The Orphan's Song

by Lauren Kate

  “What I meant was,” he said, “you’d still look nice with short hair.”

  Violetta’s cheeks blazed with heat.

  “At least you’ll never look like them.” He raised his chin toward the altana.

  Violetta realized he thought those elegant women were ridiculous. Here she’d been admiring them, envying their transformations. She didn’t want to let him know.

  “They spend all that time trying to look like you,” she said. “Venice loves a blonde.” She surprised herself by reaching out to touch him. She felt the warmth of his scalp in the sunlight, the softness of his fine hair. She’d never done anything like that. She never came near having the chance to touch a boy. But it felt so natural, she didn’t want to draw away. He leaned into her touch and sought her eyes. She dropped her hand.

  “Don’t worry about Reine,” he said, his voice quieter. “Her parents will send her a new toe. Made of gold.” He put on a French accent as convincing as his Fiona. “They must make those in Paris, no?”

  Violetta laughed, and it made her feel better, like she might be able to go downstairs and face what she had done. But then, she wondered—

  “How did you know Reine’s name?”

  “We know you all,” he said. “You’re famous.”

  “The coro girls are famous,” she corrected. The music school girls were no one, yet. In Violetta’s case—especially after today—she would probably be no one forever.

  “You have futures here,” he said. “You’re valuable to the church. We’re just hungry mouths. They cram ten of us in one room and try their best not to see us until they can show us the door. But you”—he raised an eyebrow at her and it made him look unbearably handsome—“you’re Violetta, assistant to the renowned soprano Giustina. Future—”

  “Future nothing,” she said. She couldn’t believe he knew her name.

  “Well, that’s not very sonorous. What do your friends call you?”

  He made it sound like she had so many, like together all her friends had sat down and agreed upon a nickname. Laura called her Violetta. No one else went much out of their way to speak to her at all.

  But she didn’t want to damage Mino’s image of her, false as it was. She wanted to be the girl he’d keep looking at with such bright eyes. She said the first thing that came to mind, the name of her old doll, with whom she used to imagine escaping this place, disappearing into the night.

  “You can call me Letta.”

  “I like it.”

  They stayed still, looking at each other. What would happen if she touched his hair a second time, let her fingers trail down the side of his face? His cheeks were smooth, no hint of a beard, and she liked how he looked young and innocent, like her, even if his boyish wildness gave him the air of someone older. She wanted to know more about him, to come back here and be close to him.

  When Mino looked away, she felt ashamed, as if he’d seen her desires in her eyes.

  “I should go,” she said.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Do you want to know why I come up here?”

  “Not Fiona?” she teased.

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  When she nodded, Mino crossed the roof to a retrieve a wooden violin case. Incurables boys were not taught music. How had he learned to play? This was a violation of the order of the orphanage.

  It thrilled her to think of him sneaking up here to practice. She was flattered he was taking her into his confidence.

  When he opened the case and lifted the instrument, her breath caught. Tucked beneath the violin was a painting. Half a painting on a piece of wood: a woman with flowing blond hair. Violetta had seen it before—in the hand of the boy she’d rescued from the wheel.

  She felt winded, as if she’d just sung a full mass. This handsome young man who’d made her laugh, made her forget her troubles for a while—why did he have to be the boy from the wheel?

  She saw it now—the same blond hair, the slope of the nose and set of the eyes so like his mother’s. He’d never opened his eyes that night, or else she would have known him sooner. He had eyes you’d remember.

  Violetta had been trying for more than a decade to forget that woman and her song. Now it had caught up to her at her first taste of freedom. It had disguised itself behind a mask of intrigue, and she’d been fooled.

  All this made her feel she would never escape her orphandom, no matter where she went. She wanted to leave and not see Mino again.

  But he’d been kind to her. He’d made her laugh. When he looked into her eyes, she felt she might become someone new.

  He began to play, the opening note a beautiful G-sharp with a gentle touch of vibrato. Right away, she could tell he was special. Such wrenching soulfulness emanated through the strings that she forgot the wheel and only listened. When the melody took shape, she froze.

  Over the years she had begun to think of this music as hers, but of course it wasn’t. It was his.

  The song was different than she remembered. He had taken the small, simple melody and raised it into something rich and soaring. He made impassioned leaps up the scale, whirling at the highest register like a leaf in a storm.

  An unsuppressible urge crept into Violetta. She began to sing.

  I am yours, you are mine . . .

  Somehow, she sensed the song’s changes, and she embellished them, collaborating with him. Out poured a fierce, ecstatic melody she had always dreamed of singing and had never believed she could. She bared herself through her song. Mino watched her closely, following her instincts, and together they improvised a tangled melody.

  Violetta didn’t wonder where the next words came from. She simply let them out:

  I loved you ere I said hello,

  I’ll love you long after you go.

  Farewell is neither fare nor well.

  Speak not a word that cannot tell,

  That cannot tell . . .

  For the first time, she understood what Giustina meant when she’d said “Love is here.” That was what Giustina said to the world with her voice. Violetta suddenly knew that this song was what she had to say: I am yours, World. You are mine.

