by Sasha Gould
“That’s not all,” Faustina says, shaking her head. “Massimo has scout ships roaming the waters. No one can come or leave on the seas without getting past him.”
On my way to Mass, I go down to the harbor to see for myself. People move in nervous huddles, and soldiers stand guard, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords as they watch every face carefully. Vessels of all sizes are searched without ceremony, so paranoid is the Bear about spies and subterfuge. Vincenzo’s ships, sails furled, sit at anchor, but his men move around the harbor like crows in their black doublets. His flagship, Il Castigo, is the most impressive craft in the harbor, and its side bristles with cannons.
As I step between coiled ropes, a man is dragged off a small boat and thrown to his knees. I shrink back behind a crate while soldiers surround him.
“Where have you come from?” demands one of them. The man looks up into his face, wide-eyed and terrified. He shakes his head; he doesn’t understand. The soldier sends the back of his hand cracking across the man’s face, and he falls back. “Who sent you here?”
The man gabbles in a language I don’t understand and points to piles of burlap sacks in the bottom of his boat that have been torn open to reveal wooden carvings. It’s clear he’s a trader, come to sell his goods in the market. Utterly harmless. Yet with a vicious yank, the soldier drags the man to his feet and hurls him into the bottom of his boat. He props himself up on an elbow and wipes the trickle of blood from his mouth.
“If you don’t have papers and can’t explain your business here, you must leave Venice.” The soldier unsheathes his sword and points the blade back out towards the ocean. The man stands, nodding, and begins to work on untying his mooring ropes.
As soon as the soldiers are busy harassing another captain, I step out from behind the crate and slip away towards the Church of St. John. I pass beneath the arched stone doorway into the cool and shade. I dip a hand into the holy water and make the sign of the cross. The service has already started, so I take a seat at the back of the church.
The Mass is well attended, a mixture of the wealthy merchant classes and the poor. A peasant woman sits alone across the aisle from me. I’m looking into space, barely concentrating on the priest’s Latin chants, when I spot a familiar silhouette some rows in front. Paulina, her head bent and her lips moving. My friend looks floored by grief. A young woman, now a widow.
As the service ends, we are blessed and instructed to do God’s will. I cross the flagstones swiftly and reach Paulina. She turns when I whisper her name. Her eyes are ringed with the bruised circles of sleeplessness, and her irises themselves seem sunken, darting around with fraught anxiety.
“Laura,” she says softly.
“How are you?” I ask, laying a hand on her arm. “Did you … ?” I daren’t finish my question, but she knows what I mean.
“I think so,” she begins, pulling her hand distractedly through her hair. “I left it where it could be found, marked with his name.”
I draw her to one side, away from the departing worshippers. Her shrunken cheeks make her look half starved. “When was the last time you ate?”
She shrugs. “I have no appetite.”
The two of us sit on wooden chairs in a side chapel off the main nave. No one will spot us here, and if they should, then we are just two friends talking.
She looks over a shoulder nervously. “I hardly know whom to trust.” She turns back to me and then her gaze falls, guiltily. “There’s something new. Have you seen this?” She slips a hand down the front of her bodice, and I see that there is a secret pocket hidden between the silk lining and the burlap stiffener. She quickly pulls out a fold of paper.
“More propaganda?” I ask, my voice thick with disgust.
In reply, Paulina unfurls the parchment and hands it to me. I scan its contents. It’s another diatribe against the Segreta.
“I’m scared,” says Paulina. She’s the Segreta’s newest recruit, and the practical part of me realizes that she is our weakest too. She’s already crumbling under the pressure of what she volunteered to do. I should have found someone else to run my dangerous errands for me.
“Don’t be silly,” I say, feigning lightheartedness. “You don’t take things like this seriously, do you? The Segreta are too strong to be destroyed by printed words. You’re strong.”
