Heart of Glass

29





The hood is ripped from my head, and I stare around. An anonymous room; I could be in any apartment in Venice. Empty flagons are piled in a corner, and the fireplace is stacked with logs, waiting to be lit. The chair I sit on is in the center of the room. There’s no other furniture, barring a low wooden sideboard.

Carina stands behind me, the evil of her presence filling the room. I crane round to try to get a glimpse of her, but the ropes cut into me. She kicks the back legs of my chair, and I nearly tip onto the floor, but she catches the chair and rights it. To my shame, I cry out in fear.

My old enemy laughs. “What a sniveling fool you are,” she says. A corner of her cloak swishes out to one side of me, then I spot the hem of a skirt, and finally she comes to stand before me. The cloak’s hood hides her face, but there’s a dull flash of silver from deep inside its folds.

“Show yourself,” I say, sounding bolder than I feel.

“Gladly.” She tears back the hood. Before me stands the person I thought was dead. Carina, my sister’s oldest friend and the woman who betrayed me. She’s wearing a silver mask, behind which flow red locks of hair. The mask seems to be made of some kind of filigree, light enough to wear, but sparkling with curling threads of silver on which are threaded tiny jewels. How long has she been following me around the city, watching from behind her mask?

“You were in the church, weren’t you?” I ask.

She dips her head in acknowledgment. “You made such a beautiful mourner,” she says, her tone of voice mocking. “Almost worth Nicolo dying, to see you looking so wan and pale.”

My lip curls in disgust.

“What would your father say?” she teases. “To see you like this?” She once asked me the same question when she caught me talking to a lowly painter. That was before I knew he was the Doge’s son, and before I realized how deeply evil ran in Carina’s veins. Now, I know better. She reaches out a gloved hand, and I flinch away. But she doesn’t strike me. Instead, she strokes my cheek gently. “Such beautiful skin,” she says.

“I thought you were dead,” I say.

Carina walks around my chair in a tight circle, her skirts brushing against my legs.

“Sometimes I wish I were,” she says. Her voice is light. “It would suit many people if that were the case. Wouldn’t you agree?” I daren’t respond, but it doesn’t matter—she barely catches a breath before continuing. “After the accident on the boat, I often begged God for my pulse to still. The pain … You can hardly imagine. I yearned for death!” Now her voice turns darker. “But no one was listening.”

She smacks a hand against the back of my chair, and I can’t help jumping. Carina bursts out laughing. She leans over to whisper in my ear. “Calm yourself, little bird.”

I shudder to feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. “How did you survive?”

She straightens up again. “God saw fit to spare me,” she says.

I think about screaming, but with every other able-bodied Venetian at the scene of the trial, would anyone hear? I flex my hands. The knots don’t budge. It was a man, perhaps two, that brought me here. They could be waiting outside.

“What do you do with yourself?” I ask.

She casts out a hand to indicate the window looking over the bay. “I watch! People come and go. You wouldn’t believe the gossip that takes place beneath my windowsill. I watch from afar and laugh at Venice’s pride. Your petty longings for wealth and beauty. Following around handsome fiancés in the hope that they’ll bring you happiness.” She stares at me, her head cocked. “Don’t feel sorry for me. My life has new purpose, now that my face counts for nothing. Would you like to see?”

She reaches up, and, in a single, shocking movement, the red locks fall to the floor. The candlelight plays over a shining, scarred scalp. The skin seems stretched and rippled with channels like the sand of a beach when the tide has receded. A few wisps of her old hair grow in short, crinkled tufts.

“You like it?” she asks in a mocking voice. I force myself not to look away, even when she raises her hands to the mask that covers her face. My throat goes dry as she carefully pulls it away.

Now I cannot look, and lower my eyes.

“You don’t want to see your handiwork?”

I take a breath and raise my gaze. Carina’s brow appears half melted, the skin drooping at the corner of one eye. Her mouth twists in an unnatural grin, and the skin across one cheek blossoms with scars and broken veins. This face, once so beautiful, is now a distorted version of what Carina once was.

“More to your taste?” she asks.

Pity plunges through me. How could it not? Carina is still a young woman, trapped behind the face of a corpse. One of her eyes is weeping, and she lifts a square of linen to wipe away the tears that flow from the red swollen rim. But as I remember glimpses of the past, my feelings quickly disappear. This woman lunged at me with a dagger on the boat. If she’d had her way, I would have died that night. Roberto too.

“You tried to kill us,” I say. “Whatever happened to you, it’s your own doing.”

I expect her to lash out, but instead Carina titters. “My dear Roberto,” she says. “I hear he too will suffer for his deeds tomorrow.”

She reaches into the deep pocket of her skirts and pulls out a stiletto knife. Involuntarily, my hands strain again. The narrow blade makes it perfect for sliding between ribs, puncturing deep into the flesh. One movement, one twist, and a heart can be stopped in seconds. The handle is made of mother-of-pearl, and there’s a golden guard and pommel. They glint in the weak light as Carina brings the knife closer, closer to my throat. I catch my breath and wait for whatever comes next, not daring to move.

