The Mascherari: A Novel of Venice (15 page)

“He saw into the internal

and the external world,

left and right,

above and below,

before him and after him.”

Journal of Antonio da Parma

Eve of Natale

Long before the arrival of the
signori di notte
, when I thought myself unheard and unseen, I followed a fearful Angelo into Santa Croce and there, he led me to Francesco Visconti’s atelier.  No sooner had we neared it than he ran away, leaving me outside.

Angelo’s tale had chilled me, but I was determined to discover if Rolandino had told the truth. I had at first discounted the merchant’s violent confession, hoping to find Francesco Visconti alive. I gripped to the bronze knob and tapped on the door. Thrice, I was met by a deathly silence.

Across the nearby parishes, midnight bells chimed in unison. I drew a metal pin from my boot.  I had at least an hour before the
signori di notte
arrived. With the aid of my dagger and the pin, I worked at the lock until it ceded.

A fetid odor greeted me in the cold darkness.  I shuddered. My unsteady torch shone over dirty wooden benches. I saw craftsmen’s tools and to the back, a wall, smeared with large red letters. I stepped forth. Beneath my felt boots, came the rustling of crushed fabrics. I shone my light to the tiled floor. Streams of silks and gauze were strewn at my feet.  Tiny sequins glittered in the dark.  The once faint odor had grown oppressive. Someone was inside.

Distant wooden creaks echoed from above. I started. Was Francesco Visconti still alive perhaps? Was it his ghost that I sensed upstairs? Maybe Angelo was right and I had no place here. Again the rattling sound from above. I felt as though a ghost would claw at my neck at this very instant.

My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark and I could see, much to my terror, that Rolandino’s tale might be true. The back of the room had been ravaged; paint and bails of fabric lay on the floor; satin, lace and silks ripped to shreds and stained by paint. A row of hanging masks had been carelessly pulled to the ground. Drawers lay upside down with their contents spilled.  I raised my torch to the red words on the wall, until I could discern their sinister message - “Death to the Milanese.”

Sadness gripped me. Where had such hatred come from? And all the knives, I realized, as a cold chill descended over me, all those cutting implements that an artisan has use of, those things–they were missing. 

Nearing the spiral staircase, I looked up, to where Angelo had sensed much evil on that fateful night. He had spoken of gilded rays shining from the upstairs atelier.  But up there, I could see only darkness. Whatever spirit had inhabited the top floor, was no more.  

What had Angelo seen? What was it that had shone like gold? Basing myself on Angelo’s account, I knew the light had come alive long after the merchants had already left. Where had it come from, if not from Francesco?

I was startled by a gentle tap on my shoulder.  Paint was dripping from the ceiling. I brushed over the slimy liquid on my sleeve and brought it to my nose. Not paint. It was the smell of death. Rolandino had not lied.

I raised my lantern to the wooden planks overhead.  Blood.

For an instant, my light caught a face hiding behind the staircase.

“Who is there?” I waved my light ahead, feeling my pulse quicken. One glimpse, there! The outline of a shadow beneath the staircase. I froze. A tightness burned my throat. For a chilling instant, I could barely breathe.

“Who is there? Francesco?”

No. Not Francesco.

In that moment, I knew.  I knew with every fiber of my being that even if there was still no sign of Francesco, even if I would find no
mascheraro
, I knew at least, that
she
was here, in this atelier.  She was looking at me. The woman from my dream.
It was her
. I had seen her face in the darkness.

Slowly, I advanced. I peered into the shadows, shining my torch beneath the staircase.

Nothing.

I felt relieved and yet, a part of me was disappointed.

Perhaps Almoro was right and I did suffer from delusions.

Almoro’s words came to me.
Because this reality does not please you
, he had said.

I looked around the room.  Again, no sign of Francesco.

Because
, came Almoro Donato’s whiny voice, the reality, Antonio, is that Francesco is
upstairs
.

Francesco’s dripping blood on the floorboards above… My jaw tensed at the thought.

