NINE

ON A DAMP LATE NIGHT IN SEPTEMBER, Violetta hurried down the labyrinthine calle della Toletta wearing her mask and necklace. It was terrible to run in so tight a dress, but she would not rest until she saw that rebellious tree near the entrance to La Sirena.

She had spent nearly three months weighing Federico’s offer, nervously leaning toward accepting, then backing away from the idea every time it began to feel real. Then that afternoon she had attended the farewell dinner for Vania, who, at forty, was retiring from the coro to the San Zaccaria nunnery. Vania’s voice was still so warm and bright, but she wouldn’t sing again. When Violetta embraced her, said goodbye, all she could think was never, never, never. Her own life could not follow the same narrow path. It was decided. And she didn’t want to waste another moment letting Federico know.

When she rounded the final corner, she ran headlong into a masked pair coming from the opposite direction.

“Excuse us,” the woman said. She was a head shorter than Violetta and very petite, rubbing her brow where she had smacked it upon Violetta’s opal necklace.

Violetta winced. The force of the blow had caused the pointed edge of the gold collet holding the stone to stab into her breast. When she raised the stone and looked down, she saw a drop of blood on her chest.

“Are you hurt?” the woman asked, and for a moment Violetta couldn’t reconcile the sting at her breast with this tiny creature before her. She wanted to berate the woman for her recklessness, to ignore that she herself had been as reckless, but then she noticed the man in his mask and tabarro. He was a little off-balance. He must have been drunk. Violetta understood the hurry to get the fool home and into bed.

“I’m fine,” she said, more coldly than necessary. She didn’t want to waste any more time on this pedestrian couple. She had to get to Federico.

She was moving past them when, at her feet, a black-and-white-spotted dog barked. A memory returned of the little dog she used to watch through the attic window when she was a girl. How she longed to meet him up close. She hadn’t thought of him in years, and the sight of this dog brought her back to a simpler time, when the things she wanted did not scare her.

Moments ago, nothing could have slowed her pace. Now Violetta lowered to her knees on the cobblestones and presented her gloved palm to the dog. She felt his whiskers through the silk as he sniffed her, then the damp pressure of his tongue. She scratched his head, let her fingers linger on his ears. She wanted to ask his name.

But when she looked up at the couple, she saw the woman edging her body underneath her lover’s arm. She saw how readily she shouldered the weight of her man. She saw open generosity, no judgment in the motions, in the murmured reassurances.

She tried to imagine such vulnerable tenderness between herself and Federico. There was something between them, but it was different, more charged. Perhaps one day, she thought, now watching the man kiss his partner’s hand. The simple gesture made Violetta feel she was intruding.

“Come, Sprezzatura,” the woman called the dog. “Time for bed.”

The dog trotted after them, and Violetta rose to watch them go, the little family they made. She felt unexpectedly envious, and she couldn’t express why. She had to admit, it was a terrific name for a dog.

She hurried across the bridge without looking back, touching the mottled bark of the tree with her fingertips as she ducked beneath it.

She should have been at La Sirena an hour ago, but just as she’d been pulling her cloak over her grown, ready to strip her bed, twist her sheet, and escape, she’d heard Laura rise in the room across the parlor. She’d heard her friend’s bare feet padding on the wood. Coming closer. Violetta had untied her mask with the speed of an accelerato. She had kicked it and the cloak under her bed, dove back under the covers, pulled them up as high as her neck. She undid the clasp on the necklace and let it slide into her hand, beneath her pillow. She had barely closed her eyes when the door to her room creaked open.

“Violetta?”

She held her breath, not moving. She felt Laura’s urge to come close, pull back the coverlet, and climb into bed as they used to do. When they were children their beds had been smaller, like the distance between their hearts. They hadn’t talked much recently. But Violetta understood why Laura was there.

She’d had her nightmare of her mother.

Violetta had not been haunted by her own dream of Mino’s mother in more than half a year. Her recent dreams featured Federico. They were equally hard to shake upon waking.

“Are you sleeping?” Laura asked.

Another night, Violetta would have taken her friend into her bed. They would not have to speak, only hold each other until the ache subsided enough for Laura to sleep. But not tonight. Not when she had finally determined to take Federico up on his proposal. She had the morning off tomorrow to recover. It had to be tonight.

If she let Laura in, she would see Violetta’s gown, wrinkled from having been hidden in the bottom of her armoire. She’d see the slippers she wore beneath the blankets, and she would know the nature of Violetta’s secret. She couldn’t. Violetta had plans now that stretched across the evenings into a future she couldn’t yet see.

When Laura left, Violetta felt guilty. She waited in her bed a long time, knowing how hard it would be for her friend to sleep again. She could not risk being heard when she slipped through her window.

---

NOW SHE WORRIED she had waited too long. It was after midnight. What if Federico was gone? She had to see him tonight. She climbed the stairs, and stopped before the fishtail plaque, the candle in its blue glass.

The doorkeeper didn’t recognize her in her mask, but when she moved aside the neck of her cloak and showed the opal, he bowed and opened the door. She wished Fortunato had been there; tonight she wanted a direct line to Federico.

