The Orphan's Song

by Lauren Kate

  Violetta was pleased by her reflection, how womanly she looked. Her hair was loose and wild, her skin flushed from their passion. She touched the necklace and watched the stone shimmer in the reflection. She was glad to have it back.

  She was about to move back to the window when she noticed something sticking out from the bottom corner of the mirror’s frame. She reached forward and with her nail slowly teased out a flat, triangular piece of wood about the size of the playing cards at the casino.

  When she turned it over, her stomach lurched.

  It was a dusty painting of a fishtail. It was the same image that marked the plaque outside the casino door. Violetta had seen it a hundred times by the light of the blue glass lantern. But what caught her eye now, what stopped her cold, was the diagonal cut bisecting the painting. She cleared the dust with her finger, touched the rough grain where the wood was shorn. Goose bumps rose on her skin.

  She studied the azure blue of the background, which could have been water or sky. Every time she’d seen the image at the casino, she’d envisioned the head of the fish beneath the water, but now she realized, of course—

  “La Sirena,” she said aloud. A mermaid.

  It was the other half of Mino’s token.

  “Yes,” Federico said from behind her, making her jump. She looked up and met his gaze in the reflection. She could not read his expression. He stepped closer. The ermine stole he wore over his veste brushed her shoulder. He reached over and lifted the token gently. Turning, she felt her nakedness before him. Why did it suddenly shame her? She moved to the chair by the window where she had left her chemise. She tugged it over her head. Her heart was racing when she returned to Federico’s side. He was staring at the token as if he had not looked upon it in some time.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Behind the mirror. What is it?”

  He hesitated, and she saw in the set of his jaw that he was trying to control a flare of anger. He clearly wished she had not found it.

  “My mother painted it,” he said quietly. “She had a fascination with the myth.”

  “And the other half?” she whispered, touching the air beyond the fishtail where the woman’s body should have been.

  Where was Mino now?

  “I don’t know,” Federico said.

  “You’re lying,” she said.

  His brow furrowed. “You are disturbed. What is it? Come. Sit down, Violetta.”

  “The other half,” she said. Her voice wavered. “What happened to it?”

  Federico exhaled, then moved to sit at the foot of his bed. He looked at the painting as he spoke. “I gave this to Antonia when we first fell in love. She returned it, years later, but”—he paused—“only half.”

  Violetta sat down next to him. She felt faint as she envisioned that woman at the wheel. Mino’s mother.

  Was she Antonia?

  Was Mino’s father—

  Federico clutched the token in his palm. She remembered Mino’s smaller hand clutching its other half. Could it be? Of all the men in Venice, had her life revolved around one father and his son?

  “Antonia was an opera singer,” Federico said, “the best Venice had heard in many years. We had great dreams together. We would travel abroad, to Naples, Vienna, and Paris. When I gave this to her, she was preparing for the principal role in a new opera of Vivaldi’s. She was to play the mythic creature La Sirena, yearning for love above the lagoon. But the show never made it to the stage.”

  “Why not?” Violetta had a guess.

  “Antonia fell pregnant.”

  Mino.

  “As you know,” Federico said, “I cannot wed. That path was for my elder brother, not me. I could not legitimize the child. By law, I could not write it into the Book of Names. Antonia knew that when we first met. I never hid it from her. There could be no proper life for the babe as a bastard. I urged her to bring it to an ospedale, where it would be cared for while she pursued her dreams onstage.” He shook his head, his jaw clenched. “She wouldn’t hear it. We fought. She left. I didn’t see her again for several years.”

  Violetta struggled to breathe. In Federico’s trembling voice, she heard how Antonia had broken Federico, and beneath that, so much anger. It sharpened every word he said.

