SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Fifty-Three
By the end of the week, I didn’t feel so out of control. My insecurities hadn’t disappeared, but Duccio’s betrayal seemed more like a momentary failure than a declaration of his true nature. By the second week, his affections, never more tender and loving, made my often indignant responses feel less rational. I questioned myself more than once if I’d overreacted. Nothing about Duccio in the aftermath resembled someone who’d harm me. And by the end of the first month in Venice, I had to remind myself of what he once did.
Cool evenings heralded October’s arrival, and I saw less of Duccio because of his duties to Prince Adelchi in the Doge’s Palace. I came to understand that Adelchi was the Doge of Venice. I’d paid little attention to that distinction before or to his duality. The complexity only became clear when Duccio took up the human mantle of Patrician, underscoring how the lycan and human worlds intersected on the matter of governance.
Adelchi had been Doge more than a dozen times during his long lifetime, the number rising exponentially once humans on the Council of Ten voted to limit a Doge’s service to two years. Adelchi was reborn several times over the centuries to account for his never-changing countenance in the eyes of mortals. He adopted the mantle again and again as the next son of Venice’s greatest ruling family. And during those years when he was not Doge, he remained a member of the Council of Ten to make sure Veneto’s power remained unchallenged by its neighbors. Despite whoever the Venetian humans believed Adelchi was from decade to decade, he had been Prince of the region and ruler of its lycans for centuries.
My new life in the city absorbed all of my attention. Duccio and I moved into the Palazzo Lupofiero, as it became known. Guccia would not move in until she and Duccio were married in the Spring, but she visited there almost daily to oversee refurbishment efforts underway. Though she had helped her sister-in-law make many stylistic choices when she was alive, Guccia now changed almost everything in the palazzo to suit herself and the royal matriarch she intended to one day be. She wanted papered walls of satin in her private salon. The main drawing room would include fresco reliefs accented by neoclassical Roman columns of white marble, and the tables must have fluted legs to match. In the dining room, she wanted to echo the drawing room columns with glint-edged mirrors that towered similarly to the ceiling over her guests to the ceiling.
But Guccia’s moments with decorators and artisans were brief. In truth, she’d come to see me. While Duccio’s work for the state took his days, I devoted mine to Guccia, who became my beloved confidant and sister. She bore no resemblance to my lost Thérèse, neither in appearance nor age, but I felt so cared for by Guccia that I couldn’t help but adopt the same affection for her companionship.
“It’s not simple vanity, Esprit,” she said when I rolled my eyes over her third change to her sofa fabric. “We are leaders, and this house will receive people who’ll scrutinize every detail. Their opinions affect our ability to rule, even matters as trivial as the style of a sofa. I would not have Father’s viability questioned because I didn’t take those details seriously.”
“My lady,” I answered with resigned patience. “I admire your dedication. Hopefully, it won’t force us to miss tonight’s performance.”
“Oh, stop it,” she remarked before taking her leave of her designers to make her way home. “I will see you at six-thirty. Be on time, please.”
I was beside myself with excitement for this evening. It was the opening night of the opera season in Venice, and I couldn’t remember ever wanting to be part of something so much.
I’d never been to a single performance, not even a comic opera, in any of the cities I’d played in with my family. But it wasn’t a matter of our direct competition with the large houses. Performing almost nightly, we had a job to do, and it didn’t include expensive leisure.
When Duccio and I arrived in Rome, he’d spent the summer taking me to conservatories and private homes to listen to music, which had meant so much to me, and I often had trouble sitting still during the performances. When he invited players to our house, I’d done everything I could to keep from inundating them with my praise and questions. I sensed my exuberance embarrassed Duccio. But even before the dreadful heat of August arrived, Rome’s opera houses had closed for the season.
But now I was to attend my first opera. And in Venice, of all places! Someone in Florence might disagree, but the world over understood Venice was opera’s heart and soul. Major productions often opened here and closed forever if the Venetians deemed them unworthy. The continent’s finest composers, players, and singers all knew their careers would remain in question if they could not succeed on one of the six Venetian stages.
More overwhelming to me was that more than half of Antonio Vivaldi’s operas had debuted here.
Learning my favorite composer was long dead had been no minor blow. He had passed when I was eleven years old. Duccio had mentioned it off-hand in Rome and seemed taken aback by my emotional response. He was unprepared to believe I could care so much about someone I’d never known.
