Heart of Glass (26 page)

I look over his shoulder at Father. A servant speaks quietly to him, and he begins to stride over to the dining room.

“Let us all catch up over dinner,” Father says, leading us from the library. Emilia and Lysander follow, my new friend throwing me an alarmed glance.

I take my place at the long table. Of course Father has
arranged to have me seated beside his old ally. I feel a foot tap against my satin slipper and hastily tuck my feet under my skirts.

As the servants pass around soup plates, Vincenzo takes a wineglass and gulps noisily from it. Then he leans back in his chair.

“I thought I’d never see the city of my birth again,” he tells us. “Despite what they said about me, I was always loyal.”

I choke a little on my wine. Emilia and Lysander look confused. They weren’t in Venice the day he was driven out of the city in disgrace, his machinations for the Duke of Milan exposed.

“I was honored when Massimo’s representatives contacted me. Now the Doge is taking a …” He pauses. “As he is resting, I will do all I can to ensure the city is safe from the heathens who threaten our shores.”

He bursts out laughing, the sound transforming into a hacking cough. We all wait in silence for the fit to end. Even Father looks a little discomfited. I see now that the challenges facing the Doge in his route back to power will be almost insurmountable. Too many are ranged against him.

Finally, Vincenzo draws a deep, ragged breath and continues as though he has not just made a fool of himself. “Of course, now that I’m here I can find out who was behind the trumped-up charges that saw me thrown out. I blame this conniving Segreta that everyone’s talking about. Only a gaggle of women could concoct such a monstrous lie, wouldn’t you agree?” He sends a long, meaningful glance around the table, his eyes landing at last on me.

“Quite so, Vincenzo,” my father agrees, bowing his head. “They’ll be ferretted out soon.”

“I hear they do good too.” Shy, gentle Emilia is standing up to this monster. “Haven’t you heard about the charitable homes for destitute women? Rumor has it that they’re funded by the Segreta.”

Vincenzo shakes his head dismissively and raises a soupspoon to his lips, slurping noisily. “Destitute women! What do we care for them? Throw them in the canals!”

“My sister died of drowning in a canal,” I say. “Surely you remember; after all, you were once engaged to be married to her.”

“Laura!” mutters my father.

“I’m sorry,” Vincenzo says, his eyes darting around the table as he realizes his mistake. “That was clumsy of me.”

Father nods his head. “No matter,” he says quietly.

Lysander is glaring at Vincenzo, anger narrowing his eyes. He turns to Emilia.

“I wouldn’t talk about the Segreta,” he advises her. “You know so little of Venice.”

Emilia’s face colors, and she suddenly stands up from her place at the table. “Please excuse me,” she says. As the dining room doors close behind her, I feel certain I can hear a muffled sob.

I stare at my brother.
What’s wrong with you?
I say with my eyes. I think of following Emilia, but I sense that she needs some time alone.

Dinner proceeds with dull conversation about shipping taxes. The bowls are taken away and the second course fetched in.

“Allegreza is close to cracking, I’ve heard,” my father says, suddenly shifting the subject back to the Segreta. “She’ll soon spill the names of her gaggle of harridans.”

At this, my spine straightens. As gently as possible, I lower my cutlery beside my plate.

Vincenzo shovels veal into his mouth as he talks. “The Bear knows how to get answers.”

“How can you talk of torture over dinner?” I say, my voice coming out high and strangled.

“Laura’s right,” says Lysander.

Vincenzo wheezes with laughter again, and taps his knife against his empty wineglass. A servant scurries to refill it. He stares at me, eyebrows raised in amusement, as though inspecting a fool. “We must do whatever it takes to keep our city safe.”

His hand disappears beneath the table and grips my thigh. I push him off, resisting the urge to call him a lecherous traitor. Father at least has the decency to look uncomfortable and clears his throat.

“And do you have a wife in your new home?” he asks.