Images of slaughter flashed in my mind. I considered whether to go upstairs, or leave, before the
signore di notte
stormed in. I was running out of time and yet, perhaps due to Angelo’s warning but also, from dread, I could not bring myself to go upstairs.  If the blood averred to be Francesco’s blood, I could not forgive myself.

Already, I was horrified by the madness that had driven the patricians: Rolandino, Giacomo, Balsamo, Guido and Ubertino. Already, I sought for their motives.

But was there even a reason for the savagery of Carnivale? Could the basest impulses ever be accounted for? I recalled my last visit in Venezia. The gruesome spectacle that was the last Thursday of Carnivale.  Every year, in honor of a treaty that had taken place hundreds of years before between Venice and Aquileia, the Piazzetta overflowed with mad crowds and was transformed into an arena for bloodletting.  Animals—pigs and bulls—were chased, captured and mocked under the gaze of Venezia’s noble Signoria, before being cut to pieces and devoured by the crowd.

Up there, in the upstairs workshop, I might uncover butchery of a similar kind.

But why? Why would they kill an inoffensive artisan? Questions ran unanswered until I had no choice.

I ran. I ran upstairs, clutching at my heart, the timber moaning underfoot. With every step, I lived remorse and terror. I regretted that afternoon when I had been forced to abandon Francesco to his fate. 

And now, to my left lay the bedroom and to my right…

To my right, there was a light, seeping through a partly sealed door.

Behind the door, a familiar rattling. I peered ahead. Only the wind. The cold wind through an opened window... Perhaps there were no ghosts.

I held my breath. I could feel the quickening rhythm of my heart. Below, lay the magical world of sequins, feathers, silks and paints, the world of a great artist and, here, in this second atelier... there was…

The green door gave way.

Horror.

Abomination.

Blood–black, dried, smeared in hatred onto the walls, painting a horror this room had once known. My knees trembled.

Dismembered. Human limbs ranged where there should be none.

Was this my own voice? Had I cried out? I clamped at my mouth and dared another glance.

Headless, splayed on the wooden planks, in a blackened pool of decay, where humors mingled and seeped through the floorboards–his savagely cut, maggot infested disemboweled form, lay rotting at my feet.

Here was, then, the smell of death! Here, impaled on the leg of an inverted chair, the once noble head of the Milanese. The madness of it! Of seeing his dangling gray strands caked with blood.  Of seeing that his own face was no more real than a mask. And the stench! All the while the stench was unbearable. A cesspit of rot and hell. It painted a memory of such violence, that a cry burst from within me.

“Francesco! Francesco, forgive me,” came my voice.

I tried to look upon his face.

I would have sought to close his lids, to transport him away from this murderous abode, a home that ought to have been his joy and love, the fruit of his art.  But I had long realized that he had no face.  There, the fleshy jaw with its row of broken teeth; there, the torn eye sockets where maggots fed; there, the lacerated flesh hanging off his cheeks...but nothing left of his goodness.  No, not a trace of Francesco the Milanese.

I buckled to my knees as silent tears ran down my face.

And then, something that I cannot explain happened to me, in this very room.

As I tried to sift through the last moments of Francesco’s life, a sudden rage seized me. I asked myself what earthly debt a man could have ever possessed that would lead to such treatment of him. And I formed an answer.

Though it was more like a voice, a seething voice that somehow surged from my lips and echoed in this infernal room.

“He was wronged! Francesco was wronged!”

I felt my lips curl into a rage that I could not control.

“
You will pay Rolandino!
” I heard myself curse. “
You shall pay for your deeds! I shall come to you. I shall find the keys to the Wells... I shall find you in your cell, I
...”

And just as it had come, it bolted out of me. I remained stunned by the sound of my voice. I had spoken in an accent that was not my own. I had laid bare thoughts I knew were not even mine! And yet, how they possessed me!

I gasped for air.

In the moment when I had cried out, I had glimpsed a vision of Rolandino. It told me that he had never escaped from prison. Someone had come to avenge Francesco. Rolandino was
already dead
.

Now.

At this instant.

I passed a hand over my eyes.

Had I gone mad? If I spoke in foreign accents, what would I see now? I had dismissed Catarina’s superstition on the subject of my incomplete baptism. But what if it were no superstition?

