Courtesan's Lover Page 9

  The young man smiled broadly and stood up. He leaned back against the wall. His weight was on one foot; the other he crooked up against the cracked roughcast. “If we leave it to Gianni, Signora, he’ll be a virgin until he’s fifty.”

  Perhaps my surmise was wrong. Perhaps this was all little more than an elaborate joke being set up at the unfortunate Gianni’s expense. (If the young man’s brother was a friend of Michele’s, this was not inconceivable.)

  “He’s very shy, Signora,” said the man in the green doublet, by way of explanation.

  “Do you set me a challenge then, Signore?”

  He laughed. “If you like.”

  I liked both my companion and the idea more and more as the minutes passed. My moment’s unease lifted. “Very well…” I named a price for two hours of my time. The young man’s eyebrows lifted into his hair and he flinched, sucking in a shocked breath through his teeth and whistling it out again, but rallying, he agreed. I presumed that he must be aware that even if it seemed an exorbitant sum, I am, after all, still considerably less expensive than either of those conceited bitches, Emilia Rosa or Alessandra Malacoda, if not yet as well known. But time may change that. We arranged a day and an hour, and my companion bade me farewell. As he disappeared into the crowd, though, I realized that I had let him leave without having discovered his name.

  ***

  My new customer arrives shortly after sunset on the appointed day. I am upstairs; there is a loud knock at the front door below, and I hear Modesto come up from the kitchen. He opens it and says something I cannot catch and then there is a burst of unfamiliar male laughter and the sound of feet on the step. I can hear more than one voice outside. Then, after a pause, the door closes and the sounds of the street are cut off. I come to the top of the stairs. Standing next to Modesto is a long-limbed boy with dark curly hair and wide eyes—eyes which just now seem distinctly anxious and self-conscious. This is perfect. Lack of experience can just as easily show itself as timidity or bluster in these situations…and the bluster can be tedious. I don’t think it was this boy’s laugh I heard just now.

  His friend has described him accurately: Gianni is tall and, as with many of his height, he is slightly round-shouldered and stoops a little, as though in apology for his excess of inches. An uneven, downy fluff of beard is doing its very best to make an impression upon his face, which none the less still loudly proclaims both his youth and his inexperience.

  I come down to meet him. “Gianni?” I ask, and he nods, blushing furiously. I suppress a smile and decide that I must take this one very gently indeed. I indicate that he should come with me back up the stairs. My young customer edges past me, gazing around him for all the world as though he intends to purchase the place.

  Modesto gives me a meaningful stare and pats his doublet over the place where I know he keeps a knife, but I smile and shake my head. There will not be any trouble from this boy. With an almost imperceptible shrug and an excuse for a bow, he disappears through the door to the kitchen.

  I follow Gianni up the stairs, and as he turns his head, I see that he is still wide-eyed and intently absorbing as much as he can of his surroundings. We enter my upstairs chamber. I close the door behind me. Gianni is studying the ceiling, the paintings on the walls, the window hangings, the rug upon the floor—everything, in fact, except me. He is carefully avoiding looking at me.

  And I think he is averting his eyes from the bed.

  The temptation to shock, to be outrageous and astonish him, is tremendous, but I don’t think I will succeed with him tonight if I do. This will need a delicate touch.

  “Please, sit down,” I say politely. He sits on a chair and stares at his hands, each of which is gripping a knee. The white knuckles betray his anxiety most endearingly. I watch him for a moment. He has a fine-boned face and large brown eyes; his hair is almost black and falls in tangled curls. A muscle tenses in his cheek. A lock of hair falls over one eye and he flicks his head sideways to shift it, still regarding his hands upon his knees. He moves his fingers a little, but the bone-colored wheals of tension remain.

  “You don’t have to stay, Signore,” I say, and for the first time he lifts his head and his gaze meets mine. His eyes are huge and dark. I smile. “You seem not to want to be here. No one is making you stay, Gianni. The door is never locked. You can leave whenever you choose.”

