The Masquers

by Natasha Peters

  She saw the shadowy figure pause at the grid and then move on. She forced back the tears that sprang to her eyes. Tears wouldn’t save him. She felt so helpless, frustrated. There must be some way, something she could do—.

  She left the area of the Doge’s Palace and went back to her new home and protectoress, the ballerina Marie de Planchet.

  The inquisition started the minute she entered the apartment. “Where have you been? Who were you with? What do you mean, slipping out of here before the sun is even up? You were with a man, weren’t you! How can you treat me this way? You say you want to be a dancer. How do you think that’s going to happen, if you go running off for hours on end when you’re supposed to be practising? You think you can wish yourself into greatness? You’re nothing but a street slut. That’s all you’ll ever be: a street slut!”

  Lia sighed and threw off her shawl. “I’m very sorry, Marie. Today the Inquisitors sentenced my brother to death and put him in the Tombs.”

  “What?” Marie gasped. “Your brother? You never told me you had a brother! You’re making this up!”

  Lia told an involved but not unbelievable tale about Raf and his escape to France. She hadn’t said anything before because it hurt her to speak of him. De Planchet wasn’t at all convinced, but there was no mistaking the genuineness of Lia’s despair.

  “Well, you’re not going to get him out of jail by moping. Come on, let’s get to work.”

  She drove the girl mercilessly until nightfall, when Lia dropped in her tracks.

  De Planchet laughed. “You’ll never be great if you can’t take a few hours of practice!”

  “I will be great, ” Lia puffed. “You'll see. I’ll be the best dancer this town has ever seen. Better than you, you old witch!”

  “Oh, we’ll see about that! Although I must admit that you have made remarkable progress in the past few months. I knew when I set eyes on you that you had promise, child, and I was right. That’s why I hate to see you go chasing off like this. Your work suffers. You started so late, and you must work like a slave to catch up.

  “You’re jealous of my brother, Marie,” Lia suggested slyly.

  “I? Jealous! The idea!”

  Lia sidled up to the older woman and put her arms around the scrawny neck. Seen from a distance, from the other side of the footlights, de Planchet looked like a girl of seventeen. But up close her real age was quite apparent. Even though she carefully dyed the threads of gray that appeared in her dark hair, the fine lines around her eyes and mouth gave her away. Her enemies said that she was nearly fifty, but forty-five was closer to the mark. Lia kissed her fondly.

  “Why don’t you throw me out if you hate me so much?” she asked.

  “Perhaps I will!” The dancer moved her shoulders haughtily. “You’re much too independent. When you came to me and asked me to teach you to dance, you were as sweet and humble as a saint. I should have known that was just a clever pose. You wanted something that you knew I could give you. You’re a lying little schemer, just like all the rest.”

  “But you wanted what I could give you, Marie,” Lia murmured, nuzzling the dancer’s neck and stroking her hair. “I love you, and no one else. I will never leave you. But my brother is in trouble and I must do what I can to save him. You can see that, can’t you?”

  “How can you save anyone from the Inquisitors?” de Planchet demanded to know. “He’s in the Tombs! It’s impossible!”

  “Nothing is impossible when you want to help someone you love,” Lia said staunchly. “Will you help me, Marie? You have important friends, high in the government. You can find out so much—.” Lia kissed her on the mouth. Marie shivered and closed her eyes. Really, things were so easy when someone loved you. Lovers were so ready to compromise. They would do anything, just to avoid angering you. “Dearest Marie,” Lia whispered.

  “I always knew that you could surpass me in all the things I taught you,” Marie said huskily. “Very well, I will see what I can learn. But don’t be disappointed if I fail. There are things in Venice that even the most powerful men are afraid to discuss, and treason—. It’s bad business, Lia. I don’t like it.”

  “But you will help me!” Lia said, delighted. “I knew you would!”

  Arms entwined around each other’s waists, the two women went into the bedroom. Lia never doubted for a moment her ability to win de Planchet’s assistance.

  “You want to be a dancer!” Marie de Planchet said scornfully.

