Текст книги "The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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And does not Venezia endure?

Beyond her slender link to the dry land, out in the higher, rolling hills, people put their faith in lords again, strong warlords, wielders of dependable power—lords, so they hope, that may make them safe. But they pay a price for this. One might say that in Venezia people only wear their masks for the season. But in the cities to the west, people wear them forever, the dukes, the laborers, the artisans all doomed to their roles for life.

They lack humor and romance, those outsiders, Venetians say; but Venezia possesses both. Even if the powers of the world come in with heavy boots and rules as tyrants for a season—why, as philosophically and easily as they observe their annual interval of sacrifice, Venetians accept that things might be grim for the while, but Venetians always have their will, and their ways, interlopers and sojourners be damned, Venezia is confident she will choose her doge again. She will hold her masques again and build back her realm of glittering glass, her power like the glassworkers' art, like a bubble of air, of glowing heat. Sometimes it fails, but most times it hardens and shines like the sun.

Venezia is mercantile, more than regal, more glass than gems. Her days rest, like her foundations, on quaking ground, her eternal ideals of equality, and freedom. Everything is for sale in her markets. And nothing she sells is irreplaceable. When outsiders come to rule her, Venezia changes them, or, if they refuse, allows them a space to parade and make a show. When the show ceases to amuse—then Venezia can change her masks, oh, so quickly, and the interloper finds nothing quite as it had seemed.

Venezia is no friendlier to immigrants than to conquerors, alas: she is so tiny a city compared to, say, Milano, or ancient Ravenna, or Verona, She exists on a set of isles. She can scarcely expand her boundaries, or build up, or outward. She is what she is and has been and will be. Those families who live here have lived here forever. Those who come here come on family connections, or on the charity of residents, or find no place to lodge. There is simply no room. Yet over millennia, family bloodlines run thin, and a few great houses stand vacant—a few, at least, as the age advances, as the floods grow more frequent.

In that particular circumstance, a very few newcomers find a foothold. Giovanna Sforza is one of these—la duchesa, she calls herself, this bitter old woman, la duchesa di Milano. Whether she is, in fact truly titled in Milan, no one can ascertain, or greatly cares. The necessary matter is that she came with sufficient money, and the Venetian Montefiori, who might know the truth of her claim, has rented her an elegant house in a cluster of buildings overarching the Calle Corrente. Four canals border this clump of buildings, and bridges bring foot traffic along the Priuli margin, and back along the calles. It is, in short, a place where shops spread their wares, where tabernas set out tables, on the rare walkway beside a lesser canal, It is thus not a grand palazzo, this little house with its water-stairs on the Racheta waterway. It has been run down and let go, its last owner having died in penury and the current one, who inherited it, himself reputed as mad. But the little house possesses one glory one amazing glory that would have made many wealthy families envy it, before it fell to ruin—and this was a garden, run entirely to weeds. Land was so precious in Venezia, that not to build on it and install a dozen persons on it was a token of wealth, of truly great wealth and standing. But this garden was simply neglected by the mad Montefiori, who took to religious orders, and lived in the upstairs.

Some said later that the duchesa was a distant Montefiori herself. Some said her fortunes had fallen so low that she had no income, but to serve as nurse and caretaker to this mad old man. Whatever the truth of it, la duchesa came by boat, bringing no furniture at all, so far as anyone remembered. She came with a young granddaughter and three servants, the servants with six valises which they hired ported through the calles, and which they zealously followed afoot, as if they feared the porters were thieves. The duchesa and the young girl went by gondola to the water-stairs of the little house—such were the details afterward gossiped at the edge of the lagoon, where the gondoliers gathered, and on the Serpentine, by the offended porters. La duchesa's arrival was a moment's buzz in the city: the fact that she had leased from the odd Montefiori—that was itself a delicious oddity. But the gossip among the gondoliers and the porters was thin, beyond the fact that la duchesa had arrived with one very heavy valise among the others. Gold was the common and natural guess, and in three days thieves made two attempts on the little house, in vain; the servants were quick, and efficient. The merchants of the city knew nothing, except that la duchesa, through her servants, purchased new furnishings, a dining table and two stout chairs of classical taste, three carpets of good quality, and excellent dinnerware, with, of course, blown glass. She also, through her servants, bought extravagant fabrics, and engaged seamstresses, who reported that the young girl, Giacinta, about twelve, was a lovely if solemn child, and that la duchesa was elegant and clearly of exquisite taste.

