The Orphan's Song

by Lauren Kate

  When he had labored over cleaning his apartment, when he had strewn it with gathered jasmine petals that morning, he had imagined her happy beneath its roof.

  Now he saw it in a different light. Was it enough?

  Violetta was wandering the apartment, touching the small hearth in the alcove, peering into the room where a little desk and chair sat. He had imagined her sitting there, reading or writing music, singing. Could she imagine the same? She leaned against the doorframe of the bedroom and studied the narrow cot, the table with the books, the window. She saw Mino’s violin and this seemed to startle her. After that she noticed the flowers, all the blossoms he had placed atop the bed.

  She turned to him, taking off her mask. Her beauty staggered him, but she looked hurt, her lips parted and her eyes softened into sadness.

  “Mino?”

  He realized she still thought he had left her when he left the Incurables. He flung off his own mask and took her in his arms. “Yes. It’s mine.”

  “Congratulations.” Her voice was as strained as her body, which pressed back against his arms.

  “Letta, that light in your eyes when I held up your mask,” he said, “that’s all I want from my life.”

  She looked down. “Don’t get used to it,” she said. “After today, they’ll probably never allow me outside the walls again.” She raised a hand to his cheek. “It will have been worth it. I’m happy for you. Now I’ll be able to imagine you here.”

  “Don’t go back,” he said, reaching for her hands. “Stay here. With me.”

  She laughed. “And do what?”

  “What do you mean?” They would be together. What did it matter what she did?

  “All I know is music,” she said. “If I don’t join the coro, I can’t sing in Venice.”

  She could sing here, with him. He almost said that aloud, but then he heard how ridiculous it was. Of all the things Mino had worried over, the restrictive Venetian law forbidding orphans from singing outside their hospital had not been one of them. He swayed where he stood.

  Of course, he knew of Letta’s talent; he had seen the way she lived through singing, but he had never seen her perform before an audience. When she complained of her rehearsals with the maestro, he must not have heard that there was wonder in the experience, too. He had thought it was just singing that brought her joy. He had thought the coro life was the best she could imagine at the Incurables. He had thought they could play together, here, and be happy. For Mino was happiest when he played with her. Now he saw it wasn’t enough.

  “There must be ways,” he said quickly. “I’ll help you find them.”

  “Mino, the punishment for a coro girl singing outside the Incurables—”

  “I know,” he said. Coro girls took strict vows pledging their allegiance to their hospital. Mino had never heard of a coro girl caught performing elsewhere, but he knew such a case would be taken up by the government. The Venetian Republic had come to rely on coro voices funding its churches, not private hands. So a coro girl—and anyone who hired her—might face heavy fines and a hearing before Venice’s ultimate judges, the merciless Council of Ten. The Ten were quick to imprison; terrible things happened in Venetian prisons.

  But Violetta hadn’t taken those vows.

  “You’re not in the coro yet,” he said. “Disguised, you might sing anywhere. If anyone can outsmart the authorities, it’s you.”

  She laughed, an odd sound he didn’t trust. “This was fun, Mino. A great goodbye. I’ll never forget it—”

  “Letta. I love you. I always have.” His voice was shivery, unrecognizable. He was wrought with nerves, but he knew if he didn’t say it now, he’d lose his chance. He stepped close and put his arms around her. He pressed his lips to hers, more lightly than he wanted to. He pulled away before he could tell how she’d responded to the kiss. “Will you marry me?”

  She gaped at him. For once she had nothing to say. He was expecting this. He would persevere. How many times before had one convinced the other to take a risk? This was what they did.

  But then, Mino hadn’t been expecting this change in her eyes. They lost their light. He’d thought she would feel comforted by the apartment, by his practicality. She could go on being Letta, wild and free, and he would keep her safe.

  “You feel guilty about leaving me there. But this”—she gestured at the apartment, at the flowers—“this is foolishness.”

  “You don’t love me,” he said.

  “I do love you,” she replied, hotly, and Mino hung his head.

  Love, as Mino felt it, meant taking your beloved in your arms, tipping her lips to yours, and saying I love you with all of yourself.

  “There’s one part of my life I didn’t want to change, Mino, and it was you. And it’s changed.” She sighed. “Marry someone better than me.”

  “There is no such thing.”

  She was crying now, silent tears she wiped before they spilled down her cheeks. “I can’t give you what you want.”

  He understood. “Children.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Letta—”

  “I would fail them,” she said firmly. “I would fail you, too.”

  “I don’t believe you. How many times have you sung those words to me?”

  “They weren’t my words.”

  He stared at her. What did she mean?

  “I’ve never hidden myself from you,” she said, trembling now. “I am not a wife. I cannot be a mother—”

  “Not all mothers are terrible. My mother loved me. There’s not much I remember of her, but I know that to be true. I believe she had no choice.” Without realizing it, his hand had gone into his pocket and pulled out his half token. He fingered the silver chain, studied the painted woman, wishing for guidance from her more than ever. He still believed he’d reunite with his mother somehow, one day. Now that he was out of the Incurables, he would find her.

