Chapter Text
The rain was pounding, but it was not from the cold that Gilda’s hands were shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself as she half-stumbled down the streets to home, as her father had ordered, but from then, where? Men’s clothes, a horse, and Verona? Her father following, after –
After arranging for the murder of the Duke?
She had lingered after her father had told her to return home, out of a fear she hadn’t been able to give a proper name. The rain had only just begun to drip upon the roofs and cobbles, and she’d heard enough to make it clear. (“I can throw him in the river without help.” “No, I want to do it myself.”) She’d fled then. From the Duke, from the hired-assassin, from her father.
For all that her father said she was an angel, Gilda could see now that he would not listen to her. Yes, she was heartbroken, and yes, she still felt herself to be shamed, but that did not mean she wanted the Duke dead, and, she told herself, I will forgive him – I do forgive him. (If it rang hollow to her now, she would continue to keep him in her prayers until it was true, she swore.) But her father had spoken only of revenge, then and now.
When Gilda turned a corner onto the familiar cul-de-sac of home, she ran to the door of the darkened house, her wet hands fumbling with the key as it slipped in her grasp. Once it opened, Gilda flung herself inside then shut the door, leaning against it and trying to catch her breath. She wasn’t only winded from the running – it was the everything of that evening, closing her throat and tightening her lungs. The house was silent. Giovanna was gone, sacked after her father had found out her part in the Duke’s scheme. Gilda jumped as a streak of lightning flashed the room in white. In Verona, would there be another small house like this? Would there be another courtyard, within another cage of walls?
The men’s clothes her father had procured for her were laid out on the bed, and Gilda stripped out of her wet things to change into the shirt and vest and breeches. Her own clothes she put in the little bag that was at the head of her bed, where inside she found everything she could call hers: a rosary, a few ribbons, another few changes of clothes.
She paused, touching the crucifix at the end of the rosary. Would her father even let her go to church, after what had happened here in Mantua? Or would he simply refuse to discuss it, just as he always did when she asked about his past, about anything he didn’t like?
It was still pouring when Gilda locked the door behind her, and she pulled her page’s cap tight around her ears, clutching her little bag close to her side. Another flash of lightning illuminated the street harshly for a moment. When Gilda reached the end of the cul-de-sac, she hesitated. To Verona? Or…
Afterwards, she struggled to explain why she would leave the horse her father had provided her behind, and turn instead to the Duke’s palazzo. It had been an instinct that had flashed as instantly and as strongly as that lightning strike. Few others were out on the street in such a storm, and few noticed when, instead of the bright palatial double doors, Gilda headed towards one of the service exits, and pounded on the door with the knocker.
“What – who’s there?” she heard from behind the door, followed by footsteps, before an incredulous-looking older manservant, one she did not recognize, yanked the door open. “Come in, boy, what are you doing out there in this weather?”
“I need to speak to Signor Figaro,” Gilda said, and then promptly sneezed.
***
Susanna and Figaro had certainly been surprised to see Gilda, but instead of telling her to go home or that there was nothing they could do, Gilda had found herself bustled to the room she’d found refuge in last time, wrapped in a thick blanket and given a cup of hot wine. The wet clothes – both the page’s clothes and what she’d worn before those – had been taken out of her bag and hung up to dry in the corner of the room, and Gilda had changed into one of her shifts that was only slightly damp. Susanna was currently searching in a trunk for something, while Figaro had disappeared – he and Susanna had exchanged words that had been too low for Gilda to hear.
(“Are you all right? Did something else happen with the Duke?” Susanna had asked, and Gilda had frozen, unable to form an answer. “Or your father?” Both Susanna and Figaro must have seen something in her eyes, for Figaro’s gaze had grown stony and serious, and Susanna had carefully taken Gilda’s hands. “Signorina Gilda. Will you be in… danger if you stay?”
“I can’t stay here,” she’d said all in a rush, through a sudden rise of tears threatened to choke her. “With… with my father.”)
“Ah, here we are,” Susanna said, sitting up from where she’d been knelt over the trunk. In her hands was a quilted dressing-gown, the edges and ties meticulously patched, the fabric faded a little. “I had thought it was a bit silly to pack this, but what good luck I did – would you like to wear it for tonight? You could use some warming up still, I think.”
