Venetian Mask

by Rosalind Laker

  “Take extra care with this one, Giovanni. It’s gilded.”

  “Is it indeed!”

  He found a safe ledge for it within the canopy that covered certain of the goods and she waited while he and his stepfather placed the rest of the mask consignment under cover. Then she helped Giovanni arrange some old blankets and sun-faded cushions to make a comfortable place for her mother.

  “Signora Fontana will be sheltered by the canopy here,” the youth said reassuringly.

  Satisfied, Marietta left the barge and ran back up the steps after Iseppo, who had gone to fetch her mother.

  By now Signora Tiepo was with Cattina, who sat surrounded by neighbors and their children. It seemed that the whole village had come to bid Marietta farewell. All the adults knew what this departure meant for the two of them and there was not a woman who did not have tears in her eyes. Iseppo offered his arm to Cattina, but she had been coughing and when he saw what an effort it was for her even to rise from the bench, he lifted her up in his arms.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he called out to Marietta, who was receiving small gifts of cakes and sweetmeats for the journey. “Come along, little lark!”

  Marietta broke away from Signora Tiepo’s tearful embrace and ran to catch up, her bundle of possessions bobbing on her arm. So much sadness shown by the women had reawakened terrible misgivings in her. It was almost as though they thought she would never be coming home again.

  Cattina was made comfortable with cushions propped on the makeshift bed and Marietta knelt to tuck a shawl about her. On the bank Giovanni sprang onto the back of the large barge-horse waiting to tow the vessel, a switch in his hand. At a shout from his stepfather he flicked the horse and it began to plod forward. Marietta watched the tow rope tighten and the barge began to move. The children had gathered on the bank to wave to her. She waved back sadly until she could see them no more.

  Cattina had closed her eyes. She had never felt so weak, and the pain in her chest was acute as it always was in an aftermath of coughing. The voices of Iseppo and Marietta came and went, making everything seem slightly unreal. She supposed some time had passed when she was offered food, which she refused, although she took a few sips of Iseppo’s wine.

  “There’s so much to see, Mama,” Marietta said once.

  “I’m enjoying the rest,” Cattina answered in a faint whisper. “Wake me when we get to Venice.” Already the comfort of sleep was drawing her away again.

  Marietta hoped her mother would be able to keep awake on the return journey, because Iseppo was full of amusing stories about various sights along the way. Whether they were true or not did not matter, for when she laughed it eased the dread that lodged like a heavy stone in the pit of her stomach. They were passing farms and vineyards and at one point the ruined remains of a Roman palace. All along the way, located for convenience close to the river banks, were the grand villas, many Palladian, that were the country seats of rich Venetians. These were pink or cream, yellow, peach, or white, their shutters in contrasting colors, and some were as ornate and spectacular as others were starkly plain. Many families were in residence and there were glimpses of well-dressed children, ladies with parasols, and a coming and going of riding parties. At one of the most palatial villas a gaily painted passenger barge was disgorging a noisy group of young people in a swirl of coat-tails and the flutter of fans. The door of the villa stood open and a young man was on his way to receive them.

  “That’s the Torrisi villa,” Iseppo said drily. “It looks as if all is well there today.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?” Marietta questioned, thinking this to be one of the finest of the villas she had seen along the banks of the river.

  “The Torrisi family and the Celano family have been at one another’s throats for centuries and have no civilized contact. The origins of the vendetta go back to the fourteenth century when a Torrisi bride was snatched from the altar by a Celano, who married her before a rescue could be effected. Only last week there was a sword fight between a Torrisi and a Celano on a bridge where each demanded priority in passing.”

  Marietta regarded the villa with renewed interest. There had been quarrels between temperamental families in her village and fisticuffs between men on occasions, but these clashes never lasted long. How was it possible to sustain ill feelings over hundreds of years?

