Votive

by Karen Brooks

  Escape. The mere word gave me joy. I hadn’t realised I felt trapped.

  I dressed quickly and, using some of my belladonna potion, attended to my eyes. I blinked and let the drops settle, accustomed now to the expansion of my pupil, to the slight sting. I brushed my hair and placed some pins in it, tucking the rest into my headpiece and attaching one of my day-masks: an understated, dusky creation. I pinched my cheeks and stared at my reflection. I forced my lips to turn so it appeared as if I smiled. There, I was ready to face the world.

  Despite the early hour, the canals were busy as traffic to and from the markets passed by. Forgoing my golden costume, today I wore black. It blended with my cape and ensured I did not attract attention. I found I enjoyed the anonymity.

  Baroque sat beside me, occasionally pointing out a building or explaining why a particular casa was having its stucco repaired. His appearance had also changed from the last time he was in the Candlemakers Quartiere. Gone was Barold Barbacan, the Jinoan businessman with his exotic ways and mouth full of gold teeth, to be replaced by a Serenissian intellectual. Dressed in a long togati, his face clean-shaven, his hair trimmed and tied, he would be recognised by no-one. Even his posture was different.

  We turned off the Circolo and into a narrower canal that divided the Opera Quartiere and the University. Scholars strode along the fondamenta, their togati flapping around their ankles, books and scrolls tucked under their arms. I watched them, with their solemn distracted faces, their inner life richer than the lovely façades around them.

  When we turned back onto the Circolo, it was mid-morning. The sun warmed my back in a pleasant way, the sky was a clear blue above me, the ripples of water that caressed the gondola as we sliced through its surface silver. The gondolier was new to the Maleovelli household. I wondered if he would still have his job when we returned. Baroque had neither sought permission nor told the Maleovellis what we were doing. We’d all pay for that. I didn’t care. What did it matter anymore? They could do nothing to me.

  I raised my face and shut my eyes, enjoying the sun on the parts of my face that were exposed, the artificial sense of freedom. I opened them again and found spots before my eyes. I blinked a few times and when everything around me crystallised, we were facing the mainland. On the other side of the wide expanse of water, the forest spread, the dark green pines like rows of soldiers mustered for battle. Behind them, the Dolomites loomed, their snow-covered peaks majestic sentries. For just a second, I saw a glimmer beyond them and knew what it signified. The Limen. My heart caught in my throat. Living on Nobiles’ Rise, it was easy to push the Limen and everything it meant to the back of my mind. To pretend that it didn’t exist: that, just like my past, it could be blocked out. But there it was, rising as far as the eye could see before melting into the atmosphere, a painful reminder of how much further I had yet to go, of the promise I had made to myself, to my people. It also made me think of Katina …

  I glanced at Baroque. His eyes were fixed firmly on my face. He knew where my thoughts had taken me.

  ‘Are we almost there?’ My voice was harsher than I intended.

  ‘Sì. Not long now, Signorina,’ he said. He turned to regard the mainland. I wondered briefly what he was thinking.

  I deliberately focused on the fondamenta, twisting so my back was to the verdant scene on the other side of the canal. Instead, I watched the women in their coarse dresses, baskets over their arms, children pulling at their aprons as they attended to their tasks. Shopkeepers stood outside their businesses, talking, calling for customers. Cats weaved their way around their legs, while gondolas unloaded their wares onto the cobbles. It was all so familiar and yet, in just a short amount of time, so strange as well.

  I saw it then. The spire that marked the main basilica and overlooked the buildings I knew and had grown to love. The narrow frontage, the way the casas leant into each other like derelict, drunken friends. We had reached the Chandlers Quartiere. We were so close that I could see the badge denoting the scuola of the men who trotted over the bridges.

  For the first time in a long while, thoughts of Dante returned. The pain was not as great as I feared. But it was still there. Pain and deep, desperate longing. I looked beyond the popolani, hoping to catch a glimpse of Zia Gaia or any of the Macelleria family in the futile way that those who need reassurance or wish to assuage a long-held guilt do. I wanted some kind of signal they were all right. I’d tossed them aside with my old self. While I knew it was something I had to do for their sake as much as mine, returning to this place made me wonder, for just a brief moment, if I’d done the right thing.