  Lia was shocked. Up close the dancer’s painted face was hideous. The powder on her cheeks was caked and eroded with sweat. The skin under her chin sagged a little. The luminous-looking eyes were small, buried in a mesh of not-so-fine lines. She was not at all the spritely girl she appeared to be from the audience. But she had still danced like a dream. Lia didn’t regret spending her last sequin on a ticket. Now if she could only persuade the old woman to teach her.

  “If you only knew how many girls have come to me for help,” the dancer sighed. “Hopeless, every last one of them. Well, what makes you think you’re so special, eh? What training have you had?”

  “Just a little, from one of the women in the troupe.”

  “Troupe? A dance troupe? Which one?”

  “Not dance. Acrobats.”

  “Great Heavens, an acrobat!” de Planchet moaned. “Let me tell you, there is more to dance than just twisting and tumbling, girl. Dance is hard work. Oh, I know, a lot of these girls don’t believe that. They don’t want to give up anything. They have no self-discipline, no dedication. But dancers like that aren’t fit to be on the stage with someone like me. I am the greatest dancer of our times! I was première danceuse at the Opera in Paris, and wouldn’t they like to have me back, but I won’t go! Trying to dictate to me—!” she snorted angrily. “Well, let’s see what you have to offer the world of dance. Strip. I want to see your body.” Lia obeyed without hesitation. As she undressed she saw a familiar glint in de Planchet’s eyes. She knew then that the woman desired her. God knows, she had seen that same glint in the eyes of a hundred men. She stood relaxed and naked while the dancer walked around her, poking and prodding her like a trainer examining a racehorse. She pronounced Lia’s physique as promising.

  “An acrobat, you say? At least you’re not without some kind of training. But can you do this?”

  De Planchet demonstrated a few deceptively simple moves of her arms and legs. She was effortless, breathtaking in her grace. Lia forgot her revulsion at the woman’s age and paint, and renewed her commitment. She wanted to learn to be a real artist, not just another whore from the theater. Dancers had reputations even worse than actresses. When a man said he was going out with a dancer, everyone knew what he meant. But some dancers, like de Planchet, had influential friends, important men who wielded real power.

  Lia wanted to be somebody, somebody who mattered. She knew that Raf would come back to Venice someday, and she wanted him to know that he had thrown away something precious when he had spurned her love.

  She imitated the dancer’s movements. She wasn’t smooth, but she wasn’t clumsy, either, and she knew she had done well. De Planchet declared her not completely hopeless, and agreed to teach her. Lia fell on her knees and kissed the woman’s hands gratefully. Marie tilted the girl’s face upwards and stroked her cheeks lightly.

  “You’re a very pretty girl, Lia,” she said. “I have an idea. Why not come and live with me while you study? You will progress so much faster, and I can give you my undivided attention.”

  Lia knew what the nature of that attention would be.

  She wasn’t particularly distressed by the prospect of making love to this woman. She was accustomed to enduring the passionless lovemaking of total strangers, and surely no woman could be as brutal and insensitive as most men.

  Marie de Planchet took her home that same night and initiated her into the mysteries of what she called “Venetian love: more pure, more beautiful than any other.” Lia, cooperative and uninhibited, was pleasantly surpr
ised to discover that Marie knew better than any man she had ever met how to give her pleasure. Lia still dreamed of Raf; to lie with him, that would be a pleasure greater than any other.

  Marie entertained male lovers from time to time, out of necessity. Men paid her rent and bought her clothes and gifts and gave her money. But women won her heart. She was jealous and demanding of Lia. Sometimes the girl wanted to run away and go back to life with someone simpler, like Nero. But the time she had spent under Raf’s roof, and her life with the dancer had given her a glimpse of a better existence. She could never go back to being a street entertainer. Anything was better than that. Funny, she never realized until she had achieved some distance from that life just how much she hated it.

  Yes, de Planchet would help her free Raf. Lia didn’t care what the cost would be. There was nothing she wouldn’t give for him. Even her life. That would prove to him how much she loved him.

