The Girl With the Painted Face (54 page)

‘I cut the dog. Cut its leg.’

Everyone in the room draws in a shocked breath. Cosima says, ‘No!’

Beppe begins to rise to his feet, but Sofia grabs his wrist and he sits back down without a word.

‘Once I’d done it, I let the dog out of the wagon and shooed it over towards the kitchen entrance of the castle. There were people there. I saw someone take hold of it and carry it indoors, then I went back to the banqueting hall and told you the animal had been injured.’

Memories of that evening, sharp as if they had happened an hour since, flood into Sofia’s mind and her pulse races.

‘Moments later,’ Angelo says now, ‘I saw da Correggio get up with Sofia’s hand in his. I knew what was going to happen. I could have stopped it but I needed a dose so badly by then that I knew I wouldn’t do anything that might jeopardize the deal.’

He stops, and breathes deeply for a few seconds.

‘He and Sofia left the room, and before long the rest of us were all talking about going off up to the chambers we had been given, and sleeping. My mind was filled with pictures of what must be happening between Sofia and Sebastiano. Beppe came back in with the dog in his arms and asked where Sofia was. I didn’t say – and nobody else knew. He left the room again straight away.’

Remembering her struggles with Correggio in his darkened study, Sofia shivers, feeling nauseous.

‘Then, a few moments later, just as we were leaving the banqueting room, Beppe came racing in saying that Sebastiano had gone for Sofia and that he – Beppe – had hit him and all but knocked him out. I panicked, terrified that I was not going to get the laudanum I had been promised. Sebastiano had not had his time with Sofia – and on top of this, he had been attacked by one of the troupe. I couldn’t imagine he would agree to give it to me.’ He winces. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have gone anywhere near him, but – oh God! – I wanted that dose so badly by then, it was as though there was someone just behind me, goading me into doing it. Beppe was trying to get everyone out and I should have just gone too. But I didn’t.’

He draws in a long breath and sighs it out again slowly.

‘I ran off towards where Beppe said it had happened, and found the study with little difficulty. Sebastiano was there, just like Beppe had said, still sprawled on the floor, swearing foully and clutching his face. His nose was bleeding. I confronted him. “I’ve kept to my side of the bargain,” I said. “It’s not my fault things went wrong. You owe me what you promised. I’ll help you upstairs, if that’s where it is.” He laughed at me. Sitting there in the dust on the floor, he laughed at me and said I was… I was… said I was pathetic. Said I couldn’t even manage a simple pimping job without cocking it up, and that he wouldn’t ever deal with me again.’

There are tears in Angelo’s eyes now and his voice is shaking.

‘He stood up, steadying himself against the bedpost, still laughing, then bent to pick up his doublet, which was on the floor. And… I hit him. I did it without thinking. I was so angry with him, and so desperate. I picked up an iron candlestick from the table and swung it around and hit him with it. It caught him on the back of the head and he went down. There was a row of bottles on the table – I pulled a cork and sniffed to make sure it was what I wanted, then grabbed what I could fit into my pockets… and ran.’

No one speaks for several minutes. The only sounds in the room are those from the softly crackling fire.

Angelo turns enormous eyes to Agostino. ‘You wanted the truth, and you have had it. So: when will you be informing the authorities?’

Agostino’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Sofia looks from him to Angelo; Angelo is staring at him, silently demanding an answer he cannot possibly want to hear.

No one speaks or moves.

Another log shifts and falls; this time a little knot of wood bounces out onto the hearth. Once again, it is Federico who reaches forward. Picking up the still burning fragment between finger and thumb, he flicks it back into the blaze.

Beppe draws in a breath. ‘We could hold a
congedo
,’ he says into the stifling silence.

Agostino’s head snaps around. ‘What? What did you say?’

‘A
congedo
.’ He pauses. ‘It’s a possible alternative course of action, if you don’t like the idea of handing a fellow actor over to the
podestà
. Which, even now, I don’t think
I
like very much at all.’

‘A
congedo
? But… but we’ve never had to do such a thing. I’ve never heard of one being done in my lifetime, and —’

‘Perhaps no one has deserved it in your lifetime.’

