Venetian Mask

by Rosalind Laker

  “You have no need to ask such a question!” she stormed. “See for yourself, Celano. I’m taking Elena out of here to nurse her back to health!”

  “You’re too late. She’ll not live the night!”

  “That’s what you would like! Then you’d be free to marry Bianca. I knew you were a cruel man, but I never supposed you would stoop to such evil depths. Step away! I’m bringing Elena up from this hell-hole!”

  “Stay where you are!” he ordered thunderously as she turned back to start lifting Elena again. “You’re never coming out of there alive. Since you’re so concerned about Elena you shall take her place in fair exchange!”

  Marietta pulled the pistol out of her sash and cocked it as she faced him again. “I’ll not hesitate to shoot you, so just withdraw to allow me to get out of here and raise the alarm.”

  He saw by her resolute expression that she meant what she said. The idea that this Torrisi woman should try to ruin all his plans at the last moment was almost beyond belief. He had left the debate sooner than he should have, simply because this was the night he was planning to wind up his affairs. Minerva and Giovanna were ready to leave as soon as it was dark, and the warden, after giving her final report to his agent, had been disposed of with her husband. All that remained was to bring Elena back to her bedchamber. It had been agreeable to him that she draw her last breath in her own bed.

  Marietta was slowly ascending the stairs. “Go backward into your bedchamber, Celano. Do as I say!”

  He was not in the least alarmed by the threat of her pistol. His guess was that she had never fired a weapon in her life, whereas he had disarmed far stronger adversaries. At the right moment he would break her neck. It meant a quick revision of his plans. Minerva would leave the palace in this Torrisi woman’s bauta mask and mantle, which she had conveniently left on his bed. The servants would see her depart, as would Bianca, who he had sent back to the library to watch from the window for the banishment of her former friend. No finger of suspicion would be pointed at him when Marietta Torrisi failed to arrive home, and his agent would silence Minerva soon enough.

  “At least let me carry Elena to her apartment,” he offered sharply. “Having brought her so far you can hardly wish to leave her near the foot of these cold stairs. It was my intention all along that she should die in comfort.”

  “You’ll not lay a hand on her ever again!” It scared Marietta afresh as she drew still nearer that he should be so dangerously in control of himself, making no attempt to move from his secure position. Her heart was thumping and the trembling of her hand made her fear that even though he was such a solid target she might only wound him if she was compelled to fire the pistol. “You’re an evil man and impossible to trust!”

  “Even under the threat of your pistol?” he challenged angrily, spreading his arms wide to indicate his defenselessness. “You could easily shoot and put me out of your way.”

  “No, I want you brought to justice for the attempted murder of your wife.”

  He took a step down to her so swiftly that she was caught unawares. The side of his hand struck her wrist such a blow that the pistol dropped from her grasp and went rattling away down the stairs. In terror she flung herself back against the wall, seeing murder in his eyes. In the same instant a shadow moved in behind him and he sensed another presence, wheeling about even as Bianca lunged at him with a library knife.

  “In the devil’s name!” he roared as she fell against him, the blade missing its target completely in the swiftness of his reaction and falling harmlessly from her hand. But she had brought him off balance and his heel slipped on the edge of a tread as together they almost toppled. Instinctively Bianca grabbed at the gilt hand-cord along the wall while he clutched at the curtain. He could still have saved himself as she had done, but with a jangling of curtain rings the age-rotted fabric tore free under the force of his weight. He uttered a terrible shout that was echoed by Bianca’s hysterical scream as he reeled back over the side of the stairs to land with a heavy thud on the marble floor. A deep groan told them he was not dead.

  Marietta stared at the little knife still spinning on the stair where it had fallen, and then at Bianca lying half-sprawled, her knuckles showing pearl-white from her frozen grasp on the hand-cord, her eyes wide and dark and unfocused. For a matter of seconds both she and Marietta remained motionless with shock. Then Marietta flew into action.

