Daughter of Venice Read Online Free PDF

the woman described them in detail, as though she had actually seen them herself instead of just hearing about them from her husband. And she said, “Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist.” She said it three times.
    When we got home, I taught that saying to Andriana and Laura. And later we dressed up and played procession in our bedchamber, chanting those words as we marched around the room. I felt important—as though I were a soldier or even a senator, marching for everything good and holy, unflinching no matter what assailed me. Invincible. We played procession often. Then one day Andriana decided she was too old—and that was the end of it. Just like that.
    I walk around the map room slowly now, but there’s no aerial view of Venice. Nothing I can study to learn about this world I live in.
    On the table by the window lies a picture which must be waiting to be mounted. I stand over it. It shows a ducal procession in Piazza San Marco. I smile; it’s as though my memory a moment ago has come alive and materialized on the table, just for me. The men in the procession are talking to one another or playing instruments or marching fiercely ahead. One of them looks remarkably like Father, and I am sure now that the artist has tried to make the likeness of members of the Senate, for these men wear red gowns with fur trim. Why, there’s Uncle Girolamo. It’s uncanny the way the artist has captured his smile.
    Along one side of the
piazza
women gaze down at the procession from a long balcony. That must be where we sat years ago. Beneath the balcony are arches. I remember the arches on the Basilica—but I didn’t realize there were arches under where I sat, as well. I count them now. One hundred. Precisely one hundred arches. How perfect.
    And now I look at the women on the balcony. I go from face to face. I don’t recognize anyone, but perhaps these aren’t noblewomen. Wait, this woman looks a lot like another one. Yes, it’s the same face, the same dress, the same pose. Twins, like Laura and me. But, oh, the woman next to her is like the woman next to her twin. Two sets of twins? It can’t be.
    I scan the whole balcony. The women are repeated every twelve panels. They were done from a pattern.
    But each man in the procession is unique—even though there must be over a hundred of them.
    “Donata? Is that you?” Antonio comes in, carrying Nicola on his back.
    I step away from the table. “I could be Laura.” Of our seven brothers and three sisters, none can tell Laura and me apart. Unless we’re undressed, that is; I have a blue-black birthmark on the bottom of my right foot and another on my back.
    Antonio lifts his eyebrows in doubt. “If you were, you wouldn’t be here.”
    That’s true. But it doesn’t matter, because I know Antonio won’t get mad at me. He’s the one who showed me how to crab, after all. He never gets mad.
    Nicola smiles at me. “Antonio is my horse. I’m going to race him in Campo San Polo.”
    “I’ve never been to Campo San Polo,” I say.
    “I’m going,” says Nicola.
    I bet that’s true. I bet little Nicola will go to Campo San Polo and I never will. He’ll watch the horse races and I never will. Maybe he’ll even ride a horse in a race some day, though Campo San Polo is not in our section of Venice.
    Antonio gallops around the table with an exaggeratedly high gait, so that Nicola bumps wildly, letting out shrieks of glee. He halts in front of me and prances in place. “What are you doing in here?”
    “Do you know who made this wood engraving?”
    “Matteo Pagan. He has a shop on the Merceria.”
    “The Merceria,” I say. It’s the biggest commercial street in Venice.
    “When Father and Piero and Vincenzo and I go out in the morning, we take the gondola to the point on the Canal Grande near where the old Rialto bridge stood before it burned down. You know that spot, right?”
    I nod. Mother comments on the site of the old bridge every time we pass it.
    “The Merceria