Veronica COURTESAN Read Online Free PDF

to keep me safe. She went back to our old house in Sant’Agnese this afternoon and rummaged in a chest, where she found some of my brothers’ garb from when they were my age. A silver-grey doublet of Jeronimo’s (he was the slimmest), red hose belonging to Horatio (the shortest), Serafino’s grey breeches (the most stylish) and only God knows whose codpiece, which I’ve stuffed full of cloth to make me look the part. I’ve bundled my hair into a wide black hat.
    ‘We need to get out tonight,’ I said to Mamma this morning. ‘The city is celebrating. I’d like to join in. Please, Mamma. I’m going mad cooped up in this house. Jacomo will never find out. What say you?’
    ‘If you promise not to stray from my side. Mind you, there’ll be crowds.’
    And, indeed, there are. Everywhere. People haggle at the stalls selling lace, embroidery, paintings, furniture, textiles, carpets, and objects of glass, gold and silver. Mamma lingers, but I take her hand and pull her towards the stage under the loggia of the campanile. A choir of smooth-faced castrati are singing like angels, their unbroken voices high and pure. There’s a lump in my throat and tears sting my eyes; sadness washes over me for the castration of these poor men when they were only boys.
    ‘Come, Veronica,’ Mamma says. ‘We can’t stand here all evening. Let’s go and see what’s happening by the lagoon.’
    We buy some sugared fruits from a stall in the piazzetta next to the Doge’s Palace. The great wharf at the end is filled with long ships, their masts festooned with hanging lamps so that it looks as if the sea itself is on fire. Flags depicting the great lion of St Mark hang from the buildings, and, in front of the two pillars, a troupe of acrobats is forming a human pyramid four storeys high to be finished off with a dwarf at the top. They have set poles with firebrands all around so the spectacle is well lit, and the first three tiers are already complete.
    I worm forward. The final two men are scaling their way up now, careful, like cats, while at the side the dwarf is perched on the shoulders of another single acrobat, waiting for his turn. When the top tier is secure, the two of them move over to the pyramid, the dwarf waving to the crowds and swaying dramatically as if he’s about to fall. He’s dressed in yellow and red, and his grin reminds me of my brother Serafino’s when he would tease me in our childhood. The dwarf hooks himself onto the back of the existing second storey. In the torchlight, the sweat on the acrobats’ bodies glistens, their muscles twitching as they strain to hold the shape of the pyramid against his extra weight.
    The dwarf is up as far as the third storey now, and the structure is shaking with his clumsiness. One of the men at the bottom lets out a yell, and the dwarf grimaces and flaps his arms. Is he in trouble? No, he’s jesting. When he finally gets to the top and secures himself, out of his doublet he pulls a piece of coloured silk on a small stick like a flag. He gives a triumphant wave; then he sticks it onto his back, bending himself over until he’s crouched like a dog, his hands and feet balanced on the shoulders of the two men below him, so the flag now flies like a standard above him. Maria santissima! In the light of the firebrands, his pose is a mirror image of the great stone winged lion at the top of the pillar, its wing standing up like its own flag from the ridge of its back.
    There’s a group of smartly-dressed men next to me, laughing at the dwarf. One of them, tall, blonde, with a wispy beard, catches my eye. Oh, Gesu Cristo! Where’s Mamma? I’ve left her behind in the crowds. ‘What a pretty boy,’ the man says.
    His friends form a circle around me, hustling me away from the crowd towards the Doge’s Palace. ’Tis well-known that bands of men go about the city at night, getting up to all sorts of unholy mischief in the dark alleyways. Mamma said males delight in sticking their