  “Help me carry Elena out of here, Bianca! There’s no time to lose. Filippo may only be stunned.” Marietta had run down again to Elena, expecting the girl to follow her. But that was not the case, for Bianca had merely edged her way up to her feet from where she had fallen and stood transfixed with her back pressed against the wall.

  “Come, Bianca! Now!”

  There was no response. Marietta, seeing that she could expect no assistance from that source, began lifting Elena more quickly and inevitably more roughly than before. But she had drawn her sick friend no higher than three treads when Elena was almost jerked from her grasp. Filippo had reared up with a terrible cry of pain to grab his wife by the ankle. Marietta screamed, struggling to keep hold of her as he began to draw Elena over the side.

  Then came a rush of movement. Bianca, spurred into action by Marietta’s scream, had snatched off her shoe and was jabbing the heel hard into the back of Filippo’s hand, drawing blood. His tenacious clasp relaxed and he fell back again with a roar of agony on bones that had been broken in his original fall.

  Marietta hauled Elena away from the side. “Take Elena by the ankles, Bianca!” she instructed.

  This time the girl flew to obey her. Together they soon had Elena up the stairs and through the lobby into Filippo’s bedchamber. There they laid her on the bed. Even as Marietta leaned over the sick woman Bianca spun about to dash back through the secret doors as if she regretted the violence she had used on her lover and intended to help him. Marietta’s cry for her to come back went unanswered.

  Filippo, still partly entangled in the heavy folds of the curtain, breathed with relief when he saw Bianca standing over him, the candlelight making a pale aura of her hair. He was in a cold sweat of pain for he had broken a leg in his fall, and the daggers in his hip suggested that he had severely cracked it, as well as a rib or two. Somehow he managed a smile for her, unaware that it became twisted into a grimace of agony.

  “My dear little swan, I knew you’d come to me. I forgive your angry attempt to knife me, even though it has brought me to this.” He lifted a hand in appeal. “You must pardon me in your turn for keeping Elena out of the way. In any case the blame is yours. You made me fall in love with you until I could think of nothing but having you for my wife. Go at once and fetch help, my sweeting. Summon my valet and the servants by the bell-pulls in my bedchamber.” Still she had not spoken, staring down at him with huge blue eyes that did not seem to blink. “Make haste, little swan.”

  Obediently she turned away, but it was not to fetch help. She went across to the branched candlestick that Marietta had set down by Elena’s prison bed and blew out the flames. Only then, guided by the diminishing daylight showing through the door from the bedchamber above, did she ascend the stairs, picking up the pistol and the library knife to put both into her pocket as she went.

  Filippo gave a despairing shout as it dawned on him what she was about to do. “No, Bianca!”

  But she had gone through the door and shut it after her. In disbelief Filippo heard the key turn before it was withdrawn. Seconds later there came a muffled thud as the cupboard swung back into place. He was left, consumed by pain and alarm, in total darkness.

  Marietta, who had tucked Elena under the covers and given her another sip of the cognac, saw Bianca rush to the window. Before she could stop her, Bianca had opened it and flung the key to the hidden door far out through the gathering dusk into the Grand Canal.

  “There was no need for that!” Marietta protested. “Filippo can’t be left in that place.”

  Bianca’s eyes flashed.
“I heard what he said to you. I would leave him there forever!”

  Then she rushed to the door between Filippo’s bedchamber and Elena’s apartment. It had been Marietta’s intention that the impostor and the maid, if they were still in there, be exposed before witnesses, but already Bianca had shot back the bolt and flung the door wide.

  Giovanna, who had been trying to overhear what was happening in the neighboring bedchamber, drew back swiftly, expecting to see Filippo. Instead she and Minerva saw the taut, white-faced girl with Elena in the bed behind her and Marietta darting to the nearest bell-pull.

  “You wicked creatures!” Bianca shrieked at them.

  Both Giovanna and Minerva were dressed to leave, and their hand-baggage was packed as they had been instructed. They were aware that something had gone awry, but Giovanna did not believe there was any situation from which it was not possible to wriggle out unscathed. Bluff was an invaluable weapon.

