The Rossetti Letter (v5) (6 page)

“No.”

“Any suitors on the horizon?”

“No.”

“Yet you hesitate.”

“You make it sound as if being a courtesan is easy. But I’ve heard of women who are beaten, or have their faces slashed, or worse. And what of the French disease?”

“There are dangers, that is true. But life is full of danger, whether or not one is a courtesan. There are ways to avoid those problems. I’ll teach you myself. You do realize this is a highly unusual offer. Most women would pay dearly for my secrets.”

“Why are you offering to do this for me?”

“Something you will learn soon enough is that even the most beautiful women grow old.” A shadow crossed La Celestia’s eyes and for a moment Alessandra caught a glimpse of the woman behind the courtesan’s polished facade, and realized that La Celestia was indeed older than she first appeared. The sunlight that slipped through the curtains revealed tiny lines around her eyes, deepening creases at the corners of her mouth.

“There will come a time when men will no longer pay so handsomely for my favors,” La Celestia went on, “but I refuse to make the mistakes that other courtesans make. Instead of ignoring the future, I’m planning for it. For my instruction, and for introductions to the richest and most distinguished men in Venice, there is a price: twenty-five percent of your earnings.”

“That seems rather high.”

“Does it? Why don’t I put it to you as my mother put it to me: ‘You can become a courtesan—not a prostitute, mind you, but a
cortigiana onestà
—and enjoy riches the likes of which you’ve never imagined, or you can sell candles on the church steps and live in poverty and filth.’ You don’t seem to have many more alternatives than I did.”

“Perhaps not, but—”

“Tell me, why did you choose to become Lorenzo’s mistress instead of taking orders? You must have known that you would not be accepted in most society, that it would make it much more difficult for you to marry well.”

“I wanted my freedom.”

“Exactly. ‘Freedom is the most precious gem a courtesan possesses. Given this privilege, even infamy seems honorable to her.’ Francesco Pona wrote that. Once you’re accustomed to freedom, it’s impossible to give it up. And believe me, there is no freedom in poverty.”

“I believe I have more choices than what you’re offering.”

“Do you? I see only three: you can become a nun, you can become a courtesan, or you can join the whores on the Bridge of Tits and sell yourself for cheap. If you’re smart, you’ll be at my house Wednesday at noon.” She stood up and walked to the door. “Tell me, did you love him?”

“Lorenzo?” It seemed shameful to admit that she had never loved him, that she suspected she would never love anyone. “I don’t know.”

The courtesan gave her a penetrating look. “That’s good. It’s better if you don’t love them. You must take my word on this.”

C
LAIRE PUSHED OPEN
a heavy glass door and walked into Forsythe Academy’s main corridor. Meredith had called her that morning and insisted that Claire meet her at the school at one o’clock. As she turned right off the corridor and into the suite of offices where Meredith worked, she was still unsure as to why she’d been summoned.

“Good, I was hoping you’d get here first,” Meredith said as Claire entered. Her office was reminiscent of her well-furnished home, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, decorator lamps, and two upholstered chairs facing an antique mahogany desk.

“First?” Claire asked.

“Someone’s going to be joining us.”

“Who?”

“Why don’t I start at the beginning?”

“Fine.”

“The father of one of our students is getting married next week. His second marriage, obviously. He and his new wife will be honeymooning in the south of France. Originally, his daughter was going to stay with her mother for the summer, but her mother is…well, she’s not well. She’s in the hospital, in fact. This morning he called to ask if we knew anyone, perhaps a teacher, who could take his daughter to Paris for a week. That way, he and his new wife can enjoy their honeymoon, then go back to Paris, pick up the daughter, and spend another week
en famille
before coming home. But summer school begins in a week and I’m shorthanded as it is.”

“Are you suggesting that I take this kid to Paris?”

“No! To Venice. The dates of their trip and your conference coincide perfectly. I spoke to him already and he said it was fine as long as Gwendolyn is in Paris in time to meet them. I get the feeling he’s desperate. Apparently the new wife isn’t keen on having a stepdaughter along for the entire honeymoon.”

“And what am I supposed to do with her while I’m at the conference?”

“Take her with you. She’s not a child, she’s fourteen. Tell her to sit still and shut up for the duration, then do something fun together afterward.”

