Now it did. Now she wished she knew.
The sky commiserated with her, gray and thunderous, and the water lapped high about the foundations and crept onto the walkways in thin sheets. Carnevalestruggled to be merry despite the storm, despite the rumors, but the sights all paled for her, and when she made her way to the great piazza, the sight of the dancers reminded her of her public humiliation. She stood a while, contemplating the Palazzo, and how she could manage to pass the door. She started in that direction, and got as far as sight of the guards, and lost her nerve.
All these things she did, evading the one venture she most wanted and feared to make. But when the day began to decline, still leaden and rainy, and with no sight of her harlequin among the crowds, she had found no courage to dare the Doge's guards, and walked back through the calles, immune to the pranks of pantalones and pulcinellas, one white mask among many.
It was the Ca d'Oro she sought, and the door, which, with the flooding, she could scarcely manage. She soaked her shoes again, and her hem, with a slip on mossy rock. But she gained the still, silent inner stairs, where she had left the matches and the candle. Thunder boomed above the city. The storm, threatening day-long, had broken. She lit the candle stub with difficulty in the wind, and shut the door against the rain and the world. Then she suffered the greatest fear, ascending, candle flickering on walls and ceiling, until she came to the hall of mirrors, where her candle became a hundred candles, lost in a dark that the windows beyond the arched alcove did little to relieve.
The table had changed. On it stood a bouquet of drooping roses. Her ring was gone. Hiswas there, a more massive golden round, a signet. It must be his. She set down her candle, and picked it up, and turned it to the light. It bore a coat of arms engraved in flat gold, the divided shield, and above it not a helmet, but a cap, a common cap, and not at all common. She had seen it emblazoned on banners in the piazza, that divided shield and the unwarlike red cap. The arms of the Doge himself.
All the blood fled her limbs. She plumped straight down in the shadow, in the mockery of a hundred mirrors, and turned the ring in her fingers, the arms faint in shadow and glittering in candlelight.
It was long before she found the will to move, and by then she found it difficult, her limbs gone to sleep among her crumpled skirts. She was no more warlike than the Doge. She had never been encouraged to contest her fate. But she had learned fire, all the same, from la duchesa's temper. She had learned la duchesa's stubborn endurance. She had learned la vendetta, and the will, when challenged, to stiffen the backbone when she had a choice before her. Oh, that, above all else. And now she knew her footing—at least who she dealt with. But what he might now do, and why he had courted her, and if he already knew about Nonna's plot—these still were questions.
She rose. She took her candle. The ring clenched in one fist, she went to light candle stubs in the candelabra, and found them all renewed, long, fresh tapers, half-burned, marking the limit of his patience. She lit one candelabrum after another, until all the mirrored hall was aglow in the gathering dusk, until it would shine outward onto the canal, until, if he were near, he might see. She took the diminishing candle stub, then, and explored the halls above, the forgotten, fading murals, the rotting tapestries in all the passages and the long disused bedrooms, clear to the attic. She knew his name now, her harlequin. Everyone knew it. She said it to herself, while she waited:
"Antonio." She whispered it to the empty halls, to see if it was friend or enemy. "Antonio Raffeto."
And when the light had utterly faded from the windows, while storm battered the roof tiles, and the candle stub she held began to gutter and burn close to her fingers, she went down again to the ballroom.
Every candle flame bent as she arrived, but she had opened no door. The wind sighed through the halls, and a cold air moved her skirts.
And ceased. The water-stairs door had opened. And it had just shut.
She stopped still, her eyes fixed on the opposing hall. There was no candle below. She had taken it. She held it in her hand.
But he needed no help to find the blaze of light in the grand ballroom. And he climbed into view—her harlequin, white and gold in the candleglow. He wore a gold domino, only that, and had a rose in his hand.
"My harlequin," she said faintly.
"Giacinta," he said, and gestured toward the stairs, toward the outside. "They say the Ca d'Oro is haunted now. We've made a legend, I fear."
"I'm its ghost. I've become its ghost." In her purse she had the little black bottle, her escape from Nonna's plans, and her betrayal of Nonna's own escape. But that was for the morning. "I shall live here forever."
"You were with di Verona," he said, accusingly, "in the square."
"You werethere. I wished you'd rescued me. But I knew you couldn't."
"Did you think so? You might have called out for help."
"I wish I had. But I was afraid you would die."
He walked closer. Proffered her the rose. She ignored it and flung herself into his arms, crushing out the dying candle in her fist. The hot wax burned her, and tears welled up beneath the mask, but she hardly felt the pain. The ring was in her other hand, and it was cold as ice as lips met, as he took care for the candle, and found how she had burned herself.
"Foolish girl," he cried, and pried the wax from her fingers. He kissed the burn, and kissed her lips again before he set her back and looked at her. Dark eyes glittered behind the gold domino.
"And faithless, I fear."
"No. I will not be. I shall never be." She spoke in pain, in pain that transcended the burn on her palm. "I swear," she said, "I will never marry that man."
"You accepted his betrothal. You stood in view of all the Repubblica and the great cathedral, and you accepted to be his bride."
"Under threat."
"What threat?"
Dared she imagine indignation, and that it might wake on her behalf?
"The threat to my grandmother. She is old. She is foolish, my Nonna. He gave her promises, di Verona did, that she could have her house and her garden, if I married him. And he—" Here was the thing she must say, and must not incriminate Nonna, must not, no matter the anger the Doge might direct elsewhere. "Defend yourself tomorrow, that is what I wanted to say, what I came to say today, but I had no courage. La Duchesa is no part of this, understand this first and foremost. But go protected, tomorrow, and don't let di Verona or his men come near you."
"You recognize my seal."
"I knew it once I saw it." She knew he would take back the ring. She clenched her hand on it a moment, and carried that fist to her heart, then stretched it toward him and opened her hand.
"And I know di Verona is your enemy."
"Are you?" He had not taken the ring. "Are you my enemy, Sforza?"
"Never."
He took off his mask. The eyes had been wicked and dark behind it. Without it, they were brown and kind. She took off the white bauta, and let it fall.
"No more la moretta?" he asked her.
"No more mysteries," she said, looking only into his eyes, and willing, oh, very willing, if he were willing, too.