The Fool's Girl Read online

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  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York

  First published in Great Britain in May 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

  Copyright © Celia Rees 2010

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

  This electronic edition published in April 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  All rights reserved.

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  A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 4088 1075 0

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  Also by Celia Rees

  Witch Child

  Sorceress

  Pirates!

  Sovay

  .

  For Rosemary

  .

  1

  ‘What country, friends, is this?’

  London, 22nd April 1601

  VIOLETTA

  Have you seen a city under sack? Have you seen what happens there? Have you seen the blood, heard the screaming, smelt the smoke on the wind?

  I stood on the battlements and watched them coming. Venetians and Uskok pirates, the scum of the sea, combined together to attack our fair city. I saw the red flash of the guns, the white smoke, felt walls shudder. I saw ships rammed; blown to splinters. I saw tall galleys spew fire that spread over the decks in a blazing carpet, turning men into torches and sails into ragged flags of flame. The burning ships ran on, setting fire to others until our fleet was nothing but smoking hulks set to spin in the powerful current like blackened walnut shells.

  Still they came on. Platforms built on towers above the prows of the leading galleys brought the invaders level with us on the battlements. We kept up a hail of stones and arrows but the big ships came in a long line, each platform linked with its neighbour. You could run from one end of the fleet to the other. Those Venetians are clever. The ships rammed against the walls, grounding themselves on the rocks, bringing their forces eye to eye with ours. Men leaped off the platforms and on to the battlements, letting rope ladders down to be caught by those below. Soon men were crawling up the walls in black swarms.

  From the landward side, balls of fire rained down on the city, destroying houses and churches. The roofs were obscured by rolling smoke; flames shot upwards and tiles fell in a dreadful scurrying clatter, muffling the screams of those caught inside to burn alive.

  The city’s walls were breached. The gates lay open. Enemy forces poured in, driving the people up the Stradun. The wide central thoroughfare was already jammed with all those trying to escape the ring of trampling booted feet, the swing and slash of the sword blade. The crowds were forced into the main piazza, caught like fish pursed up in a net. They would find no sanctuary in the cathedral. The great west door lay in splinters. Vestments were strewn about, defiled and discarded. Pages of sacred texts blew around and stuck in the crooked streams of blood that were trickling down the steps to pool on the white marble pavement. Once the piazza was full, the killing began. The separate wails of grief, sobbing and pleading became one constant scream.

  FESTE

  I took her. I dragged her from the battlements. She wanted to stay, to fight to the end, but her father the Duke ordered her away. He knew that there would be no mercy. He did not want to see his daughter raped in front of him until they put out his eyes. He sent his page, young Guido, with us, not wanting to see the same thing happen to him.

  We went down into the cellars. From there I hoped to take one of the tunnels that led out to the ramparts, but from the direction of the walls came the rumble of rolling barrels. The vermin were already down there. Sappers, busy with gunpowder, getting ready to blast their way up into the tower.

  I led them up into air thick with the smell of burning flesh and ash falling like snow. The fight had moved on, the streets were deserted, but they were not empty, if you get my meaning, and there was no way for me to shield her. She’s seen sights that no girl of her age should ever have to see. There’s a madness takes men over. No one had been spared. Men cut down where they stood, women raped and left for dead, children and babies chopped and butchered. Only the animals were still roaming about, and the less said about that . . .

  We couldn’t get out of the city. We were trapped like rats in a granary. Ever seen terriers sent in to clear them? They kill until they are staggering, then they kill some more.

  In the east, a woman’s high keening stopped abruptly. In the west, the sky glowed with more than the sunset. The Duke’s palace on fire. There were still shouts and screams, but they were becoming scattered and sounded distant. There was a lull while the Venetians and pirates got busy looting or broke open barrels in the inns and taverns, but the looting would finish when there was nothing left to steal, and then they would be out on the street again, this time drunk, and the slaughter would go on until there was nothing left to kill.

  We went through the narrow twists of the streets and up crooked flights of steps slippery with blood. We went to find Marijita, but she was dead with all her birds about her. She had been weaving her own shroud.

  VIOLETTA

  How did this come about? To understand that, I have to take you back to the very beginning . . .

  .

  2

  ‘So full of shapes is fancy’

  Master William Shakespeare, poet, player and sometime mage, had been on his way home from the theatre after seeing a particularly poor performance of one of his plays. The crowd had been slow to settle, churlish and sullen, given to outbursts of insults, mewing and hissing, accompanied by a certain amount of peel and bottle throwing. And who could blame them, when those whom they had come to see were stiff-limbed and leaden-footed, late to arrive on stage and slow to leave it? The heroine needed a shave, and her male counterpart was more wooden than the twigs and branches of the ‘forest’ he wandered. There was sickness in the company, some of the best players laid low, but that was really no excuse. Why did he bother to write at all, when any addle-pated actor thought he could prattle out the contents of his empty head?