There was early speculation as to when la duchesa might invade society, and society underwent a slight stir of preparation and a shudder of fortification. Venezia did not readily admit foreigners—anyone not born in Venezia was, by definition, foreign—least of all welcomed foreign aristocrats, who might expect to be bowed to and deferred to by the merchant princes of the Adriatic. And no one wanted to admit that an acquaintance with the mad Montefiori constituted native standing. Venezia drew a deep breath and closed ranks behind its doge and its council, its mercantile elite, and its own sense of proprieties. It waited for the assault. In vain. La duchesa did not enter society, and the mad Montefioro languished and died, taken in the black funerary barge to the sea, without relatives to lament him, only that la duchesa provided him a decent funerary procession, and watched from the windows as he was taken away, with what emotion no one could tell. She stayed quiet in her rented house afterward, engaged a gardener, and gossip about the gowns and the furnishings faded in favor of a grudging acceptance, since she never came out. The gossip that surrounded the house grew uninteresting, providing no amusement and no scandal.

So they caused no difficulties. They became a known quantity, and in their self-imposed isolation, respectable, even considered in invitations—but never quite invited, for fear of everyone else's opinion. The Montefiori house became an address, a location, an odd tidbit of knowledge. Fashionable people never saw the duchesa, except that gondoliers noted the beautiful child that looked out from the waterside windows, and from time to time merchants received requests to bring goods for inspection and purchase. The merchants thus favored reported the house as exquisite inside, and the gardener, who ate his lunch at a certain café on the Priuli, said the duchesa and her daughter spent hour upon hour in their little garden, that they had rooted out the weeds with their own hands, and discovered greenery and flowers under the neglect. Three years passed, in which more important matters than la duchesa di Milano pressed on Venezia. In the first of those three years, a far more extravagant visitor arrived, noisily, with abundant baggage and a train of servants. His name was Cesare di Verona, exiled and out from his own city in a recent coup, but, it seemed, far from penniless. In fact, he had long supported Venetian mercantile interests, through intermediaries—not quite idle enough a nobleman to rule Verona, perhaps, but an easier fit within Venetian society than the duchesa from farther west, since he spread gold about, liberally. More, Cesare di Verona owned ships. Society therefore understood how he derived his money. I was apt to increase. It employed and it built, it traded and therefore I could be traced, by those who knew such things, by those whose business it was to know.

That meant it could be courted. The dark and handsome Cesare di Verona, unlike the duchesa, was invited to the houses of merchant princes, and did attend their parties, and ingratiated himself with certain ones by means of charity, by his relief to a merchant who had lost a ship and cargo, by his support and rescue of a foundering palazzo, with its historic treasures. Such an aristocrat found his way into ancient and inner circles, paving his way with good works. Could anyone disapprove of such generosity? And did anyone notice the comings and goings among his servants?

Venezia absorbed both arrivals, and went about its own affairs in peace, its life regulated by the tides, by the arrival and departure of ships from the deepwater port, the Porto Nuovo, beyond the great sea gates—and of course by the flow of trade to and from the port causeway, and goods likewise flowing on the western causeway, the sole landward connection of the city to the rest of the countryside.

Two things disturbed that peace. First event and least likely, a great quake struck remote Cairo, and the consequent tide, as it rushed inland, had flooded the Cairo harborside, wrecked ships at dock, and destroyed almost all the warehouses.

To certain merchants in Venezia, Cairo's misfortune seemed more opportunity than disaster, since it had happened to a trading partner, not to them, and since their ships had not been in port, they might sell to a city in dire need of goods. But the debate of the Council, whether to send assistance gratis to the stricken city, was the news of two days only. On the third day, while the city was still abuzz, with disputes over the matter of Cairo, the Doge slipped on the stairs of his own house and died—a careless servant, a previously spilled tray, a spot of oil, on the uncompromising marble steps of the Palazzo Ducale.

