The Orphan's Song

by Lauren Kate

  “Was he bothering you?” His calmness reminded Violetta of the Magnificat by Johann Sebastian Bach. They used to sing it in the music school and it always struck Violetta that there was no trace of the bright and rapid second movement left when she performed the slower third.

  She had not felt threatened by the man, and Federico’s response seemed extreme, but Violetta was caught between being unnerved by this flash of brutality and flattered by how readily he had come to her defense.

  “Is he all right?” she asked, leaning over to check on the man, bleeding through his white mask where he’d hit the table. She offered to help him up, but Federico waved two fingers in the air, and two guards arrived.

  When the injured man was gone, only the barmaids remained, wiping down the tables. La Sirena had a tranquil romance about it without all its customers.

  “Please don’t think I make a practice of fighting,” Federico said, steering Violetta toward the bar. “That man was a confidenti of the Ten.”

  Violetta knew of the Council of Ten. Within the Incurables, these judges had always been portrayed as necessarily strict arbiters of justice, but in Violetta’s recent ventures out at night, she’d learned otherwise. She’d seen the crowds scatter at the sight of one of the Ten’s glowing red lanterns at the bow of their gondolas. If that man was a confidenti of the Ten, it meant he was one of their spies. A dangerous man for a woman taking the risks she was taking.

  “Thank you,” she told Federico. “But you’re not afraid of retribution? He was bleeding.”

  “I can handle the Ten, but I won’t give them access to you.”

  He was keeping his promise to protect her identity.

  “Now tell me,” he said, “are you here with good news?”

  “Yes.” Her voice sounded small. She didn’t know where her nerve had gone, but then he took her hands and it didn’t matter.

  “Really?” he said. “You’ll sing? Here?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I came to sign.”

  He kissed her hands a dozen times with a happiness far purer than she’d expected. She thought of the couple she’d run into by the bridge. Someday might she and Federico care for each other as tenderly as they did?

  “Contracts later,” he said. “Tonight let’s celebrate.” He lifted a champagne bottle and two glasses in one hand, taking her arm with the other. “There’s still a little starlight left before the dawn.”

  He led her toward the door, pausing for a whispered word with Fortunato, who bowed at the sight of Violetta. Then Federico led her out of the casino, down the stairs, under the bough of the cork tree, and along the dark canal. The night was still, the revelers finally gone to bed, merchants and guildsman getting their last moments of sleep. It felt like all of Venice belonged to Violetta and Federico.

  At the third bridge, where the calle turned left and the Grand Canal and the tall bronze gate of Federico’s palazzo came into view, he stopped in the center of the bridge and popped open the champagne. Foam spilled over the bottle. Violetta laughed as she held the glasses near to catch it.

  When they were full, Federico raised his to hers with a clink.

  “You’ll need a name,” he said.

  Violetta had been thinking of this, but the one she liked was so bold it made her nervous. She sipped her champagne for courage. “What do you think about La Sirena?”

  The name had come to her while staring at the blue brand of the Incurables on her heel. La Sirena would let her stay anonymous to the patrons of the casino, but it would also make her inextricable from Federico’s place. The impulse to call herself after his establishment was confusing and new, but for once, she didn’t fight the idea of belonging somewhere, with someone.

  Now she looked at Federico and for a second she thought he flinched. But then he was pouring her more champagne and smiling. “It’s perfect.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  A gondola passed beneath the bridge, a jolt of movement in their still night.

  “Your chariot,” Federico said.

  “Mine?”

  “It will be safer for you to travel here and home again by boat.” He signaled the gondolier. “That’s Nicoletto. He will wait for you on the rio degli Incurabili at half past ten on nights when you perform. He will bring you home. When would you like to begin?”

  Violetta worked through her obligations. Wednesday mornings generally started later for the coro. Mass was held in the evening that day. “Tuesday?”

  “Until Tuesday, then,” Federico said and kissed her hands. “At half past ten.”

  “Federico, wait,” she said, holding fast to him before he could pull away. “There’s something I must know.”

  “Anything.”

  One hand touched the opal at her breast. Above her, stars peeked through black sky. “Why did you give me this necklace?”

  He gazed at it a moment, then met her eyes through her mask and smiled. “I knew that if I didn’t, I’d never see you again.”

  “But what if I had pawned it and disappeared from Venice?”

  “Then I would have missed you more than any jewel,” he said. As he helped her into the gondola, delivering her into the care of the handsome gondolier, Federico kissed her hand. “But you didn’t disappear from Venice, did you?”

  TEN

  MINO AWOKE TO the music of frying sausage and bickering women. He didn’t remember what corner he’d slept in the night before, which restaurant stoop he was soon to be kicked off. He rolled over and felt the surprising softness of a pillow at his cheek, the feather-warm weight of a coverlet over him. His eyes shot open.

  He was looking out the window of a second-story room. Outside, big raindrops fell into the canal. There were puddles on the calle, water running down the red-and-white awning of a bakery below. He was dry and warm. He was alone in another’s bed.

  Ana.

