City of Masks Read online

  ‘Repeat them.’

  ‘I must never tell anyone how I went into the water instead of Your Grace.’

  ‘And if you do?’

  ‘If I do – which I wouldn’t, milady – I will be banished from Bellezza.’

  ‘You and your family. Banished for ever. Not that anyone would believe you; there would be no proof.’ The Duchessa glanced, steely-eyed, at her waiting-women, who were all utterly dependent on her for their living.

  ‘And in return for your silence, and the loan of your fresh young body, I give you your dowry. Over the ages many young girls have been so rewarded for lending their bodies to their betters. You are more fortunate than most. Your virtue is intact – except for a slight incursion of sea water.’

  The women dutifully laughed, as they did every year. Giuliana blushed. She had the suspicion that the Duchessa was talking dirty, but that didn’t seem right for someone so important. She was longing to get home to her family and show them the money. And to tell her fiancé they could now afford to be married. One of the waiting-women had finished undoing her hair and was now briskly braiding it into a coil around her head.

  *

  Tommaso and Angelo rowed behind the Barcone as it travelled slowly back across the lagoon to Bellezza, the biggest island. On deck the Duchessa stood in a red velvet dress with a black cloak thrown over it, which blurred the lines of her figure. The setting sun glinted off her silver mask. She now matched the colours of the Barcone, was one with her vessel and the sea. The prosperity of the city was assured for another year.

  And now it was time for feasting. The Piazza Maddalena, in front of the great cathedral, was filled with stalls selling food. The savoury smells made Arianna’s mouth water. Every imaginable shape of pasta was on sale, with sauces piquant with peppers and sweet with onions. Roasted meats and grilled vegetables, olives, cheeses, bright red radishes, dark green bitter salad. Shining fish doused with oil and lemon, pink prawns and crabs and mounds of saffron rice and juicy wild mushrooms. Soups and stews simmered in huge cauldrons and terracotta bowls were filled with potatoes roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and spikes of rosemary.

  ‘Rosmarino – rose of the sea!’ sighed Angelo, licking his lips. ‘Come, let’s eat.’ He tied up the boat where they would easily find it after the feasting and the young people went to join the throng in the square. But no one would eat just yet. All eyes were fixed on the balcony at the top of the cathedral. There stood four brazen rams and in a moment a scarlet figure would come out and stand between the two pairs.

  ‘There she is!’ the cry went up. And the bells of Santa Maddalena’s campanile began to ring. The Duchessa waved to her people from the balcony, unable to hear their wild cheers because her ears were firmly stopped up with wax. She had failed to take this precaution on her first appearance at the Marriage feast – but never since.

  Down in the square the feasting began. Arianna sat under one of the arches, with her legs tucked under her, a large heaped plate on her lap. Her eyes darted everywhere. Tommaso and Angelo steadily ate their way through mounds of food and kept their eyes on their plates. Arianna was content to stay with them for the time being; the moment to slip away would be when the fireworks started.

  *

  Inside the Palazzo, a rather more refined feast was in progress. The Duchessa was disinclined to eat much while wearing her silver mask; she would have a substantial meal sent up to her room later. But she could drink easily enough and now that the day’s farce was over, she was happy to do that. On her right sat the Reman Ambassador and it took a lot of the rich red Bellezzan wine to put up with his conversation. But it was her single most important task for the evening to keep him sweet, for reasons of her own.

  At last the Ambassador turned to his other neighbour and the Duchessa was free to look to her left. Rodolfo, elegant in black velvet, smiled at her. And the Duchessa smiled back behind her mask. After all these years, his bony hawklike face still pleased her. And this year she had a particular reason to be glad of that.

  Rodolfo, aware as so often of what she was thinking, raised his glass to her.

  ‘Another year, another Marriage,’ he said. ‘I could get quite jealous of the sea, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the Duchessa. ‘It can’t beat you for variety and slipperiness.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s your young oarsmen I should envy, then,’ said Rodolfo.

  ‘The only young oarsman who ever meant anything to me was you, Rodolfo.’

