The Orphan's Song

by Lauren Kate

  On the quiet canal, away from the woman, both Mino and the senator were more relaxed. The senator settled back beneath the fèlze, and Mino summoned all he had learned at the squero. He tried to feel each one of the two hundred and eighty puzzle-like pieces of wood that formed the vessel. He knew where the boat was asymmetrical at the prow to handle the curves of the canals. He knew the heavy iron fèrro counterbalanced his own weight at the back. He felt a sudden sense of calm. He knew the shape of the oar, how to turn it one way, then the other. He felt how the curves of the canals were best navigated in a three-point maneuver.

  Ten minutes later, they arrived on rio della Toletta. Mino rowed beneath three bridges and ducked beneath the bough of a tree. The cork oak had outgrown its small, walled garden and reached one arm almost across the canal like a bridge. Its bark was silvery and mottled, its clusters of leaves crisp and green, dotted with acorns.

  Mino was exhausted. He saw the building just beyond the cork bough. It was discreet, indistinguishable from its neighbors but for a single blue glass lantern lit outside a second-story door. He propped his oar on the cobblestones to stop the boat, like he’d seen Carlo do. The senator clapped Mino on the shoulder and exited the gondola in haste.

  “I am in your debt,” he called back as he hurried toward a spiral staircase cast in shadows. He climbed the stairs and reached the door, glowing in the blue light.

  La Sirena.

  Mino knew he had to hurry back to the Zattere, to return this boat to Carlo and make amends. But as he turned the gondola back down the canal, a wooden plaque below the blue glass light of La Sirena caught his eye. It featured a fishtail, arcing up out of the water.

  It was beautiful—and familiar, like something he had dreamed of long ago. He couldn’t stop seeing it, even as he turned the corner and steered the boat on. He felt a compulsion to go back, to climb those stairs and enter La Sirena.

  FIVE

  FIVE MONTHS HAD passed since the December morning when Violetta performed her first aria, and ever since, she’d felt she was living another’s life. Porpora had pulled her from the music school that day, promoted her to the coro before she’d even had time to catch her breath.

  She was no longer just a charity case. She had found a purpose. But she never forgot the twisted fortune that had led her here. Had her mother not abandoned her, had she not gutted Mino with that lie, had Giustina not been so sick, Violetta would not be in this coro. At times, fate felt so capricious that her victory seemed like ice on the canal, soon to crack.

  Her days revolved around two performances, at morning mass and vespers. On feast days or during visits from important ambassadors, sometimes a third performance was arranged. The services were short but taxing, and the other hours of her days were as regimented as ever: she awoke at the same time and said the same prayers. After mass, she waded through the morning’s same long stretch of group rehearsals and private lessons, though she now tutored a pair of younger students. She gathered with the other women and girls for the same communal meals, only now she was permitted to pour herself a mug of wine. It was all the same, yet all so different, everything ornamented by her position as the coro’s youngest soprano. She was only eighteen; she had not dreamed of a place in the coro for another few years.

  The first Sunday after she sang the aria, the prioress had called Violetta to her office.

  It’s over, she had thought. Someone had found the bauta in the bottom of her trunk. Or they’d changed their minds and decided to give the position to Reine. Or else she hadn’t washed her dishes or tidied her room or kept up with the pages of her libretto lyrics in the specific way that a coro girl was expected to do. She prepared herself for further heartbreak.

  “One lira for your pocket, for now,” the prioress said, laying a silver coin on her desk before Violetta, “and one sequin for your dowry, for later.”

  Violetta stared at the silver coin on the desk, then at the gold one, disappearing into a small black purse in the prioress’s hands. Slowly, Violetta reached for the silver coin, clutched it in her palm until it warmed. “For me?”

  “Your earnings.” The prioress nodded. “You do with it as you wish. I recommend saving, of course. I will keep your dowry here in my office.” She raised the purse, then deposited it in a locked drawer in her desk. “I have a purse for each coro girl. Return each week, and I will dispense your pocket money.”

