Oh, and the gondolas, with their festival passengers, and, far down the canal, the great barges, proceeded along dark, sun-gilded water under a stormy sky. Musicians played, vying with one another across the Grand Canal, and sweet-sellers called out, becoming part of the music. She bought a sweet from a stand, and watched a pair of harlequins walk down the edge of the canal. She followed them, and joined the rear of the crowd at a puppet show, dismissing from her mind what Nonna would say when Nonna found she would miss supper.
She would come back by full dark, well-fed, and her eyes brimming with sights—oh, so many sights—and her ears filled with music, so she would not dream of di Verona at all. She clapped for the puppets, she watched the dancers, she walked past shops and through traffic of festival-goers, all the way to the great square, the Piazza di San Marco, which was choked with celebrants. Musicians at every permanent café vied with one another for territory, making a no man's land of discord between. Sweet-sellers abounded, and a great red and gold tent had been set up in the middle of the square, where actors offered plays to make a girl blush. She stayed through half a performance, and then, fearing she was missing something outside, went to look at the glasswares at the corner shop, and wandered afterward as far as the great cathedral, which was undergoing surely its thousandth renovation, all done up in scaffolding. A harlequin had climbed up above the entry and sat hurling flowers at all comers. She caught one.
"Bella!" the harlequin called out, and she waved it back.
It was so grand an evening.
But all at once the thunder cracked fit to rattle the scaffoldings, and the rain pelted down. Festival-goers shrieked and screamed and pressed this way and that to find shelter for their finery, and Giacinta, pushed and shoved, found refuge inside the cathedral, inside its gold, lamplit sanctity, while the thunder cracked and boomed above.
The storm, some said, was no ordinary storm. A great storm had brewed up in the Adriatic, to come crashing against the sea gates, and a greater storm than any before it. The gates might fail, some said, and some had come here to pray they held.
When she heard this, a cold feeling crept through the ancient cathedral with its disapproving saints. The sea gates were vast, ancient, and saved Venezia from the flood, but now the rising sea backed up behind those gates in storm, so high the storm surges of recent years that if the gates were to fail, then all Venezia would drown.
"All the more reason for carnevale!"a pulcinella cried then, waving his hat, gallant against the threat, and people around him cheered, and laughed. Soon the crowd sheltering in the echoing cathedral shouted down the doomsayers, saying the gate would never fail.
"It will come," a prophet of disaster shouted.
"Be still, mantico doloroso!" someone shouted, and another, "Look, the storm has passed already!"
Indeed, the storm had swept past with uncommon speed, was in its last stages outside, and the crowd pressed the other way, to exit the cathedral into the vast piazza, which was all in stormlight, clouds as black as old sin. The gray stone of the piazza gleamed with moisture, reflecting black and silver off the puddles, little mirrors now and again flashing with the reflection of lightning, now and again gleaming gold with the sweep of a festival torch as people rushed back to their revels. The air was washed clean. The canal would run higher, perhaps, but not disastrously so. The day seemed not so late after all, now that the clouds had lightened. The prophets of doom, Giacinta thought, were wrong. The only threat was that of her ball finery getting soaked, and Nonna in despair, forbidding her to go out again.
She thought it time to be tending homeward, at least, if not getting there, and she crossed the piazza, seeking the route that offered the most awnings on her way. Her high-soled shoes kept her hem clear. Her plumes were only a little draggled, and would dry good as new in the brisk wind. She was not the only one leaving the piazza; no few, inebriated, plied the rain-swollen canal in gondolas, waving lanterns and laughing.
A flash of lightning, a clap of thunder. The whole Serpentine flashed white, and Giacinta ran, ran, in deepening gloom, until a low place in the walk stopped her in utter doubt. The walk had flooded there. Another band of storm was coming on.
"Bella!" a young man called out, behind her, and another, joining him in rushing toward her, called something rude. They rushed down on her, picked her up by the elbows and carried her across, splashing through the shallow water. And did not let her go.
"Let me down!" she cried. "Let me down!" They reeked of wine, and one swept her entirely up in his arms. "Let go!" She kicked, she struggled. A huge gondola nosed close to the shore here, and she thought they meant to carry her off in it. "Let me down!"
"Citizen," another man said. A young gold-and-white harlequin in a white bauta stood in the path of her abductors, like a prince of the fairy tales, and two strong black and white harlequins stood behind him. "Set the lady down."
The man did, laughing—set her down in the edge of the puddle before he took the better part of valor and ran.
"Fools!" the white harlequin said, and offered his hand and pulled her to dry pavement. Both fools fled, splashing, down a narrow calle. "Madonna."
"Sir." She was not easily frightened, but she had been so close to disaster, so close to losing everything. She pulled away from his hand and went to the shelter of an awning, not so far from other traffic, within sight of it, at least.
He stayed, he and his two companions. He made no pursuit of her.
"Would you have us deliver you to your house, madonna?"
She was not sure. She hesitated. Another man might have left in disgust, his kind offer rejected. But he stayed, and held out his hand.
She turned her back, hidden in the shadows. She pulled off the bauta and assumed instead the moretta, the silent mask, that, held by a button behind the teeth, would not let her betray herself.
"Ah," he said. "La moretta. But you must somehow tell me where you lodge." There was an unfortunate fact she had not thought of. She felt foolish. But she grandly gestured down the walk before them, and he took her hand and stayed beside her. The two black harlequins stepped lightly back into the gondola and the boat began to turn, to pace them along the Serpentine, while lightnings danced and whitened the water.
His hand was warm and comforting. Her heart still beat hard and her hands trembled from the fright she had had.
"Such a fine hand," the young harlequin said, in possession of that hand, "it must belong to a beautiful young lady."
La moretta must say nothing—could say nothing. They simply walked, and he held that hand ever so gently, seeing her safely along. She gestured that they should turn aside from the Grand, and they did, though his young men wanted otherwise. He bade them stay with the gondola—a very grand one, it was, with curtains, more a nobleman's barge than not.
And, oh, why could Nonna not be content with this young gentleman, whose clothing was satin and brocade, whose hand was warm and strong and gentle, and whose chin beneath the bauta, was very fine? She would bring home her young knight of the festival and say to Nonna, Forget il duco—I have found my own young gentleman. I shall marry him, not di Verona. Never di Verona, so long as I live!