Vincenzo rolls his eyes. “No wife, only lonely nights.” He rubs his hands together, looking from Father to me and back again. “But who knows what could happen now. Back in Venice, a return to power, happily ensconced in my rightful place. A new bride by my side?” He grins at me. A servant dips between our bodies to clear the plates, but when she steps away, Vincenzo’s leering smile is still there, waiting for my reply.

“I wish you good luck in finding a willing bride,” I say coldly. “My father will have told you that I’m engaged, I’m sure.”

“Indeed,” says Vincenzo, looking uncertainly at my father. “Engaged to a …”

There’s a cough in the doorway and when I look up, Emilia is standing there.

“Laura, could you come and help? There’s a moss stitch that I just can’t get right in this embroidery.”

Vincenzo snorts. “Embroidery? Yes, yes—go and keep your soft little hands amused with skeins of silk.”

For a moment, I picture his skull smashing against cobbles tones. I drag a hand across my forehead, clearing the image from behind my eyes. I push my chair back roughly.

“Of course,” I say, ignoring Vincenzo’s insults. “Let me see what I can do to help.”

Emilia holds out her hand to me as she waits in the doorway. I smile at her gratefully.

“Goodbye, sweet dove!” Vincenzo says as I leave the room.

In the doorway, I turn, my hands resting on the handles. “Good night, Vincenzo. May your return to Venice bring you everything you deserve.”

His smile falters, and he seems uncertain how to respond to my words. But I don’t give him the chance. I back out of the room, Emilia following, and shut the doors behind us.

37

In the days that follow, it feels as though Vincenzo’s return has cast an even more somber cloud over Venice. Each morning Faustina whispers to me over breakfast about the latest rumors heard in the market.

“Vincenzo’s ships are still docked in the harbor,” she tells me on Sunday. “It’s as if he’s taken control there. His crew struts around the harbor as though they own it.”

The curfew is still in place at night, but aside from the soldiers visible on the streets, Venice is returning to herself. The markets still trade, the gondolas still float down the canals and Allegreza is still in her stinking cell. Another pamphlet denouncing the Segreta has left the press, this one even more vitriolic than the last. It urges the men of Venice to question their wives, their sisters and their daughters, so that “we may cleanse this city of the stain in its heart.”

Paulina sent word that the letter was delivered, but there has been no response. Does Massimo really mean to call our bluff? If so, can we carry out our threat to share his secret? One word is all it would take to spread like
wildfire across the city. And what if word got out beyond? We could end up hurting Venice rather than protecting her.

And still there’s no word from Roberto. There seems little doubt that he’s fled the city, abandoning his father and mother to their fate. Abandoning me to loneliness and shame. Each time I hear the quick patter of a messenger’s footsteps, I wonder if he will bring a letter—even a few lines to let me know he’s safe. Each time I’m disappointed. More and more, I find myself thinking about how he lived for so long in disguise, posing as a lowly painter, and I wonder whether our engagement was simply another form of pretense. After all, Roberto’s past is still a secret to me. Perhaps he fooled everyone.

“That’s not all,” Faustina says, shaking her head. “Massimo has scout ships roaming the waters. No one can come or leave on the seas without getting past him.”

On my way to Mass, I go down to the harbor to see for myself. People move in nervous huddles, and soldiers stand guard, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords as they watch every face carefully. Vessels of all sizes are searched without ceremony, so paranoid is the Bear about spies and subterfuge. Vincenzo’s ships, sails furled, sit at anchor, but his men move around the harbor like crows in their black doublets. His flagship,
Il Castigo
, is the most impressive craft in the harbor, and its side bristles with cannons.

As I step between coiled ropes, a man is dragged off a small boat and thrown to his knees. I shrink back behind a crate while soldiers surround him.

“Where have you come from?” demands one of them. The man looks up into his face, wide-eyed and terrified. He
shakes his head; he doesn’t understand. The soldier sends the back of his hand cracking across the man’s face, and he falls back. “Who sent you here?”

