By then the time had run out, and Nonna saw her down not to the water-stairs on the Raceta, as she had come in last night, like a thief, but to the public walk, on the Priuli, where the whole city might see. A maid waited below to watch out the door, and soon the maid said the duke's gondola was coming.

Giacinta kissed her Nonna, and started to leave.

"The mask," Nonna said agitatedly, "the mask, Giacinta!" just as she went out the doors. It was not the white half-face she put on. It was the moretta, the black mask of silence, a reproach to di Verona, a caution to herself, that she would say nothing, nothing at all, nor eat, and especially not drink. She clamped the button behind her teeth, and that was the end of converse and compromise and the foolish warfare she had chosen with il duco. The gondola took her aboard and drew away down the lesser canals to the Grand, under a stormy sky, and there to the shore. Di Verona's grand barge was there, and he stood on the bank to meet her, with the passersby all curious to see the passenger for whom a foreign duke waited.

He was perhaps surprised, a little set aback by the mask she wore— he, the lion down to the lips, which at first frowned, then grinned at her with nothing of cheerfulness. "A mystery, are you, today?"

She did not, could not answer him, only inclined her head, took his hand, let herself be set into the barge, gilt and azure canopied, among other barges and other colors of the more grand and glorious of La Re-pubblica, on the great Serpentine.

"An improvement," il duco said, "over last night. Perhaps you should always wear it, as a wife." She turned her black-masked face to the water, gray water, reflecting the leaden sunlight that pierced the clouds. Rain fell in sporadic drops, and thunder muttered. He spoke, thinking himself a cutting wit, and she thought only of her rose in the Ca d'Oro, and the candle reflected in a hundred mirrors.

It was armor, her silence. She could not answer, so she need not listen to him, or to anything in the world. She could not find excitement in the festival any longer, so she need not regard the parade of wealth and power: she only stared bleakly at the passing buildings, and the leaden sky and the dull gray surface of the canal.

Trumpets blew. The great barges moved with oars, and occupied the center of the Serpentine, the sort of parade she would have loved to watch, safe on shore. They made their way to the landing nearest the great piazza, and there, amid a cheering throng, the barges disgorged their grandly-costumed occupants in what became a foot processional.

There was music. Banners waved. Giacinta moved where her captor dictated, her hand locked in his, and everything was a confusion of color and noise, swirling faster and faster. Cheers, then, and il duco demonstrated her to the masked, festive crowd, and with gallantry lifted up their joined hands, and shouts and pushing and shoving followed, for il duco's servants had cast fistfuls of coins into the crowd, all along their way.

"Share my happiness!" he cried to the onlookers, parading her along the edge of the crowd. "My bride, Venezia, my bride!" And his servants called out, "Giacinta Sforza is the bride-to-be of Cesare di Verona! Bring her flowers! Bring her joy and music!"

Flowers rained down, costly flowers, from his own servants, it was likely, and the music shrilled and piped. Di Verona seized her about the waist and swept her out across the crowd of celebrants. They danced, oh, they danced, and afterward, she was so thirsty, but wearing the moretta, she could not drink, or scarcely breathe. She felt faint, but still cherished her isolation. She stared blankly at the congratulating crowd, and then—

Then she saw a man among the others, a white and gold harlequin like her harlequin, who appeared just behind the first fringes of the crowd. She blinked, and he was gone. Then she could not get her breath. She could not speak. She wanted to tear off the moretta and run through the crowd crying out to anyone who would hear that she belonged to the harlequin, not di Verona. But the harlequin was gone, fled from the sight of the celebration, and she was not such a fool. She found herself swept up again to dance, and dance, and dance, and never a sip of water, never relief from the mask which she would not shed, not now. It hid tears as well as anger, and she was too proud to shed them for the crowd.

Only afterward, when they had repaired to the barges, and di Verona brought her to his palace for another round of drink and dancing, he opened her hand and pressed into it a small scroll.

"Your invitation to the Doge's ball," he said, "as my betrothed. But we shall not become separated, shall we, love?"

She mimed exhaustion, and he closed her hand over the little scroll until it crumpled, until her hand hurt.

"You will dance," he said, "While I please."

It was past midnight that di Verona's gondola delivered her to her own water-stairs, and she closed the water-stairs door. Then and only then, she took off the mask, and wiped her tear-streaked face with the back of her hand, and took off her shoes. Her white silk stockings were bloodstained, where the once-soaked leather had galled her heels and pinched her toes. She padded upstairs, and tried in her silence to evade Nonna. In vain. Nonna met her and hugged her, and with that strangely potent handkerchief, dried her tears.

"There, there, my sweet, all our informers say it went so well. The whole city approves il duco's bride, this shapely mystery, they say, this so silent, so proper, so mysterious girl. La moretta!

You could not have done better for us."

"I want a drink of water, Nonna," she said, trembling, and had that, and a cup of wine, and a biscuit, which, besides the other biscuit at noon, was all she had had to eat that day. She wanted to go out again, to go back out into the calles to look for the harlequin who had haunted her day at the piazza, but she had hardly the strength, and the wine, unsupported by anything of substance in her stomach, quite undid her. She could scarcely climb the stairs or suffer the maids to undress her and wash and salve her feet.

She still had the invitation, crumpled as it was, in the bodice of her gown. The maids laid it aside on the nightstand, and she fell onto the soft mattress between the cool sheets, half-sensible, and then not sensible at all.

Thunder waked her. She heard the renewed pounding of rain against the roof, and heard the maids talking, how the rumor was the sea-gates were nearly overwhelmed, that water had risen into the back of the cathedral, and that the great waves, wind-driven, were splashing down over the great gates into the lagoon. "We'll all drown," one wailed, and the other said that the cathedral had lit candles and prayed for the city's salvation.

She went back to sleep and dreamed that the water came, that it rose up and up above the banks of the canals, and that they all drifted, dancing beneath the waves, the carnevalecarried on forever, and they all were ghosts, she and her white harlequin.

But morning came, and a shaft of sun broke through, and the canals had not flooded last night after all. She sat listlessly, refusing her breakfast, now with a notion of starving herself, of fainting senseless from hunger before the wedding, which Nonna said would be within the month. Could one possibly starve to death, within a month?

"You will learn to love him," Nonna said, in their little breakfast room.

"I never shall. I will not marry him, Nonna. I will not!"

"And what will you choose, else? For us to be poor, in Venezia? To be turned out penniless?

There's no worse fate."