The Remedy by Michelle Lovric Page B

manufacture.
    Errands of mixed sociability and profitability detain Valentine around Bankside until late evening: Even if he had chosen to do so, there is now no time to see the actress reprise her role on the stage. From time to time, the thought of her suddenly rinses all other thoughts from his mind and he must stammer apologies to his colleagues and friends. He wonders if she speaks English. He would like to ask Massimo, but he somehow scruples to send a messenger, lest this interest drive up the cost of the favor.
    Returning to his desk, Valentine is already dragging the cravat from his neck in preparation for changing into his evening dress. He greets his assistant, immediately aware that something is wrong. From the pink rims of Dizzom’s anxious eyes he knows that there is a new communication about Tom to be found there among the papers. Sure enough, here it is, atop everything: The news that Tom’s body is now approaching Basel and that all goes safely with the couriers appointed to bring it, but the delays continue with the paperwork. It occurs to Valentine that it is easier to bring contrabandback to England than a dead Englishman with expensively immaculate papers. For once, everything about Tom is above board, something that never happened in his lifetime.
    Valentine approaches the theater to the thunder of the final applause, and remembers how last night Mimosina Dolcezza was held up to the crowd, impaled on the arms of Massimo Tosi. He hears the drumming of appreciative feet and the cries of pleasure from the audience, if anything louder than the previous evening.
    Of course he already knows the rear entrance and all the passageways to the female dressing rooms. He enters the dim back hallway that stinks of the cheapest tallow candles—backstage Massimo has no need to maintain an illusion of luxury—and strolls without hurrying down the threadbare floorboards. He knows, from experience, that Mimosina Dolcezza is at this very moment walking toward the same dressing room, though from the other end of the theater. He can almost hear her light tread and the whispering drag of her gown. If he maintains a leisurely pace then she should arrive a minute or two before him, have an interval to restore any dishevelment in her person, attend to any bodily functions, indeed discard any distracting preoccupations of the day, so as to be ready to meet her short-term destiny—that is, Valentine Greatrakes—in a state of pleasing expectation.
    Young dancers start to helter past him, not bothering to change their gowns before falling into the arms of the beaux waiting for them in the street. He smiles, noting the comfortable fullness of several faces more familiar in an emaciated state. He often places lace-girls of his own with Massimo when they have done a few too many errands to France and their looks have become known to the excise-men. One girl stops and looks at him, jerking her head back in the direction of the dressing rooms with an interrogative expression. She looks concerned and opens her mouth to say something, but another dancer rushes past and seizes her wrist: She disappears with a light clatter of heels. He tries to remember her name, but such memories are swallowed up in the all-consuming thought of what awaits him.
    Valentine reaches the corridor where the more elegant dressingrooms are to be found. He is uncharacteristically unnerved and slightly light-headed. His back itches painfully—he has, of course, forgotten to apply a buttercup decoction—and he pauses to rub it against a plaster column.
    What does he know of this woman except that she dissembles professionally? And that she is a Venetian, and therefore capable of any amount of subtlety. He is starting to shake off his enthusiasm for her company. Too much has been made of the occasion, and it’s putting him off the prospect.
    But then his trout tickles hard at its cloth encasement and Valentine realizes that no one else will ease him tonight,