The Girl Behind the Mask (6 page)

I had splashed out on a water-taxi of my own to get to the library that morning. Though I had been in Venice for three days now, I was no closer to knowing my way round than I had been on that first morning. I still got lost within fifty feet of my apartment and I could not risk being late. Not when it had been so difficult to persuade Donato to let me visit in the first place.

‘This is the house,’ said the taxi driver.

‘Thank you.’ I counted out the fare I had negotiated at the start of the trip.

‘I’d love to have a look inside,’ the driver continued. ‘My father told me in the nineteen-sixties, this was
the
place to come for a party. Everyone came here. Film stars, millionaires, politicians, rock stars. Even the president of the United States.’

‘Kennedy?’ I suggested.

‘Maybe.’ The driver shrugged. ‘It was the same in the nineteen-nineties, with the grandson. Parties, parties, parties. Every night. All the famous faces were here. One night, he had Prince fly in to play a song for his girlfriend’s birthday. We thought he would have Prince here to play for the millennium too. You know, 1999.’

‘Of course.’ I remembered my own Millennium Eve, spent in a suburban semi, getting drunk on a bottle of schnapps my cousin had stolen from her parents’ drinks cupboard. Sixteen years old and stuck in Guildford, with no hope of even being allowed out of the house to see midnight, a party in a palazzo with real live celebrities was beyond my wildest imaginings.

‘That party never happened,’ the driver sighed. ‘No one knows why. It would have been an incredible night.’

‘Well, yes. I suppose it would.’

‘And now this place is just a library.’

I had explained my mission to the water-taxi driver as he brought me to the house.

‘Such a waste.’ He shook his head. ‘Great house for a party.’

‘Great house for a library,’ I countered.

‘If you like that sort of thing.’

Fortunately, I did like that sort of thing and as the taxi driver helped me on to the pontoon in the wonderfully gallant style I had quickly come to expect from Italian men, I could feel my excitement growing. I was now only minutes away from seeing the letters and diary I felt sure would prove my theory about
The Lover’s Lessons
. I was also only moments away from meeting the mystery man himself.

I was almost trembling with anticipation as I tugged on the brass bell-pull and heard the chimes announce my arrival deep inside the house.

After a moment, I realised the water-taxi driver was still hovering. He too wanted to see behind the door that had so long been closed to anyone but the few people who worked inside.

‘Call me when you want to go back,’ he said hopefully.

‘Of course,’ I said, though I knew I wouldn’t. My budget didn’t stretch to two water-taxi rides in one day. Now I just wanted him to go away so I could savour this moment alone. I turned back to the house. At last he got the hint and the landing platform bobbed furiously as the water-taxi roared off at top speed. I had to spread my feet for balance to keep from tumbling into the canal.

It seemed like an age before the door was opened. As I heard the creak of a lock being pulled back, I straightened myself up in expectation of meeting the master of the house – after all, he was the one who had been corresponding with me – but a crooked-looking man, who must have been in his seventies, came to the door instead.

‘
Signorina
Thomson?’ the man asked.

‘
Sì, sì
,’ I confirmed. Perhaps Donato was waiting for me inside. A multimillionaire hardly needed to open his own doors, did he?

‘
Avanti
,’ the man said, ushering me through and closing the door quickly behind me, as though to shield the house from prying eyes. Donato was obviously serious about his privacy. ‘This way. Please.’

I stepped into the lobby. I had been expecting incredible luxury but the stone floor was plain and cold. The walls were covered in thick tapestries. It was dark and I couldn’t see what the tapestries depicted. The whole effect wasn’t especially welcoming. In fact it was austere.

I followed the old man through a series of corridors that were as narrow and convoluted as the Venetian streets outside, until eventually we came to another heavy door. The man pushed it open, putting his shoulder against it for leverage. I made Nick’s joke about the damp. He didn’t laugh.

‘Come on.’

The door led onto a courtyard with an elegant formal garden.

‘Oh, how beautiful.’ I couldn’t help but exclaim at the view of neatly trimmed hedges and elegant lemon trees, especially after the severity of the entrance hall.

‘
Sì
,’ said the man. ‘Come on.’

We crossed the garden at a clip. I wished I had time to linger, to look more closely at the silent fountain in the centre, and also up at the arched galleries that surrounded the courtyard. As I glanced in that direction, a gilded sundial directed a shaft of weak January sunshine right into my eyes, forcing me to look back down, catching sight of a beautiful statue of a woman as I did so. On the other side of the garden stood the marble woman’s stony partner, with his hand extended towards her. There was so much to look at. I wanted to pause and imagine what it must have been like to live here when the house was first built. Who had designed this haven from the bustle outside? Who had commissioned the beautiful marble lovers? Why did they look so sad?

But the old man was not having any of it. He was already pushing hard against the door that would take us back into the house on the other side of the courtyard. I just had time to glance up again and – I was sure of this – see a figure quickly conceal itself behind a curtain in one of the upper rooms.

‘This is the library,’ said the man as he opened another door and stood to one side to let me pass. ‘The papers are there.’ He indicated a desk with a curt nod of his head and there, as promised, was the box that must contain Luciana’s letters. ‘
Due ore
,’ was the man’s last comment before he closed me inside.

Well, I thought as I listened to the old man’s footsteps retreating slowly down the corridor. I guess I’m not meeting Donato today after all. While the air still reverberated to the sound of the door closing behind Donato’s servant, I took my first proper look at the library.

