by Lauren Kate
A figure approached from the shadowy corner near the bar. At first, Mino flinched and raised his arms to fend off an assault. But then he recognized the man.
Carlo wore his curled white wig, white stockings, and new red silk britches with a matching jacket. He flung his arms around Mino, who hugged him back with all the desperation in his heart.
“Friend,” Carlo said, wiping away tears that were always at the ready.
Tonight, in Mino’s state, he could see at last how his friend’s emotions were genuine, only bigger than most other men’s. This moved Mino, and he knew he had come to the only place he could bear to be.
“I came to see you as soon as I heard,” Carlo said.
Mino hadn’t known Carlo tried to visit the apartment. It rankled but did not surprise him that Siora had turned his friend away.
“I haven’t been fit for visitors,” he said.
Carlo waved him off. “What can I do?”
Mino glanced toward the bar. “A drink?”
Carlo was already pouring wine from a bottle at the table. He slid it before Mino and offered him his chair, crouching to be next to him. “Drink and only nod when you want more.”
Mino nodded as he took his first sip, and Carlo laughed and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Carlo’s gaze felt unexpectedly intense, and Mino realized no one had really looked at him since Ana died. Siora, Vittoria, even little Genevieve seemed unnerved by the power of his pain.
Not Carlo. He studied Mino awhile, and then something lit up his face. With one hand, he gently steered Mino’s shoulders until they faced the stage at the back of the casino.
“You are lucky.”
“Lucky?” Mino said bitterly.
“Yes,” Carlo said, his head gesturing toward the small stage, empty except for a large golden harp. “She performs tonight.”
Mino glanced around the casino, confused. “Who?”
Carlo wagged a finger. “La Sirena herself. The namesake singer. Don’t fool me, Mino. You’ve heard of her. She sings songs no one knows. She wears a mask with painted fish scales, and a sparkling opal around her neck.”
An image flashed in Mino’s mind of the glowing stone. Had he seen the singer on a night he no longer remembered? The opal in Mino’s mind felt like an older memory. It was made of blue-green stars, ever changing in the light. He felt he had touched the stone before, wrapped his hands around it. He could almost smell the metallic tinge of its gold chain. He looked at Carlo and felt embarrassed, as if he were inventing some connection with this singer.
“I don’t know her.”
“Everyone knows her,” Carlo said. “They come from England, boys straight out of Oxford commencing the Grand Tour of Europe. And this”—he poked the table where they sat—“is their first stop. There’s one itinerary, few deviations: a residence in Rome, certainly. A tour through Florence’s museums, yes. But first, ah”—Carlo smiled and closed his eyes—“first, music and wonder, right here in Venice. They used to go to hear the coro singers at the ospedali,” he said, leaning close, “but recently, the ones who know come here. To La Sirena.”
Mino shrugged, part of him still thinking of that necklace. But he had not been to La Sirena since the night Ana led him out its door and into another life.
“I’ve been in my shop. I’ve been with my wife.” He closed his eyes, fought against his sorrow. He would not be able to speak of his daughter without crying.
“You’ve been away too long.”
“And not long enough,” Mino said.
“Or perhaps your timing is perfect.” Carlo grinned. “If you’d come last night, you would have missed her.”
“Does she perform miracles?” Mino asked. There was only one singer’s voice that had ever interested Mino.
“Indeed, she is miraculous,” Carlo said. “La Sirena is the only woman I’ve ever known to make Carina jealous. One note escapes her lips and every woman in the room feels inadequate, every man immortal.”
Mino finished his second glass of wine and poured himself a third. He was distantly aware of a table of gamblers cheering, of a trio of blond Scandinavians charming a courtesan with their rough approximation of Venetian. Money, sex, delirium, what was the point of any of it? Life seemed to Mino a cosmic waste.
“The last thing I wish to feel is immortal,” he said.
By the bottom of his third glass, Mino dared La Sirena to take the stage and draw even a fraction of his interest. But she was late, the stage stayed dark, and in her absence the cacophonic music of gamblers and maskers composed its own hateful oratorio.
By the bottom of his fifth glass, the stage was still dark, and Mino and Carlo had both passed out, too broke to pay their bill, too drunk to notice that the famous singer wasn’t coming.
TWENTY-THREE
VIOLETTA FLED THE PALAZZO an hour before she was to perform. Her mind was racing. She was terrified as she stole deeper into the city, unable to flee fast enough. Her footfalls made loud slaps on the damp cobblestones. Her silk slippers were soaked, but she ignored the cold. She hurried across the Grand Canal at the Rialto Bridge, where the narrow houses looked like blades beneath their iron roofs. She berated herself for her naïveté. How had it taken her so long to know?
Something about Federico had always felt familiar. Why else would she have been drawn to a stranger so swiftly? How could she have believed she loved such a monster?
Everything she had just learned was unfathomable, but there was one part that shone hottest in her mind. Mino had a father. A living, breathing relative. And it would destroy him to know what kind of man his father was.
