Courtesan's Lover Read online

  “Is anything the matter, Gianni?”

  A voice pushed its way through the net, but he did not move.

  “Gianni? What is it?” Gianni jumped as a hand gripped his shoulder. A neat figure in dark-green doublet and breeches; hair slightly too long. An expression of puzzled concern on a good-natured, open face.

  “Niccolò,” Gianni said and his heart jolted as he saw his brother’s friend, as if afraid that his thoughts might have danced, visible above his head while he had sat there on the wall.

  “Just on my way to your father’s house to see Carlo,” said Niccolò. “You coming?”

  “No.”

  “I haven’t seen you since—” Niccolò began, but Gianni cut him short.

  “Don’t ask. I told Carlo a few moments ago that I don’t wish to talk about it. And just so that you know—he wouldn’t listen to me and I’ve just hit him.”

  Niccolò raised his eyebrows and drew in a short breath in surprise. “You? You hit him? God—was it…that bad?” he asked.

  Gianni saw something quite different to the prurient smirk he had seen on his brother’s face: behind Niccolò’s curiosity and the faint air of salaciousness was an anxious pucker of obvious guilt. “Did you meet her?” he asked.

  “Yes. Carlo asked me to go and find her to arrange everything.”

  “That’s like him. Well then, you saw her. What do you think it was like?”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes—‘ah.’ It was…extraordinary.” Gianni paused. “That’s all I am saying, to you or to anyone.” The two young men regarded each other. Niccolò looked away first and as he did so, Gianni spoke. “Niccolò, why…why are you friends with Carlo?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is an easy question, Nicco. Why do you like him?”

  “What sort of thing is that to ask about your own brother?”

  “A simple one,” said Gianni, shrugging. “He may be my brother, but he’s not a very…likeable person, is he? I just wondered what it is about him that attracts you—apart from the obvious, but I did not think you were—”

  “I’m not.” Niccolò flushed. “I think Carlo thought for a time that I was.”

  “Hoped, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So why?”

  Niccolò frowned. “I don’t really know. I suppose…well, we’ve known each other so long, haven’t we, Carlo and I? Since before your mother died. Seeing each other—it’s just something that we do. He makes me laugh—”

  Gianni raised an incredulous eyebrow and Niccolò smiled wryly. “I know you don’t often see that side of him,” he said, “but he does. And then he presented me with this suggestion of his about the Signora and…you…and it seemed an entertaining piece of nonsense. He was prepared to pay for it all in the first instance, so I…” He trailed off.

  “Did you think I would do it?” Gianni asked softly.

  There was a long pause. Niccolò swallowed. He shook his head. “No.”

  “How did you imagine I was ever going to be able to pay Carlo back if I didn’t?”

  Niccolò stared at the ground and said nothing.

  “Would you have done it?” Gianni asked.

  “Cazzo! Yes, you’re damn right I would have done. Chance like that? You’re a lucky bastard, Gianni. You going to see her again?”

  A knife twisted in Gianni’s guts. He paused. “No.” He tried to sound unconcerned. “Can’t afford to.”

  “No. I suppose not. Still…” Niccolò shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. “I had better be going. Sure you’re not coming with me?”

  “Not just yet. If you see Papa, tell him I shall be about an hour.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Niccolò said, “Gianni?”

  “What?”

  “I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have done it to you…but…well…God, Gianni, what a thing to say you’ve done, eh? Bedded one of the most sought-after women in Napoli on your first attempt…” Seeing Niccolò grin at him through a jumbled mask of embarrassment, camaraderie, guilt, and jealousy, Gianni felt his aching right hand clench itself into a fist once more. He said nothing, turned from Niccolò, and strode away from him toward the river.

  ***

  “‘Extraordinary.’ That’s all he would say,” Niccolò said to Carlo, who was sitting with his elbows on the table, a linen kerchief, spattered with red blotches, bunched loosely in his hands. His head was tipped backward, his nose was swollen and discolored; one nostril was blocked with congealed blood.

  “He didn’t hit you, then?”

  “No.” Niccolò smirked at him. “No, he didn’t hit me. Just you, amico. But…for Gianni to do something like that—she’s certainly changed him, Carlo. He’s aged five years in a week. Now I’ve spoken to him, I don’t think there’s any doubt that he actually did it.”

  Carlo snorted derisively and then winced, and lifted the scarlet-stained cloth back to his nose. “Are you busy this week?” he said through the linen.

  “Yes. I am right in the middle of this business with Signor Mastalli and his godforsaken right of access to that street near Santa Maria. Why?”

  “I have a consignment of spices supposed to be arriving on Wednesday and I can’t be there to supervise the unloading, whichever day it finally gets here.” Carlo took the cloth away from his face, examined the contents, and muttered, more to himself than to his friend, “I’ll ask Michele—he’s bound to have a few men to spare to make sure those thieving little stronzi keep their hands off my property.”

  “Where is it from, whatever it is?”

  “Spice Islands. Saffron mainly, but some cinnamon and cloves. Should get good prices for them—if I can keep it intact. I’m sending most of it on overland to Rome. Can’t send it by sea—some damned problem at Ostia, yet again.”

