The Dark Lady's Mask

by Mary Sharratt

  Turning away from her, her cousin let himself out of the room.

  The Weir sisters remained like statues, silent and wooden, until Winifred heaved herself to her feet.

  “Mistress mine, for all we knew, you’d drowned in the lagoon.”

  Aemilia trembled to see the tears in her maid’s eyes. Before Aemilia could say a word, Tabby took Enrico from her while Winifred and Prudence opened the sewing box, preparing to take in her seams.

  16

  EMILIA STOOD AT HER chamber window and watched Jasper stride across the campo and disappear down an alley, embarking on yet another exhaustive tour of the instrument-makers’ workshops of the Castello. Though she’d suspected he would disapprove of her male guise, the dressing-down he’d given her yesterday left her wretched. Jasper had never spoken to her so harshly before. The only soul who seemed to truly understand her was Will. They had known each other a mere four months, yet he already felt like a kindred spirit.

  Turning away from the window, she observed the Weir sisters, who seemed as restless as hens cooped up in too small a space.

  “Why don’t you go to the markets,” she said, handing Winifred a small bag of coins. “Take Enrico with you.”

  Tabitha was already speaking enough Italian, Aemilia reasoned, to get by at the marketplace.

  “If you say so, mistress.” Winifred insisted on addressing her that way even when Aemilia stood before her in breeches. “I think you should get some air yourself. My stars, I’ve never seen you so wan.”

  Aemilia closed her eyes as Winifred’s palm caressed her cheek. Though her new clothes now fit her like a second skin, she had the jitters about venturing forth by daylight after having come so close to giving herself away the day before, weeping in the synagogue. Venice unhinged her. Papa’s presence seemed so tangible, not even a breath away. His ghost walked these narrow streets and footbridges. What if she stepped out that door only to lose her wits again, coming undone before strangers?

  A soft tapping sounded on the door.

  Prudence opened it. “Master Shakespeare.”

  “Good morning, sir,” Tabitha said. She was fond of him for the way he doted on Enrico.

  But Will’s eyes fixed on Aemilia’s downcast face.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked, his voice rising in alarm. “Is the child not well?”

  Aemilia was touched by his concern. “My boy is as right as rain, thank the heavens.”

  She watched Will swing Enrico in his arms until the little lad shrieked with delight. How he must miss his own children, she thought.

  “Did you not say we would see the commedia dell’arte today?” he asked her.

  For him, this city has no ghosts. Will’s Venice, she thought, is a treasure box and he longs to caress its every jewel. But in order to do so, he needed her to be his translator, his interpreter, his guide through this labyrinth. Grinning for the first time that day, she swirled her cape around her shoulders. Will’s dear face, alight with enthusiasm, would be her talisman against the demons that chased her.

  With Will, she felt like herself again—the self she aspired to be. As they clattered down the stairs and set off across the campo, her spirits leapt free. Most of all, she was grateful for his lack of judgment. Whether she appeared to him as Aemilia or Emilio, he was her friend, as true a friend as she had ever had.

  THE TEMPORARY STAGE WAS set up at San Cassiano near the Rialto market. Though the acting troupe had yet to appear, a sizable crowd had gathered, attracting a swarm of peddlers.

  A pushcart vendor, seeking to impress Will with his wares, waved a picture in the poet’s face that left him doubled over with helpless laughter.

  “What is it?” Aemilia stepped close to see.

  “You want to buy one, signore?” the peddler asked her, as if anxious to salvage his self-importance while Will heaved in hilarity. “I will give you my best price!”

  The peddler brandished a painted miniature of a courtesan whose skirt flap lifted to reveal breeches beneath. It was nearly identical to the curiosity piece that Southampton so coveted. Far from being a rare, priceless work of erotica, Harry’s treasure was cheaply painted pornography that anyone with a few denari might buy.

  “You don’t like it?” the peddler demanded. “What about this one?”

  A miniature of a nun who—when her skirt flap was lifted—proved to be a courtesan beneath her habit. Will and Aemilia shook their heads, still laughing, and prepared to turn away when the peddler lost his patience.