  He laughed. ‘So much you wouldn’t let me become one as I recall.’

  ‘Mandoliering wasn’t good enough for you. You were much better off at the university.’

  ‘It was good enough for my brothers, Silvia,’ said Rodolfo and he wasn’t laughing any more.

  It was a delicate subject and the Duchessa was surprised he had brought it up, especially tonight. She hadn’t even known of Rodolfo’s existence when his brothers Egidio and Fiorentino had applied to the Scuola Mandoliera in the first year of her reign. As was her right, she had selected them for training and, as was her practice with the best-looking ones, she had taken them as her lovers.

  It was only when the youngest brother turned up at the School a few months later that her heart had been touched. She had sent Rodolfo to university in Padavia and, when he had returned, equipped the finest laboratory in Talia for him to do his experiments in. And then they had become lovers.

  The Duchessa reached out and briefly brushed the back of Rodolfo’s hand with her silver-tipped fingers. He took her hand and kissed it.

  ‘I must go, Your Grace,’ he said in a louder voice. ‘It is time for the fireworks.’

  The Duchessa watched as his tall thin figure walked the length of the banqueting-hall. If she had been an ordinary woman, she would have wanted a confidante at this moment. But she was Duchessa of Bellezza, so she rose from her seat and everyone stood with her. She made her way alone to the window-seat, which overlooked part of the square and the sea. The sky was a dark navy blue and the stars were about to be rivalled in brightness.

  In a minute, she must gesture to the Reman Ambassador, Rinaldo di Chimici, to take his place beside her. But for a moment, with her back to the throng of Senators and Councillors, she removed her mask and rubbed her hand over her tired eyes. Then she caught sight of her reflection in the long window. She regarded it with satisfaction. Her hair and brows might have been helped to stay dark and glossy, but her violet eyes owed nothing to artifice and her pale skin was only lightly etched with lines. She still looked younger than Rodolfo, with his silver hair and slight stoop, though she was five years older than him.

  *

  The crowd in the square was getting merry with wine and the sheer pleasure of a three-day holiday. The Bellezzans and islanders knew how to enjoy themselves. Now they were dancing in ragged circles, arms linked, singing the bawdy songs that traditionally accompanied the Marriage with the Sea.

  The climax of the evening was coming. Rodolfo’s mandola had been spotted making for the wooden raft floating in the mouth of the Great Canal, which was loaded with crates and boxes. Everyone was expecting something special for the Duchessa’s twenty-fifth Sposalizio – her Silver Wedding.

  They were not disappointed. The display began with the usual showers of shooting stars, rockets, Reman candles and Catherine wheels. The faces of the Bellezzans in the square turned green and red and gold with the reflected light from the display in the sky over the water. All eyes were now turned away from the Palazzo and from the silver-masked figure watching at the window.

  Arianna and her brothers were in the square too, jostled and crowded by their fellow-islanders.

  ‘Stay close to us, Arianna,’ warned Tommaso, ‘We don’t want you going missing in this crush. Hold Angelo’s hand.’

  Arianna nodded, but she had every intention
of going missing. She took the hand that Angelo held out to her, brown with the sun and calloused from fishing, and squeezed it affectionately. They were going to get into such trouble when they went back to Torrone without her.

  After a pause, the dark blue sky began to brighten with the fire-pictures of Rodolfo’s set pieces. First a giant brazen bull pawing the sky, then a blue and green wave of the sea, out of which grew a glittering serpent. Then a winged horse flying above them and seeming to sweep down into the water of the canal, where it disappeared. Finally, a silver ram seemed to emerge from the sea and grew massively large above the watchers before it dissolved into a thousand stars.

  Angelo let go of his sister’s hand to join in the applause.

  ‘Signor Rodolfo has excelled himself this year, hasn’t he?’ he said to Tommaso, who was also clapping. ‘What do you think, Arianna?’ But when he turned to look at her, she had gone.

