Vivaldi's Virgins (13 page)

I ran down the spiraling stairs, pausing to curtsey and cross myself at the sacred basin beneath the gilded statue of the Virgin.

The purple sky was quickly giving way to a bruised twilight. I was truly afraid of lions now, as well as God’s judgment, and ran harder than I had ever run before, until my sides were aching. I feared the boat would leave without me.

But at the water’s edge the gondola, and the servants, were waiting. Many of the girls were already aboard and, what with shattered nerves, many of them were weeping. I looked for Silvio and found his face, which looked chastened and silly now in his woman’s garb. He gestured for me to ignore him.

Giulietta came up and stood close to me. “They found her. They were about to go searching for you, but la Befana said she knew where you were and that you would come by yourself before daylight ended.”

“I nearly didn’t! I fell asleep there in the tower.”

“Marietta also says that she fell asleep, but in the woods.”

The twins, Flavia and Alicia, drew near and held on to our robes. “My grandmother says that this island is enchanted,” said one of them—I still hadn’t learned to tell them apart. “The spirits of the ancient ones still roam here.”

“Look at that sky!” the other one chimed in.

The sky was now the color of the skin of a plum that has been bitten through in places, leaking out the brighter color of its juices.

“There was blood on her skirts!” Giulietta whispered.

“It was mud,” said one of the twins.

“It was blood—but, hush! You’re too young to hear of such things.”

Scowling, the twins said something to each other we couldn’t understand.

And then I saw Marietta walking toward the water’s edge from the forest, flanked on each side by a nun. I crossed myself because, as everyone knows, it is bad luck to see two nuns walking together. I could tell by the way she walked and, then—when she was closer—from the look on her face, that Marietta had done or gotten what she wanted.

La Befana spoke before any of us could speak, and in a tone of
voice that would brook no dissent. “There is to be silence on the trip back! Any girl who speaks will be confined for three days with only bread and water. And that is on top of the punishments some of you have already earned! And now,
andiamo!
”

B
oth Marietta and I were locked up, though separately, for three days. On the second day, Sister Laura managed to bring me my violin, as well as some extra food beyond the bread and water that were my allotment.

I begged her to stay with me awhile.

“For a little while, Annina. But not long enough so that I will be missed.”

She sat beside me on the little pallet that served as both bed and chair. A bit of daylight came through a small window near the ceiling, but mostly it was twilight in the cell—and after the sun went down, it was completely dark.

Sister Laura put her hand into her pocket and fished something out of it. “I brought you these as well,” she said, placing a candle and two flints on the floor.

“You are very good to me!”

She brushed the hair out of my eyes with her hand. “I’m glad you think so. I was once a girl here—and though it was long ago, I can remember it well.”

I searched her eyes. “Do you wear the brand of the Pietà, as Maestra Meneghina does?”

“I must go!”

“Forgive me, Sister! You have been so kind. It was just that, on Torcello, la Befana—” I put my hand over my mouth.

She smiled at my blunder. “We know the names you call us. We served our teachers in just the same way.”

“I have never heard any girl speak ill of you!”

“Ah, but you should hear what the other teachers say. I am not well liked among them.”

Even though I did not dare ask again, my question was still in my eyes as she got up to leave. But often I did not even need to speak for Sister Laura to understand me, so attuned was she to what I was thinking.

She sighed. “I wear no brand—at least, not on my flesh. Goodnight, Anna Maria.”

“Goodnight, Sister. And God bless you!”

She did something then that she had never done before. She bent down and kissed my forehead.

I held my fingers over the place for a long time after I heard the door close and the key turn in the lock.

M
Y PUNISHMENTS,
for a week following my release from jail, was to spend all my free time copying scores into the
libri musicali
. With all the musicians here, and all the use our music gets, there is a perpetual need for new copies of old music and fair copies of new music to be made. Girls who are good with ink and a quill are made to specialize in this work. Many end their lives with weakened eyesight from the strain of writing for so many hours every day. They’re given an extra allotment of oil for their lamps. But the work always takes its toll, and it is work I have never done gladly. The thought of going blind has always been particularly fearful to me.