Agostino looks stricken. Cosima reaches across and takes his hand, and at her touch he seems to rally. He holds Beppe’s gaze for several seconds, then nods. ‘Yes, Beppe, you’re right. Though I’m not sure I know…’

‘I’ve heard it described.’Niccolò clears his throat. ‘I know what should happen.’ He looks grave. ‘There can be no going back once it has begun, though, so you must be very certain you want it to go ahead.’

Agostino breathes deeply three, four, five times, then nods. Turning to each troupe member in turn as he speaks, he says, ‘I think Beppe’s right. I cannot contemplate deliberately handing a fellow performer over to the authorities – whatever he has done.’

Remembering her terrible, fear-soaked hours in the locked room in Bologna, Sofia glances over to Angelo, imagining the thoughts that must be fighting themselves in his mind. His expression, however, is unreadable. In the flickering candlelight, she thinks, he looks like an exquisite statue.

‘Do you all agree with Beppe’s suggestion, that a
congedo
is an alternative?’

There is a murmur of agreement from everyone in the room. Sofia, however, says quietly to Beppe, ‘What is this? What does it mean?’

‘It’s for the best. Watch, and you’ll see.’

Agostino coughs, and seems to be on the point of speaking again, when Cosima stands and says, ‘Before we begin anything, perhaps we should eat. Our hosts have been kind enough to provide for us, and we are letting their good food go cold. They will think us ungrateful if we leave what they have provided.’

Everyone nods, without speaking. In silence, Cosima puts sliced meat, braised vegetables and torn quarters of bread onto plates and hands them out, one by one. The food, which had been hot on delivery, has cooled somewhat and congealed, but everyone in the room eats without comment. Only Angelo shakes his head as a plate is handed to him, and sits, wordlessly fiddling with the ring on his little finger, turning it around and around, pulling it up to the swell of the joint and pushing it back down again.

‘Very well,’ Agostino says a little while later, after the empty plates have been neatly stacked on one of the trays, and the cups that had contained ale have been put to one side. ‘It’s time. Niccolò, can you advise as to how we should best begin?’

‘It’s like the
scelta
ceremony in reverse,’ Niccolò says quietly, ‘only now the person accused must speak for himself. No one can speak on his behalf.’

The expression on Niccolò’s face is so grave and his eyes so dark and hollowed that Sofia fancies for a moment that it is Fosca who stands before her ready to do… whatever is about to be done. She watches as Niccolò leans in close to Agostino and mutters an inaudible explanation of how the ceremony should proceed and, as Agostino nods, images from her own
scelta
ceremony flood into her mind; she puts the corner of her thumb into her mouth and bites at a shred of skin; it tears as she pulls at it, and a small bead of blood swells.

‘I don’t think music really appropriate to the occasion. But we need something. Vico, will you find something to use as a drum?’ Agostino says.

Nodding, Vico crosses behind Federico and Giovanni Battista and picks up the small barrel which had contained their ale. He returns to sit beside Lidia and up-ends the barrel over his knees. ‘Pass the ladle over, will you?’ he mutters, and Cosima takes the wooden ladle from the vegetable bowl and hands it to him. He begins a slow and insistent beat with the handle of the ladle and with his fingertips, a soft pulse that rings out into the quiet of the big chamber. Sofia feels her own heartbeat quicken at the sound.

‘Angelo,’ Agostino says now. ‘Come and stand here by the fire.’

Without a word, Angelo moves to stand before Agostino and Cosima.

‘Angelo da Bagnacavallo, you have here been accused of a heinous and dreadful crime by two members of the troupe, and you have confirmed that accusation with your own words.’

‘I have.’

‘Do you stand by that confirmation, or do you wish to retract it?’

Angelo shakes his head. ‘I have no choice but to stand by it.’

Looking close to tears, Agostino says, ‘Are you ready… to take the consequences of having embarked upon a course of action incompatible with the life of a member of the Coraggiosi?’

‘I suppose I have to be. Yes. I am.’

The soft drumbeat quickens a pace.

‘I need to hear a declaration from you that you will set forth from here tonight with no malice, with no intent to bring disrepute upon the troupe, with no wish to cause harm to any member at any time in the future. Remember you are bound by the Tenure of the Road, as are we all.’

‘I so declare.’