  For a while Marietta was allowed to ride the barge-horse while Giovanni walked alongside. Her mother continued to sleep, only occasionally disturbed by coughing, and then Marietta flew to attend to her. As the river voyage drew to its end and the barge passed through the gates into the Maranzini lock, Marietta realized with a renewed pang of almost unbearable anguish how little time she had left with her mother.

  When the final lap of the journey began across the Lagoon to Venice, the barge towed now by a remulico with strong men at the oars, Iseppo saw that Marietta had tucked up beside her mother, holding the sleeping woman’s hand.

  By the time they reached the custom house, the sun was setting. Iseppo went through the formalities while Giovanni supervised the unloading of the cargo. Then Iseppo stepped back on board and stood looking for a moment at the sleeping woman and the young girl who had fallen asleep at her side.

  “This is a sorrowful business,” he said in a heavy voice to his stepson, who agreed.

  It seemed to Iseppo that some change had come over Cattina during the journey, but maybe it was a trick of light. He was glad that sleep had spared her mulling over the ordeal of parting that awaited her.

  “Cattina,” he said, giving her shoulder a gentle shake, “we’re in Venice.”

  She stirred and her movement awoke Marietta, who sat up sharply, rubbing her eyes, then gasping in amazement at the sight before her. The sun was setting over a gilded city that appeared to be floating on liquid gold.

  “This is a magic place!” she exclaimed in wonderment, having forgotten momentarily why she was there. Then the painful realization dawned with equal suddenness and with a cry she turned to throw her arms about her mother’s neck.

  Cattina patted her gently and looked up inquiringly at Iseppo. “Is this the ospedale?”

  He shook his head. “No. This is the custom house. I have a gondola waiting to take us to the Pietà.”

  Iseppo had to lift her to her feet, and she swayed against him as they stepped from the barge onto the quayside. Giovanni, left in charge, said farewell to Marietta as she followed her mother. Iseppo needed the gondolier’s help to get Cattina safely into the gondola. Then, when Marietta had taken the place beside her, Iseppo settled himself on a side seat as the gondola set off at its graceful pace across the water, heading for the broad parade that ran eastward from the Doge’s Palace and was known as the Riva degli Schiavoni. Marietta saw nothing of where they were going. Her face was buried against her mother, whose arms were wound around her. She started as if struck when, after a while, Iseppo’s voice rang out.

  “There’s the Ospedale della Pietà.”

  She forced herself to look. It was still a short distance away, a large mansion with a plain façade, its windows grilled with inner shutters. “It’s a grand house,” she murmured.

  The ornamental entrance faced the parade, its recessed doorway guarded by iron gates. On the building’s east side was a narrow canal and on its west it adjoined a sizable church. Iseppo gave its name.

  “That’s the church of Santa Maria della Pietà, one of the places where the choir and orchestra of the ospedale give concerts.”

  Cattina whispered fondly to her daughter, “That’s where you will sing one day.”

  Marietta’s only acknowledgement was to press closer to her. Cattina stroked her daughter’s hair. The gondola was drawing nearer the Riva degli Schiavoni and she could see by the light of a single lantern illuminating the main doorway that the gates in front had an opening at the bottom just large enough for the anonymous abandoning of a small offspring. A sudden wave of doubt swept over her, chilling her through. In her weak and
helpless state she began to fear for the first time that her daughter might not be taken in. It was the little ones who still had priority here, not a child already old enough to work. As the gondola left St. Mark’s Basin to glide under a bridge into the side canal, Cattina saw that at the water entrance of the ospedale the gates had the same opening. The gondola came alongside the steps.

  Iseppo told Marietta to alight first, and her hand hovered twice before she forced herself to jerk the iron bell-pull. Then she reached out to support Cattina as the two men propelled her up onto the steps. As for Cattina herself, she felt drained of all strength, her knees threatening to buckle at any moment. Then the door opened, releasing a flood of candlelight. A white-robed nun stepped forward to the gates.

  “Yes?” she said inquiringly.