I was passing by one of the practice rooms, carrying a pile of freshly penned scores to the Prioress, when I heard the maestro’s voice. “Signorina,
prego!
”

Vivaldi looked as delighted to find me passing by as I was astonished to see him there, standing at the
clavicembalo
. Seated at a small table near him, half hidden behind a heap of music paper and quills, was a man I didn’t recognize but who nonetheless seemed vaguely familiar to me. I curtseyed. Both were without wigs and had the heated, unbuttoned look of men engaged in a lively discussion.

“Don Vivaldi!” I said. Then, more softly, “Maestro!”

“Yes, yes, Annina—you’re just the girl I want to see. Here, take this quill and write for me! My hand aches from all the composing I have been doing today.”

“Vivaldi, leave off trying to impress me!” the other man said in lightly accented Italian. When he smiled, I suddenly recognized him from the Foscarini’s ball: it was Handel.

“How could I possibly hope to impress you, after the triumph of your oratorio? It seems that I hear of nothing else these days.”

Handel bowed. “As many came to hear the violin soloist as to hear the singing.”

Because I’d first seen Handel wearing a mask, it felt to me now as if the face I saw covered his true face, the Harlequin he wore that night when Giulietta—and, no doubt, countless others—fell in love with him. It was a broad face, rather fleshy, with eyebrows like two caterpillars perched upon his brow. His eyes shone, though, and he had an almost pretty, boyish smile.

“You shouldn’t tell lies to a priest, young pup. But, anyway, that was well spoken and quite gracious of you. You are well bred, you Saxon nobles.”

Handel chuckled. “I am no more noble than you are, Padre. In fact—” He bowed to me again, in that single gesture acknowledging my presence and including me in his confidence, “My father was a sort of barber, just like yours.”

“And a musician, too, was he not?”

“Not a bit of it! He had no interest in music and, in fact, wanted me to become a lawyer.”

The maestro wasn’t looking at me, but I could feel his attention shift away from Handel. “Yes—parents can be very inconvenient people to have around.”

“Perhaps so. But it was only the intercession of my mother that allowed me to pursue the gift God gave me.”

Vivaldi nodded thoughtfully. “It gives one pause to consider the good or the harm a parent can do. For instance, most of the girls here would have perished if left with the mothers
who brought them into the world. Most, but not all, of course. But they are well taken care of in this place, wouldn’t you say so, Signorina? But please,” he added, noticing my discomfort in standing there with the books stacked in my arms. “Lay down your burden, child!”

Setting the stack of scores down on a corner of the table, I looked hard and long into the maestro’s eyes, wondering what he was after and whether there were deeper meanings hidden beneath his flippant words. He looked somehow older to me; his eyes were troubled. But now I wonder if it is only hindsight that has made me remember him in this light on that particular day.

I hadn’t yet learned that we all wear masks, whether or not it’s Carnival. Though he wore no mask that day, Vivaldi was hiding—perhaps even from himself—the single event that would have the greatest consequences for him of any event in his lifetime.

Of course, I knew nothing of this and suspected even less. All I knew—and that through rumor—was that he was recently returned from Mantua. “Excuse me, Maestro,” I couldn’t keep from asking, “but is it possible that our letters to the Board of Governors—?”

“No, no. No, no, no, no,” he said, making it sound like a rhythm he was marking. “They rest with their decision. Although, for your efforts to reinstate me—you and the other
putte
—”

I bowed, then looked into his eyes—his light-colored eyes that range between gold and green, depending on his mood. I couldn’t find a trace of the despondency I’d just seen there, not a moment before. Vivaldi was, once again, his usual, lively self. He is, and has ever been, a person of changeable humors.

