Courtesan's Lover Read online

  “It hasn’t been that bad in a long while, has it, caro?”

  Modesto shook his head.

  “What made you remember this time?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why do you do it?”

  Her question startled him into speech. “Why do I do what?”

  “This: live here with me, watching and listening to what goes on here, day after day. God, Modesto, it must be hell for you. Why? Why do you want this?”

  “You asked me to come here. When I had to stop singing—after I’d been ill. You know that.” He paused. “You need me.”

  It was Francesca’s turn to stare without speaking. After a moment she said, “You had a choice.” Her voice was low, and he heard pity in it, and concern, and her compassion moved him.

  “Yes. I made a choice,” Modesto said. “And I don’t regret it.”

  “Ever?”

  He shrugged again.

  Francesca frowned. “Are you ever…ever…jealous? Of the others?”

  Modesto considered.

  At times, his jealousy burned like a brand. There were moments when, seated outside Francesca’s chamber listening to what was happening within, his fist would clench around the handle of his dagger and his loathing of whichever visitor it happened to be would threaten to erupt into rash action. These men had, in such abundance, what had been taken from him—cut from him—with such callous disregard for his well-being. But then it would strike him, even as he got to his feet, that in fact he possessed something precious that none of these paying patrons had ever had: he knew the Signora in ways none of them ever would or could. Private, unspoken ways more intimate than the wildest of those men’s purchased couplings.

  What he had said to her was true: she needed him.

  In his strange, indeterminate position as something between nursemaid, pimp, and bodyguard, he had had occasion to comfort her at her most vulnerable—faint with fatigue, flushed with fever—he had washed her, mended her clothes, and braided her hair with more care than many maidservants. But then, on other occasions he had—with fierce enjoyment—swung a heavy fist and laid out a rowdy, drunken customer who had begun to frighten the Signora. And once—just once—he had walked a naked and gibbering sadistic aristocrat backward out into the street at the point of the man’s own rapier, threatening to run him through if he ever—ever—showed his face in the vicinity again. A trembling and terrified Francesca had clung to him on that night, he remembered, gasping out her gratitude for his having quite certainly saved her life.

  After a long pause, his eyes fixed on those of his mistress, Modesto shook his head and said with a small, twisted smile, “No. I am not jealous.”

  “I could not do any of this without you.”

  “I know, Signora.”

  She reached for his hand and squeezed it. And then the absurdity of the situation suddenly struck Modesto and he began to laugh.

  “What is it?”

  His laugh died away into a sigh. “Nothing. Just…just the thought of us tucked up here together: the seedless and the strumpet. What a bloody pair.”

  ***

  “She is upstairs, Signor di Cicciano,” Modesto said. “In her chamber.”

  “Thank you. Can you take this?” Michele di Cicciano swung a coat from his shoulders and draped it over Modesto’s outstretched arm, crossed the hall in a couple of long-legged strides, and took the stairs three at a time. Modesto hung the coat on a hook by the door and followed the visitor up to the first floor. The door to the Signora’s chamber was already closed by the time he reached the little landing, and Modesto sat down upon the chair which stood just to the left of the door. He hunched and rolled his shoulders, preparing for a long wait. Sometimes—with trusted patrons like Benevento, for instance—she would say she was happy for him to leave her unattended, but with men like Cicciano, whatever she said, he knew better.

  Although he never exactly tried to listen to what went on on the other side of the chamber wall, it was hard not to hear, and Modesto frequently found he could not prevent lively images forming in his mind to match the sounds he heard. Depending on his mood, he could find himself either entertained or enraged. Today, though, he felt oddly awkward when he thought about last night’s intimacy with his mistress—it somehow made the contemplation of her energetic liaisons with her patrons rather harder to endure.

  All he could hear at present was an indistinct rumble of conversation, and he tried not to think of what was to come, distracting himself with thoughts of the covert concert engagement the Signora had told him about some hours before.

