“I began thinking it out on my way back from the shop. But I would need you to cover for my absence.”
“I will do that gladly. You don’t have to ask. What have you in mind?”
“There is that ancient door in the wall of the loggia that encloses the garden. It can only lead into the calle that lies between this building and the church.”
“But that key could have been lost or thrown away long ago since the door is never used.”
“I doubt it. There must have been a reason for that door. Perhaps it offered a route of escape in case of fire. Remember Venice has seen plenty of fires. Even the Doge’s Palace burnt down once.”
“Then the key must be in Sister Sylvia’s possession.”
“But she would not have the only one to any door. Hers duplicate those that hang in a cupboard in the governors’ boardroom. I know where they are, because the cupboard door was ajar on the day we were reprimanded and forbidden to speak to each other for three months. Didn’t you notice?”
“I was too upset to notice anything except my own feet. I knew that if the Pietà threw me out my guardian would simply marry me off to anybody that came along. How would you know which key to take?”
“There were plenty of old tattered labels attached.”
“What if the cupboard should be locked?”
“Then I shall pick the lock.”
Elena was suddenly nervous in the face of such determination. Some force was driving Marietta and there would be no stopping her. “I’ll keep guard for you,” she promised, thinking that all their previous escapades faded to nothing beside this dangerous venture. “But how will you let the Frenchman know when—or if—you manage to get this key?”
“He will be at the concert tomorrow evening. I know that somehow he will find a way to speak to me.”
“You’re very sure.”
Marietta had a clear, bright look in her eyes. “I have never been more certain of anything. That is why I have to get the key tonight.”
In the early hours of the morning, when Marietta expected the night watchman to be asleep, both girls crept from their rooms as arranged. Elena kept guard at the head of the stairs while Marietta went slowly down to a point where she could see through the latticework grille that divided the hall where visitors were admitted from the rest of the building. To her dismay the watchman was awake and on his feet, shining his lantern around him. As its rays struck the grille she dodged down just in time. The Schiavoni parade was often noisy during Carnival-time and no doubt something untoward had set him on the alert.
She heard him open a door. Cautiously she peeped through the grille. Judging by the way the glow of the lantern light had faded, he had gone into the governors’ anteroom and thence into the boardroom beyond. Then he reappeared and looked into another room. Satisfied that all was well there, he advanced toward the door that led into the grilled area. Swiftly Marietta slipped out of sight beside a large bookcase and held her breath as he went past her hiding-place and into one of the corridors on a full inspection of the ground floor.
As his footsteps faded she darted into the hall and across the gleaming marble floor to the governors’ rooms. She went straight through to the boardroom where she lit the candle she had brought with her. Then she went to the cupboard where she knew the keys were housed. Fortunately it did not need the knife she had concealed in a pocket, for it opened at a touch. Immediately she took a ring of the oldest-looking keys from a shelf. The labels were yellow with age and the ink somewhat faded, but the writing in a variety of hands was still legible. Failing to find one for the door out to the calle, and hoping it was not among those unlabeled, she tried another bunch of keys.
The task took her far longer than she had anticipated. It was not until she was on the seventh bunch of keys that she found what she was looking for. Even as she took it from its ring, she heard the watchman returning. In a matter of seconds she had pocketed the key, returned the rest of the bunch to the cupboard, and blown out the candle. Anxiously she crept to the open anteroom door and listened. She heard a metallic clank as the watchman put his lantern on a marble-topped side table and a scraping of chair legs as he seated himself. There was no way she could go past him without being seen. She would have to wait until he snored. But that was not to be. There was the rasp of a tinderbox and then the puffing of a pipe. She sat down on a cushioned bench to wait. One hour and then another ticked slowly by. She hoped that the governors realized what a good watch they had in their man.
Eventually she herself dozed, only to wake with a dreadful start to the first glimmer of day and a hand clamped over her mouth to prevent her crying out. It was Elena.
“Hush! It is all right. The watchman has gone off duty. I knew something must have happened, but I could not come down to you until Sister Sylvia, who was up before the rest of the household as usual, gave him leave to go home. Let’s get back upstairs while she is dealing with the baker’s delivery.”
That evening Marietta was extraordinarily calm as she dressed in her white silk gown for the concert. Since becoming a soloist she was able to wear panniers that held her skirt out fashionably over her hips. Deftly she pinned the spray of pomegranate blossom to her luxuriant mass of hair.
This evening was about to alter the course of her life. She knew it with every nerve and fiber of her being.
The key was in her trinket box. After an hour or two spent with Alix, whenever that should be, the key would be returned to its cupboard. By then the fire that burned for freedom in her heart, her mind, and her body would have been quelled and she would be able to pick up the normal threads of her life. An hour ago, when the loggia was deserted, she had tried the key in the door to the calle. She had expected to have to struggle with the old lock, but with a little oil, it opened easily.
Chapter Five
WHEN THE CONCERT ENDED THERE WAS, AS ALWAYS A STANDING ovation for Adrianna. Alix, who was seated in the second row, took advantage of the moment to signal to Marietta by pointing to the door. The message was clear. He would be waiting outside.
