The Girl Behind the Mask (8 page)

So, I went to bed. I made a show of reluctance, of course, but Maria said it was her duty to ensure I didn’t fall asleep in church the following day. I agreed that would be a terrible shame, though church is where I have my best naps. Maria rarely notices because she is so busy mooning over the priest.

Maria unlaced my dress and helped me into my nightgown. She unfastened my hair and combed it out. I have told her several times she doesn’t need to comb my hair. I am perfectly capable of doing it myself. But tonight she insisted. I don’t know why. She certainly doesn’t seem to enjoy the job. Though I suppose I should be grateful she doesn’t seem to be doing the task for the pleasure of hurting me either. When she finds a knot, she very rarely bothers to untangle it. At that point she hands the comb over to me.

I washed my face and hands and Maria joined me by the prie-dieu as I said my night-time prayers. I prayed for my father and my brother, my mother in Heaven, for Maria – I was rewarded with a sort-of-smile for that – and for all those on the water that evening. Maria’s brow wrinkled.

‘All those on the water?’

‘I heard there might be a storm,’ I said.

While Maria fussed about the room, letting down the curtains round the bed and blowing out most of the candles, I completed my prayers in silence. I wasn’t sure what God would make of my request for the safe passage of my gondolier and his master, but I made it all the same.

‘Goodnight,’ said Maria.

‘Goodnight,’ I answered from my place on the pillows. Knowing she would turn round when she got to the door, I made a show of finding it hard to keep my eyes open. I let my body go limp and my eyes fall shut. I was the very image of an innocent girl in her dreams.

But as soon as the door shut behind my chaperone, my eyes were open. I listened to the sound of her footsteps in the dark. I listened for the creak of the board halfway down the corridor. She was going straight to her own room. Good. I waited for a minute or two more before I swung my legs out of bed and found my still warm slippers on the floor. I wrapped my dressing gown around me and padded to the window. Softly, I opened the shutters. There is always a danger that one of them will squeak but tonight they were good to me, complicit in my plan.

The night air rushed in. It was so cold my first breath almost stopped my heart. Such a night! Who would be out now by choice? Mist swirled along the water, curling its way up to my balcony. I listened to the
campanile
strike twelve and hoped I would not have to wait too long.

There was, of course, no scene being played out at the house across the canal that evening. I’d overheard Maria and the cook saying it would be a couple of weeks before the husband ventured out alone again. I leaned as far out of my window as I could to see the distant entrance to the Grand Canal. Thanks to the fog rolling in from the lagoon, I could see next to nothing, but the voices of the revellers let me know they were still there. Snatches of song, shouts and whistles met my ears, though they were softened and distant, like the voices of the dead.

You can imagine then how ghostlike was the black gondola this evening. Just this once, I heard it before I saw it. I heard the gentle slap of the oar in the water as the gondolier steered skilfully towards my house. Then I saw the polished
ferro
, and the gondolier’s hat. He lifted his lantern towards me. The light shining on his face, illuminating that alone, made him look like some sort of floating demon. I ducked back into my window. He whistled up.

‘Hey! Hey! It’s the Madonna of the Window.’

I leaned back out, putting my finger to my lips. He was going to get me into trouble.

‘Have you written your reply?’ he asked.

I showed him the paper, folded and sealed with a piece of string and a plain blob of wax from my bedtime candle. I don’t have a seal so I used the end of my pen to scratch my initials into it. I hoped my correspondent would understand this embarrassing lapse.

The gondolier reached up his oar and I fastened my letter to the end of it. He plucked the letter off and passed it into the
felce
. He tipped his hat at me and began to row away at once.

Now I feel horribly foolish. What have I done? I have sent a letter containing all my innermost secrets and frustrations to a man I do not know. He might be anybody. How could I have been so insane as to believe I could trust someone who doesn’t show his face, even in this town where no one shows his face? I imagine my letter being passed from hand to hand in some tavern. Oh, what an evening’s sport I will make for a bunch of men on the Rialto. What if the letter falls into the hands of someone who knows my brother? Or, far worse, my poor papà? I can almost hear the gates of the convent closing behind me.

I cannot sleep. I can do nothing but lie on my back and stare up at the canopy, imagining the stream of events I have just set in motion.

Chapter 12

I was quickly learning that an
aperitivo
with Nick always turned into an event. When I met him at the bar, Bea was already there. There were other faces I recognised from the corridors of the university and a whole host of other people I didn’t know yet, but who greeted Nick like an old friend. The proprietor of the bar seemed especially happy to see him. When Nick wrapped his arm round my shoulder – treating me to a cloud of his delicious aftershave – and took me into the bar itself, to see the sort of food that was on offer, the old proprietress gave him a beaming smile. She gave me an altogether more appraising look. It put me in mind of Donato’s old retainer.

‘And what can I get for
her
?’ the old woman asked, jerking her head in my direction.

I tried not to take offence. Instead, I smiled and said ‘
Grazie, grazie
,’ a million times as Nick picked out a selection of small bites –
cichetti
– he thought I might like. Then Nick ordered me a spritz – Venice’s signature tipple, a mixture of white wine, soda water and Aperol – and we went back outside. Despite the freezing weather, international students in their North Face puffa jackets and locals looking altogether more glamorous in their Prada and real fur thronged the bridge.

‘This bar has been here for centuries,’ Nick explained. ‘Bea thinks Casanova might have mentioned it.’

‘I worked it out from the location,’ Bea explained.

‘I don’t suppose it’s changed much,’ said Nick.

Bea picked up a crostino and examined it. Her nose wrinkled. ‘This has certainly been on the counter for several centuries already.’