  “I searched for her,” he went on, “to no avail. I could not rid myself of thoughts of her betrayal. She had abandoned me. Ruined me. And then, one day, there she was again.” He was looking past Violetta now, into the distance, remembering. “I heard her singing. She was masked, but I would know her voice anywhere. I was in my gondola. She was on the calle. I passed her from the water. She was washing clothes outside a decrepit building. She was singing a lullaby to a boy some four or five years old.”

  “Your son,” Violetta said hoarsely. She could see them now—mother and child, the same pair she’d witnessed at the wheel.

  Federico didn’t seem to hear her words. He was transported back to that day. His features tightened. “Our eyes met across the water, but I did not stop my boat.” He looked down at the painting, and when he spoke again, there was a subtle shift in his voice, as if he were forcing himself to brighten it.

  “The next day, she came here, to see me.”

  “With the child?” Violetta sat very still. It took all her effort to suppress a thousand other questions.

  He tensed his brow. “She came alone,” he said, speaking quickly now. “When Fortunato let her in, and I saw her up close, I could tell she was very ill. Her skin was marred by syphilitic lesions. She confessed she had struggled to get by in the years after we parted. By the time she came back to me, it was too late. She was dying. She begged my forgiveness.”

  He met Violetta’s eyes and she was surprised to find them filled with tears.

  “I still loved her, even after all those years. I forgave her, of course, but my position on the child had not changed. She begged me to soften my heart toward him. I still believed it best, for his sake, to grow up in an ospedale.”

  He touched her thigh. She fought the impulse to flinch. She could not reconcile this cold man with the one she had lain with all these months, with the one she had so desired.

  “Surely you understand,” he said. “The ospedali are not bad places. They do wonderful things for the city. They gave us you.”

  “He was your son,” she said.

  “I saw no other way,” Federico said.

  There was a distance in his voice that made Violetta’s heart ache for Mino. She itched to take the half token into her own hands. She wanted to leave and gather her thoughts. She wanted space from Federico and this story. She knew her face was filled with horror she could no longer hide. He looked at her. He saw it.

  “There’s more,” he said. “Hear me, Violetta. I was too stunned that day to think clearly, but after Antonia died, I did search for him. She left me this token as means to find the boy. Perhaps she knew all along I would change my mind. She told me he would be at the Mendicanti, in Castello, near where I had passed her in my boat. I searched for him there . . . I searched for him at all four ospedali, but to no avail.”

  He met her eyes again, and she saw him searching her briefly, checking for her response. And she knew he was lying. He had never gone to look for Mino at Mendicanti or anywhere else. He’d hid the token away and tried to forget. Except—

  She took the token from him and traced the mermaid’s tail.

  “Why did you use this image for your casino?”

  Federico sighed. “What happened with Antonia is my greatest regret. My casino operates in her memory. That plaque honors her and the child, and it reminds me to turn my life in a better direction.”

  Violetta started crying, small sobs that racked her shoulders.

  He reached for her, and she caved in, her head falling onto his shoulder.

  “I was a diffe
rent man,” he said.

  Church bells chimed outside. They startled Violetta, but Federico didn’t seem to hear them.

  “The vote, Federico, at the palace,” she reminded him. “You’ll be late.”

  His eyes ran over her face, worried. “I don’t want to leave you now.”

  “You don’t have to say anything else,” she said. He seemed relieved by her words. It sickened her that he could believe she was all right. But she wanted him gone. Silhouetted as he was by the sunlight behind him, she saw how she had made him into a man-shaped horizon, hanging all her dreams on him. What a fool she’d been.

  “You’re not upset?” he said, doubtful.

  “The past is the past,” she told him evenly. “I’ll see you tonight at La Sirena.”

  “And afterward,” he said, drawing her to him on the bed. “Right here.” He looked at her closely, his dark brows arched, and she felt the threat beneath his words. “Promise me.”

  “Of course,” she said and kissed him one more time, though she felt ill inside.