“I don’t know how to have fun with kids,” Claire protested.

“You don’t like kids?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like them, it’s just that I haven’t been around teenagers since…since I was a teenager.”

“I’m around teenagers all the time, and they’re not any different than we were. Most of them are really quite nice. Gwen’s a normal kid. Perfectly normal. But the thing that’s most important to remember about this plan is that Gwendolyn’s father is very well off, and he’s going to pay for everything. He may even cover the cost of the conference and throw in a little extra for your time.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m completely serious.” Meredith was grinning, her eyebrows raised in a positive slant, but the pen in her right hand rapidly tapped the desk, revealing her anxious energy.

“What is it you’re not telling me?” Claire asked.

“There was an incident that you’ll have to be discreet about. In other words, you can’t discuss it with Gwendolyn. Her father injured his foot a few days ago in a…a golfing accident.”

“Someone ran over his foot with a golf cart?”

“No, someone punctured it with a bullet.”

“This girl’s father is the guy who got shot by his ex-wife?”

“Yes.”

“Which means that this girl’s mother is the woman who shot him.”

“Yes.”

“But you just said she was normal, perfectly normal. Having a mother who shoots people is not normal!”

“Keep it down, he’s going to be here any minute. You have to pretend that you don’t know anything about this.”

“I thought you said her mother was ill, that she was in the hospital.”

“She is. She’s in the psych ward at Mass General.” Meredith shrugged in reply to Claire’s perturbed glare. “Temporary insanity is an illness. At least, that’s the position her attorney is taking.”

“You must be temporarily insane to think that I could be a chaperone.”

“You don’t want to do this?”

“No, I don’t want to do this.”

“Then let me lend you the money for the trip.”

“No, I couldn’t accept it.” The night before she’d tried to estimate how much it would cost to go to Venice; once she’d added up airfare, hotel, food, and incidentals, it had been well over three thousand dollars. Even at tony prep schools like Forsythe, assistant deans weren’t highly paid. The money Meredith was speaking of was probably everything she’d managed to save. “I don’t know when I could pay it back,” Claire continued. “What if I’m never able to pay it back? It would ruin our friendship. And that would be much worse than not going to Venice.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m worried about you. You’ve hardly left your house in two years. Except for the nights we’ve gone out together, which I can count on one hand, I don’t think I’ve seen you dressed in anything other than sweats and those ridiculous flannel pajamas.”

“You think my pajamas are ridiculous?”

“When you wear them for days at a time, yes.”

“They happen to be comfortable and it cuts down on the laundry.”

“How you dress is not really the point. What I’m saying is…look, I might not have the husband and the kids and the picket fence and all that, but I do have relationships that last longer than one dinner.”

“The only thing that’s important to me right now is finishing my dissertation.”

“Claire, you know I love you, and I think it’s great that you’re so passionate about the seventeenth century and care so much about what people were like then, what they thought, what they ate, what kind of fork they used—”

“It’s interesting you should mention that. Forks were almost unheard of outside Italy in the early seventeenth century. Travelers to Venice often remarked on their use, they were so unusual.”

“See? That’s what I mean.”

“What’s what you mean?”

“You know about stuff from four hundred years ago, but most of the time you don’t seem to know what day it is. You need to get out of your house, and you need to go to Venice. Your adviser said it was vital to learn everything you could about that competing book. If you don’t, aren’t you risking everything you’ve worked so hard for?”

Claire sighed. Meredith was right, of course, as usual. “This girl’s father has agreed to pay for everything?” she asked.

“Everything,” Meredith said, nodding.

Suddenly Venice wasn’t out of the question, and Claire realized how desperately she wanted to go. In just over a week, she could be on a plane, on her way there. There’d be some kid sitting beside her, but so what? She could find out what this Cambridge professor had written and, even better, she could spend the rest of the week in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice’s library, doing research. A week wasn’t much time, but it was better than nothing. She’d be able to check the original documents for some of the sources she’d already cited; best of all, Alessandra Rossetti’s diaries were there.

“And, as I told you the other day, there are Italian—” Meredith stopped as they heard a man’s voice calling out an uncertain “Hello?” from the reception area.

