But in due time it swerved over, knocked against buffers, and with halloos and cursing the gondolier handed her to the duke's servants bearing umbrellas, who brought her under a wind-billowed awning, and so up into a brightly lighted passage to a reception hall. There was sparkling wine, there was white wine and red wine, there were sweets heaped up, the sight and smell of which disgusted her. There were very many attendees whose colors she knew, and the banners of Sienna and Verona were displayed, and the banner of Milano, which was her own.
Music began, signaling the processional, and a young man presented himself, a man in il duco's azure blue.
"Il duco has wished me to lead the lady in," he said. "I am his cousin, Fedorico." A handsome young man, but notthe rank of il duco himself, and not to Nonna's wishes.
"I shall stand here," she said haughtily. "And you may say to il duco that I am stranded here, for want of courtesy."
"Signorina," the young man said, scandalized.
"Signore," she said, "shall I write down my message, or can you possibly remember it?" It was what Nonna would say, when a servant failed her expectations, and she was angry, by now, and judged that if Nonna could deal with people in such a way, so could she, on Nonna's business.
"Signorina," the young man said, bowed, and walked stiffly off. So she stood, and stood, until the foyer was empty of incoming guests, and at last the same young man came back.
"Il duco wishes you to come," the young man said.
"I should have written it down," she said, in mock regret, but now with a little qualm of fear she refused to show. "Try again, signore."
That brought Cesare himself, a Cesare as frowning as herself, a Ce-sare who snatched her hand and hurt it, leading her toward the stairs.
"I provided you an escort," he said.
"One that let you disclaim inviting me," she said, her back stiff in her tight lacings, and the moving air wafting chill on her exposed bosom. She might have felt naked, a few days ago, before her young harlequin had kissed her. Now she was armored in steel and anger. "Now I have you for escort, as promised."
"Damn you."
"I am la duchesa's granddaughter," she said. "Did you ever think I was not?" He tightened his grip, crushing her hand. "Never defy me."
"I have choices," she said, "and you do not. To have my grandmother's name, you do not have a choice, signore."
"You have her tongue, that's very clear."
"I do," she said, and smiled dazzlingly at all about her, weeping and sick inside, as she came down into the hall.
The storm crashed outside. Certain fools drank too much too early and languished by the serpentine pillars of the grand ballroom, saying, like the prophets in the cathedral, that soon there would be no Venezia to rule, that the sea gates were doomed to fail, and that the flood would rise, and that they would all be swept away if they took di Verona's coin and settled here. Certain fools talked of the floods to come, and how they would set out the choice of their wine cellars and drink them all, when the flood began to rise. Others said that the failure would be catastrophic, and there would be no sipping of wine at all, that wise men would go back to higher ground—such fragments of conversation she heard, while she danced with di Verona, who held her hand too tightly, and who said that he would rule the city before it drowned. He would take back Verona, and she would be an apt bride for a conqueror, full of spite and fury.
"How should you ever rule?" she challenged him, hating him the deeper the more intimately she faced him, the more their bodies grazed each other. She wore the bauta, white, anyone's mask. He wore a lion's mask, in gold and azure and sable, and plumes were its mane, a heraldic creature, snarling at the world.
"By blood," he said. "Here, and then Verona, I promise you. Have faith, Sforza, in your husband to be."
"You have not courted me," she said, a fading defiance.
"I need not. You're bought and paid for. Your grandmother will have her fine furnishings, and her garden. She cares for nothing else, believe me. We announce it tomorrow, and you have no appeal."
It was true. It was all too true. In all the world she had met only one kindly creature. Everyone else only pretended kindness, even her servants, because it was bought and paid for, and they had no choice.
"I want some chilled wine," she said, out of breath from dancing. Others dutifully applauded their duke, as they left the floor for the side of the room. "It's far too warm." He wrenched her hand to his lips. "Command me, dare you, to fetch your wine?"
"Shall I fetch it myself, and have every servant stare?"
"Shameless girl."
"Utterly," she said, protected behind her mask. "One who must be won. Like the city." She felt his body heat, greater than her own, and sensed she had just challenged a predator, a cruel and determined predator, and by so doing, had set the harsh conditions of the rest of her life.
Unless . . . she said to herself as he walked away and snapped his fingers at a servant, who brought her the wine. Unless, she thought, she could not be won at all.
"Three days," she heard as she sipped her wine. She stood near the group of the duke's men. "In three more days, at the Palazzo," but it was all part of the dizzy, overheated room, until, again, her wine finished, di Verona set her cup down and brought her up against him, face to face.
"What will happen three days from now?" she asked, challenging him.
"Where did your hear this three days?"
"Oh, I have ears, signore."
"In three days, in three days, the Doge's ball. And you will have an invitation," he said in a low voice. "I shall give it to you. And I shall escort you there. Do you understand me?" She understood too much, from far back, now that she understood things she had heard, having heard him and Nonna plotting together, when they regarded her as part of the furnishings. She stared into the lion's face, confronted its gleaming white grin inches from her face, and said, because she had not chosen to be meek: "Perhaps. Perhaps I shall."
"You will, fool woman. And you will appear with me tomorrow, in the grand processional, and in the square, where we shall announce our wedding. Remember your function. You are nothing necessary. An ornament. People love a wedding. A public betrothal. It will quite seduce them."
"Shall I? I might if you please me."
His hand wounded her arm. "Think of your grandmother. Think of her comforts, and of your own future. You can end, or you can begin."
She could not meet her harlequin. She would not bring him into so great a danger. This man would kill him, if she fled tonight to their trysting place, and tried to find him, tried to explain her failure of their rendezvous.
She had no choice but drink di Verona's wine and dance with him, in a room packed with foreigners, all foreigners, like herself, like Nonna. She danced until her feet hurt, and tried to think what she dared do. She found no answer.
And when the ball was done and the men were down to steady drinking, the ladies began to leave, and di Verona called his own gondoliers, and had her carried home to her own water-stairs, on the Raceta. It seemed dark, and ominous. The whole city felt in peril of the lightnings and the threats she had seen in that room.
And she only pretended to go inside. The moment the gondolas pulled away onto the Priuli, she slipped along the foundations, the merest precarious ledge above the rising flood, clinging here and there to the mooring-rings, perilously advancing crabwise, until she reached the broad walkway along the Priuli.