  Will had left before the end. He knew how that would be, the epilogue rushed to give way to a prolonged bout of energetic, over-exuberant jigging, whether the play warranted it or no. Even though the present production was a comedy, it would not benefit from a lot of antic prancing. The thought of it put him even more out of temper as he went past the sharp animal reek of the bear garden. Here the crowd roared at every deep snarl of fury and sharp yelp of agony. The animals were earning more applause than their human counterparts at the Globe.

  He walked on, eyes down, picking his way over the turd-studded ground, making for his lodgings, close by the Clink Prison. As he turned the corner hard by the church of St Mary Overie, a throng of people stopped his further progress.

  A bearded man who looked like a Spaniard strummed a cittern and a blackamoor beat on a row of upturned buckets, but these two were not the focus of the crowd’s attention
. Every head was turned; every eye was on a small, thin man. He stood, stripped to the waist, his legs encased in black hose, his white visage a blank mask of concentration as his head wove this way and that, trying to balance a motley collection of objects on his forehead: a wooden pole, a painted box, a chair on top of that. His bobbing sideways motion had the crowd weaving with him, as if their sympathetic movement could strengthen his.

  He gave a slight nod and the crowd gasped, sure that the whole lot would tumble, but it did not. The clown righted the swaying edifice and his assistant, dressed in the white baggy costume of a Commedia dell’arte zanni, threw a puppet high into the air. All eyes turned upwards as the puppet flew, seemed to hover for a moment then fell down, settling on the seat of the chair. The crowd clapped and roared their appreciation as the puppet’s tiny head nodded to them and its hand seemed to stir in acknowledgement. The clown gave a violent toss of his own head and the whole lot went skyward, each object falling to the ground arranged neatly around him, the puppet still seated on his chair. The clown picked up the puppet, a black-clad replica of himself, and set it to bowing and waving and accepting the applause.

  Will stayed to watch, as did the rest of the crowd, and others joined them. The clown had created a great space out of nothing, a scrap of paving where two roads met. Each successive trick seemed more dangerous, more outrageous, doomed to inevitable failure. That was what held them. They were all waiting for the moment when the clown would falter and the objects he was juggling or balancing would tumble about him. But they never did. Full-size chairs flew through the air like children’s toys.

  One act followed another. He wriggled out of locks and chains heavy enough to crush him. Fire did not scorch him. Swords and daggers left him without a scratch. He took the crowd with him like the tide pulled the river’s flow. Will had long ago left watching what the clown was doing; he knew he would not fail in it. He was watching his face. Terror, fear, relief, humour, happiness and sadness rippled over his expressionless features like water over stone, running out to the crowd who mirrored each emotion, entirely unaware that they were doing so. Will knew that he was in the presence of a master, a great clown, perhaps the best he had ever seen. When the show was over and the crowd applauded, he joined in, throwing a coin into the hat the zanni was passing. The clown held the puppet behind his back and they both bowed low, the clown turning to take in all of the circling crowd.

  His audience began to disperse into the surrounding streets and alleys, but Will stayed behind.

  ‘What is your name, master?’ he asked.

  The clown affected not to hear. He pulled a black tunic over his sweating body, his pale torso corded and knotted, his arms like twisted rope. He wiped his face with a rag, revealing a pale countenance almost as white as the paint that had covered it. Will watched as the man walked about collecting the chains, clubs and sticks and various bits he had used, throwing each one into the battered box that had been part of the balancing act. He could have been any age and no age. Will liked the look of him. A thin clown, a lean clown, a clown with no spare flesh on him, the kind Will admired, quite unlike that fat fool prancing about on the stage of the Globe. He was yesterday’s clown.

  The man picked up the puppet, removing the rudimentary arms and legs like a suit of clothes to reveal the central shaft of a folly stick. The head was hewn from a natural burl of wood, the contours carved into his own features, with a twisted mouth and a sharp, curving nose. Shiny black stones gleamed from lids half closed, sly and knowing, beneath the swirl of a jester’s cap.

  ‘My name is Feste.’ The clown cradled the folly stick to his chest, twisting its face away to avoid further scrutiny. He turned to welcome back his companion. ‘This is Violetta.’

  The white-suited zanni had slipped away to use a nearby alley as a tiring room and returned as a maid, wearing a low-cut bodice under a soft blue gown. She shook out her dark hair as she came towards them. She wore it loose, with no covering cap. Around her neck hung a pendant charm of branching silver sprigs and strands of coral as delicate as a baby’s fingers.

  Will stepped forward, intending to introduce himself.

  The clown held up his stick, as if in warning. ‘We know who you are, master,’ he said.

  ‘My compliments to you both,’ Will replied. ‘You pleased the crowd. But performing is hard work. You must be hungry . . . thirsty. Would you accompany me to the Anchor? It is close by here. We could share a jug of wine and take some supper. It would be my treat.’

