The Orphan's Song

by Lauren Kate

  * * *

  MINO STAGGERED DOWN the hall, numb, blind, and nauseated. He leaned on Letta, grateful for her strength, for his had fled.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked when she stopped before an open door next to Federico’s office. She didn’t answer, only drew him with her into the small room. He glanced about it, at the gowns and perfumes, and he understood this to be her boudoir from her performing days. On the table before the mirror, there was a mask painted to look like fish scales. Letta pressed it to her breast, then turned back toward the door.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  As they stepped outside the back door, a cry escaped his mouth. It was over, but he no longer knew whether he’d been right or wrong. Was he free now? Was Letta? Was this a story he would want to tell his daughter? He did not know. He knew the night was cold, starlit, and still. He knew a light wind rippled the canal, and that a lantern shone in Elizabeth’s boat, growing brighter as Letta led him closer. He knew Letta’s strong arms. He prayed that every time he was haunted by the memory of his father, she would be close enough to hold him.

  At the sound of his footfall on the wooden dock, Mino knew they were really leaving. His mind sent desperate prayers of hope and love in every direction, to every corner of this city. To his mother at the wheel. To Ana in the maranzaria. To Carlo at the Rosicrucians’ table. To everyone at the Incurables, and the rooftop where he had grown into himself.

  For the past two years, Mino had been sending prayers to Letta. Now he held her hand. He felt it play within his body like a song. He could give her more than prayers. He could give her everything. He would never let her go.

  By the time they boarded the boat, Mino felt a physical need for his violin. He needed to put this night to music. All that had just happened, all that lay ahead. A single measure, round and rich as a black opal.

  And somehow, his violin case was there on the long bench of the boat. Letta had brought it for him.

  “Let’s go,” he heard her tell Elizabeth, who told the boatman. The smooth confidence in their voices made Mino think, for the first time in such a long time, that maybe things would be all right.

  At the sound of the violin, Violetta spun around. She had brought the instrument and her few small possessions when she left Elizabeth’s palazzo, but it stunned her to hear Mino playing it now. He’d seemed so weak as they’d left the casino. She’d thought he would need to rest.

  But now he stood with the violin at his breast, and he looked strong again. He looked like Mino. Even though he was bathed in his father’s blood, balancing in the center of a burchiello, sailing away from everything they knew.

  The first song Violetta had heard Mino play had determined her life. It had been the source of her nightmares. It had taught her how to sing. She remembered embracing him after they played together, amazed by how their song had felt like a physical force.

  Tonight a new melody poured out of him, slow and open, profoundly bittersweet. She listened, as she always listened, with a deep desire to join him in the song.

  “Beautiful,” she said when he lifted the bow and looked up with tears in his eyes.

  “Will you give it words?” he asked. “I don’t know what it’s about.”

  She smiled and came close, lyrics already swirling in her mind. She would sing of a horizon, a little girl, of ships gliding in the night, and true love.

  “It’s about us,” she said, and she kissed him. She would never let him go.

  LONDON

  June 1821

  NONNA FARFALLA.” My granddaughter taps me. “You fell asleep again.”

  “Don’t you know the rest, child?” I murmur through half dreams, settling back in my bed in my son’s London flat. I am eighty-one years old and tired. I have birthed five children, who have given me eighteen grandchildren and, at last count, two tiny great-grandchildren, one named in my honor. I have sung on opera stages in London, Vienna, and Naples. Twenty years ago I buried my father next to Violetta’s London grave; they passed within six months of each other. I buried my own husband twelve years later. But somehow it has taken me this long to tell my story—all of it—to someone who would listen.

  Violet, my granddaughter, twenty years old and just as plucky as her namesake. They have the same dark, beguiling eyes.

  “I know they picked you up in the burchiello from the sausage shop,” Violet says, reciting the more commonly known portion of our family lore, “and that you sailed along the Brenta Canal to Padua. You took a coach north, then another ship across the Channel. You came to London and grew up singing.” She shakes her head. “But all this time, I never knew Letta and Mino were orphans.”

  “We are all orphans at some point or another. I am one now that my parents are dead.” I take her hand in mine and meet her eyes. “In every generation, there’s a storyteller. Tell the real story of the Incurables to your children. And if they won’t listen, be patient. One day, you’ll have grandchildren, too.”

  “I’m not a storyteller,” she says, “not like you.”

