The Heart Remembers

by Margaret Redfern

  She spoke across Kazan. As if I am a poppet for the dressing, Kazan thought. The over-gown was high waisted with long folds dropping away beneath her breasts. It was heavier than she had expected, she who had been used to the freedom of cotton şalvar and gōmlek. She liftedan arm experimentally and felt the material of the long sleeve pull and drag.

  ‘And for the other, this blue will match her eyes, do you not think, sister?’ Alegreza said. The older sister nodded. ‘Let us see.’

  Some of the stiffness was gone. The sisters were absorbed in the business of dressing their living poppets. Elizabeta looked critically at Kazan standing in front of her in the russet and green. She twitched a fold into position, arranged the sleeves. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘this is very good.’

  ‘Let them see for themselves, sister,’ Alegreza said, eagerly. ‘The looking-glasses that are made by the glass-makers of Murano are the best in the whole of the Veneto,’ she told them, adding with simple pride, ‘and ours is the best in Venezia.’

  ‘And the last,’ Elizabeta said, ‘now that traitor da Silvano has been put to death.’ Cristina pulled away a draping and a looking-glass stood clear and bright. Kazan had seen nothing like it. Agathi was closest, her shape reflected in the looking-glass, with the sun streaming through the window directly on to her. Her pale gold hair shimmered and the blue folds of the gown gleamed. Kazan gasped. ‘You are so beautiful!’ she exclaimed. ‘Agathi, you are like an angel come to earth!’

  Agathi looked wonderingly at herself. ‘Is this me?’ she asked. She looked across at Kazan. ‘You too, Kazan, you are very beautiful, like a garden. Come and see.’ Kazan walked across the room feeling the unfamiliar drag of skirts, lifting the material to make movement easier. She stared at herself in the looking-glass. ‘Where is Kazan?’ she murmured.

  ‘Your hair,’ Elizabeta said, addressing the girl directly for the first time, ‘why is it so short?’

  ‘I cut it when I ran away,’ Kazan said calmly. ‘It was better to travel as a boy.’

  ‘Run away? Travel as a boy?’ She was shocked into genuine emotion now. ‘What can you mean?’

  ‘I promised my grandmother I would travel to the country they call England to find my grandfather. It was her dying wish. But to do this I had to travel the merchant road through my country to Attaleia and from there by ship to Venezia.’

  ‘Alone? You did all this alone?’ There was no admiration in her voice.

  ‘Until I found sior Dafydd and his caravan on the road to Konya.’

  ‘And then you travelled alone in the company of men?’

  As if I were one of the women who haunts the Rivo Alto, thought Kazan. She said, ‘Sior Dafydd knew my grandmother. He kept me safe.’ Her head tilted up in the way Dai would have recognised as a battle sign. ‘He is a man I trust with my life.’

  ‘I have met sior Davide. He is a friend of my brother and known to my father through sior Heinrijc Mertens.’ Elizabeta stumbled over the foreign name. ‘He is a man of few words.’ Her thin lips curled in that tight smile. He had not found favour with her, Kazan realised.

  ‘He is my good friend.’

  Alegreza tittered in a way Kazan found maddening. Elizabeta said, ‘Your good friend? But that is not possible. No man can be the “good friend” of a young woman. Never. This is why our fathers and brothers keep us safe, from the young men especially, and their appetites.’

  ‘In my country,’ Kazan insisted, ‘it is possible. It was the young men of my tribe who taught me to ride and shoot with the bow until I was better than any of them.’

  ‘Ride and shoot? You did these things?’

  ‘Of course. But not in clothes such as these. It would not be possible, not even to mount a horse.’

  Elizabeta had frozen into outraged condemnation. Alegreza rolled her eyes at her sister, open-mouthed, avid with curiosity.

  ‘Were none of these young men in love with you?’

  Kazan chuckled. ‘There was one but Nene – my grandmother – sent him away.’

  ‘Your grandmother did so? But what of your father?’

  Kazan hesitated. The dark waters of the Canalazzo came into her mind. This was too deep to explain to these disdainful women. ‘I have no other family and now my grandmother is dead I go to my English grandfather. Sior Dafydd escorts me.’

  ‘When sior Davide came here two years ago, a very handsome man came with him. He was tall and dark haired with very dark eyes and long lashes, like a girl’s. Did he travel with you?’