  It was a vow and a surrender, a manifestation of all the love she’d ever felt but could never express. She didn’t have to worry that the world wouldn’t receive her love, wouldn’t love her back. It was infinite. It could do anything, be anything. It could take her as she was. It wouldn’t abandon her.

  Tears brimmed in her eyes. Never had she felt so many things so intensely at the same time: fear and heartbreak and wonder and desire all danced within her. She leaned into these emotions, singing with every forgotten part of her soul. At the end, when Mino lifted his bow from the strings, both of them were shaking.

  “How did you know?” he asked as the women of the altana applauded their invisible musicians. “I thought that song lived only in my heart.”

  He didn’t remember. He didn’t know his mother had sung it to him. He thought he’d made it up. Violetta struggled with how to respond. She didn’t want to lie to him, but how could she tell him about his mother? He’d want to know everything, and she was not prepared to part with the memory. It was hers, too.

  And then there was the matter of her voice, which had blossomed through this song. She should have been proud, but she feared she would never again be able to re-create that sound, not with any song but this one. She couldn’t sing this to Porpora.

  Before she lost her nerve, she stepped close and put her arms around Mino. She leaned her head against his and held him, feeling his arms come around her. Her cheek to his, she gazed beyond his shoulder to the horizon.

  For years, each of them had nurtured this music privately within them. Now Violetta could almost see how the song had entered into the world. They’d let it out, a physical force, a subtle
shift of light and sky.

  It was everywhere. How far would it go?

  TWO

  MEETING LETTA CHANGED Mino. From the moment they played together, he felt he would do anything for her. Every day for weeks afterward he brought his violin to the roof at the same hour, hoping to see her. His skin browned as he lingered, practicing his vibrato under the September sun. Would she come again? He stayed until the cook expected him to serve supper to the boys. He climbed back through the attic window unwillingly.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He could confide in no one.

  By October, the weather turned cold and dark gray. Carnevale began on Sunday. Though its celebration never entered the Incurables, you could still breathe it in the air, like the complicated sweetness of the canals. You could feel the city’s pulse quickening, even through these walls.

  Up on the roof, Mino shivered, tuning his violin absently, entranced by sunlight on the dome of Il Redentore across the Giudecca Canal.

  “It’s like someone polished a piece of the moon and stuck it on that church.” The voice startled him.

  He turned, and it was Letta, at his side. His heart raced. His desire to draw closer to her made him speechless. She was all he’d thought about for weeks, and now that she stood before him, he knew his memory did her an injustice. She was as beautiful as he remembered, with her bright smile and large eyes. Her dark hair had been cut short, as she’d feared, punishment for breaking the French girl’s toe. Mino liked the way it looked. But it was more than that, there was something altogether more to her in person: she seemed free despite every restriction of life at the Incurables. Mino got the feeling she’d been born with a spirit so big nothing could constrain it. He’d never met anyone like her.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  She seemed to tower over him, and Mino straightened, embarrassed, even though he’d grown a handbreadth since the new year. He’d always been small for his age.

  “I’ll be sixteen this month,” he said. “Or so it says on my birth card. Do you know your birthday?”

  She looked across the water. “Close enough. Only because I was so young when I arrived.”

  How young? he wanted to know. Who would leave you?

  “I turned sixteen in February,” she said. “Do you have an apprenticeship? I heard some boys get to leave as young as twelve.”

  Mino wondered what else she’d heard about the dozen foundling boys who lived on his side of the Incurables. Letta spoke like leaving here was a privilege, but only the troublesome boys had apprenticeships hastily arranged by Father Marché before they turned thirteen, a way to move them out. Father liked Mino, and so did Esmeralda, the cook, and the younger boys, whom he taught woodworking to by day and forbidden card games by candlelight in the dormitory. There was no urgency to be rid of Mino, and he’d been glad of that—until now, when his lack of apprenticeship made him feel like a child. Letta made him want to be a man.

  But then, if he had an apprenticeship, he wouldn’t be here with her now.

  “Father Marché wants a position at the squero for me,” he said, “but I wouldn’t start for another year.” The boatyard in Dorsoduro made most of the gondolas in Venice. Mino had been there only once, to meet the foreman.

  “Is that what you want?” Letta asked.

  “It’s a good position,” he said. Unheard of for an orphan, Father Marché said. It would be a rise well above Mino’s station. “I like intricate projects.”

  He looked down at his violin, and wanted to tell her how he’d discovered it in the attic when he was eight years old. It had seemed to him a barely living thing in need of care. The strings were broken, and the neck had been snapped nearly in two. The ebony fingerboard hung on by a few splintery shards of wood, and there was a gash in the lower bout. It looked as if it had been bashed against a wall. Mino took it into his arms and adopted it. He borrowed tools from Father Marché when they wouldn’t be missed. Alone on this roof, he took the whole thing apart and taught himself to put it back together again. He restored the neck, pitching it at a higher angle than before, so the strings now arched like an elegant Venetian bridge over a canal. He’d patched the hole in the bout. The only wood he could find was a lighter grain, so you could still see where he reset it with resin, but Mino liked the visible imperfection, the way it honored the instrument’s life. Over the years, he had tinkered continually, shaping the violin into many different incarnations. Each had a voice slightly but essentially different from the rest.

