Caterina, where do I start? If I wish and wish, will you appear here in Venice, be sitting in your loggia where I can find you? Walk with me in the garden, have a water fight by the well, like when we were girls?
But no! I will never forgive your father for sending you away to that convent. Or, my mother. It was her meddling that started it all, I’m sure. And now, look where we are. Me in Venice, and you, alone in the lagoon.
Cousin, shall I tell you first about Giorgio? To understand it, you have to know that before anything that happened—what he did—I had been visiting the stables regularly to see the old mare, Farfalle. Stefano—you remember him, the handsome farrier—taught me how to brush and comb her, how to fold a cotton cloth around her body, even how to girt on a saddle. Whenever we sensed everyone was asleep for the afternoon, I would ride her around a back paddock. She was no great galloper, and I no great rider. It was a perfect match.
One time even, Stefano accompanied me as far as a fishing pond fed by a spring. While Farfalle drank her fill, we soaked our bare feet in the icy water . . . oh, Caterina, I have never been happier than I was on that day. I learned Stefano lives near the villa on a small farm with his grandmother and mother. His father died two years ago—an event very sad for him still. He is an only child, as I am: an adored, only son. No wonder so much joy shines on his face. I think it comes from being so sure you are loved, each day of your life.
But we both knew fall was coming. The air grew chill, the green leaves were turning brown. Soon, I would be returning home to Venice. My father was busy maneuvering to finalize the marriage agreement with Signor Contarini: how much dowry I would bring, when it would be delivered.
“I do not like Giorgio Contarini,” I dared one time to tell him. He sat at the writing desk in his bedroom at the villa, drafting the official request to the Avogari to approve the marriage between our families. “Please—let us find someone else for me to marry. I am in no hurry.”
“It will get better,” he assured me. “You are focusing on what is now, not what will be, Zulietta.”
“What will be?” I echoed, incredulous. “What will be is what is. Giorgio is an overgrown child. And worse, he is cruel.”
My father kept writing and waved me out. He was blinded by the prestige the marriage offered, and would not hear me. I suppose I should be grateful he is not a hothead like your father, did not lose his temper or threaten me, but the result was the same: My fate was sealed.
All through the summer, the Contarini entertained lavishly and new guests were always arriving at the villa. The last week of September, four Greek spice merchants, on their way from Venice to Crete, came to stay. Finding themselves with little to do—the weather was poor, days of rain—they began a game of practical jokes. They stole spectacles and canes from the old people, or had the cook prepare food that caused whoever ate it to fart constantly. The leader was Signor Demitrio. He was amusing, but I thought from the beginning he had the glimmer of the devil in his eyes.
When the weather cleared one afternoon, Signor Demitrio invited us—Giorgio and me—for a walk in the wilder part of the villa grounds.
“There is an unusual bridge I have found there,” he said to Giorgio. “But I am afraid to go over. Can you—noble, and brave—lead us to the other side?”
Giorgio gulped at this bait.
We set out on soggy paths through the wild, wooded grounds. Within the hour we reached the bridge, which was no more than a plank spanning a muddy ditch. Giorgio ran ahead, eager to cross it. But when he reached the middle, it snapped. He was thrown into the mud almost up to his neck. Even his blond hair was caked with mud. It was awful, but I admit it was funny. Screaming, he looked like an enraged tomato. The farmhands, including Stefano, had to be fetched to pull him out of the slop.
That night, Giorgio refused to come down and eat, which was surprising. You see, it was part of the game that no one was expected to stay angry. The point is to show you are a gentleman, and laugh it all off.
The next morning, Giorgio appeared at breakfast looking pale and mumbling and giggling to himself. Signor Demitrio did not come down, and also did not appear later at pranzo. Giorgio’s mother went upstairs to check on him. When there was no response at his door, she peered in and saw that Signor Demitrio was still in bed. He was shaking with spasms and unable to speak. She immediately sent for a physician to bleed him.
