The Fool's Girl Read online

  The palace became a place of wonder. The Duke spared no expense. There were airy rooms with frescoed walls and mosaics set into marble floors. At the centre he made a paved courtyard shaded with orange and lemon trees, cooled by fountains. A wide terrace faced the sea, and gardens, each different from the others, descended to the shore with ruined arches and hidden secret places: little grottoes made from the fallen masonry and broken columns saved from the ancient site or dredged up from the sea.

  Although Duke Orsin had built the summer palace for his new bride, he didn’t spend much time there, staying in the town even in the hottest weather. He had matters of state to attend to, he said, fleets of ships coming in and going out. When he was not attending to such matters, he was in his library, overseeing the scriptorium that he had established, working with the scholars he had gathered. On the hottest days of the year he might ride out as the day cooled to evening, to eat supper, drink wine on the terrace and listen to music made by his wife and her ladies, but the summer palace became Lady Viola’s domain. She loved to be by the sea and hated the heat and stench of the summer city.

  Viola soon had her own court. She gathered ladies around her: young women from the city’s leading families, daughters of the local nobility. Lady Olivia spent all her time there, and I with her. The days went by in idleness: singing, playing music, reciting poetry. When the day grew hot, they would swim in the sea. Any man found spying would be likely to suffer the fate of Actaeon. My Lady Olivia and Viola were as close as sisters, closer. They were always together, from when they took breakfast on the balcony overlooking the sea to when they retired at night. They lived in each other’s eyes and could not bear to be separated for even a day.

  When the year turned, the summer palace was shut up and Lady Viola returned to Illyria town and became the Duchessa. She charmed the court, bringing the light and laughter of summer back with her to the ducal palace. The Duke seemed lost in his admiration of her all over again, her wit and her brilliance. When she came into the room, every head turned towards her, and everyone wanted to be rewarded by the flash of her smile.

  In Illyria, the winter festivities were always a time of great celebration, with feasting, dancing, plays and masques every day from Advent to Twelfth Night, but that first midwinter was especially blessed: Viola gave birth to a daughter, Olivia to a son, Stephano, born within hours of each other on the Feast of St Stephen. Outside, snow was falling. It covered the earth in a mantle as a soft and white as a christening gown.

  VIOLETTA

  In my earliest memories I am always at the summer palace. That was the time I was closest to my mother. She liked to walk by the shore in the early morning, and I would go with her. I would wake early, listen for her footfall and follow. It was likely to be the only time I would be alone with her that day. She would take my hand and we would cross the wide terrace and thread our way down through the gardens while the dew was still wet. As we walked, we met statues of fauns and maidens, suddenly looming out of the mist, looking secretive and furtive, as if the rising sun had surprised them in the middle of some forbidden frolic.

  The garden slopes were all in shadow and the beach was pale in the dawn light, with little waves crisping along its margins, the sand cold underfoot. The sea beyond looked greyish purple, like wine spilt on pewter. Then the sun would emerge over the rim of the hills behind and touch the water, like a molten river of gold stretching out to the horizon. My mother would loose her gown and plunge in, leaving me to watch from the shore. Sometimes she would take me with her. I could swim before I could walk. Then I would take her hand and we would wander barefoot as the incoming tide sewed the sand with silver. We would pick up pebbles bright from the water, collect delicately whorled shells, fine-fingered starfish, fragile purple and green urchins. Then we would go back. She would return to Lady Olivia. I would hear them conversing in low voices and laughing while I added our finds to my collection. Stephano would come out yawning, rubbing his eyes with his fists. I would show him the things that I had collected with my mother and we would arrange them together.

  Everyone said that he was as good-natured as he was handsome, with his mother’s mild grey eyes and her fair hair, his short-cropped curls as shiny in the sun as a heap of gold coins. I was older by all of an hour and thought that gave me precedence. Stephano never argued. He was happy to follow my lead in the games we played. The garden was our outdoor palace, the rocks on the beach were our fleet, the forest was our terra incognita, to be explored and conquered. Through all our adventures, Stephano was my friend and my companion and we were constantly in each other’s company.

