The Remedy (41 page)
Sant’Alvise was far more humble than San Zaccaria. The
nuns were grateful even for the small sum I now offered for her care. “It is just until her guardian arrives,” I told them. “A matter of a week or two at the most.” This short time made my ducats look larger and they thanked me with seriousness.
“She’s a sweet child,” I told them. “You’ll find her quite tractable. In spite of an aristocratic education in London, it seems that they have neglected to teach her Italian, but she will respond to whatever way you communicate with her. She is an extraordinary girl.”
I fused every stage skill I’d ever possessed in a gesture that conveyed and
transferred
to them a heavy wonder at her magnificence.
The nuns looked gratified that I had brought them such a pearl, as I hoped they would. By stressing her particularity, I hoped to persuade them to find her strangeness becoming and even attractive. Novelty appeals to all Venetians, and most particularly to the city’s enclosed nuns. My parting words brought smiles to their kind faces: “She shows an extreme partiality to sweet foods.”
All the while I was thinking to myself:
This Pevenche, she is indeed extraordinary. She is a girl one cannot love. Every attempt I have made to befriend her had been quickly decayed by her contempt. Anything I have taught her
—
that for her own curious motives she did not disdain to retain
—
it is like a diamond set in lead. I hope she does not abuse these kind women.
Pevenche tottered from my arm to that of the abbess, a plump and homely nun, so unlike the hard-eyed anatomies at San Zaccaria. The abbess looked kindly on my fake belly, without any insinuations against the respectability of my incipient offspring.
“We’ll take good care of this one,” she smiled, “and you, my dear, must take care of the new little one. These blessed months of gestation are not to be taken lightly”
“You will be safe here,” I told Pevenche in English. She flinched away at the sound of my voice. Even though she was awake, she was still afraid of me. But whether it was her memories of my “ghost” or the knowledge that I was cold-hearted
enough to torture her with its appearance, I would never know and I did not preoccupy myself with the question. It was nothing like as evil as the deceptions that had tricked me into San Zaccaria without a fight.
“I don’t believe this,” she said one more time, and that was the last I saw of her: The abbess with a gentle arm about her shoulders, leading her down one of the innumerable corridors of cells radiating from the reception room on the first floor.
Take Canary Wine 1 pint; Diascordium half an ounce; Yolks of Eggs 2, mix.
What Cordial Juleps are to the Stomach, the same this Glyster is to the Guts. For it so refreshes them, as to raise an universal Exultation of the whole Systasis of the Spirits, whereby they are roused up, and enabled to perform their Business briskly; and throw out whatsoever is offensive to Nature, and noxious, vigorously.
The last anyone here had knowingly seen of me was my back firmly turned from Venice. Even if they had discovered the true trail of all my perverse routes around the north of Italy even if they had followed me through France, it seemed obvious that they had not tracked me to London.
Or, if they had, my shabby life as a quack’s assistant had given me sufficient cover from their vigilant eyes. Perhaps they never looked for me, a Golden Book daughter, south of the river, among the breweries and the glassworks and the humid parlors of the Blackfriars laundresses. They were probably still scouring Mayfair for a woman of my style and quality being kept by the kind of man who could afford me. Perhaps they were touring the theaters and the high-class brothels, thinking that the stage and its related profession were the only way I might feed myself. Or having found that trail quite cold and dead, then they might have given up on London, and were perhaps even now looking up my old haunts and my former lovers in Paris, Vienna, or St. Petersburg.
I imagined Mazziolini, his energy fed by fury, arriving in yet
another city. For him, too, it would be a point of honor to find me, and to administer a little homely chastisement of his own before he handed me back to my employers. My escape would have disgraced him in their eyes, and only my recapture would restore him to their favor. He would be after me like a bloodhound, eyes splayed, fingers avid, that soft insinuating voice asking the same questions in language after language, in city after city, proffering a miniature of me: “Have you seen her? Was it recently? Where exactly? Do you know where she is now?”