  “You love your coins too much to spend them, signori? Are you Jews?”

  Aemilia reeled as though the man had punched her.

  Will gripped her arm. “What did he say?”

  Too angry to speak, she spat on the ground where the peddler had stood. Her eyes wandered off into the crowd. Everywhere she looked she saw lovers sharing kisses. Though Italian girls from good families were not allowed out unchaperoned, young women of the servant and artisan classes might court freely as long as any babies were born within the bounds of wedlock.

  The couples’ love-struck faces drove a blade into Aemilia’s heart. To think she had once been that young and full of hope. She shook to recall the way desire had possessed her, driving her to gallop after Lord Hunsdon. The way she had surrendered to him, dissolving in bliss as he played her body like an instrument. She had gone from being his courtesan to a sexless thing that could scarcely bear to look at courtesans—or courting lovers.

  All her desire had died the moment Lord Hunsdon had so unceremoniously washed his hands of her and given her in marriage to a man she despised. She would have to spend the rest of her life paying for what to him had been a passing pleasure. The only way for a woman like her to survive in this world was by remaining dispassionate. Friendship could be her solace but never love. Never again.

  Now an old woman selling card decks approached her. She pressed a pack into Aemilia’s hand and allowed her to shuffle through them and examine the intricately painted images. A lady in a sumptuous gown rode a white horse and carried an unsheathed sword as though she were a female knight errant. A woman in a nun’s habit sat enthroned and crowned in the papal triple tiara. The deck was old and well-worn, its edges wrinkled and nicked, its paint fading in places or smudged by fingerprints. Still, it seemed a precious thing. She passed the cards to Will, who appeared just as enchanted as she.

  “Ask her how much she wants for them,” he said. “I shall buy them for you.”

  “For me?” she asked, utterly astonished.

  “Why can I not give you a gift when you have given me so much? Am I to be only the receiver?”

  “They are tarocchi cards,” the old woman said, smiling at Will while Aemilia translated. “You can play the game of trionfi with them, signori. Or you can use them to discover what Fortuna has in store.”

  Her gnarled hand revealed a card depicting the goddess of fate and the ever-turning wheel of fortune.

  After some haggling, Aemilia and the old woman settled on a price and Will bought her the cards. Delighted, she shuffled through them until she came to a trump bearing the image of a great globe.

  “Look!” she told Will. “Fortuna shall give us the world!”

  A cheer exploded from the crowd, for the players had arrived and soon the show would begin. There was much shuffling and chattering behind the patched canvas curtains. Pressing her way forward, Aemilia found a space to stand at the very lip of the stage.

  A man in a mask and a faded satin costume stepped from between the curtains.

  “Fair citizens of Venice,” he said, in a rustic dialect, “today we present to you La Mirtilla, a pastoral! For we’ve come from the countryside to bring its romance to your city.”

  As he spoke, a bewitchingly beautiful girl, her long blond hair streaming like a mermaid’s, squeezed her way through the crowd to collect soldi and denari for the players.

  “Why can’t a city as rich as Venice have a proper playhouse?” Will whispered, after they h
ad paid the girl. “This ramshackle thing looks like it might collapse in a strong wind.”

  “The ladies will enjoy our play, too,” the man on stage said, continuing his speech. “For this play was written by a lady, the great Isabella Andreini, who performed at the wedding of Ferdinando de Medici and Christine de Lorraine.”

  The women in the audience shouted their praises for La Andreini. Aemilia felt light-headed. So the commedia dell’arte not only featured female players but also female playwrights who staged their creations in the highest aristocratic circles? She had never imagined such a thing. What if her mask was unnecessary and she could write as a woman under her own name?

  A boy moved through the crowd selling cups of pale Veneto wine for less money than Aemilia would have paid for milk in England. She and Will raised their cups to each other.

  “Did you know that in ancient Greece, the theater was part of Dionysus’s cult?” she asked him.