In an instant the benevolent and honest man who had ruled Venezia for two decades now was dead. The fate of Cairo entangled itself in the debate over his succession. The Council, after loud argument and the purveying of every favor and counterfavor wealth could manage, deadlocked, and finally chose as the Doge replacement a young man, an astonishingly young man, in fact: one Antonio Raffeto, remote relative by marriage of the lamented Doge, a scholar, and reputedly honest. His election came as a third-round compromise between the pro and the con of the relief effort. The Raffeti owned no ships, nor did they trade. In fact the Rafetti of the last five generations had been respected historians, professors, and scholars of the great library, though this young man was said to be very knowledgeable in practical matters. In fact, as people about town now said, the Raffeti finally held power openly, through this quiet young man, when, through the centuries, they had only stood behind the Doges and told them step by step what to do.

Antonio Raffeto’s first official act was to send aid to Cairo. His second was to oppose Cesare di Verona in his bid to gain the long-vacant Montefiori seat on the Council—a bid against precedent, but supported by several still angry families who had voted against Antonio Raffeto. It was straight into the boiling water of politics for the young Doge, but he withstood this storm, and gained from it a reputation, when several merchant princes found their own accounts audited, and Cesare di Verona was found to have entertained them extravagantly.

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 all: "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.

"Il duco is a good friend," Nonna said, "and a protector for you. He's a warlord, with claims to a wealthy city. Men follow him. And who knows? He may soon became a greater man than he is." That word soontroubled Giacinta, who had no possible interest in di Verona's future. She walked to the diamond-pane windows that looked out on the Priuli's dark chasm, above the water where traffic passed. The sound of shops and restaurants down on the walkway always disturbed the peace in this room. The days of carnevalewere approaching, beginning this evening, and already there was a scattering of festive traffic, despite the dimming of the sun and a spatter of rain. Thunder murmured in the distance.

"Il duco Cesare is our very powerful friend," Nonna said.

"He's not my friend," Giacinta said sharply. She wanted not to think about Cesare di Verona. She wanted the carnevaleto break out now. All the spectacles of previous years she had viewed only from the windows, but this year, this year Nonna said she might go to one of the balls, di Verona's, unfortunately, on the fourth day of the festival, but it was the price she had to pay. "I don't want to think of him. I want only to think about the festival. I want my dress to be finished. I want to go to the Serpentine and see the barge parades."

Listen to me, child. These pretty things you enjoy all have a source. Do you not care where?" She was not a stupid girl. Nor was la duchesa a stupid woman. Giacinta looked at her grandmother sharply, with great apprehension now. A source? A source, for her party finery?

Before now, only this or that trinket had been a gift from di Verona to her grandmother, not to her. But Nonna had talked of liquidating certain properties in Milano, of being sent a sum of gold.

"This man," her grandmother said, "this man you so lightly dismiss, mark me, will rule Venezia." A moment of rash rebellion. "The Doge rules Venezia."

"The Doge," Nonna scoffed. "The Doge, the son of a professor, with the mind of an accountant. Weare the nobili, weare the ones burdened and privileged to rule, for centuries." Giacinta knew that speech. She had heard di Verona and Nonna talking together about old times.

"Come." Nonna took a bracelet from her own wrist, and put it on her. "You will go to il duco's ball, and dance with him, and perhaps . . . perhaps two great houses may make common cause."

"What are you saying?"

"That a union of our houses is to our good. I depend on you, my girl, my bella. I depend on you to make that union possible."

"To marry him, are you saying, Nonna? To marryhim?"

"If you can manage to please him. If you are a good and clever girl, who thinks most of her Nonna, and make a good impression on this man."

He throat seemed too narrow, breath too short. She struggled for argument. 'Why should I marry? Why should I ever leave you?"

"Because—" Nonna always had a lace handkerchief, it was always perfumed, always slightly damp and warm, and, being magical, as she had once said, it dried tears even before they were shed. "Because, my sweet, my treasure, if you marry Cesare di Verona, you will become the most powerful woman in Venezia."