Paulina doesn’t look convinced. “I’ve heard they’re doing awful things to Allegreza. Even worse than we thought. Oh, Laura, I’ve heard …” She lets out a sob and shakes her head vehemently. “I couldn’t do it, I know I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay quiet under torture, and Massimo doesn’t seem to be reacting at all to our … promise.” She looks into my face, her eyes pleading for reassurance.
“You must be strong,” I tell her. “The Segreta rely on us. Allegreza especially.”
Paulina’s face crumples, and she hides her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking as her body is wracked with sobs. Nearby, a woman with a broom glances towards the sound. I give her a minute shake of the head and smile patiently. She nods, and moves farther down the church, sweeping in wide strokes.
Paulina has managed to compose herself slightly, wiping away the tears with the hem of her sleeve. “Have you heard from Roberto?” she asks.
“No.” I can hear the emotionless quality of my own voice. That’s how he’s left me. Not even a word.
“That’s it, then,” Paulina says, tucking the scroll back inside her secret pocket. “War will come to Venice. Even the Segreta can’t do anything to stop this.” She gets to her feet and turns to leave, pressing her hand into my shoulder. “Take care, Laura.”
It feels as though she’s bidding me goodbye for the last time. With a sweep of her skirts, she’s gone, and I am left alone in the sparse little chapel.
When I arrive home, the villa is in chaos. Servants rush from room to room. One carries a pile of clothes while another heaves wicker baskets of food into a waiting carriage, luggage strapped to its roof. Faustina’s voice can be heard from the bedrooms, crying orders to the servants, and Bianca bustles down the stairs, almost tripping over the gowns she carries. An open leather chest stands in the hallway, overspilling with skirts. Emilia kneels beside it, placing her silver-backed hairbrushes inside a vanity case that slots into the lid of the trunk. When she sees me, she smiles sadly.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I hoped you would be back,” Emilia tells me, climbing to her feet. “I wanted to say goodbye properly.”
“Are you going?” I ask. “Already?”
Her eyes dart to the stairs, where my brother appears, his face set. Faustina hurries behind him, carrying Lysander’s writing desk, and shakes her head at me as if to say, Don’t stir things up.
“We’re leaving now,” Lysander tells me as he walks out to the coach. “We have to.”
I leave Emilia in the hallway and follow him into the sunlight.
“So quickly? Why the rush?”
The servants are red-faced and sweating as they maneuver the heavy cases onto the coach’s roof. The horses, already in their tack, hoof the gravel drive impatiently.
Lysander hands a sheaf of papers to a manservant and for the first time looks me in the face. He places a hand on my arm and squeezes. “War is coming. Venice isn’t safe. I’m taking Emilia back to Bologna. As she’s already told you, you are welcome to come with us.”
I gently pull my arm free of his grasp. “Things will calm down,” I say, though I can hear how hopeless my words sound. “I don’t need to leave.”
Lysander shakes his head. “Things are going to get worse before they get better. A lot worse. The Doge’s power is stretched to its breaking point.” He reaches out and strokes my cheek. “And Roberto isn’t coming back. We can all see that.”
He frowns and his glance flickers over to the doorway. I look over my shoulder and see Emilia following Faustina to the rear of the house. Lysander takes me to one side, farther away from the coach. “It’s not just all the u
nrest. It’s this damned secret society. I’m worried that Emilia will be vulnerable to their influence. We haven’t been married long; I don’t want her changing for the worse.”
I groan. We’ve already argued about this once. “How can you be so close-minded?” I say.
“I’ve read the pamphlets. I know what the Segreta are capable of.”
I can’t contain the laugh that emerges. “I’ve already told you—those pamphlets are nothing more than rags circulating vicious lies. Only a fool would believe them!”
Lysander’s face hardens. A wall has risen up between us.
“Lysander,” I begin, drawing him to me. “I have enjoyed every moment of having you back, and Emilia already means so much to me. Let us not fall out during our last moments together. I cannot come with you, but I don’t want you to leave as a stranger.”