  Cattina clutched frantically at the bars between them, feeling as if everything, even life itself, were falling away from her. All she was going to say, the appeal she had rehearsed, deserted her. She cried out a single desperate plea: “For mercy’s sake give my child a home!”

  As her mother collapsed, Marietta shrieked in alarm. If Iseppo had not tightened his hold on Cattina, she would have slipped from his grasp and vanished into the dark water.

  Afterward Marietta had no clear recollection of the events of the next few hours. All she could remember was Iseppo carrying her mother into the building. People scurried around and the faces of some young girls appeared behind a gilded latticework grille, only to be shooed away again.

  Cattina was put to bed by the nuns in attendance. A priest from the church of La Pietà performed the last rites. Marietta sat holding her mother’s hand, leaning her cheek against it when tearful exhaustion overcame her. Iseppo, who had been allowed by the nuns to stay with the child, woke her at their grave nods just before the end came at dawn. Cattina, who had not spoken since the moment of her collapse, opened her eyes and looked at her daughter with the faintest of smiles. Then it was all over.

  Iseppo gave a full report on Marietta to a senior nun, Sister Sylvia, who wrote everything down for the governors. He wanted to take Marietta home to his wife and even hastened her with him into the entrance hall to get her away, but the nuns stopped him. His offer to bring her back in a month or two was similarly turned down. Sister Sylvia put an authoritative hand on Marietta’s shoulder.

  “This child is in our care now, signore. A dying woman’s wishes cannot be refused. This is a well-named house of pity.”

  He had no option but to leave. As the door opened to the full light of day on the parade outside, he paused to look back at the child standing bleakly in the nun’s charge. Her arms hung limply at her sides, her red hair was tousled about her pale, tear-blotched face, and her drab peasant clothes contrasted with the nun’s composed and snowy appearance.

  “I’ll come back to see you, Marietta,” he promised.

  “No visitors,” the nun stated, signaling for a servant to close the door and the gates after him, “except by appointment.”

  Marietta said nothing. Grief had choked her to silence.

  Chapter Two

  BY THE TIME MARIETTA HAD BEEN THREE YEARS AT THE Pietà, her earlier life had faded to poignant memories. It could not be said that she had really settled into the aspedale, although the joy of singing and having her voice trained had given her a dedicated outlook. She discussed her feelings with her friend, Elena Baccini, on the morning they were to be auditioned by the Maestro di Coro for possible inclusion in the Pietà’s premier choir. Until then they had both been in a secondary choir, which meant that they had sung only behind grilles during services at the adjoining church of Santa Maria della Pietà, and then only when the premier choir was singing at the Basilica, the vast edifice that was the Doge’s own chapel, or in the cathedral.

  “I wish I weren’t so nervous,” Marietta confided, buttoning the bodice of her red gown, which was the uniform of the girls of the Pietà, “but so much depends on how we sing today. It’s more than the honor of getting into the premier choir that’s at stake. Getting accepted means the chance to enter the outside world again at public performances. That will be like inhaling the breath of freedom once more.”

  She frowned slightly, seeming to hear again the echoing slam of the door that had shut her away forever from all she had known in the past. Yet she was not unhappy at the Pietà. Her nature was too lively and resilient for her not to have made the best of everything, but she had never fully accustomed herself to institutional life. Discipline at the Pietà was strict, as it had to be with some hundreds of girls of all ages under its roof, but otherwise there was a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere conducive to the study of music.

  “I’m scared I’ll sing a false note,” Elena wailed despairingly as she brushed her soft fair hair. She was still in her petticoats with the pads over her hips to hold out her skirts at the sides in keeping with fashion. The governors encouraged an interest in all things stylish. Most of the other girls in the dormitory were already dressed and leaving to go downstairs. “I think I’ll die if I have to endure another carnival without getting beyond the Pietà walls.”

  After her parents died while she was still a baby, Elena had been raised by her great-aunt. With that lady’s demise, Elena had been placed at the ospedale by a lawyer-guardian, which made her one of the few fee-paying orphans there. She had arrived some weeks after Marietta and the two newcomers had become close friends.