I gazed to the ceiling, struggling to calm my troubled spirits. I could not bear to look at the deceased. I feared I may soon see his ghost.

And then I noticed it–the hanging portrait beside the window. The portrait that had plagued Rolandino and haunted him since that day. 

Rolandino had smeared white paint across the canvas as though to protect himself from her gaze. And as I stared at it, a gnawing tugged at my chest. 

Suddenly I had sprung to my feet. I had reached for the portrait and begun to peal the sullying paint off.  I had never known such urgency. Flake by flake, I worked at the canvas. White curls fell upon the floor as I etched off the paint.

Even then, I knew what I would find. Still, I came at it, gritting my teeth, my breath quickened by a sickening desire to see beneath–an urge to see her face. I wanted to see it. I had to see it because—

Because it was
her
.

I stepped back in horror.

The woman in my dream, the one I had seen on Rialto Bridge and then later, rising above Santa Croce as she wailed in torment–she was looking straight at me. 

The portrait fell at my feet.

I recognized her by the pendant round her neck, black locks framing her oval face, black eyes of such savagery, such raw beauty—and her lips—I shook with fear.

Who was she? Why did she haunt my dreams? Could she have been Francesco’s long lost wife? The Magdalena that Angelo had spoken of? I did not doubt it.

Yet, Rolandino had seen her in a different light.  He had seen her as nemesis incarnate.

He had been terrified.

While I sat in the deathly atelier, outside, a loud murmur stirred the silence of the
campo
.  Emerging from a narrow
calle
in the distance, masked young men and women spilled into the courtyard like phantoms on just another Carnivale night.  The foreboding hum of their voices rose to a shrill.  They ran, wading past the flooded courtyard, splattering the walls of this very house.  They contoured this very edifice toward the canal nearby.

I gazed through the window.

“Why the noise?” I called out.

None of them even looked up. They seemed agitated. 

Under the dancing torch lights below, I discerned youths in multi-colored
calzas
, some scantily clad, their
camicias
still open from a night of reveling. Their
compagnes
went unveiled, their long braids loosened provocatively.  They had removed their cork platforms and walked bare-footed. They seemed much reduced in height, the trail of their gowns drenched by the muddy courtyard.

To my dismay, the unruly crowd came to a halt beneath the atelier.  I dreaded what sport had newly taken their fancy.  As though in pursuit of some mischief, they crowded to the moored gondolas. 

A terrified voice rose above all others.

“Can you see it? Is it there?”

Then a reply.  A woman.

“It could not be far. I saw it earlier...in the water...”

Then came a shriek.

I leapt. I bolted down the staircase and into the main room.  I heard a further cry of terror and shuddered. What madness, what sport, what game had suddenly taken hold of these youths? I was short of breath from what I had seen an hour before. The rank smell of death festered in this diabolic house and now...

I stepped into the coldness outside, locking the doors behind me.  I feigned to have been stirred from my bed as though I lived here. With a frown on my face, I wiped a speck of white paint off my tabard and advanced toward the youths.

They crouched forth, close to the waters, peering into the dark liquid.

“Step aside! Move away!” I shouted as I elbowed my way through.

“It is him!” whispered a woman still staring into the water. Then she buried her masked face into her companion’s doublet.

“What is it? You have disturbed the peace with your carrying on endlessly at such late an hour.”

Despite my pretenses, I was like them, overcome with a restlessness and the knowledge of some uncanny evil. In truth, I had been waiting for it all night.

“Signore, you must see! You must see!”  The young woman was in hysterics.  She had lifted her
volto
mask as though she wanted me to see how truly horrified she was. She wanted someone to read her fear and to believe in it.  Her clammy hands were tight on my arm as she led me closer to the water. 

“They have killed him!” sobbed a youth.

“They did not! He escaped!” protested another.

I hesitated. I had a sharp sense of what I would see, but in that moment, I dared not believe it.  I took a step forth, feeling my heart thumping.