When the physician arrived, I accompanied him upstairs. As soon as we entered the room, I gagged at the smell—like metal, and putrid. The physician pulled the sheets down from around the sick man. And there, lying next to him in the bed, was the sawed off arm of a man. Caterina! Such a sight I hope you never see. A blackened, bloody limb, jaggedly cut at the edge. I turned away to vomit, though miraculously, I held steady. Signora Contarini fainted and had to be revived.
This is what we learned: Giorgio had gone to the church graveyard during the night, and dug up a recently buried corpse. He sliced off the arm, and put it into Signor Demitrio’s bed in revenge for the prank that had been played on him. Signor Demitrio must have gone into a state of shock when he found it, and did not even have the presence of mind to remove it. Who knows when the poor man will regain his sanity after such a fright? A priest had to be fetched to re-bury the arm.
“Do you see now?” I asked my father. “Do you see now who Giorgio Contarini really is?”
“I do,” he conceded, stricken. “I thought—Zulietta—I had thought it was a good match for you, the very best . . .”
“I know you did,” I comforted him, sensing my time had come. “But now . . . ?”
“Now we are done,” he announced. “We will leave today.”
Deliverance! But I panicked—Farfalle? What to do. Would she be safe in this place where a madman lived? Should I take her with me, as I had been ordered to do by Giorgio, after all?
I ran to the stables. I found Stefano in the lower barn. He had heard the commotion, had seen the physician and priest arrive, but did not know what had happened.
“Giorgio—in revenge—he put a severed arm in the bed of Signor Demitrio,” I explained. “Because of this, I must go.”
“Of course,” Stefano said, his jaw tightening. He lifted an empty bucket off the floor, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Do you think . . . you will ever be back?”
“Well . . . no,” I said. “My reason to be here was Giorgio, and now I wish never to see him again.”
We stared at each other sadly. In that moment I realized that while I had come to the villa to get to know Giorgio, in meeting Stefano I had found a true friend. I reached out my hand to touch his. He took it and brought it to his lips. Before I knew what I was doing, I moved in and kissed him on the mouth. His sweet, now smiling, delicious mouth.
By God! What had I done? I pulled away.
“My father will be looking for me,” I stammered. “Do you—shall I take Farfalle? Do you think she will be safe here?”
Stefano—who by this point was blushing from ear to ear—turned to pat Farfalle’s muscled neck. She nuzzled him. These two were clearly inseparable.
“Do not worry,” he assured me. “I will ride her to my own farm tonight. With everything that has happened, the Contarini will not notice she is gone.”
“Grazie, Stefano,” I said. I kissed Farfalle on her forelock just above her eyes, so trusting and bright. “I love you, old girl,” I told her, my eyes beginning to fill with tears.
I turned to Stefano, standing very near me. I leaned to whisper in his ear. “And I think I may love you, too.”
I folded the thick letter, pages and pages of Zulietta’s neat, small handwriting. I had read and reread it right through supper—but I had little appetite these days, anyway.
At first, I was mostly stunned by the news it contained. Stunned at Giorgio’s crime—it surely was a crime against God and the Church, to defile a corpse like that—and stunned, too, that my rule-following cousin had broken so many rules. Had spoken up to her f
ather. Had kissed a low-born man.
Then, I began to smile and laugh, feeling a crazy sense of elation. Because I was so happy Giorgio Contarini was gone from her life. And happy for Zulietta—happy even in my own imprisonment—she was free.
CHAPTER 62
Venice, 1774
The day faded around Caterina and Leda with soft light. The shutters in the main room were now fully opened, and the last slanted rays settled on an interior door painted pale blue with gold shell-shaped designs.
“So—” said Leda with a marveling smile, “the father of Zulietta’s children is not Giorgio Contarini, after all!”
“No,” said Caterina. Her throat was dry from talking for the last several hours.
“She didn’t—she couldn’t marry Stefano, the farrier—did she?” Leda asked, beginning to giggle. “That would mean she started off with a nobleman and ended up in the stable!”
