Courtesan's Lover (40 page)

As Carlo reached the top of the
sottosuolo
steps, there was far more noise in the tavern than he would have expected: the normal thrum of conversation was sharper, louder, more jagged and confused than usual. He stared about him warily. A large number of people were on their feet, several tables had been pushed aside, and a couple of chairs lay tipped over on the floor. Even as he registered all this, Carlo heard running feet, and the sound of the door to the tavern being opened and then slammed shut.

He paused. The climb back up to the surface from the hell of that lightless cavern had been long and tiring; he had had to sit in the blackness and rest several times, feeling giddy and with his head aching, and—though he would never have admitted it—he had been very frightened to be so entirely wrapped in that smothering darkness for so long. He felt sick with relief at his arrival back in the smoky, smelly familiarity of his favorite tavern; he needed a drink to steady his nerves and he wanted time—time to decide what best he should do. But, to his irritation, there seemed to be some sort of drama going on in the middle of the room: a drama that appeared to be absorbing everyone's full attention, something which might very well mean that his chances of being served promptly would be considerably reduced.

Determining to find the tavern-keeper and demand the
grappa
he craved, he wormed his way between the jostling bodies and peered through to see what it was that was so fascinating everyone, but, on actually seeing the cause of the disturbance, he stopped short. A body lay sprawled on the flagged floor and, as he stared down at it, several thoughts struck Carlo almost simultaneously. The first was that there was something indefinably and irrevocably broken about the silent figure in front of him; it lay quite still, crumpled and bent in a manner no living person could have sustained for more than a second or two. The second thought was that it was, quite clearly, Cicciano. The third was that Marco was standing on the far side of where Cicciano lay, his arms folded tightly, his usual dirty cloth draped over his shoulder. Marco was staring at Carlo, a ragged wince of undisguised dislike twisting his face into a grimace. Carlo stared back for a second or two, and then, unthinking, he pushed through to crouch down beside where Cicciano lay motionless.

He put his hand to Cicciano's neck and felt for a pulse. The skin was still warm, but he could determine no movement of any sort, and there was a heavy solidity to the flesh beneath the skin that proclaimed no life. The linen of Cicciano's shirt was stained red below his armpit, and, seeing this, a sick wash of dizziness swept over Carlo and he put a hand down to the floor to steady himself. The wooden boards on which he leaned were wet and sticky; snatching his hand back up again, he wiped his fingers on his shirt.

Then the door to the tavern banged open again, and four heavyset men shoved their way into the room, scattering any drinkers in their path. Dressed in scruffy, ill-assorted black doublets and breeches, and each brandishing a broad-bladed knife, they had a thuggish air about them, and Carlo—recognizing them immediately for what they were—scrambled to his feet and backed away from Cicciano's body. The forcible maintenance of the law in Napoli might have been the nominal function of the
sbirri
, but Carlo knew as well as every other man in the room that he would most likely be treated by them with an unthinking, heavy-handed lack of justice.

“Everybody stay where you are!” one of them shouted.

At least a dozen people ignored the command completely, and in a noisy scramble of poorly fitting shoes and panicked gasping, they barged past the newcomers and ran for the door of the tavern. One of the
sbirri
followed them, and, although failing to stop any of the escapees, he turned and stood square in the doorway. Holding his knife point upward, he leaned his other hand against the door jamb and glared around him at the occupants of the tavern, jaw jutting mulishly. Nobody spoke. Nervous looks were shared; throats were cleared; feet shuffled and clothing rustled.

Another of the new arrivals—a bear of a man with an unruly black beard and unwashed, over-long hair—took the position just vacated by Carlo, down beside the body on the floor. Holding Cicciano's chin between thumb and fingers, the
sbirro
flipped the head over to face in the other direction and back, staring down at the blank features with a frown of compassionless curiosity.

“What happened here?” he said, glaring up at the crowd. “Who did it?”

The silence in the room became absolute. Nobody moved.

“Well?” the
sbirro
said again, a bite of aggression in his voice. “Someone must have seen something. This man's been knifed, and not more than a few moments ago, I'd say—some bastard in this room must have seen who did it!”

Suddenly aware, with a cold thrill of fear that slid from the back of his throat down into his belly, that his freshly split lip, grazed cheek, blackened eye, and bloodstained hand might well appear suspicious, Carlo began to edge slowly backward, aiming to slide through the crowd toward the steps to the
sottosuolo.
He would, he thought, go back down into the tunnel and wait, a few yards in, in the darkness, until the
sbirri
had left.