  I became aware I was chewing my lip and my hands were strangling each other in my lap. I took a deep breath and forced them still.

  I was not prepared for the effect seeing my old home would have on me. There it was. So ordinary. So neglected. The windows were empty eyes that looked at me dolefully, but without accusation. I stared up at it as we glided by.

  ‘Wait!’ I said as we neared the Ponticello di Mille Pietre – a place I’d never wanted to see again but realised now, that like its name, it was the rock upon which I needed to ground myself. ‘Can we stop? Please, Baroque. I would like to walk.’

  Baroque stared at me. ‘Certo.’ He gave the order to the gondolier who, with practised ease, brought us level with the water-stairs at the base of the bridge. He tied the gondola to the paline.

  ‘Here,’ said Baroque, reaching in his purse and handing over a ducat. ‘Find us some breakfast. We won’t be long.’

  The gondolier tipped his hat and, after assisting us from the craft, strolled down the fondamenta, away from us. He stopped for directions from a young child. I recognised little Sophie, the cobbler Enzo’s daughter. Because of me, she’d survived the Morto Assiderato. She pointed down a nearby ramo. The gondolier bowed and followed her finger. She giggled and skipped towards us. I froze. What if she recognised me?

  She took one glance at us and skidded to a halt. She dropped a clumsy curtsy. ‘Signor, Signorina,’ she said, her mouth falling open as she gazed up and down at us. I had removed my cape during the trip and my gown, while dark and faded, was sewn with jewels and had slashed, full sleeves.

  Both Baroque and I bowed our heads. My throat was tight with tension; my eyes mere slits behind my mask.

  Sophie broke into a huge smile and raced off. ‘Mamma, mamma!’ she cried. ‘I’ve seen a princess!’

  I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

  ‘Well, that’s a sound I haven’t heard for a long, long time,’ said Baroque. He smiled at me kindly.

  I thought for a moment. ‘Vero. It’s been a while.’ I took his proffered arm, looping it through mine and, turning our backs on the bridge, we strolled along the fondamenta.

  I was aware of eyes upon us. From the windows, from the darkened shelter of doorways. One or two nodded to us. I knew them all: Carlita, Enzo’s wife and Sophie’s mother, who stepped out of her shop and also curtsied. There was Fabrizio, another candlemaker; Guiseppi, the fruiterer; and Francesca’s husband came past us, dragging a cart. He tipped his hat and muttered, ‘Buon giorno.’ I felt him looking over his shoulder, not because he recognised me, but because strangers in the quartiere were always noted. They were the subject of conversations for days afterwards. I knew that Baroque and I would entertain many a group in the taverna, many a family tonight.

  Finally, we paused outside Quinn’s shop and Pillar’s workshop. It was only when Baroque placed his hand over mine that I realised I was trembling.

  ‘He’s really gone, hasn’t he?’ I said, looking around, resisting the urge to touch, to draw, to learn, to feel.

  Baroque nodded. ‘From here. Sì.’ He cleared his throat.

  I took in the peeling paint, the cobwebs that festooned the entrance. Debris had blown onto the doorstep and gathered in the corner. Quinn would have had me sweeping that away, scrubbing the wood until it gleamed.

  ‘Do you want to go in?’

  ‘Inside
?’ Panic flared in my chest. ‘We can’t –’

  Baroque glanced around. Apart from a young boy scaling a fish, the fondamenta was relatively quiet. He reached over and did something with the lock. The door swung open, the creak it made echoing around the empty room. I hesitated for only a second and then stepped inside.

  Memories crowded my head. Anger, harsh words, fear, blood. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. The musty smell of age, damp and disregard filled my nostrils. I opened my eyes again and walked to the counter. I removed my glove and ran my finger through the thick dust. I stood outside the door to the workshop. Composing myself, I twisted the handle and let the door swing open. It creaked loudly before stilling.

