by Sasha Gould
Someone puts their hands over my eyes, and my heart skips. I turn around.
“Oh! It’s you, Carina. H-how are you?”
“What a welcome!” she says, smiling.
“I’m sorry, I thought …”
“You thought I was that painter boy,” she says, with a thin smile. “I saw you having quite a chat with each other.”
She must have been watching through a window. “Don’t be silly,” I reply, feeling my face getting hot again.
“Aha, I see it now!” she says, pointing at me. “It doesn’t take much to get the truth out of you!” She sounds like she’s only joking, but tiny hairs of alarm bristle along the back of my neck. Her smile has gone, and she draws me closer, her hand on my elbow.
“You should be more careful. It’s terribly easy to get a bad name, you know, and very difficult to regain a good one when you’ve lost it.”
I try to smile. “Really, Carina, you’re assuming something that’s not the case. We were just passing inconsequential remarks. There was nothing in it.”
“I see,” she replies, but her voice is granite hard—and I know that she’s not convinced by my protestations at all.
A horn sounds, high and shrill. There are hoofbeats and shouts, and a haze of dust rises. The rest of the hunters clamber up. Raffaello leads the group to the gates and down the tree-framed track. All the others follow, trampling away in a cloud of frantic hollers and whoops.
Silence reigns after the pounding of hooves. It takes a few minutes before a new, softer set of conversations begin. Inside the lodge is sparsely furnished, and the women bustle around the table and instruct the servants in laying out the cold platters and plates. The women are smiling and busy and chatting. Some take off their shoes and elaborate hairpieces and gasp with a temporary relief.
As the hours pass, there’s talk of childbirth, illnesses of older relatives, marriages and romances, the threads and turning points of human connection. Although I’ve little to add, the conversation is comforting, familiar. Now, among all these courtly women, I realize that I miss Giacomo. What if he should be injured by a charging horse, unseen by its rider? Will he return for the evening, or will he go back to the mainland?
I’m happy to be apart from the others, and I find a quiet bower beside the kitchen doors, away from the bustle. Some of the other women toss a ball between them like children. Beatrice and I used to play like that, and I can almost hear her happy shrieks.
I’m called back inside to help lay the feast along with the servants. We’re playing as if involved in some rustic idyll, pretending to be country wives. The real servants hardly know how to behave with this inversion of the natural order. For them, it’s not a game, but a nuisance. Carina rushes in: “They will return soon.”
It’s the signal for us to be ready. Those who have taken off shoes and hairpieces put them on again. Maids brush some of the other women’s hair and powder their faces.
We hear the baying hounds first and assemble in the courtyard. Late afternoon is drifting towards evening, and the sun has dipped behind the trees. The men are sweating, shouting, calling for wine. My father looks flushed, and a little tired as he lowers himself from his steed. Another man has broken his arm in a fall but carries the injury lightly in a sling. There’s no sign of Giacomo, and from a groom I learn that a boat has already left for the mainland once more. The attendants parade the kill: two deer, savaged at their throats, their eyes already turning translucent. The butchery happens right there in the courtyard, and scraps are tossed to the yapping hounds as the men regale us with the triumphs and disasters of the day.
The lodge is half open to the elements, and the great table becomes gaudier and more bountiful as each dish is brought from the kitchens into the fading light. There are delicate yellow discs of polenta arranged in a curved pyramid and speckled with fresh green herbs and black pepper. Vast platters of lobsters, shrimps, mussels, octopus and clams are carried out proudly. The main focus, though, are the deer. The poor creatures slain today have been taken away, and one that has been hanging for some days is set to roast over an open fire pit. The men are still changing from their hunting gear.
Carina comes over. She holds a fat grape and bites into it. A little dribble of juice escapes and trickles down the side of her mouth for a second before she wipes it away.
“I’m sorry about the way I spoke to you earlier,” she says. “I was only worried for you.”
“I know,” I say. “Thank you.”
