Cross My Heart

by Sasha Gould

  He works in silence while I hunt around for something to say that will restore the easy feeling between us. I’m relieved when he finally shakes his head at me, pretending to scold.

  “Stop moving about so much,” he says with a grin. “I can’t paint you unless you’re still.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  And this whole time I feel the quickening thump of my heart as if it’s trying to escape from my body. I hope he doesn’t notice. It would be a hard thing to explain.

  I’ve no idea how much time has passed. But the sun has moved across the window, and it must be getting late. Faustina wakes up with a snort. She sits upright like a puppet whose strings have been pulled, looking dazed.

  “How long have I been asleep?” she asks dozily, and I tell her it’s probably been hours. She’s horrified and tells me off for not waking her, then scuttles away to find Bianca.

  Giacomo starts to gather his materials. He cleans the brushes and wraps them in a graying cloth. He fastens the lids on the pots of paint he’s been using, then loads them into his basket.

  “Is it finished?” I ask him.

  “You’re a demanding client,” he laughs. “I couldn’t capture that face in a single sitting.”

  “That means you’ll have to come back again.”

  “Yes, it does,” he says. “Do you mind?”

  I shake my head. I wouldn’t mind if he came back a hundred times, and a hundred times after that. I’m trying not to smile, but there seems to be no controlling this wayward face of mine.

  “May I see it?” I ask.

  “Not until it’s finished. It’s bad luck.”

  “I’m not superstitious,” I say. “Please?”

  He wipes his hands on a stained cloth. “If you want to look, then I don’t imagine I, or anybody else, would be able to stop you. Now, I’d better go and clean up.” He excuses himself and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

  I stand stiffly. The other side of the canvas draws me like a powerful hand, so much that I can’t resist. I gather myself and then I walk around.

  Pink and pale, I’m transparent, like a ghost or a shadow passing a window. But already the portrait has taken shape, and an image is starting to emerge. In Giacomo’s picture I’m strong and upright.

  On the low table beside the easel is a big black leather satchel with the flap open. Visible inside it are stacks of papers and the lines of other drawings. Something draws me to it and makes me want to look, even though it’s an intrusion. Carefully, I pull out a handful and leaf through. Talent resides in every one of them. The perfectly executed arches of churches, the curves of fruit and pottery, the shapes of faces, bodies, arms and legs.

  Three sheaves slide out, floating down onto the floor. I crouch quickly, my mother’s shell-pink dress rising around me as I rush to recover them. I turn over the first. It’s a sketch of a woman’s body—just a detail from her chin to her waist. She’s lying on a couch with one arm above her head. She wears a peasant’s dress, and something about the picture feels very intimate. Who is this girl to him? Who is he to her? The modesty that I learned in the convent makes me blush, though no one is here to see my shame.

  The second picture shows the same model, though in this she leans over a desk, holding a quill as she writes a letter. Her long brown hair falls over her face, but there’s something familiar about her pose. It reminds me of myself in the convent, when I used to write my letters to Beatrice.

  I hear Giacomo’s footsteps, soft scuffs against the marble. He’s whistling happily as he approaches. Panic shoots through me. What will he think when he sees me crouched on the floor, going through his pictures? I should never have looked! I scoop up the sheaves of parchment, but as I pack them back into the satchel, Giacomo enters the room. I can’t stop myself from trembling. The words of apology are already forming on my lips when the third picture slides from my grasp and floats to the floor. It shows the same girl—but this time her face looks defiantly into my own.

  A constricted little wail escapes my lips.

  “What’s the matter?” asks Giacomo. His smile vanishes.

  I hold out the picture to him with a trembling hand. I want it taken from me. But I can’t let it go.

  It’s a picture of Beatrice.

  I slowly put the picture on the table between us and step back. I cling to the sides of my dress, crushing the material between my fists. “How is it that you have drawings of my sister in your portfolio?”

  “I can explain—”

  “Her bodice is unfastened!”

  The truth stabs through me. I’m sure it was him—that Giacomo was the man my sister went to see the night she died. The pictures, so full of sensuality and longing, leave me little doubt. Giacomo and Beatrice were lovers.

