The Fool's Girl (8 page)

‘What is inside it – the casket?’ I asked.

‘It is not a real casket.’

I thought about that for a while and then I asked, ‘What if it contains just another key?’

‘That would at least be something.’ He gave me one of his rare smiles, his teeth white and even, and I could see a ghost of the handsomeness that had so captivated my mother when they first met. ‘There are patterns in everything, in the whole of Nature, from the way the stars turn in the heavens to the whorl of a shell or the petals of a flower and the way leaves arrange themselves about a twig. There are forces, hidden forces. If I can discover what they are, how they operate, I will have my hands upon the levers of creation and can work them myself.’

‘Creation is God’s work,’ I said quietly. ‘Man can have no part in it.’

He followed the obsessive thread of his thought as if I had not spoken. He was searching for a way to summon my mother, to call her back from the realm of the dead, and he would use any means. I worked, my hand trembling enough to bring down his wrath. What he was doing reeked of sorcery, of necromancy. I feared for him. I feared for all of us. This was forbidden. Even a duke is not above the attentions of the Inquisition. I pictured the great doom painting that covered the walls above the altar in the cathedral; vile monsters and hideous creatures busy torturing the souls who had been consigned to Hell. What if he loosed such a legion upon the world?

I tried to reason with him, but he would not listen. I was replaced by a Dr Grimaldi from Padova in Italy. He came with a trunk of books and a square leather box which contained his magical instruments. He would work with my father now.

Many thought that my father truly had lost his senses. Guards were set at the base of the tower. Urgent envoys were ignored. Letters and messages from far and near gathered dust, their seals unbroken. My father neglected everything in order to concentrate on his secret studies. Rumour began to seep and spread through the city like a foul, low-lying miasma. The sharp stench of sulphur clung to the area around the tower, along with something putrid, like seaweed left by the tide to rot in the sun. There was talk of spirits walking. Parts of the battlements went unguarded. The Tower of the Winds became known as the Wizard’s Tower, and citizens passing under its shadow crossed themselves thrice.

‘Dead is dead,’ Feste said, his thin face twisting in distaste. ‘Best to let her rest. The dead are not supposed to come back; there is probably a reason for that.’

My father was not the only one searching. One evening I was told that Marijita was waiting for me in the Evening Gallery: a long, light room painted with arcadian frescoes and panels decorated with plants and flowers, so detailed and lifelike they might be growing. It was one of my mother’s favourite rooms. The gallery faces west and gives on to the Garden of the Box Trees. The garden was still well kept, the paths raked and free of weeds, but the plants were wilting for lack of water, their leaves dusty and drooping. I found Marijita staring through the central glass doors, sealed now against the scent from the orange and lemon trees, the bushes of lavender, rosemary and sweet-smelling myrtle.

‘No one walks there any more,’ she said. ‘Ah, well . . .’

Her sigh was full of regret for times past and fear for times to come. Things begun must be finished. My presence was needed. That was all she would say.

She threw a scarf over her head as we left the palace and we hurried through the dark streets. A full moon was rising, casting the town in a cold bluish light. We crossed the Stradun and skirted an old church. We were going towards Lady Olivia’s palazzo. We took a long flight of wide steps, each one worn in the centre, the stone gleaming, polished to marble by the passage of many feet.

The palazzo stood on its own, the grandest house in a street of fine mansions. Wide balconies jutted out in the Venetian manner, each one carved with the family coat of arms. The lower windows were barred and shuttered, the huge front door closed for the night. We rang the bell and the doors were opened by Lady Francesca, one of Lady Olivia’s attendants. I knew her. She had once served my mother. She was originally from Italy and wore her fair hair pulled back from a high forehead in the fashion of her native court.