“Based on my most prolific career, the governors wish me to continue composing for the
coro
: at least two motets per month, two new Mass and Vespers settings—one for Easter, and one for the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin—to whom
this venerable institution is dedicated, for your information, Handel.”

“I didn’t know.” Handel smiled at me, as if the maestro’s speechifying were all part of some jest that was bound to end in a delightful surprise.

“And so, in consideration of these works and others for funerals and the Offices of Holy Week, and the requirements for interpreting all of them correctly—”

My eyes opened wider as I took this in. “You’ll be teaching us still?”

“Occasionally. As required. Or more, perhaps.” The maestro, rather to my surprise, winked at me. “But enough of this idle chatter, strictly against the rules! Take up your pen, Signorina!”

After copying scores for hours and hours on end all week, writing some more was surely the last thing I wanted to do. But I shook out my ink-stained hand and picked up the quill for the maestro. What wouldn’t I do for him, even now? He gave me his chair and pushed a clean sheet of parchment in front of me. “To your Excellencies, distinguished Governors of the Pietà. In consideration of the great success and enormous popularity of
La Resurrezione
last year—”

“Please, Maestro, you’re not giving me time to dip the pen.”

Vivaldi carried on, ignoring me, “—testaments to the talent of Signor Giorgio Federico Handel, the young but undoubtedly distinguished composer visiting
la Serenissima
from the court of Saxe-Weissenfels”—he nodded at Handel, and Handel nodded back at him, while I wrote as fast as I could—“who, with the guidance and advice of our own dear
maestro di coro
, Signor Gasparini, is composing an opera to be mounted at the now gloriously reopened Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, pride of Venezia…”

He went on in this mode, and I wrote as fast as I could.

“…and thus we are proposing that certain
putte
of the
coro
of the Ospedale della Pietà be allowed to participate in these performances, thereby bringing the attention of a wider public to the celestial music, which will, without doubt, be followed by bequests and benefices to the greater glory of this institution…”

I laid down my pen. “Maestro, do you think they will let us?”

He shook his head, smiling. “We will see, Annina. It is at least worth a few strokes of the pen to try. Especially if I am not the one who has to do the writing.”

An opera! It pleases me to remember that the first thought that came into my head was how happy Marietta would be—for once I was thinking of someone other than myself. This was the very chance Marietta had been waiting for.

She had not been the same since that day on Torcello. I felt guilty every time I thought about how I’d failed to even try to talk her out of her folly. Now, of course, I know she would not have listened to me—and that she should not have, either.

But at the time I saw this as a second chance for both of us—a chance to wash out whatever harm was done that day. A chance to earn the title Marietta had given me of best friend.

ANNO DOMINI
1709

Dearest Mother,

Sister Laura will be surprised when I hand her this letter to post for me, because it is the first I will write on my own initiative, without her complicity.

You see, I have been set to copying scores—a job that is sometimes a privilege and sometimes a punishment here. The
putte
who are given this task are naturally given a supply of paper, ink, and candles. I’ve been writing the notes in so compact a style that
I can save one in every five sheets of music paper. I hope it doesn’t bother you to read my words within the staves.

But I have two bits of great news—or, at least, it seems tremendous news to us, a veritable revolution of opportunity. There are plans afoot to mount an opera, either by Maestro Gasparini or Signor Handel of Saxony, based on the tale of the ancient Roman queen Agrippina, and set to a libretto by Viceroy Grimani of Napoli. This would not be great news in itself were it not for the fact that Maestro Vivaldi has made a request to allow certain
putte
of the Pietà to be part of the performance. An opera, Mother, in a real theater!

I have no idea whether the governors will listen to Vivaldi, especially now that he is no longer employed as a teacher here. But he has made a good argument—and I know this because I took the letter down myself from his own dictation. At the end he made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anyone else about it, lest it all come to nothing. But I can’t see the harm in confiding the project to you—and my heart will burst if I don’t tell someone.