It was true that the quality of the
cichetti
Nick had picked out was variable, but no one came to this particular bar to eat. They came to be seen. They came to meet old friends. They came to flirt with strangers. After two glasses of spritz, which I’d quickly got a taste for, I forgot about the cold. After three, I was delighted to join Nick and some other guys for dinner. When I finally pushed open the door to my apartment at midnight, I had the feeling I was going to have a slow sort of morning the following day.

I fell into the spooky old four-poster quite gratefully. I pulled the red velvet curtains closed to keep in the warmth and snuggled deep beneath the scratchy blankets. Laying my head down on the pillows, I thought about my morning at the Palazzo Donato.

I drifted into sleep thinking especially about the secret courtyard. I heard the drip, drip, drip of the broken fountain. I saw the statues – parted lovers frozen in time – eternally beckoning to each other across the crooked path. I saw the playful sparrows jumping in and out of the water as sunlight turned the droplets on their wings into dazzling sequins. I saw the fruit trees waiting for the first breath of spring. I saw my hand closing on the stem of the single white winter rose, breaking the sap-filled green stalk to set the blossom free. And then another hand, large and masculine, was suddenly closing around mine. I felt hot breath on the side of my face.

‘What will you give me in return for my most precious possession?’

I turned in horror. Towering over me was a man in a half-mask similar to those sold in every tourist shop in the city. He was smiling but with no intention of putting me at my ease.

I apologised for my clumsy theft, my face reddening with shame as I struggled to find the right words. I tried to step backwards but the stranger held on to my hand and unbalanced me. The rose stem was squeezed inside my palm. I waited to feel a thorn pierce my skin, but no pain came. The masked man stared at me. Behind the mask, his eyes were dark and almost animal. Like a bear’s. I was hypnotised. As I looked closer, they started to change. Far from being hard, now they seemed sad but kind. They were at odds with his cruel, twisted smile and I felt my fear begin to ebb away.

‘It’s yours,’ he said eventually. ‘It was waiting just for you.’

And then suddenly that cruel mouth was upon mine, kissing me passionately. Our two hands were still joined together round the flower. His free hand was round my waist, posed as though we were dancing. He kissed me until I ran out of breath and started wilting in his embrace. The rose was forgotten as we unlaced our hands so I could wrap both my arms around his neck. He picked me up. He was strong and certain. He lifted me as though I weighed less than the broken flower. I knew he would not drop me.

He carried me into the house, past the door to the library and on down the corridor. Still carrying me, he pushed open a door with his shoulder and took me into his chamber. In the centre of the room was a high four-poster bed made up with bright white sheets. He laid me down upon it.

Helpless with desire, I sank into the pillows. I reached my hands up to him. He stripped off his shirt. His back was wide and strong. His arms, as I had gathered when he carried me, were hewn from thick hard muscle. I stared at his body. On his chest was a scar that looked like an exploding comet. It sat over his heart. When he leaned over me, I touched it with a tender finger. Without speaking to me, he pushed my hand away.

He started to undress me. I was wearing clothes I did not recognise as my own. They were not even from my own time. I was dressed in a long velvet gown like the ones I had seen in paintings of Luciana’s contemporaries. While my terrifying lover struggled to unfasten the laces that held the bodice closed, I could feel the bones of a corset straining as my breath grew more ragged. Unable to untie the ribbons, my lover was angry enough to rip them instead. I gasped as I felt the bodice loosen. It was as much from relief as from the indignity.

He devoured me with kisses. I lay helpless on the pillows as he touched every part of me greedily and without restraint. He treated me as though I were his possession. But at the same time, I knew I was precious to him. He would not hurt me. He wanted me to feel pleasure in everything he did to me. He pulled my legs apart with rough enthusiasm. I gasped at his erection. When it pressed against me, I felt like a virgin again.

I gave myself to him without question. I abandoned myself to the bliss of our two bodies melting into one.

‘Take off your mask,’ I begged him. ‘Please take off your mask.’

But he would not. He simply would not show me his face. No matter how urgently I asked him.

Waking up alone in the darkness, I blinked away the last of the dream, wishing at the same time that I could close my eyes and go back to it. Three erotic dreams in as many nights. I sat up and caught my breath. Was there something about the air in Venice that was making my imagination so wild, or was it just that I’d had too many spritzes? I fetched myself a glass of water in the hope of making the next morning’s hangover less hideous. While I was out of bed, I checked my phone and my emails.

A text from my mother. An email from an old friend. There was still nothing from Steven in response to my own last angry message. Getting back into bed, I closed my eyes and pressed my eyelids with my fingers to stop the tears from coming. I was as lonely as I had ever been and somehow the dream of my strange lover in the palazzo garden had only made things worse.

Chapter 13

I spent the next morning looking at the notes I had made in the library. The white rose I’d plucked from the garden was pressed into my notebook, already a paper-thin ghost of itself. I felt a rush of shame as I admired my stolen bounty and remembered the previous night’s strange dream. Though I had not been given express permission to do so, I’d also taken a few sneaky photographs of the letters with the camera function on my phone. I’d taken some sneaky photographs of the library too. I thought about sharing them with Bea and Nick but decided against it. Not yet. I suddenly felt a strange obligation to keep Palazzo Donato’s secrets.

At midday, the post-boy came into the office, pushing his little trolley. He had books for Nick and Bea. He had flyers regarding a Martedì Grasso party being organised by the students’ union. And for me he had a single letter.

I knew at once whom this letter was from. The envelope, made of thick creamy vellum, did not bear a stamp. It had been delivered by hand. My name and the university address were written in extravagant cursive. It was, I thought, exactly the kind of handwriting I would have expected. I could imagine its owner using his expansive script to sign off large cheques and hotel invoices. Maybe even signing the odd autograph. I tucked my thumb underneath the envelope flap and levered it open. Inside was a single sheet of expensively heavy paper.