  When he closed the door behind him, she was trembling. He’d left the token behind, as if it didn’t matter. She clutched it, drawing closer to the mirror again. She looked at herself in terror and shame, running over the details of his story. She knew he was lying about searching for Mino, to make himself look better in her eyes. But something else didn’t make sense.

  Violetta had a clear memory of Antonia from the night she’d left Mino in the wheel. The timing in Federico’s telling matched what she knew—Mino had been nearly five years old when he’d been abandoned—but the woman who had left him had not been dying. Violetta knew the late stages of syphilis. She knew the lesions and the blindness and the bone-deep pain those invalids suffered. She had lived among them at the Incurables, not in close quarters, but close enough to know. Antonia had not been diseased that night. What other reason would she have had to abandon Mino?

  Violetta thought back to the last portion of Federico’s story that had felt true to her. It was the moment Federico said he’d seen Antonia, masked and singing, from his gondola, and their eyes had locked.

  A cold bolt of fear ran through Violetta. It was as if she saw through Antonia’s eyes the rage on Federico’s passing face. Violetta had seen his dark side at the casino—with the barnabotti, with the spy who’d tried to touch her. She’d written off those incidents. So Federico had a temper; it was the other side of his passion. He had never turned his rage on her, not even when she lost the necklace.

  But it was in him. It was possible. And if she ever betrayed him, as he felt Antonia had . . .

  Why would a mother give up her child? Violetta had seen with her own eyes that night how deeply Antonia loved Mino. Only death would part them.

  Or the fear of it.

  The day Federico saw Antonia singing on the calle, he discovered her hideout, the apartment where she had sought sanctuary from him. She would have known what kind of man he was, and how her betrayal became a disease Federico would never be cured of. She would have known she was in danger. She would have taken measures to protect her child.

  Now, in her reflection, Violetta saw the necklace anew. Suddenly she remembered: Mino’s mother had worn a similar stone that night. She stared at it. She knew. The black opal at Violetta’s neck had been Antonia’s.

  If the stone had come back into Federico’s possession, along with this half token . . . Maybe Antonia had not come back to visit Federico at all. Maybe she had not begged him to look after their child.

  Violetta was seized by the conviction that Federico had done her harm, perhaps even with his own hands. How else could these two spoils have been reclaimed from Mino’s mother’s body?

  Violetta turned from the mirror and ran down the hall to her bedroom. She had to get out of there. She had to find Mino.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ON A DARK MORNING IN JANUARY, Mino stood at the rain-spotted window next to the turtledove cage. He held his baby in his arms.

  “It should have been me,” he told her.

  How old was his daughter—three days? A dozen? Since her birth, since Ana’s death, time had fallen away from Mino.

  When Farfalla was calm, she fit in Mino’s cupped palms. But she was not calm. She wailed. She swung her limbs in spastic fits. She was ferociously distraught except for the precious time she spent at the breast of the laundress who lived down the calle and had given birth to her own son two months before.

  Every day Mino carried Farfalla, thickly swaddled, down the dismal, rainy calle to see the laundress, who lived in a damp room above her shop. She’d set down her huge wooden spoon next to her murky, steaming bucket of sheets, and Mino would release the baby to her, then wait in the hall while she lowered her bodice.

  His back pressed against the stone, he would listen to his daughter’s sounds. She was anxious with hunger at first, then briefly content before becoming anxious again as her tiny stomach filled. Back in his arms, Farfalla writhed and reddened, arching her back until she vomited and fell into a fitful, abbreviated sleep.

  Every challenge of her fresh, new soul staggered Mino, and the onslaught was continuous. Ana’s family helped, but their help was a torture to Mino. So dutiful were these women in both their grief and their competency. Mino failed at both. He had neither the time nor the energy to wonder what it might have been like if his wife had lived. When he thought of Ana, it was not in a kindly manner. He was angry with her for dying, for leaving him alone. He envied her sudden, permanent disappearance. He was the last man who should be charged with the responsibility of this tiny, struggling being. And in his heart he also felt guilty. It was his fault Ana was dead.