It was an incredible room. The kind of room I dreamed of having for myself. Not that it would have fitted into that tiny flat back in London, where Steven and I had stuffed books onto an overflowing set of shelves from Ikea, or stacked them in precarious piles in every spare corner: by the bed, by the bath, in the kitchen. What luxury to have so much space for books. The ceiling in this secret library was two storeys high. It was crammed with volumes, but at the same time, the stacks had been carefully arranged so they did not encroach on any of the windows. The room was brilliantly lit, even on a January day. There were two desks, which faced each other like companions, and a number of comfortable chairs arranged in various corners and round a huge fireplace set with a fire to cut through the winter chill. Above the fireplace hung a portrait of a woman in eighteenth-century dress. She was beautiful, with intelligent brown eyes that reminded me a little of Bea. She looked down upon me kindly, I thought. I wondered who she was. There was no name on the frame.

It would be a pleasure to work in a library so well appointed. I was already wondering how I could extend my visit beyond the two hours I had been promised.

Two hours would certainly not be long enough to study Luciana’s correspondence with the attention it deserved. But, remembering that two hours might be all I ever had here, I stopped admiring the scenery and sat down to the task ahead.

The letters of Luciana Giordano were collected together in a beautiful box, covered in the kind of multicoloured marbled paper for which the master stationers of Italy are justly famous. I opened the box gingerly, unsure how robust it would be. Though it was undoubtedly much younger than the letters it contained, it was still ancient and fragile. I had to take care.

I automatically held my breath and closed my eyes as I let the hinged lid fall open. I knew that when I opened them again, everything would be different. Because this wasn’t just a box full of old paper to me. I was about to touch something that my heroine had touched, three centuries before. The letters inside this box contained her own true thoughts. The implications were momentous. Luciana Giordano and I were about to make contact across the years.

Chapter 9

The diary of Luciana Giordano, 11th November, 1752

I have to write quickly, as in just half an hour Maria will be awake and at her daily business of bothering me to within an inch of my life in the name of preserving my dignity and reputation. What a night! When the household was asleep, I took up, as usual, my place by the window to watch the nightly circus unfold. Truly, I cannot imagine anything the good people of Venezia might see at the
Teatro San Benedetto
could compare with what happened here on our little canal last night.

It all began as usual. The husband from the opposite house left at his customary time. I checked his exit against the bells. He kissed his dear sweet wife on the forehead and sent her to bed. He didn’t look up to see her watch from the window to make sure that he had really gone. He never does. Poor fool.

Fifteen minutes later, the lover arrived. He tied his boat out of sight of the main canal and made his way to her building like a cat sneaking after its prey. Hearing his signal – which is not unlike a cat’s meow; I have been practising it myself – the wife threw her window wide and let down a rope, as long and thick as Rudaba’s hair in the Persian fairytale. Her lover was up it like a monkey and did not even wait until she had closed the shutters to start kissing her and loosening her breasts from her bodice. I have to admit, I was quite aroused by the sight, though I fear it will be a long time before anyone but Maria loosens my stays.

They only half-closed the shutters this evening – though it’s grown so cold these past few days I would have thought they would catch their deaths – so I was able, if not to see what was going on, to hear what was going on very easily. Such grunts and groans! It’s hard to imagine they were doing something pleasurable. I thought the act of love was supposed to be accompanied by tender sighs and sweet declarations, not howling and curses to raise merry hell.

Anyway, the grunting and groaning took the usual amount of time and came to its crescendo with a particularly anguished wail on the part of the lover. After that, I heard the wife giggling so I assumed the lover was not hurt. Indeed, he came to the window moments later, throwing the shutters a little wider to let in the air. Frustratingly, he had his mask on. Perhaps he had not taken it off. Maria tells me there are people in Venezia who wear their masks so often that even their friends and relations are unable to recognise them bare-faced.

My father thinks the practice of wearing masks in this town has gone much too far. My brother says my father disapproves of the widespread use of the mask precisely because it is so levelling and liberating. When everyone is masked, a pauper may talk to a duchess. The Doge can move among his people unknown and thus learn exactly what they think of him. My father thinks masks encourage dishonest behaviour. My brother argues the exact opposite. How can the Doge govern properly if he does not know the true will of the people and how can he know the true will of the people but by being anonymous? Indeed, how can the ordinary people make their true feelings known except from inside a disguise?

All I know is I wish I had a mask. But I do not want the one kind of mask my father has offered to buy me. Despite making me spend my childhood in a plague doctor’s mask to keep me from my mother’s terrible fate, these days he says if I want to hide my face from the sight of God in broad daylight, then I must wear a
servetta muta
, a mask only held in place by a button between my teeth so I may speak no evil while I am wearing it. Apparently, the
servetta muta
is very popular with the husbands of Venezia.

Anyway, the lovers finished their exertions, but that was not to be the end of the evening’s entertainment. I heard the bells of the
Chiesa degli Scalzi
sound the quarter to. And then I saw the husband. He was early! Oh! If only I could have given the poor wife a warning. Instead, the husband and the lover met in the most unfortunate circumstances. When the lover let himself down from the wife’s balcony, he almost landed on her husband’s head.

You have never seen such a pantomime. It drew a crowd until the canal was quite solid with boats. No one could get by but nobody cared. Here was a fabulous free show.

I was so absorbed by the spectacle I didn’t notice at first that the black gondola had stopped right beneath my window. I slipped back behind the curtain, hoping to hide myself, but I was too late. The gondolier looked upwards and caught my eye. He gave me a smile. I stayed behind the curtain but he beckoned me back out. He looked towards the canopy and its mysterious occupant and, while I watched, a hand, in a white cuff that was stark against the darkness, snaked out and handed the gondolier a letter. The gondolier duly spiked the letter on the end of his oar and – horrors – passed it up to me.