  Arianna had laid her plans well. She had to stay on Bellezza overnight. The day after the Sposalizio was the city’s great holiday and no one but a native-born Bellezzan was allowed to stay on the main island. Even the other lagooners, from Torrone, Merlino and Burlesca, had to return to their islands at midnight. The penalty for breaking this rule and remaining in Bellezza on the Giornata Vietata – the forbidden day – was death, but no one in living memory had taken the risk.

  Arianna was not taking any chances; she knew exactly where she was going to hide. At midnight, the bells of Santa Maddalena would ring out once more and at the end of their peal every non-Bellezzan, whether islander or tourist, must be away in their boats across the water. Tommaso and Angelo would have to go without her. But by then Arianna would be safely hidden.

  She slipped into the cavernous cathedral while everyone outside was still gasping ‘Ooh!’ as the fireworks were let off and ‘Aah!’ as they fizzled out. Santa Maddalena was still ablaze with candles but it was empty. No one to notice a slight girl running up the worn, steep steps to the museum.

  It was Arianna’s favourite place in all Bellezza. She could always get into it, even when the cathedral was so thronged with tourists that they had to queue all round the square and be let in in batches, like sheep going through a dip. They didn’t seem to care much for the museum, with its dusty books and music manuscripts in glass cases. Arianna hurried through the room with the four original brazen rams and out on to the balcony where the Duchessa had stood an hour or two earlier, between the two pairs of copies.

  Arianna looked down into the square, milling with people. So many, it would be easy to mislay one. She couldn’t pick out her brothers from the many swaying revellers but her heart went out to them. ‘Don’t be soft,’ she told herself sternly. ‘This is the only way.’ She settled down beside one brazen leg, clinging on to it for comfort, as she got the best grandstand view of the end of Signor Rodolfo’s display. It was going to be a long, uncomfortable night.

  *

  Lucien woke to feel the sun on his face. His first thought was that his mother had been in and opened the window, but when he came to more fully, he saw that he was out of doors.

  ‘I must still be dreaming,’ he thought, but he didn’t mind. It was a lovely dream. He was in the floating city, he knew that. It was very warm and yet still early in the morning. The beautiful notebook was still in his hand. He put it in his pyjama pocket.

  He stood up; it was easy in the dream. He was in a colonnade of cool marble, but between the columns, where the bright sun splashed in, were warm pools of light, as comforting as a hot bath. Lucien felt different; he reached up to his head and felt his old curls. This was definitely a dream.

  He stepped out into the square. There seemed to have been some huge party going on; the few people who were about were sweeping up and putting rubbish into bags – not plastic bin-bags, he noticed, but more like sacks made of rough cloth. Lucien gazed at the huge cathedral opposite him. It was vaguely familiar, but something about it was not quite right.

  He turned the other way and looked out over the water; this was the most beautiful place he had ever been in. But more beautiful still was being able to walk about in it. Lucien had almost forgotten what it was like to do that.

  But a moment later, the dream changed completely. Someone came up on him from behind and grabbed his arm, dragging him back into the cool shadows of the colonnade. A fierce boy, about his own age, whispered in his ear, ‘Are you mad? You’ll be killed!’

  Lucien looked at him in astonishment. His arm really hurt, where the boy was pinching it. In his real life Lucien couldn’t have borne such a touch; it would have made him cry out in pain. But the point was, he could feel it. This wasn’t a dream at all.

  Chapter 2

  The Scuola Mandoliera

  The night had been just as uncomfortable as Arianna expected. Up on the rams’ gallery it was freezing cold, in spite of the warm cloak she had brought with her. She had changed into her boy’s clothes as soon as she had slipped out on to the loggia, taking cover in the dark and the knowledge that everyone’s eyes were turned towards the fireworks still exploding out over the lagoon.

  At midnight, the bells rang the hour from the campanile, nearly deafening Arianna, but she pulled her woollen fisherman’s hat further down over her ears and shrank back against the bulk of the cathedral. When they stopped, she stepped forward and leaned over the marble balustrade, watching the crowd streaming towards the water and the waiting boats. Somewhere among them, tagging reluctantly at the end, would be her two brothers, going home without her.