“Another time,” said Caterina, standing and stretching. She felt stiff from sitting for so long. “Shall we take a walk and get some sorbet?”
“Certainly,” said Leda, always eager to eat. But for Caterina, the sorbet was mostly an excuse to end her story. She felt uncomfortably close to the next part. She wanted to forget.
Leda pulled her big body upright using the arms of the chair. Caterina grabbed a shawl for her in case it had gotten cool. She neglected to bring one for herself.
The late afternoon streets were chilly with shadows. Caterina soon regretted forgetting her own shawl. She wrapped her arms around herself and felt her body tensing as the minutes passed. Leda cast a glance at her, and draped the one shawl over both of their shoulders.
Caterina relaxed into the warmth of their two bodies together. Leda pulled her in close.
* * *
They decided to walk all the way to Campo dei Frari, where the best sorbet was sold in paper cones from a cart. The walk had the rhythm of Venice: Narrow, dark streets led into bright open courtyards, then back down narrow streets. The last, late pools of light in the courtyards felt to Caterina like God’s love—warm, then somehow, gone.
They bought their sorbet—blood orange for Caterina, lemon for Leda—and headed back along a different route, slurping contentedly. Leda fell behind a few steps as she drank the last of her melted ice from the bottom of the cone.
“Come here, cara,” Caterina called back. She turned to face the wall of a yellow ochre–painted building. “I want to show you a shrine.”
“I’ve seen enough shrines,” Leda said. “There must be a thousand in this city.”
“Come see this one,” Caterina persisted. “It is different.”
Leda approached reluctantly.
Caterina pointed out a small fresco of the Virgin, set inside a rectangular stone frame. Flowers and messages had been left on the shelf below the faded picture. There was nothing like it anywhere in the city. Christ’s mother was painted almost naked, except for a simple cloth over her shoulders. She sat directly on an uneven bank by a brook. Trees and shrubs behind her looked windblown, as if a storm was coming. In the midst of this scene, she nursed her baby. Most strangely, she looked directly at her viewers, as if just interrupted.
“My God,” said Leda. “She is—so exposed!”
“I know,” said Caterina. “Just a mother and her baby. It is the most revered shrine in Venice for this reason. Every expectant mother comes here to make her offerings.”
“Who painted it?” asked Leda, studying it again.
“It is a mystery. Every few years someone repaints it, so at this point no one knows when the painting was born or if it will ever die.”
“You say that as if the painting is alive,” Leda noted.
“True.” Caterina laughed. She admired Leda’s perceptiveness—the girl was smarter than she had seemed months ago when they had first met. “In some ways the painting is alive. It is as if the Virgin looks up at each visitor and asks, Who are you and why have you come?”
“And your answer would be . . . ?”
“Oh—I don’t know,” Caterina said, beginning to feel uneasy. Who was she, after all? All her schemes. Her lies. Her desperation.
Leda regarded her closely, until Caterina felt considered to her soul. “Bene,” the girl finally said. “Maybe one day, we’ll know.”
“Perhaps . . . one day.” Caterina turned away from the mysterious picture. “Come—” she said, holding out a hand to Leda. “It’s getting dark and my whole body is cold from that sorbet!”
Caterina and Leda grasped chilled hands. The wind picked up. Leda draped the shawl around them again, tight as a cocoon.
“I want to know what you meant,” Leda whispered, “when you said you would have to take matters into your own hands.”
Caterina shivered. Then she began to speak again, quiet as a secret.
CHAPTER 63
Murano, 1753
Where else did I have to turn, when I wanted to seem like an angel but act as clever as the devil? Do the lowest thing I’d ever contemplated in my life?
I sent word to my brother to come see me at the convent.
“There she is!” he called out with mock cheerfulness when, a few days later, I greeted him in the visiting parlor. I let him kiss my cheeks through the iron bars. “Mama was right. You look awful, Caterina.”
