29

Velvet soiled. How easily Giulietta never realised, not having had to wear any garment for more than one day at a time. Locked in a cold attic, she still wore the red houppelande gown and fine woollen chemise she’d worn the night she was abducted. Which was, it happened, what she’d worn that time with the boy in the cathedral.

A tiny slit in the houppelande showed where she’d put the dagger to her chest, unwittingly ruining embroidery her mother had sewn. And she could still remember her trembling hands undoing mother-of-pearl buttons and slipping aside her chemise to put the point to her skin. Giulietta blushed.

The memory of that silver-haired boy refused to leave her. It left her troubled, sleeping badly and waking early. Part of her had always believed he was searching for her. There had been other fondnesses, of course. Other crushes. No matter what her aunt and uncle thought. A lute player, chestnut-haired and slight, with soft brown eyes that captured everything in their gaze. His fingers held her shoulders as he kissed her lightly on the lips. A sweet sin that would have seen them both whipped had she told anyone. Which she hadn’t, except Eleanor, who could keep a secret.

The eyes she thought of now were not soft. Their owner not slight… Wiry, maybe. She could imagine his fingers on her shoulders. Elsewhere too.

A single look, and his memory burned.

Giulietta shook herself crossly. Of all things to think about, a boy had to be the most stupid. So she thought of her mother instead. More stupid still, since her eyes backed up with tears, overflowed against her will and kept falling long, long after she willed them to stop. Her mother was even less able to help her than a stranger seen across a darkened nave.

Wishes granted kill you. Her mother had whispered that.

Curling up on the floor, Giulietta tried to sleep; but the memories of her mother were too strong. She’d been assassinated three days after that whisper, at the age of thirty-six. Her marriage to a Visconti had been unhappy.

Her death a release.

The old duchy included Venice itself, and the towns, villages and estates on the mainland inland for a day’s ride on a fast horse. The estates boasted fortified houses, built of brick and limed with stucco. Those towns not built with limestone-faced defensive walls had made good their lack in the last few generations.

By accident, long before returning merchants brought Chinese cannon to Serenissima, the creators of the first town walls provided protection against not-yet invented weapons. The stone-faced walls split, but the compacted earth inside withstood the impact of a cannonball.

The young woman curled on the attic floor—hips stiff, swelling breasts pressed against cold boards—owned two estates, three towns and more villages than she’d bothered to count. She could recall, if she tried, the names of the ones she’d ridden through as a child, when they still belonged to her mother.

At dawn, she gave up trying to sleep and went as close as she dared to her only window. It was locked and shuttered and, from what she could see, looked out on broken roofs and a part of the city she didn’t recognise. A church tower in the distance looked ready to topple. The houses opposite were ruined, or near-ruined. None of them seemed occupied.

Unbuttoning her gown, the girl weighed one breast as a cook might examine a plump capon. It was definitely bigger. This would have delighted her a year ago. Now she was simply scared. Her nipples, usually pale, were puppy-tongue pink and hurt to touch. She prodded one all the same.

“You’re safe,” said the note she’d found on waking.

She didn’t feel safe, and she didn’t understand the bit about not stepping outside the circle until she realised it meant an oval of salt trickled round the edges of the room. That amount of pure salt was expensive. So she obeyed, being as yet too afraid of what might happen if she broke the command.

Her breasts ached, her flux had stopped its tides and her belly, she could swear it was swelling. Added to which, she’d worn the same gown for days. In a world where poor women wore rags that rotted with sweat under the arms, beneath the breasts or across their buttocks that would be unremarkable. But Giulietta changed her dress regularly, washed daily and bathed weekly.

At least she had, until that night in the cathedral.

Now she stank like a servant. And her food would disgrace an almshouse. Bread so stale it needed soaking. Rancid cheese that clogged her nails as she picked free the mites. Always served on a filthy pewter plate.

In one corner a bucket was hidden under her discarded chemise. She could wear the chemise and suffer the stink of her own shit. Or cover her bucket and freeze. From the scratches on the wall, she’d covered the bucket and been frozen for the best part of six weeks.

“You’re a fool,” she told herself.

It made a change from her uncle being the one to tell her. So many memories and so few of them good. “You have your health,” Giulietta snapped. Something her nurse used to say. It made little enough sense then. She had her health, and her life.

Didn’t expect that, did you?

She’d taken to talking to herself. There being no one else to talk to. This made her think of Lady Eleanor, her long-suffering lady-in-waiting…

Well, Giulietta didn’t think she was long-suffering. But she’d heard it said, more than once, and been so offended she slapped Eleanor next time they met, and demanded to know what she’d been saying. The memory made her ashamed. At least, she assumed that was the feeling. It made a change from rage, and fear and despair. These being her usual responses to waking in this attic.

She never saw who collected her bucket. She never saw who delivered her food. The one time she stayed awake to find out, her slop bucket went unemptied and her plate unfilled. No one arrived to clean the mess when she kicked her bucket over in fury. Only the memory of cleaning it herself stopped her from doing so again.

Damn it…

She could scream and shout for help. But what was the point? The last time she tried she screamed herself to a frog’s croak and damaged her throat so badly it hurt to swallow. Her nails not encrusted with rancid cheese she’d broken scraping mortar from around the door that kept her prisoner. Someone had thought about this. Her prison was filthy, its floor splattered with pigeon shit, its ceiling sticky with cobwebs, in which dead flies and desiccated spiders mixed equally.

Only the door was new, its hinges freshly oiled. When she woke, still rolled in the carpet, it was the hinges she noticed after struggling free. Now she wondered if the carpet was more significant. Still here, looking rich and out of place.

Like me, Giulietta thought.

Except she and squalor were proving to be closer bedfellows than she liked. The dirt troubled her less than it did. Her bucket’s stink was bad, but she was close to choosing warmth over her sensibilities. And she was regarded as having delicate sensibilities indeed. She was changing, and that scared her too. Because the change that scared her most was the one she didn’t dare think about.

A vicious wave of fear broke over her, tumbling her emotions in its wake, and then swept back, threatening to drown her al-together. What, she wondered, feeling tears fill her eyes again. What if it was even worse than she thought? People said Dr. Crow called up demons, captured djinn in bottles.

What if she carried a monster?