Something changes in his face, and he draws me to him in an embrace. When he releases me again, his eyes are fraught. “I worry about you, Laura. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were one of them.”
“And what if I were?” I say. “Would you do what the pamphlets ask and hand me over to be tortured?”
He swallows. “Of course not.”
I’ve taken a vow of loyalty to the Segreta, a vow I have already broken once before. This time it comes more easily. My brother’s love is too important to lose.
“Lysander, listen. Without them, I would have been married to Vincenzo. I would have been forced to bear that man’s children.” I can see the emotions fighting in his face. He looks back to the house for a moment. “During my time with the Segreta, I have seen them do nothing but good. Truly! Hundreds of people in Venice owe their lives and health to these women. They help those with no power of their own.”
“I should have guessed,” he murmurs. “Laura, the city has laws to protect people. The Grand Council—”
“The Grand Council stands on the shifting sands of politics. But the Segreta’s feet are braced on a bedrock of common decency.”
Lysander shakes his head. He looks up at me, and his eyes are fearful. “Come with us, please. I’m begging you, Laura. I don’t care about the Segreta and I don’t care about the Grand Council, I just want you to be safe! Massimo’s men will kill you.”
“My life is here.”
“It will be no life if you are discovered.”
He’s my loving brother again, eyes soft with concern.
“I must take that chance.”
I wait for him to tell me that I’m a fool, but instead he waves away a servant who stands over a chest. My brother goes to open the lid and reaches inside a case made of felt, bringing out a small glass vial filled with clear liquid. Cupping it in the palm of his hand so that it’s concealed from view, he passes it to me.
“Hide it,” he orders, “on your person, and never let it go.” Forcing myself not to look down at my hand, I pocket the tiny vial.
“What is it?” I ask, my eyes fixed on his.
“An infusion of hemlock. It was given to me by a doctor friend. Small quantities can be a useful sedative, but he warned me that drunk whole it could kill a person.” His eyes narrow. “Laura, if they discover that you’re … Do what you must.”
I understand, and lean in to kiss his cheek. By his ear, I whisper, “The death. Would it be a painful one?”
“It would not,” he whispers back.
Our eyes meet. “Thank you,” I murmur, struggling to contain the tremor in my voice.
“Tell Father goodbye.”
Then I hear the crunch of gravel as my brother walks away from me. He calls out to Emilia, and I look up to see her run from the house. She goes to climb into the coach, then hesitates. She breaks away and races over to me, pulling my body to hers in a fierce hug.
“I love you like a sister,” she whispers. Then she lets me go and I stumble slightly, watching her run lightly over to her husband, my brother. Now she does climb into the coach. She blows me a kiss through the air and Lysander waves a hand in farewell, before climbing in behind her and slamming the varnished door shut. There’s a click of the driver’s tongue and a snap of the reins and they’re gone.
38
I kneel by my bed, but not to pray. I lift the lid on the box that holds the clothes from my past. Tucked away among mothballs and sheets of lavender-infused paper are my nun’s habit and headdress. Faustina wanted to burn them, but I insisted on keeping some memento of that time. Now I’m glad I did.
I lift the robe and cowl and shake out the creased fabric as I go to stand before the mirror. On the dressing table is a small, stubby knife that I stole from the kitchen last night when Faustina was busy kneading bread. It’s nowhere near as sharp as a sword, but it will do.
I dress in the musty clothes, pin my hair back tightly, then arrange the cowl over my head. Soon, I am all but hidden. I barely recognize the woman who gazes back at me in the mirror. The picture of innocence. At my bedroom door, I wait on the landing, listening for noises.
Nothing.
A short while later, I stand before the public door of the Piombi. The guard stares at me, frowning.
“What are you doing here, Sister? This is no place for you.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, ducking my head, “but I wish to give comfort to one of your prisoners. The lady Allegreza. She has been a faithful supporter of our convent and it would keep the Abbess—and God—happy if I could share a few words with her.”