Meredith stood up as Edward Fry appeared at the door. Claire made a quick appraisal: tall, medium build, vaguely athletic. About forty-five, she guessed, with a golfer’s tan and attractive crinkles around his eyes when he smiled. He was casually attired in jeans and a polo shirt. The most remarkable thing about him was the plaster cast on his left foot and his hospital-issue cane, and Claire was reminded of why her assistance was being sought. It occurred to her that he might have done something truly terrible to deserve his ex-wife’s fury. She was somewhat surprised to discover that Edward Fry was a pleasant man, and Claire soon realized that she’d made up her mind: she would go to Venice as his daughter’s chaperone.

Honestly, how bad could it be?

21 May 1617

“O
NCE MORE, ALL
the way across the room,” La Celestia said.

Alessandra hitched up her skirt and took a tentative step in her new
choppines,
the high, platform shoes favored by Venice’s style-conscious women.

“Don’t pull at your dress, it looks awkward. Your arms should rest gracefully at your sides, like so.” La Celestia waved Alessandra back. “Start again.”

Again?
Alessandra sighed impatiently. La Celestia was a bigger tyrant than Signor Ligorio, her old Latin master.

“I heard that,” La Celestia said. “Any time you’re ready to give up, just remember that the convent awaits.”

Alessandra tottered back to the end of the room. La Celestia stood at the other end, a good distance away. The courtesan’s bedchamber was larger than most salons; it was easily twice the size of Alessandra’s largest room at home. In the three weeks since she’d first come here, she hadn’t quite overcome her astonishment at the luxuriousness of La Celestia’s palazzo. Each day she found another detail at which to marvel: soaring ceilings painted with clouds and angels or scenes from mythology; endless mosaic tile floors, layered with sumptuous carpets; a
camera d’oro
—or chamber of gold, with walls coated in gold leaf—adjacent to the
portego
that glowed in the afternoons with a light so rich it appeared almost liquid. The walls were covered with tapestries, ornate mirrors, and portraits of La Celestia—Alessandra had counted eight so far. On the top floor was a lavish room just for bathing, containing a huge tub where the courtesan took her daily ablutions, in water steeped with fragrant herbs, or, twice a week, in milk.

The entire house was filled with sunlight, fresh flowers, and, in the afternoons, the sweet melodies of La Celestia’s young daughters, Caterina and Elena, at their music lessons. Peacocks strutted on the
altana,
the rooftop loggia; finches, parakeets, and larks in gilded cages twittered and filled the air with their song; the courtesan’s pet monkey, Odomo, had his own small room furnished with a tiny canopy bed and brocade chairs. Servants of every sort appeared and disappeared as effortlessly as apparitions, always ready to fulfill the slightest request. If Alessandra had not known otherwise, she would have thought that a princess lived in this palace.

Alessandra started across the room again, trying to imitate the graceful, gliding walk La Celestia had shown her. Why was it impossible to hold her arms elegantly while she was thinking about them? The harder she tried, the more they felt like two sausages dangling at her sides. And her dress, one of La Celestia’s that had been fitted for her, was so tight that it itched unbearably. She reached up to scratch her back, and in the instant she took her mind off her feet, she tripped and fell in a heap on the floor.

“By the Virgin!” La Celestia exclaimed.

“It’s this dress,” said Alessandra, exasperated. “Is it necessary for it to squeeze the life out of me?”

“It’s not the life I’m trying to squeeze out of you, it’s your bosom. Little good it will do you, though, if you can’t manage to walk like a lady.”

“If my faults are so pronounced—if even my breasts are inadequate—then what on earth am I doing here?”

“Great beauties are not born, they are made. There isn’t a woman in the world who wouldn’t benefit from a bit of paint or a more flattering fashion.”

Alessandra rubbed her ankle. A bit of paint? Clearly, in her case it required substantially more than that. In La Celestia’s adjoining dressing room, there was an array of lotions, powders, oils, and unguents, each with a specific use, that La Celestia insisted she learn. La Celestia’s maidservants, under her supervision, had primped and prettied Alessandra to the point that she hardly recognized herself. A few sessions on the sunny
altana
had lightened her hair to a golden blond; she’d been bathed in rosewater, had had her nails trimmed and buffed, her legs and underarms depilated, her hair and skin massaged with perfumed oils, her eyebrows shaped. She’d been fussed over so much that sometimes she felt like one of Bianca’s game hens, plucked and trussed.