  He was sharp-eyed, good at finding things: tesserae from some long-crumbled mosaic floor, bits of pottery, coins scoured by the sand and worn smooth by the sea.

  One day, when we were five or six years old, he found a gold ring on one of the terraces in the shape of a snake, with an eye made from a tiny red stone. He picked it up and took it to my mother and Lady Olivia, thinking one of the ladies might have lost it. No, the ladies shook their heads, it was none of theirs; it was his to keep.

  ‘Give it to the one you love,’ my mother said, thinking that he would give it to Olivia.

  He turned and gave it to me. It was ancient, I could see that. The ruby eye was bright, but the finely etched scales were hardly visible, the gold worn thin on a hand long turned to bone and dust.

  ‘It is too big for her!’ his mother said, laughing.

  Stephano looked up at her, his expression grave and solemn. ‘One day it won’t be.’ He took my hand in his. ‘Then we shall be married.’

  Our mothers and their ladies rocked with laughter and then clapped their hands and cried, ‘Blessed be!’ We were meant for each other. When we grew up, we would be married. It was our destiny.

  MARIA

  There were things a child could not know. With Viola spending so much time at the summer palace, rumours grew. Some whispered that the Duke had lost interest, preferring his books to his young wife, and she, in turn, had lost interest in him.

  They also whispered about Lord Sebastian: that he resented his sister, that he was jealous of her. He was Count Sebastian, but she was Duchessa. Not only that, but he had lost his wife to her. Olivia might have married him, but there was no doubt which twin she preferred. It was as though she’d made her vows to the sister, not the brother, they said as they laughed behind their hands, but no one said such things in his hearing. He had a violent temper on him and was always ready to draw steel.

  Who knows what goes on in men’s minds? Who knows what causes a canker to root there and grow to bitter hatred? Lord Sebastian attracted followers, young men who found the Duke’s court as dull and boring as the dusty old books in his library. Without my lady there, her palace became more like a barracks. My Toby was supposed to keep an eye on things, but you might as well have set a sot to oversee a brew house. The men spent their days hunting in the forest, or hawking in the hills. They spent their nights getting drunk. When they weren’t out hunting, the Count’s men swaggered around town, dressed in his black-and-white livery, causing trouble. They often clashed with the Duke’s men, and over time the two groups became sworn enemies. The young men of both courts wandered the town, seeking each other out, swapping slights and insults. Fights were frequent and often bloody. What began with single fights and skirmishes ended up in pitched battles. The followers were acting out their masters’ rivalry. However much Count Sebastian might crow over siring a boy, while the Duke could only manage a girl, he bitterly resented the power that Orsin held over him.

  About this time, the fortunes of our country began to decline. Illyria had always been rich and prosperous, had rarely known want, but her prosperity came from the sea. There were bad trading seasons. Ships were lost: argosies failed to return, or never arrived at their destination. The Duke took each loss upon himself. It was not the money or the goods. The sailors were men from the port, or the islands offshore, or the villages along the coast. A ship go
ing down meant widows, fatherless children. The Duke grew thin and haggard busying himself to make sure that each family was provided for, the losses covered, and that there was enough food for his people.

  Lord Sebastian was often absent abroad. It was said that he had grown bored with life in Illyria and was seeking excitement in Italy and Spain. Like his sister, he loved the sea and he loved adventure. The ills of the country began with his travels. He was seen in Venice, on the Rialto and at the Doge’s palace. His friend Antonio was banned from the city, but they were seen together in different ports. Antonio was an Uskok, a pirate, with a particular hatred for the Duke, and Venice had long been Illyria’s enemy.

  None of this happened in the time it takes for night to turn to day. It takes months, years, from the day the ships leave port to when they return, or are never seen again. Life went on, much the same as ever . . .