  With a click, the door to the dining hall opened then, and Carlo’s father appeared. He started at the sight of his elder son, whose nose and mouth were once more shrouded in crimson-blotched linen. “Santo cielo! What happened to you?”

  Carlo said nothing.

  “Hmm. The suffocating disagreement. What on earth was it about, Carlo?”

  Carlo shrugged. Niccolò’s gaze moved from father to son and the silence stretched out. He said, “I saw Gianni in the piazza, Signore. He told me to tell you he would be about an hour—some half hour ago.”

  “Thank you, Niccolò,” he said. “Are you staying to supper with us?”

  “If I may—Carlo?”

  Carlo shrugged again. His father frowned at him, turned, and left the dining hall.

  ***

  Back in his study, Luca della Rovere sat at his desk and stared unseeingly at his spectacles, turning them over and over in his fingers as he thought about his sons.

  He heard the rattle of the front door, then the thud of feet on the stairs, and a moment later the door to his study opened and Gianni peered round, leaning on the handle.

  “You said you wanted to see me, Papa.”

  Luca smiled at him. “Yes. I was just thinking about you.”

  Gianni came into the study, pushed the door to behind him, and perched himself on the corner of his father’s table.

  Luca hesitated, and then said, “Gian, is there a…particular problem between you and Carlo?”

  Father and son held each other’s gaze some five seconds, then Gianni spoke. “Yes…but we can resolve it ourselves. Please leave it, Papa.”

  “Gianni…?”

  “No, Papa. What was it you wanted me to do?”

  There was a pause. Sensing a lost cause, Luca abandoned his interrogation and said, “Two things, caro: can you run up to Signor Cedro and collect the two candlesticks that he has been mending for me?” Gian
ni nodded. “And more importantly, can you drop in at Signora Zigolo’s and find out if she’ll be ready in time with that doublet? I’ll be needing it for the evening with Filippo and the Parisettos at San Domenico Maggiore, and I don’t want to find out at the last minute that she hasn’t been able to finish the alterations. It’s the only suitable one I’ve got to wear. Poor Luigi is being so hopeless at the moment; I really don’t want to send him to do it. I’d go myself, but I promised I’d stop by next door and read to old Bartolomeo before it gets dark. Do you mind? Unless you’d rather read to Bartolomeo of course…”

  Gianni grimaced and shook his head. “No. I’ll run the errands.”

  “Thank you, caro.”

  “I’ll go now then. I won’t be long. Don’t wait if the meal is ready before I get back.” Gianni smiled at his father and disappeared.

  Luca sighed. He stared at the door for several moments, then pinched his spectacles onto his nose, picked up a book, and riffled through it to where a strip of leather was marking the place at which he had abandoned his reading some moments before.

  Ten

  The twins are sitting on the floor in the sala. Both little girls look up at me as I say, “Modesto is feeling rather sad at the moment, so I thought you two might like to make him some of those little dolls he showed you once. You could run over and give them to him this morning. It would cheer him a great deal to see you. What do you think?”

  “Candle dolls?” Beata asks.

  “Yes.” I smile again at the two upturned faces. “Now…remind me how you make them. What do we need?”

  “Twigs.”

  “Twine.”

  “Wool.”

  “Candle-wax.”

  “Let’s find it all, shall we?” And my two little girls begin to scurry around the kitchen; Ilaria sighs irritably as they pull open cupboard doors and ferret in corners. Bella holds onto Ilaria’s skirts and jumps up and down, saying, “Can we have candles, Laria, please, can we have candles?”

  She ignores the tugs on her clothes and says to me, “Only got the best beeswax, I have, Signora. Do you really want to…”

  “I only need one, Ilaria, that will be perfect. Bella, take it will you? Beata, get a bowl and put it in the embers—carefully.” They follow my instructions. I run upstairs and pull a handful of wool from the underside of my mattress, then reach for a bag of leftover dress lengths and pick from it a few scraps of bright silk and linen. As I again enter the kitchen, Beata and Isabella are both squatting in front of the fire, breaking the long beeswax candle into small pieces and sliding each piece off the wick with careful fingers; they put the lumps of wax into an earthenware bowl, which stands among the glowing embers. Ilaria is peeling vegetables and scowling, trying to ignore the irritating disruption to her routine, but on my entrance she turns from her work and wordlessly hands me a short stick wound thickly with twine. I thank her and a brief smile flickers across her face.

  “Find some twigs in the log basket, Bella, will you?” I say then, and she crawls across to the basket and begins to search.

  “Will these do?”

  “Just right.”

  Each twin takes a twig. I hand them each a soft tuft of wool, which they tease out into a thread between forefinger and thumb and then wind carefully around one end of their twig to make a tight, round, knobbed ball. Then about two fingers’ depth down the twig, they each tie a length of twine so that an end protrudes on each side. Each protruding thread has a knot at the end of it.

  “Bella first.”

  Isabella squats back down in front of the bowl of now melted wax. Carefully she upends her twig and dips the woollen ball into the wax. She lifts and dips once or twice and then shuffles back.

