Courtesan's Lover Read online

  “When?”

  “Seventh of next month.”

  He frowns and calculates. “That’s a Thursday.” Giving me a rather dirty look, he turns to the girls. “Listen you two, before you set off for Signora Bianca’s, run down to the kitchen and get the big blue pot down from the lowest shelf. You can take one each of what you’ll find in there.”

  The girls scrabble to be the first to the stairs to the kitchen.

  As soon as they are out of earshot, Modesto turns to me. “The seventh? It’s a Thursday. What about Signor di Cicciano? You know what I said the other—”

  “He won’t mind—he will be just getting back from a trip. To Malta, I think he said—with his privateer friend. And I don’t see Vasquez that week at all. He’s away with his troops until the Sunday.”

  Modesto raises his eyebrows and pushes out his bottom lip.

  “I’ll tell you more when I get back later,” I say, flicking a glance toward the stairs. The girls are on their way back up, each holding a large and sticky comfit.

  With a kiss for each girl, Modesto takes his leave of us and returns to the kitchens, and I take my excitable children the remaining quarter mile to the house of the former whore, now an accomplished seamstress, who I think is probably the closest thing I have to a friend of my own sex in Napoli.

  ***

  “Breathe in,” Bianca says.

  I hold my arms in the air and breathe in. Bianca lips a mouthful of pins and mutters grunting instructions through her nose, pushing and pulling me into the position she needs with plump fingers. She pins and tweaks and folds and tucks until the bodice—inside-out at this point—sits snug around my body like a silk skin.

  Standing back from me for a moment, Bianca frowns critically at the high, concealing neckline I have requested for this dress. She runs needle-pricked fingertips along the upper edge, takes the remaining pins from her mouth and says, “I don’t understand, Francesca. What is this about?” She flicks a glance down to the girls, then drops her voice and mouths the next few words almost silently. “Has whoring finally lost its appeal? Are you planning on going into a nunnery?”

  I smile at her and explain. She laughs. Head thrown back, pin-less hand on an ample hip, Bianca laughs aloud and then sighs noisily. She speaks through the sigh, “Oh, dear, I should like to see this, cara, I really should—you, a demure and retiring widow? How entirely marvelous you’ll be—I’ll make sure of it. Every inch of flesh that might inflame your poor unsuspecting hosts will be well covered, I promise you. And pearls, you say?”

  “Present from Signor di Laviano.”

  “And entirely illegal of course.” Her face lights up at the thought.

  “Of course.”

  “What does illegal mean, Mamma?” Beata says, looking up from her bowlful of glittering glass beads.

  “It means…‘beautiful,’ cara,” Bianca says quickly. “Your mamma will be beautiful when she goes out next month.”

  “Mamma’s always beautiful.”

  “She is indeed.”

  Bianca spends another few moments pinning and stitching and then carefully takes the half-made shell from me, leaving me in my chemise. She and the twins return to the front room while I change back into my old dress; I am just fastening the last lace when I hear the shop door open, and a man I cannot see begins speaking to Bianca. I tuck the ends of the laces down between my breasts, wriggle my shoulders until my dress sits comfortably, and then re-emerge to go and find the girls; as I walk, I fiddle with a wisp of hair that has escaped from its braid.

  A tall young man is leaning on Bianca’s table, pointing with his forefinger at a line written in her ledger. He pushes untidy hair back from his face with the other hand, and I draw in a breath.

  It is Gianni.

  I step back into the shadow of the passageway with my heart thudding, experiencing again in my mind that moment when he laid his mouth upon my scar and cracked open my defenses. I can feel his fingers on my hipbones again. I press my back against the wall of the corridor and peer sideways at him: I don’t want him to see me. My much-loved but loose-mouthed friend Bianca shall not know that I’ve lain with this boy, nor shall I risk my expression revealing the unnerving disquiet he has begun within me. Her gossip-greedy nature would delight in such a tidbit, and my reputation would surely suffer for her revelations.

