Ignoring the gold lace mask, I opened the note, caught it in the glow of the nearest torch, and strained against darkness to read:
My love — Second intermedio. In the lobby as planned.
And then, that far more communicative S.
“My love,” the moiré mask cooed in my ear. “What is it?”
I snatched the note away from her groping fingers, realizing now, as I hadn’t when they were on my codpiece, how aged they were, and spotted. I realized, too, how, for all the gems she did wear, one jewel was conspicuously absent, one on her left hand that now exposed a telltale band of white.
“My love—?”
Her use of those words irritated me. “Business,” I replied brusquely.
I looked to my uncle for confirmation as I did reflexively whenever “business” was mentioned. My uncle’s eyebrows were even higher than before. In retrospect, I have to admire his restraint. In spite of all the inept fumbling with gold lace going on in the seat next to him, he’d managed no comment. Or at least he’d managed to match his guffaws to the general rise and fall following Columbine and her Harlequin.
“Oh, business. Yes!” He started as if with sudden memory.
And then, off the silken hose of his knee, he pointed a finger to the opposite arm of the audience. My friend in moiré did not see this signal, but I followed the line of Uncle Jacopo’s fingers across the room, realizing that he knew whence the note came.
They were late arrivals I hadn’t noticed until this moment, seated in a far section of the audience reserved for women who wanted to keep to the convention of separation that was usually the rule. They were almost alone there, masks and Carnival erasing the lines between courtesan and honest woman that were otherwise observed.
Blinking against the dim light, I recognized the chap-faced nun first. She looked angry to be the only unmasked face on three tiers, uncomfortable with the worldliness about her and the bawdiness on stage. Although both young ladies with her were identically masked, it didn’t take me a moment to reject the nun’s right-hand charge as too giggly, and lay claim to the taller one on her left.
It was exactly the conclusion the very form of the S and my mind’s constant echo had set me to from the start. She seemed to steal torchlight from the stage. And her intense gaze coming back to me left no doubt whatsoever. Oh, how long could these buffoons on stage keep it up? How long till intermedio?
“Say you mustn’t go. Can’t we escape together for a few moments? Can’t the business wait?”
I brushed at the sting of gold lace as at a bothersome mosquito and tried to clear my head enough to think straight. But all I could do was to wallow in the wonder of it. I lost all consciousness of the stage. Me? Baffo’s daughter calls me “her love”!
The refrain of my thoughts began to have musical accompaniment. The tapestry had dropped again and the rewards of the Blessed were now revealed in song and dance. Seraphim were joined by a celestial nonet of Muses on lutes, double harps, bowed rebecs, recorders, transverse flutes, one straight and one curved cornet. The continuo sneaked on stage as a harpsichord within a gauzy cloud.
No host of heaven could compete with what was ringing through my mind. Or rather, the stage was my mind’s perfect, if less extravagant, complement. I got ready to excuse myself.
And then, the host and their clouds parted to reveal divinity. No patriarchal Jove, but an Apollo in golden armor and corona was flown in on ropes you could see only if you were spoiling for them. The continuo hit two crashing chords to bring him in, and Apollo opened his mouth to address us.
The sound that flung itself suddenly to the furthest corners of the theater was beyond belief. It riveted me to my chair and washed my mind blank to any other thought. At first I raked the stage with my eyes, looking for the full woman’s chorus that must be concealed somewhere to make the noise Apollo’s lips only pretended to. Then I was beaten back to the realization that this torrent of sound was a full octave above the normal range of women. The notes were brilliant, painfully so, showering like slivers of shattered crystal on the ear. They sparkled and ran glancingly through the most breakneck cadenzas as if they required no effort at all. That it was this fine figure of an Apollo who tossed his golden locks with every breath was impossible. Absurd. My first reaction was to laugh out loud as no harem escapade had induced me to till then.
But this was hardly the reaction in the rest of the audience, so I had to stifle mine. My companion in moiré leaned forward, transfixed as if it were indeed divinity she heard.
“It is!” she exclaimed in her rapture. “It is!”
“It is what?” I demanded.
She said a name I cannot now remember, but definitely a man’s name, then added: “Messer Foscari promised me he would lure this singer out of his church in Florence and onto our stage. He has done it. And oh, isn’t the voice just as divine as reported?”
I struggled with this definition of divinity and its music for a while. Even so, all I could find to say was: “But how—?”
“He’s a castrato. A childhood injury, poor man,” my companion enlightened me.
Mariners miss a lot at sea, I realized. And then, since the host of heaven had decided to render their lord praise in their common, mundane voices for a time, she continued.
“At least, that’s what they say. But I have it on good authority that he was a choirboy in Florence and his family was too desperately poor to let him grow out of a good thing. There are physicians, I understand—”
“I won’t believe it. That a family would do this to their heir?”
“Oh, you must believe
