The Conquest by Yxta Maya Murray

Author:Yxta Maya Murray [Murray, Yxta Maya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-203770-1
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2002-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

This love of male and female’s a strange business.

Fifty-fifty investment in the madness

Yet she ends up with nine-tenths of the pleasure.

Isabella glanced up. “You know it quite well.”

“Yes. My old lover used to read it to me.”

“As mine did. A girl I once knew in Spain.”

“It’s curious that we have the same sorts of memories.”

She now shot me a hot look. “What are you doing here, Helen? Why do you let him make you the fool with those portraits?”

“I don’t know. I am beginning to wonder if I have lost my head.”

“You should leave. This place will ruin you.”

“And you?”

“I have my own plans. Venice is dead. A friend of mine, a witch, has told me a plague will come in ten years.”

“I have thought of leaving. Just now. Just now when the Doge spoke of Charles at Mallorca.”

“It would be simple to escape, with enough to money to last.”

“How?”

She showed me the trident she had palmed, the “fork.” “These buffoons do not know what clever devices they invent. I could open Titian’s cache now with this small thing.”

I sat down on one of Titian’s velvet chairs and watched the courtesans play their cards. “I am very sad.”

“You must not be. It does not help you.”

“My gentle girl, Caterina, was from Spain. When I met her she was a beautiful nun, at the Vatican. She was sent there by the Inquisition. And she loved poetry.”

Here, Isabella appeared to have stopped breathing.

“What?”

“I had my heart stolen once, as you may have heard,” she said slowly. “My lover’s name was Caterina Lucia Gloria á de Carranza.”

I became angry. “Are you trying to hurt me? That’s impossible!”

She struggled to compose herself, though a tear did slip from her eye. “Apparently not. I was her nurse. A long, long time ago.”

Now I felt myself trapped inside some storm. My face was all fire. “You are an insane wretch,” I whispered. “This place has poisoned your mind.”

But she only took my hand. “If you knew her as I did, then you must have loved her.”

I could say nothing.

“And that,” she continued, “makes us sisters.” She pressed her hand harder to mine. “I will help you out of here, with all the supplies you might need. You are only in danger in Venice.”

No, I could not answer her, for the crashing of my heart. All my memories reared their horrible forms and nearly blinded me. But just as I gained back my breath and tried to say something to her that might make sense, events twisted and tangled again.

From the inner chambers of the house, we heard a loud bellowing, as if a bear had just been cut down.

“Hush, Helen,” she said. “Something’s happened.”

And here came another roar.

Now we rushed out to find our patron.

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