She would sooner take her own life, though the sin was mortal. If they pushed a barge with both her and Prospero into the sea, she would jump from it and swim until her limbs gave out, swim until she sank.
* * *
Prospero did return. He returned for Miranda and damned her by so doing.
Antonio delivered the news to Agata himself, the day before he freed her from the cells. “They say the false duke returns this evening. The king of Naples has men at the ready to back me when he does. The priests have come to me to plead your case and beg me to allow the salvation of your soul. On their word alone I will liberate you, once Prospero and the girl are gone. But know that no penance will satisfy me, Agata.” He leaned closer to the bars, and she could smell his musk, as though he were the trapped animal, not she. “You live by my largess, but forgiveness I will never grant.”
She let the emotion drain out of her. She had loved this man, but she would not love again. If love had made Prospero do what he did, she wanted no part of it. She only wanted quiet now. She only wanted peace. “I understand,” she said dully. And then her mind snagged on the other part he had just said, the part fear and hunger had caused her to skip over. “The girl . . . Miranda? You’re sending Miranda to die?”
“Better that she perish before she learns what a monster her father is. What a monster he made of her mother. Better that she die than become a monster herself.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Do you believe any child born to a man like that could escape his influence, Agata? Do you? Bice could not save him, could not change him, and if not for him she would have taken her place among the saints. Any child of his seed will bloom as poisoned fruit, whether he is here or not.”
Agata heard the truth in his words. Prospero’s corruption had already crept into Miranda’s character, she was certain of it. But Bice’s heart would break, wherever she was, if she ever learned of her daughter’s fate. “Let me keep the child, please. Let me raise her. Let me save her.”
Antonio let out a barking laugh. “You? You, preserve her from evil? I would rather she be reared by a common bitch than fall into your clutches, woman. No, the child cannot live. Prospero’s line will end, and his reign will be nothing more than distant memory.”
“If you let them leave, she will be his. He will smother every spark of goodness in her. She will become a demon, Antonio, raised without faith, without hope of redemption.”
“She will never live that long. The seas are stormy, and God in His wrath will destroy them, for Prospero has committed the ultimate transgression against Him and the order of His world. Let the sea take them and scatter their bones. Let the fish feast on their flesh, and let the name Prospero never be heard again in all of fair Milan.”
* * *
From that day forward, as Antonio decreed, Prospero’s name was seldom heard. But Bice’s name still echoed through the halls. Only out of Antonio’s hearing; only as a story. A ghostly tale, passed on in whispers. Agata knew that young men and women sneaked away from court dances to look upon the portrait in the gallery and to try to find the place in the tunnels where Bice had lived. She chased them off whenever she found them lurking near the painting, and the workrooms were locked, their contents turned over to Naples as evidence in Prospero’s hasty midnight trial. Agata heard the court there did not believe the fantastical tales of the old duke’s wife come back to life. King Alonso hardly cared as long as Milan bent the knee.
Antonio had ordered Prospero’s portrait moved to the family vaults, perhaps fearing some supernatural retribution for its destruction, but had left Bice’s portrait alone, save for the shroud he commanded the servants to hang over its frame, the shroud he forbid them to lift. He himself lifted it, though. Agata knew, for she had come upon him there, standing in the galleries, and she had let him be, let him look upon Beatrice’s countenance for as long as he liked, though she herself could not bear the sight. She welcomed the covering, for it felt like the only true burial Beatrice had been granted.
She held her own funeral for Bice and Miranda, though there were no bodies. She went to the plot where Beatrice’s body once lay, and placed some of their garments beneath the dirt, and prayed for hours under the shade of the towering oak. She thought about leaving Milan, once the deed was done, but she had nowhere else to go. She seldom returned to Franciacorta. Her aunt and uncle seemed to blame her for Bice’s death, as though she had failed, in some way, to protect their only child. Their faces were drawn and wan, and they both, it transpired, did not have long left to live. She went home for the respective funerals and never ventured back again.