He caught Marco's eye again.

There passed between the two young men a wave of almost palpable antagonism. Carlo heard again in his head the conversation that had followed their final coupling; remembered Marco's whining entreaty as he had sulkily refastened his breeches, wiping his eyes and nose with the back of his hand.
“But from everything you said—right from the start—I was sure that you felt more for me than just—”
Irritated, Carlo had held up both hands and interrupted what had surely been set to become an embarrassingly trite outpouring. “
For
God's sake, Marco,”
he had said
, “what did you think? That I was in love with you or something? Proficient in a number of…useful methods of entertainment you may well be, but, well, Marco, I do have standards.”

And then…then he had been foolish enough to boast of his plans a few hours ago, down at the dockside.

Marco stared at him across Cicciano's body for several seconds, then, turning away, he took a step toward the nearest
sbirro
and said, in a clear and carrying voice, pointing back toward Carlo, “That man over there. The one with the black eye and the thick lip. The one with blood on his hands. You might ask him about it.”

Modesto sounds angry. I stand, quite unable to move outside Luca's
sala
door, looking at Serafina and listening to my manservant's tirade. Of Luca, I can hear nothing at all. Serafina's mouth has opened and she is fiddling unthinkingly with her lower lip.

“You
might
think that whores are scum, Signore,” Modesto is saying. “Well. Some of them are—I've met a fair number of them. But
she'
s not.”

Scum. Flotsam. Fragments of stinking rubbish lying on the surface of stagnant water. Is this what I've been all this time? Is this what Luca thinks I am?

“You might want to think for a moment or two about your elder son before you condemn the Signora too harshly.”

Oh my God.

How has he dared to say such a thing? I wait for the explosion—for Luca to shout at him and order his immediate departure, but there is only a horribly empty pause. Serafina reaches for my hand.

And then at last I hear Luca's voice. He says, “I do love her.”

I don't seem to be able to move.

Modesto says, his voice emphatic, “Then tell her so, Signore. Please. Before you lose her. She needs you. She really needs you. Now. Because, after what has happened this evening, I am…” He hesitates. “I am going to be leaving Napoli, straight away, before they catch up with me, and—”

I do not hear the end of his sentence. I don't care whether they all realize that I have been blatantly eavesdropping. I crash open the door to the
sala
with my heart thumping in my ears, and my voice comes out as something near a shriek as I say, “Leave? Why? When? Modesto, you can't!”

All three turn and stare at me.

Luca has a cut above his eyebrow and his lip is split and bleeding. Modesto's face is smeared with blood, his shirt is torn and bloodstained. Neither man is wearing a doublet. Gianni, his gaze flicking from one to the other, seems entirely bewildered.

“Leaving Napoli?” I say.

Modesto pushes his hand through his hair and nods.

“But why?” My voice cracks.

“Did you hear what I said just now?” Modesto asks—not crossly, but because he wants to know.

I nod.

He says, “Well. I'm pretty certain I did kill that bastard. If I stay, and they find out that I'm responsible for his death, then there's little doubt that I'll hang. Or burn. So I need to get out of Napoli—probably tonight.”

I look from Modesto to Luca and back.

I'm not sure I can remember how to breathe.

Modesto is looking at Luca. “Just talk to her, Signore,” he says quietly, then adds, to me, “I'll be downstairs. I promise I'll not go anywhere without telling you.” He lowers his voice still more and says, “Did I leave that leather bag in your room? With your books in it?”

I nod.

He puffs out relief. “Thank God for that. I wasn't sure what I'd done with them. Keep them safe. They are your bloody insurance, Signora, and don't you forget it.” He doesn't give me time to tell him that I've burned most of the books, but, turning away, he nods at Gianni and Serafina and jerks his head toward the door, inviting the two of them to follow him out. All three leave the room, leaving Luca and me together.

Several heavy seconds pass. I can feel my pulse in the cut on my face. I have no idea what to say, and I can see Luca is struggling too. Then we both speak at once, each almost instantly stumbling into a clumsy apology for interrupting the other. Another silence, and then Luca says, “I'm so sorry.”

“What for?”

His gaze moves from me to the floor, to the ceiling, to the fireplace and then back to my face again. For a second he reminds me forcibly of Gianni that first night, staring around my bedchamber in an agony of embarrassment and a clotted sob rises thickly in my throat.

Luca says, “I'm sorry for what Carlo did. For what
I'
ve done. For being small-minded and narrow and not understanding what—”

I interrupt him. “There's a lot not to understand.”

