All the lost places, p.30
All the Lost Places, page 30
The history was a muddle, and so was the house. But he could not shake the distinct impression that he had entered another place entirely, here in this new wing.
Sebastien scanned the bottoms of the doors, looking for any light slipping out, any semblance of life—but found none.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Acting upon instinct, he gripped the handle of the door on his left and ducked inside. If he’d been thinking, he would have stepped into the character of his costume. Drawn his shoulders wide, lifted his head, and acted every inch the Doge.
But he was a peasant imposter at a ball, on the run, and had acted every bit of it.
The room was dark, the only light a slip of blue moon from the opposite wall, which arched with windows high and numerous. As the footsteps receded, his eyes adjusted before he crossed the room and took in the scene outside. Though he knew the layout of the palazzo fairly well, there was still much he had not discovered, for sheer fact of being so often absent.
Outside, he could see a garden, clambering with ivy over brick walls. A pathway meandering through two trees that grew tall, some of the only of their age in this vast city. He studied them, the way their leaves shimmered in a breeze, and thought of their roots casting down, gripping ancient piles made of their ancestors. A forest standing upon a forest.
And wasn’t Venice such? Wasn’t life just such an anomaly? If not for the people who had come before them, the idiosyncratic creases and folds left by an era unfolding like a garment pressed by time and circumstance . . . would not his life have been entirely different?
The thought gripped him until an answer fell silent inside him.
He would wish for no other life.
For all the questions, all the mysteries, all the maddening ambiguity of his own life—he could not imagine it without Pietro’s universe of shimmering glass, or Valentina’s hearth fire, or the mellowed wooden clack as ideas inked into words in Dante’s universe, or Giuseppe’s midnight shrimping expeditions, or Elena’s warm and welcoming home.
. . . or Mariana, treasure to his very soul.
He would not, for all the answers in the world, wish these things away.
Who am I? The old question scrambled around in the dark, as if looking for the rest of itself. Incomplete. Who was he? It could have been anyone, in that basket. How had he been the one to be taken in, raised up . . . loved?
Who am I . . . to be loved?
Across the garden, he could see that he had landed in a wing extending to the back of the property, affording him a view straight through those two trees and into the glowing ballroom on the piano nobile where the throng of people continued to swirl.
And him. Standing still, watching it all go by.
At length, he withdrew from his portal into their world. His eyes had adjusted much better to the darkness, and he could make out a sitting room with pale walls—perhaps blue, like the sky. A vineyard scene painted across the far wall, where a marbled fireplace held court to stuffed chairs and settees, a sofa, and a population of tables tucked about like slumbering creatures.
The floor spread out in the diamond pattern typical of the rest of the house, but here, the squares were goliath. A single square might play foundation to a pair of chairs upon it, and a chess table between. The startling breadth of each square was warranted, for inside, each boasted a circle of stunning blue stone, its center composed of alternating shapes and hues of blue. “From lapis to cerulean and every blue in between,” he could imagine Pietro remark, always with the eye of an artist. In the corners untouched by the circles, adornments in meticulous mosaic scrolled, their forms identical but their pieces unique. Even the floor was a work of art.
And yet, the ceiling was oddly vacant. Palest blue, an occasional streak of white, a break from Venetian tradition. It seemed a stark contrast, at first, but then Sebastien considered what would happen when the sun came through the reaching windows. The light would shine upon the swimming dimensions of blue stone, the reflective bits of mosaic, and cast a kaleidoscope of light, always moving, shifting with the day, upon that ceiling.
There was something more about the room that felt . . . off-kilter, somehow. He couldn’t place it, looking around. Certainly, it held an air of general neglect, and none of the glitter and pomp of the ballroom, but it was more than that.
Stepping toward the fireplace, he ran his hand along the smooth marble surface.