A year later, Antonio finally married, choosing as his bride the fair Isabella della Torre, who died not two years later in childbirth. Their son did not survive, as Agata remembered well. And yet she could see the child’s face; and yet she could imagine his laugh, the way he would run around the castle, pulling at skirts and pleading for treats. There had been no little boy, no little duke with Antonio’s dark eyes and his mother’s auburn hair. Antonio had never taken him to Africa, on his very first trip abroad, to see the marriage of the princess of Naples to the king of Tunis. Whatever she remembered was only a wishful dream.
* * *
Agata’s days passed a dozen years in drudgery. Antonio ignored or abused her at his leisure. The servant girls seemed to grow younger as she grew older, and stupider by the year. Patrizia had long since passed away in the last plague. All her friends were gone from this world. She was thirty-three years old, and she longed for this lingering life to pass. Daily Mass was her only peace.
She preferred the Duomo to the closer-by Santa Maria delle Grazie and to the smaller castle chapel Antonio had revived after many years of disuse under Prospero’s reign. The Duomo, with its sky-reaching ceilings and perpetual construction, reminded her that the work of God on earth was still unfinished. The kingdom of Heaven, in its perfection, was not yet revealed to man. Stone by stone, they would create it here.
As she walked back one Sunday with a contingent from the castle, she saw as they approached the gates that a caravan was passing through. Perhaps Antonio had returned from his trip to Tunis, for he had been due to stay a few days afterward in Naples.
She came through the gates and entered the courtyard to find servants running hither and thither, talking amongst themselves in murmurs. She took hold of one girl’s arm as she passed, arresting her mid-step. “What’s going on here? Has Duke Antonio returned?”
The girl looked at her with wide eyes. “Antonio is the duke no longer. Haven’t you heard? The old duke is returned. And his daughter—” She pointed towards the landing, where a dark-haired young woman stood. “His daughter—”
At the sight of the woman’s face, Agata’s heart nearly stopped. Bice had returned. Bice had left the tunnels, had survived this decade and more. Bice—
Miranda—
Bice—
Miranda!
Bile rose in her throat as she realized the truth, as she took in the girl’s meaning. The old duke is returned. “Get her something to cover her face,” she hissed to the girl. “Do not allow her to take it off. Tell the rest—if they permit her to so much as lift it for a moment, they will answer to me.” The girl gaped at her, and Agata thrust her away. “Go! Now!”
The girl fled, and Agata walked in the opposite direction as fast as she could, seeking refuge in the halls. She walked, and she gasped, and her hands began to tremble, and she feared that she would faint, when she turned a corner and there—
He’s here.
There—
He sees us!
There was the old duke, the Devil himself, his eyes as blue as the sea meant to drown him. “Hello, Miranda,” he said, but that was wrong. She wasn’t Miranda, she was—
He knows we aren’t Agata, Dorothea, he knows—
“Playing games?” He came towards her, one slow step at a time. “Messing about in minds? Leave the magic to me, girl. You meddle in wha
t you do not understand.”
It’s only a dream. Miranda felt the terror shooting through her, the blood pumping and the throat tightening back in the body she had forgotten she had. A dream, a dream, a dream—
He was closing in. Miranda could feel Dorothea nowhere. We have to get back. We have to get out. He sees me, he sees—
Her father held out his hand. “Let me help you. You’ve wandered off the path and into dark woods, Miranda. Let me help you sleep.”
Agata-Miranda recoiled and forced herself to remember Dorothea’s smile. Her touch, her laugh, her presence in the real world, the world beyond this shadow play. Somewhere out there, Dorothea lay beside her, and Miranda needed to find her.
“Miranda—”
She could hear it. There. Below his voice. Below the sounds of the castle, the vivid illusions of this recent past. A pounding, even and steady. Two rhythms, entwined. Her pulse, and Dorothea’s, beating fingertip to fingertip.