I dreamt of Mazziolini’s eyes. Eyes so pale a green that in certain lights and at certain angles they looked like tiny pools of milk, and the apertures too small in any case to give any access to a reading of his soul. I knew he would not stop looking until he found me.
After consigning Pevenche to Sant’Alvise I hurried to a quiet parish in Santa Croce, where for the second time I rented a room by posing as a recent widow who awaited her inheritance. The story fitted with my naturalistic air of desperation and apparently swollen belly.
I did not leave the house for several days. When I did so, my preparations were elaborate. I was masked and kept my cloak around me. I bulked myself up like a bear with concentric layers of clothes and on top of them all, beneath the ultimate dress, I tied the pregnancy apron from my quack days in London. To make me waddle, I wore a rolled chemise strung between my legs.
After my first anonymous costumed circuit, I flung off all the dresses and petticoats. Dressed only in my chemise, I lay on the bed, panting.
I had done it! I had arrived in Venice, and I had delivered Pevenche into a safe house. No one had detected me, and no one knew my true identity. I was safe. All I had to do was write my letter to Valentine Greatrakes, keep my head down, and wait. I knew that there was a risk that he might call my bluff, but I preferred not to think about that. I saw only sweet hope in that
direction of thought. What I must fear lay all around me in the silent streets of Venice: The eyes and ears of Venetians who might betray me.
The sooner I wrote the letter, the sooner I would be delivered from this danger. But something in me stopped me from writing it. My plan had worked perfectly until now, but I still lacked the confidence to use my own words to ask for what I wanted. And so I prevaricated, never even setting pen to paper. Each day for a fortnight I sat at my little desk, dipped the quill in the ink, and turned to stone. Eventually, when the darkness made the streets less perilous, I stole out and foraged for some food.
I walked to Zattere, and listened to the water chanting. For hours, I stood there, sniffing the salt and watching the lights extinguish on Giudecca, until the island lay nakedly dark, crooked as a gibbon’s arm flung round the promontory of Dorsoduro.
Then I went back to my desk, and did not write the letter.
I drank a little gin, and then a little more.
Take sweet Almonds beaten in a Mortar 12; Yolks of Eggs 2; Conserve of red Roses and Gilly Flowers, each 1 ounce; Aqua Coelestis half an ounce; Canary Wine, Damask Rose Water, each half a pint; work them about well together, then strain and add confection of Alkerms 2 drams; Oil of Cinnamon 2 drops.
It greatly Nourisheth, Recruiteth and Reviveth the Spirits.
Meanwhile the strangest thing was happening with Pevenche.
Instead of screaming and fighting, instead of sulking, instead of threatening, she settled calmly into life at the convent.
I did not at first go to visit her. I wished neither to witness the histrionics nor to hear her lamentations. I had endured enough of her voice and her dull repertoire of self-pity on our journey. I hoped that the nuns would be generous with the bottles I had left, for their own sakes. Dottore Velena’s opiate was sweet enough to please Pevenche and I knew that the nuns would have no trouble administering it. In fact, they would probably have to ration it.
But I received reports from the nuns, and they were good.
After a scant hour of repinings and tears she had asked to be let out of her cell so that she might dine with her companions. The next day she made a hearty breakfast and later a substantial luncheon. In the afternoon she had remarked on the beautiful smell of almond cakes and asked to see the kitchens where they were made. There she had been fascinated by the sight of nuns measuring flour and butter, and stirring powdered almonds into marzipan paste.
The following morning she asked if she might be able to try making the marzipan herself, and within three days she was
working with the most accomplished bakers in the kitchen. She proved to have a good touch with all sugared dishes, and her productions were of high quality, her only fault being a tendency to over-sweeten.
