Votive

by Karen Brooks

  Surely these journals that kept him here, as much against his will as Pillar, could not be that important? I would know.

  I reached out to touch the chair upon which a shirt was draped. I rubbed the material between my fingers and opened myself to what I found.

  Emotions flowed into me; sometimes they were accompanied by images. I moved around the room, running my hands over every surface, feeling the man who owned these things, understanding him in a way that had been denied me.

  It did not stop there. Emboldened by my new awareness and knowledge, I left the workshop and ascended to the piano nobile. As I passed the objects in the corridor, I touched them. I didn’t care anymore who saw me. The servants who did ignored me, believing me lost in reflection or suffering ennui. I extracted and, before I could stop myself, distilled a little of something back into them. Tapestries, chairs, mirrors, paintings, nothing was spared. Sensations warred inside me. Feelings such as I’d never known – jealousy, craven lust, deception – it was all there, carved deep into the fabric of the casa itself. But there was also love, hate, loathing and lies – dreadful, terrible lies.

  I moved along faster now, my breathing heavy. I had to stop. This was too much, too great for me to bear. Outside Giaconda’s door, I hesitated. Just one tiny extraction, one little insight into the woman who hovered over my life like an avenging angel. I slowly reached out and then touched the door handle.

  I staggered and fell into the chair against the wall.

  ‘Who is there?’ called Giaconda. ‘Hafeza?’

  I was panting now. The shock of my discovery almost undid me. I whirled to my feet and ran down the passage. I reached my door and wrenched it open and ran inside, straight into Hafeza, almost knocking her off her feet. I threw my arms out to steady her, not realising that I was still extracting. It was only when I saw the horror spreading across Hafeza’s face, saw the way her eyes were locked onto mine, that I knew what I was doing. But by then it was too late. I could not stop.

  Standing in the middle of my room, I held Hafeza in the thrall of my gaze, my touch, and after all these months of anger and distrust, I came to know her.

  Taken from her family just as she was reaching womanhood, she had been locked in the hold of a ship, chained to other children, other women. Beaten, starved, thirsty and tired, she’d been too afraid to speak. She worried about her mother, her sisters, her father, the young man who had just begun to court her. I felt the passage of time – it did not lessen her loss; that only intensified.

  Next she was on a platform, a skinny, frail girl with black skin, stripped for all to see. Others were beside her, trying to hide their nakedness, protect what little of their dignity remained. Below them, men jostled and fought to get closer; their hands flew up, their gaping mouths shrieked. It was all babble to Hafeza. She did not understand. She didn’t know what they wanted, that they were bartering for her.

  Then she was here, in Casa Maleovelli. A fat old woman with red hands washed her. She cried then, not from the cloth that, ignoring her wounds, roughly broke the scabs away and made her bleed, but because she knew she would never get her former life back. The big woman scrubbed her hair and then cut it coarsely, with a knife. She tugged and pulled, oblivious to Hafeza’s protests.

  Hafeza pleaded. I heard words even though I did not understand exactly what they meant. My heart seized. Hafeza could talk! She was not born mute as I had believed. I held her tighter, searching, probing, what had happened to her? I could not let her go.

  Another woman came towards Hafeza followed by a beautiful little girl. The girl had long dark hair, green eyes and olive skin. She looked like the woman leading her into the room, her mother. Only I saw calculation in this young one’s eyes that made that of her mother’s seem harmless. Hafeza saw it too and cringed. Even so, she was unprepared when the child handed her mother a long, shiny knife.

  The pain of having her tongue cut out gradually faded along with Hafeza’s hope. She came to understand these people whom she now worked for and what they required of her. They didn’t need to remove her tongue – she would have been quiet, she would have kept any secret. And that was how I found out that she’d never revealed mine that night in the portego – the night I spied on the Maleovellis as they dined with the Moronisinis. Hafeza would never, never tell, especially not the dreadful secret about Giaconda and Signor Maleovelli, the one that I now knew we shared.