A book sat upon the mantel, and he picked it up, searching in vain for a title. There was none. The cover was mellowed and soft, but absent of dust and neglect. And yet the mantel it sat upon had a thin layer of dust upon it, which he had never seen a speck of in the rest of the palazzo.
Taking in the entirety of the room, he knew: this place was to someone else what his ruins were to him. A refuge of one’s own in this chaotic world.
As for the person it belonged to, he could picture her—there, on the faded red chair, legs tucked up beneath her just as she had done in the field on Burano, when she had seemed free and natural and so very alive.
He stood in her sanctuary now and felt at once an intruder, and yet he also felt a deep and growing sense of protectiveness to guard this, her one sliver of solace.
The notion instructed him to leave.
But footsteps sounded, approaching in haste.
In three strides, he reached his only hope of disappearing: a curtain, velvet and heavy, floor to ceiling. A pair of them flanked the mantel he had just stood beside. He made haste to hide. The door groaned with the echoes of the ages, closing swiftly.
Sebastien held his breath, listening for some hint of who it was, and met with only silence.
Slowly, as if even a breath would bring the curtain down and the house along with it, he shifted toward the outer edge, leaning to see.
At the door stood a figure all in blue, hands pressed to the door as slim shoulders rose and fell, her own breath slowing as she eased in backward steps into this sanctuary-room.
Mariana.
He moved to go to her, but in that instant, she turned, and the look upon her face was one he had never seen before. It anchored him there, watching as something swept her features. Torment, easing into realization as her brows furrowed. A small shake of the head, as if she were playing something over in her memory. Fingertips rose to her mouth, touching on the beginning of a smile and then the lightest laugh, clamped over with that same hand.
Her eyes danced with the feeling that flowed from her so poignantly it crossed the room, wrapped Sebastien’s ankles, wended up into his soul until he felt it too.
Freedom.
And just as he moved to go to her, the door handle gave a brackish rattle, admitting Massimo with all the force of a breached dam. “Mariana.” His voice cut like a cleaver. Silence billowed. Sebastien’s curtain, too, swayed. He flinched, willing it to stop.
“You know I love you above all else in this world,” Massimo said at last. His words measured, spun with the shine of honey. Too much of it.
“It’s why you sent me away?” Mariana spoke, her words quiet but courageous. What had it taken her to speak this question?
“You weren’t ‘sent away,’ Mariana. You were gifted a chance to grow up among a true family, to receive education and opportunity—”
“You were my family, Massimo.”
Silence.
Mariana continued. “Remember when we were young? The time that it rained for days, and the house was in a flurry because of the flooding—everyone was moving vases, chairs, art, up and away from the floor—and in the flurry, you forgot about me.”
“I would never forget you.”
“I tried to help move things, but everyone kept saying, ‘No, milady. Let me do that for you, milady.’ It was the first time I thought that if being ‘milady’ meant doing nothing, I didn’t want to be ‘milady.’”
“We all have such thoughts. We all wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to live a different life. But the fact is, you were born to this—and with good reason, Mariana. Did you hear how the people hushed when they saw you tonight? Even if you did pull that trick of switching costumes.”
Mariana waited, in her patient way, then continued as if Massimo hadn’t interrupted with his interlude.
“That rainstorm . . . was the day I found this room. All the furniture was shrouded, the air was thick with dust, but it was a quiet place in all that madness. I began to move things around, and I remember how the rain seemed to sing me along as I did. I opened the window to hear it, to let its fresh air in, and I felt—so alive.”
Massimo was strangely silent, at that.
Mariana continued, “I felt so guilty for loving the rain that was causing such havoc. But for the first time, this place felt like home.”
“And so it is,” Massimo said. “Every room, every door, every step, stick, and brick. It is your dowry, after all.”
Sebastien’s chest thundered now.
Her one home would be hers . . . if she wed, as he intended.
“What?” Her voice was small.