  He noticed Letta looking coldly at the token in his hands. It had always seemed to annoy her when he took it out.

  “What if you’re wrong?” she asked.

  Tears welled in his eyes. “People need family, Letta. They need love. You don’t have to fear it. Not with me.”

  She turned away. “You’re wrong about everything,” she told him, and her voice was like the winter wind. With her back still to him, she said, “How do you think I knew that song, Mino? It’s not our song. It was hers.”

  He touched her shoulder, turned her to him, tipped her chin up with his finger until he could meet her gaze. In her huge, dark eyes Mino saw resolution. But there was also something new—fear.

  “I heard your mother sing it. I saw her, that night.”

  His hands fell away from her. He had felt those words rising through Letta’s breast before her lips spoke it, but he didn’t understand. Was she lying? What could she possibly know? These questions were too big for him to fathom.

  “Mino,” she said, reaching for him. “Let me explain.”

  He shook his head and it hit him: she’d said no. She had not even considered his proposal. Worse, she had used his mother to push him away.

  The apartment seemed to cave in around him. He couldn’t stay. He turned for the door.

  * * *

  MAMMA? HE COULDN’T see her face. Surely he used to know it, but he couldn’t summon it anymore. She was sky behind sifting clouds to him. She was silt at the bottom of the canal. For a long time now, when he looked for her, there was only an atmosphere of doom.

  Was it true what Letta had told him? Had she heard his mother’s song? Could she have told him even the smallest detail about her? Could she have helped Mino search for her, to find some trace of the family he desperately desired?

  He had a horrible sense that Letta’s words were true, for how else would she know that song? But then, why had she never told him until now?
She knew how much he longed to find his mother.

  If she’d lied—was that worse? Either way, she did not love him. She had given no thought to his proposal before she turned him down.

  A hard rain arrived without warning. It shocked him out of his thoughts and made him aware he had walked back to the Incurables. To the west wall, to the wheel. He fell on his knees and began to weep. Harsh, choking sobs racked through him as he leaned his head against the stone.

  The rain came down. He grabbed the metal handle. Was this what his mother had done that night? Where was the one who’d given him life? Why didn’t Letta love him enough?

  “Who’s there?” a voice called from within the kitchen.

  Suddenly Mino felt how cold he was. He looked in, saw eyes on the other side. Reine, the French girl.

  “I heard a noise.” She squinted. “You’re the boy who just left for the squero—”

  “Let me in.” He still had the cook’s key, which opened the door from the kitchen to the outside. He passed it through the wheel.

  After several moments struggling with the key, she let him in, opening the door shyly, jumping back when he pushed past her. He could barely stand through his grief.

  “Are you all right?” Her fingers felt his coat. “You’re soaked.”

  “What are you doing on this side of the hospital?” he asked as she slid the cloak down his arms, draping it over a chair.

  “Did you hear Violetta’s run off? We all have to look for her.”

  “I didn’t hear,” Mino said numbly, sinking into the chair. Had anyone connected him to Letta? They saw each other only on the roof. No one knew of their friendship.

  “It’s like her to ruin the one day the rest of us get to go outside,” Reine said. Mino looked up. Reine thought she was suffering at Letta’s hands.

  “You don’t look well, Mino,” she said. “Do you want a drink?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  He didn’t know she knew his name. Her hair was loose from its braid, and it was rain damp, too, but her cloak was dry. Some of the other boys spoke about Reine, how beautiful she was, how different from the other girls, because she had money, because she had parents. She moved differently, spoke differently. But Letta had also spoken of her over the years, and what Mino felt most strongly was that Reine lacked the capacity to love anything as Mino loved Letta. Love took imagination.

  “I’ve wanted to meet you,” Reine shocked him by whispering close to his lips.

  Mino stayed still. He hurt so much he did not feel on solid ground. He noticed her arms coming close, her chin tilting up. Her face approaching his.

  She kissed him. And in his unmoored state, he rose to his feet and kissed her back. He wanted to lose himself in another. He put his hands on her hips, her waist. He held fast and kissed deeply, blindly, even as his heart said no. He should have been kissing the woman he loved, not this stranger who smelled of sweet cologne. Her shoulders were wider, her bearing denser than Letta’s. But she felt sturdy, like something he could hold on to. She drew him against the wall, loosening the ties of her cloak and sliding her body free. Her legs wrapped around him and her body shifted until he held her aloft with his hands under her thighs.

  “You found a taker.”

  Mino dropped Reine and spun around.

  Letta. What had he done? The disgust on her face made her unrecognizable. She looked vicious—eyes narrowed, jaw clenched, face washed of color. Regret coursed through Mino. How could he have kissed Reine?

  “Letta—”

  “I saw her,” Letta said, her voice slow and low. “I saw your mother put you in the wheel.”

  He wanted to wake from this nightmare back into his dreams, but Letta’s gaze locked him in place. She was another person.

  “I’ve never seen such relief as I saw in your mother’s face leaving you.”

