Antonio had not accompanied them to Naples, though he had sent them with a powerful contingent of gifted guards. He stayed behind to tend to the turmoil in Milan, the uproar caused by the mysterious murder of the old duke. Miranda had asked if there would be rebellion, if Milan’s subjects would object to his reclamation of the dukedom, and he had shaken his head. “Chaos will reign, for a time. But then, that is Italy. Milan will endure.”
All Antonio’s lieutenants had been waiting by, waiting for their chance to push out Prospero’s scanty forces within the ranks of Milan, and so the transition had already begun. Miranda left the city satisfied that its future was ensured, that her choice had been the right one. But in the night, she still dreamed of paradise. In the darkness, she still heard an old voice calling, and she awoke, more mornings than not, with tears in her eyes.
Dorothea knew this. They had let Dorothea stay in Miranda’s room, in a supposedly separate bed, when Miranda explained how the death of her father had wracked her nerves. She and Dorothea had not spoken of what might come next, now that they were safe in Naples. After almost losing Dorothea again, at the hands of her own father, Miranda was loath to destroy their fragile bit of peace. Part of her longed for this life, watching the sun set over the sea from her fine palace, Dorothea by her side and all the power of the Neapolitan crown at hand. But the ocean breeze made her restless, raised in her again the desire to run, to swim, to dive into the blue waters wearing nothing but her skin, an act that Ferdinand would surely never condone. She might teach him the pleasures of discarding courtly life, of casting off titles and cumbersome jewels and embracing the gifts of the sun and the earth and the stars every once in a while. Yet she felt she would soon tire of such teaching, of instructing someone in truths that ought to be evident, of guiding through ignorance a person who should be better equipped to navigate the nuances of the world.
As, perhaps, Dorothea had tired of teaching her.
* * *
Miranda’s mother stayed in the room next to where Miranda and Dorothea slept, and Miranda had spent their first night talking with her until the early hours of the morning, learning all that had occurred in the dozen years they had been apart.
“I never surrendered hope that you would return to me,” Bice said, her voice hushed, which was the tone that seemed to pain her least. She had taken off the mask, at Miranda’s request. Her eyes were glazed with a whitish-blue film, and her skin speckled with spots of decay, but she was still Miranda’s mother. Still her spirit endured, though Miranda wished she could help her find a better life than this one lived in the shadows. “If the dead can rise, I knew you could come back to me. So I waited. I read. I prepared, for I knew Prospero would be preparing, too. Remember: I knew better than anyone what he could do. I knew no sea and storm could stop him.”
“And you visited Antonio. You told him not to tell me.”
Beatrice nodded. “I did. I feared . . . I feared you would not understand. That even if I found a way to stop your father, you would never come with me, never escape him. You had to learn the truth yourself. And I did not want you to see me this way.” She looked down. “It’s why I brought you to the gallery, that night at the ball. Perhaps it was foolish, but I wanted you to remember me as I seem to be in that frame. Living. Beautiful. Not—” She gestured to her face. “Like this.”
Miranda took her hand, ignoring the involuntary frisson of repulsion she felt every time she touched the clammy flesh of her mother’s palm, which reminded her of the skin of that little frog from so very long ago. “All I care about is that we’re back together again. I only wish Agata—”
Beatrice shook her head. “Agata has suffered enough. Knowing I still walk this earth would only bring her sorrow. I pray she will find peace.” She cleared her throat, as she often did, for too many words seemed to strain it. “Let us talk . . . of happier things. Your wedding plans. Are the preparations for the ball near done?”
“They are.” The wedding ball was to be held in two days’ time, and Miranda had been caught in a whirlwind of ribbons and silk as the ladies around her rushed to fit her for her gown and attend to other plans. Only her nights were her own, and she was grateful to spend them with her mother and Dorothea.
Bice tilted her head, her vitreous eyes fixed on Miranda’s face. “You don’t seem happy.”
“I am.” The words rang hollow. Miranda tried again. “I am. Happy that this sad tale is come to an end. Milan is saved. Naples will be joined with Milan, and all of Italy will be stronger for it.”