  I take a couple more backwards steps, moving closer to the door.

  “Laura, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “Tell me what?” I say. My voice sounds high and loud.

  “That I knew your sister.”

  “What possible reason was there not to tell me something as important as that?” My teeth are clamped together. “Why would you keep it a secret? Why would anyone? Unless they had something to hide.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Like what?”

  He looks nervously at the door. Has he just been playing with me—the lingering looks and the lovely things he’s said?

  “Laura, please …”

  “Oh yes, of course. Little Laura, fresh from the convent, naive about everything. That’s what people think. Well, I’m not stupid. I know that my father was right. There are no friends in Venice.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s not true.” He walks closer to me and tries to take my hand.

  I snatch my fingers away and run out of the room, across the hall, through the front gates. I keep running along the banks of the slick black canal. The wind strengthens and it’s starting to rain. The drops on my skin are like tiny knives.

  I travel all the way to St. Mark’s on foot, crossing the Rialto and other tiny bridges, and threading narrow alleys. I rush inside. I don’t know why I’ve been drawn here. I kneel at the back of the pews and put my face in my hands. Rainwater drips from the ends of my hair, and a little pool of it collects on the floor. Jesus’s broken body, betrayed and bleeding, hangs before me.

  God, please show me someone I can trust.

  I’m ashamed when I remember how far I thought I had come—what a sophisticated lady of the city I thought I had grown into.

  There’s a poor man hunched a couple of rows ahead of me, clacking his rosary beads. A woman lights candles in Our Lady’s chapel. Two shadowy people flit around, stopping at the Stations of the Cross. Nobody comes near me. I’m like La Lunatica from the convent, who used to rock to and fro, alone in her cell.

  I remain on my knees, offering rambling prayers, until my skin seems to register my cold damp clothes at last, and I shiver. I don’t know if God will answer any of my entreaties, but being here in the dark soothes me. I breathe deeply and realize that perhaps I’ve found a serenity of sorts.

  I stand, holding on to the back of the pew in front of me. I wipe my face with a handkerchief that I’ve found in the pocket of my mother’s dress. I breathe it in, hoping for a lingering smell of her, but there are no vestiges of Gabriela della Scala in that little square of cloth.

  Just as I’m ready to go back out into the world, the door of the cathedral creaks open, and a black-hooded woman enters. She stands upright, with her head up high, and carries a bouquet of flowers in her arms as tenderly as if it were a baby. She genuflects towards the altar, then walks up to the tombs of Carlo and Roberto. It seems like a lifetime since Paulina and I stood in front of them, considering the story of the feuding families and their terrible end. The woman kneels down in front of Carlo’s tomb, pulls her hood off her head to reveal flashes of silver hair.

  It’s Grazia—Carlo and Carina’s mother.

  There’s someth
ing mesmerizing about the way she polishes the gilded edges of her son’s tomb and arranges the great armful of roses at its base. She kneels, her hands clasped and her head bowed. It’s wrong to be watching her grief like this. I should leave.

  But the door has swung open again. A woman hurries in, shaking raindrops from her long yellow cape. Anger rises in my chest—it’s the prostitute who wore my sister’s ring. Her brown eyes flicker around the cathedral, then rest on Grazia. She moves towards her.

  I follow, staying behind the pillars so I’m hidden from view. I wonder if Grazia is in danger. The prostitute glides down and kneels beside Carina’s mother, so close to her that their shoulders are almost touching.

  Grazia turns to the other woman, and from her slow movements, it’s clear that she’s not alarmed. She takes the woman’s shoulders and kisses her on both cheeks. They know each other. But what is this woman of ill repute to Grazia de Ferrara? Carina’s mother reaches into her black cloak and pulls out a stringed purse. The prostitute takes it with the hand that still wears my sister’s ring; I see it glitter in the candlelight.