  As I watch him, Gianni smiles at Bianca; she beams, nodding her agreement with whatever he is saying. She taps her finger smartly on the paper in front of her and he inclines his head.

  Beata glances up from her bead-threading, sees Gianni, and stares openly. Bella senses her sister’s inattention; she raises her eyes too. He smiles down at the two little figures and my heart jolts—it is a sweet, brotherly smile that has both girls immediately making huge doe-eyes at him, gazing up into his face from beneath long lashes and giggling. Bianca says something I cannot catch and Gianni laughs.

  He seems to be protecting his right hand for some reason; he is holding it with the other, and a couple of times he stretches and folds his fingers as though they are paining him. I find that I want to talk to him and am on the point of ignoring my instinctive anxiety, stepping into the light and surprising him, when he straightens, thanks Bianca, and leaves the shop.

  “Mamma, you just missed such a nice man. He said we were pretty,” Beata says smugly as I come back through the door.

  “And so you are; he was quite right.”

  “And I told him you were a pair of naughty little minxes just like your mother,” Bianca says. The girls giggle.

  I half-laugh, but say in protest, “And there was I thinking you were my friend, Bianca Zigolo.”

  She smiles, reaches out and strokes my cheek, chuckling as she speaks “And so I am, cara, so I am. But…a young thing like him—Santo cielo!” She drops her voice again, and mouths, “I would not let him anywhere near you! Just as well he left before you came out from the back.”

  “What did he want?” I ask.

  Speaking normally again, she says, “His father needs a doublet mending. Oh, now he is a lovely man, the Signore. He has had his troubles, mind you. Lost his wife some ten years back and has brought up those boys on his own. A good man, he is…and that young lad is just like him.” She smiles and then lifts her eyebrows. Glancing down at the girls, who are absorbed in their threading again, she whispers, “I’ll tell you, Francesca, I would not mind having something like that to play with. I would not mind at all. Ooh, if I were twenty years younger…”

  She pulls a face of exaggerated lasciviousness and I say nothing, wondering what Bianca would say if I described to her exactly what it had in fact been like…playing with Gianni.

  We collect all our belongings and leave the shop. I take the children back to Ilaria and leave them happily stringing the bagful of beads Bianca has given them. I make my way alone back to the Via San Tommaso.

  As I walk, my thoughts jangle uncomfortably inside my head. Why has this sight of Gianni so discomposed me? I truly do not believe I am—even a little—in love with him. He’s just a boy. I would be pleased to lie with him again should he ever ask me to—of course I would—but then…perhaps women such as me simply don’t deserve men like Gianni. Not gratis, in any case.

  Will it ever be possible to turn the twins into the sort of women whom someone like Gianni might one day agree to marry? If, that is, I can manage to manufacture some sort of artificial respectability for them. Will a generous dowry and a few carefully constructed lies ever be convincing enough to conceal the unpalatable truth?

  Eleven

  “You had an agreement, Carlo,” Michele repeated. “You shook hands on it. Walk away from it if it no longer pleases you.” He turned from Carlo and, lantern held high in one hand, began once more to pick his way down the narrow tunnel, away from the warmth and light of the tavern above them into cold
darkness. Carlo followed, and for a while the two men were silent.

  The ground began to slope downward, and keeping their footing in the darkness took careful concentration. Carlo had known since he was a small child of the ancient, labyrinthine web of tunnelling that crisscrossed its way beneath the city like the home of some horrible Neapolitan Minotaur, but until this moment, his natural dislike of confined spaces having been encouraged by his father’s vehement injunctions against any proposed boyhood explorations, he had never done more than peer into the various tunnel entrances, wondering at the extent of the pitch-dark maze that had lain for centuries underneath the city streets.

  The tufa stone was damp and slippery; it smelt of decay and dust, and the men’s breath hung cold before their faces in the shifting light from Michele’s guttering lantern. The tunnel bent sharply to the right, and then several steep steps dropped the level of the floor some dozen feet.

