The Girl Behind the Mask (35 page)

‘I understand,’ said the uncle. ‘I am happy to continue to pray alone.’

‘I will leave the main gate to the island open so that you may leave when you wish.’

‘Thank you. Oh, and before I forget.’ The uncle reached into his purse and pulled out five gold coins. ‘For your trouble. And for your gracious intercedence with God on high on our behalf?’

‘I will pray for you all, sir.’

The priest would have attempted to get the entire Borgia family into Heaven for five gold coins. He would certainly pray for this poor wretch who had lost his whole family. But first, dinner . . .

Chapter 53

With my ticket booked, there was still work to be done before I could start packing up my things at Ca’ Scimmietta.

The last of the papers I had scanned in the Donato library before the ball and its disappointments lay on my desk at the university. This was not written in Luciana’s hand, but someone else’s. It had been tucked inside the diary as an afterthought. My heart fell as I translated it. It confirmed all my worst fears. It was an account of Luciana’s death. She had died in the convent of ‘diseases unknown’. She was taken from the convent to be buried on San Michele with her mother.

I had not made the trip to San Michele during my time in Venice. Reading about Luciana’s last resting place, I decided I had to. I boarded a ferry at the quay where I had first set foot in Venice almost ten weeks earlier. Spring was truly in the air now and the lagoon was bright and calm.

I climbed off the ferry at the cemetery island along with a couple of grandmothers bearing flowers. They walked quickly and purposefully. They knew where they were going. They chatted animatedly as they walked, suggesting to me that their time for grieving helplessly had long passed.

I didn’t know quite where I was supposed to start looking. I knew that space on San Michele had been at such a premium for so long, it was quite possible that Luciana was no longer on the island at all. Modern Venetians leased their plots on the island for just a short while, buying a decade or so before they were dug up and moved on. But I knew some very old graves still existed from when the island was not just a cemetery but also a working church for the people of Canareggio.

I weaved my way around the graveyard with the help of a tourist’s map that pointed out the notables who’d ended their days in Venice. The description I had read said that Luciana was buried in a family tomb. I could not find it. After three hours of searching, I gave up. I sat down on a bench, defeated and depressed.

My thoughts wandered back through my time in Italy. I’d found what I came for in terms of my research, but I’d uncovered a whole new set of mysteries within myself. I decided, as I sat on that bench, that I would write back to Steven and tell him I was ready to talk. What would become of that, I didn’t know, but at least my relationship with him, however dysfunctional, had been real. On the island of the dead, I decided I was through with chasing ghosts.

The ghosts, however, were not quite finished with me. To celebrate my last night in the city, Nick and Bea insisted we three go out to dinner. There were spritzes and there was wine. There was much departmental gossip and much laughter. When the evening was over, Bea started to cry.

‘I’ll be coming back,’ I told her, though I didn’t honestly know if I would. ‘Or you could visit me in London.’

‘Nick’s going to be in London soon,’ Bea told me. ‘You two should definitely meet up.’

Nick smiled shyly.

‘That would be nice,’ I said.

Bea’s security guard arrived at the restaurant to take her home for a booty call, leaving Nick and me alone. He offered to walk me home, of course. Though it wasn’t icy, he offered me his arm. When we got to Ca’ Scimmietta, he didn’t ask to come in.

‘I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do,’ he said. ‘Finishing off your packing.’

I nodded.

He helped me to get the door open one last time. I went to kiss him goodbye. Nick grasped my shoulders and suddenly placed a kiss right on my lips. I was wide-eyed with surprise but he let me go after just a second.

‘You deserve love, Sarah,’ he told me. ‘Proper love. Not angry, not jealous, not evasive. You need someone who is supportive and kind to you. Someone who will always be there.’

I knew he was talking about himself. I hugged him tightly.

‘Take care,’ he told me.

I promised that I would.