  Marietta fastened the final button and gave her friend a twinkling glance. “Tell me again what it was like when you and your great-aunt took part in the fun.”

  Elena uttered a happy little laugh. “You’re indulging me, because you know how I love to talk about it. Did I tell you about the year when I went to the Carnival dressed in yellow, red, and gold? The costume was refashioned from a wonderful chest of old carnival robes that Great-Aunt Lucia had hoarded since girlhood. You should have seen us, Marietta!” She stopped brushing her hair and flung her arms wide. “We were both masked and she was wearing an ancient purple domino that swirled dramatically about her. We sang and danced and dodged the eggshells full of rosewater that the young bloods threw into the crowd. And oh! the marvelous fireworks! No creeping out of bed to try to watch them from the windows as we do now, but standing in St. Mark’s Square under a canopy of colored stars. All this I shall see again, albeit at a chaperoned distance, if only I’m chosen by the Maestro today!”

  “I’m sure you will be, but do hurry or we’ll be late for breakfast.”

  Marietta took up a silver medallion stamped with a P for Pietà and slipped its chain around her neck. Back in the fourteenth century when the Pietà was founded, its orphans had been branded with a P on the foot upon entry, but mercifully that custom had been replaced in these more enlightened times with the wearing of a medallion.

  Elena heeded Marietta’s advice and began to put on her red gown, but she was still brimming with anticipatory excitement. “When I become one of the two prima donnas with the premier choir—you will be the other—I think I’ll be known as the Rose of the Pietà.”

  It was not unusual for the public to find a descriptive title for a favorite Pietà singer. The ospedale’s present prima donna, a young woman named Adrianna, was known throughout Europe as the Venus of the Pietà. Marietta did not doubt that Elena would gain that acclaim for her appearance. With her pale gold hair, her pink and white porcelain complexion and slightly uptilted nose, a mouth of extraordinary sweetness and eyes of an astonishingly deep blue, Elena was indeed rose-like and the very epitome of the Venetian ideal of beauty. Throughout the Republic of Venetia many women of fashion resorted to dyes in an attempt to achieve hair of that ravishing hue.

  “What shall I call myself?” Marietta pondered with a wide smile, willing enough to share the embellishment of their mutual dream of Pietà success. “I can’t think of any title that would suit me.”

  Elena raised an eyebrow, incredulous that her friend had not given thought to the matter when they had discussed so often
the honor paid to Adrianna as the Venus of the Pietà. “That’s easy. You’ll be the Flame of the Pietà!”

  Marietta was dismayed. “Is my hair so orange?”

  “No!” With a laugh Elena took Marietta by the shoulders and thrust her in front of a silver-framed mirror. “It’s a marvelous color—red as copper in the sunlight and dark bronze in candleglow. It’s just the same beautiful hue as the great painter Titian loved to use. But that’s only a part of it. It’s you yourself. Can’t you see?”

  Marietta studied her reflection critically. Her well-brushed hair had a fine gloss and her longish neck was slender. She supposed her eyes and her even white teeth were her best features and the other girls expressed envy of her long dark lashes, but she saw nothing else to favor. Picking up a hand-glass she turned sideways to reassess her profile in the reflection of the wall mirror. Her nose seemed longer and thinner than ever and her chin far too determined to suit her idealized notion of beauty. Even her cheeks had little hollows under high bones.

  “More like the Dandelion of the Pietà,” she jested ruefully, never minding a joke against herself.

  “Tiger-lily,” Elena corrected, amused. “That’s more flattering.” She found it comical, having astutely judged her own good looks, that Marietta should fail to see reflected in her own face the beauty of another age. She had the same thin-nosed, smoldering looks that gazed out from medieval frames. One knew instinctively that those women of a much earlier century, for all their docile poses, were full of fire and tempestuous passion. It was Marietta herself who had made this observation when they were taken to view some early works of secular art. Elena watched her friend closely. Was Marietta really seeing herself at last?