  He hesitates, then, turning his eyes upward, he speaks to the flaking stucco cherubs who cavort cheerily around the edges of my ceiling. “I can’t leave,” he says. “If I do—if I fail—I will have to pay my brother back the money he has given you. And I don’t have it to give him.”

  I had never thought of myself as an obstacle to be overcome. Gianni’s honesty is disarming. “Well…” I pause, thinking. “If you were here in my chamber for an appropriate length of time, perhaps we could deceive them. We could just sit here and talk.” Why did I say that? I have been looking forward to this encounter for days.

  Gianni once more addresses himself to the peeling putti. “No, that’s not possible either,” he says in a voice that still has the edgy, raw quality of the recently broken.

  “You do know that none but the two of us will ever know, Gianni, don’t you? I never speak of what I do in here to anyone at all.” Except Modesto, of course.

  He pulls his gaze from the ceiling. “But they would know—my brother and his friend. They will be watching me for changes; they’ll see none in me, and will draw their own conclusions,” he says, very wisely for a boy of his years. “They don’t think I will go through with this. My brother is expecting to be reimbursed.”

  Go through with this? Is this what I have become then? An unpleasant experience this boy must endure if he is to avoid ridicule and debt?

  He continues to watch me, his expression almost hopeless. His shoulders droop even more and one leg begins to twitch. I breathe in slowly and then say, “Do you have…any particular aversion to women, Gianni? Might that be the cause of your reluctance?”

  His astonishment is transparent and answers my question.

  “Oh no, Signora, you’re quite wrong! It is just that I’ve never…I don’t know…I…I just…” He cannot find the words he seeks. He flaps a hand in frustration, runs his fingers through his hair, and drops his gaze to the floor.

  “In that case, it would seem that you have no choice. So perhaps we had better begin, Gianni,” I say with a smile. “You never know, you might even enjoy it. Most people do, you know.” I lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I am told that I’m very good at it.”

  Gianni’s face is stricken. “Oh, Signora, I did not mean to imply that—”

  “I know,” I interrupt him and take his hand. It is warm and dry and he allows it to lie in my palm. “I know you didn’t. But if, as you say, you are resolved to see this particular challenge through…” I raise an eyebrow. Gianni reddens. “Perhaps you should begin by inspecting the goods you have purchased at so substantial a price.”

  His jaw drops and he shakes his head. “I didn’t—”

  “Well—that your brother purchased on your behalf then.” I lick my middle finger and thumb and, walking around my chamber, pinch out the candles that stand in brackets on the walls, until in the end, only one remains alight in a brass candlestick on a small table near my bed. I turn to Gianni. I don’t think I have ever had one so nervous before. How should I best begin?

  Laces. “Have you ever undone a lady’s laces before, Gianni?”

  He shakes his head. He is avoiding my eye again.

  “Try it,” I say then. “Take your time.”

  I sit down upon the end of the bed and pat the covers. Looking charmingly confused, he sits next to me.

  “Watch, Gianni,” I say, and I pull the lace ends of my bodice out from where they sit pushed down between my breasts. The laces are damp with sweat. I undo the kn
ot and pull the lace through the first two holes so that he can see how to do it. He raises trembling hands to take the lace from me, and tries to coax it through the next hole, but it seems stubbornly unwilling to oblige him.

  “Loosen it all off all the way down the front first,” I say, tucking my chin down to see what I am doing, and pulling slack across the bodice front. I wriggle the two sections of the bodice apart so that the laces lie looped between the holes, hanging in swags across my chest as I stop pulling. Gianni tries again; this time the lace slides through its hole with ease and I hear him suck in a soft, uneven breath. I lean forward a little—partly to help him with the lace, partly to give him a taste of what he will find inside the bodice when he has finished unfastening it. I talk softly to Gianni as he works, playing with his hair as I do so.