I watched Nick walk away along the misty canalside and thought about his words. At any other time in my life, perhaps I would have invited him upstairs and let him kiss me again. But Nick had never been a feature of my dreams.

As I settled down under the covers on the four-poster bed for the last time, I thought about the months that had passed since my first night in Venice. Memory fragments of my stay in the city swirled through my mind, mixed up with scenes from Luciana’s diaries and pictures from my nocturnal adventures with the man in the mask. Would he be with me that night?

Chapter 54

This time, my dream began not in the garden but in the library. A figure, not unlike the man Bea had insulted, was standing by the fireplace in that very same pose. I stepped into the room. Glancing down at myself, I saw that I was wearing the Dior dress Marco had picked out for me. The metal-grey skirt formed a puddle of fabric around my feet. In my hand, I held the
servetta muta
.

The man at the fireplace turned to face me when he heard me come into the room. He was wearing his mask but I could see, even from a distance, that his eyes were smiling. He held out his hand to me. His perfect, strong, tanned hand. We knitted our fingers together.

‘Come here.’

He sat down on one of the armchairs beside the fireplace and pulled me down onto his lap. He ran his hand over my hair and unfastened the clip that held it in place so that it fell loose over my shoulders. He pushed his fingers deep into the cascading waves and then brought my face closer to his for a kiss.

‘No,’ I said.

Gently, I pushed back from him.

‘Not with your mask on.’

Behind the mask, my lover’s eyes glittered. He smiled at me. He smoothed the curve of my lips with his thumb.

‘Of course.’

With one hand, he reached up to undo the ribbon that held his mask in place. With the other, he continued to hold the mask to his face so that it didn’t fall away too soon.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked me.

I took a deep breath. I was. Nothing he could reveal would change my feelings for him.

Like a magician exposing the secret behind a trick, finally he uncovered his face for me. His familiar smile. Those brown eyes. His expressive eyebrows. I put my fingers to his perfect skin. He was every bit as handsome as the man I had only seen in photographs.

‘Happy?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘Can I kiss you now?’

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my lips to his. He held me tightly as he kissed me back. There was truth in our embrace. At last we were being honest with each other. The warmth of his mouth upon mine suffused every part of my body. I had never felt so happy or so loved.

‘Come on.’

We stood up. Still holding my hand, he led me away from the fireplace. We went from the library to the galleried floor, where Ernesta had once entertained Luciana, and Marco now had his own quarters. He opened a door to a room that overlooked the Grand Canal. The sunshine and the reflections bouncing off the water outside made a light show on the gilded walls. Stepping into that room was like stepping into heaven. And in the middle of heaven was a wide white bed.

I turned my back on Marco so that he could unfasten my dress. He worked quickly, occasionally dropping a kiss on my shoulder as he did so. As the bodice slowly loosened its grip on me, I breathed deeper, and relaxed. I stepped out of the dress. Beneath, I was wearing a pure white lace camisole, knickers to match and snowy stockings, like a bride. Marco smiled as he took in the sight of me. He placed his hands on either side of my waist and squeezed playfully as he kissed me again.

Laughing, we tumbled onto the bed together. The sheets were cool and crisp beneath my fingers. Sitting up, I helped Marco pull off his shirt. He sat up to tug off his boots and his trousers himself. When he lay down again, I ran my hands over his broad chest. His perfect chest. The scar I’d seen in my previous dreams was gone, leaving no trace. Meanwhile, he slipped his hand beneath my camisole and cupped and caressed my longing breasts, cooing at the softness of my skin. His palm lightly brushed my nipples, causing them to harden quickly. I begged him to take one between his teeth. When he did so, gently closing his lips around the rosebud, I felt as though I had been plugged into some magical source of electricity. My entire body trembled with excitement. I felt arousal spread to every part of me. I wanted him so much.

His shaft was already hard for me. I wrapped my hand around it and felt its heat and strength as I pulled the foreskin down. I slid down the bed so that I could take it in my mouth, making it harder still by sucking. Marco groaned with pleasure. He reached for my head and smoothed my hair while I licked the length of his penis, savouring every warm, smooth inch.

