by Laura Rahme
Maffeo gasps. He watches the veiled woman step back and signal to the two witches. He can see that the child has grown silent and ceased clapping. Something is wrong. Wrong, wrong, Maffeo! Stupid Maffeo! The witches move fast now. No one seems to notice them save for Maffeo. But Maffeo is too far. Elena’s little frame is clasped in the witches’ grip as they bolt through the calli, past the fishermen’s market.
They have disappeared.
Maffeo curses as he runs and grips his heart.
“Elena!”
His voice is lost to the pipes and drums. Maffeo is in tears. He holds his hands to his head in disbelief. The veiled woman has gone. He spins round, looking in all directions. Where is Elena? Where?
Maffeo takes a turn into another calle. He has reached the place where the hooded men may have taken the child but now he is not sure. The alley is empty. Above him, a window opens just as peeled vegetables and urine are showered upon his shoulders. Maffeo cries out. He wipes himself with a handkerchief, eyes stinging, still searching in each calle. Then he remembers. On his way to the races early in the morning, there was a black gondola tied there. He had thought to himself, how odd it was that it should be here. He returns to it. Where has it gone to?
Further out, above the dove-gray lagoon, a thick winter mist has risen. The silhouette of a dozen gondolas blind him. And beyond, there are hundreds of them. Maffeo sobs. Dread fills him as he searches again for Elena.
Maffeo! So wrong, wrong. Look what you have done! He feels the knot in his stomach and the tightness in his throat. He can see them now and his breath fails him. No breath comes as he stares.
The black gondola—for it is the same one—sweeps fast toward the East. The two witches are rowing further out, faster, faster. Even if Maffeo tried, he could not reach them. They have begun a different race.
Poor Maffeo gives out a sob. Between the two witches, a little head bops up and down.
He calls and calls but his voice is strangled by the mirthful cheers rising from the campo. The witches gather speed. Strong and determined, they do not even look at the child as they row. They only look ahead. Rowing, rowing. Far, too far.
The mist closes around the black gondola, swallows it. Soon it is nothing but a black spot in the distance.
Maffeo weeps. What will he tell his master, the mascheraro?
“Ah, Francesco!”
The Armenian slave falls to his knees. Before long, he has been tossed aside and kicked by the unforgiving crowd.
From the top of the campanile in Piazza San Marco, a bell begins to ring. It strikes midday on the 6th January.
A haunting sound it is. One, two, three… Each toll sends a dagger into Maffeo’s heart.
The bell echoes through the Rialto and beyond. It marks the day from which Francesco Visconti, the mask maker, will never again set eyes upon his daughter, Elena.
The Hidden Message
An entry from the cancelleria secreta
January, 1416
Grave words follow and he who is not intended to uncover them will be found and duly punished.
It has come to the attention of the Consiglio that the late Magdalena Visconti, wife of Francesco Visconti, the mask maker of Santa Croce, suffered from an excess imagination during her pregnancy.
Such were the images that visited this woman and imprinted themselves in her lost pagan mind, while she carried her unborn child and such was her restless spirit in absorbing all that was impure and unholy, that the nature of her child can only be deemed inhuman.
Our first witness was Signora Catarina Contarini, who claims that the child cast a spell on her. When asked how the jettature had operated, Signora Contarini informed us that during a visit to the Visconti atelier, the child had placed a curse upon her. Asked how she had done so–Catarina explained that no sooner had she placed one of the child’s creations upon her face, than she began to feel ill.
The child’s overwhelming use of her left hand, her remarkable art at such young age, her astrological profile–Moon in Scorpio with negative aspects—and Catarina’s alarming deposition, all led to an immediate inquest.
Following Elena’s imprisonment, the Consiglio has reached a startling conclusion: the child, Elena Visconti, is a jetatture with malefic powers.
6 June 1417
Unanimous decrees passed by the Consiglio dei Dieci are as follows -
Elena Visconti is dangerous.
Elena Visconti must remain in Constanziaca indeterminately.
Only select members of the Signoria are to know of her location.
PART II
Elena
The Art of Unmasking
Journal of Antonio Da Parma
2 January 1422
It begins. January has come and with it, the month of Janus.
Janus. Why can I not take my mind off him?
It is now two days since my clandestine entry into the chancellery. I live each moment as I can. By day, I hide in a church close to the Arsenale. It is understood that if ever my life should be in peril, that I should leave a letter hidden under the third row, for Esteban to find. At night, I sleep in a small room that Esteban is renting out for me. To all those who ask, I am his cousin.
There are armed sbirri well into the night, prowling in Castello. It is no question who they are looking for. But none have yet noticed me. Blanca’s masks and costumes have proven of great assistance.
Esteban wishes to take her to Aragon. He is more in love than I thought was possible but he looks at me with downcast eyes whenever I see him, as though he is guilty of some deed I know not of.
He is eager to greet me at the port tomorrow. He says he dearly wishes to show me something. Despite Esteban’s insistence we depart after the Befana, I refuse to leave Venezia. I wish to find Elena Visconti.