  I didn’t step inside, I just looked. The vats were cold, the fireplace a dark, barren space. The worktops were scattered with broaches and yards of wick rolled into tight circles. I saw remnants of candles, half-melted stumps, broken votive glasses, pillar moulds, just sitting there, abandoned. While I could recall the lessons, the burns, the triumph of mixing and pouring my early batches, of rolling the wax, straining the impurities, it seemed so pointless now. Even my lessons with Katina, those gentle explorations into the essence of objects, of extracting and distilling, no longer seemed relevant. Not when all I had focused on was kindness and beauty. Oh yes, Katina had warned me that life was not all sweetness and light. Little had I known back then how well I would learn that lesson. I recalled Cane and Dante, crushed beneath a Bond Rider’s horse. Hardly any of what she’d given me, what she’d imparted in our brief time together, apart from the basic skills, was meaningful to me. Not in the life I had now.

  Even her order that I must not kill I’d ignored. And why shouldn’t I? Death was not her decision alone nor God’s. Not when I could so easily remove those who didn’t deserve to live. Even while I had these thoughts, others spun in my head: Katina’s warmth, her conversations about her childhood, about Estrattore. She’d always made them sound so good, so noble in their intentions. That was what she wanted from me. I hadn’t listened. I’d done terrible, unforgivable things, felt and responded to extreme emotions, as Baroque had accused. What a disappointment I would be to her.

  Standing here, I could recapture those moments with her and Pillar. And yet, as I did, I found I wanted to let them go.

  I felt time contract and then expand out into some endless void. How long had I been gone? Was it really more than a year? Looking over the ruins of my former life, it seemed like centuries. I sighed and closed the door.

  ‘Have you seen enough?’ asked Baroque. He had wiped a space on the counter and was leaning on it. I sensed his agitation, his nervousness. He’d brought me here, manipulated me into coming. He could wait.

  ‘There is one more place I want to go.’ I pointed upstairs. ‘Wait here, please.’ This was something I needed to do alone.

  I slowly ascended, my heels clattering on the stairs. I paused beside the kitchen. It looked so … ordinary. So dirty and poor. And yet I had called this place home for the greater part of my life. Now it felt as remote to me as the distant Dolomites. I took in the blackened grate and pots, the chipped porcelain plates and wooden trenchers that lay on the table. What astonished me was that food had been left upon them and had rotted into hardened green lumps. Not even flies feasted on those remnants. Wherever Pillar had gone, he’d left in a hurry. His coat still hung from the hook. What had made him leave so quickly? I knew from Baroque that the Signori di Notte and the Cardinale had been through this area. God knows, Renzo had paid the price of harbouring me, but Pillar seemed to have escaped. I was relieved. For all that thoughts of him still hurt, I was glad he was safe. I wouldn’t have wanted him to be any other way. I touched the table in the hope of extracting something of his fate. Quinn’s face rose in my mind, and the lacerating power of her words, the agony of her beatings, almost reduced me to tears. I snatched my hand away. Pillar’s fate would remain a mystery.

  It was better that way.

  I turned aside and climbed the last staircase, to my room. There, I looked upon the tiny space that had been mine. I shook my head. It always seemed so much bigger in my dreams, in my memories. I walked around, trailing my finger along the edge of the two huge vats, bending to brush the surface of the mattress and the tatty blankets that lay in a heap in the middle. Without meaning to, I began to draw. I almost doubled over as waves of dreadful pain, sorrow and grief washed over me. I grabbed a hold of the chest and clutched my stomach. I gagged.

  I quickly stopped extracting. Every surface screamed of horror. How could I have ever remembered my time here as good, as somehow magical? As something to cherish and restore my lost faith in others, in myself? I leant against the chest, trying to regain my equilibrium. My fingers gripped the top and I remembered that, inside it, were my precious items. I moved away and lifted the lid, coughing as dust and the smell of lost time hit me in the face.

  I looked inside the tiny space and saw the things I had once treasured still sitting there. There was my old tinderbox, a few candles, the piece of green myrtle wax and the ancient bit of paper I’d salvaged from the canal the first time I ever rode in a gondola. I drew it out and examined it.