  “The god of wine and ecstasy!” Her friend threw back his head, as if reveling in this. “No wonder the Puritans despise the theater—it’s heathen to the core.”

  Minstrels played pipes and viols as the patched curtains opened to reveal the masked figures of Venus and her son, Amore, who lamented that mortals blamed him for their broken hearts. His mother offered her counsel.

  But you with your wings carry your followers

  to heaven, and time cannot damage

  your powers, nor can death itself,

  because you do not love fleeting beauty,

  but that beauty which is celestial and divine . . .

  You alone are the life in the life

  Of every created thing.

  Aemilia cast a glance at Will, who appeared transfixed by his first glimpse of a female player, a mature woman with a deep bosom and dark golden hair. They could even smell her violet perfume. How majestic she was, speaking in her natural voice. The lisping boy actors back in England with their padded chests and rouged lips couldn’t hope to compare. Will’s eyes shone.

  “That’s what our English comedy writers forget,” he whispered in her ear. “Winged Cupid is a god. To fall in love is to be pierced by the arrows of a god.”

  His words sent a shiver through her.

  The innamorati, or young lovers, entered the stage—three shepherd boys and three nymphs. These were the only players who remained unmasked. How they suffered from the pangs of love! The nymphs Filli and Mirtilla both pined for Uranio, who desired Ardelia, who loved only herself. Iglio courted Filli in vain. Tirsi proposed to Mirtilla, but she rejected him, which only inflamed him all the more.

  Though he struggled to understand the Italian, Will soon seemed to grasp the plot. “It’s a pastoral like so many others I’ve seen,” he whispered. “Save for the masks and the female players. And yet the heroines change everything.”

  The actresses played their roles with wit and aplomb. Far from being helpless damsels or mere objects of desire, they were fully fleshed characters, cunning and clever, giving as good as they got. Only Ardelia was as silent, chaste, and docile as a girl was supposed to be, yet she was so vain and foolish that she, like Narcissus, fell in love with her own reflection and the audience could only laugh at her.

  The comedy darkened into tragicomedy when the satyr Satiro stalked the nymph Filli. The masked actor played his role with such menace that Aemilia felt her heart pound and her throat go dry.

  If she won’t surrender to my will,

  I’ll do her a thousand outrages!

  Neither her beauty nor her loud cries

  nor her request for mercy will help her!

  But Filli, as wily as a seasoned courtesan, declared that she desired Satiro as much as he desired her and that she would do anything he wished if only he would first let her tie him to a tree. Once she had him bound, she yanked his beard and pinched him mercilessly while he bewailed his humiliation.

  The courtesans and market wives in the crowd roared their approval, yelling, “Brava!”

  Aemilia cheered herself hoarse. Never before on stage had she witnessed such a spirited heroine—neither a victim nor a scheming temptress nor even a shrew, but a resourceful young woman who knew how to survive and even triumph in a dangerous world.

  Moved by the ecstasy of the moment, lifted outside of herself by the applause and the wine, Aemilia clasped Will’s hand. He gazed at her, his eyes softening as she felt the heat rise in her face. She stared at their joined hands then, laughing in apology, tried to release him. But he held on for another moment, as if reluctant to let go.

  The play concluded with Filli and Mirtilla saving their lovers’ lives and accepting their proposals. Even Ardelia, haunted by the fear of losing her beauty and growing old alone, embraced Uranio. The three happy couples laid garlands of thanksgiving on the altar of Venus and Amore.

  The play left Aemilia buoyant, as though she could float off on a cloud, and Will’s happiness mirrored her own. How sparkling their own comedies would be if they could create heroines as fresh and witty as Filli.

  Mirth seemed to settle on the entire crowd. Aemilia noted the camaraderie between the laughing young courtesans and the older market wives who offered the girls pears and honeyed hazelnuts. They appeared not to judge these girls but rather to acknowledge the world as it was and what a young woman must do to carve out a life for herself.

  Presently, the courtesans returned to their usual commerce. Two young women sidled up to them, towering over Aemilia and standing as tall as Will in their chopines. When Will pointedly shook his head and Aemilia averted her gaze, the courtesans exploded in contempt.