But there is yet, another errand, I must attend to. One that is long overdue. One that concerns two sisters. Two sisters whose names were listed upon the Consiglio dei Dieci’s secret parchment. Two sisters of flaming red hair. One a widow, the other a meretrice.
I have waited long to scribe the letter which I am about to pen. It will please me to do so.
For I know, already, that she has fibbed.
***
2 January
Letter from Antonio da Parma to Catarina Contarini
We must talk Signora,
Only two moons ago, I saw your sister, Blanca. She entrusted me with a secret.
How is it that you kept it so long from me?
I admit, that in my position, I can do little to protect your family’s name. If the Consiglio dei Dieci is intent on guarding one of their great secrets, then I do not find it surprising that they would resort to life threats on your remaining son and extort you at such a troubling time, going so far as miring your deceased husband’s name in sin. Do you follow?
The Ca’ Contarini faced persecution at the hands of the Consiglio dei Dieci and to save your family, you chose to not tell me about Elena Visconti. This I can comprehend.
But Signora, I know about Elena’s abduction.
I understand your silence if you feared the Consiglio’s retribution. You have played foul, Signora, and you chose for so long to keep past misdeeds forgotten. But fear not, Blanca has explained it all on your behalf.
I have asked myself why the Consiglio has only now toyed with your family. I think I understand it. They fear that you might know something of your husband and daughter’s recent deaths. Could it be that they fear you might be inclined to speak of it, if only to alleviate your tormented soul?
We must talk, Signora. I would like to know more about Elena Visconti.
I will tell you what really caused the deaths of your husband and daughter. I will tell you how all these murders took place. I will offer you my protection.
My courier will wait outside for your response.
Deliver your reply to him in person. Do not follow him.
Antonio da Parma
***
January 2
Dearest Antonio,
I ignore what you speak of. Of course, you are welcome to my home. I shall await your visit the day after tomorrow.
Please, I forbid you to mention the name of Blanca. If in past letters, I hid one thing from you, it was that my sister has turned whore. I request your pardon for this omission but you must know the shame she brings to the Canal and the Contarini. Even as a Florentine, you must know the torment of making this indecency public. She is nothing but a meretrice and if there was a treacherous soul who would gain in sullying the Contarini and Canal names, it is her.
I know not what lies she has spread about me and about this Elena that you mention, but I should hope you would know better, Signore, than to trust in the lies of a cunning whore. She has always envied my successful marriage and my happiness. In her mind, it was she who ought to have received the Canal dowry and married Giacomo.
Do you think it uncommon for a woman to spread lies out of spite and envy? Surely in your experience as avogadore, you would have met such varieties of my species.
My courteous salutations,
Catarina Contarini
***
January 3
Letter from Antonio Da Parma to Catarina Contarini
Signora, it is I who is in the wrong.
I have been wrong about you on two accounts and I apologize.
I will state my meaning clearly.
In my previous letter, I inferred that you did not know the cause of these remarkable banquet murders. I offered, in exchange for more information about Elena Visconti, to illuminate you on this matter, at least for the repose of your troubled spirit.
It turns out, Signora, that the Consiglio dei Dieci is absolutely right in your regard. You not only know very well who engendered those murders, but you sought to protect yourself from that very person.
How do I know this? Do you remember my first visit? I left a message with your servant. What you ignore, Signora, is that I followed you on that rainy afternoon when you set off to Campo San Lorenzo with a certain parchment in your garment.
You hesitated at length to post it. In the end, you did not. And when you finally regained your home, it did not occur to you that you had left this parchment in your mantle.
When I visited you the following day, I took note of that still drenched mantle, near the door. You must forgive my curiosity, Signora, but while you disappeared into the kitchens, I wondered if perhaps I would retrieve, for myself, the parchment you may have left in your coat.
Look for it, Signora. Look well. But you will find that this wretched letter, which I first took to be a denunciation and which was written in your hand, is no longer in your mantle. Perhaps you have already discovered that it was gone. It does not matter. Yes, I have it with me, Signora. And if, back then, I did not understand its contents, now, I see that all along, you knew well who caused your husband and daughter’s death.
So now I come to the second reason why I must apologize. I had long believed you of unsound mind. I thought you emotional and distraught by your family’s accursed deaths. Why did I think this? I read that parchment, Signora. I retrieved it from where you left it on that rainy afternoon and upon drying it to a well kindled flame, I read it many times. Certainly the ink had run in some places, but your writing is sure and your hand is steady. You have passion, Catarina. The words could still be seen.
For so long, I thought that you must be prone to some emotionally induced madness. Yes, it is true. I thought you vulnerable and slightly mad. Forgive me.
But upon reading it again, it all makes sense to me. And now, I ask myself. Why would you write to the Consiglio dei Dieci, the words, ‘it was the child, please protect me’, unless, Signora, unless you understood that the person of Elena Visconti had, by way of her sorcery, driven these men to their deaths, unless you understood that the only people who could protect you and who could perceive the significance of these words, signed by you, were those very people who had engineered Elena’s disappearance. Who else but the Consiglio dei Dieci.