There was another stir from the crowd.  Torches were raised and voices lifted at the sight ahead.  I noted two large
sbirri
gondolas and the gleam of a dozen
sbirri
swords traveling fast toward us, along the dark water.  The crowd emitted further cries.

“They want to hide him from us! They want to...”

“Who? Hide who?” I sensed the anxiety in my voice. There was not much time. I had to see.

“Signore, it is horrible!
Guarda qui! Guarda!
”

A flambeau was thrust into my hands.

I came close. Closer. I crouched at the edge of the canal.  I dared not breathe as I peered into the shimmering surface.

There!  Surrounded by the murky waters of Venezia, a drowned man–his body covered in filth—stared back at me.  The flames danced in his face...

“It is Rolandino! Rolandino!” they shouted.

Rolandino Vitturi...

I could no longer hear the crowds. I barely took note of the
sbirri
as they stepped off and ranged themselves before the youth, barring the waters. They shoved the crowd away, one hand resting ominously on the hilt of their swords.  I felt strangely distant, even as the young voices rose around me in protest. They were soon hushed by the relentless
sbirri
.

Somehow a deafening silence enveloped me. I could only stare. The armed men formed a shield around Rolandino’s floating cadaver. They untangled his hair. They detached his limbs from the two gondolas.  They lifted him out, dripping with slime. They hushed the crowd, warning them—sending them off to their beds like children, after a game that they were meant never to have played.

I saw it.

Unmistakable terror on the
sbirri
’s faces. 

Unmistakable confusion as they gazed upon one another and wondered. Because even
they
did not know.

But I knew.

I knew everything. Its truth burned my fingers.

Rolandino
, I heard myself whispering. 
I see your death as though I were in the Wells.

I see it all.

You poor fool. You thought she would not find you but she did. It only took one stormy night. And as the sky thundered overhead, as lightning struck above San Marco, as the waters swelled and flushed the Wells, you dreamed your last dream.

She came for you. She dragged you out of your cell in your sleep and streamed you along, panting for breath in the waters of Venezia. 

Deep, so deep in the lagoon. What night you have seen, Rolandino!  Tangled in the black vine of her hair, gasping for life even as she cried for vengeance, cried for the man she loved and whom you murdered.  And how you fought to tear her away, but she clung to you, filled your lungs and took your breath...

And when you died, when your body was defiled by the lagoon and had begun to rot, she brought you to him…like an offering. She tied this cord round your neck to mark you...

I knew not how. But I had seen it. I had felt it all.

The certainty of it stung me as surely as the object that I now held in secret within the palm of my hand.  My wet fingers curled tight round it as I watched the
sbirri
oar their gondolas away, carrying with them the bloated corpse of Rolandino Vitturi.  

Before the
sbirri
had reached us, I had slipped a hand inside the waters and lifted the pendant from Rolandino’s neck.  The witch’s rue. The one I had seen round her neck, in my dream.  The one she wore in the portrait.

I had claimed it for her.

I receded quietly, moving past the atelier until I spun on my heels and lurched in the dark to regain my lodgings.  I moved past an alley that I had taken previously. I was now well acquainted with the shortened paths through labyrinthine Venice.  The events of the nights flashed in my mind.

Then a blow, fast and sure.  For moments, I remained out of breath, stumbling back to my feet. Two black-clad men, wrapped in long fur-lined mantles, their faces hidden by black
bautas
, stood there, wielding their swords in my face. 

A night of murder had begun.

“Signori, it is late,” I mused. “Have you, then, no lady to serenade with verses on this enchanting night?”

A sneer from one of the men who sprung forth, attacking me from the side. I evaded him.

“Signori, you are foolish to come at me. Do you not know that before you have the chance to skewer me, the most reputed
bravo
of Venezia, will come to my aid?”

Saying this, I clung, uncertain, to my rondel. An idea had crossed my mind. Throwing my flambeau in the face of one of my attackers, I sprung into the streets, evading the thrust of his blade. They chased after me, the sound of their heeled footsteps pounding against the marble paving. 