I could hear laughter, the rumble of male voices coming from the main part of the house. It was now Lord Sebastian’s domain. Lady Francesca took us away from there, up a side staircase that led to Lady Olivia’s private apartments. I had not been there since my mother’s disappearance. The rooms were dimly lit, furnished with white lilies, the mirrors covered as if for a funeral. The only spot of colour was a small, jewel-bright portrait of my mother, her eyes like dark sapphires, her pale pink cheek as translucent as alabaster. She was looking over her shoulder, her rosy lips slightly parted, caught between smiling and laughing as she swaggered in her scarlet-and-blue page’s apparel, a feathered cap upon her head.

The painting stood on a table, flanked by candles. It was cased in a small folding frame, like a portable Madonna, and I stopped to gaze, as if at a shrine.

‘That is how I first saw her. I had the portrait painted from other likenesses and from my memory of that time.’

I started as the voice came from the shadows. The Lady Olivia must have been there all the while.

‘I’m sorry.’ I curtsied. ‘I did not see you there.’

She waved a gloved hand as if it were no matter. She was dressed all in black, her face obscured by the triple layering of veils.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

As she turned, I caught the shine of her large, lustrous eyes and the livid sheen of her pale skin. We followed the rustling silk of her skirts up another flight of stairs and then another, up to the roof. Lady Olivia’s house was tall. From the top, it was possible to see over the city walls to the sea. We walked on to a wide terrace, planted with trees and flowers, bleached of colour in the moonlight, their fragrance strong.

‘Come, child,’ she said, beckoning me on. ‘Don’t be afraid. There is something I want you to see.’

The terrace was set out with a silver bowl on a tripod. Lady Francesca melted into the background as Marijita stepped forward. She took a stone from a soft leather pouch that she wore at her waist. This was the shewstone, the seeing stone that I had found on the sill in her room in the walls. She held up her arms, holding the stone up to the moon’s brightness.

Lady Olivia had been engaging in the same rites as my father but with more success. I felt my mother there. I sensed her nearness, like a cold breath. I would have turned and bolted, but the Lady Olivia had hold of my arm, her gloved hand tightening like a vice.

‘Oh, no,’ she whispered. ‘It seems that your presence is needed.’

I was propelled forward towards the place where the silver bowl stood. It was filled with water. The moon floated like a bone counter on the black surface. Stars showed around it like a scatter of diamond dust.

‘She will come to you,’ she whispered.

Marijita lowered the stone into the water, rippling the stillness, and went to the very edge of the terrace. She raised her arms and began the Summoning: ‘
Hear us, Great Hecate, Triple-faced Goddess, Mighty One, Queen of the Night, Goddess of the Pathways, Lady of the Crossroads. Hear our prayer and answer . . .
’

‘Look! Look closer!’

Lady Olivia’s hissing command came to my ear as Marijita’s voice rose and fell. I clutched on to the sides of the bowl and gazed into the water past the reflected moon and caught the blue-white glimmer of the moonstone in the silver depths. As I looked and looked, moon and stone joined together and I saw something lighter than a moth’s wing moving across the surface. As I stared on, the form seemed to free itself and come floating up towards me. The water became agitated. Ripples moved in circles out to the edge of the bowl and back again until the whole surface began to bubble and roil, as if the water was coming to the boil, although the silver under my hand remained cool.

I started back, fearing that the thing would spring up into my face. Beside me, the Lady Olivia stood transfixed, her veils moving in and out with the rapidity of her breath. I looked up. The shape of a woman was coming towards us. She moved between earth and heaven, between air and water, following the broad silver path made by the moonlight across the glittering black surface of the sea. Swathed in a shining mist, her outline as yet indistinct, with each step she gained solidity. I remembered what Feste had said. Dead is dead. My mother would never walk in life again. I would never hear her voice soften in affection, or be held in her embrace, or feel her kiss, soft as a butterfly’s wing on my cheek. This was not her. This was a spirit, maybe sent by the Evil One to beguile us.

I shrank away, but Lady Olivia did not share my doubts.

‘Viola!’ she called, and started forward as if to meet her. Marijita held her from the brink and spoke in warning.

‘You may speak to her, but she may not answer. Do not on any account touch her, or she will take you with her to the realm of the dead.’

‘But that’s what I want! Don’t you see?’

