul was soothed by that holy resin, just as it was used to anoint the broken body of Our Lord. I left that dark place and rose again, just as He did, knowing that my purpose in life would be to punish those who had sinned against me and bring all men back to God’s Holy Church.’