  He remembered last night, stumbling upstairs, after their walk along canals and beneath the shadows of church towers. He remembered her small hand guiding him and her ripe laughter in his ear, telling him shhh, until she closed a door behind them. In the darkness, Mino had stumbled against the bed and Ana pulled him to her.

  She had kissed him, and the reality of her firm mouth on his amazed him. He’d felt as if he were kissing a firework. Desire lit her up.

  She tasted like oranges.

  When his fingers traced her hair, she’d let it down. It spilled like wine past her breasts, a silky web Mino wanted to climb inside.

  He didn’t realize she was showing him exactly what to do until their bodies moved together. He remembered the damp sweat on her back afterward as they lay still. He found it all hard to believe.

  He lifted the sheet, looked down at his nakedness, expecting to appear different from yesterday. The sight brought back a new memory—both her hands wrapped around him at once—and he wanted her again.

  He heard her giggle. His head popped out from under the quilt.

  She stood in the open doorway in a pretty white nightgown, her hair swooped over one shoulder in a low braid. A wicker tray balanced on her hip.

  “You’d better be hungry.” Her words were confident but her voice was shy, and this touched Mino and relieved him. From the moment he’d remembered where he was, he’d worried about overstaying his welcome.

  “Starving.”

  She brought the tray to him. He rolled onto his side to face her, and she sat down on the bed in the curve between his chest and knees. He was surprised by how natural it felt to prop himself up on an elbow and open his mouth as Ana raised a fork to his lips. He bit the sausage, crisp and hot. He chewed for a long time. Nothing he had ever eaten had tasted half as good.

  “You’re too thin,” she said. Her voice was as smooth as the sunlight on her shoulders. Mino glanced out the window again. A moment ago it had been r
aining. Now that Ana was in the room, sun broke through the clouds over the canal and made it shine.

  “You must start eating better,” she said, drawing him back to the plate.

  He took another bite, but as soon as he had swallowed, he called, “Sprezz?”

  Mino and Sprezz had had breakfast together every morning for half a year. Some days Sprezz had been the only thing that kept Mino going.

  Now the mutt crawled out from under a heap of blankets at the foot of the bed, padding up to Mino’s chest and licking his chin. Mino hugged him, ashamed that he had not remembered the dog coming in with them last night. Sprezz eyed the sausage, wagged his tail.

  With a blunt knife, Ana sliced off the tapered end of the sausage and tossed it to him, clapping her hands when Sprezz leaped up to catch it. Mino’s eyes widened. Who was this magical woman who shared sausage of such quality with the dog of a man she’d met the night before? Sprezz licked his chops and looked at Mino. He, too, could not believe their luck.

  “There’s plenty more,” Ana said. “We make it.” She rolled her eyes. “All day long. You’ve heard of Costanzo’s?”

  “Your family?”

  “My grandfather, and my father after him. Papa died two years ago, and now my mother and my sisters and I handle the shop.” The corners of Ana’s mouth flicked up, a smile with minor notes of sadness as she glanced around the simple room. “This apartment used to be my grandfather’s. Mamma and my sisters and I live across the hall.” She nodded her head in the direction of the women’s voices. “We rent this place to boarders when we can.”

  Mino wanted to beg for the apartment. Whatever the price, he would pay it. Imagine seeing Ana every day. This thought surprised him; for years the only person he’d yearned to see was Letta. But when he looked at Ana now, he knew the urge was real. He wanted to see her again. But he didn’t want her to know he had no other home, so he stayed quiet.

  “Do you like working in the sausage shop?” he asked.

  “I used to want to be a governess.” She was looking out the window, her fingers soft on Sprezz’s ears. “I like children. I should have been the eldest, not the baby. But when Papa died, we all had to help. Well, except for Stella. She already earned money with her violin. Mamma made the rest of us vow to help her, so now I stuff meat bits into intestines every day.”

  Mino took her hand. “I have never eaten so well.”

  She kissed him. “Stay for lunch.”

  Her eyes were like the darkest grains in the cherrywood of his lost violin. Mino found it hard to keep looking at her. She was so pretty, and it had been so long since anyone had talked to him like this. It was too much, too rich, like the sausage already tightening his stomach. A man should not go from famine to feast. He looked away, out the window at the canal.

  “I have a confession,” Ana said.

  “Tell me.”

  “I have known you since before last night.”

  Mino’s face fell. His stomach lurched. The drunken penniless state in which Ana had met him last night was among the most flattering states he’d assumed this past year.

  “Where else?” he asked. What street corner? Which scrap heap? What brothel?

  “The maranzaria.”

  “Oranges,” Mino said. Her scent, like the first breath after peeling the fruit. He knew it from the sunrise job hauling oranges to the maranzaria. This was better than so many other places Ana might have seen him, and yet it pained Mino to think about it. How miserable he’d been each of those mornings, always the last hour before he stumbled off to sleep. He wondered how slumped he must have been under the weight of the crates. How brutish his expression. He had known her for eight hours and already she made him want to be a better man.

  “It’s near our shop,” Ana explained. “I used to see you passing with the crates on your shoulder.” Her fingers threaded through his hair. “You looked like you’d come from somewhere exotic.”

  “I don’t,” he said.