“The palazzo,” he said. “Did I not tell you? Your husband-to-be knows and has all manner of plans for it. Imagine the extravaganzas, even grander than tonight. You’ll not be in want of a home, Mariana. Is that what this is about? I must say, your disappearance for so long did not reflect well on the House of Fedele. But was I not the soul of understanding? You had your little adventure out on the lagoon. And now it is time to rise to your purpose.”
Silence.
Silence from the girl whose very presence was waves lapping, leaves rustling, all the mighty whispers that breathed hope into creation.
“It was not a little adventure, Massimo.”
He laughed indulgently, as one does with a child. “Very well. Your grand adventure, then.”
Mariana spoke at length. “Our home . . . will be his?”
“Yes. Your husband’s.”
“And this is why he has taken me as a bride?”
Massimo’s voice was tender, protective. “No. The House of Fedele . . . certainly you have a dowry, as is befitting the daughter of a patrician. But I have made a study of these things. Your husband has agreed to provide a certain sum—”
“He is—purchasing me?”
“Not a price, sister. You are not for sale. Never. No, no—it is a bride token, as a show for the treasure that you are. The honor of aligning himself with our family. No one could ever purchase you—you are priceless. The very best in all the world. But for a man of his stature to do this—why, it is more respect paid us than even Penelope’s suitors paid Icarus the Spartan king! This, for us. The unremembered. Do not forget our heritage. This, sister, is the very making of all our forefathers strove to make right. You . . . are it. We have done it. Made right the sins of the Unremembered One. And with these funds, the revolution has a way forward and—well. No need to trouble yourself about all of that. Just know that it will bode well for you and your children and your children’s children . . .”
“You say that as if you know there will be children. But, Massimo—”
“Not to worry, Mariana.”
Sebastien bit his tongue. The man cared for his sister, clearly, but had gotten it so inextricably tangled in these maneuverings, he had given her no choice.
If he could give her that choice . . .
Mariana spoke. “And you . . . Will you stay here too?”
“I have other plans.”
“I see.”
“Plans that have been crafted with care, for your own good and the good of Venezia. I’m not at liberty to say yet what they are—”
“But they will take you away.”
A pause, and then, “Yes.”
And then footsteps. Resigned, slippered steps, followed by assured steps doling out confidence in staccato beats. The opening of the door, the closing, the resuming of voices as they moved down the corridor.
Exhaling, Sebastien rested his forehead on the wall.
It was true, what Mariana had said about his life, growing up. Migrating. She understood the movements of birds, their search for a home, even more than he. And now, this last vestige of a home was to be given to a near-stranger, as his settlement for marrying her.
He could hear it now, how Massimo would protest this loudly—It’s all for her! She will keep her home, she will have a continued place in society—these are all the things I, as her guardian, must secure for her. It is my duty as her brother. Do you see?
He did see. For all his professions and even actions of love, Massimo continued to bruise his sister’s heart. Words like tasked, secured, plans crafted . . . as if she were a commodity and not a soul.
Perhaps it was not his fault, entirely. His family had risen to power through trade, and so he used the language of business.
And yet . . . Her silence echoed, her pain with it. It drove him to wordless prayer, that this God who created her might see her even now. Might not abandon her in this, the moment her fate teetered upon.
He opened his eyes, head still braced against the wall where the mantel met the framework of the adjacent white stucco.
And found himself staring into a chasm.
Minuscule in width, and certainly not remarkable in a house where cracks were commonplace. But this one was different. It did not web but reached, top to bottom, straight as could possibly be. Emerging from his cloistered place, he investigated the curtain’s twin, and found another crack. Top to bottom, rigid.
Standing back, he examined the fireplace.
Marbled and innocent. Logs poised for igniting, a bed of cinders beneath. A painting of an island framed above it.
He had not seen it before, the painting. The growing moon spilled in from outside, illuminating a scene where aqua waters broke in waves upon a seawall. An arched entrance. In the distance, a stand of trees, sap-green in their young and spindly form.