  Kazan recognised Alegreza’s description immediately, and her interest. ‘You must mean Thomas,’ she said. ‘Yes, he travelled with Dai. He is very handsome, as you say.’

  ‘You must be a little in love with him, I think.’

  Kazan shook her head. She grinned. ‘It is lucky I am not. He has promised himself to the Friars of St Francis.’

  Alegreza pouted. Elizabeta’s laugh was mocking. ‘Now you have broken my poor sister’s heart. She was much taken by this young man but, as you say, it is lucky he has promised himself to God. My father has a husband in mind for her.’

  ‘But he is old and ugly,’ Alegreza complained.

  ‘He is rich,’ Elizabeta said. ‘A man without money is a corpse that walks, as the saying goes.’ She turned to Agathi. ‘What of the young man who has escorted you here today? Your promessisposi?’

  ‘He takes her now to his family in England where they will marry.’ Kazan smiled at the blushing Agathi, determined to say nothing of Edgar’s past to this calculating woman. ‘I think Edgar will fall in love with you all over again when he sees you looking so beautiful.’

  ‘Are you also betrothed, siorina Elizabeta?’ Agathi asked in her soft, shy voice.

  ‘Yes, of course. We shall be married soon, before the winter, now that Francesco is home. It is the duty of the older sister to marry before the younger one. My home will be with my husband’s family in the ca’Trevior.’

  ‘Trevior?’

  ‘Yes. I am to marry Jacopo Trevior, the older brother of Marco who was the patronus of your ship.’

  ‘He is not as old as the sior Guiseppe,’ muttered Alegreza. ‘Nor as ugly.’

  ‘Nor as rich,’ responded Elizabeta. ‘Not yet,’ she said confidently.

  Kazan said, ‘Sior Francesco did not tell us of this.’

  ‘He did not know.’ Elizabeta smiled. ‘He was away with the fleet when we exchanged our promises. And now our brother has gone to visit Marco, to see how he is recovering from the wounds inflicted yesterday by that madman.’

  Cristina had been busy plaiting and looping Agathi’s hair. She threaded a gold-spangled blue ribbon through it. Elizabeta nodded approvingly. ‘Now see what can be done with this short-haired one, Cristina.’

  ‘If the Signora agrees, perhaps a green ribbon?’

  ‘And then let us show our handiwork to your promessisposi and our brother, if he is returned.’

  He was. The sisters entered the salon first and clapped their hands for attention. ‘See what a miracle we have achieved, brother!’ exclaimed Elizabeta. She stood aside and beckoned Kazan and Agathi forward. Kazan, behind Agathi, saw Edgar’s eyes glisten with adoration. Lucky Agathi. Sior Francesco came forward, raising Agathi’s hand and bowing over it. ‘Bellabella,’ he said admiringly. He turned to Kazan. ‘And you also, siorina Kazan.’

  She smiled. ‘Not so bellabella as this angel, I think, but,’ she sighed, ‘I am no longer Kazan.’

  ‘Then what should I call you?’

  She paused, shrugged. ‘I was named Sophia after my grandmother but I have never been called by that name. It sounds strange to me.’ She thought of the image in the looking-glass that was not her. I am a stranger to myself, she thought. All these reflections in this city hide truth. She shivered.

  ‘How did you find our brother Marco?’ asked Elizabeta.

  ‘A slight fever. The wounds were not fatal, thank the good Lord. I shall return later. I wished to see that all was well with our two guests.’
r />   ‘It is a disgraceful business!’ Elizabeta said viciously. ‘When that murderer is caught, he should have his wicked hand cut off and hung around his neck and then be strung by his neck for such a crime. A worker to attack a noble, to draw blood!’

  ‘Hush, sister. Such hasty words are not becoming to a noble lady. Marco is alive yet, and the surgeon says he is strong and healthy in spite of the fever. No murder has been committed but it is, as you say, a disgraceful business. The Ten will have justice, no fear of that.’

  ‘Has the man been found?’

  ‘Not yet. They are searching.’

  Kazan’s mouth opened to protest, to say what she had seen and heard from the deck of the boat; she caught Edgar’s warning look, the slightest shake of his head. She lowered her head, kept her mouth tight-shut.