Gilda nodded, and Susanna handed it to her. When Gilda had pulled it on, Susanna stood and rearranged the blanket around Gilda’s shoulders, then sat next to her on the spare cot Susanna and Figaro somehow found for the room.
“I’m sorry to have brought you such trouble,” Gilda said, before Susanna could say anything. There was a part of her that was bewildered by how easily the pair of them jumped straight to comforting her, when she could hardly even explain how she was feeling or what she wanted to do.
Susanna made a “pfft” sound, but when Gilda looked over at her, the smile-lines at the corners of her eyes were crinkled. “Nonsense. I offered my help sincerely, and so did Figaro. Besides, we are well used to trouble, so I can confidently say that you are not.” Gilda smiled, but it fell as she looked down into her cup. Steam rose up from it, and she took another small sip. Susanna shifted slightly, then took an audible breath before asking, “Gilda… when you said you couldn’t stay here. Did you mean just for tonight? Or… here, in Mantua, where your father is?”
There was a roaring in Gilda’s ears, and suddenly Susanna was taking the cup from Gilda’s hands as some of it spilt, eyebrows raised in alarm. “I’m sorry,” Gilda said faintly, just as Susanna was apologizing, “I’m sorry, Gilda. It can wait until the morning.” Gilda stared at the red splotch on the dressing gown, tinted slightly purple by the blue of the quilted fabric. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, but Susanna was shaking her head.
“Hush, my dear, and you can keep it. It was something old my mistress no longer wanted,” Susanna added as Gilda opened her mouth to apologize again. “And now it’s yours, and it fits you better than it ever did me, anyways.”
The absurdity of that statement knocked Gilda out of the hazy panic that had been building – she was swimming in the gown, and it looked like Susanna and her mistress must have been exactly the same size, judging by it. Susanna winked at her, and after checking to see if Gilda’s hands were shaking still, handed her back the warm cup.
The heat radiating through her hands calmed her somewhat. “I can’t… stay where my father is,” she said quietly, and she felt that same hurt in her chest as when she’d heard the Duke singing his love song in another room, to another woman. “He’s… he no longer listens to me. He never has,” she added, almost to herself. “He wants the Duke murdered,” she said, looking up at Susanna, “and he’s hired someone to do it, tonight. He wants me to go to Verona with him, after. He’ll keep me alone, locked away, until – until I don’t know when. I can’t.” She gulped in another breath of air. Why was it so hard to breathe? “I can’t.”
“If you don’t want to, then you won’t,” Susanna said softly. “If you were able to, would you stay in Mantua?” Gilda shook her head, and there must have been some wetness still in her hair, for she could feel that her cheeks were damp. After a pause, Susanna nodded. “Then you won’t. We shall see what – how we are in the morning,” she said, but Gilda was too distracted by the fact that Susanna had just let her explain, and said nothing to contradict her or cut her off, and then…? Susanna brushed a piece of Gilda’s hair away from her face, and her touch was gentle. “Will you be able to sleep?”
Gilda nodded, but only halfway noted the question. Susanna had just let Gilda decide what she wanted, like it was so easy. And it had been easy. That was the strangest part. It had been easy.
***
Gilda wasn’t sure what woke her up during the night, but when she blinked her eyes open in the darkness, she could hear Susanna and Figaro murmuring on the other side of the small room.
“If we can explain to Madama how we’ve gained another person on our way out of Mantua, that would be better,” Figaro was saying, his voice pitched so low Gilda had to strain to hear it. “Do you think we could pass her off as a cousin?”
“A cousin of yours, maybe,” Susanna whispered. “Her coloring is more similar to yours than mine. But how would Madama accept the coincidence of it all? She’ll suspect something. You know she will.”
“I think she’ll suspect something no matter what, but if I spin the tale of my poor tragically newly-orphaned cousin, whose father had been unable to fully care for her and whose only wish was to find family again – and a position – and what a miracle that we had managed to encounter each other, so far from home… then it may tug at her heartstrings enough to let her set aside her suspicions.” Susanna made a considering noise, and Gilda raised a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. Were they planning to somehow take her with them? She was breathless with the thought, both the absurdity of it, and the sudden, wild hope it filled her with.
