Venetian Mask

by Rosalind Laker

  Wandering on, she came to a mantle-draped figure in a harlequin mask. On a flight of fancy she imagined how she might take part in the Carnival, unknown and unrecognized in such a costume. Her hand, almost of its own volition, reached for the tricorne. In the same instant a man in a white bauta mask loomed out at her from behind the figure. She shrieked involuntarily as much from her own guilt as from his sudden appearance.

  “Your pardon, signorina, for alarming you,” he said in French-accented Italian. “You did not hear me enter the shop.”

  “The door is locked,” she gasped.

  “You are mistaken.” He went across to the door to open and close it in demonstration. “The bolt appears to be almost home, but that is all.”

  Leonardo, who had come running, burst through the curtained archway. “What is amiss?” he demanded, looking fiercely from the nun to the man in the mask and back again. Marietta, her face anxious, followed close behind.

  “Everything is in order,” Sister Sylvia informed Leonardo hastily. “I was passing the time by looking at the masks and failed to hear this gentleman enter.” She knew well enough she was not in the least deaf, but such was her absorption in her own thoughts that she could have been in another world. “I was taken by surprise to suddenly see him there. It was as if one of your display figures had come to life.”

  Calm was restored, and Leonardo assured the stranger that he would attend him shortly. Alix stood back and his gaze through the mask followed Marietta as she and another young woman, both veiled, left with the two nuns. He felt he had quite deftly saved the situation for her. Nobody suspected they had spent time on their own together.

  He went nearer the window, and when Marietta turned to glance one last time in his direction, he dipped his head slightly to her. As she went away with her companions, he thought to himself that all he had heard of this city of intrigue was true. He had been in Venice for less than twenty-four hours and already he was involved in a game of hide-and-seek with a beautiful Venetian girl. His first sight of her had been between masks. Her beauty had caught him by the throat. The pale oval of her face amid that mass of deep red hair blazing in the overhead candlelight! Her eyes, her inviting mouth, and the subtle sexuality that emanated from her had drawn him like a magnet. The fact that she was a Pietà girl simply added zest to the adventure.

  The mask-maker had come back into the shop. “Now, signore, how may I serve you?”

  Alix untied the bauta mask and removed the silk mantilla. “I will purchase these two items.”

  Leonardo thought to himself that this young foreigner had certainly made free with the contents of the shop, but these young bloods on the Grand Tour were all the same, wild and undisciplined away from home. In his opinion the Grand Tour was less for the gaining of cultural polish and far more for the sowing of wild oats away from their own territory.

  He pitied the unfortunate tutors who always accompanied them. He had heard many express their despair at trying to keep track of their charges, especially in Venice where the disguise of a mask gave the young devils free rein.

  “Have you arrived recently in Venice, signore?”

  “Yes, yours is the first mask-shop I have entered.”

  “I am honored.” Leonardo thought to himself that the first purchase these young men made was always a mask, and their second the book published specially for travelers that listed the best of the thousands of courtesans in the city together with their addresses and specialities. “Have you traveled far?”

  “From France originally, but there have been months of journeying since then.”

  Leonardo noted he did not say he was from Paris. Parisians never failed to let it be known where they were from. This Frenchman was probably from one of the wealthy noble families who lived in the country and had little contact with the social life of Paris or Versailles. From what he had heard, there was little to choose between the morals of Versailles and those of Venice.

  “After so much traveling I am sure you would like all paths smoothed for you here,” he said obligingly. “I could arrange a selection of carnival costumes for you.” He and a constumier on the Merceria recommended each other whenever possible and afterward shared their profits. “Delivery would be made to your place of sojourn where you could consider the various costumes at your leisure. Have you any preference?”

  Until that moment, Alix had not given the matter any thought, but what his costume should be was an immediate decision. “I have Harlequin in mind.”

  “An excellent choice.”

  “You may arrange for several other costumes to be sent. My fellow traveler, who is about my height and build, will also need an outfit or two.”

  “It shall be done.”

  Measurements were taken and Alix’s address written down. Leonardo then bowed his customer to the door. Good business had been done. He prided himself on being a good salesman. From lowly beginnings and a hard apprenticeship to a merciless master, who had beaten him for the smallest error, he had worked himself up slowly and surely from a peddler’s tray to a stall and then a hovel of a shop that he had transformed through his own imagination and initiative into a place where people of all ranks began to come for well-made masks of original design. By then he had apprentices of his own who he treated fairly, and now he owned these present premises in the most prestigious of all sites in Venice. By the same perseverance and patience, he had won a bride for himself who was above all other women in Venice. It had taken two years of correspondence, and when eventually she had accepted him he wept with joy.

  With everything tidy again he glanced proudly about his shop. It was small, which gave a sense of intimacy that Venetians liked, but he had the best stock in all Venice and served most of the nobility. How odd it was that Sister Sylvia should not have seen the young Frenchman rigging himself out in mask and mantilla. Admittedly the shop was crammed with wares and there were several display figures, but nothing that would have hidden him from view. Unless the nun was extremely short-sighted? That must be the explanation. Deciding that he had solved the mystery, Leonardo gave it no more thought.

