Heart of Glass - By Sasha Gould Page 0,75

get right in this embroidery.”

Vincenzo snorts. “Embroidery? Yes, yes—go and keep your soft little hands amused with skeins of silk.”

For a moment, I picture his skull smashing against cobbles tones. I drag a hand across my forehead, clearing the image from behind my eyes. I push my chair back roughly.

“Of course,” I say, ignoring Vincenzo’s insults. “Let me see what I can do to help.”

Emilia holds out her hand to me as she waits in the doorway. I smile at her gratefully.

“Goodbye, sweet dove!” Vincenzo says as I leave the room.

In the doorway, I turn, my hands resting on the handles. “Good night, Vincenzo. May your return to Venice bring you everything you deserve.”

His smile falters, and he seems uncertain how to respond to my words. But I don’t give him the chance. I back out of the room, Emilia following, and shut the doors behind us.

37

In the days that follow, it feels as though Vincenzo’s return has cast an even more somber cloud over Venice. Each morning Faustina whispers to me over breakfast about the latest rumors heard in the market.

“Vincenzo’s ships are still docked in the harbor,” she tells me on Sunday. “It’s as if he’s taken control there. His crew struts around the harbor as though they own it.”

The curfew is still in place at night, but aside from the soldiers visible on the streets, Venice is returning to herself. The markets still trade, the gondolas still float down the canals and Allegreza is still in her stinking cell. Another pamphlet denouncing the Segreta has left the press, this one even more vitriolic than the last. It urges the men of Venice to question their wives, their sisters and their daughters, so that “we may cleanse this city of the stain in its heart.”

Paulina sent word that the letter was delivered, but there has been no response. Does Massimo really mean to call our bluff? If so, can we carry out our threat to share his secret? One word is all it would take to spread like wildfire across the city. And what if word got out beyond? We could end up hurting Venice rather than protecting her.

And still there’s no word from Roberto. There seems little doubt that he’s fled the city, abandoning his father and mother to their fate. Abandoning me to loneliness and shame. Each time I hear the quick patter of a messenger’s footsteps, I wonder if he will bring a letter—even a few lines to let me know he’s safe. Each time I’m disappointed. More and more, I find myself thinking about how he lived for so long in disguise, posing as a lowly painter, and I wonder whether our engagement was simply another form of pretense. After all, Roberto’s past is still a secret to me. Perhaps he fooled everyone.

“That’s not all,” Faustina says, shaking her head. “Massimo has scout ships roaming the waters. No one can come or leave on the seas without getting past him.”

On my way to Mass, I go down to the harbor to see for myself. People move in nervous huddles, and soldiers stand guard, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords as they watch every face carefully. Vessels of all sizes are searched without ceremony, so paranoid is the Bear about spies and subterfuge. Vincenzo’s ships, sails furled, sit at anchor, but his men move around the harbor like crows in their black doublets. His flagship, Il Castigo, is the most impressive craft in the harbor, and its side bristles with cannons.

As I step between coiled ropes, a man is dragged off a small boat and thrown to his knees. I shrink back behind a crate while soldiers surround him.

“Where have you come from?” demands one of them. The man looks up into his face, wide-eyed and terrified. He shakes his head; he doesn’t understand. The soldier sends the back of his hand cracking across the man’s face, and he falls back. “Who sent you here?”

The man gabbles in a language I don’t understand and points to piles of burlap sacks in the bottom of his boat that have been torn open to reveal wooden carvings. It’s clear he’s a trader, come to sell his goods in the market. Utterly harmless. Yet with a vicious yank, the soldier drags the man to his feet and hurls him into the bottom of his boat. He props himself up on an elbow and wipes the trickle of blood from his mouth.

“If you don’t have papers