  Afterwards, in the gondola, this time with only Edgar as escort, she said, ‘Why did you wish me to stay silent? Should we not try to help Radovan?’

  Edgar sighed. ‘Venezia has its own laws and strict regulations. We are strangers here. We do not understand their ways.’ He remembered what Francesco had told him when they were alone together; how there was talk that the Croatian had been hired as an assassin. Nonsense, of course, but it worried him. ‘Let’s ask Dai,’ he said. ‘He’ll know what best to do. He knows this city.’

  He had not returned. Rémi was there. Dai, he signed, had gone to the island of Murano to find out for himself what had happened to a glass-maker he knew, one Pietro da Silvano. He knew the glass-makers there; he would ask them. Kazan was disappointed. She had wanted to walk in and surprise him in all her finery but Thomas was there, sitting with Giles over a jug of wine. He looked at them, astonished and laughing.

  ‘You are transformed into a girl at last, Kazan,’ he teased her, as an older brother would. ‘You too, Agathi. Whoever would have thought a slave girl and a yürük boy would turn out as Venetian ladies of fashion?’ He grinned. ‘I’d give good gold to see Blue’s face.’

  ‘He would still call me Fustilugs,’ said Kazan.

  Thomas laughed outright. ‘I expect he would. Now, sit down and listen, Kazan. I’ve been waiting half the afternoon for you. I have news for you.’

  ‘News for me?’ Her face paled.

  ‘Good news, I think. The brothers at the friary know of the great artist Giotto of Padova who has done much for the Franciscans.’

  Kazan and Agathi looked at him, puzzled. These names were nothing to them. ‘This is good news for me?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘The Sior Giotto uses real people to paint the figures in his frescoes. Many years ago he met your grandfather, Kazan.’ He sat back and waited for her to comprehend his news.

  ‘He knew my grandfather?’

  ‘And he painted him. The friars said it was the year of the great comet. One of them, an old man now, takes great pride in remembering the friendship between the storyteller and the painter.’

  She drew an ecstatic breath. ‘Can I meet this sior Giotto? See these paintings?’

  ‘See the paintings, yes. They are in the Chapel built by the Scrovegni family in Padova. It is not so far from here – a day’s travel by horse or by boat along the river. And it is on your way to the mountain road. But meet Giotto? No. He is an old man – and a rich one – and lives in Firenze.’

  She drew another breath. This grandfather, known only through Nene’s stories, was becoming real. They would stop in Padova, she knew Dai would agree, and she could see her grandfather’s likeness in these paintings, see the young man her grandmother had fallen in love with. ‘That is wonderful news you bring me, Thomas.’ She glanced at him through lowered lashes. ‘I would like you too to see my grandfather’s image. Are you sure you wish to go with the friars?’

  ‘I am sure, Kazan.’ He suddenly stretched out his hand to cover hers. ‘I do not like bloodshed, Kazan; I never have done. Now I feel free to be my true self, a man of God.’

  ‘Then you are right to go, Thomas. Dafydd will miss you. We shall all miss you. We do already,’ she said, sadly. Our tribe is breaking up, smaller and smaller, she thought.

  She walked down the steps with him to the Canalazzo, They stood together in the shelter of the portico where goods were being unloaded from laden cogs. A musty, stale smell came from the water. One of the monastery pigs was snouting into a wooden crate. They roamed freely over the city, protected by law; the sailors shrugged and ignored this one. Thomas pulled her aside to make room for a young sailor panting under the weight of the heavy barrel he shouldered.

  ‘Do you care for what Dafydd thinks, Kazan?’ he asked, suddenly.

  ‘Yes, of course. How could I not?’

  ‘He loves you. Do you know that?’

  ‘As a man loves his horse or his sister.’

  ‘No, Kazan. He loves you as a man loves his woman. He would have you to wife but he thinks you can never love him.’

  She stared at him, her face pale. ‘No. You are mistaken. He has never given me any sign.’

  ‘He wouldn’t. He is honourable. He thinks he must protect you, and that means from himself as well as others.’

  ‘He does not love me.’

  ‘I say he does. Do you love him?’