“Thank you. You do, too,” I retorted. It was true. Though it was midafternoon, Pier Antonio’s face was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot. He smelled like bad wine and long nights spent praying for his luck to change. But the nuns and other boarders didn’t seem to mind. He was a man under fifty at the convent, and that was good enough. They cast glances at him and giggled inside the nearby caged windows. Pier Antonio started immediately winking and blowing kisses at his admirers.
“Stop it!” I snapped at him. “The abbess will be over here in no time, and that will be the end of this visit or any other!” The abbess was actually nowhere around, but the sight of my brother flirting filled me with fury. I had called him out to the convent to help me, not suffer the humiliation of watching him make the place his hunting ground.
He reluctantly brought his gaze back to me.
“Your message said you needed some help?”
“Yes, I do. You see—”
“You admit that when I needed help in prison you were hardly my angel of mercy. You sent a few of my things, but otherwise—”
“What else could I have done?” I cried in a high voice. A few other visitors turned to look at me. I caught myself.
“Let’s not revisit the past, Pier Antonio,” I said, more softly. “There is no point. I asked you to come out here because I need a favor. Something . . . only you can do for me.”
“A favor?” He raised a brow and smirked at me. “Let me guess. You want me to deliver a letter to Venice. No—wait. You have a servant to do that. You want me to bring Giacomo Casanova to you? Shall I dress him as a priest? Have him meet you by the altar?”
He laughed. “Come on—that is funny. Have you forgotten how to enjoy yourself in this place? Love is all a game, Caterina.”
“Exactly. That is why I need your help.” I brought my mouth close to the bars. “I need you to hire a spy for me.”
“What?” His bloodshot eyes sprang awake.
“Yes. A spy. To follow Giacomo. I think—I—I know for sure he is having an affair.”
“If you know for sure, what more is there to learn from a spy?” He chewed on his fingernail. The skin around it was raw from the habit.
Actually, his point was a good one. Smarter than I usually gave him credit for.
“I know the fact of the affair, but not much else about it,” I explained. “Is he consumed by her, or is it just a distraction? You see”—it felt hard to confess, knowing Pier Antonio might laugh at me—“Giacomo and I are secretly married.”
Pier Antonio grinned at the news. Yes, it was all a good joke to him. But he managed to stop when he saw I was not smiling. His eyes softened, and I felt a tiny wave of his love fo
r me.
“Bene,” he said. “I will help you.” He gestured for me to lean in more. “I know the perfect spy. He is a Grimani, but his family has no money. He will want the job.”
I felt some panic rise at the mention of a real man, a real spy. Not just a fantasy anymore, living in my fevered mind.
“Is he the sort of person who can keep a secret?” I asked, needing reassurance from—of all people—my brother. “Giacomo must never know what I am doing!” I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. Did I have the stomach for this?
My brother reached through the bars and pulled my hands from my eyes.
“Trust me,” he said, gripping my wrists. “Casanova will never suspect a thing.”
CHAPTER 64
“Did you bring the spy’s report?” I asked my brother when, just a week later, I met him in the visiting parlor. I knew he had not come out to the convent so soon simply because he missed me.
“I did.” He patted the pocket of his breeches. “But it will cost you.”
“Of course.” I reached a hand into my own pocket beneath my skirts. “How much?”
“Ten zecchini.”
“What?” That was going to take just about all of the money I had left. Money that Giacomo had given me. My mind went again to that last night in Campiello Barbaro. My body hoisted against our garden wall. Our hearts beating against each other, our love and our desperation. A wave of desire stirred in me right there in the convent visiting parlor. I would do anything—pay anything—to feel that way again.
“Keep in mind,” my brother went on, “Signor Grimani has to pay for the information he gets for you. Do you think servants who know secrets simply talk for nothing?”
“And he has to pay you, too, I’m sure.” It was all adding up for me. I noticed my brother’s chin and cheeks bristled with stubble, and his eyes shone. He was probably drunk.
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