  VIOLETTA

  . . . Until the year when I was ten years old and everything changed. At the end of each summer, the palace was closed up and we went back to the city. I saw less of Stephano during the winter, but that year he did not appear at the summer palace at all.

  ‘Sebastian has claimed him,’ Lady Olivia said. ‘Made him his page. He wants to make a man of him.’ She laughed, but there were tears in her eyes as she said it.

  I missed him sorely, but I hid my sorrow in the way that children do. I always had Feste to teach me new tricks and laugh me out of my misery. He’s no child, but he can enter into a child’s world. He can be savage and kind by turns, as children are; he sees with a child’s clear and pitiless eye. He spies what lies beneath surface appearances and will punish pretension and hypocrisy with merciless mockery.

  He went where he wanted, but he was the Lady Olivia’s Fool, so came with her to the summer palace. He taught me to juggle and tumble, to walk a rope without falling and do magic tricks. He taught me how to whistle like a bird, hoot like an owl, how to make all manner of noises and sounds and use them for mischief and trickery.

  Feste’s lessons were useful to me as a currency with the boys who had been sent by their families to my father’s court. In the winter months I took lessons with them. My father believed that girls should be educated like boys, and was happy to find that I had a quick mind and an aptitude for learning. I counted the boys my friends and became an honorary page. Feste had shown me the value of duplicity. I created pockets of freedom within my life as the Duke’s daughter. The palace was very large. Often no one knew where I was, or who was supposed to be looking after me; by telling one person one thing and something else to another, it was easy for me to pass under everybody’s notice.

  My favourite among the pages was Guido, the son of an Italian duke. He was small, with a mass of curly brown hair springing out from under his blue-and-red cap. He was a handsome boy, with clear olive skin spattered with freckles, and large green eyes flecked with black. His friends called him Gatto, Italian for cat. He could usually smile and talk his way out of anything, no matter how stern the master, or how serious the scrape. He was wild and mischievous and now that Stephano had gone from my life, he was the perfect substitute. I taught him tricks, swearing him to secrecy. If Feste found out, he would be furious. A Fool does not divulge his secrets, and I was the Fool’s Girl. We would outdo each other in feats of daring: walking along the battlements and roof ridges, mounting raids deep into Count Sebastian’s territory, south of the Stradun, the wide thoroughfare that divides the city. We would go there to steal peaches, shout insults, steal buckets of blue wash to daub the Duke’s colours and his motto on their walls.

  It was the end of August. I’d come back early from the summer palace. I’d missed Stephano. Without him there, I was expected to join the ladies. I was ten and no longer a child. I felt the adult world close in on me: sewing and poetry. I could not wait to get back to the city to be free.

  When Guido suggested we went on a raid, I was more than willing. We collected a bucket of blue wash from outside a house that was being painted and set off through the twisting narrow alleys, steep flights of steps and hidden squares that make up Illyria town. We were safe enough in our territory, but more cautious after we crossed the Stradun. The alleyways often lead nowhere, or turn in on one another like a maze. It is easy to get lost in an unfamiliar district, possible to turn a sudden corner and be face to face with an enemy without any warning, avenues of escape limited, or absent.

  The noise from the Stradun should have warned us, but we paid it no attention. We were right up the other end, and fights were always breaking out down by the market. Insults and name calling easily turned into scuffles and the flash of steel with stalls overturned, the fruit and vegetables used as missiles or crushed underfoot in the melee. We heard the shouts, the city guard running to sort it out, but we thought that we would be safe.

  ‘This’ll do.’ Guido stopped in front of a high wall. He looked up at the expanse of cream stucco, as a painter might eye a canvas. ‘I’ll get started. You stand lookout.’