  Something twisted inside Mino. He stared at her in horror, in rage, as she pulled something from her cloak pocket. It was the score he’d written with their song, his promise to her left on the roof.

  I am yours, you are mine . . .

  Now her hands tore at it, shredding the paper and tossing it into the kitchen’s hearth. There was such anger in her eyes as it burned, anger so dark Mino thought he might never know its depths. For once, he did not want to try. It took such energy to know Letta. He had loved that about her. But now, he was exhausted. He wanted to disappear. His hand went to the half token in his pocket. His fingers wrapped around it.

  Slowly he became aware of footsteps coming closer.

  “We found her!” Reine shouted, and Mino wrested his gaze from Letta to follow Reine’s waving arm. The prioress ran down the hallway toward them, surrounded by a chorus of maestri and zie. “Here she is. Here’s Violetta.”

  Letta watched the prioress advancing, then her eyes darted toward the exits in the room. She met his gaze and raised an eyebrow. Yesterday he would have thought she was suggesting the two of them run together. Today, he saw the dark flash in her eyes, and he knew she didn’t love him.

  When the prioress’s arms closed around her, Letta gave less of a fight than Mino expected. She slackened. She didn’t even look at him as they led her away.

  He left the Incurables. He could never return.

  THREE

  THREE WEEKS OF solitary meals. Five weeks of scrubbing floors. Shorn hair, again. Public confession before the other girls each night. No alms walks or outings for a year. Her name in the maestro’s probation book, again. Violetta’s punishment touched every part of her days. But it could not touch her.

  “Why did you do it?” Laura asked, coming to her bed that night. She knew only that Violetta had slipped away from the group, missed the coro performance, and returned hours later. Mino had always been Violetta’s secret.

  “I thought it would be worth it.”

  “Was it?” Laura asked, aghast.

  Violetta saw the bridge at Ca’ Foscari in her mind. She saw the view of the Grand Canal and felt Mino at her side. “At first it was the best day of my life.”

  She couldn’t bear to tell Laura anything more. Only Reine knew something had passed between Violetta and Mino. Violetta expected the French girl to betray her at the first chance, but the secret stayed between them. Perhaps because Reine could have been expelled for kissing Mino. Violetta did not like sharing a secret with the French girl. She wanted the pain of him to herself.

  She made herself ill remembering her last words to him, hearing them over and over as she carried her bucket up and down the stairs, as she ate her lonely soup, as she sat in the confessional before the priest.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” She leaned on the partition, feeling the dampness at her forehead and her breast from the holy water’s anointment. “It has been one month since my last confession.”

  “And what sins have you committed since then?” Father Marché’s question was so familiar, his cadence always precisely the same, kind but tired, a little bored.

  Violetta always gave her rote response: acts of laziness and selfishness, disobeying the prioress, taking the Lord’s name in vain. Not today. Her words choked her. She could hardly get them out.

  “I have lied to a friend.”

  Father looked at her through the grate. He’d never done that. “This weighs on you.”

  She nodded; tears spilled from her eyes. “It is unforgivable.”

  “Nothing is unforgivable with penance and contrition,” he said with a kind of faith Violetta could not muster. He went on about Hail Marys; she said them aloud in a daze. He gave her absolution, but it did nothing to ease her mind or heart. As she left the confessional, she felt diseased by her own actions.

  Mino thought she didn’t care. But apart from music, he was the best thing in her life. When they played together on the roof, Violetta knew that joy was real. Still, their paths had
to diverge. There was no way around it. She had always known there was a limit to their friendship. Mino would go on to have a life beyond the Incurables. Violetta could not. She wanted a brilliant future for him, full of the family he longed for and deserved. She couldn’t give him that. She would not bring children into this difficult world.

  She had seen a mother abandon her son. She had been abandoned. Caring for a child was a greater responsibility than she was built for—and an even greater leap of faith. She would not be a mother worth having, so she could not be a mother at all.

  His proposal had surprised her. He couldn’t know how seeing him in the wheel had shaped her. She should have told him what she’d seen of his mother sooner, but she didn’t want that night to haunt him. And neither had she wanted to revisit it, to answer questions. She knew he longed to find his mother, still carried that half token. Violetta did not know his mother’s fate, but her instinct told her his search would not end happily.

  He had to make his own way in the world. She had wanted him to find everything he wanted, to never worry about her or this place. To remember her with affection.

  She’d ruined that and it shattered her. She regretted deeply tearing up his letter, their song.

  Dark and rainy weeks dragged by before she found a clear night to escape to the roof. She paused in the attic, clutching Letta, afraid to go on. His baritone laughter, his dulcet violin, his hair in his eyes as he gazed across the water at Giudecca—these had become as much a part of the view as the dome of Salute and the palazzi across the water, the white pillars of Il Redentore. Lanterns lit the gondolas going to and from Giudecca, silhouetting the oarsmen in their dark cloaks and heavy scarves. As she climbed out the window, she smelled the afternoon’s rain on the calli. How could she stand it without him?