“Ready to try again?”

“I feel as if you want me to be someone other than who I am.”

“Precisely. To be a truly successful courtesan, you must be more than a woman. You must be a goddess.”

“Is that all?” Sarcasm laced Alessandra’s voice.

“Do you believe that men think of me as just another woman?”

“No, but you’re…you. You’re La Celestia. You aren’t like other women.”

“How do you think that came to be? Luck? A happy accident? Did you imagine that I was born to the life I have now?” She sat down in one of the chairs near the marble fireplace and motioned for Alessandra to sit next to her. Alessandra dutifully slipped out of the
chopines
and, dragging her skirts, limped over to the empty chair.

“Not many people know what I’m going to tell you,” La Celestia said. “I wouldn’t like it to be repeated. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She’d already learned that La Celestia’s angelic countenance concealed a calculating mind and an iron will. It would be foolish to cross her.

“Good.” La Celestia smiled, but there was little warmth in it. “I was born in Treviso, not Venice. My mother was a prostitute. My father was a French soldier who never married my mother. The way we lived was…mean. Squalid. It was nothing like this,” she said with a gesture that encompassed her luxurious bedchamber and its furnishings: the numerous carved and gilded chests and the palatial bed covered with gold-embroidered white silk linens.

“My mother was uneducated, but she was shrewd. By the time I turned five, she could see that I was going to be beautiful, and she used every resource at her disposal to groom me for the life she knew I could have. She made sure that I learned to read, that I studied music, singing, and deportment, that my manners were impeccable.

“When I was fourteen, we came to Venice for the sole purpose of launching my career as a courtesan. My father was long gone, but my mother had managed to save enough money to pay for our journey here and board and lodging for two weeks. Only two weeks. If her plan did not work, we would be out on the streets, poor, begging, and alone in a city where we knew no one.

“Even though we could barely afford it, we took rooms at an expensive inn on the Grand Canal, near the Rialto, so we would be close to the place where all the richest and most influential men in Venice congregated. On the very first morning after we arrived, my mother went out for a few hours, returning with a blue silk dress more beautiful than any I’d ever seen. She’d gone to the Ghetto and pawned her only piece of jewelry so that I would have something pretty to wear. Once she’d fitted the dress, and oiled and combed my hair, she bade me stand by the window overlooking the canal.

“After a while, a gondola came by and stopped under the window. In it was a young lord, dressed very fine.” La Celestia smiled faintly. “I even remember what he wore: red hose and a red feather in his
biretta.
When he saw me, he burst into raptures.

“‘Oh, my glorious lady!’ he called. ‘My heart is aflame! Your beauty is such as I have never seen! From whence do you come? Are you a stranger to this city? You must be, for certainly you are an angel, not a woman! Speak to me, my angel! If you cannot speak, show me a sign and I shall be yours forever, for your loveliness is beyond compare!’

“And on and on he went. Everyone nearby was curious to see the great beauty who had captured this young lord’s heart. More gondole came to the window, and soon there were men of all sorts staring up at me. They shouted at me to step farther out on the balcony, to show myself, to let them feast their eyes. I grew afraid and went inside instead, to ask my mother what to do.

“And I saw something I’d never seen before, and would never see again. My mother’s shoulders shook with mirth, and tears rolled down her face: she was laughing and crying at the same time. I said, ‘Mother, why do you laugh? Why do you cry?’

“She replied, ‘I cry because I know now that everything is going to be fine, and we will not end up begging in the streets. I laugh because in singing your praises, that ridiculous boy has become a lyric poet—he babbles on far beyond what I paid him to say!’”

Alessandra’s eyes grew wide. “She paid him?”

La Celestia laughed. “My mother didn’t believe in leaving anything to chance. However, this young lord kept coming back to see me, even without further recompense. But no matter; soon he was just one among many.