“I’m so glad you were able to come,” she continues. “This must be your first hunt!”
“It’s all so lovely,” I say, relieved to talk about something different.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she agrees. “It’s very important for everything to be perfect. This is my first time organizing the hunt as Raffaello’s wife. The whole of Venice will know what we ate, and who said what, and what everyone was wearing. So tell me,” she says, and I’m afraid she’s going to interrogate me about Giacomo again. “Now that you’re free, and a lady of leisure, what are your plans? Your head must still be reeling from Vincenzo’s exile.”
“Every morning I wake and I feel the weight of that burden lifted,” I say. “Though of course, I don’t revel in anyone’s misfortune, not even old Vincenzo’s.”
Carina’s face stiffens again. She leans a fraction closer, rearranging a vase of flowers minutely, then tilting her head to survey her efforts.
“I don’t imagine fortune had anything to do with it.”
She tosses out these words as though she’s trying to sound lighthearted and casual, but when I look at her eyes, I see she’s anything but. I wish I could steer Carina back to the mood that she’s usually in. The way she’s acting now—it makes me tense.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I say quietly.
“Don’t you?” she asks.
I lift my eyes up to her again. Her brow is arched.
“Walk with me,” she says.
We leave the tables and walk into the grounds. The water of the lake is silver and completely still. Carina clutches her long pink fan and whacks it into the palm of her hand from time to time, like a soldier with a baton.
“There may be luck in other parts of the world,” she says, “but not in Venice. When some great stroke of fortune falls across someone’s path, then the first thing I always do is look to see who threw it there. What was the chain of events? To whom is that person connected? And what actions contributed to their so-called luck?”
Her shoes crush the grassy verge on which we walk, and we have to bend from time to time to avoid the low-hanging tendrils of bindweed that dangle from the orange trees above.
“Well, in my case, I’m sure it was plain old good fortune.”
“We are either puppets, or we are puppeteers,” she says. “Always strings attached. Always someone pulling them. That’s how Venice works: it’s how sailboats move; it’s how the curtains in the theater are opened at the beginning and closed at the end. It’s how some people become rich and how others become poor. It’s how promises are made and kept,” she says with a smile, “and broken.”
Our walk brings us by a looping path back towards the lodge. Carina takes a few moments to issue instructions to a girl drawing water from a well. Then she lowers her voice and says something that makes me go cold.
“I know, Laura. I know who you’ve been in contact with.”
If I try to deny it, I know that I’ll give myself away. My breathing quickens, and the bones of my dress dig into my waist and chest.
“I know that the Segreta have approached you,” she continues. “Just as they came to Beatrice.”
I stop walking. She takes a few more strides ahead, pulling a strand of foxgloves out of the ground, picking each of the little bells off and dropping them on the ground. She turns around, and the look she gives me feels like a stern glare.
“What do you mean?” I say to her.
“She didn’t tell you? Of cours
e, she wouldn’t have. So trustworthy. So loyal. So good at keeping her promises.” She plays with the stripped foxglove stalk like it’s a little whip. “Stay away from the Segreta. Stay well away from those women. They’re not what they promise they will be. They take your secrets and they do favors in return, but that is never the end of it. Think about your poor sister. Laura, I don’t want to upset or frighten you. But there are things you don’t understand, and it’s best not to get tangled up with such people. Their webs of control are beyond your wisdom.”
She continues away from me. Her words chime so readily with my own fears about Allegreza and the others that I hurry after her and take her arm.
“Wait! How do you know Beatrice was in contact with them? What did she tell you?” I know that I’m trembling. If Beatrice told her, she broke the oath—she broke their first rule.
“Most people come in contact with them sooner or later.” Her tone is lighter now and she’s smiling again, but there’s a troubled feeling in my stomach. “Did they make you wear one of their masks?” Her smile turns to a grimace as she looks at her wrist. “You’re hurting me.”