  Not far away Jules, Comte de Marquet, was on his way back to the apartment he had rented for himself and his two charges on the Campo Morosini. He strode purposefully over the snowy ground, a tall thin man in a white wig with a hawkish face weathered by his sixty years, his eyes sharp and observant. In the pocket of his greatcoat were three tickets for the Pietà concert, which he had obtained by standing in line for twenty minutes. The Pietà choir was as popular now as it had been on his previous visit to Venice years ago when he was newly married. He and his bride had heard the girls sing more than once and had attended a concert conducted by Vivaldi, who had been the Maestro then. The whole city was full of pleasing associations for him.

  How different his financial position had been in those days, Jules recalled with a slight shake of his head. His name was an old and distinguished one in France, but the extravagances of his forebears and their weakness for the gaming tables had frittered away the family fortune. He had lived on a virtual pittance at Versailles until his marriage to Adelaide. They had lived happily and fecklessly on her dowry until her father’s death revealed he had been penniless and in debt. Settlement of the estate had forced the sale of all his possessions.

  For a while they had struggled to remain at Versailles by selling Adelaide’s jewels until there were no more to sell. The blackest day of their lives was when they left Versailles for the last time. One of her uncles took pity on them and loaned them a country house near Lyon with a small allowance to keep them in modest comfort, but Adelaide had never been able to adjust to country life and had pined for the old days, becoming bitter and bad-tempered. If they had had children that might have helped her, but it was not to be. When eventually she died it was a relief to him, for she was no longer the woman he had married. He had been reduced to two miserable rooms in Lyon where he had taught private pupils until Messieurs Desgrange and Chicot, both weal
thy and successful silk-mill owners, had asked him to complete the education of their sons.

  Jules, by reason of his noble birth, had faced verbal attacks from thirteen-year-old Alix on his first morning in the schoolroom of the Desgrange mansion.

  “Monsieur le Comte, why don’t the aristocrats at Versailles get off their backsides and visit their country estates?”

  “What are you talking about?” Jules was offended.

  “The land everywhere is in desperate need of good husbandry. It is going to waste! They take everything from it and leave nothing for those who work in the fields.”

  “Some noblemen do oversee their estates once every other year or two,” Jules answered in a lordly manner. “But there is too much happening at court for them to be spared more often.”

  “I can’t believe that! They would be quick enough to come if their bailiffs did not send the monies that the land produces for them. Our former tutor told us the aristocrats do not even pay taxes like everyone else.”

  “It strikes me,” Jules said coldly, “that he talked a deal too much about matters above his head. In future you will refrain from coarse terms and speak with the politeness expected of a gentleman.”

  Alix sprang up from where he was sitting. “Politeness be damned. Does the King not care that every winter hundreds of peasants die from hunger while the aristocrats debauch themselves at Versailles?”

  “Silence!” Jules was angry, taken aback by such vehemence, and his old loyalties came to the fore. “Versailles is the King and he is France herself! I will not allow such treasonable sentiments to be uttered in my classroom! Apologize this instant!”

  The boy drew himself up. “I meant no disrespect to His Majesty. When I am grown my sword will always be ready to serve France even at the cost of my life.”

  Jules found it impossible not to like the boy, however much he disagreed with his inflammatory accusations. “I trust it never comes to that, Alix,” he said more calmly. “Your parents have high hopes for your future and in time to come heavy responsibilities will rest on your shoulders.” Then he glanced at Henri, sitting with elbows sprawled across the table. “And yours too, Henri. Sit up straight, boy!”

  While both boys were intelligent, Henri was by far the more easygoing of the two. Alix, on the other hand, only grew more fiery in support of his ideas. By the time he was sixteen and being trained for management, he had outraged his parents by trying to improve conditions for the workers at the Desgrange silk mill.

  Jules was no longer needed now as a teacher, except to continue instruction in Italian, Greek and English, but he had adapted by doing a great deal of clerical work for Monsieur Desgrange and thus ensuring permanent employment.

  When Alix was eighteen and had roused the workers to stopping their looms for an hour in protest at their low wages, it evoked such a quarrel between father and son that only Jules’s intervention averted a permanent rift between them. When peace was restored, Jules took the opportunity to make a suggestion.

  “In my opinion,” he said, “it is high time your son’s education was rounded off as a gentleman’s should be. Let me take him away for a couple of years on the Grand Tour. It will give him the chance to get matters here in perspective by seeing something of the culture of other lands. I feel sure it would inspire him with a new understanding of design and art, which can only be beneficial to your business when he returns.”

  Monsieur Desgrange eyed Jules astutely. He was no fool and could see that the comte was offering to do everything in his power to change Alix from a hot-headed idealist into a man of sophistication and logic. Travel could do that. The lad would see how well weavers did in Lyon in comparison with workers in other lands. Alix had good sense when he chose to use it.

  “I am in agreement should my son wish to avail himself of the opportunity. Well, Alix? What do you say?”

  Alix’s eyes gave his answer before he spoke. His whole face lit up. It would give his father time to come around to his way of thinking. For months now sparks had flown almost every time they spoke to each other. That would have changed by the time he returned. In the meantime he would travel!