  “English!” one of them cried, glowering at Aemilia’s riding boots. “They hate women! Their own Queen must remain a virgin because they only have eyes for other men.”

  The speaker’s companion caressed Aemilia’s cheek. “Madonna mia, aren’t you a pretty boy with skin as smooth as a lady’s! I bet your friend loves to bend you over and bugger you.” She swiveled to address Will. “Does he have nice shapely buttocks, signore?”

  With a most theatrical dexterity, the two courtesans proceeded to make obscene gestures concerning the carnal acts they presumed Aemilia and Will indulged in. Abruptly, the girls burst into peals of wicked laughter before racing away, their chopines smacking the cobblestones. Will swayed on his feet as though their performance had left him both speechless and deeply impressed.

  “Do you require a translation?” Aemilia asked him, with a half smile. “Or was their meaning clear? By my troth, we’ve learned never to slight a courtesan.”

  She wished she could send the girls to Southampton House to give Harry a good telling off.

  “You display an astonishing equanimity,” Will said. “Unlike yesterday at the Ponte delle Tette, when I thought you were going to throw yourself overboard because you couldn’t bear the sight of breasts. Which is a pity, seeing as the girls seem to prefer you over me.”

  She flushed in spite of herself. “At least these girls had all their clothes on.”

  What Aemilia hid from Will was how disturbed she truly was, not by the courtesans’ bawdy insinuations, but by the accusation that she hated women. She felt sick to think how those girls had glared at her as though she were something despicable.

  “WHAT CARDS ARE THESE?” Tabitha asked, fingering the brightly painted deck.

  “The poet gave them to the mistress,” Winifred said, in a voice as dour as November.

  Winifred had not been the same since they left England. Between her bouts of seasickness and the poor food aboard ship, she had lost so much weight during the voyage that her once-huge frame dwindled. Now that they were back on solid land, Tabitha had hoped her sister might regain her appetite and spirits, but Winifred was of the opinion that Venice, with its stinking canals, was the most unwholesome place she had ever seen. People here didn’t eat honest food, as in England, she declared, but supped on strange spiny creatures dredged up from the lagoon. Tabby feared Winifred would soon be as thin as Prudence. Meanwhil
e, Tabitha bloomed.

  Though Tabby had cried the hardest upon leaving England, she discovered she loved Italy more each day. She couldn’t get enough of the fresh figs and pomegranates from the market, and she found swordfish and even octopus most delectable. Of her sisters, she was the quickest to learn Italian, her tongue savoring the words that sounded like angels singing. And she thrilled at the way young men gazed at her with adoring eyes as though she were an angel.

  These painted cards were the latest lovely thing she had encountered in her beautiful new world. She smiled at the image of a golden-haired maiden dancing with pitchers in both hands. But she uttered a cry when she came to the card with the grinning skeleton armed with a giant bow and arrow. A shudder shot up Tabitha’s spine when Prudence appeared, as though from out of nowhere, and took the card from her trembling hand.

  “That would be Death,” said Pru, as unflappable as if they’d never left Essex.

  Tabitha wondered what Pru made of their new life in Italy. Her eldest sister was increasingly silent these days, her eyes darting everywhere, examining everything, but she rarely gave her feelings away.

  “Death?” Tabitha’s heart raced. Where was Enrico? She whirled around then saw him safe in Winifred’s arms.

  “We should fling those cursed cards in the canal,” Winifred said. “What does mistress want with them anyway? They’re the sort of thing that piss-pot astrologer Simon Forman would have in his rooms—if he isn’t already dead of the plague!”

  “Mistress says they’re soothsaying cards.” Pru’s brow remained unruffled.

  Tabitha and Winifred drew close while Prudence shuffled the deck and laid out three cards.

  In the first, an old bearded man leaned upon a staff and gazed at an hourglass. In the second, a young couple clasped hands beneath a canopy while above them hovered Amore—blindfolded Cupid—about to unleash his arrows. In the third, lightning struck a tower.