  But then her voice, sharp with anger, cut through Modesto’s musings, and his pulse raced.

  “Cazzo! I said no! Just get rid of it, Michele! Put it away!”

  Modesto stood, his heartbeat thudding in his ears; he put one hand on the handle of the door and reached for the hilt of his dagger.

  Signor di Cicciano said something, but Modesto could not distinguish his words, and then the Signora spoke again, her voice cracking.

  “No—I know, but not in here, damn you! You know why. Just give it here, or—”

  There was a moment’s pause, and then the sound of a slap, a muttered oath from the Signore and the beginnings of a scuffle.

  Modesto pulled the dagger from his belt.

  He opened the door.

  Neither the Signora nor Cicciano heard him, and he stood frozen, knife in hand, watching the two of them from the doorway. His mistress was crouched like a cat above the Signore, who lay on his back on the bed, arms flung up above his head, each of his wrists held tightly in one of the Signora’s hands. Her hair hung forward, hiding her face so Modesto could not see her expression, but even as he was about to step forward and interfere, she laughed. A mirthless little laugh it was, he thought, hard and joyless, but nevertheless, she certainly did not sound frightened, and he began to breathe more easily. He took a step back.

  Then the Signore swore. “Vaffanculo, stronza!” He pushed upward against her, trying to shift her weight.

  “Ooh, what profanity, maleducato!” she said through her teeth.

  “I’ve told you before never to bring one in here. Haven’t I?” She leaned forward and jerked down on his wrists with each significant word as she spoke. “Haven’t I? Drop it! Go on—let go of it, Michele!” She shook his right arm vigorously: something that gleamed as it caught the candlelight fell from his fist to the floor with a clatter. “You know perfectly well why—and, no, you are not having it back.”

  Not having what back? thought Modesto.

  “I’ll do what I bloody like…”

  “Oh, you think so, Michele, do you?” Francesca sat back on her heels and released his wrists; she pushed her hair back from her face and flattened her body down onto his chest, her elbows splayed, her fingers gripping his rib cage. A shiver tightened Modesto’s scalp and buzzed down through his belly, but, ignoring it, he stepped back out into the corridor as Cicciano grabbed a fistful of Francesca’s hair. He pulled the door closed silently behind him, his heartbeat still quick in his throat. There was a moment’s pause, another rumble of indistinct voices, more scuffling and then a new sound—a thunk, as of metal in wood. He heard the Signora say, “Ha! There you are—it can just stay there. No—get down! Get your hands off it! I told you, you are not having it back, bastardo!” Another slap. A squeal. And a laugh.

  Modesto made himself breathe calmly.

  After a few moments, he sat back down on his chair. The sounds from the chamber became more predictable, and Modesto closed his eyes, tipped his head back against the wall, and prepared to wait out the duration of Signor di Cicciano’s visit.

  Four

  Filippo di Laviano looked long at his wife. Her head in its crisp linen cap was bent over a small, calf-bound book. One or two tightly curling wisps tendrille
d from under the edge of the unadorned linen, but it was obvious that these were rebellious escapees; the severity of Maria’s hair and cap was clearly deliberate. This austerity was mirrored, too, in the upright carriage of her spine as she sat reading before the fire. She held the book in the flat of one hand, the forefinger of the other tracing beneath the words she read. Her lips moved a little as she mouthed the lines. One might once have thought, mused Filippo, his eyes fixed upon his wife’s mouth, that those tiny movements were mute invitations to be kissed. Once. Breathing in a long sigh through his nose, he compressed his own lips briefly and raised his eyebrows in a gesture of frustrated resignation, while Maria finished her page. She placed a narrow strip of red vellum down the length of the book and closed it tenderly.

