The Orphan's Song

by Lauren Kate

Ana lifted her shoulders, a smile in her eyes. “Every luthier starts somewhere.”

  “Yes, in an apprenticeship, with a master—”

  She put her hand over his to stop him talking. She eased herself onto his lap and draped her arms around his neck. Her kiss was tender, full of love. Mino felt himself relax at last.

  “Maybe all you need is someone to believe in you.”

  THIRTEEN

  BY THE END of November, when Violetta had been performing at La Sirena for two months, she needed guards to escort her off the stage. Her audience lined up outside the casino’s door hours before her performances. Once inside, they battled to press against her, hungry for a word with the mysterious singer. Each night after she sang, the guards ushered her to Federico’s booth in the back room. She never knew whether he would be there.

  Tonight in his place was a vast bouquet of flowering jasmine. She hadn’t told him she liked jasmine, but she remembered fondling a blossom in one of the casino’s vases last week.

  “Marvelous, aren’t they?” her cicisbeo had said, taking note at her side. “Are they your favorite?”

  Davide worked for tips.

  This jasmine was meticulously arranged, a hundred blooms in an ornate spun-glass vase from Murano. Nothing like the strewn flowers on the bed in Mino’s apartment. Along with the flowers, Federico had left champagne and enough steak to feed the entire coro. She was always starving after a performance.

  “Please sit,” Fortunato said as he and a squadron of guards formed a wall around her, dissuading the gamblers wishing to try their luck.

  Then they parted again, moments later, and Violetta expected Federico. She was disappointed to see a woman approach her table. She was older than Violetta, though it was hard to tell by how much. She had blond hair, curled and coiled in surprising places above her white bauta. Her dress was pale blue, with giant ruffled sleeves and a long elaborate train made of lace and velvet. She had tied a blue ribbon in a giant bow around her neck.

  “At last we meet.” She curtseyed. “I am Elizabeth Baum, Federico’s friend from London, and now, I hope yours, too.”

  Violetta blinked at the British woman, impressed by her confidence. Normally, Violetta talked to no one after her performances, but tonight she was feeling vulnerable, eager for company. That morning she’d had a bad row with Laura, who had pressed Violetta over a rehearsal Violetta skipped to nap.

  “Are you ill?” Laura had asked, dubious.

  Violetta had almost told her friend the truth about the other world she lived in. But how, when Laura had found all she’d ever wanted in the coro? There was no way to make her friend understand that Violetta had to sing at La Sirena. She couldn’t let anything come between her and these nights at the casino.

  “Tell them I am ill,” she instructed Laura, “but do not send a nurse. It’s only my time. I’m bleeding.”

  Laura stared at her, and Violetta understood that her friend knew she’d bled the week before. This made Violetta’s lie even worse. She’d never paid attention to the rhythms of Laura’s body.

  “I can’t keep covering for you,” Laura said. “It’s not like when we were in the music school.”

  Now she felt ashamed. She wished she could show this place to Laura, drink champagne and eat steak and talk about men in ways that would make the younger orphans blush.

  Impossible.

  She would make amends with Laura tomorrow, but tonight she didn’t want to think about the Incurables. She wanted company that might understand her. So she made room for the elegant woman from London.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” she said. “Federico sends enough food for a party he never graces.”

  “Indeed, he does,” Elizabeth said, wasting no time sawing off a large bite of steak. “But if he lingered over filet with you, who would keep out the republic’s rabble?” She pointed her fork across the casino to where a man in a black patrician robe pleaded with Federico, attempting to fend off two guards.

  “One game,” the man cried to Federico, hands clasped as if before a priest.

  Federico’s features held a cold distaste, making him almost unrecognizable to Violetta. She saw his lips move: “Out.”

  When Violetta thought of rabble, she thought—without judgment—of the republic’s working people. The men of the squeri, men like Mino. She saw plenty of working-class men in this casino, gambling unmolested, surrendering what must be precious soldi to the tables. But Elizabeth was speaking of a nobleman, an older masked gentleman with ornaments of silver dangling from his robe. It confused her.