She tore the veils from her face. It was if she was dead already. Her beauty had gone, eaten away by grief. The skull showed clear beneath skin as pale and dry as parchment. Only her eyes were alive, blazing out from their bony orbits, full of hunger and longing.

She gazed at the approaching figure as one long starved might look at a feast. She stepped past me. Divining what she was about to do, I put out my hand to stop her.

Suddenly Marijita was by my side.

‘Let her go,’ she whispered. ‘The dead are hungry for the living. She will take you too.’

Her hand held on to me as, between one blink and another, Lady Olivia stepped out, arms stretched towards the spectre. For a moment she seemed to walk on the air and the couple floated together, arms around each other; then one of them disappeared, as insubstantial as a bubble, while the other plummeted to earth, being made of more corporeal stuff.

There was no cry; she made no sound as she fell. I found myself listening for the muffled thud of impact, but there was nothing. Then came shouts of alarm and the sound of running feet.

In front of me, the tripod started to shake, the sides of the bowl began to quiver, the surface of the water shiver and quake. There was a deep rumbling roar which seemed to come from the depths of Hades. The whole building was moving. The shouts from below turned to screams. I struggled to keep my footing. The house shook like a toy in a giant’s hand. All around us tiles were falling, chimneys toppling. Bells began tolling, wild and spasmodic, shaken to life in the church towers.

The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started, and there was a moment of still silence, before the air was filled with a distant, different kind of roar. I looked out to see land where all had been water. Boats lay stranded, rocks and weed gleamed in the moonlight. The sea had been sucked away, and now it was coming back to shore. We threw ourselves down as the great wave broke against the walls, drenching us with water, tossing boats up on to roofs, flinging weed to hang from balconies and fish to lie on terraces, flopping and gasping.

It was put out that the Lady Olivia had fallen, frightened by the earthquake, or had been pitched from her balcony by the force of it. But many refused to believe it. Those first on the scene insisted that she fell before the earth began to shake. Many suspected that she had taken her own life, and that her sin had made the earth to quake. Others suspected darker forces and pointed to my father’s tower, second and third finger curled tight to the palm, forefinger and little finger extended like horns in the sign to ward off the evil eye.

Lady Olivia was to be buried alongside her ancestors in the family vault beneath the cathedral, but many kept to their houses; those who dared turned their backs as the funeral procession passed them. Lord Sebastian was there, dressed in deepest sable, with every show of sorrow, although he stood to gain everything. He led the mourners, although he would not allow Stephano to attend, punishing him for something that he had done. Sebastian was growing in his cruelty. He was chief among the pall-bearers, helping to carry his wife’s coffin down into the vaults. The stone steps were still strewn with flowers from my mother’s funeral. The pall-bearers crushed the dried and withered blossoms under their boots. As they emerged, even the attending priests were white-faced and shaking. The vaults’ heavy sealing stone was quickly lowered, thudding back with such speed that it all but trapped the robe of the last to leave. The priests stood in a cluster, praying with great fervour, swinging incense and sprinkling holy water. After the ceremony, the great processional cross was moved from its normal place close to the altar and positioned above the entrance to the vault. It might have been a settling of the earth following the recent quake, but some of those who had gone under the ground swore that they had heard a great sigh, as if two lovers had been reunited, at the moment Lady Olivia’s coffin slid on to its stone resting place.

Lord Sebastian left on a sea voyage soon after the funeral. When he came back, he did not come alone.

.

9

‘I wear not motley in my brain’

FESTE

I can read and listen at the same time, can’t I? He’s listened to you two long enough. It’s my turn to tell.

Don’t put your trust in your betters, master. That’s the lesson here. Don’t put your trust in those set to rule over you. Illyria was a fair town, but it’s not any more. Illyria was a prosperous country; now it’s laid to waste, its people wandering the high roads. The truth of it is, the Duke and my lady between them had succeeded in pulling our world down about our ears.