  “Now look here,” she began, “Signor Celano would never allow anyone to speak in such a manner to my mistress.”

  “Be silent!” Bianca took a threatening step forward, her fists clenched by her sides. Never in her life had she experienced the fury that consumed her at this moment. “The truth is known! The Council of Three shall throw you both into their torture chambers!”

  The two women, Venetian to the bone, were immediately seized by terror at this dreadful threat. They snatched up their dominoes, which they had put ready for their leaving, flung the garments about their shoulders, and grabbed their hand-baggage. Minerva made little pleading cries for mercy like a mewling cat as they fled the apartment. One piece of baggage had been overlooked in their panic. Bianca rushed to catch it up and hurl it after them. The women heard it fall in their wake, but neither stopped to retrieve it. Giovanna, the more intelligent of the two, had deliberately investigated ways out of the palace in case of any emergency, and now she led her companion at a run to a little-used stairway that led down to a flower-room with a gardener’s door. Since they had lost all the promised renumeration for many tedious weeks of boredom, she grabbed whatever small items of value were available en route and shoved them into her pockets. Minerva was too panic-stricken to follow her example.

  Marietta went to Bianca, who had sagged sobbing against the door jamb, and put an arm around her. “There’s no time for tears now,” she urged kindly. “We have to think of Elena first.”

  As Marietta began to guide Bianca back to the bedside, Filippo’s valet arrived. He was instantly belligerent, demanding to know why a stranger was in the Signor’s bedchamber and for what reason the sick woman had been moved from her own apartment. Marietta gave back in the same vein, brooking no argument.

  “Signora Celano is at death’s door and her apartment is a pigsty! Fetch her own doctor immediately if you don’t want to be blamed for her demise! Go! Dr. Grassi lives near here in the russet-red house on the Calle Bernardo.” He left hurriedly as a footman arrived from another direction, puzzled to see her there. She spoke as urgently to him. “Two women are fleeing from the palace! Catch them! There is little time. They were in Signora Celano’s apartment and may have stolen something!”

  Other servants appeared. Some were urged to give chase with the footman while a maid was sent to fetch Sister Giaccomina in haste from the library. Marietta’s stormy presence and imperious orders brought almost instant results. Another bedchamber on the other side of the palace was made ready for Elena. While this was being done Marietta and Sister Giaccomina bathed her in warm water, Bianca handing them the towels and the nun gently bewailing the terrible state to which one of her dear Pietà daughters had been reduced. They also gave Elena small spoonfuls of goat’s milk that had been rushed from the kitchen, and sips of water to relieve the dryness of her mouth.

  A footman returned to report that the woman named Minerva had been caught and detained in a locked storeroom off the kitchen, but her companion had escaped. When he wanted to know if the police should be called, Marietta shook her head and said that would be decided later.

  When the steward of the palace arrived at the bedchamber door he was outraged to find that a Torrisi woman, who had come into the palace under false pretenses, should be commandeering his staff. It was Sister Giaccomina who beat him back with strong words. “Disgrace” and “neglect” and “ought to be ashamed of yourself” were some that she used to make him retreat. Fuming to himself, knowing the wrath he would have to face when Signor Celano reappeared from wherever he had gone, he vented his ill temper on those who were preparing the new apartment for the Signora.

  Dr. Grassi, who had not been called to care for Elena since she had suffered a spate of headaches two years before, gave her his most solicitous attention when he arrived breathless from hurrying up so many stairs. After examining her and propping her up during a coughing attack, he gave her a spoonful of black liquid to ease her lungs. Then he had her carefully carried by two footmen to the bed that had been prepared for her, which was being warmed with heated bricks wrapped in linen. As the nun and Bianca attended to her, Dr. Grassi drew Marietta aside.

  “This is a case of extreme malnutrition complicated by an infection of the lungs.”