  My thoughts approach a dark threshold of understanding; God has led me to the truth, so all I have to do is to reach out and grab it. Grazia is a member of the Segreta; this woman has Beatrice’s ring. I know now that I am looking at Beatrice’s murderer. Or one of them, at least. What better intermediary to use, in hiring a killer, than a woman of the streets? Is Grazia only now paying off this woman for the deadly services, or is this fee for some other vicious act she’s committed on behalf of the Sisterhood?

  Without offering prayers of her own, the prostitute stands and quickly leaves the cathedral through a side door. I hurry after her.

  The rain has stopped, but there are still huge sheets of water on the ground. Merchants, beggars and nobles go about their business, some glancing in my direction as I run. I catch up with the woman when she’s almost in the very center of St. Mark’s Square, and I grab her shoulder and spin her around. I remember her struggles last time and hold her firmly by the arms.

  She shrugs and wriggles to disentangle herself from me. “You,” she says. “Take your hands off me!”

  “Who are you?” I ask. “What did you do to my sister?”

  She tries to pull free her arm, but I twist her wrist with a strength I didn’t know I had. She gasps. “I’m Bella Donna, and I know nothing of your sister, I swear.”

  “Then tell me how you’re wearing her ring!” I hiss, holding her hand up between us.

  A wave of sunlight has broken through the clouds drifting over the square, and the vast puddles glint on the ground. Thin blankets of steam rise around the square. An old man watches us beneath a dripping porch.

  “How dare you!” screeches the woman.

  “Tell me!”

  She stops fighting, but fire burns in her eyes. “This ring was a gift. Now will you let me go?”

  Her tone is so straightforward that I loosen my grip. She scurries off between two covered stalls. I run into the lane after her, splashing through puddles and across a wooden bridge. Her feet slap the ground as she barges past two mystified gentlewomen, who frown and tut as she passes. “Watch where you’re going!” one says to her, but I doubt she hears.

  I can’t keep up. When I round the next corner, the alley splits into three. I follow one with hurried steps, but it’s clear that either I’ve chosen the wrong turn, or she’s quicker than the wind.

  At last I know who’s behind Beatrice’s death—and I’ve lost her.

  As I walk home, I stumble across a tiny piazza that I’ve never seen before. It’s empty. The shutters of the buildings that loom on each side are closed, and an unexpected silence helps me to calm my beating heart. I sit in the middle, on a bench of stone, and try to stop the world from swimming in front of me. Small streets lead away in many directions. Shadows fall. Footsteps echo. I watch the raindrops cling to my mother’s sodden dress.

  I’m sick at heart. The Segreta tried to make me feel grateful and obliged for their banishing Vincenzo. Raffaello is dead because of the powers that are controlling me—the same powers, I’m sure, that killed my sister. I’m glad that I haven’t followed Allegreza’s orders and recruited someone for the Society now. I refuse to lure some poor trusting soul the same way I’ve been ensnared.

  I’m sick too of being dressed up and primped and powdered, to attract some rich man who’ll solve my father’s financial woes. And to add to all of this, Giacomo’s betrayal … How could he keep such a secret from me? Even when I held the proof in my hands, still he showed no shame.

  His words seemed like magic things to me. I could nearly taste them, like sips of wine. But they were lies, masquerading in the honeyed lilt of the boy I thought I might be falling for.

  Oh, Beatrice, I think. Did he treat you like this too?

  Annalena once said that we have more power than we know, inside our own hearts. I wonder if she’s right. I need such power now.

  It’s nearly dark when I get home. Giacomo and the half-finished canvas have gone. I’ll be happy never to set eyes on him again. I dash up into my room, leaving a damp snail’s trail across the marble floor, and peel off my sodden clothes. I rub my hair dry and dab myself with perfume to disguise the musky smell of Venetian rain that seems to seep from every pore.

  Faustina is at the door. “Thanks be to God,” she says. “Laura, you promised you wouldn’t disappear like this! I was sure we would have to search the streets for you. The painter almost convinced me to start, but …” She wrings her hands. “Oh, Laura, where did you go? And your dress!”

  “I just needed to be on my own, that’s all.”