To glimpse invasion in a magic stone is not to live through it. The attack came with no warning. Lord Sebastian and his fleet made up of all our enemies arrived out of the bright blue morning. You have been threatened here, master, have you not? By a mighty Armada sailing up the Channel, but you had time to prepare yourselves, and the gods smiled on you, giving you the luck and the strength to fight them off. We had neither. When the walls were breached, my first thought was for Marijita, how would she fare in her chamber high up there? But my duty was to Violetta.

When I got to Marijita, it was too late. We found her with her throat cut. The wound fresh, gaping like a second mouth. Her eyes were empty, her face like dirty parchment, her lifeblood pooled around her like her spreading skirts.

A length of white wool hung in the frame of her loom. She had been weaving her own shroud. The shuttle was carved from a man’s thigh bone, the warp weighted with skulls filled with sand. She must have finished just as they broke in on her. The last thread was cut, but the stool by the loom had been overturned and there was blood on the scissors that she held in her hand. I had a feeling it was not hers. She had something else. I bent down. A folly stick, bound to her bosom the way working women tie their babies to them with a shawl. I lifted it away from her. It was stained across the head with her blood, like a baby new-birthed. I looked at the face and saw the likeness. She had been making it a long time, looking for the right burl of wood. Olive. Hard to carve with that little knife she had, but smooth as silk to the touch. It hefted heavy, as newborns are wont to do. A little Feste. He was mine now. I stuck him in my belt.

This happened quicker than the time it takes to tell it. I picked up a sound, faint and stealthy. We were not alone. I motioned Violetta to keep out of the way and quiet. I took out my knife and my little friend from where I’d stowed him. As good as any cudgel.

Someone was creeping along the wall from Marijita’s balcony. I could hear the shallow whistle of his breath. I waited until I saw the flash of a sword and sprang forward. If Violetta had not called out, he would have been gutted and his brains all over the floor.

‘Stephano!’

The boy started back in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked as he lowered his sword.

‘Violetta must get out of the city,’ I said. ‘We came to Marijita. We came . . .’ Who knows why we came? ‘What are
you
doing here, more to the point?’

‘I had a sudden feeling that I must come, to see if she was all right. If she was safe . . .’

‘She is neither.’ I turned on him. ‘Thanks to your father.’

‘I know . . .’ The boy stood, head bent, taking the shame on himself. ‘I surprised them, a gang of Venetians,’ he said, a shake in his voice. ‘Marijita was dead, and the birds, but they had hardly got started. Do you think there would have been anything left? If . . .’ He reached up to wipe his face with his sleeve. ‘If you don’t believe me, you’ll find what’s left of them underneath the balcony. They won’t be coming back again. It’s a long way down to the rocks.’

And whose fault is it that they were here in the first place
? I wanted to say, but held my tongue. There was no point in blaming the boy for his father’s pride and ambition. Fathers are as like to heed their children as they are to listen to Fools.
Her
father was just as bad, neglecting his dukedom for dreams fed by a charlatan. Who suffers for it when the world turns mad?

I left the two wronged children to comfort each other and went back to Marijita. She was the nearest thing that I’d ever had to a mother. I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand. I had business to do before I left this place.

Violetta helped me lay her out. Stephano cut the shroud from the frame with his sword. We placed her upon it and I covered her eyes with coins for the ferryman. Before we wrapped her, I lifted the cimaruta from her neck and gave it to Violetta.

‘This is for you. She would want you to have it, to keep you from harm.’ I looked at Stephano. ‘Where is the shirt she promised you?’

We found it folded neatly, the yataghan on top of it.

‘It is almost as though she was expecting us,’ Stephano said.

‘Almost.’ I held the shirt out to him. ‘You had better put it on.’

There was scuffling and shouting coming from below. It was time to go. I’d left the boy, Guido, on guard at the foot of the stairs. It sounded as though he was no longer alone down there. I took the Turkish sword, then kicked wood shavings and threads together and threw Marijita’s little oil lamp on to the pile.

