"There is. Di Verona is worse. I don't care about being poor. I'd rather be poor, than face him for the rest of my days."

"Don't say such things."

Nonna was vastly upset. And she had had enough, suddenly. She stood up, her feet protesting even then. "He is cruel and spiteful, Nonna. He has a cruel nature, and cruel hands, and I detest him more the longer I spend in his company. I will never live with him."

"Let me show you something," Nonna said, and went to the cupboard drawer, and took out a little glass bottle, stoppered with waxed cork. Its contents were black, and left a brown stain on the glass.

Nonna set it on the table beneath them. "This is my alternative," Nonna said. "This is what I will choose, if you fail to secure our place here."

"Poison? Is it poison, Nonna?"

"Rather than poverty. Yes, it's poison. I want my garden, my girl, I want my garden and my house and my servants. I have earned them, in my old age. I have brought you up to use your wits and think like a practical woman. I have taught you to be practical. I have arranged the best marriage you could make, an alliance that will make you rich beyond anything I ever asked for myself, beyond anything your father had. You will be splendid, la duchesa in your own right. You will never, never be so foolish as to make me use this."

"Put it away," Giacinta said, sick at heart. "Put it away, Nonna." Nonna took the little bottle back to the cupboard, and shut it in the drawer. "You will go with il duco to the Doge's ball. You will, of course, stay well aside from any matters there. Stay with il duco himself. He will see you come to no harm, and his men will let no harm come near him.

"I don't know why he should care whether he marries me. I don't know why I should matter."

"Legitimacy. Legitimacy, dear girl. You are your father's daughter, as I am mine, but Cesare di Verona—lacks a certain certaintyin that matter, and you are the most beautiful, the most eligible—"

She was struck to bitter laughter. "So il duco is common! He is commonborn as the Doge, as the Council, as any of the merchant princes!"

"Common is as common does," nonna said stiffly, "and he has nobility of spirit, and he is, whatever they say, di Verona."

"He has money, Nonna, oh, say it! He has money, and he wantsnobility, which our name can provide him."

"He wants Verona, which rejected him."

"Oh, is thatthe key to his passion? Reject him and he immediately must have you? Go reject him, Nonna, and he will become your passionate suitor."

She had never used such a tone to her grandmother. But she had reached the end of her endurance last night, and Nonna only bit her lip and shook her head at ingratitude.

"He is cruel, Nonna. He has no heart. I found none."

"If he had more legitimacy, if he had a noble wife, it would be easier for him. If he ruled Venezia, ruling Verona would be certain. And then Milano. Never forget Milano, granddaughter." Oh, Nonna could never forget Milano, from which they themselves were exiles, her father's rights overthrown, and Nonna unable to prevent it. The fall of their family gave Nonna no peace, and di Verona was as much la duchesa's means to revenge on her enemies as she was di Verona's means to regain his city. It was all la vendetta. It was all revenge, and blood. She lost all interest in her breakfast, but she forced it down, foreseeing she would need her strength. She only half heard Nonna's talk about the old days, and the house, and the garden, and how they would plant a flowering plum, which loved to have its feet in water. Then they would have fresh fruit in late spring. Nonna was happy in her imaginings. But it was all nonsense to her ears. Everything had become clangor and nonsense.

She had one night, one night left before this disastrous ball at the Palazzo Ducale, when di Verona's plan would set itself in motion. And she had one recourse. She had her key. She had her one escape.

She went upstairs by midafternoon, when Nonna had taken to her bed, and had her maid lace her into her party gown.

She put on the shoes, never minding the pain of her bandaged feet, and slipped downstairs. And from the drawer she took Nonna's little bottle, and slipped it into her reticule, with her few holiday coins.

Then, wearing the white mask, the bauta, she went out the front door of their little house on the Priuli, and walked down the margin among the revelers, looking, looking, hoping her forlorn harlequin might have lingered somewhere near. The music echoed off the opposing walls, sounding out of key to her, and the laughter and the revelry she met were sadly distant to her ears.

She thought perhaps she should go down to the Palazzo Ducale, and ask to see the Doge, and warn him of di Verona's intentions in the plainest words. The consequences of that brazen action were unforeseeable, but she feared for Nonna if she did so, and yet she did not know why she cared for Nonna's safety, when Nonna had arranged this all for her. She was angry, and bitter, and so full of plots and possibilities that an angry mind could hardly sort through the consequences. She was young. She was new to connivance and conspiracy. The affairs of three states had gone on over her head. Never worry, Nonna would say to her. It doesn't concern you.

Now it did. Now she wished she knew.

The sky commiserated with her, gray and thunderous, and the water lapped high about the foundations and crept onto the walkways in thin sheets. Carnevalestruggled to be merry despite the storm, despite the rumors, but the sights all paled for her, and when she made her way to the great piazza, the sight of the dancers reminded her of her public humiliation. She stood a while, contemplating the Palazzo, and how she could manage to pass the door. She started in that direction, and got as far as sight of the guards, and lost her nerve.

All these things she did, evading the one venture she most wanted and feared to make. But when the day began to decline, still leaden and rainy, and with no sight of her harlequin among the crowds, she had found no courage to dare the Doge's guards, and walked back through the calles, immune to the pranks of pantalones and pulcinellas, one white mask among many.

It was the Ca d'Oro she sought, and the door, which, with the flooding, she could scarcely manage. She soaked her shoes again, and her hem, with a slip on mossy rock. But she gained the still, silent inner stairs, where she had left the matches and the candle. Thunder boomed above the city. The storm, threatening day-long, had broken. She lit the candle stub with difficulty in the wind, and shut the door against the rain and the world. Then she suffered the greatest fear, ascending, candle flickering on walls and ceiling, until she came to the hall of mirrors, where her candle became a hundred candles, lost in a dark that the windows beyond the arched alcove did little to relieve.

The table had changed. On it stood a bouquet of drooping roses. Her ring was gone. Hiswas there, a more massive golden round, a signet. It must be his. She set down her candle, and picked it up, and turned it to the light. It bore a coat of arms engraved in flat gold, the divided shield, and above it not a helmet, but a cap, a common cap, and not at all common. She had seen it emblazoned on banners in the piazza, that divided shield and the unwarlike red cap. The arms of the Doge himself.

All the blood fled her limbs. She plumped straight down in the shadow, in the mockery of a hundred mirrors, and turned the ring in her fingers, the arms faint in shadow and glittering in candlelight.