I look down and see my nails are digging into her flesh. I let go at once. “Sorry, I—”
Carina’s eyes dart upwards and I turn. Allegreza is standing just a few paces away, under a bower of bay laurel. How long has she been there? I shiver. Her sudden arrival feels uncanny.
“Good evening, Contessa, Signorina della Scala,” she says. She wears her usual muted gray tones—this time a deep pewter dress with a silver belt hanging from her waist. She clasps our hands between her gloved palms as we greet her in turn.
A servant girl is stuffing a large bunch of long-stemmed lilies into a high vase.
“No!” Carina shouts. The girl looks up, startled and round-eyed. “Look at the way you’re squashing them. They’ll be destroyed.”
Allegreza turns her head sharply to Carina, who walks over to the table, where the nervous girl stands holding her hands away from the flowers. “I’ll show you how to do it,” Carina says more gently, “and then you’ll never forget.”
Allegreza nods, then drifts away.
As Carina cuts the bruised and broken stems of the lilies with a sharp table knife, I try to drive a terrible image from my head: the gold-toothed man pushing Beatrice into the canal, while in the shadows Allegreza watches.
The table at which we dined was so inviting and lush at the beginning of the night. Now it is strewn with debris from the meal. I look at my father and will him to get up. He’s slumped on one elbow and drooping, but still engaged in conversation close to the top of the table. I know he’ll not even dream of leaving until the important people have started to move off.
The rhythm of a whole lifetime seems to have been squashed into these few strange hours. The excited, high-pitched, horn-blowing sounds of their beginning have descended into a low, general hum.
Nicolo, the Doge’s youngest son, jumps up onto the table and strides through the debris, his boots leaving smears of black mud on the linen. He stumbles and clears his throat.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I ask for the indulgence of your attention, please?”
Apart from me, none of the diners even look at him.
He takes his dagger from his belt and throws it. It spins around in the air and drives its tip deep into the table. It wobbles and stiffens, wedged into its place the way I think Nicolo wanted it to. Everyone stops talking, and a few shocked gasps rise into the air.
“I will have attention!” he shouts.
“Get down from there!” someone yells back.
“I’m sorry, but this is important,” Nicolo slurs.
“Well, say your piece, and have done with it,” calls the dissenting voice.
Nicolo strides forward and plucks his dagger from the table. “Paulina di Moretti and I are going to be married,” he says.
“Ahh!” say the guests in delight, and Paulina lets out a little shriek. The women rise from their seats to gather round her. The Duchess smiles proudly, nodding graciously to her congratulators. Nicolo leaps athletically from the table, and the men shake his hand and slap him on the shoulder or on the back. People’s faces glow in the low light of the huge candles, which once stood as tall as the jugs of wine but now are molten masses, sliding and mixing with discarded food.
“What was the knife-throwing act all about?” mutters a woman in blue under her breath.
“Oh, it’s the animal in them,” replies another. “They’re always like this when they come back from the hunt.”
Suddenly I see Paulina’s face, open and sweet. I catch her eye and smile, mouthing “Congratulations” to her across the room. She blows me a kiss in return.
I see that Allegreza is looking at Paulina too. With a jolt, I realize how my friend must appear to her—young, yes, but with an engagement to the Doge’s son, also powerful. Her fine forehead crinkles thoughtfully.
Allegreza’s eyes flick er and I follow the direction of her gaze. She’s staring at Carina and the count. Raffaello lifts a lock of his wife’s hair and strokes her cheek with his finger. It’s a simple, caring gesture, and a reminder that not every relationship in Venice is guided by necessity or ambition. I feel a rush of warmth towards them both. Carina’s stern words of caution about the Segreta stemmed from concern, nothing more. There was no spite or malice in them.
Raffaello leans over to kiss her on the neck. Then his eyes seem to stare far off, and he rolls forward, his face pushed against Carina’s breasts.
A young man thumps the back of Raffaello’s chair. “You haven’t spent enough time in bed, Raffaello … that’s the problem!” he laughs.