  A noise of sheer despair finally broke my concentration. It was Hafeza. Her mouth was contorted in a rictus and I could see the stump of her tongue flapping in her mouth. Dismayed that I could cause such pain, such alarm, I stopped extracting and began to distil, quickly, using all my power. I wanted to hasten forgetfulness, allow this dear, sweet woman I had judged so wrongly the panacea of oblivion.

  ‘No! No!’

  It took me a moment to realise the sounds came from Hafeza. I was so stunned to hear her voice, I dropped my guard. With a forceful shove, she separated us. She scrambled to her feet and stood panting, her hand on her chest, her eyes wide as they stared at me.

  ‘Hafeza.’ I held my arms out. She threw up her own to stop me. ‘Mi dispiace,’ I said, my voice hollow. ‘How can you ever forgive me?’ I took in her tortured face, at the memories I’d brought to the surface caused by a lifetime of servitude to those who had brutalised her. The lines were heavy, the sadness etched all over her ageing mien. ‘Oh God,’ I said, and sank back to my knees, my head dropping into my hands. ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’

  A gentle pressure on my head caused me to look up. Hafeza was stroking my hair. ‘Don’t touch me!’ I cried. But she ignored me and, picking up my hands, clasped them in her own aged, dry ones and held them over her heart. She knelt and gave me a tremulous smile. I inhaled deeply before shakily returning it.

  ‘Forgive me, Hafeza. I should never have doubted you.’

  She placed a finger against my lips, and instead released my hands and opened her arms. I fell into them. In that instance, I opened myself to Hafeza. Just as I had discovered aspects of her I did not know existed, I allowed her to see inside me as well. For the first time since Dante, I gave of myself in a way I never had before – my hopes, my secrets, my dashed dreams.

  I began to cry – quiet, deep sobs that tore at my chest and spilled into Hafeza’s. Tears rolled down her cheeks as we comforted each other, sharing an awareness of what we once were and what, under the Maleovellis, we’d allowed ourselves to become.

  WITH THE MALEOVELLIS AND TARLO GONE, the casa was suddenly quiet. Servants had retired to their dining area downstairs, Jacopo was locked in his study, and at last Hafeza was able to attend to the disruption the preparation of her two charges had caused.

  Folding Tarlo’s undergarments, Hafeza found herself thinking over what had happened this morning – what the little Estrattore had done. With a soft smile, Hafeza stroked the delicate fabric of her camicia before stowing it away. It reminded her of Tarlo – fragile and yet with an inner strength that only a fool would underestimate. She knew that now. Did the Maleovellis, she wondered? They must, she thought, otherwise they would not be intending to kill her.

  With a heartfelt sigh, Hafeza blew out the candles around the room. She stood in the semi-darkness, in front of the fire, staring into the flames. There was so much to do before Giaconda and Tarlo came home, and yet she found she could not attend to her duties just yet.

  She’d known that Tarlo had not had an easy life; one had only to remember what she’d been like when she first came to Casa Maleovelli. The way she would flinch if an arm was raised near her, how those eyes would darken with despair if she thought she’d hurt someone’s feelings; how she would try so hard not be noticed, quietly slinking around corners, melting into chairs and walls. Hafeza sighed. She knew those signs all too well.

  Only something had changed Tarlo. She remembered the day she first noticed it. The day that Tarlo, despite Hafeza’s inability to reply, stopped speaking to her. Later she also stopped smiling. Hafeza,
who had thought she’d finally found someone she could nurture, had despaired. Like Tarlo, she’d also withdrawn into herself, erected walls that, over her life, she’d worked hard to maintain. Even now, she tried to restore that which Tarlo had dismantled.

  But in Tarlo’s arms she’d done something she hadn’t done for such a long time – feel. She’d felt compassion, fear, need and the desire to help. She understood why Tarlo had done what she had and why she was risking herself and everything she held dear to do what the Maelovellis ordered – kill the Doge. Hafeza knew about the man in the dungeon; what she hadn’t realised until Tarlo had shared with her was what he meant to the Estrattore.