  “Beata?” She does the same.

  It takes some half hour and several dippings, but before long both twins have a headlike ball of wax at one end of their twig, and both dolls have a tiny waxen lump on the end of each twine arm, to represent hands. The girls poke eyes into the soft wax with a pin, and then stand their dolls upright in a pot to harden. While they wait they sort through the scraps of fabric I have brought down and choose stuff for each doll’s dress. Beata’s will be elegant in rose-pink silk, while Bella’s creation will be somewhat more sober in deep-crimson linen. A few scraps of lace will complete the picture—Modesto will be most impressed, both girls assure me gleefully.

  With my usual lack of finesse, I help the girls cut and stitch, crimp and pinch; and before long both tiny ladies are—as well as we can manage—complete. A little deformed, perhaps, but resplendent none the less.

  “Would you like to drop in and give them to Modesto on the way to…Signora Bianca’s?” Both girls squeal with delight at the prospect of a visit to their favorite shop, and in a flurry of flustered chattering, they ready themselves for an outing. I—rather more calmly—swing a coat around my shoulders and bid good-bye to a grumpy but relieved Ilaria, who is, I think, very grateful to see us leave, though she does press two dried figs into my hand as we go: one for each girl.

  “Why are we going to Signora Bianca’s?” Bella asks.

  “I have asked her to make me a new dress. She needs to fit it today.”

  “Can we watch?”

  “Can we see all the cloth?”

  “Can we do cutting?”

  They both speak at once, both run and jump, back and forth in front of me as I walk. Bianca will find something entrancing for them to do while she fits my dress, I am sure of it; her glittering treasure trove of buttons, ribbons, threads and beads always pleases my two self-centered little voluptuaries, and Bianca is generous and inventive with her wares. I cannot help laughing at their eager faces. Perhaps, if I cannot find husbands for my girls, I will apprentice them to Bianca when they are a little older. They would enjoy the work, I think. It’s a thought, anyway.

  I smile at them and say, “Yes, I am sure you will do all that. But we’ll go to Modesto’s house first, and give him the dolls,”

  As always, I’m allowing the girls to presume that Modesto owns the house in the Via San Tommaso.

  Bella and Beata begin to bicker about who has made the most beautiful doll and which one they think Modesto will prefer, while I see again in my mind the image of my manservant as I saw him a few nights ago, sobbing in my arms. I rage inwardly for him; I could weep at the thought of everything that has been taken from him. Years ago, right at the beginning, I offered—several times—to give him what he has never experienced, but he always refused. I think he was frightened of being seen to fail.

  “Here we are!” I say as we round the corner, and the two girls run ahead to knock at the door.

  Bella has her hand raised, with Beata right behind her, when they stop dead. “Oh, Mamma…listen!” Beata says in an awed whisper.

  The kitchen casement is open wide, and through it is streaming a sound so beautiful that it seems that the whole street must hold its breath to hear it. Pure and clear, and heartrending as a perfect boy’s soprano voice, though much bigger and more resonant, I can hear in it all Modesto’s years of loss and pain and wisdom and compassion. The hair on my neck prickles. Thinking himself unheard, my manservant pours his lovely voice out into the silence, and we all three stand on my doorstep and listen, entranced, for fully five minutes, hardly daring to breathe. Then Bella whispers, “He sounds like an angel when he sings, doesn’t he?”

  “I don’t think an angel would sound so sad,” Beata says quietly.

  “Let’s go in and give him your dolls,” I suggest in a whisper. It seems wrong to interrupt, but when I open the door, the singing stops.

  ***

  “Signora.” Modesto smiles to see us all upon his doorstep, but there is a flicker of wariness in his eyes: I think he’s still embarrassed at my having seen him in such distress the other night.

  “We made something for y
ou, Desto,” Bella says, pulling at his hand as we all go inside; Beata takes his other hand and looks up at him. “We hope you’ll like them,” she says.

  Modesto crouches on his heels and, with a little curtsy, the girls each pass him their doll. He holds one in each hand, taking his time to examine the handiwork with an air of grave consideration. After a moment or two, he says, “I have never seen such well-made dolls. Did you make them yourselves? Are they really for me?”

  “Mamma said you were sad,” Beata says, as they both nod. “She said these would make you feel happier.”

  “We did make them, Desto. Just us. But Mamma helped,” Bella says.

  Modesto is squatting, thick-thighed on the floor of the hallway. He smiles again. “Mamma was right,” he says, his gaze on mine. “They are a lovely present. Thank you, all of you.”

  “We liked your singing, Desto,” Bella says, leaning against him.

  He puts down a hand to steady himself, lifts his eyebrows, and shrugs. “Hmm,” he says. “I didn’t think anyone was listening. Well. It’s not what it was.”

  “It was beautiful, caro,” I say.

  “But we’re going to Signora Bianca’s now,” Beata says with a meaningful glance at me.

  I laugh. “Don’t worry, we are going there right away—the new blue dress needs fitting,” I say to Modesto, who nods.

  “You are going to this concert of the Signore’s then, I take it?”

  “It’s not a concert—it’s a play. A meal and a play, apparently.”