The man gabbles in a language I don’t understand and points to piles of burlap sacks in the bottom of his boat that have been torn open to reveal wooden carvings. It’s clear he’s a trader, come to sell his goods in the market. Utterly harmless. Yet with a vicious yank, the soldier drags the man to his feet and hurls him into the bottom of his boat. He props himself up on an elbow and wipes the trickle of blood from his mouth.

“If you don’t have papers and can’t explain your business here, you must leave Venice.” The soldier unsheathes his sword and points the blade back out towards the ocean. The man stands, nodding, and begins to work on untying his mooring ropes.

As soon as the soldiers are busy harassing another captain, I step out from behind the crate and slip away towards the Church of St. John. I pass beneath the arched stone doorway into the cool and shade. I dip a hand into the holy water and make the sign of the cross. The service has already started, so I take a seat at the back of the church.

The Mass is well attended, a mixture of the wealthy merchant classes and the poor. A peasant woman sits alone across the aisle from me. I’m looking into space, barely concentrating on the priest’s Latin chants, when I spot a familiar silhouette some rows in front. Paulina, her head bent and her lips moving. My friend looks floored by grief. A young woman, now a widow.

As the service ends, we are blessed and instructed to do God’s will. I cross the flagstones swiftly and reach
Paulina. She turns when I whisper her name. Her eyes are ringed with the bruised circles of sleeplessness, and her irises themselves seem sunken, darting around with fraught anxiety.

“Laura,” she says softly.

“How are you?” I ask, laying a hand on her arm. “Did you … ?” I daren’t finish my question, but she knows what I mean.

“I think so,” she begins, pulling her hand distractedly through her hair. “I left it where it could be found, marked with his name.”

I draw her to one side, away from the departing worshippers. Her shrunken cheeks make her look half starved. “When was the last time you ate?”

She shrugs. “I have no appetite.”

The two of us sit on wooden chairs in a side chapel off the main nave. No one will spot us here, and if they should, then we are just two friends talking.

She looks over a shoulder nervously. “I hardly know whom to trust.” She turns back to me and then her gaze falls, guiltily. “There’s something new. Have you seen this?” She slips a hand down the front of her bodice, and I see that there is a secret pocket hidden between the silk lining and the burlap stiffener. She quickly pulls out a fold of paper.

“More propaganda?” I ask, my voice thick with disgust.

In reply, Paulina unfurls the parchment and hands it to me. I scan its contents. It’s another diatribe against the Segreta.

“I’m scared,” says Paulina. She’s the Segreta’s newest
recruit, and the practical part of me realizes that she is our weakest too. She’s already crumbling under the pressure of what she volunteered to do. I should have found someone else to run my dangerous errands for me.

“Don’t be silly,” I say, feigning lightheartedness. “You don’t take things like this seriously, do you? The Segreta are too strong to be destroyed by printed words.
You’re
strong.”

Paulina doesn’t look convinced. “I’ve heard they’re doing awful things to Allegreza. Even worse than we thought. Oh, Laura, I’ve heard …” She lets out a sob and shakes her head vehemently. “I couldn’t do it, I know I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay quiet under torture, and Massimo doesn’t seem to be reacting at all to our … promise.” She looks into my face, her eyes pleading for reassurance.

“You must be strong,” I tell her. “The Segreta rely on us. Allegreza especially.”

Paulina’s face crumples, and she hides her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking as her body is wracked with sobs. Nearby, a woman with a broom glances towards the sound. I give her a minute shake of the head and smile patiently. She nods, and moves farther down the church, sweeping in wide strokes.

Paulina has managed to compose herself slightly, wiping away the tears with the hem of her sleeve. “Have you heard from Roberto?” she asks.

“No.” I can hear the emotionless quality of my own voice. That’s how he’s left me. Not even a word.

“That’s it, then,” Paulina says, tucking the scroll back inside her secret pocket. “War will come to Venice. Even
the Segreta can’t do anything to stop this.” She gets to her feet and turns to leave, pressing her hand into my shoulder. “Take care, Laura.”