  Hafeza leant over the mantelpiece and rested her head against her arm. Tonight, something terrible was going to happen. The Maleovellis, using Tarlo, were setting in train events that would change Serenissima. They’d change all their lives – but was it for the better? Would hers change? No. She already knew the answer. It would not. She would continue to be Hafeza, the slave. But for Signor Maleovelli, for Giaconda, theirs would never be the same again. And what about Baroque? That man made her laugh. She enjoyed encountering him in the courtyard when she fetched water. He would go out of his way to talk to her, to help her if he could. Over the last year, he’d changed too – but Hafeza knew his transformation was good. She’d seen him many times before Tarlo came to live with them. Most often he would meet the Maleovellis in their rented apartment in the Chandlers Quartiere. She saw how distant he was, how careful to hide his real self. He’d been the same when he first came here, but something or someone, she thought, an image of Tarlo appearing before her, had worked its magic on him. Only it hadn’t been deliberate, like the candles.

  And yet the Maleovellis had plans for Baroque as well. Hafeza knew. She’d overheard them, as she often did. People were strange. They believed that because you couldn’t talk, you couldn’t hear either. So much was revealed in front of Hafeza. In this casa, she was invisible – a slave, a Morokan, displaced, dispossessed and, she knew, afraid. Afraid of being seen. She understood Tarlo and what she’d confronted in her early life all too well. No wonder the young woman had embraced what the Malevoellis offered. Through them she could make a difference, but she had to follow their orders, obey their whims and help them before she could help herself.

  Hafeza sighed and reached for some wood to stoke the fire. She threw it in, using the poker to make sure it rolled into the embers, waiting for it to catch. She rubbed her hand across her face. She was tired of this life – an admission she’d never had the courage to make to herself until now.

  She slumped into the chair and glanced around the room. The fire gave a burst of light as the log took. Something flashed on top of the dresser. It was the little harlequin, the funny statuette that she’d never really noticed before, not until she understood what it was that Tarlo had done with it. Earlier, she’d pulled it out of its hiding place in the drawer and placed it back where it had stood for years. Now it caught her eye. She rose and crossed the room, picking up the delicate object. Holding it up, she watched the way the light from the fire plucked out different colours within the glass. So much love, so much pain. She wished she could do that – extract her memories and emotions and put them somewhere else so she could stop feeling all the time. But she was no Estrattore. She had to live with her past and her present. Together, they made her future.

  But what did that hold? More pandering to Giaconda, remaining silent while the Maleovellis brought down not just the Doge – oh, that was too remote and vague for her to care about – but the young woman she understood as well as she did herself. And Baroque. They were not going to let him escape their clutches either – not alive. They couldn’t afford to. They knew he’d softened towards Tarlo, that if they harmed her, he might expose them. They kept him on a lead through blackmail.

  What was it her insights into Tarlo had revealed? That was right – it was Baroque’s journals, those battered old things that Signor Maleovelli kept locked in the top drawer of his desk. She’d seen him thumbing through them. And then there was Pillar.

  Listening to the casa creaking as the wind blew outside, bringing with it lashing rain that now beat against the window, Hafeza fingered the little statuette and let her thoughts go in directions they had never before dared …

  HAFEZA ENTERED BAROQUE’S ROOM slowly. Wet and cold, she couldn’t risk lighting a candle. She fumbled around in the dark until she felt what she was looking for. She pulled the four old books out from under her dress and slid them beneath his pillow. It would be weeks before Signor Maleovelli noticed they were gone. Baroque would find them and then he would be free, a slave to the Maleovellis no more. She smiled and moved quietly through the workshop. She stood in the doorway, watching the rain for a while. It was heavy tonight. She was glad. She sent a quick prayer to her gods that it would cover any noise she might make as she descended into the dungeons.

  Eschewing a torch, Hafeza felt her way down the stairs. A chilly wind whistled along the corridor, making her shiver and her teeth chatter. When she finally found the keys, they clanged together in her hands. She looked over her shoulder, but all she could see was darkness. No-one had followed her. She was certain.