“You speak of politics, Miranda. The chessboard of kings and queens, where all of us are only pieces.” Her mother reached out to tilt Miranda’s chin up. “What about you? Are you happy?”
“I . . . I don’t know. What is it, to be happy? I hardly know my own mind, after so many years alone, with only my father as a guide, and he so often plunged me into darkness. Who knows what I do out of fear, and what out of love? Half my life is lost, my history submerged.”
“But you do love.” Bice’s eyes searched her face. “You know Ferdinand loves you.”
Miranda sighed. “He tells me so, every day. He wrote it in his letters. I read every one. But he was writing to a painting, Mother. He may as well be in love with a portrait hanging in the galleries. Nothing he says penetrates beyond that. He talks of the beauty of the children I will bear, of the favorable alliance our marriage will make.” She looked down at their joined hands. “He has cast me in the role of queen, and my lines are already written.”
“And it isn’t the role you want.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You aren’t sure that you love him.”
“No.”
“For your heart belongs to another.”
Miranda startled, raising her head. Bice laughed, a rattling sound that came from deep in her throat. “My heart may not beat, Miranda, but I can still tell what love looks like. You love her, and I understand why.”
“But—in this world—”
“Love is life, Miranda.” Her mother blinked, the motion slow and strange to see. “It matters not in what form it comes.”
* * *
Dorothea had been quiet since they had come to Naples. In their room the past two nights she had lain beside Miranda but had made no move to embrace her, to kiss and caress the way she had in Milan. Perhaps, Miranda feared, their brief romance was at its end. Looking at Dorothea’s face, bathed in the early-evening glow as they stood on the loggia gazing out at the horizon, she wanted nothing more than to reach out, to stroke Dorothea’s cheek and ask her to stay.
And yet she couldn’t ask Dorothea to remain in a gilded cage. She couldn’t ask her to risk her skin by staying too close to Miranda’s side, by hiding who she was, day after day, night after night. Already Miranda had overhead murmured questions in Ferdinand’s court about which of Milan’s noble families Dorothea hailed from and knew they could not keep up the ruse for long.
“Dorothea.”
“Hmm?” Dorothea was still looking out to sea, over the cerulean waters of the bay. In the distance loomed the green mass of Vesuvius, which Ferdinand had told Miranda was a volcano. He’d promised to take Miranda to see the old Roman towns its ash had covered, and she could picture it in her mind’s eye: a rare outing from her pretty palace, encircled by its palm trees and terraced rows of oleander and jasmine and violets. License to walk free for an afternoon, maybe even to dirty the hem of her fine cloak as she bent to examine one of the bodies Ferdinand said he was sure would make her faint. That was adventure, for a princess. That was her life as a future queen.
“I was thinking.” Her mouth felt parched by the salty air. “Now that we’re here—now that I’m to be queen—I could help you go anywhere you want. Do whatever you want to do. Ferdinand says we have ships, lots of them, and plenty of gold to spend. If there was somewhere you wanted to go, I could help you get there. I couldn’t in Milan, but—I can help you here.”
Dorothea had turned during
Miranda’s stumbling speech, watching her with an impassive gaze. “You’re sending me away?”
“No, I—” Miranda reached out but then pulled back her hand, suddenly afraid of anyone—a servant, a noble, Ferdinand himself—interrupting this stolen moment. “I’m asking you. Where you want to go. You can’t—it’s not fair, me asking you to stay here. You know it isn’t. I want you to, I do—”
“But you can’t.”
Miranda’s voice was little more than a whisper. “I can’t.”
Dorothea looked at her a long time. She could see every freckle on Dorothea’s nose, every line in her lips, those lips she had kissed only a few nights before. The edges of Dorothea’s features began to blur, softening and shading like the lines of a painting, and it was only then Miranda realized that she was beginning to cry.
Beneath them the waves beat on. Dorothea turned back to them, away from Miranda, and Miranda could hardly hear her as she began to speak. “I never told you how my mother died, did I?”