  “I should like to go, Father.”

  “Good. I daresay Monsieur Chicot might be persuaded to let Henri go with you.”

  So the journey had begun. They had traveled by coach and on horseback, been tossed about on stormy seas, rattled along in village carts, and ridden mules along precipitous mountain paths. Twice they had been attacked by bandits, but all three of them could handle a rapier to good effect, and on another occasion Jules himself had winged a thief with his pistol. There had been comfortable and clean accommodations as well as filthy hovels and bedbugs. Splendid meals and meager peasant fare had alternated according to where they had put up for the night. And everywhere, much as Jules had expected, the two lustful young bloods in his charge found women eagerly attracted to them. Before leaving on the journey he had given them plenty of good advice and this morning he had handed each young man a copy of a refined list of Venetian courtesans, which was more selective than the usual book purchased by male visitors to Venice. Nothing could shake his determination to return the two youths in his charge to Lyon as healthy and unemcumbered as they had been when they left home.

  He reached the Campo Morosini, unlocked a door into a small courtyard and went up the snow-covered steps to the apartment he had rented for their sojourn. Alix had not yet returned from a solitary exploratory walk, but Henri was writing one of the obligatory letters home. He glanced up as Jules entered the well-appointed room, a bored expression on his face. He had a kind of foxy handsomeness and a way of looking at women under hooded lids that they seemed to find irresistible.

  “I thought I would get this letter over and done with,” he said, looking down again to sign his name.

  “But you have nothing to tell your parents and sisters about Venice as yet!”

  “Yes, I have. I described our arrival yesterday and how we dined afterward at the Hotel Louvre—my mother always wants to know that I have eaten well. Then after midday we climbed those hundreds of steps up the Campanile to view the city and were nearly deafened forever when that giant bell chimed.”

  “We have not visited the Basilica yet!” Jules handed his outdoor garments to the manservant, who was hired with the apartment.

  “We viewed the facade and the four bronze horses. I have described the splendid sight. Now I need not write again until we reach Vienna.” Cheerfully Henri sprinkled sand over the ink and shook it off, and when he was sure it was dry he sealed the letter with a grunt of satisfaction. “Did you see Alix while you were out?”

  “No, but I have tickets for the concert. That sounds like Alix now.”

  Boots were being clumped against the doorstep to shake off the snow. Then Alix came in briskly, clearly in high good humor with a large box under his arm. Henri grinned, getting up from the desk.

  “You are looking very pleased with yourself, Alix. What have you bought?”

  “A mask, a mantilla, and a black wool mantle. Carnival costumes for you, Henri, and myself will be delivered shortly.”

  “You have had a successful outing,” Jules remarked.

  “Extremely so.” Alix lifted the lid of the box and raised an eyebrow at Henri to indicate that he had more to tell him later when their tutor was out of the way.

  ELENA WAS ENTHRALLED by Marietta’s account of her meeting with the Frenchman.

  “How opportune that you failed to bolt the door properly!”

  “I agree.” Marietta spoke almost triumphantly. “The Frenchman came into the shop like a breath of the outside world—not just the world of Venice or Italy or his own France, but the whole universe. I have never felt more like turning my back on the Pietà than when he invited me out for the evening. Just an evening, and yet it was as if he had flung doors wide open for me!” She moved about the room as she spoke, pacing like a caged animal. “I’m tired of grilles and constant chaperonage and, although I k
now we are not prisoners here, locks on doors for our own well-being. It is too safe here. Sometimes I feel I can’t breathe!”

  Elena sprang up from where she was sitting and put a restraining hand on Marietta’s arm. “Calm down. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  “It’s been slowly building up in me, although I’ve never experienced so much envy of those to whom we sing in public. I still want the future the Pietà can give me as a singer. But I also want the liberty to come and go as I please!” She looked quite frightened, as if realizing that all her self-discipline had suddenly been cast into an abyss. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with Alix Desgrange himself. It was what he offered. Maybe just being in the mask-shop reminded me of the freedom I once knew at home. Do you suppose that those shut up in the Doge’s prison get moments of such madness when they do not know how to endure the bars and locks a minute longer?”

  “I’m sure they do.” Elena felt unsettled herself. This mood of Marietta’s was alarming. A chance meeting had created as much change in her friend as disillusionment had wreaked in her. Such trivial events by comparison with the great happenings of life, but she and Marietta had both been indelibly marked by them. Maybe it was always such small matters that exerted the most influence.

  Marietta paused by the window and gazed blindly at the twinkling lights of the ships at anchor. The music of a sailors’ orchestra drifted from one of the Venetian warships. Not even at sea could a Venetian be parted from his music. “I must get out of this place for a little while. An hour or two in which to be with Alix would be enough.” She spoke vehemently as if to convince herself as much as her listener. “After that I will think of nothing else but work again.”

  Elena felt obliged to advise caution. “Don’t think of doing anything rash. Not yet. Wait until he seeks you out again. If he is really determined he will find a way. Then we can make plans.”

  Marietta became calmer but turned swiftly to her. “I have one!”

  “Already?”