Audit the newcomer Cesare, as well? Di Verona was not quite implicated. And since he was a foreigner, though his position was precarious, his behavior, ordinarily benevolent, did not fall under the prohibitions of the city.
So nothing changed and everything changed, which was business as ordinary in Venezia. The tides came and lapped at the walls. The young Doge proved canny and immune to blandishments and threats from inside and out, and Cesare’s enemies in Verona, a city which had attempted its own intrigues aimed at bringing Venezia under its control, did not prosper. Far from it—certain foreigners left Venezia hastily, and in disarray. Cesare di Verona gifted the city with a treasure of books for its library, and made peace with the young Doge, as the man who had pointed out this scheme.
Cairo thrived again and reopened trade. The city; relieved of its worries inside and out, drew a wide breath and celebrated.
Spring came as it always did, with its storms and its carnevale. The young girl had disappeared from the barred window on the canalside this winter. In her place, a young woman of extraordinary beauty came and went freely on the streets, attended by one servant, or completely on her own. The gondoliers called to her, below the Ponte Vele, and along the walk, among the shops.
"Bella! Bellissima, oh, take pity,"
She bought fine silks and grand plumes, this granddaughter of la duchesa. She also purchased—oh, yes—mauve silk and ribbons and beautiful leather shoes. She had come outside the walls of the little house. She bought, yes, masks, this spring, oh, indeed, una bauta, the common white mask of carnevale. And whispers took wing. She would join in the festivities. Young men sighed. She was beautiful, dark-haired dark-eyed, and oh, so quick in wit and soft of voice. Dared young gentlemen ask her name?
It was, she said softly, Giacinta.
Giacmta, like the upright flower that bloomed in spring gardens, the rare gardens of Venezia. Giacinta, young men sighed.
Invitations suddenly came to the long-unvisited door, beautiful invitations, borne by liveried servants of this house and that. One such came from di Verona, who intended a ball in his beautiful palazzo. There were flowers sent, rare and beautiful. And the days of carnevalecame on them.
The dress fitting went on, and the dress itself became like armor, such a weight of thick amethyst silk and cording and purple velvet that it could stand by itself. Giacinta drew in her breath as the servant drew in the laces, everything traditional, everything authentic, from the layers of lace petticoats to the beautiful black lace cuffs and the high-heeled shoes that lifted her up so the hem no longer swept the floor. . . or the watery edges of the canals.
The seamstress, on her knees, surveyed the hem, that it hung well, checked a spot, and stood up to take and pin a tuck at her rigid waist, to be dealt with after she shed the dress. La duchesa sat in her chair across the room, her walking stick resting against her dark blue skirts, a pile of sweets beside her, untouched, in a silver bowl.
"I looked like you, once," la duchesa said wistfully.
Giacinta looked at her, wondering in what decade this was, but never doubting Nonna's word. Nonna never tolerated doubt, or contradiction.
"In Milano," Giacinta ventured.
"In Milano," Nonna said, "before there were fools in charge there. Before I met your grandfather. You look beautiful. Like your mother."
The comparison lanced like a knife. Giacinta had lost her parents and all the family but Nonna. They had died one autumn when the fever had swept the west, and Nonna had been immune, and had sheltered her, and brought her up, somehow blaming the people of Milano for this disaster. Giacinta never understood why. To this day she feared to question, somehow reading into Nonna's silence something Nonna had no wish for her to know, and what Nonna forbade her for her own good covered a world of dark things. Nonna would not, for instance, tell her why they had left Milano in the dead of night, or why they had ventured here. She knew that things had happened in the upstairs room with Signore Muntefiori, terrible things, that had broken china and shaken the locks in the dark of night, when the Signore had cried out that devils were in the upstairs hall, and that they hunted little girls. Things had happened between Nonna and Signore Montefiori, when she had gone into that room, and the noise had very soon stopped. And Nonna did not talk about that night either.
So there were many, many things that she never asked Nonna. She came and went about the house and garden like the servants, in silence. If ever they entertained, it was di Verona, who called nearly every week, and sometimes walked in the garden with Nonna, or worse, sat and talked with them both in the gallery.
Di Verona came visiting during this last fitting, and Giacinta was mortified, being, as it were, incompletely dressed, but Nonna thought nothing of it.
"Hyacinth for Giacinta," di Verona said. He was in his thirties or his forties, if handsome, and came and fingered the damask silk of her skirt as if he were buying it. "How becoming." Giacinta blushed furiously and looked only at the white and black tiles of the salon until di Verona strolled aside and spoke to Nonna.
"Gossip in the town is," di Verona said, "that she will wear mauve, and the white mask."
"Your gift," Nonna said, "will deceive these young scoundrels." Then Giacinta knew where the hyacinth fabric had come from, and that Nonna approved this man. She had liked the dress until then.
"I do not like him," she confessed to Nonna, when di Verona had gone away. It took courage, to express an opinion while she wore the hyacinth dress, but it was the truth, and she had endured their one visitor too often since the signore had died, endured, because he was their only visitor, and pleased Nonna.
But, oh, she had gotten the taste of freedom, when, this year, having come by a little money, Nonna sent her out to the calles and the shops along the Serpentine to buy necessities and even fripperies. She had breathed the air and walked farther than ever the little garden permitted, and her steps had grown wider and surer every passing day. More, she had seen choices spread everywhere, choices in fabric and in glass, in trinkets and foods and wines and oils, and every sort of thing the merchants had. She had the choice to laugh or not to laugh. She had the choice to stare at a young man who stared at her, or not to stare; or to return a wink, or not, from a young gentleman in russet velvet, who followed her all the way to the Ponte Vela. She had made such choices, and realizing that she had them, now she said to Nonna, her greatest act of rebellion, her greatest choice of alclass="underline" "I don't like him at all, Nonna."
"Hush, silly girl. Would you have the servants gossip?"
"But, Nonna, I want my pretty mauve silk." It was what she had bought for her gown, before this fabric turned up. "I most of all don't want to wear his gift. He's an old man." This amused la duchesa, who rose and leaned on her walking staff. "And what am I? Am I old?"
"You're my dear Nonna," Giacinta said, unhesitating: that was forever the coin that paid for quiet, and for getting her way. "You're always my Nonna, and you're always beautiful."
"Dear child." Nonna walked close and touched her cheek. La duchesa went, as usual, stiff-braced in an old-fashioned gown—such tight lacings helped her back, Nonna maintained; but Giacinta found the hyacinth silk dress, low cut, similarly rigid, exposed and emphasized far too much of her bosom, and the lacings made her ribs creak. She felt strangely undressed, to have had di Verona passing judgment on her. Most of all, she detested the way he looked at her, walking all around her, like a buyer contemplating a table at the market.