  Back then it had been the colours and patterns that had attracted me. I had never seen anything so unusual. Now, I looked at it and the meanings of the designs and words, at one time obscure, became apparent. The urge to laugh found me again. That was how Baroque came upon me moments later, doubled over with tears pouring down my cheeks.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong?’ He didn’t intrude, but asked from the doorway.

  ‘Wrong?’ I straightened and wiped my face. My shoulders shook, my throat contracted. I wasn’t laughing, I was sobbing. ‘Look,’ I said, and with two steps, thrust my cherished piece of paper into his hands.

  Baroque took it from me carefully and his eyes widened.

  ‘Sì,’ I said. ‘It’s ironic, isn’t it? The one thing of the outside world that I chose to keep as a child is a piece of paper advertising the services of a courtesan. I have even met her. Veronica Franco. The poetess.’ I took a deep, quivering breath. ‘Oh, Baroque, let’s go. I don’t ever want to come back here. It does not contain what I thought it might.’

  Baroque glanced at me with his secret eyes. ‘I’m not so sure about that. Did you … did you extract?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I raised my tear-stained face to his.

  ‘You felt nothing?’

  ‘No. I felt everything.’

  As we shut the door and returned to the fondamenta, a barrage of abuse greeted us.

  ‘What right do you have to go in there?’ screeched a familiar voice. We both jumped guiltily to find Francesca, the fruit vendor’s wife, staring at us, a broom in her hand held before her like a weapon. ‘You’ll not find anything in there that the Signori and the Cardinale haven’t. He’s gone, I tell you. Gone.’ Her voice broke. ‘And so has the Estrattore, all right. We don’t know anything. Go back to Nobiles’ Rise. Leave us be!’

  ‘Signora,’ began Baroque in his most consoling voice, ‘you misunderstand. We were not –’

  ‘I don’t care what you were doing. We’re no objects of curiousity. We’re people with lives and families. And your kind don’t belong here. Now go!’ Francesca began to sweep hard in our direction, dirt and bits of rubbish flying into our faces. I began to cough and held my hand up in front of my face. We tried to escape, but Francesca followed us, her broom working harder and harder. Along the fondamenta, people appeared in doorways, cheering her on, spitting at us, ordering us to leave. Soon she was joined by others, all of them sweeping us away in a tirade of words and dust.

  It wasn’t until our gondola was in sight that they stopped and watched us. Grouped together in silence, they waited until we were in the gondola and on our way before, one by one, they turned their backs and returned to their lives.

  It was some time before Baroque and I spoke again.

  BY MID-AFTERNOON WE WERE BACK at the
Maleovellis’ casa. As we glided through the water-gates, I removed my mask and disembarked. I saw Giaconda waiting. If she was angry, she hid it well. Her voice as she told us to go to Signor Maleovelli’s study was measured, her gestures calm. It was only when she turned to the boatman and ordered him to report to Salzi that I detected the fury. I knew I would not see the gondolier’s smiling face again. I felt guilty about that.

  In silence, Baroque and I went up the stairs. Jacopo loitered at the top.

  ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ he muttered. ‘Naughty cousin.’ His grin only enhanced his delight. ‘I am here to comfort you if you need it,’ he said to my back.

  Giaconda snapped. ‘Don’t you have work to attend to, Jacopo?’

  He stammered something and limped away. I allowed my lips to curl.

  Signor Maleovelli was seated behind his desk. Papers rested askew in front of him. Navigating our way between the chairs, Baroque and I stood patiently and waited. I repressed a yawn. My early morning adventure was catching up with me.

  Finally, Signor Maleovelli raised his head. The afternoon sun streaming behind cast him into shadow. His hooded eyes glittered.

  ‘Where have you been, Tarlo?’ he asked. It had been a long time since he’d directed a question or any conversation to me. I was taken aback. ‘I went to the Candlemakers Quartiere.’

  ‘Really?’ he said. He glanced at Giaconda, who had followed us into the room. ‘Why?’

  Something in his tone warned me not to implicate Baroque. Without rushing, I explained that I had a sudden urge to see my old home and that I had found Baroque and insisted he take me. Baroque had unhappily obliged.

  Signor Maleovelli’s eyes passed from me to Baroque and back again.