  This foreign woman understood something about Venice that Violetta didn’t. She leaned closer to Elizabeth, keen to see the place through her eyes.

  “Who is that man?” she asked Elizabeth.

  “He is a barnabotto,” Elizabeth said, “a nobleman at the end of his family’s fortunes. He and a hundred like him sit with Federico on the Great Council. The governing body of your city is now half full of men selling their votes for gambling money. They come to every ball but cannot afford to host them. Federico has no patience for them.”

  “Because they posture as if they are still rich?”

  “Because,” Elizabeth said and smiled, “what if noble destitution is catching?” The woman tossed her head with an intelligent mirth that Violetta admired. “What happens when all this money runs dry, too?” She glanced around the casino, finished her wine, dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “But let us not concern ourselves with the fate of the republic. Have you ever been to London?”

  “No.” Violetta looked at her hands, felt the distance open back up between her and Elizabeth. “I wish to someday. . . .”

  “My husband runs the King’s Theatre in London. I design the costumes, and come here for inspiration every carnevale. Before tonight I thought the fashions were the most inspiring aspect of Venetian life, but now I’ve heard you sing, and I’ve changed my mind. You must visit. Do you have a favorite opera?”

  Violetta raised her shoulders, not wanting to mention that she’d seen only part of one opera in her life.

  “Does Federico ever visit?” she asked. She was surprised by her own question, but it was easier—and more fun—to imagine one day traveling with him to a place as distant and romantic as London.

  Elizabeth gazed through Violetta’s mask, taking her aback with their intensity. “Sometimes. But regardless of him, Sirena, you should.”

  Everything out of this woman’s mouth enchanted Violetta, but the practicalities of such a visit still eluded her. She had money now; Federico paid her at the end of every evening, and he’d been right—the two or three sequins she took home from one night at the casino was more than ten times what she made in a week at the church. But still, she wasn’t like Elizabeth, who could come and go from the city as she pleased. If Violetta ever left the Incurables—for longer than these few hours at night—she would have to leave it forever. And then, if she still wanted to sing, she would have to leave Venice altogether.

  Sometimes she did want to leave it all behind. And sometimes nothing was more terrifying.

  Now the guards parted again, and one placed a card before Violetta. She opened it and saw Federico’s hand. She shivered with unexpected pleasure at his message.

  Your presence is requested for a special performance tomorrow night. If you agree, Nicoletto will pick you up at half past ten.

  F

  * * *

  FOR THE SECOND night in a row, Violetta opened her window and readied her bedsheet to escape. The night was windy, almost December, and she was fatigued from the night before. Her provocative dinner conversation with Elizabeth had kept her up late, thinking of London, imagining walking down real streets, not calli bordered by water. She imagined horses and carriages.

  She hadn’t apologized to Laura yet, and she’d felt the coldness throughout their suite all day. She
put it out of her mind. She wouldn’t miss the chance to see Federico. Shivering under her cloak, she lowered herself down with the bedsheet, tossed it back up inside her window, now with practiced ease. She leaped down to the street. The night was frigid, but the sky was clear. She hurried for the gondola, but there was no gondola waiting.

  Instead, there stood a broad, floral-decked burchiello, the kind of boat noblemen took on longer voyages, up the Brenta Canal to Padua. A whistle rang out, and Violetta saw Nicoletto at the helm.

  She went to him and took his hand. He helped her onto it wordlessly, as if this majestic, candlelit vessel were her ride every night.

  Inside, Fortunato bowed his greeting, and then, the best surprise—Federico. He was seated alone at the polished wooden dining table inside the boat’s salon, which could have held two dozen guests.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  “Who am I singing for tonight?” she asked. This was a boat fit for the republic’s most distinguished nobility. Violetta felt suddenly nervous.

  “For no one,” Federico said. He smiled enigmatically, coming forward to greet her with a kiss.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The boat began to move. Usually, Violetta traveled inward, up the Dorsoduro toward the casino; tonight Nicoletto steered the burchiello south, turning left onto the wide Giudecca Canal.