  “Still, I fantasized. I’d try to steal away, to follow you and see where you went after you set down the last crate, took your soldi from the merchant. I always wished to buy an orange while you were there, unloading. But each time, you’d be gone before I could catch up.” Her eyes narrowed. “Then one day, you weren’t there, and I confess, I missed you.”

  She covered her face, embarrassed, and Mino gently drew her hands down so they could look at each other. She was flushed but smiling, and Mino admired the way she sat with her discomfort, certain it would pass and brightness return.

  “And then?” he asked.

  “Last night,” she said, “there you were, snapping a hair off my sister’s violin bow.” She touched his cheek, her palm so light and soft. “I’m not usually like this, but I couldn’t let you get away again. What if you never came back?”

  Mino put his arms around her waist, pulled her back under the covers, and threaded his leg around hers. With the weight of her settled over him, he felt rooted, as if by staying right here he could grow into something better.

  What if he never left?

  ELEVEN

  IN THE ANNEX of La Sirena, Violetta studied herself in the mirror. It was October, the first week of carnevale and her first night performing at the casino. Nerves kept her fingers busy, smoothing her new gown, tugging at her wig for the thousandth time. She had chosen every aspect of her costume, but taken altogether, her reflection mystified her. She looked like the kind of woman she had long admired, the kind of woman whose confidence was as much on display as her pearls. Now she wondered whether those bold, inspiring women on the altana ever felt as unsure as she did beneath her mask.

  Her gown shimmered, blue silk woven with shiny threads of silver, created by Federico’s seamstress. Her petticoat had a thousand layers, and when she sat it billowed around her like the sea. Her lace gloves reached her elbows, and her lace collar plunged down between her breasts, leaving ample space for the black opal. Her wig she’d chosen carefully—not blond like every other lady’s in Venice, but glossy black and curled into long ringlets that cascaded down her back. Most exquisite of all was her mask. Federico had had it painted by the famous mascareri Patrice, to resemble the iridescent scales of a fish. It was the same shape as a bauta, but at the mouth Federico had requested a rectangle of dark painted mesh instead of the papier-mâché. The mesh was indiscernible from the rest, and would let her sing more clearly.

  Federico’s purse had opened at the first request, and open it had stayed. Nothing was deemed frivolous. Yes to a brand-new corset. Yes to a series of fittings with the dressmaker. Yes to an armoire at the casino, for there was no way she could store her clothing at the Incurables. Yes when she requested a harpist to accompany her performance; the violin would have reminded her too much of Mino. She would have lied if Federico had asked why, but he asked no questions. He only said yes. Anything. Yes. It gave her the confidence to experiment, to make herself beautiful and strange.

  The anteroom was drafty and damp, but it was hers and it was quiet, and the candlelight flattered her reflection. She had asked Federico for the librettos to secular operas she had no access to at the Incurables. Of the bounty he provided, she’d selected an aria from Handel’s Giulio Cesare. She thought that, after Mino’s mother’s song, this was one of the saddest and most beautiful pieces she knew: imprisoned Cleopatra singing to her brother and betrayer, Tolomeo.

  Piangerò la sorte mia,

  sì crudele e tanto ria,

  finché vita in petto avrò.

  Flow my tears, cease not your grieving,

  Though my sorrow be past relieving,

  While I breathe still let me mourn.

  Everything about the aria resonated with Violetta, its minor chords and legato phrasing. Every word of its libretto. She wanted to use the pain it brought her, how it made her think of Mino and the mistakes that had determined their fate. She
wanted to sing those words in a sorrowful, hedonistic manner. It would be so unlike anything she’d ever sung through the grille of the coro.

  The terms of her agreement with Federico were simple: on the one night a week she performed, he would give her fifteen percent of the casino’s earnings. It was far more than she’d expected and far more than the five percent all the coro girls split at the Incurables. She could stop at any time, on the condition she discussed her leaving with him first.

  She could manage one late night a week and still sing at the Incurables as expected. The thrill of these nights out gave her more energy than sleeping. She could keep this secret for now. Not even Laura had guessed.

  There were three bottles of perfume on the vanity in her little boudoir, rouges and powders in becoming pinks and golds, fine kohl crayons for lining the eyes behind the mask, for shading the beauty marks. There was even, to Violetta’s great amazement, her own cicisbeo, a wispy man with a naughty sense of humor. He appeared without warning at Fortunato’s side to assist her with her preparations.

  His name was Davide, and until Violetta asked him politely to stop, he applauded everything she did—humming, cleaning her fingernails, scratching an itch. But once he relaxed, she did, too. He even sang for her in a startlingly deep baritone, confessing as he powdered her neck and bosom beneath her mask that he once dreamed of becoming a castrato. He brought tea brewed from jasmine that tingled Violetta’s throat. When he stirred in the honey, and asked her about her lovers, she demurred and drank while it was still too hot.

  He laughed. “I can’t tell if you’re a virgin or if you love someone you shouldn’t.”

  She tried to smile enigmatically, but he couldn’t see it through her mask.

  “If you get nervous,” Davide coached, arranging ringlets across her back, dabbing her neck with vanilla cologne, “look for me in the audience. I know all the words to every song. I’ll cheer you on.”