I scaled a wall and hauled myself on a balcony, leaping to the roof of an adjoining house.  They pursued, undeterred and we took on the rooftops of Venice in a mad chase. The sounds of slamming wooden shutters alerted us to the awakening citizens beneath.  Lights flickered as numerous torches were lit in San Polo homes. And twenty feet behind me, I saw my pursuers closing in.

I tripped, cursing myself.

A raven crossed the night, his black mantle unfurling like wings against the wind. I recognized the proud velvet
cioppa
, the shapely thighs in their leather high boots. He stood before me, facing the other two men. His heavy mantle was thrust over one shoulder, as he drew out his blade and prepared to strike.  He leapt forth with a savage snarl, his rapier swift, parring every feint, the thrust of his Aragonese blade, unmatched, the glimpse of his dark skin unseen behind his white mask. 

I breathed a sigh. But it was disbelief more than relief as I watched him, watched the grit of his attack and the unsurpassed nobility of his swordsmanship.

He drove his blade into the first man who gave out a cry.  The other one took fright and lurched aside, only to leap into a courtyard and disappear in the hidden
calli
of San Polo.

Esteban kicked the dead man at his feet. The body rolled down the rooftop and splashed into the canal waters below.

I clutched at my side, damning the night. Esteban put away his sword and knelt beside me.

“Are you badly wounded?” he asked, noting the red on my right arm.
“It is not my blood,” I protested. “I think I have torn a limb and my ankle hurts a little but I should be in one piece.”

“Antonio Da Parma,” he said, as he helped me up my feet, “it appears you have made an enemy of the Consiglio dei Dieci. Or at least, one of them disapproves of your actions... These two
sbirri
wanted you dead.”

I gave a grunt, still rubbing my bruised rib.

“I don’t know what you are harping about, Signor Bravo. These men were hardly
sbirri
. They were mercenaries. Mistaken identity; that is all. It happens often in these dark streets. I can assure you that the Consiglio dei Dieci is not the scourge of Veneziana society that you make of it.”

“Mistaken identity,” he repeated, mocking my words.  He gave a short flash of white teeth before shaking his head in disbelief.

“Certainly. I can certify that the Consiglio and I are on very good terms,” I said, raising myself from the ground.

“Oh, I can see that. A moment ago, you were being chased by two
sbirri
who had every intention of murdering you, Signor da Parma.”

“They were mercenaries. Not
sbirri
.”

He glowered at me.

“You are not observant, Antonio. I have been watching you, from the instant you entered the Santa Croce house and long before Rolandino’s body floated up the canal. The two men you saw, they visited your dwelling early this evening.  They were
sbirri
. First they entered your room and spilled the contents of all your drawers and when I sprung upon them, they fled. ”

“You broke into my lodgings?”

“As did those two men!”

I tensed at his words, but since I carried all my possessions on me, including the journal where I recounted my notes, I soon recomposed myself.

“Well I am pleased at the situation, however odd. For some reason, you take an obsessive interest in anything I do and have a passion for leaping in dark places where you are not invited...”

“Oh, is that so?”

“…spying on me, like a vulgar ruffian.”

“Vulgar now? I see.”

“Never showing your face…”

“That is my affair. If I am still alive today, it is partly because of it.”

I sighed. I was being unfair. The
bravo
had saved my life. I had no idea as to what these
sbirri
were looking for or why they had wanted to kill me.

“Signor Bravo...”

“Esteban. Here, lean on my arm.”

“Esteban, you have my gratitude. There—are you satisfied? But do not expect me to endorse your distrust of the Consiglio dei Dieci.  I cannot share your grievance for the simple reason that I do not commerce with criminals.”

“You would comply with the Consiglio dei Dieci, even as they dispatch men to murder you?” he bellowed. “You are seeing the light, but choose to look the other way. “

His words might have spurred doubt in my mind but at that instant, I thought of nothing else except her.  I had seen
her
light and I did not want to ignore it. No, not now.

I tied the pendant around my neck and put it aside, tucking it beneath my linen shirt. As I did so, it appeared to me that Esteban stared at me in great confusion. He gaped in silence, eyeing the silver rue with a sudden curiosity. After a while, he bit his lip and said nothing.