  “Tonight,” Federico said, gesturing out the windows of the ship, toward the sky, “there are fireworks in Giudecca, and a hundred illuminated boats to shine like stars. Tonight Fortunato has prepared a feast, and there is no one else for us to share it with. Tonight, Sirena, the republic performs for you.”

  Violetta blinked at him, a smile spreading across her face. She thought of the girl she’d been in the attic, the old doll she used to press to the window, promising enchanting nights like this. Her throat felt tight as she looked out at the splendor she so rarely got to see.

  The sky bloomed with sparkling light she wished would last forever. The way the fireworks faded and reflected on the water was beautiful and sad.

  There were many boats on the canal that evening, and as they glided by, Violetta heard bursts of laughter and violin music. She felt like they were all at one big, magical party. Through the windows of other gondolas’ wooden fèlzi, she saw masks turn to stare at Federico’s opulent boat, wondering who was inside.

  “What are the fireworks for?” she asked.

  “A wedding, I think,” Federico said absently. “A member of the nobiltà da terra ferma.”

  Last night she’d learned of barnabotti, the fallen noblemen of yore. But she had long known about the nobiltà da terra ferma. They were newly rich citizens, relatively speaking in an empire of a thousand years. They had bought their way into the nobility by funding wars two hundred years ago, and no one ever forgot it. Violetta knew of the nobiltà da terra ferma because the Incurables gladly took their money, but the prioress reserved her true respect for that closed caste of nobility, the original families of the republic.

  “They can hang the sky with jewels for their celebrations,” Federico said, his tone gently mocking, “but everyone knows their ancestors sold sugar in the merceria.”

  He was joking, but it made Violetta sad. Wasn’t she like the nobiltà da terra ferma? Trying to escape her original circumstances and become something new? It made her wonder, in the Republic of Venice, could she ever be anything but an orphan?

  Federico’s fingers moved to untie the ribbon of her mask, but Violetta pulled away. She could not show her face. Federico came closer, to her side, and nodded in Fortunato’s direction. The servant was drawing the curtains closed.

  “You can feel at ease with him,” Federico said of Fortunato. “He is like family. He would do anything, anything I asked. You’re safe here.”

  She knew Federico had much invested in keeping her identity secret. She trusted that, as well as her own yearning to show herself to him. Slowly, she untied the bauta, let it slide to the ground. With her bare face, she looked up at him.

  Federico’s smile was soft, mostly in his pale blue eyes. She felt his pleasure at the secret of her face. His gaze swept over her eyes, her lips, her cheeks and ears and nose, seeming to savor what he saw. It was so slow and so thrilling Violetta managed to sit still through her embarrassment. She let him look at her even as she blushed. For the first time in her life, she felt beautiful.

  “The fish is ready, sir,” Fortunato said, placing two silver salvers upon a white tablecloth. Violetta had eaten risotto and salad, drank a mug of watery wine at sundown with the coro girls, but she was still hungry, and the fish smelled wonderfully smoky and fresh. They sat down to eat amid a tower of vegetables, an appetizer of beef consommé set in aspic, and an array of little tarts filled with lamb and potatoes and leeks. Fortunato poured amber wine from a green bottle.

  “We’re not so different, you and I,” Federico said as the boat glided on. “I am practically an orphan, raised by servants, just as you were raised by your prioress.”

  Violetta flinched and her mind went to Mino. What it would have meant to him to know his family.

  “But you knew them,” she said, “you knew the sound of their voices, the scent of their hair, and the touch of their fingers on your face when you were ill.”

  “Of course.” Federico flushed. “I am sorry.”

  Instantly, she felt a sharper pain at having embarrassed him. “It’s all right; I’m not sentimental. I don’t think of my parents, just as I don’t think they’ve ever thought of me. I’m happiest on my own. I’ve always been that way.”

  “Funny,” Federico said, tiling his head. “That’s not how I see you.”