He knew that wall. He knew that arch. He knew those trees, though they had aged by decades since the time of this painting.
It was his home.
All at once, recollections came to him like a still-life, painted and fleeting: Mariana standing, awestruck, at the sight of the arch. Dipping her feet, unshod, over the seawall and letting her toes skim across those waters.
She had known his island all along.
The facts lined up like lines in a story, awaiting his understanding.
Stepping close to the fireplace, he noted again the strange beauty of this floor’s pattern. One of the blue circles extended from the fireplace, the wall bisecting its arc perfectly. The arc of the blue, lined in black.
He stooped to look closer. The line . . . was not a line. It was a cut. Deliberate and meticulous.
This . . . was a moving floor.
34
The Book of Waters
The Spinning Room
Sebastien pressed against the mantel.
Nothing.
He moved to the side, standing to the right of the mantel, and pushed again.
Nothing.
The same to the left, up high, down low.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. He thought of Elena’s tales, her fables and legends of Venice. A fireplace in the round, set to rotate and guard some secret, would not be outside the realm of possibility. In fact, it was just fantastical enough to make it entirely plausible in this enchanted city.
He examined it, attempting this corbel, that book, another tile. Prodding, pulling, pushing this and that in hopes of setting the mantel and hearth into motion.
Perhaps he was imagining it all. Perhaps he was tired, perhaps he was at the end of himself, his purpose and role at Ca’Fedele disintegrating before his eyes.
Who was he, after all, to be here?
He laughed dryly. Who was he, after all, to presume he had discovered something of this house its own residents apparently knew nothing of—or perhaps knew a great deal of and took pains to hide.
He looked again at the painting, the scene pulling at strings deep inside him. It was flanked on each side by candlesticks mounted in scrolling iron to the wall. Narrowing his eyes, quieting his bounding hopes lest this, too, be in vain . . . he reached up to the one on the left. Gripping the protruding curve of the candleholder with firm but gentle motion, he tilted it toward the painting.
Something clicked. But nothing moved.
Moving to the opposite candlestick, he repeated the motion, but found it would not tilt, not at the same angle. Holding his breath, he attempted tilting it the other way, pointing toward the painting, opposite its counterpart.
Click.
And slowly, with stops and starts . . . the platform began to turn, groaning with whatever pulleys were hidden to make such a thing possible. It made a quarter of a turn and stopped, leaving the fireplace perpendicular to its original position and leaving whatever it hid exposed.
He could not see in, the darkness inside seemed so complete that it seeped into the original chamber like a cloud of ink.
Without warning, the door behind him opened and closed quickly. He whirled.
Relief washed over him at the sight of Mariana, carrying a lantern.
“H-hello,” he said, and wished for all the world he’d had a better word to offer, in the wake of all that had transpired.
She froze. If there had been any question as to whether she’d known about the fireplace’s secret, her wide eyes and open mouth quickly answered. She rushed across the room, picking up her whispering gauzy skirts. And then, shifting her gaze to him, her expression grew grave. “Sebastien? What is this?”
He explained what had happened, her face flushing as she understood he had witnessed her conversation with Massimo.
She inhaled deeply. “Well, then,” she said. “There’s only one thing to do, wouldn’t you say?”
Picking up a candle from the mantel and lighting it from her lantern, she handed it to him, and they entered together.
One tentative step at a time, discovering steps downward.
Each of them extended their candles about the room until they faced each other.
“What is this place?” Mariana said, nearly in a whisper.
A sea of white-sheeted furniture gathered in odd shapes around him. The room itself was not so much a room, as four walls hidden somewhere beneath layers of paint, gilded millwork, and plaster formed into ornate frames and frescoes. It was in such stark contrast to the airy surroundings of the room to their back. The effect here, in contrast, was almost suffocating, summoning walls close and ceilings lower until the room felt rather like a trap, or perhaps a dungeon, with its lack of windows.