When she and the other girls emerged from the building it was snowing hard again. Alix stood alone, watching for her. She raised her hand so that he would know her in her veil. Fortunately the escort of nuns was less observant than usual in the swirling snowflakes, and when she drew level with him he took a posy quickly from under his cloak and handed it swiftly to her.
“When?” he asked.
“Later tonight. Wait in the calle between the Pietà and the church.”
He swept away at once, his long mantle billowing around him. Only Elena had witnessed the swift exchange.
“Well done!” she whispered to Marietta. “Flowers too. What are they?”
“Winter roses, I think.” Marietta was holding the posy under her cloak. “I only had time for a glimpse.”
“They will look beautiful in your room.” It was typical of Elena not to be envious but to delight in her friend’s good fortune.
THE WINTER ROSES were pale as porcelain and tinted green around their golden stamens. Marietta arranged them in a vase of deep blue Venetian glass where they shimmered like snowflakes against a wood-paneled corner of her room. She had changed into a simple dark gown in readiness for going out and she touched the open petals with her fingertips, admiring their delicacy. Then she chose one blossom, snapped the stem, and tucked it into a ribbon bow on her bodice. She longed to fly to the calle door at once, but knew she had to wait for the whole community to settle down for the night and the watchman to finish his first extensive round.
In the heavily falling snow Alix had lost his way and found himself following the twists and turns of the narrow calli like the paths of a maze. He was afraid he might miss Marietta, and it was with immense relief that he finally came out into St. Mark’s Square, for he knew his way from there.
The flakes swirled about his lantern as he waited by the door through which he guessed Marietta would appear. Time slid by. He began to wonder
if he had arrived too late, but he had no intention of leaving. The lantern illumined a carved sign from the fifteenth century on the church wall. To pass the time he brushed the snow away to read it. In old Venetian spelling it warned that dire punishments and curses awaited any person who tried to place unlawfully at the Ospedale della Pietà any female child who was neither an orphan nor a bastard.
He looked again at his watch, getting more anxious as time passed.
In her room Marietta went to her trinket box and lifted out the top tray. At the bottom lay the moretta mask that she had brought from home. How long she had waited for this chance to wear it! Now the time had come in a way she had never anticipated.
She held it to her face in front of the mirror. Nobody expected a woman in a moretta mask to speak, for it was feather-light and kept in place by a button on the inside held between the lips. It was a mask with a special allure, and Marietta had seen how men’s eyes always followed any woman who wore it. She held up a hand-glass and turned her head one way and then the other, noting with pleasure that the black velvet oval accentuated the alabaster smoothness of her brow, chin, and the sides of her cheeks.
But now at last it was safe to leave. She put on her cloak and gloves before drawing the hood over her hair. Elena appeared in the hallway just as Marietta emerged from her room.
“I’m going to time the watchman’s rounds,” Elena whispered. “He may only check again if he hears anything unusual, but it is a risk to leave the door to the garden unbolted. I shall slide the bolt back at the right time for you to come in again.”
Marietta paused to look at Elena in the glow of the sconce that lighted the stairs. Briefly she removed the mask to speak. “You are the best friend anyone could have,” she whispered appreciatively.
“Never fear! I shall demand return from you a thousandfold one day,” Elena joked in reply. “That is if I ever have need of it.”
“You shall have it!”
Downstairs Elena watched as her friend sped along the loggia. At the ancient door Marietta ran her fingers down the old woodwork in the darkness to locate the lock and insert the key. Then she was outside in the calle.
“Marietta!” Alix exclaimed with relief, looming out of the falling flakes like a specter in his bauta. Then he drew in his breath as she turned after relocking the door and he saw her masked face in the lantern light.
She lowered her moretta, her eyes merry with laughter. “It is I,” she reassured him. “I didn’t dare to come before. Have you been waiting long?”
Mentally he dismissed all his previous anxiety. She was here, he had not missed her after all, and that was what mattered. He told a lover’s lie to put her mind at rest.
“Time flew by. Come! Let’s get away from here.”
He took her hand and they passed under the wing of the Pietà that joined the church, hastening out of the narrow way toward the Calle Cannonica. There he led her through the door of a brightly lit coffeehouse.
The welcome warmth hit them like a wave as Alix handed his lantern to a page. The gilded and muraled rococo salon was crowded, every table occupied with merrymakers, many of them in masks and fantastic costumes. There was a whole party in rich Renaissance garments. An orchestra was playing, white-wigged and in blue satin coats and breeches. Such places were often at their busiest after midnight, when members of the leisured class of Venetian society liked to turn night into day.
A waiter showed them the way, amid the chatter and laughter, to the alcoved table Alix had reserved. Several people glanced in the direction of the new arrivals in case they should be acquaintances, but Marietta in her mask and hood was confident of being fully disguised. Their outer garments were whisked away, and when Alix had given his order, the waiter released the brocade curtains, which swung closed to ensure their privacy.