  Fosca contracted a summer fever, not uncommon in Venice at that time of the year and one of the reasons the nobles fled to the country. She lay tossing and sweating in her arid prison. She ate nothing, refused drink, dreamed of death. Alessandro visited her and saw that her health was getting worse. She really was failing, using the fever as a means of killing herself. Her bones gleamed through her transparent flesh. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused. She looked at him and smiled weakly because she didn’t know him. Once he sat on the edge of her bed and touched her face. She grasped his hand firmly and muttered, “Rafaello.” He snatched his hand away and left the room. It was so tempting, seeing her lying there helpless and alone. He wanted to take her, to use her, to feel her moving under him, loving him in return. But as much as he wanted that, he could not deceive her.

  The doctors he called in said that unless she was taken away from Venice, they could not answer for the consequences to her or to the child she carried. Alessandro agreed, and Fosca was removed to an airy room in the Loredan country villa near Vicenza. Her friends called, and were told, as they had been since her escape with Raf Leopardi, that she was at home but that she was too ill to see anyone. Only this time the story was true. The mute servant was dismissed and Emilia weepingly ministered to her charge. August passed quickly, and at the beginning of September she began to recover. No one told her that Raf’s execution had been scheduled to take place in the first week of October.

  Alessandro returned to Venice for the opening of the Grand Council. These days most nobles stayed away, loath to leave the joys of country life and to take up their duties to a state that didn’t require duty anymore. But Alessandro Loredan had not missed an opening session since he took his place among the nobles, and he would not start now.

  When he entered the portals of the Doge’s Palace, he noticed that conversations faltered, halted, then began again on a falsely brighter note. He knew what the gossips were saying: that the Jew had been dragged back from Paris to be punished not for his revolutionary sentiments, but to satisfy Loredan’s lust for revenge. Leopardi was about to pay a very high price indeed for cuckolding the Commissioner of the Seas. But had he really done it? Eloped with La Loredan? The gossips weren’t sure—no one knew the truth except the Inquisitors and Loredan himself—but that didn’t stop them from speculating. Would Loredan divorce her? they wondered. Most certainly, if the scandal achieved the proportions it deserved. A pity. Whatever she had done, she was a very beautiful woman.

  Alessandro ignored them and doggedly performed his duties to the state as though nothing were amiss. He answered questions about his wife’s health truthfully, and the worry in his tone was genuine. He told himself that Raf Leopardi would have deserved to die, even if he and Fosca had never met. One day, on impulse, he went to the Tombs to visit the prisoner.

  The jailer let him into Raf's cell. Alessandro had to stoop to enter, and the jailer stood in the doorway and held his lantern high to illuminate the interior.

  Loredan wrinkled his nose slightly. Appalling, these places—. “Leave the lantern and go away,” he said to the guard. “Bar the door. I’ll call you.”

  “But Excellency, my orders—”

  “I will be responsible. Do as I say.”

  The man obeyed reluctantly, although he would have given a year’s pay to overhear what took place between Loredan and the Jew who had cuckolded him. What a story for the boys in the guardroom!

  Alessandro was somewhat surprised at the drastic change that had taken place in Leopardi since he saw him last, in Fosca’s casino. His hair and beard were long, matted and filthy. He had not been given fresh clothes since his sentencing, nor had he been allowed to bathe or take exercise. But the old rebellious light shone in his eyes. He made no move to stand when Alessandro entered the cell, but lounged on his bunk and narrowed his eyes against the bright light.

  Raf was tempted to attack the man and try for an escape, but he rejected the idea. There were guards all over the place, two on duty at all hours of the day and night, pacing the hall in front of his cell. They were armed, and just out of earshot. He’d never succeed.

  He said, “What do you want, Loredan? Come to chuckle over your handiwork? I hear it will be over soon, next week.”

  “Still as crude and disrespectful as ever, I see,” Alessandro observed.

  “Why not? Would respect win me a pardon? We both know why I’m here. I’m not a traitor. And I’m not the only man in Venice with Jacobin sympathies.”

  Alessandro ignored him. “I would have thought that a sentence of death and eight weeks in this place would have taught you some manners.”