  After a few moments he says, “I think I have finished…” in a whisper. He is quite right: the two sides of the bodice are hanging forward to reveal the crumpled lawn of the shift beneath. The long lace hangs from Gianni’s fingers, but as I meet his gaze, he drops it.

  I think I have him now.

  “Thank you, Gianni,” I say. “Are you ready to begin?”

  He swallows untidily and nods.

  Standing up and facing my young customer, I stroke the side of his face with the back of my hand and say quietly, “You may not have done this before, Gianni, but I expect you have imagined doing it. If you were imagining it now, what would you…imagine…doing next?”

  His eyes are wide and black in the dusk and he is breathing a little faster than before. He says, “I think…I think I would imagine taking that dress from your shoulders.”

  I can hardly bear to wait another moment, but I know I can’t rush him. “That’s what you should do then,” I say. “Always follow your imagination.”

  He reaches forward and, with his fingers cupping behind my shoulders, hooks his thumbs under the neckline of my dress. Very gently he opens the bodice outward.

  This seems more promising.

  Gianni slides the sleeves down my arms, and I step out of the dress as he lowers it for me to do so. I stand before him in my shift, and the dress hangs from Gianni’s hands in great folds upon the floor. His eyes are round and unblinking and he does not move.

  “You can let go of the dress, Gianni,” I say with a smile.

  “There are no laces in your shift,” he whispers, his fingers still clutching the green silk.

  “How would you—imagine—taking it off then?”

  “Perhaps you would do that for me. I should not want to presume…”

  His sweetness is charming and I feel an unexpected stab of what I realize with a shock is envy—for the girl with whom this boy will one day fall in love.

  She will be a lucky woman.

  I take the dress from him and throw it to one side, step closer to him, and begin to unfasten his doublet and shirt. As I do so, he at last finds the courage to lay hands upon me. Trembling visibly, he runs one hand up one of my arms, pushing up inside the loose sleeve of my shift, round the curve of my shoulder and across my back. The other hand tentatively reaches around my waist and pulls me, very gently, toward him. I lace my fingers into his hair, push forward against his body, and feel hard against my belly the indisputable proof that my pupil is indeed now ready to begin.

  “Take off your shoes and hose,” I suggest, and Gianni obeys without once taking his gaze from mine. His breathing is shallow and quick. “Keep imagining, Gianni,” I say. I do not want to break the spell—it has been carefully spun.

  “In my mind,” he says more firmly, “I am telling you to pull off your shift now.”

  I do what he asks and he sucks in a soft gasp.

  “And then, if I were imagining this, you would sit back up there”—he points toward my pillows—“and you would ask me to join you.”

  I put myself where he suggests. “Well, Gianni, come and begin,” I say.

  He hesitates.

  Dear God—how much longer is he going to keep me waiting?

  ***

  But in the event, it takes very little more to break through Gianni’s reserve. I am not sure exactly what it is that releases him from his smothering embarrassment: whether it’s the sensation of my hands on his buttocks, the softness of my breasts beneath his fingers, or perhaps it is no more than the taste of the honey I have rubbed onto my nipples. But, whatever it is, as I wrap my legs around his body and pull my hands up his back and into his hair, his gaze meets mine and I see that his eyes are shining. With a brief frisson of pleased satisfaction, I know that the reality of the occasion is indeed living up to his imagined expectations.

  Of course, now that he has broken through his barriers, Gianni is as eager to rut as any other boy would be, but I think I shall keep him waiting: I have a number of things I want to teach him before I allow him into my body, and I think I might enjoy the lesson as much as he will. To my great delight, my pupil is indeed instinctively—and wickedly—imaginative; his confidence grows quickly as we play together, and before long, he is making as many suggestions as I am. What I thought, at first, might prove to be a difficult and unsatisfying evening, in fact turns out to be a wild, funny, excitable tumble.

  And it might indeed have proved to be no more than this: nothing more than an entertaining and profitable night with an energetic innocent—had it not been for my scar.