“But how can you say that? I know him in here,” I answered, placing my hand over my heart.
It wasn’t until I’d admitted as much to Guccia that I found a kindred spirit.
“The people of Venice went into a state of mourning!” she exclaimed one night at dinner, as if the impact of Vivaldi’s passing were common knowledge. “All the people attended the following season dressed in black to show our loss. I wouldn’t allow myself to wear color until Easter!”
Not only was Vivaldi sacred to Guccia, having once met him when she was my age, but she was also the principal patron of the Teatro Sant’Angelo, where he’d created all his finest works.
“I succeeded my brother, Carlo, who gave il Maestro everything to keep him in the city. Vivaldi might venture across Europe to play for kings and queens, bringing every audience to its knees, but he always returned home to Sant’Angelo to create ‘the new.’”
Though Venetians were renowned for demanding new operas to satisfy their appetites, the season opened tonight with a restaging of Vivaldi’s Griselda.
“Because it’s my favorite,” Guccia added as if there needn’t be any other reason.
I’d heard its coloratura aria, Agitata da due venti, performed on a harpsichord in Rome, and I was dying to hear it sung to a full orchestra.
Duccio had declined to attend this evening. There would be room for only one more in the Adelchi box—the Genoese ambassador and his wife would take the other seats. It was also inappropriate for Duccio to sit beside Guccia at the opera before they were publically married, which meant he would need to sit in another gentleman’s box.
“I’d attend to keep you company,” Duccio remarked before kissing me on the cheek, “but if you’ve found another fanatic, don’t let me keep you two apart.”
I worried that my desire to attend with Guccia might incite that same spark of jealousy that once offended him. But if Duccio felt in any way slighted by my enthusiasm, he didn’t reveal it to me.
By the time I boarded our gondola for the Palazzo Adelchi, I’d ensured I had never looked more put together in all my life. People’s heads turned to see me in my finest dark blue brocade coat, ornamented with gold thread and white lace the color of fresh snow. All this peaked through the front of my black cape, which I donned with gratitude as the autumn wind took hold. The heels of my paste buckle shoes were high enough that I envisioned stumbling into the sea. But it was a reasonable compromise for the added inch of masculine height they offered. With my gold-edged black tricorn hat flared over my powdered wig like the sails on a ship, I looked every bit like a gentleman worthy of a seat in the Adelchi box on the grand circle.
The first stars were breaking through the deepening violet shades of the evening sky. Torches along the canal were being lit, and none shone so bright as those around the Teatro Sant’Angelo. It was a thrilling cruelty that I must ride past her brilliant windows to first fetch Guccia from her home around the first bend of the Grand Canal.
“If it rains on this gown, I shall never forgive myself,” she swore as she stepped into the gondola, her anxious eyes stealing glances at the bank of threatening dark clouds in the distance.
Sumptuously decorated with floating layers of cream silk and trails of champagne satin bows, Guccia’s elaborate gown was something everyone would notice on account of the perilous height of her wig ornamented with sparkling jewels. I couldn’t help but giggle when she almost lost it all before taking her seat in the unstable boat.
“Your courage is a credit to your house, my lady,” I remarked, drawing a smirk of agreement when she settled.
“Remember, we’re leaving halfway through the third act in case I need time to change for the ball.”
“So early?”
“It will be much earlier if the other nobles tire of the performance and rise to leave. Then we’ll have no choice but to leave with them and race home to receive them.”
Tire of the performance, I pondered. How could anyone tire of such a thing as music?
It was an expected privilege of her patronage that Guccia would throw the first opera season ball in her home. The Palazzo Adelchi would welcome Venice’s finest, and they would party from midnight until dawn. Griselda’s players and singers would give a private performance in the palazzo, which contained a small theater that could accommodate almost a hundred guests. Guccia described the event as a considerable burden that had placed her household on edge for weeks.
Though he wouldn’t attend tonight’s opening performance, her father, Prince Adelchi, the Doge of Venice, would attend the private performance in his house, which had set the city’s elite clamoring for an invitation.
“But would they leave early?” I pushed. “Would that not be a great insult to you and the players?”
“It would,” she glanced with dire eyes that pressed her affirmation. “But, by now, you know how impossible we Venetians can be.”