“He’s looking for something he’s lost!” cries someone else, raising his glass in a toast to his own words. Bellows of mirth lift the room. Still the count’s face is pressed against Carina’s bosom.
She says, “Raffaello, enough!”
The joke isn’t funny anymore. Raffaello looks like he’s in a drunken slump, not an amorous embrace. Carina tries to ease him off her. He’s completely still.
She shakes her husband, gently at first, then more firmly—and then frantically.
“Raffaello! What’s wrong?” she whimpers. She casts glances at the other faces at the table. “Why won’t he move?” she asks them.
Raffaello slides in a strange, slow movement onto the floor, like a puppet whose strings have been severed. Chairs scrape, some of them toppling over as people rise from their places. I rush forward too. Raffaello lies on the ground, eyes horribly open, staring at nothing.
“Stand back. Please, everyone, give him air to breathe,” begs Carina, but no amount of air will make a difference now. A man puts his fingers to Raffaello’s throat and announces, with a look of bewilderment, that he’s dead. I want to go to Carina and comfort her, but it’s all I can do to stay upright, so deep is the terrible feeling that swirls inside me. A young man does not simply die in the arms of his wife at a party. I don’t know what has happened, but I am certain Raffaello’s death was not natural.
Carina kneels beside him. She looks around the room, but I don’t think she sees very much at all. Her blue-green eyes seem coated with a kind of glaze. She holds out her arms like a blind woman begging for alms.
There’s a buzzing in my ears. People are openmouthed, their faces twisted like gargoyles. Others are so drunk they won’t remember this tomorrow or they’ll wonder if it was just a hazy dream, until someone sober tells them that it’s true. The decay of this night seems to have accelerated with a frightening swiftness.
I glance at the place where Allegreza was sitting, but she has vanished.
The lodge, which earlier felt like a palace, now feels like a cage. I must do something. This is my fault. Allegreza and the Segreta, they have killed Raffaello. I’m sure of it. Raffaello, with all his power in the Grand Council—that male power, which the wild, jealous women of the Segreta spoke of. I saw him galloping off earlier today, and then we saw him coming back,
invincible and triumphant, and surely unassailable by any weakness or illness. It makes cold, terrifying sense to me. When she was trying to warn me, Carina bad-mouthed the Society right in front of Allegreza. Their faces, I see them still, masked and flickering in the firelight, talking about how much they disapproved of the rising of men’s status, and the wielding of men’s power, and the vanity of men’s ambition.
As the body is carried from the room, I elbow my way towards Carina.
“Move back, please. The contessa needs some space.” Amazingly, the crowd obeys me. “Carina,” I say. “Come with me.”
She takes my hand and her fingers feel hot around mine. She looks at me, a network of tiny veins in the whites of her eyes. Her face is smeared with tears, and the more I think that I’ve had a part in her horrifying predicament, the tighter I clasp her hand.
“Come,” I repeat. “Over here.”
It’s like I’m leading her through a dark forest. Some of the faces leer and pry. And even though others are kind, everybody wants to glimpse the impact of the tragedy on her face. They gather up the drama as if someone has tossed gold coins out into the crowd.
My father sits at the center of a cluster of men. They are hunched like vultures, already engaged in some debate about what all this means for the redistribution of power.
I take my friend into a room where only a single candle burns and sit her on the couch. Carina, normally so self-assured, starts to sob.
“It must have been his heart. Are the doctors here? I must see him again. Take me back to him.”
She tries to pull away, but I hold her firmly. For a second, I see myself holding the Doge that day in the convent. Carina’s mouth opens in a similar kind of twisted, tearless grimace, and she puts her hands in the air, curling her pretty fingers into rigid bent claws. I persuade her that she doesn’t really want to go back. I manage to coax her to lie down, and I loosen the bodice of her dress.
I can sense someone standing silently beside me. “Do you have a fan?” I ask.
The figure hands one to me. It’s black with gold roses etched upon it.