The other piece of news is even more amazing than the first one. King Frederick—still traveling here as the Duke of Olemberg—commissioned Venezia’s own Rosalba Carriera to paint a life-size portrait of the goddess Diana. And—imagine this! The king instructed her to choose a
figlia
of the Pietà as her model.

I can’t begin to describe the excitement spawned by this news. Rosalba is best known for her exquisite little pictures on snuff boxes and spot boxes and the like, painted in oil pastels. The grander ladies who come to visit us in the
parlatorio
have shown us examples of these, and we have always marveled at their wondrous detail. Lately Rosalba has come much into vogue among the nobility both here and abroad, who are commissioning her to paint full-size portraits for their collections.

There was endless speculation about which member of the coro
had so caught the fancy of the duke (as we are still instructed to call him) that he wanted to have her face hanging on his wall. Girls, teachers, and even servants here placed bets on which of us would be chosen.

The Prioress addressed us at dinner the night before the inspection to tell us to wash our faces and brush our hair with special care, and to be sure that our fingernails were clean and tidy.

But, really, we didn’t need reminding to attend to our looks. For days before, ever since the announcement, we’d been brushing our hair till our scalps hurt, and putting stolen honey on our faces. Marietta was discovered with a vial of belladonna, which all of us insisted that she share with us. Even I, without any hope of being chosen, prayed to the Virgin to clear my complexion for the big day.

Aside from our own hopes of glory, we were all of us thrilled that Rosalba—the humble daughter of a lace maker and a clerk—has won this commission from among all the brilliant artists of Venezia. As a woman—and a woman of the people, at that—her success can only bode well for us. She has no husband, and yet she has recently bought her own
palazzo,
where she lives with her sister and their servants. If Rosalba, without high family connections, has accomplished so much through the perfection of her craft, why can’t we aspire to similar accomplishments in our turn?

I have always believed there to be only three possible paths for me, barring an early grave: the profession of Holy Vows; a cloistered life here, playing and teaching music; or a marriage that would bar me from ever performing again. And yet it seems that there is a fourth path, the path carved out for all the women of Venezia by Rosalba. My God, she should be made a saint!

One can’t see the movement of the sundial’s shadow, and yet it moves. Why couldn’t one of us become a world-famous performer in the manner of Albinoni or Corelli? Why couldn’t our composi
tions be played not only here, within these walls, but in the theaters of Venezia and beyond? What do Handel and Scarlatti have, beyond the world’s permission, that allows them to go where they choose, from city to city, attending every ball and courting every patron? Surely that extra lump of flesh between a man’s legs has nothing to do with making music!

Believe me, Mother, when I tell you that my knowledge of such things comes only from hearsay and looking at paintings. I am virtuous—but I am no fool. If girls were not as good at making music as boys, then the governors would surely have chosen boys to be Venezia’s choristers.

The maestro is not as happy about Rosalba’s commission as we are. But I am sure that jealousy has also played a role in his pique. After all, Don Vivaldi won no such commission from the king of Denmark and Norway, despite his schemes and all they cost him.

All anyone can talk about is Rosalba and the king. There’s certainly no practicing going on. If only I could tell the others of the marvelous possibilities presented by the upcoming production of “Agrippina”—they would all ensconce themselves in the practice rooms!

After Matins on the great day, the Prioress inspected us, paying special attention to our fingernails. (She is obsessed with fingernails.) She exhorted us to be on our best behavior, and then led the flock of us behind her down the grand staircase to the
parlatorio,
where a crowd of visitors sat waiting.

The painter—as a mark of respect, I’m quite sure—rose from her chair when we entered. She is short of stature, but quite a delightful, cheerful-looking person, with a dimpled chin, a strong face, and white hair swept up onto her head and fixed there with ornaments in the shape of dragonflies and flowers. We recognized her sister at once from among the others sitting there: her fine brown
eyes are a mirror image of Rosalba’s (even though the sister, who serves as the painter’s assistant, is prettier, younger, and taller). The king—masked, of course—sat behind the grille with his entourage of attendants.