my mother and the lord of Milan exchanged pleasantries. I thought I knew my own drill by now: lovely to meet you, here are your rooms, see you at the feast tonight.
But this time it was different. I was not taken to the residence across the moat, which clearly housed the court, but up the battlements to one of the towers. The room had no furniture, save a faldstool. There was no bed save a straw pallet in the corner. There was no window, just a drafty arrow slit, and the only comforts afforded me were a tinderbox and a bundle of candles.
It was a cell.
I turned back, sure there was some mistake, met the heavy oak door as it slammed in my face, and heard the key turn. There was no mistake. I was a prisoner.
Shit.
Well. This was far from the glorious court I had heard about from my various Milanese clients over the years. Why had my fortunes changed so, in a heartbeat? In Bolzano my lodgings were sparse, but at least they were comfortable and befit my new rank. Had my mother, in her short conference with the Milanese lord, shared her suspicions of me? How was she so sure I had betrayed her somehow? Why had she placed me in this empty cell? I even began to miss Marta, Marta who had left the carriage abruptly somewhere in Lombardy, there one day, gone the next. I thought of the deep and deadly glass lakes and their poisoned waters. I wondered if she had been dumped there, weighted down to dance on the bottom, like the figures in the lagoon. A Venetian death. Or perhaps she had been taken back to Venice and would once again rut with her kitchen-boy love. Despite her actions to me, I rather hoped that this last would be her fate. I knew my mother’s capability for revenge—she had been let down, and did not forgive. She had guessed, in the carriage that day, that Marta had failed to watch me closely, and now she was leaving it to the professionals. An armed soldier—doubtless one of the multitudes I had seen in the courtyard—paced outside. I heard his sword tip scrape my door as he switched back and forth. The watch changed, it seemed, every two hours. I was out of the world with frustration. How would Brother Guido contact me now, with a locked door and an armed guard between myself and the world? I heard the watch change once, twice, and no one else came near. I had not food nor drink, and my growling stomach soon served to remind me of the tale of Brother Guido’s ancestors, imprisoned in the Muda tower, driven to starvation so extreme they devoured each other. Nor did I have any diversions save the view from my window. I dared not take the picture from my bodice, the wooden roll from my sleeve, or my mother’s mask from my hood, lest someone burst in upon me. I had to content myself with watching a small sliver of a city through the long arrow slit that was my only light and air. The wind perished my eye and whistled and moaned in counterpoint to the percussion of the soldiers marching outside. I was trapped in an organ pipe.
On the third watch there was a knock and a burly soldier entered, with a cadet at his shoulder.
“Signorina,” he said, as if such pleasantries were alien to him. “I regret to disturb you, but you are to be searched on the orders of il Moro.”
Madonna.
I assumed il Moro was his name for his lord, but I knew the orders came from my mother and I invoked her name now, in desperation. “But sir, I am the dogaressa’s daughter!”
He blinked once. “Indeed, and I regret the necessity. But these are sensitive times and all guests must be searched, including your exalted mother.”
He lied and we both knew it. There was no way a duke would offend his noble guests with such mistrust. My heart stopped beating. They would find the painting, and the roll, and the coin, and the fifty gold ducats and mask I’d stolen from my mother. I was as good as dead. Fleetingly, I toyed with the idea of offering them a fuck apiece if they’d let me be, but I knew that the notion was hopeless—sex was my currency when I worked the streets, but for a noble maiden to lose her “reputation,” she