  She takes my hands. “Darling, you’re freezing.” She takes a woolen shawl and puts it round my shoulders. “Carina sent a message,” she adds. “She asked if she might call here tomorrow afternoon. I told her of course.”

  I plead a cold to avoid dinner with my father. There’s much I have to tell him, about Beatrice and Allegreza, but I need to steel myself for the conversation first. I only hope I can make him understand what the women of the Segreta are capable of. Each time I think of my confession, I hear Allegreza’s low tones. Breathe one word of the Segreta to anyone—and your life will be forfeit. Each time I close my eyes, I see the masks crowding around.

  Sleep comes more easily than I expect, and I doze well into the morning. My head is clear. I’ll talk with my father now. He won’t be able to ignore what I tell him about Beatrice’s final hours. And if I stay within these walls, no one, not even the Segreta, can touch me.

  Faustina hears me stirring and comes to help me dress.

  “I wish I could sleep as you do,” she says, tugging my green gown over my shoulders. “But alas, I barely manage a fitful slumber.”

  I remember her snores while Giacomo was painting, and would smile if it weren’t for the memory of what followed.

  I ask her my father’s whereabouts and she says he’s in his library.

  “Come with me,” I say. “We need to talk to him.”

  “What do you mean, child?” she asks, trailing in my wake.

  I don’t answer; she could barely bring herself to describe Beatrice’s death to me, and I don’t want her to run away. If she’s present when I lay out the story before my father, I can appeal for her corroboration. I try to formulate my words. Father, Beatrice was murdered. Or, Father, I must tell you a dreadful thing. Sit down.

  I knock and my father calls me inside. He’s already sitting in the ancient leather chair where my mother used to read me stories. Faustina wrings her hands beside me, as though she’s sensed that some extra duty will shortly befall her.

  “Father—” I begin.

  A cough by the window catches me. A woman stands there, her silver-streaked hair reflecting the morning light.

  Allegreza.

  “Ah, here she is,” chuckles my father. “Just the person we wanted to talk to.”

  I bow my head a little and make a cautious curtsy in Allegr
eza’s direction. What’s she doing here? Has she heard already about my pursuit of Bella Donna through the rain-soaked square?

  “How nice to see you, Signora,” I say politely, though I wonder if she hears the wariness in my voice.

  “Likewise.” Allegreza smiles. “There is a recital this afternoon, in honor of Nicolo and Paulina’s impending marriage. I was just asking your father if you’d like to accompany me to it. I have seen that you and Paulina are close friends.”

  My father darts me one of his expectant glances. I think quickly.

  “You’re very kind to think of me, but I’m afraid I’m expecting a visitor this afternoon—Carina. I haven’t seen her since her husband’s death. I don’t want to be out when she calls.”

  My father sits up in his chair. “Nonsense, Laura. This recital starts in an hour. You’ll be back in plenty of time.” He turns to Allegreza. “Won’t she?”

  “It’s up to her whether she wants to come or not. I wouldn’t like to compel anyone,” Allegreza replies. The line of her jaw tightens.

  “Well.” My father speaks with a heavy, deliberate tone. “I know that my daughter shares my view that attending such a wonderful event would be a privilege. Isn’t that right, Laura?”

  I see Faustina shoot me a troubled glance; she senses my reluctance. But the combined force is too much. Calma, I tell myself. Bide your time. Don’t give yourself away. “Yes, of course, Father. How silly of me. I would be pleased to join you, Signora di Rocco.”

  I thought the sun was going to come out, but when we leave my father’s house great swathes of cloud lurk in the sky. Allegreza holds out her arm and reluctantly I slip my hand inside it.

  “Where is the recital taking place?” I ask.

  “Wait and see.”

  We walk together in silence, snaking through the city along corridors of stone. I wish I had requested that Faustina or Bianca join us, but I expect Allegreza would’ve had a clever answer to that too. At each corner, my skin prickles with fear as I imagine Bella Donna leaping towards me. I try to think rationally. Surely Allegreza would not have come to collect me in person from my father if she intended that I never return?