  Violetta nodded and the clown shouldered the box. The take had been good, but an offer of food and wine bought by another was not to be passed up. Will turned to make sure that they were following after him and led the way to the inn by the river. They were strangers, that much was clear, but more than that, there was a strangeness about them. A Fool who was no man’s fool, and his boy who was really a girl. He’d felt the old pricking sensation running through him. He’d sensed a story here, and he was seldom wrong.

  .

  3

  ‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house, and all the brothers, too’

  VIOLETTA

  It began when my mother came to the shores of Illyria. I am named for her: Violetta, meaning little Viola. My mother arrived in my country as much a stranger as I am here. I remember the story from when I was very young. I remember it from when I was lying in my cradle, watching the shimmering light from the sea play like shoals of silver fish across the ceiling, while the charms hanging above me seemed to turn to the music and laughter twisting up the stairs from the great hall below.

  In my mind, my mother became mixed with the heroines of other legends, the stories so woven together that I could not work out where their stories ended and hers began.

  When I was a child of about four or five I would sit at my window, watching the ships come and go from the harbour below – long galleys with their oars stretched like insect legs; sturdy little carracks, the wind billowing their slanting sails – and I would wonder: did my mother come on that kind of ship, or that? Sometimes I would mount the steep, worn steps to the Tower of the Eagles, pulling myself up by the thick rope looping between great iron rings set into the wall. I would look out from the battlements and my mind would take flight like the eagles that nested on the topmost turrets.

  I would look down at the sheer cliffs, the white waves curling beneath, the tiny coves and lonely inlets with their crescents of pale grey beach, and I would wonder: where did she first come to shore?

  I would see the great ship founder: sometimes with a splaying tangle of splintering oars, sometimes with a sturdy hull split asunder – the crack of a tall mast, the rending of canvas, the wild flapping of fallen sails. I would see the cargo spill. Among the casks and barrels I saw bodies floating, arms outstretched, hands and faces livid in the blackness. My mother was among them, her eyes closed in her white face, her pale hands floating upwards, her dress billowing, her hair flowing about her, moving like the weed in the harbour. She hung there, suspended between brightness and darkness, until I was sure that she was dead. Then she pushed upwards, making for the shifting glimmer above her, her head breaking the surface like a sleek seal.

  She bobbed there for a moment, looking about her, before breasting the tumbling waves and striking for shore. She was a strong swimmer, my mother. She rose from the water, emerging from the foam like Aphrodite; coming out of the waves like some mysterious mer-creature, stepping on to the sand like a lost princess, spared by the sea to pursue her destiny. Behind her, day had become night. The storm raged and between sky and water there was no margin, only inky blackness. Then a single flash of lightning forked from the firmament, stitching heaven and earth together, and she stood illuminated by the sudden violent brightness. Although yellow was a colour that I never saw her wearing, she was wearing a yellow dress. When I told her this, she smiled and pulled me to her.

  ‘Yes. That is how it was! A yellow dress, exactly. How could you know? You clever, cleve
r child!’

  This was her story. How she told it to me. She emerged from the water to find people standing on the shore, attracted by the storm or the chance of a wreck. Her appearance was so sudden, so miraculous, a splash of yellow against the blackness, that they looked behind her, to see if her feet printed the sand. Among them were sailors, lately washed up. Their number included the captain of the ship.

  ‘What country, friends, is this?’ she asked.

  ‘This is Illyria, lady,’ the captain replied.

  She enquired about her brother, Sebastian, who had been travelling with her. He was last seen clinging to a spar, but there was no sign of him on that shore. The captain’s words gave her hope, but his eyes denied it. The truth would be too much to endure.

  The news took the last of her strength and she shivered. A man started forward to cover her with his sheepskin coat. She was taken to a cabin, a stone’s cast from the beach. There was an upturned boat outside, spread with fisherman’s nets. The walls of the cabin curved inwards, the beams keel-shaped, made from the timbers of wrecked ships. In the middle of the room a large square grate contained huge driftwood logs crumbling to ash. Various pots and pans lay lodged in the embers. A toothless crone ladled fish soup as space was made at the hearth.

  My mother sat down to share a simple meal with them. She was grateful and courteous. She had charm and grace, a way of making people like her. She was the sort of person that people want to help.

  She refused nothing. Although she knew that they were giving her the best of their meagre store, food likely being saved for a wedding or a feast day, she was careful not to proffer any reward. Hospitality was a sacred duty. A holy obligation. To offer money in exchange would be an insult. These were superstitious people. They lived by the old ways, ancient and unwritten. She looked about and saw the glass disc, a milky white circle surrounding a blue iris and black pupil, that hung above the door to ward off the evil eye. In a little niche in the wall a candle burned before the shining icon of the local saint. He was always shown holding the holy relic. It had been brought to these shores in a wreck, just like she had been. She did not know it yet, but that was why these people regarded her with such awe.