  I draw her hand close before my face. My vision isn’t what it used to be, but I can still see color. Violet is a painter, studying at the Royal Academy of Arts. Her hands always bear memories of the canvas she brings to life.

  I trace a dash of green along her thumb. “What is this? Grass?”

  She smiles. “Willow frond.”

  I find the blue nearby, on the joint of her forefinger. “A creek for the willow to weep in?”

  “You’re good, Nonna.”

  There’s white paint on her nail. I rub at it with my finger. “Cloudy day?”

  She shakes her head. “Clear skies. That’s lace. The dress of a woman on a picnic.”

  “You see?” I say. “You are a storyteller.”

  “Mozart!” she says suddenly, sharply. “Get down.”

  “It’s all right,” I tell her, patting the space beside me on the bed for the little spotted dog to sit. “Let him stay.”

  The beast is the descendant of the original Sprezzatura, who traveled with us from Venice to London long ago. Each in his line has been pampered and spoiled by my family, their lineage as Venetian street mutts not forgotten but elevated into lore.

  “So now,” I whisper to Violet, aware of her father, my middle son, passing in the hallway, “will you grant my request? I know your papa thinks it morbid, but I don’t care. You understand me—”

  “Shh, Nonna,” Violet says, reaching beneath her chair at my bedside. My heart lifts when she raises the mask. It’s worn, yellow at the edges, the black ribbon frayed. She’s had it with her all along. She puts it in my hands.

  I close my eyes, wrap my fingers around it.

  “Thank you.” My voice surprises me, choked with emotion. I could not make it to the attic to retrieve the bauta on my own.

  It is the one my father gave Violetta on that carnevale afternoon. No one in my family—no one except for Violet—could understand why I need it now at the end.

  When Venice finally fell to the Austrians some twenty years ago, carnevale ceased to exist. I am told masks are forbidden there now, though it’s impossible to imagine. The once-ubiquitous baute are considered strange today. Restrictive. Even foreboding. My own children have come around to this unfortunate way of thinking.

  I never had the chance to take them back to Venice. They never got to see it as I did. It was only one trip, but it changed me forever. My father, Violetta, and I spent two wondrous days there when I was twelve years old. We were always masked, whirling through a party that never seemed to end. They took the risk because they wanted me to know where we had come from. To this day that trip is my most precious memory. I used to make them wear the masks around our home in London as often as they would indulge me.

  Now I press the bauta to my face and travel back to Venice. I lift my head off the pillow so Violet can tie the ribb
on. This small effort exhausts me, and I know I’ve managed just in time.

  Violetta left this bauta to me. It always seemed to charm her that I preferred the simple white mask to the painted one she wore as La Sirena. She was buried in that mask, my father in his original white bauta. I want to meet them wearing mine. I want them to know me through it.

  I meet my granddaughter’s eyes again. When she smiles, it is enough. I close my eyes and hear the lullaby my father used to sing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With thanks to Tara Singh Carlson, whose generosity and intellect let me find the book I hoped to write. To Helen Richard, Sally Kim, and the distinguished team at Putnam, for your commitment and ingenuity. To Laura Rennert, beautiful ally.

  To Federica Fresch, for two spellbinding journeys into Venice’s past. To Dr. Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini, for your passionate discussion of a Serene Republic. To Agata Brusegan, for the dive into archives of the ospedali. To Guiseppe Ellero, fellow writer and keeper of the orphans’ secrets. To Don Giovanni, for revealing Tintoretto’s Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, original art of the Incurables. To Giordano Aterini and Giulia Taddeo from Rizzoli, for warmth and wisdom. To Hanbyul Jang, for violin lessons. To Leonard Bryan, voice coach. To Addison Timlin, for tattooed inspiration. To Soundis Azaiz Passman and September Rea, sundial and compass.

  To Idomeneo at the Teatro La Fenice. To spritzes to go from the Corner Pub in Dorsoduro. To alleys too narrow for double strollers. To the Aqua Palace Hotel, for letting us know.

  To my parents, Harriet and Vic, and my family and friends, with love. To Matilda, my teacher. To Venice, love is here. And to Jason, everything.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lauren Kate is the #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of nine novels for young adults, including Fallen, which was made into a major motion picture by Sony. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold more than ten million copies worldwide. She lives in Los Angeles with her family. The Orphan's Song is her debut adult novel.

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