  When Violetta left the prioress’s office, she’d felt the coin glowing in her hand. She wanted to run right out the front gate and spend it in the first café she crossed. She didn’t know what it would buy her, how much anything cost in the city. How much was an acqaioli? A ride in a gondola? A lace fan from France? How much was an apartment for a week?

  How much was a life outside these walls?

  Soon she learned that the other coro girls spent their pocket money within the Incurables, on new lace collars for five lire or extra fruit for one. But Violetta kept hers in her trunk, next to her bauta. Over time the lire multiplied, until she traded six of them to the prioress in exchange for one gold sequin. Then another. Someday she would find a way to spend them.

  In the afternoons now, between dinner and vespers, Violetta rested her voice. Porpora believed the part of the voice that spoke, not sang, thickened the tongue and thwarted singing, so it needed hours of silence each day. She gathered the notes from him, her sheet music, her cup of hot water with lemon, and a wool wrap for her neck. Even in the warming May weather she had to protect her throat. She ascended the stairs to the coro sottomaestra’s suite, where her red silk chaise awaited. She and Laura had moved into this double suite in the spring, after they took the coro vows.

  They had pledged ten years of performance. They agreed to apprentice two younger girls, who would, in return, serve as their assistants. Last and most important, they promised that if they ever left the Incurables to marry, they would never play or sing in public. Violetta had spoken the vows stiffly, feeling the grip of the Incurables tighten around her. She was getting what she had long wanted, but at what cost? It made her think of Mino, and what he’d said to her when he proposed—that they might find a way around the rules, that she might perform somewhere in Venice. She had laughed at him. She wasn’t laughing now.

  She knew she should be grateful for her change in circumstances, but sometimes she felt the horizon slipping away. Sometimes she wanted to be back on that roof with Mino, when nothing and everything had seemed possible.

  “You’re in the clouds today,” Laura said on a Thursday in May. After three hours of rehearsal, both girls were tired. Laura rubbed rosemary ointment over the calluses on her fingers. Violetta sipped from her steaming cup.

  “Don’t respond,” Laura teased. “I know you’re not meant to be talking. Only know that I see you, and I know something’s running through your mind.”

  Violetta smirked at Laura, pursed her lips together dramatically. Each girl had her own large, well-furnished bedroom in their new living quarters, but they spent most of their limited leisure time in the shared parlor. It had become Violetta’s favorite place, like their own private altana. Just Laura and her being young women alone, together. They could talk privately there—at least, when Violetta was permitted to talk.

  Sometimes she felt guilty for not taking Laura into her confidence about Mino, but what happened that day still felt so raw and so private, Violetta could not speak of it aloud. It stayed within her, a wrenching secret song.

  Their suite was warm. Spring had blossomed in Venice. Recently the nights smelled of jasmine, and the girls had swapped out their woolen gowns for lighter white linen blouses. Full sunlight streamed through a big window and sparkled invitingly on their view of the canal.

  This room used to intimidate them. Years ago, when Violetta was first assigned to study under Giustina, she had run the new sheet music back and forth from the copyist to Giustina’s parlor. Now she and Laura were the on
es with servants, tiny girls with tiny voices scampering up and down the stairs at the first request.

  There were irises on the mantel, wisteria blossoms on the table, a big bouquet of roses in a crystal vase on the piano. The prioress would never reveal the flowers’ donors, but bouquets rained down on Laura and Violetta after each performance. Violetta didn’t care whom they were from. They were a welcome burst of color for the musicians, who suddenly found themselves with little time to step outside, not even into the courtyard with its single fragrant lemon tree. When Violetta felt trapped in the Incurables, even in her new, grand chamber, she would dip her face in the flowers and inhale. For a little while, she would feel better. She would feel the pulse of life on the outside.

  “I know I shouldn’t say this,” Laura said, looking up from her pages as Violetta smelled the roses, her finger dancing lightly across the piano’s keys. “But some days I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m not supposed to be here.” She swallowed, her gaze flicking toward Violetta. Her hazel eyes brimmed with sadness. “Don’t answer that. It was just—”

  “You were always meant to be here,” Violetta said. Her friend was more important than a few minutes of quiet for her voice. She knew the circumstances of Laura’s promotion weighed on her, just as Violetta’s did.