  She felt an invitation in those words, in his expression. She put her fork down, leaned forward. “With you, it’s different.” How did she explain it? “When I listen to a new oratorio, I can hear, in the slow opening notes of its adagio, the anticipation of the faster allegro that will follow.” Her cheeks were warm with nerves but she pressed on. “With you, it’s as if I can hear that something is coming in the music.”

  “How does it sound?” he asked. “Will you sing it for me?”

  She dropped from her chair to her knees and drew near him. At first, she felt his body welcoming her, her elbows on his thighs, but then he tensed, and she became embarrassed at her forwardness. She withdrew, turned away. She pulled one curtain back a bit and gazed out the window, at the golden sparks igniting the sky.

  “Violetta,” he said in a low voice, “once I loved a girl with all my heart.”

  She waited for him to go on.

  “But I was a fool,” he said, “and I lost her. I don’t want to lose you. . . .”

  Outside, the sky exploded, the show’s finale, golden bands of light sinking in the darkness. Violetta turned from the window to look at Federico. “You won’t.”

  He sighed, and she heard his infinite sadness. How she longed to comfort him and to take comfort in him, too.

  “In my experience,” he said, choosing his words with special caution, “it is possible to ask too much of one person.” His hand cupped her cheek, then his fingers trailed down her face until they were under her chin. He raised it so that she looked into his eyes. He smiled and, though she was still embarrassed, she smiled back.

  “We have agreed upon music,” he said. “We are gifted with starlight and champagne. For now, Sirena, it’s enough.”

  FOURTEEN

  IN THE MERCERIA, next door to Costanzo’s Sausages, a painted plaque swung in the March air from a metal arm outside a new shop. The plaque was not an exact replica of Mino’s half token—Ana had painted it on the floor in her apartment—but it was close. Mino felt a proud ache to see it marking the entrance to his store, to see the words above it:

  I Violini della Mamma.

  It had been Ana’s idea to paint the plaque in the image of his half token, to name the fle
dgling shop after his mother.

  “I do not wish to whore my token out,” he’d told her in a series of arguments beginning the night he’d fixed her sister’s violin.

  “Think of it as a talisman, Mino,” she’d said, ever calm and steady, “to draw your family closer to you.”

  Eventually he saw her wisdom. Between his work in the sausage shop, his renewed devotion to the violin, and Ana, there was less and less time to pursue his mother, especially with no leads to follow. But what could Mino do with the shame he felt at not searching for her?

  “More people will pass by and see this painting than you could ever show her to,” Ana argued. “If anyone pauses to stare, is compelled to step inside, there you’ll be. And if they don’t know your family, maybe they’ll want your business.”

  While Mino sought out materials—willow and spruce planks, clamps and blades, metal bending straps to shape the instruments’ waists—Ana worked on the shop itself. She had convinced her family to spare the storage room adjacent to their storefront. It had its own entrance and was just the right size for a man starting out. She detailed a plan for Mino to pay them rent as soon as his work turned a profit. She scoured the columns of San Marco to round up groups of facchìni, men for daily hire waiting near the docks. But for the grace of God and Ana, Mino would have still been one of them. The men brought their axes and their wood, cleared the room, and built a wall and a door between the two establishments.

  She had Mino fitted for a periwig, explaining that no merchant wore his own hair. She chose wallpaper, patterned in blue like Mino’s eyes, and bought four plush blue receiving chairs on consignment. She threw down rugs and bought an expensive tea set, insisting Mino learn to steep and serve it, making him promise to offer a cup to anyone who stepped inside.

  “Venice is small,” she said. “Everything you do must suit the gossips.”

  She was the one who pushed him to open before Easter, kept him up until early in the mornings, constructing a prototype violin for the shop. Privately, Mino wished to model his prototype not on Stella’s instrument but on the one he’d rebuilt years ago: his first violin. He spent a week tinkering with the angle of the neck, making the strings arch higher and higher, drawing closer to the sound he remembered could match Letta’s voice on the roof.