  For a time, neither she nor Filippo spoke at all. The room was still and quiet—all that could be heard was the soft crackle of the fire in the hearth. The squares of sky visible in the windows darkened from blue, through indigo to charcoal. Filippo stood for a moment and bent toward a pile of logs that stood to one side of the fireplace; he placed one carefully on the white-burning ghost of a thick branch, which crumbled and fell into the embers under the weight of the new wood. Opening a long silver box, he picked out three beeswax candles which he fitted into a triple candlestick on the mantelshelf. One by one he lit them carefully with a taper. Maria put her book down on the slim-legged table which stood next to her chair.

  “What are you reading? Is it still The Decameron?” Filippo asked.

  “Oh, no—I finished that last week. This is by a woman. Christine de Pizan. It’s called The Book of the City of Ladies.”

  The muscles of Filippo’s face felt stiff as he smiled, as though the corners of his mouth were being pushed back down as fast as he tried to lift them.

  “It pleases you? As much as the Boccaccio?” he said absentmindedly, watching the curve of Maria’s upper lip.

  “Oh, yes. Despite her name, she was born in Venice, did you know?” Maria said.

  “Who?” asked Filippo, not listening.

  “Christine de Pizan. It is her father who came from Pizzano. She lived in France for most of her life, apparently, and wrote everything in French. I’m very lucky to have found a translation—it would have been such a struggle for me to read it in the original.”

  “What is it about?” Filippo tried to arrange his features into a semblance of polite interest.

  Maria smiled at him and began to explain. “It’s about the extraordinary achievements of women. She describes having a vision. It is not a vision that ever actually happened to her—at least I don’t think so—but she describes three ladies who…”

  Filippo was still not listening. He saw the light in Maria’s eyes as she spoke about this book she quite clearly loved; he watched her slim hands move with unself-conscious grace and thought uncomfortably of the ease with which he could extinguish that light. With no more than a simple request he could—and too often did—transform this vivid enthusiasm into a stiff and expressionless anxiety. A ripple of guilt clutched at his scalp like a too-tight hat.

  The door opened, and a thin woman of around thirty-five came in. With her dark hair drawn back from her face in unadorned simplicity, she had the air of a Bellini Madonna, though Filippo had always imagined that the Mother of God would have possessed rather more in the way of animation of feature than his wife’s sister ever did. She bobbed a curtsy to Filippo and sat next to Maria. Laying a bony hand on her sister’s sleeve, she said, “Maria, I was in the kitchen a moment ago and, do you know, I am not sure that the venison will be ready for tomorrow. Would you be happy with the pork?”

  “What’s the matter with the venison?”

  “I don’t think it has hung long enough.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Maria’s face but vanished almost as fast as it had appeared, and she smiled.

  “It is not a problem, Emilia. I’m sure the pork will be delicious. We can have the venison on Sunday. Thank you for thinking of it.”

  Filippo sat impassively in his chair watching this conversation unroll and pass him by. Neither his wife nor her sister seemed to wish to include him in this trivial domestic hiccup, and although he was not in the least interested in the change in the menu, he nonetheless felt the clench of a little fist of resentment in his chest at being thus ignored.

  Emilia stood up. “I think I will go to bed. It’s late.” She bent and kissed her sister’s cheek; Filippo watched his wife’s eyes close momentarily and her mouth push forward in a brief echo of a kiss, as Emilia’s lips brushed against her skin. His cock twitched. Even now, after so long, it still twitched.

  “Good night, Filippo,” Emilia said then with an unenthusiastic smile as she left the room. Filippo’s gaze moved to where his wife sat staring into the embers. “Maria,” he said.

  She glanced across at him, her sudden wariness glaringly obvious.”

  “I’ve told Luca I’ll be going to the play on my own. I told him that you haven’t been very well.” He paused. “He says he hopes you will be fully recovered soon. He was very understanding.”

  Maria’s color deepened. She nodded but said nothing and kept her gaze fixed upon the fire.

  “Please don’t worry yourself about the matter, Maria,” Filippo said, thinking to himself that it was he who needed to be understanding, rather than Luca.