The world began to dissolve around her. She saw her father snatching at the air as she sank into blackness, swallowed by the void. Around her she heard laughter. Howling, hysterical laughter, not Ariel’s voice, but a thousand screeching wails, a cacophony, tearing at her eardrums. They drowned out the twin pulses, and she grasped for purchase against the slippery sides of the void. Dorothea! she cried out. Then, in the voice of the child she had once been, she pleaded now as she had pleaded then: Mother! Mother! Mother!
Chapter 11
Miranda tumbled back into herself, panting, staring at the angels on the ceiling, the bed beneath her firm, the world around her real.
“We made it.” Her voice did not sound like her own, so long had she been in Agata’s mind. “We made it. Dorothea, we—”
She stopped, for Dorothea’s hand was not in hers. She turned and saw that Dorothea’s lips were blue. A dark stream of blood dribbled from her nose.
“No,” Miranda breathed. She forced herself up, against her body’s protest, and leaned over Dorothea, cupping her face in her hands. “Dorothea, please. We made it. We’re alive. You have to wake up. Please.”
I’ve never known anyone whose brother and sister died before. I’ve never known anyone who died before.
“Dorothea, you have to.” Miranda’s voice cracked, and she pressed frantic kisses to Dorothea’s lips, her cheeks, her closed, unmoving eyelids. “Duriya. Dorothea, come back to me. Come back to me, please! I love you, Dorothea, I love—”
Dorothea’s chest heaved, and she burst into a flurry of violent coughing.
Miranda gripped her shoulders as Dorothea convulsed, nearly falling from the bed. “In my pouch—” Dorothea gasped. “The mithridate—”
Miranda bolted across the room, grabbing the pouch and fumbling for the small stoppered alabastrum left inside. She ran back to Dorothea, who took hold of the container of mithridate and swallowed it in one draught, though she gagged and coughed as she forced the substance down. She quieted, staying still for a long moment as Miranda stroked her back, and then looked up at Miranda with bloodshot eyes.
“He . . .”
“I know.” Miranda’s mind was still filled with visions of what her father had done. The sight, the smell of it. The feel of her mother’s hand, cold and heavy in Agata’s palm. “Did he really see us? There, at the end—was it him?”
Dorothea shook her head. “I don’t think so. I can’t see any reason he would be walking in Agata’s dreams, Miranda. He couldn’t have known we would go there. I think it may have been our own fear, or the demons of the void, toying with us. I could hear them, there, at the end. I—” She shuddered, looking down at her arm, as though she bore scratches there. “I felt them.”
“Me too.”
They both fell silent. Dorothea got out of the bed, swaying slightly on her feet. “I should leave. You should go to Naples, Miranda. To Ferdinand.” She started towards the portal leading to the tunnels. “He can protect you.”
“Wait! Don’t go.” Miranda followed her, taking hold of her elbow and guiding her back to sit on the edge of the bed. “Dorothea, stop, please. I do not know what the future brings, it’s true, nor where we go from here. But I do know that I want you there with me.” She softened her tone, lest the words sound like a command. “If you want to be, I mean.”
Dorothea did not speak for a long moment, and Miranda thought she would refuse her. “I do want to be,” she finally said, her voice raw. “But even if we discard your royal titles when we’re alone—even if we pretend you’re not to be Ferdinand’s queen—I don’t want to be your servant, Miranda. I know that’s how I entered your life, but I can’t bear the thought of continuing on that way. It’s hard enough for me to imagine finding happiness as your mistress, much less your maid. I can’t promise you anything now. Let’s survive this madness, and then we’ll speak of what might be.”
Miranda clasped her hand. “Of course. I’m sorry. I never should have let you clean these rooms, never sat and watched while you toiled. I wouldn’t now. It’s only that—” She sighed. “On my island, it was different. My father bid spirits to do our work, and forced Caliban into labor, telling me all the time it was the natural order of things. It’s taken me a long time to understand life here. But that’s no excuse. I should have let you know how I feel about you, Dorothea. I’m sorry that I didn’t, until I thought I’d lost you.”
Dorothea smiled at her weakly. “So you’ll scrub the floors and dust the shelves in Naples? You, on your noble knees?”