  Arianna pulled further into the shadows when she heard the old monk who looked after the museum going on his rounds. Her main fear now was that he would lock her out with the bronze rams until late the next morning. She had slipped a piece of wood in the jamb of the door out on to the loggia, just in case, but she needn’t have worried. The old man lifted a blazing torch just high enough to see the balcony was empty, pushed the door to and shuffled on his way.

  Arianna breathed out loudly and settled down to the long night between the two pairs of rams. They felt like some sort of protection, standing on either side of her, the left pair with their left forelegs raised, the right pair mirroring them, even though they were not exactly company.

  ‘Good night, rams,’ said Arianna, making the sign of the hand of fortune and covering herself with her cloak.

  *

  She was woken early, by the shouts of the people who had come to clear up the Piazza after yesterday’s revels. She stretched her cold, cramped limbs and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She walked stiffly to the balustrade and looked down over the square to the colonnade behind the bell-tower. And froze.

  There was a stranger there, a boy about her own age, risking death. He was obviously not Bellezzan, not even Talian by his clothing. Arianna had never seen anything so outlandish as what he was wearing. He was as out of place as a dog in the Council chamber. And yet he seemed totally oblivious of danger, warming himself in the sunshine and wearing an idiotic expression like a sleepwalker. Perhaps he was touched in the head?

  Arianna didn’t hesitate. She picked up her bag and slipped off the loggia, past the sickening drop to the floor of the great cathedral, and flew down the museum steps and across the Piazza.

  *

  ‘What do you mean, killed?’ said the boy, stupidly. ‘Who are you? And where is this?’ He gestured helplessly at the glittering sea, the silver domes of the cathedral and the bustling square.

  ‘You are mad,’ said Arianna with satisfaction. ‘How can you be in Bellezza on the Giornata Vietata, the one day of the year forbidden to all except natives, and not know where you are? You haven’t been kidnapped, have you?’

  The boy shook his black curls but said nothing. Arianna saw at a glance what she was going to have to do, though she hated him for it. She dragged him back into the shadow of the bell-tower and started yanking off her boy
’s clothes, unaware of the effect she was creating.

  The boy watched in astonishment as her brown hair tumbled out of the fisherman’s hat and she stood in her feminine if rather old-fashioned underwear, pulling a skirt out of her bag.

  ‘Quick, stop gaping like a fish and put on my boy’s clothes, over those weird ones of yours. You’ve only got minutes before someone spots you and hauls you up before the Bellezzan Council.’

  The boy, moving as if in a dream, obediently pulled the rough woollen trousers and jerkin on, still warm from the body of the extraordinary girl, while she dressed herself in more clothes from the bag, talking all the time. She seemed absolutely furious with him.

  ‘Almost a year it’s taken me,’ she fumed, ‘to get this disguise together and now you’ve ruined everything. I’ll have to wait another year. And all to save the life of some half-crazed stranger – what’s your name, by the way?’

  ‘Lucien,’ he said, grasping the one remark he understood.

  ‘Luciano,’ said the girl, making his name as different in her mouth as his whole life seemed to be in this place, this ‘Bellezza’ as she called it.

  Lucien was sure that wasn’t the real name of this city, just as he knew his real name wasn’t Luciano, but he decided to accept the girl’s version. Nothing made sense here anyway.

  ‘What’s yours?’ he asked, clinging on to the little ritual of meeting that was common to ordinary life and this place.

  ‘Arianna,’ said the girl, tying her loose hair back with a lacy scarf. She looked at him critically. ‘At least you won’t attract so much attention now. Good job we’re the same size. But you’re done for the minute someone questions you. You’ll have to stay with me.’

  ‘Why were you pretending to be a boy anyway?’ Lucien asked.

  Arianna heaved a big sigh. ‘It’s a long story. Come on. We’d better get away from the Piazza and I’ll tell you. Then you can tell me how you got here on this day of all days. I’d have sworn I was the only non-Bellezzan in the city.’