  When the fever spread through the Incurables, Laura’s violin sottomaestra, Ginerva, had died. Laura had come close to dying, but recently she confessed that Violetta’s words—her urgent I need you—had brought her through the worst. Now both girls had risen to high places in the coro, and both of them felt guilty for it.

  “Everyone knows you’re meant for this,” Violetta said. “Ginerva looks down and smiles to see you playing her violin.” She moved to the chaise and sat down again. She took a sip from her cup and was quiet a moment, dark with thoughts of her own sottomaestra. Giustina had recovered from her sickness in January only to leave the Incurables in February.

  “It could be worse,” she said. “Ginerva could have had Giustina’s luck and been married off.”

  “Don’t say that,” Laura said.

  But Violetta meant it. She felt personally guilty about Giustina’s situation. Had Violetta’s performance during the worst of the fever not been so unexpectedly good, Porpora would have kept Giustina on as lead soprano, probably for years. She was only twenty-six. But part of a sottomaestra’s responsibility was to train the next girl, and now Violetta had proved herself ready—far sooner than anyone expected. Porpora liked young talent. Eighteen beat twenty-six. And just like that, with an eye toward the church’s future coffers, Violetta was promoted. Giustina could have stayed on as a nonperforming maestra, or a lesser soprano in the coro, but she would be its star no more.

  Violetta would never forget the day Giustina had summoned her to her bedside—the bed where now Violetta slept—and requested that she sing. By then Violetta had learned what she had to do, the precise feeling she had to tap into to make her voice soar, but that day, she didn’t even need to think of Mino. Her sorrow for Giustina was enough. She sang her mentor’s favorite aria from Hasse’s opera Allessandro nell’Indie. She left Giustina speechless, able only to kiss Violetta’s hand. Giustina had accepted her fate and her marriage with a quiet dignity that haunted Violetta.

  “One day it might happen to us,” she told Laura now. “Maybe we shouldn’t teach our assistants as well as our sottomaestri taught us. We’re just asking to be replaced.”

  “Again with this, Violetta?” Laura shook her head. “Marriage can’t be that bad. What if your husband turns out kind? Think of the babies. I wouldn’t mind teaching my own daughters to play violin someday.”

  “Not me,” Violetta said, tightening her scarf. “Never.”

  She felt Laura’s gaze on her. She picked up her music and tried to focus on her aria, aware that her cheeks were turning red. They’d had similar debates before, and Laura had always disagreed with Violetta’s adamant refusal to wed. But something felt different today. The conversation was making Violetta sweat. The word marriage was no longer some distant fate; it was the reason Mino hated her. It was where everything between them had gone wrong.

  “Do you miss him?” Laura asked. She smiled, as if to break the tension, but her eyes were curious. “You know who I mean.”

  Violetta’s heart skipped a beat.

  “How did you know?” she finally whispered, at once relieved to share her secret and devastated to speak of Mino aloud.

  Laura looked down, massaged the calluses on her fingers. “I used to hear you leaving your bed in the night sometimes. Once, I followed you to the attic, watched you climb out that window. For the roof. I was so stunned, I just stood there. Then I heard a sound and I hid, and it was him, following you up a few minutes later.” She looked shy when she met Violetta’s gaze. “I’ll never forget how gay you seemed the next morning at breakfast. I’ll admit, I was jealous. And fascinated. After that, I could always tell which nights you saw him.”

  “Oh, Laura,” Violetta said, her breath hitching, her hands pressing against her breast. “My heart is so heavy.”

  Laura came at once and sat beside her. She touched her forehead to Violetta’s. “I know. I always wanted to know what it was like up there, with him. But you think I worry too much.”

  “And you were worried I would worry about your worrying?” Violetta said and both girls managed to laugh.

