Marco sighed. He had buried Marco Valdosta quite thoroughly, and not even for the sweet eyes of Angelina Dorma was he going to resurrect the name he’d been born to. “Marco Felluci” he was, and Marco Felluci he would remain—even though it meant abandoning all hope of ever winning the girl he was quite certain was the love of his life. But even if he couldn’t touch, he could dream—and, perversely, even if she were never to learn who her unknown admirer was, he wanted her to know how he felt. So he’d spent three hours struggling over that poem.
Just two weeks ago it was, that he’d first seen her. At Giaccomo’s, with a couple of companions. Until then his daydreams had been confined to something just as impossible, but hardly romantic.
The Accademia! Lord and Saints, what he wouldn’t give to get in there to study medicine! But—he had no money, and no sponsor, and the wrong political history. Not that he gave a fat damn about the Montagnards anymore, and their fanatical determination to bring northern Italy into the Holy Roman Empire. But there was no way he was ever going to pass for one of the young nobles of Venice or even a son of one of the Casa curti.
Still . . . Marco was young enough that sometimes, sometimes when the day had really gone well, it almost seemed possible. Because a long-buried dream had surfaced with this new life.
Marco wanted to be a healer. A doctor.
He’d had that ambition as far back as he could remember. Mama had owned a drug-shop for a while, which she’d set up with what money she had after her family cut her off. Marco had been just old enough to help her with it, and he’d found the work fascinating. The patrons of the shop had teased him about it—but right along with the teasing, they’d asked his advice, and had taken it too. That perfect memory of his, again. He remembered symptoms, treatments, alternatives, everything. He’d helped old Sophia out in the marshes, later, with her herbs and “weeds,” dispensing what passed for medicine among the marsh-folk and locos.
Of course, since seeing Angelina for the first time, she’d crowded out that particular daydream more often than not. But it was still there, rooted so deeply he knew it would never go away.
And so, as he made his way from Casa Dorma, Marco’s thoughts were brooding and melancholy. Two heartbreaks at the same time seemed a bit much, at the age of sixteen! He consoled himself by beginning to compose, in his mind, another love poem. A brooding and melancholy one, of course.
His feet were chilled as he padded along the damp wooden walkways. He couldn’t get used to shoes again after two years without them in the marshes, so he generally went as bare of foot as a bargee. The temperature was dropping; fog was coming off the water. The lines of the railings near him blurred; farther on, they were reduced to silhouettes. Farther than that, across the canal, there was nothing to see but vague, hulking shapes. Without the clatter of boot soles or clogs, he moved as silently in the fog as a spirit—silent out of habit. If the marsh-gangs didn’t hear you, they couldn’t harass you. Breathing the fog was like breathing wet, smoky wool; it was tainted with any number of strange smells. It held them all: fishy smell of canal, smell of rotting wood, woodsmoke, stink of nameless somethings poured into the dark, cold waters below him. He hardly noticed. His thoughts were elsewhere—back with the inspiration for his poem.
Oh, Angelina . . .
He wondered if he’d see her tonight at Giaccomo’s. Half-hoping; half-dreading. She tended to show up at Giaccomo’s pretty frequently. Marco was under no illusions as to why. Caesare Aldanto, of course—the most handsome and glamorous man there. Hell, Caesare even had Claudia and Valentina exchanging jokes and comments about him. Marco wondered hopelessly if he’d ever have—whatever it was that Caesare had. Probably not.
* * *
His feet had taken him all unaware down the cobbled walkways and the long, black sotoportego through to his own alleyway, to his very own door, almost before he realized it. He started to use his key, but Benito had beaten him home, and must have heard the rattle in the lock.