"How should I be?"

"Because Cesare is a clever man, and the Doge will soon fall, and the divided Council will find itself in chaos, with riot in the city. Cesare will be at hand with a strong presence, to save Venezia from civil disorder. When ever could an accountant rule a city like this? It's only to the good of the city that he fall. And you will be a grand duchesa yourself, la duchesa di Venezia, respected among all the other cities."

One could never argue with Nonna when she spoke like this, so soft, so close and so intimately. It began to sound reasonable and necessary, whatever Nonna said.

But this year she was seventeen, and thought her own thoughts, and had been promised the carnevale, and Nonna could not persuade her. She said, however, obediently, "What shall I do?" because there was only one way to have peace from Nonna, and to get out the door. So Nonna told her how she must go to the duke's ball in three more days and dance with him, and he would dance with her the next day after that in the great Piazza di San Marco, declaring their engagement to the crowds. They would become the talk of Venezia, how handsome they were, how well matched.

"Then the people will applaud the match, and you will be in the public eye as his fiancee, and when someday soon some mischance befalls the Doge, as, who knows? it might, why, then, then, bella, you will be protected and well-situated. Il duco will take firm charge of the city and prevent public disorder with a strong show of force. As, who knows? such wild events might easily happen, in the license of festival."

It was a warning what Nonna wanted to happen, what Nonna expected to happen. She knew Nonna hated the Doge, for what reason she never had understood, except that he was common. Nonna had never shown hatred for the citizens of the Repubblica, only regarded as disgraceful the notion that commoners should rule when their betters wondered where their next meal might be coming from.

She had been happy before di Verona's visit. Now the sun seemed dimmed outside the diamond panes, and the thunder walking above the tiled roofs seemed full of omen. Her first carnevale, her carnevale, was to be full of Nonna's plans, of a betrothal, and to di Verona. Of a sudden her perspective was not of days of celebration, but a little stolen time before the holiday celebrations met di Verona's ambition, and before her own life forever took a turn she never wanted. She let herself be unlaced, shed the dress to the seamstress for a final few tucks, and told the seamstress, when Nonna had left the room, "I shall want it in my room in an hour." In fact, she had formed a deep resolution, that what carnevaleshe had left, she would enjoy with all her might.

She went to her room, she took out all the coins she had saved in secret, coins of Milano, coins of Verona, coins of Venezia, and put them all in the little purse she used when she went to the shops. She laid out her jewels, and when the seamstress came with the dress, she had the seamstress lace it up, lace it tight.

She did her hair up, she put on her jewelry, the amethyst necklace, and her pearls. Her mother's ring, all she had of her parents, she always wore, a gold circlet with a chased design and a band of diamonds. She put on the beautiful headdress, nodding with plumes of gray and hyacinth. Last of all she took her masks, the white bauta, the common mask, and the black moretta, the mask of silence—she tied them by long ribbons to a velvet belt, and put it on so they hung among the folds of her skirts. Outside the window, twilight came early, in storm. Yet through the windows, from the walk outside, on the Priuli, came increasing squeals and laughter. She could not see what the cause was, but she resolved she would miss not a moment more of festival, nor think of di Verona a minute for the rest of her freedom. She slid her stockinged feet into the high-heeled, high-soled shoes, then fled downstairs to the front door and out under the sky, alone, free until the sunset. She put on the white bauta, beneath her plumes, the half-mask that let one eat and drink, and hurried along the Pruili and to the bridge, a young woman alone, dodging importunate young celebrants. She danced across the bridge, and so to the narrow shadow of the calles, then out again where she had longed to go, onto the great Serpentine, where the gold and fading sun speared the broad canal through massive gray cloud. Here was spectacle. Here people went about in wonderful costumes, wondrous gowns flashing with paste jewels. Men and women alike squealed and fled the cloaked mattacino, who flung eggs at festivalgoers, targeting particularly the women, but his eggs when they burst were full of perfumed water, and left a sweet smell where they struck. Giacinta wished he would fling one her way, and she would try to catch it. But the mattacino only bowed, out of missiles, and went his way, seeking more eggs, it was sure.

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.