  OPENING PILLAR’S CELL WAS harder than she thought. Her fingers were stiff and fear made her clumsy. At last the key turned and the lock sprang open. She pulled open the door. The cell was even darker than the corridor and it took her a moment to see the body huddled in the corner.

  ‘What do want?’ croaked a voice. ‘Oh, it’s you. What have you brought me this time?’

  In answer, Hafeza threw a bundle at his feet and opened the door wider. She made a grunting noise and flapped her arms towards the corridor.

  She could see Pillar reaching out for the package, shaking out the contents: trousers, a shirt, doublet and boots.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Stepping closer to him, she caught his hand and raised it to her eyes, placing his fingertips against her lids.

  ‘Tallow,’ he said. Hafeza nodded. She knew that had been Tarlo’s name; it was the one she still called herself. Tallow, like the wax. Something to be moulded, shaped to others’ designs. It was appropriate.

  ‘You are setting me free?’ In answer, Hafeza began to strip his old clothes from him, peeling off what remained of his shirt, ignoring the smell that exuded from him, that made the bile rise in her throat.

  ‘Grazie mille.’ He began to help her, struggling out of his tattered pants and into the new ones. Hafeza tried to hurry him. They didn’t have much time. She wanted Pillar away from here.

  In minutes, he was dressed. She could hear him panting from the exertion. She gave him a flask of vino and a hunk of bread. He drank and ate as quickly as he could. From his quiet moans she could tell his gums were sore. She remembered that feeling. When he’d finished eating, she pressed a knife into his hands.

  ‘Bene,’ said Pillar. ‘What else do you have concealed in there? I see you have thought of everything.’ He gave a low laugh that turned into a rasping cough. She sought to support him. ‘I am all right,’ he said, ‘I just need a moment. I’ll be fine.’

  Hafeza frowned. He did not sound fine.

  She followed him out into the corridor. A blast of wind forced her dress to press against her. She could feel Pillar shaking beside her as she closed the door to his prison, locking it again behind them. Let the Maleovellis puzzle that one.

  She groped for Pillar’s hand and began to lead him forward, stepping around the pools of stagnant water. They’d just passed the second cell when a figure leapt out of the dark. With a small noise, Hafeza stopped, Pillar slamming into her back with a grunt.

  ‘Well, well, well. What are you up to, Hafeza? You deceptive black puttana.’ It was Jacopo. Wood struck the flint and light flared. Jacopo raised his torch and looked them up and down. ‘What have we here?’ He began to chuckle. ‘Have you lost your mind, Hafeza?’

  Hafeza’s eyes slid from Jacopo’s
sneering face to the glinting steel he held in his other hand. Pillar squeezed her fingers and then released them. He doubled over in pain and began groaning loudly.

  ‘Oh, my stomach, my legs!’

  Jacopo ignored him. ‘What are you thinking?’ he hissed at Hafeza. ‘How could you, after everything my father has done, everything Giaconda has given you? How could you betray them, tonight of all nights? The moment everything we’ve been planning comes to a head and you would ruin it! You bitch!’ With every word, he came closer and closer to Hafeza, pushing her in the chest. She stumbled into the wall, tripping over Pillar.

  Jacopo followed closely, kicking Pillar out of his way. ‘You choose to help that –’ he spat at Pillar’s side ‘– instead of the family that has given you a roof over your head, taken you in? You don’t deserve to look after Giaconda, you don’t deserve to be part of this casa, not anymore.’ He lifted the torch and leaned into Hafeza, his nose almost touching hers.

  Hafeza was backed against the stone wall, her hands trapped behind her. She could not push Jacopo away, she could not fend for herself.

  ‘And I am going to give you what you deserve.’ Jacopo raised the knife in the air.

  Hafeza tried to scream, to protect herself. She managed to free an arm just as the knife came down, just as the torch was knocked out of Jacopo’s hands and fell to the floor. Jacopo shouted and a great weight fell against her and pain exploded in her side. She thrust at the body that pinned her to the wall, trying to free herself.