Miranda took a step forward, up to the railing, wiping away a tear. “No. You never did.”
Dorothea’s eyes stayed on the sea. “She drowned. We were living in a city a lot like this. A place called Smyrna. A beautiful city on the ocean, where she loved to swim every day. But one morning her body washed up on the shore. Mariam wouldn’t let me see it. The people in our neighborhood all said she drowned herself, but my brother, Beni, said she went out with a man, a stranger, earlier that night, and he was certain she’d been murdered.”
Miranda’s breath caught in her throat. “Do you think she was?”
“I don’t know. She was tired, by the end. Tired of searching for a place to call her own.” Dorothea’s voice was weary, and Miranda wondered how well she’d been sleeping these past two nights, if she had remained wakeful and restless while Miranda slumbered on. “My mother didn’t want to settle down, and she refused to marry. It’s why we never stayed still. Well, that and other trouble along the road. She dreamed of seeing the world. But all she saw is lost. Her pages, burned. Her memories, drowned in the Aegean Sea. Maybe Mariam carries her poetry on, to the new continent, or Beni tells her tales around campfires. But I’ll never know what they sow. We’re scattered to the wind, like seeds in a storm.”
“I could help you follow them.” Miranda did reach out now, curling her pinkie finger around Dorothea’s. “Anywhere you wanted to go, Dorothea. I could get you there.”
“I appreciate the offer, my queen,” said Dorothea. Her voice held only the faintest lilting mockery. “But living in a French war camp hardly seems the life for me, and the stories they bring from the Americas hold horrors greater than here.”
“Surely there must be someplace, though. Somewhere you’d like to go. Somewhere better.”
Dorothea shook her head. “I’ve been so many places, and it’s always masks. Masks and masks, until you lose your true face. I want it back, Miranda. My face. I want to live as I am, somewhere in this world. And I don’t know where to go. I don’t know anywhere I could be free.”
The sun was slipping from them now, lost in the darkening waters roiling far below their feet. Somewhere out there lay the only real home Miranda had ever known. Somewhere in the night, Caliban roasted fish over a fire, and the spirits joined their voices in chorus, singing silver-sweet melodies. She could almost hear them, those euphonious lullabies that had carried her to sleep. They echoed through her mind, along with Antonio’s last words to her, the words that had been ringing in her head ever since their escape from Milan.
He had embraced her at last, just before they left for Naples. They had kept their departure a secret, to conceal Bice, to protect Miranda, and only Antonio bade them farewell. His arms were stiff around her back, but he leaned in close, whispering one last request in her ear. “Promise me. If you return to the island—if you find his bones—bury him. Let him rest.” He pulled back, searching her face with dark, haunted eyes. “Please. Let him rest.”
In all these long weeks in Italy, in all the time since they had left, she had never considered returning to the island. It lived on no map. She could not trace a route back to its shores. But she knew its birds, she realized. Birds that nested nowhere else, flocks that could lead her back, if she got close enough. And she had two magicians by her side, who together surely could find an enchanted isle.
She had thought it her duty to stay. To become queen, and rule justly, and carry on the aims of that noble civilization of which her father had so often spoken. But the island had civilization, too. It had Caliban, who she still missed, and with whom she wished to make amends. It had Ariel, who perhaps she could one day count as a friend, or at the very least an ally. It was thick with colonies of frogs, and clouds of bats, and thriving swarms of bees and butterflies and gnats. Miranda had not realized that she even missed the gnats. And if Dorothea came with her—if her mother did, too—she would have a family. Maybe, if they all went together, if Miranda could somehow convince Dorothea to leave the mainland behind, it would be enough. Maybe she didn’t need anything more, for in the whole world she could not think of what she’d want, besides the sea, and the sky, and her mother safe, and Dorothea by her side, somewhere they could live their own lives.
“There may be . . . one place. A place we could go. Together.”
Dorothea looked up. “And where would that be?”
“The island.”
“Caliban’s island.”