Niccolò mutters something in Agostino’s ear, and he nods. ‘For should word reach us of any such defamation or harmful intent,’ he says, ‘the Tenure of the Road – shared by every member of every troupe upon the road – would be dissolved between us and we would feel obliged to alert the authorities immediately, laying before them all the facts as you have made clear this evening.’

Angelo swallows visibly. After a deep breath, he says, ‘I shall cause no harm to be brought upon the troupe.’

Vico’s drumbeat speeds up still further.

‘Then, Angelo da Bagnacavallo, despite the damage you have done to us and to others, I ask Genesius and Vitus to travel with you and to keep you safe, as a Brother of the Road.’ Agostino closes his eyes and clasps his hands. ‘Genesius and Vitus, keep our brother here safe from harm… but keep him too away from us. We do not wish to see him amongst us again.’

Niccolò whispers in Agostino’s ear again, and, opening his eyes once more, he nods, his face taut and miserable. ‘Angelo da Bagnacavallo,’ he says in a ringing voice, ‘take this handful of dust.’ And, reaching over to the outer edges of the hearth, he bends down and scrapes up a fistful of ash.

Angelo frowns slightly, as though unsure how to proceed, but he holds a hand, palm up, beneath the fist as Agostino allows the ash to trickle out, then he closes his fingers loosely over the little pile in his palm.

‘Mingle with that a pinch of the dust of the Coraggiosi.’ Agostino now has in his hand the small corked pot which Sofia last saw on the day of her
scelta
ceremony. He pulls the cork, puts finger and thumb into the neck of the pot and brings out a small pinch of dirt. Opening his fingers, Angelo allows Agostino to drop the dirt onto the pile in his palm.

‘Take with you now this fragment of the dust of the Tenure of the Road,’ Agostino says, and Sofia thinks his voice is now perilously near cracking. ‘It is time for you to go. You may be a road-dweller for the rest of your days or you may choose to renounce it and live within walls, but as from this moment, wherever you are, you are… you are no longer a member of the Coraggiosi.’

Angelo stares around at them all without speaking for several long seconds. Then he speaks, and his words fall like hard pebbles into the silence. ‘May I say something before I leave?’

Agostino darts a glance towards Niccolò, then nods.

Angelo, staring now at Beppe with deadened eyes, says in an expressionless voice, ‘I should have prevented your father’s death, Bianchi. I could have done it, but I chose not to. Papa discovered my friendship with you a few days after your father was arrested – one of his servants had told him – and he forbade me to see you again, or to have any contact with you.
It was an acquaintance that reflected particularly poorly upon the family’s social standing
, he said. He was angry – he shouted at me for hours. I was very much afraid of him. I had disappointed him in almost everything I’d done up until that point, and I knew that I was going to disappoint him most of all in the request I was saving up to make: the fact that I wanted to be an actor and I needed money from him to do so. Even at thirteen I knew it was all I wanted – an ambition first born out of our wild games together, I suppose. Papa, however, saw actors as little better than criminals. I knew that if I asked him to speak out for your father, it would reflect badly upon me and threaten my ambitions. So I stayed silent. I stayed silent and your father died a most terrible death, when he might have walked free.’

Beppe’s mouth is slightly open and he is breathing fast. Sofia’s gaze flicks from him to Angelo and back, her eyes wide, her lips dry and cold.

Angelo turns to Agostino. ‘I stayed silent at Franceschina, too, and Sofia nearly paid the price for that, as Beppe’s father had done before… because of me. So I spoke up for her in Bologna to try to… to try to smother the accusing voices in my head: the ever-present voices. Voices… that even the laudanum never fully manages to silence.’

And, crossing the room in a few long strides, he throws his handful of ash into the fire and wipes his hands, first one against the other, then both against the sides of his breeches. Snatching up one of the bags from the pile near the door, he stares at each member of the troupe in turn, then leaves the room without a word. The door bangs behind him and the echo of the noise hangs in the air like the rising curl of smoke after a cannon-shot. His footsteps ring out for a moment on the steps outside and then fade.

No one utters a sound or moves a muscle.

The silence is almost suffocating.

Then Lidia begins to sing: a soft lament, which raises the hairs on Sofia’s arms and neck. Vico picks up the ale barrel and taps out an accompaniment on its base with his fingers, humming a wordless harmony beneath Lidia’s haunting tune.