  “But we agreed upon one twelfth…”

  Michele merely shrugged. Without turning round, he said, “You agreed with , if you remember, upon one twelfth after my portion had been removed from the pile, Carlo.”

  “Yes, well. ‘The pile’ would have been a damn sight smaller had I not been able to secure a buyer for the silver and if the silk hadn’t sold for twice the amount predicted.”

  Flicking a brief glance behind him, Michele said, “I accept your connections are second to none and you drive a hard bargain. But a deal is a deal, Carlo—apart from which, if you want a piece of advice, don’t even think of ever trying to cross Salvatore .”

  A couple more almost silent minutes passed; the only sounds were the feet of the two men scuffing against the rock floor, and the muttered oaths from Carlo as he slipped and stumbled and grabbed at the walls to maintain his balance.

  “However big or small the pile might be next time,” Michele said, “we need a safer way to get it from the up into the city; we need somewhere to store things if necessary, and wants to know if this route is still viable.”

  “This tunnel is supposed to go direct from the tavern to the sea?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “If it does—and I had no idea that any part of the sottosuolo actually linked to the water—then I agree, it solves any number of logistical problems, Cicciano.”

  Michele nodded. “ says he can bring the —or at least the cutter—right up into the crook of the bay behind Posilippo, and if we can take any goods right into the city straight from there, then life will certainly be a very great deal simpler and— Porca puttana!”

  He broke off, swearing softly as the two men stepped from the cramped tunnel out into an enormous, echoing chamber the size of a church. Vast, slabbed side walls sloped inward and upward; several shallow “rooms” led off to either side, and as Michele held the lantern high, Carlo saw another three tunnel mouths leading out of the cavern at the far end, little more than black slits in the tufa. The two men’s shadows stained the rocks behind them like great ink blots.

  “It’s perfect.” Carlo stared around him. “We could store anything here. Anything. And you are certain that no one else uses the entrance at the tavern?”

  “Not as far as I know. seems confident, anyway. The landlord has been an ally of his for years—was a privateer himself once, said. Shall we go on—down to the sea? says we need to take the central tunnel. Both the others are dead ends. Useful storage areas, perhaps.”

  Carlo nodded.

  “Wait a moment.” Michele stood the lantern on a ridge of rock, and spent a few minutes collecting small stones, and piling them into a neat, conical cairn at one side of the entrance to the tunnel they were about to leave.

  “What in hell’s name are you doing, Cicciano?”

  “I want to be quite certain of finding my way out…” Michele said with a grin.

  Carlo said nothing, but his eyes were suddenly blacker.

  The two men crossed the great cavern; their steps sounded strangely dead in the unmoving air. The tunnel they entered was narrow and dank, and Carlo felt his heart beat faster as the darkness closed in behind them. “Let’s hope whatever picks up on his next voyage is not heavy…” he said. “If it’s gold, I am paying someone else to collect it.”

  “The ‘pile’ gets smaller, Rovere, every time you delegate, don’t forget.”

  Carlo scowled.

  They walked on for several more minutes. Then Michele stopped suddenly and Carlo, still staring moodily at his feet as they picked their way over the uneven ground, bumped into his companion’s back. He swore again.

  “Look!” Michele said.

  Carlo edged past him and together the two men gazed down the last twenty feet of tunnel, to where it widened out and opened onto a view of the Posilippo bay. The sky was a lightless charcoal; the moon visible only as a faint yellowish stain behind shifting, dirty rags of cloud. But below them, the hillside fell away toward the great sweep of black water. They stared out across the bay, unmoving and silent for a moment, save for the faint rasp of Carlo’s breath, the enticing possibilities of wealth danced in the heads of both young men.

  ***

  The eunuch opened the door. Shorter than he by a head, and softly thickset, Modesto always reminded Michele of a pug dog, a resemblance which was heightened just now as Modesto’s black eyes widened in mild surprise at the sight of the visitor upon the doorstep.