Guido was holding his own, but the Count’s men were forming a line to fight him. I joined in at his side, wielding the yataghan. The sword was his, but I’d blood it for him. I thought we were going to have a tussle, but as soon as the men saw Stephano they put up their weapons. The captain of the guard, tall and young, twenty or so, bowed low, calling Stephano ‘my lord’. Very polite, but his offer to escort us to the Count’s headquarters was not one that we’d be refusing. His men formed a guard around us. They were ten to our three fighting men. None of us would risk Violetta. We had no choice but to go with them.

My Lady Olivia’s beautiful palazzo had turned fortress. The windows were covered in metal sheets. The fancy bronze gates that gave on to the street had been taken down to be melted into cannon, replaced by wooden doors as thick as a tree. The captain banged with the heel of his sword and there was a lot of throwing back of bolts and removing of barricades. Eventually, the doors creaked open and in we went.

The courtyard garden was trampled dust dotted with piles of manure. The ante-rooms, once so delicately perfumed, stank of men and horses. We were taken through to the Hall of the Horses. In Lady Olivia’s day it had been the Hall of the Muses, a place for conversation and recitals. Muses dancing with Apollo and playing on the flute and lyre had all been painted over. Replaced by great snorting warhorses, hunting scenes and prick-eared, big-bollocked mastiffs. The room was full of men going about the business of conquering, standing about in huddles talking or hunched over maps, with messengers moving to and fro and boys and women serving wine. Lord Sebastian stood at a table, leaning over a plan of the city, using a Turkish dagger as a pointer. The room went still as we came towards him, but only a lift of an eyebrow showed that he knew we were there. He was going to ignore us for as long as it suited his purpose. It left me time to taste how much I hated him, like bile in my mouth. Eventually he looked up. His eyes are darker than his sister’s and without her depth or sparkle, opaque and lustreless, like lapis. His lip curled, as if he did not like what he was seeing. He left his map and came towards us.

He had been considered good-looking – my lady thought so anyway – but he would never get back the bloom he had when she first saw him. The weakness that had been there all along was beginning to show; his cheeks were broken-veined and florid from too many nights drinking with his men, the youthful pout was gone from his mouth and the lips were thin and the colour of half-cooked liver, compressed into a line that pulled down at one side. His dark curls were greying and arranged carefully to hide what he was lacking. That jade Francesca was standing near, simpering and fawning, offering a wine cup to him. She had taken my lady’s place in his bed. Now she stood at his side, as bold as you please, the double-dealing Venetian whore.

Stephano spoke first, trying to soften his father’s wrath. He only made it a thousand times worse. The young are fools enough to put us poor clowns out of a job.

‘Father,’ he started, ‘I beg you . . .’

He made a good start, I grant you. Son begging a father. They all like that.

‘I beseech you . . .’

Beseeching? Even better.

‘Have mercy . . .’

This is where it began to go wrong. Sebastian never had mercy on anyone.

‘. . . on the people of this city . . .’

Sebastian’s face began to colour. As if that was likely to happen. Considering the slights against him, all the times he had been ignored.

‘Stop the sacking or you will have nothing left, no people to rule.’

There was truth in that. Sebastian relaxed a bit, or at least the blood stopped beating in his temple quite so hard.

‘That is what I am trying to do. As you would know, if you had not run off to hide like a cowardly child.’

The young captain who had escorted us smirked. That was unfair. Stephano was as battered, besmirched and battle weary as any there.

‘I did my share,’ Stephano said, but his father wasn’t listening.

‘Ran off to see
her
, I’ll warrant!’ He pointed at Violetta. ‘I know what’s been going on between you. Paddling palms in church. My own son consorting with the enemy. I should banish you as a coward and a traitor. You are no son of mine.’

‘Disown me if you like,’ Stephano said. ‘Banish me – I’d welcome it. I only have one thing to ask of you.’ The boy linked hands with Violetta. She smiled and nodded, encouraging him, as though they might have made this up together, stupid children that they were. ‘I ask only that, whatever our fate, we share it together. We will go away, far from here. We will never return. I give my word.’