Why hadn’t Violetta trusted the love she saw between Antonia and Mino that night? Back then, she hadn’t known how to believe in love. And now? Now, when she thought of love, she thought of Mino.
She had to find him, retell the story she’d seen through the attic window. She had to bring him peace. She would be brief but honest.
And what else? Would he introduce her to his wife and child? She wouldn’t stay long. There was nothing left for her in this city. She would go her own way. Maybe she would visit London.
But how would she find him? She didn’t even know where her feet carried her now. She had never tread upon these dark calli or crossed these ponti before. When she rested in the shadows of a quiet church’s eave, she looked up at the bell tower, but didn’t recognize the sky above. After so many months of not seeing the world beyond Federico’s palazzo or the casino, all this open starlight, all this glittering water, staggered Violetta.
As soon as morning broke, she would need a new disguise. At this very moment, Nicoletto might be knocking on her door at the palazzo, and when she didn’t answer, he’d be forced to knock it down. He would find the open window, the silk bedsheet knotted like a ladder.
She knew what Federico’s guards could do. She’d seen their violence at La Sirena, tossing out men who couldn’t pay. She felt certain they had tracked the thief who’d stolen the necklace. She felt in her bones the awful fate that had befallen Antonia.
Federico’s vengeance would come for her, too, if she did not get out of Venice soon. She gripped the other half of Mino’s token, hidden in the heavy pouch where she kept her gold. She drew strength from it.
All night she stayed in darkness, close to the walls, not sleeping. She had always taken precautions on the street, but now she had to go further. Federico’s resources, his cunning, and his jealousy and desperation were of another timber. His words came back to her.
I saw no other way . . .
He’d been talking about giving up the baby to an ospedale, but Violetta believed he was also talking about what he’d done to Antonia. There would be one response to her betrayal; it was absolute.
* * *
THE FIRST RAYS of sun brought pink light to the cobblestones and fresh terr
or to her breast. Violetta felt unexpected sorrow as she took in the beauty of the dawn-lit canals. She would miss this maze of water and stone, the masks and the parties, the echo of her voice in the church of the Incurables. But she wanted to live. She didn’t want to hide anymore. As soon as she’d given Mino back his token, she’d go.
She found a dressmaker opening shop in the merceria. She stepped inside, closed the door, and breathed more easily. Her fingers ran over cloaks and gowns, touched feathered edges of masks. The shop smelled musty and sweet. She bought a hooded black cloak trimmed in lace, a green silk gown with a narrowing bodice, long white wool gloves, a three-cornered black hat, and a wide white mask to render her fully anonymous. Not the flashy clothes of a casino singer but those of a subdued aristocrat. She bought a wig with long, golden-blond curls. When she looked in the glass she did not recognize herself. She prayed that no one would.
For six days she walked in search of Mino’s shop, knowing it was in Cannaregio but not where Cannaregio was. She would speak to no one, only listened to the music of strangers’ clues around her. Six nights she took a different room at a different boardinghouse, ate her meals alone, removed her mask only in absolute privacy, with the door bolted and shutters closed. When she lay in lumpy beds amid strange sounds and scents, she prayed that tomorrow she would find him.
On the seventh day, Violetta did not find the shop so much as it found her. Swinging from the iron post was a painted sign bearing the image of Mino’s half token.
“I Violini della Mamma,” Violetta read the sign. She wished to take the other half of the token from her velvet pouch and hold it up so that they formed a whole. Not now. Once she found Mino, she would try to make everything whole for him.
His shop was closed, perhaps for lunch, but Violetta touched the windows, lay her hands upon the panes. As soon as she did, she felt him through the glass.
“Mino,” she whispered.
She moved to the door. She knocked. Then louder, longer. She would wait as long as it took.
“This shop is closed.” A voice jarred Violetta. She turned around to find an unmasked woman a few years older than she holding two heavy crates in her arms.
“I can wait. I’m looking for a someone,” she said, feeling obliged to help the woman. She reached beneath a crate to share some of the load.
“Thank you.” The woman nodded toward a doorway. “Here.”
They set the boxes in the doorway next to the violin shop and the woman righted herself, rubbing the small of her back. “That shopkeeper is gone.”
“Mino?” Violetta said.
The woman leveled her gaze at Violetta, taking in her fine clothes. She seemed confused. “Yes. Mino.”
Violetta stepped close, took the woman by her sleeve. “You know him?”
The woman’s eyes shifted; pain flickered through them. “My sister’s husband.”
She squinted at Violetta, trying to make sense of her. “Are you from the ospedale?”
“Yes,” Violetta said without thinking.
“I’ll get the violin. The first is finished. Wait here.” She disappeared and came back a few moments later, holding a beautiful instrument. It was no ordinary violin. This was a masterwork. The woman held it out to her.
Violetta took it in her hands and shivered, feeling him.
“I must confess something,” the woman said. “Mino is missing. I don’t know if he’ll be back to complete the work.”
“Missing?” Violetta’s chest seized.
“My sister—his wife—she died three weeks ago,” the woman said quietly.