  He wanted to tell Letta all of this, but when he looked at her, she was watching the water, melancholy in her eyes.

  “Do you want to play again?” he asked, raising his violin. He wanted to bring back her smile.

  “I shouldn’t,” she said, but her gaze and body twisted toward his violin.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to.” She smiled at him. It made him stiffen everywhere. He felt transparent before her.

  “Most of the things I want get me into trouble here,” she said.

  Was she flirting? He dared not dream so boldly. “I thought you wanted to make the coro.”

  When Letta tossed her head, her dark hair shone. “I want to make music. I want to sing my way to the horizon. The coro is the closest I can get.” She looked out, her gaze searching the distance as she leaned against the parapet. “How do you reach the horizon, do you think?”

  Mino followed her gaze to the thin blue line where sky met sea. “Keep going?”

  “It’s easy for you. I bet you don’t have a tenth of the rules we do.”

  “There are still things I want.” He wanted her to turn from the view, to him.

  “Like what?” she whispered.

  How could he tell her how she’d filled his mind for weeks? Where would he start? He looked down at the Zaterre, at a party of maskers clinking glasses on the café patio. Their laughter filtered up like smoke.

  “I’d like to be down there,” he said, “dressed for carnevale.”

  Letta leaned closer. Their shoulders touched and neither moved away.

  “I want a bauta,” she said.

  “Me too.” Foundlings at the Incurables were sheltered from nearly all the simple pleasures of childhood, but they still knew about the costumes, the masks, the great lure and art of concealment. Behind a bauta, you could be anyone. Paupers could flirt with noblewomen. Senators could kiss fishermen’s daughters. The Venetian bauta covered the entire face, with holes just for the eyes and a sculpted nose. The bottom of the mask protruded far enough that the wearer could eat and drink beneath it. The fashion had become so admired, at once elegant and discreet, that most Venetians wore them year-round, all but the days expressly forbidden by the sumptuary laws of the republic. Every year the laws changed, depending on the way the Great Council voted. One year there might be twenty forbidden days; the next year there might be twenty-four, but for the rest, whomsoever desired could wear masks out on the street, in the markets, at the masquerades. Mino vowed somehow, someday to get masks for them both.

  I am yours, you are mine . . .

  Her voice arrived suddenly and filled him with joy. He scrambled to meet her with his bow. He held her gaze as they played. The last note of their song left Mino trembling.

  Letta didn’t embrace him like the first time. Though he longed to reach for her, shyness kept his arms at his sides.

  “Is that the only song you know?” she asked.

  “I can learn others.”

  “When I was younger, I used to make up songs, but . . .” She looked down at her hands, and Mino saw the scars on her palms.

  He’d seen other boys caned for stealing food or missing mass, but no violence had befallen him at the Incurables. “Up here, no one would know.”

  “Do you ever come at night?”

  He took her hand and squeezed a promise. “Tonight.” />
  * * *

  ALL THROUGH THAT winter and the following spring, Letta met Mino on the moonlit roof once a week. By May, it was warm enough to meet without first donning the musty robes from the attic crates, and the sight of her climbing up in just her nightgown made Mino gulp.

  It wasn’t that Letta was the first beautiful girl he’d seen; Incurables boys were naïve relative to the rest of Venice, but they weren’t blind. From an early age, he’d been transfixed by the coro singers up in the gallery of the church. Even through the brass grille, you could see lips flash and dark eyes shine.

  During his walk to his first training at the squero in June, the women with their feathered hats and sweet colognes had made his head spin. He knew what all Venetian men knew: that you could experience a woman’s radiance through her mask. It was in the way she walked, in her laughter, and her carriage. It was in her hands. He knew that men had to earn the gift of a woman’s bare face. He could imagine the thrill of getting a woman to lift her mask, but he did not desire any radiance but Letta’s.

  Tonight she vibrated with inspiration in the cooling September air as she came close to him on the roof, nodding at his violin. “Play an A-sharp chord.”

  He did, concentrating on her word, sharp, knifing his bow hard and true, as if slaying a dragon.

  She wore the pride of a new song in her eyes as she began:

  “Who”—she held the note, so Mino held it, too, patiently in his chord. “Who named the moon?”

  He followed her to C-sharp minor as her song unfurled.

  “Who named the heart?”

  D-sharp minor now.

  “Who asked the poet to turn her pain to art?”

  “Beautiful, Letta!” he called, still playing, beaming at her.

  “The man who named the beasts stopped too late to start. It was me.” Her voice softened near the end of the refrain, eyes closed and hand on heart. Mino stabbed his violin with the most forceful E-sharp 7th of his life. “Only Eve.”