“I will say what pleased your father and what did not!”
Venice, spring, 1324
Both of them turned to see Donata Polo standing there in her luxurious dark robes with not a fold out of place. She was attended on her right by a serving woman who looked every bit as censorious as her mistress and on her left by the man who had shut the door so decisively in Johanna’s face on the day of her arrival in Venice. He looked very pleased with himself.
The three of them bore a distinct resemblance to the statues on the temple walls she had seen in Mien as a child, glaring of eye, thunderous of brow, prepared to smite the unworthy. Although with fewer arms. The taverna’s keeper, yet again proving her worth, became absorbed in the examination of her stock of pitchers and mugs, one at a time, inspecting them for flaws.
“Can’t you?” Moreta’s mother repeated, looking from her daughter’s face to Johanna’s and back again. “I see. I see, indeed. A bastard of your father’s, looking for largesse. Well, we know how to deal with your kind.”
The temple statues of Mien had frightened her. This woman did not, perhaps because she had known another woman very like her in a prior life. Johanna rose to her feet, shaking Moreta’s hand from her sleeve. “A granddaughter, certainly,” she said, stepping forward and perforce causing Serra Polo to step back, which didn’t please her. Unfortunately, Johanna was taller than she was and she couldn’t glare down her nose at the younger woman. “I ask nothing of you, Serra Polo. I want nothing from you. I came a long way to meet my grandfather, and I merely wished—”
Serra Polo looked at her daughter. “I had not thought to suffer such disloyalty in my own house.”
Moreta closed her eyes for a moment. “He was pleased to see her, Mother.”
“Pleased! Pleased! I will say what pleased your father and what did not!”
Dana sez–
I’m ashamed of myself for perpetuating the stereotype of the wicked stepmother, not once but twice in the same novel. Shame on me.