“Yes.”
“The enchanted island, in the middle of the treacherous sea.”
“Yes.”
Dorothea stared at her and then burst out laughing. “I knew there was a reason I loved you. You’re even madder than me.”
Miranda felt a grin spread across her face, and she clutched Dorothea’s hand tight. “I mean it. We could live as we like, and no one would ever find us.”
“Start anew? Make a better world?”
“Yes!”
“And if Caliban refuses? If he wishes to keep his island his own?”
“If he refuses us—” If he turned them away, she would not try to trick him or cajole him into letting them stay. She hadn’t begun to pay for the sins of her father, and she would not compound them by forcing her way onto Caliban’s land. “If he refuses, we’ll venture on. We’ll find someplace. Some corner of the world no one else wants.” She could see it in her mind. A distant jetty beneath gray skies. A thatched cottage on a rocky coast, with smoke rising from the rustic chimney. Three women at the end of everything, holding fast to the edge of the earth, in thunder, lightning, and in rain.
“It might work.” Dorothea pressed her fingertips into Miranda’s palm. “If your mother helps us. If her magic is strong. But first, Miranda, you must make me a promise.”
“What is it?”
“If Caliban lets us ashore—if he accepts us into his home—you must learn his language. You must listen, rather than speak. Unlearn the lines of your father. Watch Caliban write his own in the sand. Learn his language, and mine, and maybe we can create this new land you dream of.”
“But—” Miranda floundered. “Caliban has no language. We—I mean, my father—taught him everything he knows. The name of the sun and moon, and the stars. He knew nothing of these, before we came.”
“Do you believe his mother knew no poetry? That she never whispered or sang him to sleep? Ask him, Miranda. His mother wrote, or spoke her truths to him. Language isn’t bound in books. It’s in hands and tongues and looks just as surely as in holy scripts. Caliban has a language. It’s you who ignore its import, his greater meaning.”
The skin on the back of Miranda’s neck prickled. She wanted to deny Dorothea’s words, to tell her that she was wrong, that Miranda could never have missed so much, all those years living with Caliban in their island home. And yet there were places on the island she had never gone, places where the spirits hissed a name like Sycorax and flies hung thick around the mouths of sunken, swampy caves. There were symbols carved into gnarled tre
es in the deep woods, and she’d never known if her father or the witch or Caliban himself had put them there. She had stopped asking long ago, in the face of her father’s rage. Now she could give voice to all she’d wondered. Now, for the first time, she and Caliban could speak freely, without fear, without restriction.
“I promise.” She threaded her fingers through Dorothea’s as the sky above them turned from blue to black. “Wherever we go. I’ll learn to speak his language, and yours.”
* * *
The two young men were escorting a leper to a nearby lazaretto and were in need of a boat. The dockmaster in the port of Valletta sold them the first decent vessel he found on hand, to clear them from the harbor as quickly as he could. It was an old rowboat, and they paid him far too much for it, but perhaps it would get them where they were going. They didn’t seem to know how far that was, or much about sailing at all. He watched them head out to the horizon, their unlucky cargo covered in a shroud, and then turned his attention to other things, to the bustle of boatswains and passengers.
As soon as they were far enough from the shore, Duriya let the glamour drop. She had been happier than Miranda had ever seen her, ever since they had made their escape from Naples, to Palermo, and then to Malta. The sprezzatura in her step delighted Miranda, as did the fact that she had at last asked Miranda to call her Duriya. She taught Miranda to say it properly, only laughing a little as Miranda tried, again and again, until she finally got it right, and Duriya rewarded her with a kiss.
Beatrice had come willingly, though she only smiled when Miranda explained that the enchanted island might have properties that could help her heal, could help her live some fuller kind of life. “Perhaps” was all she said. She seemed to enjoy the journey, and as they made their way farther out to sea, she kept the waters calm. Beneath her mask Miranda could see that her eyes were closed, and on occasion she gave directions, bringing them closer and closer to the power she could feel emanating from the isle.
Miranda in Milan Page 12