‘Stop,’ he told me, when I could feel he was close to the edge. ‘I want to come inside you.’

I lay back down on the pillows for him, lifting my hips so he could pull off the white lace panties. He joyously threw them into the air. They fluttered to the floor like a tumbling dove.

I pulled him down towards my lips. We kissed again, full of heat and love for each other.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked me.

His hand was between my legs, his finger pressed into me. He could feel that I was ready. My pussy was perfectly wet and longing to be filled by him. I parted my legs so that he could give me what I wanted. As he guided his cock inside me, I felt what can only be described as relief.

Our lovemaking was as wonderful as anything I could remember. We were like teenagers, experiencing sex for the very first time. Our sighs were punctuated by happy laughter. Our orgasms were tremendous. I came again and again and again. I felt I could have made love all night long.

Afterwards, Marco propped himself up on his elbow to look down at me.

‘I love you,’ he told me.

I told him that I loved him too.

He kissed me and said, ‘I know.’

Chapter 55

The following morning, I left Venice for London. I ordered a water-taxi to take me to the airport. It was an extravagance, but I felt I needed it. I did not have the energy to stand like a sardine in a packed vaporetto, and then drag my bags to the airport ferry stop. Nick had offered to help, of course, but I told him I didn’t need help and he had accepted the brush-off with grace. Almost with relief, I thought. I didn’t want to be waved off.

The water-taxi driver promised he knew the fastest route out of the city. We would avoid the busiest canals, zipping through the smaller ones instead. That was another advantage of the water-taxis. They could go where the vaporetti could not. But what I had not reckoned with was that the taxi-driver’s route might take us right past the Palazzo Donato.

I tuned out of the driver’s incessant chatter and gazed at the house I had come to know so well. That morning, it looked just as it had done the very first time I laid eyes on it. It was well preserved and well cared for but somehow it still had an air of neglect. The windows were all shuttered. There was no boat other than Marco Donato Senior’s old water-taxi by the landing-raft. The feeling one got when one looked at the place was a distinct lack of life. A lack of love.

‘Are you in there?’ I asked Marco silently. ‘Are you sitting in your courtyard? Are you in your library, holding the letters I was reading just last week? Are you peering out from behind your shutters? Can you see me?’

I stared at the Palazzo Donato, daring Marco to come to the window. My eyes were defiant. He had asked for my forgiveness. I wanted him to know that there was no need to ask forgiveness. He had not humiliated me. He had not left me feeling foolish or down at heart. Much.

The water-taxi driver noticed me staring at the palazzo as we passed.

‘Ca’ Donato,’ he said, automatically switching into tour-guide mode. ‘Nobody knows what goes on in there but it used to be a big party house. There are stories. There was a tragedy. Now, it is a house of mystery . . .’

I nodded impatiently.

‘How much longer until we get to the airport?’ I asked.

The driver took his cue and shrugged. ‘Is a calm day. Twenty minutes.’

‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you can make it nineteen?’

I turned away from the Palazzo Donato at last.

Chapter 56

8th September, 1753

I don’t know how long I lay asleep. When I woke, I was not certain I was even still alive. I pinched my leg, but then surely, I said to myself, you would be able to feel your own leg in Heaven, too. Or did the angels go round bumping into things because they couldn’t tell where their own feet were?

Certainly, I hadn’t sprouted wings. But as consciousness came back to me, I was in no hurry to pronounce myself alive. There had been moments when I was convinced that the poison was a trick. How could you take a draft that would make you appear to be dead for three days then,
miracoloso
, be returned to life safely and absolutely with no lasting effects? How could you ever trust someone not to sell you an ordinary poison, intended to kill you outright? How could you tell the difference? I would have felt better had I met the poison-master but of course, that was not going to be possible.