“Every day thereafter, all the men in Venice came by to get a glimpse of the new beauty who had just arrived in town. And a glimpse is all they got—for as I said, my mother was shrewd, and she played upon their curiosity like a fine musician plays an instrument. One day they might see a bare arm, or an ankle, or my hair cascading down my back, or my face in profile. I’m not saying I wasn’t pretty—I was—but this mystery combined with the imagination of men’s minds was incredibly powerful. Soon it was all over Venice that I was the most beautiful woman ever to grace the city. That I was also a virgin and destined to be a
cortigiana onestà
created a frenzy that surprised even my mother. Men sent their servants bearing all sort of gifts: fruit, flowers, jewels, expensive cloth. Poets wrote sonnets about me, and artists pleaded to paint my portrait.

“One day, one of the men who was courting me recited a poem in which he called me ‘La Celestia.’ In it he wrote that I was as beautiful and as remote as the heavens, and somehow the name stuck. From then on, I was no longer little Faustina Emiliana Zolta from Treviso, but only La Celestia. Even my mother began calling me La Celestia because she understood the benefits immediately: I was transformed from a pretty girl into something akin to a goddess. My new name only added to my mystique; men became absolutely crazed with passion for me. Fights broke out in the gondole that gathered under my window. When the passions were at their most fervent, my mother began the bargaining. She sold my virginity six times. Amazing what you can do with gum Arabic, rosewater, and sheep’s blood, and, most of all, men’s ardent desire to believe.” The courtesan’s eyes sparkled with irony as she looked at Alessandra through her thick, dark lashes.

“My point is this: being a great courtesan isn’t simply a matter of beauty, charm, or even sexuality. It’s about desire and fantasy. If men wanted only sex, then any common prostitute could satisfy them. You must ask yourself why the same man who would toss a few
soldi
to a tavern whore would bring me precious jewels. What men really want, and what they rarely find, is a woman who captures their hearts, minds, and souls. And no less important, a woman who flatters their vanity. Men know that when they conquer a woman whom every man covets, they are raised higher in other men’s esteem.”

“And how am I going to be all that?”

“I’ll help you as my mother helped me. You know, to this day I seldom allow my feet to touch ground in public—it helps to preserve the illusion of my otherworldly nature. We’ll have to think of some way to present you.”

“Are you going to make me stand in a window?”

“No, we should try something new, something no one’s done before. In the meantime, you still have a lot to learn.”

The voyeur’s chamber was as elaborate as one of La Celestia’s jewelry chests, with walls swathed in a patterned red silk and cleverly disguised to conceal the closet-size alcove hidden between the bedroom and hallway. Alessandra peered through the peephole to the bedchamber, where La Celestia would soon arrive with one of her lovers. The scene that met her eye was superbly arranged for seduction. Except for a few candles that flickered in the far corners, the room was lit only by the roaring fire. Its welcoming corona illuminated the thick rug that had been placed in front of the hearth, and the small table set with a bowl of fruit, a carafe of wine, and two glasses. La Celestia’s extravagant bed waited, tantalizingly, at the very edge of the firelight, its white silk sheets glowing with a warm, subtle sheen.

“Did you enjoy sex with Signor Liberti?” La Celestia had asked Alessandra earlier that day.

“I suppose,” she had answered slowly, wishing that she didn’t feel embarrassed by the question. If she were going to be a courtesan, she would have to overcome her reserve. “It wasn’t terrible.”

La Celestia laughed. “Not terrible? That isn’t much of an endorsement. But accurate, as I recall. Sex with Lorenzo was rather…uninspired.”

“You and Lorenzo?” Alessandra said, astonished.

“I’m very popular,” La Celestia replied with a coy smile and a shrug. “The thing is, at eighteen you’re too old to pass for a virgin, and I’m probably not the only one who knows about Signor Liberti, so that method of captivation is closed to us. It would behoove you instead to learn more of the arts of love. Since I’m certain that Lorenzo didn’t teach you, I suppose I’ll have to do it myself.”

“Is that how you learned, from another courtesan?”

“My mother showed me a few things, but most of it I learned on my own. As it turns out, I am very well suited to my profession. I have a natural desire for love that is not easily satisfied. While this isn’t an absolute requirement for a courtesan, it certainly makes life more pleasant.” She looked at Alessandra searchingly. “Did you ever feel pleasure with Lorenzo?”