Despite her lack of Italian, the other nuns found her a very acceptable companion, and in her way, she was popular among them. They even admired her. The appalling red of her hair, universally despised in London as a fashion item, was optimistically seen as approaching the gorgeous tint of Titian’s painted tresses in Venice. Her foreignness and the expensive cut of her clothes meant that she was not classified as a Venetian girl would have been. No one knew her bloodline: Golden Book,
borghese
or peasant. No one countenanced the idea that society might be organized differently outside of Venice. They took her as they found her. She appeared to think very highly of herself, so they did too. Her interest in cooking was viewed as charmingly and cunningly faux-naïve. Her productions were exquisite, and much appreciated. And when she sat at the supper table it was among Cornaros and Mocenigos, the highest-born girls in the convent and those who were most arrant in their pride. The
convene
jostled to wash her sheets.
She did not ask when she would be released. She occasionally asked for more cream and sugar, because she wished to experiment with recipes of her own. And she was soon hosting cake festivals in the convent laundry, with the noble choir-nuns as guests and the
convene
serving. In honor of their new sister, the nuns commissioned a ukulele-shaped baking tray for the kitchen, and in it Pevenche produced the most exquisite
panpepato
flavored not just with ginger and saffron but also with powdered red sandalwood. She even went down to the orchard with the other nuns to decorate the trees with sugared almonds and candied fruits on the days when young girls were due to come and see the convent. Stupid young girls, such as I had been! Pevenche was already a part of the conspiracy, from the powerful end of the operation.
One more extraordinary thing: Pevenche, tone-deaf to French and German, had begun to chatter in Italian and even Venetian.
I had not bestirred myself to instruct her in Italian. I had assumed it a hopeless task. But the nuns reported that she was proving an able pupil.
Now I heard that she was a veritable queen bee among her set, and that she had begun to rule the social order with an iron hand. The little world of the nunnery, its febrile politics and coiled-up emotions, clearly suited her. While her Italian was still basic, the lack of nuance was an advantage to her, as she was able to press home her superiority in ways that were adapted to her own special kind of bullying. She had taken under her wing one younger noble girl, spurned by the rest on account of her ill-looks, and had taught this child some ideas about dress. The girl was pathetically grateful, and served Pevenche as if she were a duchess.
Now I had no fears for her being seen or reported to the three magistrates of the
provveditori sopra monasteri.
No one outside the Order would actually lay eyes on her. Three times a day she lumbered to the suspended choir-stalls and sang lustily with the other nuns—just “la-la-la” to their words of devotion, and she had begun to take her ukulele along with her. I wondered at the effect on the congregation of Sant’Alvise of her harsh voice and the squawking of the disembodied strings floating above their heads.
She even lined up with the other nuns to receive communion through a slit in the curtain over a grille beside the altar.
When I went to visit her at the end of the second week, the first thing I noticed was that she had gained a visible amount of flesh. She came into the room warily, and on seeing me did not stoop to a greeting but quickly assumed her usual attitude of disdain. She left it for me to greet her and try to begin a conversation.
I asked how she did, and she looked out of the window. Humiliated, I repeated the question with the servile formality that she preferred in me: “Your guardian has asked me to inquire as to your condition.” She nodded to acknowledge the question but clearly felt it beneath her to answer such a lowly messenger.
At this point two young nuns burst into the room and Pevenche’s face changed completely. It flowered into a smile, and she even took one of the girls by the hand. Then she pointed to me, and scowled. The little nuns erupted into knowing giggles, and I felt myself aged to ninety years by their cheerful disrespect. With a series of hand gestures, Pevenche indicated that she would not occupy herself long with such a paltry object as myself and the girls tripped out of the room.
Left alone with me, Pevenche seemed less sure of herself. She did not meet my eye, but looked at the floor. I saw that she was waiting to hear what I had to say. I noticed she was clutching her ukulele against her belly like a ridiculous toy shield.
It seemed too feeble to explain that I had come merely to see how she was. She would mock me for that pathetic weakness. I envisioned her laughing about it with her new friends. So I said merely, with as much menace as I could convey: “Now I have seen you are alive, you may go.”