Neither Alix nor Marietta realized that during those few minutes their reflections had been observed in a wall mirror by a man whose back was toward them. He was a member of the Renaissance-clad party, his costume of sapphire and emerald-green velvet, his mask studded with jewels. In the moment before the curtains of the nearby alcove were released, his wife at his right hand had spoken to him chidingly. Scented, masked, and richly gowned, with her luxuriant hair caught up in a cap of pearls, she had plucked at his full-cut sleeve.
“You’re not listening to me, Domenico! What are you staring at?” Angela Torrisi followed the direction of her husband’s gaze, but was too late to detect the source of his interest.
He turned to her with a lazy smile. “I thought for a moment I had recognized someone, but I must have been mistaken. Forgive me, my love. What was it you were saying?”
Although he did not allow his attention to be noticeably distracted again, Domenico Torrisi could not shake off the conviction that it was the red-haired chorister from the Ospedale whom he had seen. But a Pietà girl in here? It was impossible! Yet surely that marvelous hair, which had been fully revealed when she let her hood fall back, was unmistakable. He had seen her only once before, on the evening of his confrontation with the Celano, but the beauties of the Pietà were often talked about in male company and since that night he had heard her name. Marietta. Some of her admirers had been concerned when she was missing from the choir for three weeks, apparently through some indisposition. He himself was as quick as any other man to look at a beautiful woman. Yet that was not why he had been drawn to glance back at her when leaving that concert. It had been a strange moment. The pull on his gaze had been as strong as if she had called his name.
He saw in the mirror that the waiter had returned to the alcove with a coffeepot and dishes of sweetmeats and small cakes on a tray. The brocade curtains parted, but not enough to allow another glimpse of the girl. Domenico’s curiosity remained unsatisfied. Could she be the Pietà girl? He had heard vague rumors of nocturnal visits to the Pietà, but never of a girl coming out. Business and diplomatic missions on behalf of the Doge, which took him away from home more frequently than he would have wished, and the longstanding vendetta between his family and the Celanos, had taught him never to ignore anything that was even slightly mysterious or unusual. This alertness had served him well on more than one occasion, but tonight he feared his suspicions would have to remain unresolved.
Then Angela spoke to him again. “Why not let us all remain here for the rest of the night’s pleasure? I have no wish to go in and out of the snow twice more before going home.” She had always loathed cold weather and had come out this evening against her better judgement.
Everybody at the table chorused agreement, content to talk the hours away. Domenico smiled as much to himself as to the company. “I think that is an excellent suggestion.” So he was to have the chance to see the girl again.
In the alcove Marietta and Alix sat on soft and comfortable seats, their masks laid aside as they smiled triumphantly at one another in the candleglow. Now that the waiter had gone, the buzz of conversation beyond the brocade curtains seemed very far away. With the walls of their alcove painted in a design of birds and flowers, it was as if she and Alix were seated in a secret arbor, and Marietta was bursting to tell him all about her escape from the Pietà.
“Getting out was far easier than I had imagined possible!” she exclaimed joyfully. “Although getting the key to the calle door was hardest.” Briefly and amusingly she described her adventure while he approved her daring and was thoroughly entertained. She was unaware that in her plain gown with no adornment other than the pale winter rose tucked in her bodice, she scintillated, her eyes sparkling, the excited little gestures she made quick and twinkling, her hair full of coppery lights. Alix had been infatuated once or twice or maybe thrice on this Grand Tour, but never had he been so affected as by this powerfully alluring young girl.
“Here’s to your success, which is my good fortune,” he said, raising his coffee cup to her.
“My good friend Elena played her part.”
He was not interested in anyone but her. “Is there any
danger of the key being missed before you return it?” he asked, holding out a silver platter of cakes for her.
She helped herself to a ring-shaped one before replying. “I hope not. I’ll have to put it back as soon as possible.”
“How shall you manage that? Will it be by night again?”
“No. The governors meet only once a month unless there is some special reason, although one or another of them makes an appearance quite often to discuss affairs with the Maestro. In any case, it will only take a second to pop the key back on its hook.” She smiled encouragingly at him. “Tell me about your travels. Where did you start?”
“In Holland.” His first purchase on the Grand Tour, a Hals painting, was made there and she wanted to hear about it. She was equally interested when he spoke of traveling on through some of the German states to sail down the Rhine. Her eyes widened as he told of the precipitous paths they had followed through the Swiss mountains down to the states of Italy. With her fingers linked under her chin, she absorbed all he had to say about the marvels of Florence and Rome as well as the extraordinary ruins being excavated at Pompeii.
“After those two months in Greece,” he concluded, “we arrived back on Italian soil about six weeks ago.”
“And where do you go from here?”
“Vienna and Paris. Then it’s home again.” Alix laughed as he told her how he and Henri tried to get away from their tutor as often as possible. “We have had a surfeit of paintings and sculpture and mosaics and murals for the time being. Now we want to enjoy the pleasures of the Venetian Carnival.”
He went on to say that he and his friend were beginning to get their bearings in the city, although he had not managed well that night. She was amused to hear how he had become lost.
“Did you think you might have missed me when you arrived?” she probed mischievously.
“I was beginning to wonder.”
“So you were about to go home again?” Her eyes were dancing.
“No!” His protest was vehement. “I would have waited until dawn!”
Venetian Mask Page 9