Miranda laughed. “And more.” She sombered. “But I fear that neither Ferdinand nor King Alonso can aid us. You saw what my father can do, Dorothea. Even death will not deter him. He will come after me, wherever I go.”
“He was defeated once, Miranda. He can be stopped again.”
“His power is far greater now. You didn’t see him on the island. I didn’t understand it then, but now I do. He was refining his magic. Perfecting his art. I believe he could turn this whole city to ash, Dorothea. He could make all of Italy bow to him and do his bidding. Antonio is right. He could rule the world.” She shivered. “He must need more time for his plans, though, or he would have already made his move. We must act quickly.”
“What do we do?”
“You remember the figure that brought me to the galleries during the ball? The one wearing the mask?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I think—Dorothea, it seems impossible, but I think that may have been my mother.”
Dorothea’s eyes grew wide. “After all these years? How would her body have endured?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she found someone to help her, or discovered a kind of magic to preserve herself. She loved to learn.” Miranda’s throat tightened on this last word. Now that she was back in her own form, she could fully feel the pain of seeing her mother, her lovely, laughing, living mother, and losing her once more. “Antonio doesn’t appear to have left his cell in all the days of his confinement. I don’t think it was him. It was her.”
“So she wanted you to find out. She wanted you to see her portrait.”
“Yes, I think so. She’ll help us, Dorothea, if she’s still within these walls. We should go to the tunnels. See if we can find any trace of her. Together we can free my uncle, and all of us—you, me, Antonio—will go to Naples and warn Ferdinand of what’s coming.” She tightened her grip on Dorothea’s hand. “Is there a spell you can do that would reveal her to us? Some way we could find her, if she walks the world still?”
Dorothea blew out a long breath. “That kind of magic is far beyond my skill. Prospero plunges into the sort of dark pools in which other mages wouldn’t dare dabble. I wouldn’t even know where to look for details of such rituals, or who to ask.”
So their magic was no match for her father’s. And on their side they had no firm allies: only the ghost of her mother, which might be nothing more than Miranda’s own fancy, and her treacherous uncle, who might murder Miranda as soon as come to her aid. “We’ve no choice, then. We’l
l search the tunnels tomorrow and see if we can find a way to release Antonio. We need someone King Alonso will believe, when we come to his court. But we must watch our backs with him, Dorothea. I’m still Prospero’s daughter. You heard the way he talked about me.”
“I know.” Dorothea raised her hand to run the fingers along Miranda’s cheekbone. “But don’t listen to your uncle and Agata, eh? That was long ago. They didn’t know you then, and they don’t know you now. You’re nothing like him, Miranda. I promise you.”
Miranda brought Dorothea’s hand to her lips, brushing a kiss over the knuckles. “Whatever we do come morrow, we both need to sleep. I’ll help clean you up, and then you should rest. We still have hours until the dawn.”
Dorothea did not fight her. She acquiesced to Miranda’s ministrations, and they fell asleep together, a fitful sleep, laced with shared and terrible visions that were not their own.
* * *
In the last hours before morning, Miranda dreamed of a paradise.
All around her a lush jungle stretched out, as far as the eye could see. In the distance, she could hear the calling waves.
It was like her island, but far vaster. A world of wonder, with sickness banished, with death long gone. In her ears echoed the lilting songs of birds she loved, their flocks hale and huge, swooping high in the shade, darting in and out of the canopy. Creatures ran around her feet, rabbits and lizards and frogs, uncrushed by man, untormented by larger beasts, living in eternal idyll. Above her, the sky was endless and blue, a shade almost purpureal, cushioning flocculent clouds in its fathomless depths.
She heard someone calling. The voice of someone she loved. Everyone she loved was here, forever. Everyone she loved was safe, at last. She knew what it was to love, at last. This was a perfect world, the world she had never even known she wanted. This was Heaven, brought down to earth, and tears streamed down her cheeks as she beheld its infinite perfection. She never wanted to leave this place. She wished to stay, and knew she could not: not yet. Not yet. Not yet, Miranda. Not yet.
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