“Perhaps she’ll trust us enough that even if she does suspect some scheme, she’ll go along with it even without knowing the truth of it,” Susanna murmured.
“Perhaps,” Figaro’s voice replied. “But perhaps Gilda won’t even want this in the first place. Spain is, after all, a long way from home.”
“True,” Susanna said. Gilda felt wide-awake, the same sudden shock one felt after burning oneself. Was it possible?
“You will have to get your mother in on the story,” Susanna said, after a long pause. “Better her than Bartolo, I think. And I worry about the Count. You know how he can be!” Her voice rose for a moment out of the whisper, and Figaro made a gentle shushing noise. Gilda willed herself to stay still, and after another moment, Figaro spoke again.
“If Gilda wished, I bet she could stay with my mother instead of at the estate. I’m sure it could be done. And if she’d rather stay with us – ”
“Then we’ll guard her like wolves,” Susanna said, and while Gilda didn’t hear a reply from Figaro, she heard a noise that sounded like a brief kiss.
Silence softly blanketed the room again, and Gilda wrapped her arms around herself in the dark and squeezed.
***
Gilda awoke to someone gently shaking her shoulder, and she opened her eyes to see Figaro standing above her cot.
“We’ll all be getting ready to leave soon,” Figaro said. “My wife has been with her mistress all morning, or she would have woken you.” Gilda sat up quickly. “There will be room for you in the servants’ carriage, but we should sneak you out there soon, so none of the Duke’s retainers can spot you.”
He then deliberately turned around and advanced towards the door, stopping with his back to her, and Gilda scrambled to get dressed, pushing her sleep-mussed hair out of her face. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and not just from being suddenly awoken.
“That is, if you’d still like to leave,” Figaro said after a beat or two. Gilda couldn’t read his face with his back to her, and she bit her lip as she laced herself into her stays and tied her skirts on as fast as she could.
“I’m… I’m afraid,” she finally said, accidentally stabbing herself with a pin as she hastened to pin her bodice closed. But if any blood got onto the fabric, it didn’t show through the deep brown.
“Afraid to travel?”
“Afraid to leave my father,” Gilda said, and she coughed to push the well of tears back down her throat.
Figaro turned back to face her, and he sighed as he offered her a sympathetic look. “You could change your mind,” he said, and Gilda stared at him, uncomprehending. “If it would be too hard, I could… let me think. I could tell the Countess you slipped away in the night, while everyone was asleep. If you cannot leave your father, you don’t have to, and, before you say anything,” he said, lifting a hand to forestall any comment she’d been about to make, “neither Susanna nor I would wish you any ill for it. Far from it, actually.”
Gilda blinked, then opened and closed her mouth. Here was another choice, one that could put all Figaro and Susanna’s efforts to naught, depending on how she chose. Yet it was still being offered.
How many choices had anyone ever offered her?
Figaro and Gilda rushed to the carriages, which were being loaded up by Count Almaviva’s footmen and porters, and Gilda was glad not to see any of the Duke’s courtiers. Eventually the carriage crowded with servants inside and on the box bench outside, and Gilda found herself pressed between Susanna’s and Figaro’s shoulders, something she was especially grateful for when two pages took their seats on the opposite bench, mid-conversation.
“And I’ve heard their Duke is missing, and with their jester found drowned – ” Gilda flinched, and Susanna leaned forward and rapped one of the pages’ knees with her knuckles.
“What gossips you are!” she snapped, squeezing Gilda’s hand as she did so. “And all before ten in the morning! Go back to sleep, you still have growing to do.” The other page seemed to have noticed Gilda for the first time, and he was staring.
“Who are you?” he said, and this time Figaro rolled his eyes.
“She’s my cousin and Madama’s maid, and that’s all you need to know for now, scamp,” he said, and just then the carriage lurched forward. Gilda would have with it, but Figaro caught her, and Susanna was still holding her hand. If tears were shed on the way out of Mantua, there was time for them to dry and be dried as the road stretched away towards Andalusia.