Masks

Chapter Twenty-Two

Business remained slow the next night, although you couldn’t tell it to look at the house. Every window burned brightly as the storm of cleaning continued, with the cook on a positive rampage. And ordering the “useless ones,” as she termed everyone not under her iron thumb, into the city to get them out of the way.

“Beats scrubbing pots,” was Bezio’s only comment.

“I know a good tavern,” Mircea offered.

“Tavern, hell,” Marte said, coming down the stairs with a gaggle of girls in tow. “We’re going to see the fireworks!”

And so they had.

Everyone except Jerome, who insisted that he hated fireworks. “They give me a headache.”

“You’re a vampire,” Bezio reminded him.

“A vampire who doesn’t want a headache.”

“So you’re going to do what? Stay here and help clean?”

“Maybe. If they ask nicely enough.”

Bezio shook his head and gave up.

But everyone else went. Even Paulo who, of course, tried to organize everything. But the excited group was beyond even his abilities. “Like herding cats,” Mircea heard him mutter, as the brightly dressed throng of giggling girls tumbled into a gondola, leaving no room whatsoever for the boys.

Until Zaneta pulled Bezio down into her seat near the back of the boat, and then sat on his lap. “Mmm, so much softer,” she said, wiggling around coquettishly.

“Not if you don’t stop doing that,” he warned, grabbing her around the waist.

She shot him a glance over her shoulder, blue eyes mischievous behind the silver half-moon mask she wore. “I was talking about old hard wood.”

“So was I.”

She laughed and continued squirming, while the rest of them tried to find seats. Mircea was pulled into a flutter of silks and hooded cloaks, his black and gold mask coming loose and almost landing in the canal before he managed to catch it. And then Danieli, in the big-nosed mask of a fool, was squeezing in alongside.

Even Sanuito had come, Mircea was surprised to see. A mask might cover the marks on his face, but not on his hands as he gripped the side of the boat, white knuckled. Mircea briefly wondered if he was afraid of water.

And then it was too late when they cast off, joining the queue of other gondolas crowding the small canal, all of them filled with masked revelers.

“I thought it was supposed to be illegal to wear masks after dark,” Mircea said, staring around at the sea of anonymous faces. People flouted the convention all the time, of course, especially during carnival. But he’d never seen so many all at once.

“It’s illegal to do everything,” Danieli said, in the world weary voice he cultivated. “Everything fun anyway.”

“They just wanted a law on the books to let them prosecute anyone causing mischief,” Bezio explained, fighting yards of velvet to peer at Mircea from behind his well-dressed armful. “Young idiots used to go around throwing eggs at people while masked—”

“Eggs?”

“They were filled with rose water, but they could still ruin an outfit,” Zaneta said, disapprovingly.

“And, of course, some people used the anonymity to commit crimes,” Danieli added. “That’s why they throw the book at you if you get caught with a mask and a weapon—”

“But otherwise, it’s carnival!” Zaneta grinned. “What are they going to do, arrest the whole city?”

Mircea decided she had a point, and lay back against the back of the boat, watching the beautiful, surreal scene spread out in front of him. Dancing flames from the torches affixed to surrounding buildings highlighted old bricks and new flowers, dark water and bright smiles, flashes of real gold and fake jewels. And a surrounding flotilla no less contradictory, filled with regular people pretending to be creatures out of myth and legend.

He’d heard that an early Doge had carried the idea of mask-wearing back to Venice after a visit to Constantinople, where he’d been fascinated with the veiled faces of the local women. Of course, he’d also heard that it was an ancient Roman custom, popular in some of the pagan festivals like Saturnalia, on which some said carnival was based. And yet again that it was done for pragmatic reasons: gamblers used masks to hide their expressions, merchants to make deals under the table, and young gallants to sneak into the numerous local convents—and not for prayer.

All were plausible, he supposed. Especially the latter, since masks were worn almost year-round in Venice, instead of just at carnival time. But he thought there was more to it than that.

It seemed fitting that masks had grown up around a festival that celebrated the world turned upside down, the reversal of roles, the throwing off of the usual rigid social restraints. Inside a mask, the rich man tired of his responsibilities and the poor man tired of his poverty could switch places. So could the proper lady and the courtesan. Or the staid merchant and the adventurous sailor. Or even women and men.

After all, inside a mask, you were whoever you said you were.

Like Auria, in her fine clothes and jeweled half-mask, pretending to be the elegant lady she so wanted to become. Or Bezio, the once upstanding pillar of the community hiding behind the façade of a leering satyr, enjoying his newfound freedom from expectations. Or Paulo, with the soul of an accountant concealed by the mask of an Adonis.

Or Sanuito . . .

Mircea wasn’t sure what statement Sanuito was trying to make. He was sitting at the other end of the boat beside Auria, wearing one of the eerie, full-face ghost masks the Venetians called larve. And, somehow, the blank, anonymous features and dark holes for eyes managed to be more unsettling even than Bezio’s mask, with its grotesque features and gilded horns.