That was a big mistake. Whatever they wanted, Sebastian would do the opposite, just because they wanted it. Surely the boy knew that? I wished I could have collected his words as they spilled and stuffed them back into his mouth.

Sebastian did not explode with rage. He spent a long time, as if considering, but that vein was pulsing in his temple again and the knuckles were white on his clenching fist.

‘Your word? What is that worth? I have plans for her, and of one thing you can be very sure: you will never see her again. Her fate is decided. She is to be sold into slavery. I already have a buyer.’

‘Father!’ Stephano stepped towards him. ‘You can’t do that! She’s a duke’s daughter and your own niece, your sister’s child!’

He looked around, as if others would support him in his pleading, but they’d all turned away.

Lord Sebastian continued as if his son had not spoken.

‘You will go into the service of Sale Reis, the Barbary corsair.’ He indicated the man standing by his side. ‘He can do with you what he likes: galley slave or catamite. It is of no concern to me. I do not know from whose loins you sprang, but you are no son of mine.’

Stephano didn’t lack for bravery. He leaped forward to defend his mother’s name, grabbing the Turkish dagger from the table. He had it at his father’s throat, the needle point pricking through the skin. Sebastian swallowed, bright blood trickling past his Adam’s apple. The boy should have jammed the knife right in and ripped through his windpipe, but he couldn’t do it, and then Sale Reis had the knife.

‘To kill a father is a grievous sin in any man’s religion,’ the corsair said. ‘You do not want such a crime on your conscience.’

He was a big man, the dagger looked like a toy in his hand, but he had struck quicker than a snake to force Stephano’s hand down. He smiled, his gapped teeth white against his swarthy skin, his glossy beard touched with henna. He wore a white turban and was swathed in robes in the manner of his people. He put the dagger back down on to the table. In case there was any more trouble, he rested his hand lightly on the short curved sword stuck into his sash.

Sebastian ordered the guards to seize his son, but Sale Reis put up his hand.

‘He is mine now. I’ve lost many fine men. I need all I can get. What about the other one?’ He nodded towards Guido. ‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Guido Ad Romano, of Pavia.’ The boy spoke up with courage and dignity.

‘He will be hanged.’ Sebastian turned to the guards. ‘Take him away!’

‘You can’t do that!’ Stephano shouted. ‘He’s a nobleman’s son.’

‘I can do what I like.’ Sebastian’s lips stretched into a smile. He dabbed at the blood on his neck with a kerchief. One victim was better than none.

‘I will take him too, if I may. As I said, I have lost many men in your service.’ Sale Reis bowed slightly, as if in deference, but it was clear that Sebastian was in his debt.

‘Very well. Take them.’ Sebastian looked cheated, then he saw Violetta.

‘Your father, the Tyrant Duke, is dead,’ he said to her, his tone as curt and dismissive as if she were a kitchen maid. ‘He was killed in the fighting, which is unfortunate. I’d have had him blinded and hung outside his own tower for all to see, left there to starve to death. I could take your life as forfeit for his, but I have been prevailed upon to be merciful. You are sold into slavery. Meet your new master.’

A man stepped out from the shadows. It was sixteen years since I had last seen him, but I would have known him anywhere. He’s got spindle sticks for legs and walks as if someone’s stuck a stave up his arse. Age had not improved his beauty. His goose-green eyes, once popping out of his head, were now sunk into little hammocks of flesh. His long upper lip curled back to show teeth a deeper shade of yellow and even more bucked than I remembered. His long face had grown pendulous and wattled; his hair seemed to have migrated from his head to eyebrows, ears and nostrils. I hardly had time to look at his face. I could not keep my eyes away from the great crucifix that hung at his chest. He had become a priest – by the size of the cross, and the blackness of his robes, a Jesuit at least. He had found his true vocation. I almost put up two fingers in benediction. He moved with stately dignity, as befitted his station, and I smothered a smile. Monsignor Malvolio. And it got better. The Lady Francesca, whom everyone took for Sebastian’s whore, was hanging on his arm, simpering up at him, her pale blue eyes bulging with fawning admiration.