  “Signore,” he said. “We were not expecting you until next week.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Yes, Signore, but—”

  “Then let me in, damn you. I have just spent two hours clambering over an inhospitable hillside; I am cold and hungry and I could do with a bit of company before I go home.”

  “If you would care to wait in here, Signore, I will go and see what she says.”

  Michele stood in the doorway of the small anteroom and watched as Modesto slowly climbed the stairs, turned left and knocked upon Francesca’s bedchamber door. The stocky figure waited a moment, then opened the door and leaned in, with one hand upon the handle, the other pressed against the jamb. He shook his head and then nodded, apparently in conversation with the occupant of the chamber, though Michele could hear nothing of what was being said. After a moment, Modesto pulled back, closed the door again, and just as slowly as he had climbed them, descended the stairs once more.

  “If you could just give her a few moments.” he said. “Would you care for something to eat, Signore?”

  Michele nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

  The eunuch padded away down the short flight of steps that led to the kitchen and returned some moments later with a plate of meat and fruit in one hand, and a large goblet in the other.

  “Thank you,” Michele said. Modesto walked past him. He put the plate and the goblet down upon a table, pulled a bone-handled knife from his belt and laid it next to the plate. Michele crossed the room, sat down on a folding chair, and began to eat.

  “Don’t hurry yourself, Signore.” The expression on the eunuch’s face as he spoke was difficult to read. “I’ll come and collect you, when my lady is ready,” he said.

  Michele ate the meat and the fruit, and drank deeply from the goblet, which proved to contain a very palatable red wine.

  ***

  “I wasn’t expecting you till next week,” Francesca said.

  Michele slumped himself down heavily in a carved wooden cross-framed chair. “That’s exactly what your eunuch said. Is it a problem to you?”

  “No, it’s not a problem. And Modesto is a castrato, not a eunuch—he is very particular. To him the word ‘eunuch’ is an insult—he uses it to describe himself sometimes, but he’s furious if anyone else does.”

  “Castrato, eunuch—he still has no bollocks, whatever he might care to be called.”

  “You’re lucky I was here—I wasn’t planning to be.
You really are in a filthy temper, Michele. What would you like me to do to raise your spirits?”

  “It’s not my spirits I want you to raise, woman…” said Michele.

  Francesca laughed. “Come here, then, scorbutico, and I’ll try to sweeten you up.”

  Michele did not move. She crossed to where he sat scowling near the window and stood in front of him, between his splayed knees. He reached forward and held one of her buttocks in each hand through the silk of her skirts, pulling her in toward his body so that her bent legs rested upon his thighs. She pushed her fingers into his tight curls, and Michele said, “Where’s my knife?”

  “Never you mind…” Francesca said absentmindedly, now unfastening the laces of Michele’s doublet.

  “What made you so angry the other week? Why take it away from me?”

  “You shouldn’t have brought it out. I told you why a long time ago, Michele; I’m not going through it all again. It upsets me to think about it.”

  “You should know me well enough to know that I would never—”

  “Shh…I just don’t care to have a knife near me. I’ve put it out of harm’s way. Be quiet.” She was squatting on her heels now, still between Michele’s knees, and her fingers had reached his breeches.

  “Give it back to me when I leave, then,” he said. “Oh, God—that feels good, woman…you are…certainly…worth every scudo.” His breathing had become shallow and his voice was hoarse.

  “Stai zitto… stop talking, Michele. You talk too much.”

  Francesca pushed his knees farther apart and bent forward.

  Michele stopped talking.

  ***

  “How did you meet this man—what did you call him? ?” Francesca said some while later, hutching herself upright and sitting cross-legged on the rumpled sheet. Arms raised, she began to wind her hair into an untidy knot on the top of her head.

  Michele lay back on the pillows and grinned, watching Francesca’s breasts move as she worked. “By chance,” he said. “About a year ago. Down at that filthy little inn at Marechiaro—”