But the casino was almost empty. A first glance showed neither the owner nor his servant.

“How can a beauty like you be alone so late in the evening?” a man said, coming up behind her, his hand sliding up her hips.

“I’m not alone,” she said and swiveled away, taking in what she could of him beneath his mask. He was no taller than she, with a pale unshaven neck. He smelled of brandy.

“I’m meeting someone.” The words brought a confidence to her voice.

“Everyone’s gone home but the barmaid,” the man said, stepping close again. “And me—”

Before he’d finished speaking, he was lifted off the ground by the neck of his tabarro and tossed violently to the side. He landed on a card table, then rolled off it to the floor, breaking a bottle with his fall. In his place stood Federico. As the man moaned and rolled to his knees, Federico looked at Violetta, and the violence in his eyes suddenly cleared.

“Was he bothering you?” His calmness reminded Violetta of the Magnificat by Johann Sebastian Bach. They used to sing it in the music school and it always struck Violetta that there was no trace of the bright and rapid second movement left when she performed the slower third.

She had not felt threatened by the man, and Federico’s response seemed extreme, but Violetta was caught between being unnerved by this flash of brutality and flattered by how readily he had come to her defense.

“Is he all right?” she asked, leaning over to check on the man, bleeding through his white mask where he’d hit the table. She offered to help him up, but Federico waved two fingers in the air, and two guards arrived.

When the injured man was gone, only the barmaids remained, wiping down the tables. La Sirena had a tranquil romance about it without all its customers.

“Please don’t think I make a practice of fighting,” Federico said, steering Violetta toward the bar. “That man was a confidenti of the Ten.”

Violetta knew of the Council of Ten. Within the Incurables, these judges had always been portrayed as necessarily strict arbiters of justice, but in Violetta’s recent ventures out at night, she’d learned otherwise. She’d seen the crowds scatter at the sight of one of the Ten’s glowing red lanterns at the bow of their gondolas. If that man was a confidenti of the Ten, it meant he was one of their spies. A dangerous man for a woman taking the risks she was taking.

“Thank you,” she told Federico. “But you’re not afraid of retribution? He was bleeding.”

“I can handle the Ten, but I won’t give them access to you.”

He was keeping his promise to protect her identity.

“Now tell me,” he said, “are you here with good news?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded small. She didn’t know where her nerve had gone, but then he took her hands and it didn’t matter.

“Really?” he said. “You’ll sing? Here?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I came to sign.”

He kissed her hands a dozen times with a happiness far purer than she’d expected. She thought of the couple she’d run into by the bridge. Someday might she and Federico care for each other as tenderly as they did?

“Contracts later,” he said. “Tonight let’s celebrate.” He lifted a champagne bottle and two glasses in one hand, taking her arm with the other. “There’s still a little starlight left before the dawn.”

He led her toward the door, pausing for a whispered word with Fortunato, who bowed at the sight of Violetta. Then Federico led her out of the casino, down the stairs, under the bough of the cork tree, and along the dark canal. The night was still, the revelers finally gone to bed, merchants and guildsman getting their last moments of sleep. It felt like all of Venice belonged to Violetta and Federico.

At the third bridge, where the calle turned left and the Grand Canal and the tall bronze gate of Federico’s palazzo came into view, he stopped in the center of the bridge and popped open the champagne. Foam spilled over the bottle. Violetta laughed as she held the glasses near to catch it.

When they were full, Federico raised his to hers with a clink.

“You’ll need a name,” he said.

Violetta had been thinking of this, but the one she liked was so bold it made her nervous. She sipped her champagne for courage. “What do you think about La Sirena?”

The name had come to her while staring at the blue brand of the Incurables on her heel. La Sirena would let her stay anonymous to the patrons of the casino, but it would also make her inextricable from Federico’s place. The impulse to call herself after his establishment was confusing and new, but for once, she didn’t fight the idea of belonging somewhere, with someone.

Now she looked at Federico and for a second she thought he flinched. But then he was pouring her more champagne and smiling. “It’s perfect.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

A gondola passed beneath the bridge, a jolt of movement in their still night.

“Your chariot,” Federico said.

“Mine?”

“It will be safer for you to travel here and home again by boat.” He signaled the gondolier. “That’s Nicoletto. He will wait for you on the rio degli Incurabili at half past ten on nights when you perform. He will bring you home. When would you like to begin?”

Violetta worked through her obligations. Wednesday mornings generally started later for the coro. Mass was held in the evening that day. “Tuesday?”

“Until Tuesday, then,” Federico said and kissed her hands. “At half past ten.”

“Federico, wait,” she said, holding fast to him before he could pull away. “There’s something I must know.”

“Anything.”

One hand touched the opal at her breast. Above her, stars peeked through black sky. “Why did you give me this necklace?”

He gazed at it a moment, then met her eyes through her mask and smiled. “I knew that if I didn’t, I’d never see you again.”

“But what if I had pawned it and disappeared from Venice?”

“Then I would have missed you more than any jewel,” he said. As he helped her into the gondola, delivering her into the care of the handsome gondolier, Federico kissed her hand. “But you didn’t disappear from Venice, did you?”