  “I didn’t want you to think I’d turn you in. But then, when you were punished, when he left, I didn’t know how to tell you I understood. And now everything is so different.” She looked around the parlor with a visible incredulity. “But you’re still hurting.” She reached for Violetta’s hands. “What happened?”

  Violetta let Laura’s eyes warm her, as they had in earlier years. “He asked me to marry him.”

  Laura gasped. “Why didn’t you?”

  Violetta shouldn’t have been stunned by the quickness of Laura’s position. Laura was a born romantic. She would have said yes in Violetta’s place.

  “What of the coro, Laura?” she asked. “Would you put down your violin today and never play again?”

  “What of love, Violetta? Would you put that down forever? You did love him, didn’t you? Don’t you?”

  Violetta closed her eyes. I was his, he was mine. But what did it matter? She was here. She had chosen music over Mino. She had hurt him enough that she would never see him again.

  “Violetta?”

  “It’s over now,” Violetta whispered. She was grateful when their assistants, Helena and Diana, came rushing in to top up her teacup and to refresh the vases with new blooms.

  * * *

  IN BED THAT night, Violetta couldn’t stop thinking about Mino. She couldn’t sleep; she did not want to dream their song. She tried to push him from her thoughts, but nothing—not Porpora’s music, tomorrow’s performance, not even the bath she was looking forward to in the morning—could compete with her memories. She could still call up the feeling of standing on that bridge, looking ahead at the Grand Canal. How brilliant life had felt next to Mino.

  She rose from bed, went to the window, and slid up the lower sash. She leaned out and gulped the warm spring air. It felt lovely, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough just to watch the canal, where lantern-lit gondolas full of laughter glided by. It wouldn’t even be enough to go up to the roof.

  She had been out unchaperoned in this city one afternoon in her life; it couldn’t be the only time.

  If she’d said yes to Mino, she would have given up performing, but she might have found new richness in the world. Was he finding it? Was it changing him? She ached to consider who she might be by now if she had said yes.

  She went to her armoire and selected her finest dress, the white silk gown she’d worn the day she first sang in the coro. How pretty it had seemed the first time she put it on, its thick cuffs of bobbin lace. Now that Violetta int
ended to wear it outside the Incurables, she saw only its telling simplicity. It would have to do nonetheless. She stripped off her simple nightgown and pulled the dress over her head, smoothing it down her hips. She slid her slippers on her feet.

  Finally, she reached into the back of her armoire and found the white bauta, tied the black ribbon. Even alone in her room, she felt different, jittery, with a hungry thrill. She faced her window, held her arms out, the way she’d seen women dance with partners in the piazzas. She twirled, but the warm night air didn’t hold her in return. She felt like a child.

  She returned to the window. It was Ascension Day, the start of a two-week feast to celebrate Venice’s symbolic marriage to the sea. Violetta could feel the pulsing jubilation on the street below, passing groups of young men and women like her—only free.

  She took her cloak from the hook by the door. She turned it inside out. Her heart was racing.

  Just one night. Just to see what it was like. Maybe she would step inside a tavern. Maybe she would flirt with a masked gentleman. An hour free on the streets tonight would last Violetta months once she returned to the Incurables’ rules. It could be her new secret. She could savor its memory when she felt she couldn’t breathe.

  If she were discovered leaving the Incurables in the middle of the night, she would be out of the coro. But if she didn’t follow her heart, she would lose a part of herself more important to her even than her music.

  She had to try. She just couldn’t be caught.

  Easy enough, she heard Mino tease in her mind, goading her on.

  The Zattere was two flights down. The sculpture of the orphan girl above the entrance to the dormitory formed a ledge between Violetta and the ground. She eyed the distance. The drop seemed endless. Then she remembered a conversation she’d overheard on the altana, about the cloth ladder a gondolier kept in his boat for when someone needed to exit a second-story tryst. She could return via the rocky, climbable ledge that reached a window in the apothecary’s ground-floor store room. She was an expert at prying out the loose panes of these windows after her years in the attic. She’d discovered the entrance the afternoon of Mino’s proposal.