  Mino wanted to die. His grief felt so deep it might kill him. He took no comfort in his helpless daughter, and this brought him more guilt. When he looked upon her face, he saw a stranger, and he felt a dark fear that he would never know her.

  How did the others bear it, orbiting him in the apartment? Vittoria cried so quietly as she changed the baby’s cloths. Siora cooed like the turtledoves and smiled as she lifted the child from Mino’s grasp, pretending she wasn’t afraid he might crush her fragile granddaughter. Their calm enraged him, made him feel ashamed of himself. What foolish optimism had led him here? He was not like this family. He did not belong. He never had.

  In the darkness—listening to rain fall and his daughter’s cries—Mino wondered about his own mother. If he had found any evidence of the woman, of his family, would he be stronger? Would life’s traumas not destroy him? Would he be standing strong despite Ana’s death, understanding the right way to provide for his daughter?

  Mino believed that, yes, he would have been a better, more capable man, and so he blamed himself for failing to find his mother, for giving up the search when he met Ana. He was weak to let another woman fill that empty place.

  And now? He could do nothing for his own child. It would be best to offer her the same chance at a better life his mother had offered him. The wheel spun round and round; there was no getting off.

  His absence would mark his daughter forever. He knew that. But it would be better than weighting her with his guilt and dark fortune. He was no good for anyone.

  “Mino.” Siora put a hand on his arm, gathering Farfalla from him. The child had been fussing, but she settled into the wide crook of her grandmother’s arm.

  In the glow of the hearth, Mino looked at Siora Costanzo, seeing so much of his wife in her face. Now he saw the differences, too. Beneath the extra years and the recent grief and exhaustion, there was another distinction. It made Mino sad to realize it: Ana’s face had been lit by the faith she had in others. It gave her a spark and a grace that were absent in her mother. Mino felt he could be frank with the woman.

  “I can’t do this,” he said.

  “I know.”

  It stung to have her acknowledge it so readily. Just when Mino did
n’t think he possessed a capacity to bear more pain, here it was. There were always new ways to hurt.

  Siora Costanzo touched the baby’s nose. The child’s eyelids fluttered open.

  “Your mamma could make anyone feel strong,” Siora told her granddaughter. “I never could determine whether this was a blessing or a curse.” She looked up at Mino then. “We plan to raise her, Mino.”

  Mino winced and his hands moved to his heart, but to his horror no argument sprang to his lips.

  How could he walk away from his only kin?

  He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t go. He couldn’t raise the child. He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t go on like this.

  “It’s better this way, Mino,” Siora said. It was a goodbye. He stood and watched her take the baby to her room and close the door.

  * * *

  STRUGGLING BENEATH A driving rain, Mino was crossing the bridge to La Sirena when he realized Sprezz was still at the apartment. The dog had been sleeping at the base of the cradle, and in Mino’s creeping shame it had not occurred to him to wake Sprezz up.

  For the first time since Ana died, Mino cried. He slumped to his knees on the wet bridge. He hung his head in his hands, and he wept. Sobs choked him. His hot tears were a balm on his frozen hands. He could feel revelers dart past him, but he didn’t care.

  He wept for his dog, his child, his wife. He wept for his mother. And he wept for Letta—how right she had been about the dark reach of orphandom. All these years, he had never wanted to look directly at who he was—and who he wasn’t. A son. A brother. The person someone in this lonesome world loved without question, and loved most of all.

  He wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry, Sprezz. You’ll be better off without me.”

  He entered the casino with his hat slung low, not that the doorkeeper would have recognized him; it had been more than a year since he’d darkened this door. He squinted at the dimness and the noise, which throbbed with clinking glasses and coins. He could not remember having slept or eaten recently, and he staggered as he moved toward the center table. Once, right there, the alchemists had allowed Mino to believe he might turn his dull life to gold. What a hoax.