Perhaps the Abbess, if she knew, would call it the ultimate blasphemy, but God will surely forgive me.
The guard folds his arms and looks embarrassed. “I’m under orders to search everyone who enters. No exceptions.” I gasp meekly, and see the tide of red travel up his cheeks.
Before I came, I dug out my Bible from beneath my bed. It was covered in dust, but I gave it a cleaning, and it looks for all the world like my dearest possession. I hold it out to the guard.
“I have nothing to declare but my faith,” I say, smiling. “Feel free to search me, but this is all I carry. All I need.”
The guard clears his throat and his eyes look up and down the street. It’s thronged with people, too many to pay us much attention. He kicks the door behind him, and it opens a crack. Without shifting his stance, he jerks his head in its direction.
“Go on, then. Quickly, Sister.”
In the darkness of the prison corridor, I see the shape of another guard, sleeping in his chair. He snorts and stirs as I draw near.
“I’m here to see Allegreza di Rocco,” I say, keeping my head bowed in case he recognizes me from my previous visit. But he doesn’t even spare me a glance.
“Up the stairs, first cell on the right,” he grunts.
From the foot of the staircase I see a prisoner reach a skinny arm between the bars of his cell and paw the ground. “Help me!” he calls, his mouth frothing. I shudder and look away, running up the stairs. The heat is already oppressive, even this early in the morning. Beyond the turreted roof I can hear the noises of Venice. How horrible this must be for the prisoners, knowing they are so close to the life and energy of the city, yet so hidden from it.
Allegreza crouches at the rear of her cell on a bed of old straw. The acrid stench of urine stings my eyes. Through her torn dress I can see the nobs of her spine as she holds herself in a tight ball, protecting herself from whatever blow may come next. It is the same gown I last saw her wearing, the day that she was arrested. Now it is filthy, the silk covered in stains. A scattering of bruises decorates her arms and the skin exposed above the neckline of her gown. As she shifts, patches of baldness reveal themselves among her gray hair.
She shifts on her haunches and notices me for the first time. Her eyes widen in fear, and she scuttles back, pinning herself against the rear wall of the cell, until a second glance allows her to take in my cowl and Bible. Her face softens and she tries to smile, but her lips crack with dried blood.
“Prayers are no good to me,” she says, her voice faint.
This is
not the Allegreza I knew. For a moment, I want to race down the stairs and away from here, wiping this vision from my mind’s eye. But then I remember what I’ve come to do.
“I’m not here to pray,” I say.
The change in her is immediate. Her chin jerks up, and she narrows her eyes, as though testing to see if her vision deceives her. I smile and pull back part of my cowl so that she can see my face.
Allegreza braces her hands against the wooden floor and heaves herself up to standing. As she limps towards me, I notice for the first time what has happened to those beautiful hands of hers, once so adept at playing the spinet. Her fingers hang useless and gnarled, and where her polished nails should be are crescents of dried blood.
A sob emerges from me, despite myself. Allegreza shushes me as she used to. Up close, I see that what remains of her hair has matted into a solid, tangled blanket.
“How could they do this to you?” I ask.
“I suppose I could use some beauty sleep,” Allegreza says, pressing her thin body against the bars. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe.” She looks down at her hands and gives an ironic laugh, which dies away, and she looks into my face. “You must go,” she orders.
“Not yet. Allegreza, you need to know—we tried to get you out. A letter was delivered to Massimo, threatening to expose his secret about the useless gunpowder. Did anyone say anything to you? We hoped he’d release you, rather than risk his secret coming out, but …” I don’t know what else to say. My plan has failed—like so many of my efforts on behalf of the Segreta.
A frown creases Allegreza’s pale brow, and the look in her eyes is one I recognize—her mind turning over, calculating.
“What is it? Did they say something to you?”
She shakes her head. “Quite the opposite. Nothing has been said at all. You’re sure Massimo received the letter?” Her voice has sudden life in it, as if her injuries are forgotten, at least for a moment.