  “I don’t need manners where I’m going. Prisons aren’t impregnable, you know. I was in Paris when they stormed the Bastille. I know how thin stone walls can be when the people want to tear them down.”

  Alessandro leaned against the wall opposite the bunk and crossed his arms over his chest. “I suppose you’re hoping that the people of Venice will do the same for you? You will be disappointed. They don’t care what happens to you. They aren’t interested in revolutions because they have nothing to rebel against. We have always treated them fairly.”

  “As fairly as you treated the Jews?” Raf sneered.

  “Jews are a different problem,” Alessandro admitted.

  “Yes, Christ killers, right? Still paying for a Roman crime after nearly two thousand years! Lock ’em up, rein ’em in, all those radical peddlars and moneylenders and bankers! And above all, look after your wives.”

  Alessandro stiffened. “I thought you might be interested in news of Fosca,” he said. “She’s been quite ill. Near death. But she’s recovering now.”

  Raf’s heart beat faster but he said in a bored voice, “Oh, really? Glad to hear it. I don’t get much news of the activities of the upper classes in here. They won’t even let me see a Gazzettino. Well, have you any more gossip you’d like to share. Signor?”

  The older man reddened. “I have not. She would be delighted to hear of your callous attitude.”

  “She’s used to callousness and coldness, after being married to you for six years. By the way, is she still carrying my son in her belly, or have you managed to murder him?”

  Loredan shouted over his shoulder for the guard.

  “What’s the matter, Loredan?” Raf asked. “Didn’t you know about that? Of course you did. She would have told you. She’s not ashamed of it. But you’ll see to it that she is ashamed, won’t you? You’ll make her pay for this. I know you. Were you really so surprised that she ran away with me? What did you expect, after what you did to her? The thing that astonishes me is that she didn’t put horns on you sooner.”

  Alessandro leaped at his throat. They grappled together. Raf tried to fight him off, but the weeks in prison had sapped his strength. Loredan choked him and pounded his head against the stone wall. The world began to grow dim—.

  The guards burst in and dragged Alessandro away. Raf rubbed his raw throat and croaked.

  “That’s right, save me for the public spectacle! Why not bring Fosca? I’m
sure she’ll enjoy The show!”

  One of the guards struck him with a club and he dropped unconscious to the floor. Blood from the wounds in his head spread slowly over the stones.

  Alessandro stood trembling in the doorway. The guards had to speak to him loudly and repeatedly before he roused himself and crossed the Bridge of Sighs back to the Doge’s Palace.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that this ‘brother’ of yours was the Jew who ran away to France?” Marie de Planchet demanded. “What a fool I felt, asking my friends if they knew anything and could help! Do you think anyone could help that man after what he did? They say he ran off with Loredan’s wife! And you, you little slut, you lied to me! He’s not your brother at all, but one of your old lovers! You damned, deceitful little bitch. Protestations of love mean nothing from you, nothing! Get out of my house before I slaughter you!”

  Lia sighed. “No, Raf Leopardi is not my brother. But he was never my lover, either. Through no fault of mine. God knows I wanted him badly enough. But I still want to help him, if I can. I—I owe it to him. I know you’re angry with me, Marie. I don’t blame you. I should have told you more—but surely you could have guessed?”

  “Guessed! Do you think I read the newspapers and listen to gossip like those stupid noblewomen? I’m much too busy!”

  “Then there’s nothing to be done,” Lia murmured desolately. She dropped her head into her hands. Her shoulders shook. “I would have done anything—given my life for him!”

  Marie tossed her head. “Well, as a matter of fact, I have heard from a man who is very interested in the situation. He wants to see you. He actually wants to help this man!”

  “But who is he?” Lia asked, amazed and hopeful.

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” de Planchet said briskly. “He is coming here tonight to speak to you.”

  “Who I am is not important,” the man told Lia. He was masked and cloaked and he made no move to take off his disguise. His voice was deep and mellow, his accent educated. He wore no rings on his hands, nothing that would give a clue to his identity. “But I have friends who want Leopardi to live.”