Mircea had stood looking at it for a long time back at the house, while it was still in its case, the blank, white wax features both repelling and attracting him. He’d briefly thought about wearing it himself, since he hadn’t found any others that were more appropriate. And that was despite the several dozen on offer after the girls went around gleefully raiding storage chests.

He had stood for a moment holding two of the most elaborate—a prince with a golden crown sliding drunkenly over one cut out eye, and a red-faced demon with snarling, evil features. And felt nothing for either. Except a vague sense of appreciation for the artistry that had created them.

But neither had called to him, not the fair features of the man he’d been, nor the snarling visage of the monster he had become. He was caught in between, no longer one thing, nor yet the other. He couldn’t even have said what he wanted to be, and thus pretend with everyone else.

He’d been thinking that perhaps the larve fit him best, after all, with its anonymous features meant to represent a ghost, a spirit standing outside any world. But then Besina had come over with the decorative half-mask he was wearing. And, finally, something in him had responded.

Unlike the full-face varieties made of papier-mâché or molded leather, this one was simple. Just stiffened linen decorated with black and gold paint and a single paste jewel, held on with ribbons that tied behind the head. It reminding him of the one he’d worn to perform for the senator’s ladies, and didn’t really look like much of anything.

But then, neither did he, at least not yet. And it was what he’d been wearing when he started this strange journey, from what he’d been to whatever he was becoming. He thought that it fit him better than the cold, white features of the other, which seemed frozen in time as he no longer was.

And so Sanuito had worn the larve.

He looked as quiet and wraithlike in it as he did when ghosting around the house, an unseen, barely there presence that seemed to melt into the furniture. Mircea suddenly realized that, except for their brief, odd encounter in the courtyard, he’d not spoken to Sanuito since their arrival. It hadn’t been deliberate; they’d just been occupied with different things.

He made a resolution to fix that, as soon as he got the chance.

And then their small craft was spilling out into the Grand Canal, and total pandemonium.

It was a working mass of boats, with what looked like half of Venice on the water. And in everything from simple rowboats and gondolas, to the floating palaces of the rich—molded, gilt-covered barges with rowers in the lower story and a party deck above, modeled on the Bucentaur the Doges used. They reminded him of the ones that had been used in the consul’s entertainment, only these were decked with flowers and covered with tents erected from brightly colored silks.

But that was only part of it, for the Venetians seemed endlessly creative with their water conveyances. There were boats called piatti that seated forty, covered in crimson satin and carpeted with tapestries. There were the elegant ganzara—sail-type vessels that also sported thirty oars. There was something Mircea wasn’t even sure should be called a ship, more like a floating platform, where musicians were trying to set up amidst the chaos.

There was everything and anything that would float, all bobbing about, cheerfully ignoring the fact that they weren’t actually going anywhere.

Neither was anyone on Mircea’s boat, where wine had been brought out and mugs were being passed around. They were supposed to be headed for the home of a pepper merchant Martina knew, who had offered his balcony for the occasion. But they weren’t headed very fast. In fact, Mircea thought it might actually be quicker to walk, had there been anything to walk on.

But then he looked at the shore and revised that opinion.

The throng on the water was nothing compared to the crush of people lining both sides of the canal. Some were jostling for a better view or watching the fire-eaters, jugglers, and jesters trying to part the crowd from their coins before the real entertainment began. Others were being conned by men working hastily assembled, and quite illegal, monte games, like the new three-card variety, while lookouts kept watch for the authorities. Still more were crowding the vendors selling dried fruit, chestnuts, and galani, the fried pasta strips sweetened with honey or sprinkled with cinnamon sugar that were practically a carnival requirement.

“Oh, I want some!” Zaneta cried, as they passed a pier where a particularly mobbed seller was about to be forced into the canal.

“You can’t taste them,” Bezio pointed out.

“I don’t care. It’s carnival!”

Zaneta seemed to think that phrase excused pretty much anything, but she pouted so prettily that Bezio grinned and gave up. And snared the beleaguered pastry vendor as they passed, pulling the surprised man into their gondola and causing the girls to squeal in protest, since there really wasn’t room.The relieved man handed out pastries to placate them before taking his leave on the next pier.

Where he was immediately mobbed by the diminutive audience of a nearby Punch and Judy show.

Mircea had heard that Venice was possibly the largest city in the world, now that mighty Constantinople had started to decline. But even after living there almost a year he hadn’t really believed it. Until now.

Everywhere he looked—crowding the banks, hanging out of windows, piled on top of surrounding buildings, and floating in the water—were people. Laughing, talking, flirting, occasionally fighting, or dancing to the ensemble that had finally gotten itself sorted and started to play. The whole panoply of human life visible in one huge vista. And in between, bewildered-looking tourists stood, as awed and slack-jawed by it all as he was.

Until the gondola suddenly bumped into something. Mircea looked around to find that it was a pier. He supposed they must have been moving, after all.

And then he was tumbling out along with the girls.