  It all happens very quickly.

  We at last reach the moment that Gianni has been waiting for. He lies on his back, visibly shivering with expectation as I kneel over him and begin to show him exactly what I intend him to do next. He runs his hands down the length of my spine—and then his probing fingertips catch on what I have hoped he wouldn’t notice: the lumpy ridge of scarring which lies just below my right-side ribs. He starts, and fingers the hard, puckered flesh curiously.

  “What is this?” he asks softly. “How did you do this?”

  ***

  He is on his feet in an instant, and he scoops me to standing with an arm around my waist, pulling me in with my back against him, held close to his body.

  “And just what the fuck do you think you’re doing, stronza?”

  His arm is so tight—iron-hard muscles across my belly—that I cannot breathe in enough to answer him.

  “Planning on helping yourself to more than you’re worth, were you?”

  The iron bar jerks in harder.

  “You’re good, stronza, I’ll give you that, but you’re not that good. Bloody bitch whores—you’re all the fucking same!” Bending down to his doublet, folding me in two beneath him, he stands us both upright again and in his clenched fist is something small, needle-pointed, which flashes in the light from the window. “Wanted a bit more silver, did you?” he says in a whisper.

  He grabs a fistful of my skirts with the hand that holds me, pulls me outward and punches up under my ribs. Not hard. It doesn’t hurt much. No more than a pricking sting and a sudden pressure. But a hissing begins in my ears, that all but drowns the words he says next.

  “That much extra silver I can spare. You’ll not thieve again, I think.”

  I wonder why I can only see him in shades of grey as he leaves the room. His color has quite gone.

  ***

  I cannot speak. I sit back on my heels and my heart races, as those pictures I would prefer to forget swirl in front of my eyes, vivid and sickening. I feel suddenly giddy. I grope for the words which will not come, but at last I manage to say it. “Someone was once not as…as pleased with me…as you seem to be…and…he expressed his disappointment…very clearly.”

  I stop. My dance at death’s door is not a memory I cherish. I hate anyone drawing attention to my ugly reminder of that day; I am always afraid it will disgust people. It disgusts me.

  Gianni says nothing, but he turns me from him, then bends an
d kisses my scar with great tenderness, his hands on my hipbones. His mouth rests warm on the little twisted ridge for a second and then he brings me around to face him again.

  This is something I have never known. Never. His compassion brings stinging tears to my eyes and I do not know what to say to him. We stare at each other for what seems an age, without speaking. Gianni’s moment of consummation has been interrupted and now he is hesitant to touch me again, anxious in the face of my distress as I fight to recover my composure. I should hate him to lose the joy of the occasion, though, and after a short inner struggle, I manage to begin to reengage my pupil in the lesson he has interrupted. He and I resume our activities. It takes a few moments to bring ourselves back to where we were, but in the event, it is not long until, to his obvious delight, Gianni’s explorations into this hitherto undiscovered country are complete and he is a virgin no longer.

  ***

  When at last, gasping and exhausted, Gianni sinks his full weight onto me with a groan, I laugh, fighting for breath. I am a beetle, trapped under a stone. I put my hands up and under his chest and bend my knees up to try to push him off.

  “Among the most sophisticated lovers, it is usually thought best…to try not to squash…your lady…completely flat, Gianni,” I manage to gasp.

  He slides off me at once and begins to apologize, but I interrupt him. “Stop! I was not serious, caro. Tell me—was that worth all that anxiety and trepidation?”

  The look he turns on me in the dying candlelight brings an unexpected lump to my throat. “Yes. Yes, Signora, it was. I…”

  I do not usually care to kiss my customers, though I am not always given the choice. But when Gianni interrupts his own sentence and holds my face in his hands to kiss me in thanks, I do not even try to draw back.

  After a few moments, though, I pull away from him. “Gianni,” I say softly, “it’s time for you to go now. I think we’ve run over our two hours as it is and I must be getting home.”