She draws the blade through the air, a hairsbreadth away from my neck, in a slow, luxurious movement.

“Tomorrow the executioner will take Roberto’s head and place it on a lance,” she says. Then the twisted smile drops from her face, and her voice turns low and angry. “You wouldn’t remember the execution of Grand Councilor Luciano Braccia, I suppose? You were in the convent still. Well, I remember. I held my mother’s hand as the old fool put his head to the block, his lips muttering a useless prayer. Some say he hadn’t bribed the executioner to make it quick. Others that the axman was drunk. Anyway, it took half a dozen blows before he was dead, and the ax handle broke after the third. It was almost funny as they hunted for a replacement, and all that time he lay there twitching.”

I feel the bile rise in my throat, and my chest heaves as I struggle to contain the gagging sensation. Carina claps her hands in delight, turning around on the spot like a child at a party.

“Oh, good! The great Laura is human after all. Have I turned your stomach, dear heart?”

“What kind of animal are you?” I spit. Any sense of treading carefully has evaporated. “What is it you want?”

Carina places the knife in my lap, tantalizingly out of reach of my bound hands, then bends down to retrieve her mask and wig. She places the red locks on top of her head, tugging at them until they sit in place. She looks laughable, like a gaudy puppet. Then she ties the mask in place and straightens her shoulders, as though retrieving what little dignity she has left.

Finally, she answers me. “I want nothing more than to see you and the Segreta suffer.”

She snatches up the knife again, and moves behind me. Every sense seems on fire as I wait for what must surely come. Will it be quick, or will she leave me to bleed to death in this lonely room? I close my eyes and try to think of Roberto’s face, but even that offers me no comfort now. I think instead of Lysander, the brother only recently returned to me. I think of Emilia, and hope their life together is a happy one. I even feel a long-forgotten fondness for my foolish old father. Beatrice, I shall be with you soon.

The knife is cold as she places it along the top of my ear.

“Do you know how it feels to be disfigured?” she whispers.

I feel a sharp tug, and pain. Then there’s a pressure on my wrists, and suddenly they’re free. My hand goes at once to the side of my head, but I can’t find any blood. I climb from the chair. Carina stands by the doorway. In her hand she trails a few locks of long, curled hair. “I could have killed you, Laura, or I could have made your face like mine. Perhaps one day I will. But for now, I want to see you suffer. I want you to wake each morning and feel the pain I do, never knowing when your end will come, when I will appear to you again.”

She places her knife back in the hidden pocket of her skirt and turns away from me, striding from the room. After catching my breath, I follow. I wouldn’t put a final trick past Carina. But the corridor is empty, and daylight glows from the far end. I walk out into an empty street.

I go straight home, walking rather than hailing a coach, with my hood pulled up. I need time to think. When I arrive back at the house, Father is in his study, and I can hear raised voices through the studded door. I can only catch the odd phrase, but enough to tell me the men inside are arguing about the Doge. Is this the faction of which he spoke? Members of the Grand Council, planning to usurp him? I creep closer and rest my ear against the leather-paneled door.

“… his infirmity …,” a voice says.

Another joins in—Father’s. “… need a strong leader, one who isn’t compromised by personal problems …”

There’s no place for loyalty in the circles among which my father moves.

I check my head in the hall mirror. By rearranging my hair a little, those missing locks are hardly noticeable.

The voices are getting louder. “But who can possibly take over?” says one man. Other voices clamor to be heard, and now I can’t make out anything other than a general sense of anger filling the room. I step away. Is this what Venice has become? Full of hatred, deceit and politics. Or perhaps it has always been like that, and the shroud is only now being torn away from my eyes.

It doesn’t have to be like this, I tell myself, remembering Emilia’s offer. I could leave. Perhaps if the ruling class left, Venice could become a better place again.

I start to ascend to my room, when the door is flung open and men stride out into the hallway. As I pause on the stairs, one of them throws me a surprised look and I bend my head deferentially. The others are grim faced and leave without casting me a glance. My father emerges last.

“Happy now?” he says, glaring at me. “You still want to marry that fiend?”

Then he walks back into his study and slams the door shut behind him.

“You’re back,” says a voice.

Lysander appears at the door to his chamber. He comes to take my arm and leads me farther up the stairs towards my own room.

“You must have been at the trial, I think.” He casts a wry glance at my outfit, and I remember for the first time how I must look.

“I had to go,” I say.

“Then you know about the Doge?”

I shake my head. “I couldn’t stay,” I tell him. “I couldn’t watch them take Roberto away.”

Lysander’s face is grim. “Forget that man,” he says. “His life is over, and it’s all he deserves.”

Each word cuts me. “How do you know that?” I say.

“The Doge had a fit after you left, Laura. He and the Duchess came onto the stage to speak with the Council. She tried to conceal it, leading him away, but everyone could see how he wasn’t in control of his own body. It was awful.” Lysander gathers himself. “It’s clear that something is seriously wrong. The Doge’s days are numbered, one way or another. Venice will be in turmoil.”

I realize I no longer care.