He smiles then—a tight, uncomfortable smile that doesn't reach his eyes. “Your servant says I should be careful not to lose you.”

“Do you agree with him?”

He does not answer directly. He says, “Can you forgive me?”

“
Me
forgive
you
?” His question surprises me. “For what?”

“For having failed as a father. For having raised a son who could have done something so…so abhorrent. To your children.”

I hesitate, then ask the question to which I'm not sure I want a reply. “Is what he did more abhorrent then, than my being a whore?”

Luca pulls in a trembling breath, and his words slide out through the sigh of its release. “Before today, I'm not sure how I would have answered that question. But now…”

I see he has tears in his eyes.

“Now,” he says, “the answer is easy…but I can hardly bear to give it.”

“You are not your son, Luca.”

“But I raised him!” Luca's face is anguished.

“Aren't we all of us comprised of much more than just our raising?”

Luca says nothing.

“I was raised well. By a mother who loved me,” I say. “She truly loved me and she did her best for me, but she was a fragile thing—she had neither the strength nor the courage to defend me from my father; his drunkenness ruled both our lives for years. It killed her in the end, after which I was the sole target for the beatings and the ranting insults and…” I stop. Feeling sick, I manage to admit it. “It was only by chance that he managed to avoid siring upon me his own grandchild.”

Luca's jaw drops.

“I ran away from him when I was seventeen. I went to Ferrara and…after nearly a week of miserable starvation and fearful sleepless nights curled in doorways, I was presented with a way of making enough money to live on. Not an easy way, not a pleasant way, and certainly not the way I would have chosen, had I been offered an alternative, but I didn't feel that I had a choice. It was at least something I seemed to be able to do, and something I could sustain.” I pause and then add, “I just wanted to survive.”

Luca is staring at me, his eyes now huge and glittering.

I say, “My mother raised me with tenderness. She wanted to see me safely married—to someone who would treat me with more care than she had ever known. She taught me to read and write, and to pray, and to deal with those around me with compassion and tolerance. But
circumstances
prevented the seeds of those lessons from bearing much fruit—ale-stinking, iron-fisted circumstances that ploughed in between me and my mother's wishes, like a runaway bull.” My voice cracks then, as I say, “If you're drowning, Luca, you grab at whatever floating branch comes near you, however filthy and diseased and cracked it might be—you just don't have time to wait for the nicely polished, carefully cleaned one to come bobbing past.”

I put my face in my hands.

Luca crosses to where I am standing and puts his arms around me. His body is hot and damp; his shirt smells of woodsmoke and blood and the acrid tang of fear-tainted sweat. My arms slide around him and, grabbing fistfuls of linen, I cling to him, pressing myself against him. One of his hands cups the back of my head and he holds it in close to his shoulder; I can hardly breathe, my face is buried in Luca's shirt, the heat of his fingers is in my hair and his arm lies heavy around my back. And then I pull back and our eyes meet, and, for the first time, we look at each other in total truth.

There is nothing left to hide.

He bends his head, seeking my mouth with his. I tilt my head back and he kisses me; speaking and kissing at the same time, he murmurs into my mouth incoherent, salt-wet declarations of love. His poor split lip tastes of blood and must be painful, but still he kisses me. One of his hands holds the unhurt side of my face, the other he pushes up into my hair. We kiss and kiss: two parched desert travelers newly come to an oasis. I silently bless Modesto for insisting that I should never lie with my patrons
gratis
. Thanks to him, I've never bedded a man without money changing hands. Ever. Luca will be my first. I am a virgin again.

***

Luca takes his mouth from mine, slowly, slowly, drawing away from me, as though the normal division of time into seconds has lost pace and each is taking five times as long as usual to run its course. Holding me by the shoulders for a moment, he looks into my face, then hugs me close again. He is lover, brother, father, friend; he is everything I have longed for him to be from that first moment at San Domenico—and he is all those things despite my terrible truths. My tears slide between my face and Luca's shirt, hot, wet and salt-slick.

“Don't cry,” he says into my hair. “Please,
cara
, don't cry.”

I turn up my face toward his and smile. He returns it—wincing as his lip cracks open again. Bunching up a handful of his shirt, he wipes along below my eyes, first one side, then the other.

“Enough tears now, I think,” he says, stroking my hair. “For ourselves, at any rate.” He pauses; his smile fades and his face darkens as he adds, “We have Carlo to cry about now.”