  ‘I do not know. It is not as my grandmother told me.’ What was it then that tore my heart and soul? Who can tell, girl? When you feel this, then you will feel love and you will give your heart and soul and life for your beloved. ‘I do not know.’ She was agitated. ‘He is my good friend.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve upset you but he will never speak and I could not leave you without speaking for him. No,’ anticipating her question, ‘he has not asked me to do so and he would be very angry if he knew I had said so much. Don’t hurt him, Kazan. He is the best of men.’

  ‘I know that. I would never hurt him. Never.’ She was passionate, rejecting what he said, and he sighed, his dark face all angles and planes and so handsome. She wondered how she could ever have imagined herself in love with him.

  ‘No. I don’t think you would ever intend hurting him.’

  There was no place in this fondaco to be alone, to be quiet, to think. Always there was coming and going, and she and Agathi were the centre of much exclaiming and admiration. One man produced a fiddle, another a pipe, and they played cheerfully and discordantly until their friends begged them to stop. ‘A donkey is trying to sing my song – he gives a donkey’s bray,’ one man warbled the lines from an old song and there was a burst of laughter. But here was Evrat le Breton who played the lute like a troubadour and who sang with the voice of an angel; not loud and harsh like these donkeys but soft and sweet and melodious as was fitting for two such beautiful ladies. Now listen!

  Sweet noble heart, pretty lady,

  I am wounded by love

  I am sad and pensive,

  I have no joy or mirth,

  for to you, my sweet companion,

  I have given my heart.

  Evrat le Breton’s pure tenor voice rose high and fell and rose again; the strings of the lute rippled in unison. I am wounded by love. Was it true, as Thomas had said? I have given my heart. He had given no sign; he had never given any sign that she was anything other than Kazan. True, he called her cariad, but that was what he might call a loved child. She was so lost in thought she didn’t see him arrive but suddenly there he was, dusty and tired and hungry and with such a sternness about him that she dismissed Thomas’ words as nonsense. He came over to their small group and sat down next to her.

  ‘Very fine plumage it is, Fustilugs.’ He watched her face a moment. ‘Well, Kazan, what troubles you?’

  ‘Am I Kazan? Me, I do not know who I am.’

  I am Çiçek, granddaughter of Sophia-the-Wise

  I am Çiçek, granddaughter of Will-the-Wordmaker

  ‘You are you, always and only you. Your name does not matter.’

  ‘And these clothes?’

  ‘You look very fine in them.’

  She waited.

  He sighed. ‘You are al
ways beautiful. In these fripperies, of course; the colours suit you. Those sisters of Francesco have chosen well. But,’ he smiled, reminiscing, ‘Rémi’s best clothes suited you just as well. And your blue şalvar and gömlek.’ He paused, thought of his own fraught day. ‘Is that all that troubles you, cariad?’

  Am I truly your cariad? she longed to ask. Instead, she said, ‘Those sisters, they said no man could be a friend of a woman.’

  Those sisters, he thought irritably, should be boiled alive in their own olive oil. The older one especially. ‘They are Venetian,’ he said, ‘and noble and sheltered. You are wiser than that.’

  She sighed. ‘The older one – Elizabeta – asked me why my hair was so short so I told her I travelled as a boy.’

  ‘I expect,’ he said, calmly, ‘she was very shocked.’

  ‘She was. Dai, you should have seen her face – like a landed fish gasping for water! Then stiff like a corpse.’ She lifted her eyes to his, shaking her head. ‘I should not say such things when they have given Agathi and me such beautiful gowns to wear.’

  ‘I remember the siorina Elizabeta,’ he said. ‘It seems to me you have earned them now, isn’t it?’

  ‘But Dai, what do you think? She is betrothed to the brother of that slimy sea-snake, that Marco Trevior.’

  ‘Is she now? Francesco didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘He did not know until he returned. I think,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘he is not pleased by this.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Sior Francesco was at the ca’Trevior. You should have heard the things they said! It is not fair that Rado is the villain. Marco Trevior is not a good man. I heard Rado, Dai. He said Marco Trevior had ruined his family. What did he mean? You must tell me.’

  ‘Hush – speak quietly. Tell me first – did you say any of this to Francesco or his sister?’

  She shook her head. ‘Edgar would not let me.’

  Dai sighed in relief. Sensible Edgar. He considered; better if she did know, now they were no longer confined to the boat. ‘Marco Trevior,’ he said slowly, ‘raped Radovan’s sister.’

  ‘But that is terrible!’