  ***

  The next morning, Maria was nowhere to be seen, and Filippo spent a few irritating moments hurrying from room to room searching for her to say good-bye. He did not like to call her. He found her eventually in the downstairs back room, which overlooked the garden, already busy with her book. Today, she had a quill in her hand, and Filippo saw she was engrossed by what she read. A piece of paper next to the book was already covered with notes, and fresh ink gleamed on the end of the quill as it hovered above the sheet.

  “I have to go,” Filippo said.

  “Do you know when you will be back?”

  Filippo thought about this. It was a Friday, and he was normally at home early on a Friday. It was only on Wednesdays that he was late. But, he began reasoning with himself now, perhaps if he was only ever late on a Wednesday, Maria might become suspicious. Her suspicions would, he was sure, distress her, and he had no wish to do that. So he lied. “I have a great deal of work to accomplish today, Maria. I might well be late again. Perhaps as late as the other night, though I’ll try my hardest to get away before then.”

  Maria gave him a tight little smile, nodded, returning to her book, just as Filippo bent to kiss her. She seemed not to see his descending face, and his kiss grazed her temple. Filippo hesitated, then stood upright once more and cleared his throat. “You might have gone to bed before I return,” he said. “So I’ll perhaps not see you until tomorrow, then, if I am delayed as long as I fear.”

  The closing of her eyes as he spoke again was momentary, but Filippo felt chastened. He said no more.

  The sun was already high, and though the summer was truly over, the air was mild, and no breeze blew. Filippo was grateful that the fiercest heat of August had passed—when the fetid oppressiveness of Napoli’s darker streets clung to the skin like sweat-damp sheets and the black threat of typhoid lurked in every stagnant gutter.

  Having decided not to take the little carriage, it took Filippo some half an hour to walk to his destination. He headed east along the street that spanned the very edge of the bay for half a mile and then turned inland, leaving the sea behind him. As he moved away from the coast, the streets narrowed into a labyrinthine tangle, but Filippo determinedly wound his way through, and he reached the great church of San Pietro a Maiella with ease.

  Some two streets further on, the apartments of Maestre de Campo, Don Miguel Vasquez, faced onto a dilapidated but obviously once sumptuous piazza, whose peeling stucco and graceful arches were at the same time elegant and shabby, like a f
ading dowager still clad in the outmoded finery of her youth. The piazza was already crowded: marketeers were setting up their wares, old men were gathering in stiff-legged clusters in the vaulted alleys that led in and out of the sun-filled square; a squealing group of ragged urchins raced the length of the piazza. Filippo stood for a second to let these chattering, tattered starlings pass in front of him, before he set off across the diagonal toward Don Miguel’s flaking front door.

  ***

  Miguel Vasquez ran a finger down his list of activities for the day. Filippo watched him for a second and pondered as he did so on the nature of arrogance. Was arrogance innate in the personality of someone who was prepared to work as part of an alien occupying military force in a foreign country, or did the very nature of the position create arrogance in characters who had not before possessed it? For Maestre Vasquez was indeed arrogant, thought Filippo, perhaps even the very personification of the word.

  Maestre Vasquez, however, was also slim and graceful. His movements were fluid and quick; he gesticulated frequently in his speech, and though the Maestre’s eyes were cold, his hands were as expressive as a dancer’s. In his company, Filippo was frequently reminded of his own increasing age and lack of agility. Though he could not have been much more than fifteen years the senior, Filippo often felt in Vasquez’s presence like an aging, heavy-hoofed hack in the company of an Arab colt.

  “Come and see this, Filippo,” said the colt, in Spanish, and Filippo crossed the room to where Vasquez stood frowning at his papers in front of the long window. “Does the Conte di Ladispoli mean to attend the parade or not?”

  Filippo peered at the spidery writing on the small sheet of paper Vasquez then held out to him.

  I am, Signore, quite delighted to have been considered amongst your honoured guests, and regret most sincerely that I have not yet replied before but with my travels to Sicily now imminent I have been most sorely pressed and have only just extricated myself from several other less agreeable commitments.