  “What are her chances, Doctor?” Marietta asked anxiously.

  He looked very grave and made a weighing motion with his hands. “It is touch and go, that’s all I can say at the moment. It is utterly disgraceful that Signora Celano’s state of melancholia—which I assure you I would have checked long ago had I been consulted—should have been allowed to go to such lengths.”

  “She was never melancholic, Doctor,” Marietta said. Then she told him the whole story. He was outraged by the treatment Elena had suffered.

  “Yet however much I decry Signor Celano’s action, he must be released at once,” he insisted, “and I will treat whatever injuries he has sustained in his fall.”

  “That won’t be quickly done. In the confusion of Elena’s release the key was lost. It will take male servants with crowbars a long time to break open the door.”

  “At least a start must be made. Show me where it is.”

  Marietta led the doctor to Filippo’s bedchamber. She showed him the device that sent the cupboard swinging back on its hinges. Then Dr. Grassi himself summoned the steward, who put his strongest footmen to work. Marietta, leaving the doctor to watch the proceedings, returned to the sickroom.

  Elena’s breathing was labored, and with Bianca’s help Marietta propped her higher with another pillow. Sister Giaccomina was waiting to give her a spoonful of the dark liquid the doctor had left on the side-table.

  “Bianca has told me everything.” The nun sighed deeply as she carefully tipped the liquid between Elena’s colorless lips. “To think that this dear girl was locked up in such misery while I was contentedly dealing with that wicked man’s library. What is to be the outcome of all this?”

  “My hope is that the Church will allow an annulment of Elena’s marriage and that she can be moved away from Filippo in the meantime. We have never needed your support more.”

  The nun dabbed with a napkin at a trickle of medicine that had escaped Elena’s mouth. “You have it, my dears. All three of you, just as you have always had my blessings.”

  Marietta kissed her soft cheek. “I just remembered that Leonardo should have arrived downstairs two hours or more ago.”

  “Go and see him. Poor man! He’ll be wondering whatever has happened.”

  Bianca followed Marietta out of the bedchamber. “I’m so ashamed,” she cried. “If I’d taken notice of how much you distrusted Filippo I could have uncovered that imposture myself! Then Elena need not have come quite so near death’s door.” She bit deep into her tremulous lip. “I’ve been so stupid about everything!”

  Marietta put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I’m sure most people have felt like that at some time in their lives, and I include myself. What matters is that you saved Elena’s life and mine by your action. She and I might both have been locke
d in that awful room if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “When Filippo told me to go to the library and watch from the window to see you being evicted, I was suddenly afraid for you and for what I had done. I had never seen him flare into a rage before, and although he didn’t speak sharply to me, I knew he would treat you roughly. I couldn’t have endured that! It’s why I followed him upstairs. I intended to stand between the two of you. Please believe me!”

  “I do, Bianca.”

  They hugged each other then, and Bianca commented on the crackle of paper in Marietta’s sash. “What are you hiding? Not a message for a new mask?”

  Marietta smiled. “You found that, did you?” She dived a hand into her sash and then into her pocket to bring out the collection of papers she had hidden there. “Elena made me fetch these from behind the mirror in that room. I’ll take them downstairs with me and look at them with Leonardo.”

  In the corridor she met the steward cloaked for outdoors. “I’m going to fetch Signor Alvise Celano,” he said stiffly. “An axe has had to be taken to that door and still it is proving impossible to open. He may have a second key.”

  Nodding briefly, she left him and hurried on to the Ivory Salon. Leonardo jumped up from a chair as she entered and came to meet her, relief written clearly on his face.

  “What’s been happening?” When she had explained, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s as well that Bianca just gave the villain a push. Had she used the library knife on him it would not have been taken lightly. Nevertheless it’s my guess that Filippo Celano will make much of that push!”

  “As I shall make of Elena’s incarceration!”

  “Naturally. But you must remember, it is generally accepted that a husband may chastise his wife and cool her temper or a nagging tongue by shutting her up for a while.”