Violetta exhaled slowly. How had she missed the woman’s mourning clothes? “I’m sorry.” She looked down at the violin again, her thoughts whirling. She knew she had to hand it back—but what if she never found Mino? What if this was her last chance to touch him? “What is the balance due on this violin?”
“I don’t know.”
“The maestra put down twenty percent, I believe?” she guessed. She remembered Laura saying they commissioned each violin for five gold sequins. What would Laura say now, at the sight of Violetta fishing into her purse, putting four sequins in the woman’s hand?
“What about the baby?” she asked.
“Yes,” the woman said, and finally a smile broke across her face. She was very pretty, with fragile features and dark, clear eyes. Violetta imagined that her sister, Mino’s wife, had been pretty in much the same way. “The child is well. Nearly one month old.”
“No,” Violetta said. How could it be? “The child lived yet Mino is gone?” It didn’t seem possible.
“He was not well after Ana died.”
“I see,” Violetta said, but she didn’t. Mino, who desired nothing more than family, had finally got one and then abandoned it?
She thought of her horrible words to him—that an orphan like her should never have children. She hadn’t meant Mino. She had meant herself. Everyone knew Mino was different. She had thought she was protecting him from the mistake of loving her. What effect had her words had on him?
No, Violetta dismissed the notion. The man’s wife had just died. What was wrong with her that she thought his desperation and disappearance might be something to do with her?
The woman shifted, glanced at her crates, and Violetta felt the end of the conversation advancing with terrible speed.
“Can I meet her?” she asked quickly.
“Who?”
“The baby.” Violetta’s voice was a whisper.
The woman looked wary. She could make no sense of Violetta’s interest in the child.
“Please.”
The woman hesitated. Violetta could not bear missing this chance. For years, she had been vigilant about preserving her anonymity—hiding first that she was a coro girl, and now that she was La Sirena. But no one hunting Violetta knew that she had a third identity. She could show it to this woman now; she could tell the truth.
“Mino was my dearest friend.” The words rushed out of her. “I was so hoping to see him and the child today.”
The woman heard Violetta’s sincerity and she softened. “My mother won’t like it,” she said slowly, “but she is away for the hour.”
They stepped inside a sausage shop and Violetta was assaulted by the rich scent of meat. She saw the unusual, narrow sausages, the same as Fortunato had brought her when she was recovering at Federico’s. How close she’d been to Mino yet again. It filled her with an even stronger need to find him.
“Your family owns this place?”
“My grandfather, then my father, now my mother. Ana would have taken over, but I suspect now it will be me. My name is Vittoria. And my daughter, Genevieve.” She called into the back of the shop. “Genevieve, bring Farfalla.”
From a back door, a little girl appeared. She had plaited black hair and a red-checked dress, bright eyes and a charming gap-toothed smiled. In her arms she carried a tiny bundle. She passed the baby to her mother, who cooed and kissed the sleeping child before holding her up for Violetta to see.
Violetta caught her breath at the baby’s beauty. She was round and bright with soft pink lips and thick dark eyelashes. She felt a rush inside of her and reached out to hold the child. Vittoria put the baby into her arms. Violetta felt tears well in her eyes.
Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the mask blocking her face. She wanted to see the child wholly, to have the little girl see her. She took the risk and raised her mask. Despite everything, her face broke into a grin.
Mino’s daughter. His family. A miracle.
“Oh, Mino,” she said.
“I don’t think he was prepared for those early days. Lord knows my husband couldn’t take it. He left after two weeks, just as Mamma predicted he would. Mino did the same.” She put up a hand, as if arguing with herself. “I know that isn’t fair to Mino. He was also grieving his wife. All my h
usband grieved was the loss of his nights at a tavern. But I did see those early days wear Mino to the bone. You know how it is. How old are your children?” Vittoria asked.
Violetta looked up, blinked. “I don’t have children.”
“Forgive me,” she said. “The way you held her, I thought . . .” Vittoria laughed apologetically and stroked the baby’s cheek with her finger. “She is special.” She swallowed and was quiet for a moment, and Violetta sensed a hesitation in her.
“What is it?” she asked.
“My sister told me her last wish was for Mino to raise the child up. I think she knew he’d leave, but I think she thought he’d take the baby with him. She wanted me to know that was all right with her.”
“Does Mino know that?” Violetta asked.
Vittoria shook her head. “My mother would never tell him. She helped him pack.”
Violetta didn’t want to hand the baby back. Farfalla’s small, warm weight made her want to stay still. For the first time in her life she felt whole, without a yearning for more. How could she surrender it? How cold would the space in her arms feel? How must Mino be feeling right now? Where was he?
She longed to take the baby with her on her journey to find him, but it wasn’t her place. She knew that every moment she waited would make it harder for her to let go. She released the child, and lifted the violin again. The need to find Mino was absolutely dire.
“He’ll come back for her,” she told Vittoria. “I know he will.”
Vittoria put a hand on Violetta’s arm. “Good luck.”
TWENTY-FOUR
A HARD BOOT TO the ribs awoke Mino.