As it turned out, I should tell you something. Something I know you ignore. The night before their deaths, your husband and his friends murdered the mascheraro, Francesco Visconti. If Elena is indeed a witch, something you once, yourself, saw fit to reveal to the C.X, she would have known of his murder. Why, she might have even set her vengeance upon his murderers!
But I come to the core of it. You, Signora, did not know of Francesco Visconti’s murder. So why, would it even occur to you that the child, Elena Visconti, drowned since 1416, would want to strike at your family? And, I should add, why would she choose to strike at you, in the manner you most feared? Was it perhaps to exact revenge upon you?
Revenge? What a notion! Had you, say, six years ago, come forth to the Consiglio dei Dieci with some spiteful reports regarding Elena Visconti, perhaps then, through your hand, a father may have been deprived of his daughter and a daughter forever lost to her home. But accusations of witchcraft and the like have a frightful bearing on their victim, Signora. In France, as in Castile, they lead to burnings. Would you have set your hand at such an act? I cannot imagine it to be so. Unless, of course… Perdonami. Another notion has surfaced—do you believe, Signora, that it is by any chance that Giacomo, on the night he died, murdered his own daughter? Might the loss of your own daughter be akin to the sort of retribution you dread? If so, I fear it has already struck.
So it is true. You denounced Elena Visconti to the Council and now, your fear of her speaks for your guilt.
I now come to your sister who you accuse of ill sayings about you. You should rejoice, Signora. Blanca did not once speak poorly of you, not at least, in the same terms you chose to apply to her. If she gave signs that you had abandoned her, it was only to share her distress and explain her cruel situation. Have pity on her, Signora.
But I saw upon her face the recognition of a certain pendant which I know has been taken from the child Elena. I can only surmise that Blanca was your corrupted accomplice.
Regarding lies of the sort you accuse her of proclaiming, I only have you, Catarina, to recall this proverb–women have two pockets, one for tears and one for lies.
To our coming meeting.
Antonio da Parma
Death to the Janara
A letter from Almoro Donato to the other Capi
3 January 1422
Prior to my monthly appointment as Capi, I have made a last visit to the Visconti offspring. What I observed does not favor us.
You have all witnessed the evil that Elena spawned on the night of the Winter Solstice. Elena’s powers accrue daily. The men who guard her fear her ever more. They wish to leave.
There remains the question of the Armenian slave, Maffeo. I fear he can no longer be trusted. Till now, his guilt and his love of the girl bound him to our service for years. Without his familiar face, the girl would have lost her mind during years of captivity. The removal of his tongue saw that he could speak to none about her existence and location. But at present, he knows what she is capable of and he is bound to help her escape.
I sense in her a growing will that if not contained, can endanger us all. On the Winter Solstice, she found a way to dupe her guards. Make no mistake– she will find another.
Our only recourse is the Beast. Soon after the Winter Solstice, this slave, a mountain Sard, was brought to Constanziaca to guard her prison. The Beast knows no law and bows only to his master. He will prove our greatest ally. He is of such baseness that her craft cannot reach him. Her power has no effect upon him. He can be relied upon.
A homing pigeon has been dispatched to the guards of Constanziaca. They will instruct Maffeo to poison the girl and report to us tomorrow. Should he fail, the Beast shall take care of both of them.
The Visconti offspring must die.
***
A letter from the Sbirri captain to Almoro Donato
Antonio da Parma has
not been found, but we have a lead, Almoro–a parchment with your portrait. A cunning hand drew it and we know well to what designs.
We have interrogated the palace notary and several vendors from the Piazza. One of them remembers seeing a young woman, sketching by the latrines. We now know how Antonio entered the cancelleria secreta and very soon, we shall know the identity of the artist who engineered the mask to your image.
Donna Laura
Journal of Antonio da Parma
3 January 1422
Esteban and I walked along the Arsenal port, bathed in the gilded sunlight. It was early in the morning and white pigeons circled around and above us, their wings, majestic in flight. The smell of the sea, of Venezia, pervaded the air. If it were not for my wariness and the omnipresent fear of my arrest, I would have been graced by our surroundings.
Yet I noted Esteban’s somber mood as we walked to the docks.
“Have the compagnia endorsed the document as valid?” I asked.
“That time will come when they shall,” he answered. But he seemed elusive.
“What of your demands? Gaspar’s will? Did it bear fruit?”
He remained in thought before finally speaking.
“I am blessed with a skilled lawyer, Antonio,” he said, gazing somewhat anxiously toward the Arsenal. “His most formidable skill to date remains persuading the world that he is a loyal husband and father. Fortunately cunning devils can prove useful. In answer to your questions, I have at last, recovered one thing that is dear to me.”
“Blanca spoke to me of this lawyer.”