  He dipped his brush and daubed VV, short for Veritas Vincit, my father’s motto. He was just finishing the open triangle with a bar across the top, which had come to mean my father’s insignia, the eagle, when I heard men coming up the steps. Not just one or two, but a lot of them. I went to look. There must have been ten, walking five abreast, blocking the steps. They were talking loud, laughing and bragging, as men do when they have been fighting. Their black-and-white tunics and hose were torn; one or two were bloody.

  ‘Count’s men, Guido! Quick!’

  I was already running. I expected Guido to follow me, but when I looked back he was standing at the top of the steps, laughing, with the bucket in his hand. He’d thrown the paint all over them. I heard their roar of fury, the stamping of their boots as they took the steps two at a time to get him. He hurled the bucket for good measure and took off into a tangle of little alleys that led up to the walls. This part of the town had been abandoned, the houses tumbled in an earthquake. There were plenty of hiding places in the ruins and overgrown gardens, so I wasn’t worried; besides, I had problems of my own. One of the Count’s men was following me, running swiftly and gaining. He was shouting my name. He’d recognised me. That made me run even faster. I didn’t stop to think how he knew me; I was in trouble enough. I hitched up my dress, but the skirts twisted and tangled round my legs. He would outrun me for sure.

  He caught me at the top of the steps that led down to the gates, where I knew I would be safe, grabbing me from behind and pulling me back. I had no weapon, but I thought I could take him. He was a page, not much bigger than me. Feste had taught me how to fight, and fight dirty. I kicked back and felt my heel connect with bone, then I jabbed him in the midriff. As he doubled over, I planned to grab him and pitch him down the steps. I caught hold of his collar, twisting so he couldn’t breathe, and got ready to push and kick him on his way.

  ‘Violetta!’ He wriggled to get free of my grip. ‘It’s me!’

  I let go of him then, looking down the long, steep flight of stone steps. He could have broken his neck. I could have broken his neck. It was Stephano. I hardly recognised him. I hadn’t seen him for a year and more and he looked different. Older. I’d never seen him in his father’s black-and-white livery before.

  ‘We have to go after the boy who was with you,’ he said.

  ‘Guido? He can look after himself.’

  ‘My father’s men – they took a licking on the Stradun. They will be after blood.’

  ‘There’s plenty of places to hide up there,’ I said. ‘He’ll be all right.’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ He looked around. ‘My father has had the buildings blocked up to keep out beggars and people living there without a permit. The alleys lead nowhere – they are just dead ends.’

  We found him in a small square surrounded by tall tenements, their doors blocked with stone, their windows roughly bricked up. He was propped against a well surrounded by the Count’s men, their black-and-white livery fle
cked with blue splashes. They were taking their time with him. His mouth was swollen. Blood glistened on his hair and ran in a thick streak down his face, dripping on to his tunic. The fun was nearly over. One of them drew his stiletto. Another was easing his sword from his scabbard. Guido was looking up at them, death in his eyes. The Cat’s luck had run out. He’d used up all his lives.

  Stephano started forward, dagger drawn. He would likely be thrown aside by his father’s men, but he would not stand by and watch Guido butchered.

  A sudden shout of command held his step. The Count’s men turned, disconcerted, as the first shout was answered by another. Then came the tramp of marching feet, the sound of men approaching the square from all directions. The Count’s men stepped back from their quarry. Their leader reached down, his stiletto angled for a quick thrust up into the chest, ready to gut the boy like a fish, but a loud command stayed his hand. He turned. The rest of the square was deserted. The shouting seemed to come from nowhere. The marching feet were getting closer. New orders rang out, although there was no one to be seen. The Count’s men crouched, swords drawn, standing back to back, ready to strike out. The echoing shouts became too much. It was as though an invisible army of ghosts and spirits was coming for them. They turned tail and ran.

  I looked about, trying to work out what had happened, and then I saw Feste, seated cross-legged on the balustrade of a balcony, wiping the tears from his eyes. When I looked again, he had gone.

  I saw him. ‘Here. Through here.’ Feste was pushing loose bricks from a window. He beckoned to us.