Courtesan's Lover (15 page)

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—”

“That squalid old pigsty? What on earth were you doing in a place like that?” Michele raised an eyebrow and said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on Francesca's nipples.

Francesca noticed the direction of his gaze and turned her shoulders away from him. She said, “Oh, Michele, no—don't even think about starting again. I'm tired, my mouth is all stretched and sore, and my poor
tette
already feel as if they've been attacked by a particularly overzealous baker.”

“Baker?”

“Dough.” Francesca mimed kneading, then cupped her hands protectively around her breasts and smiled at him. “Poor things. They're all bruised.” She turned back toward him and stroked his cheek with her hand. “And anyway,
caro,
I doubt you have money enough for a second attempt so soon.”

Michele's smile vanished. He reached across and caught Francesca's wrist, twisted her arm around so that she gasped, overbalanced, and fell backward, back onto the pillows. Kneeling up, he leaned over her and took her other wrist, pressing both her hands back onto the bed. “Listen,” he said softly. “If I wanted a ‘second attempt,' I'd have one, bitch
,
whatever the expense. Do you understand?”

“Get off me, Michele,” Francesca breathed.

“When I'm ready.” Still holding her arms down, Michele bent and took one of her nipples into his mouth.

“Get off!” she said through clenched teeth. He could feel her wrists twisting under his hands, and she squirmed around, trying to kick him. He sucked hard, once, feeling the soft flesh press up onto the roof of his mouth, and then, almost in a single movement, he let go of her arms, moved back from her, stood, and reached toward where his shirt lay across a small carved chair.

“Get out of my house, Michele!” Francesca's voice was no more than a hiss. She had a hand pressed against her breast.

“Don't worry,
cara,
I'm going. I'll see you on Thursday,” he said, pulling on his doublet.

“I don't know that I want to see you again that soon now,” Francesca said, glaring at him.

“Maybe not, but you will be happy enough to see my money, I'm sure.”

“I'm thinking of raising my prices.”

Michele grinned. Stamping his heel down into his second boot, he said, “Let me know how much I owe you next time,” snatched up his coat from the cross-framed chair, and strode across the room.

He turned at the door to see Francesca sprawled on her stomach across the bed, snatching up one of her shoes from the floor. She scrambled up to sitting and flung the shoe hard at him. Michele raised an arm to ward off the blow; the shoe caught him across the wrist and fell to the ground. He bent to pick it up.

“I'll bring this back on Thursday,” he said. He waved the shoe at Francesca.

“Vaffanculo
!”

Michele blew her a kiss as he pushed past the eunuch, who was on his feet just outside the bedchamber door. He ran down the stairs and made his own way out into the street, throwing the shoe up into the air and catching it as he walked.

He was almost home before he remembered the knife.

“It came from your father this morning, Signore.”

Michele pulled the front door shut and took the letter from his servant. The shadows of both men slid up the walls of his cramped entrance hall as the single candle flame shivered in the resultant draught.

Michele frowned at the paper and then glanced across to see his servant smothering a yawn; for a moment, the boy's face lengthened and distorted, his eyes watering. He blinked a few times and rubbed his face surreptitiously with his fingers, looking suddenly much younger than his twenty-odd years.

Michele flapped a hand by way of dismissal; Franco bowed briefly and left the room, rubbing his eyes again. Cracking the seal, Michele opened the letter and held it up to the candlelight. His eyes flicked across the contents, then he swore, screwed the paper into a tight ball and threw it across the hallway. “
Cazzo!
Same pile of
merda
as the last one,” he muttered. “And the one before and the one before that. When is the bloody man going to stop asking?”

He pulled off his boots and kicked them irritably to one side of the room, flung his coat across a small chair, and took the stairs three at a time on his way up to his bedchamber.

A fire had been lit; its flickering flames distorted the black shadows of the crimson-hung bed, the wall hangings and two large Moorish shields which hung one on each side of the window.

“More than twenty years,” Michele said aloud as he unfastened the knot at the neck of his doublet. He was breathing fast, as though he had been running. “Might he not—even unwillingly, the blinkered bastard!—have resigned himself to the fact that his younger son has never,
ever
had one single fucking
iota
of interest in the damned
priesthood
!” He smacked hard at the carved wooden bedpost with the flat of his palm. His hand stung.

***

“Why were you not at Mass this morning, Michele?” His father's face is dark with anger and Michele can see the big hands starting to curl into fists. “It was noticed, Michele, it was noticed. Monsignor Rossi was expecting you—asked me if you were unwell…”

Michele
shrugs. He will not tell his father the truth—that every time he steps into a church now, the prospect of ordination rises up like a spectre from the dust of the floor of the nave; it seeps from the shadows of the transept, constricting his breathing and deafening him as it wraps itself silently around his head like the mercy hood of an executioner. Even the smell of candle-wax has now begun to make him feel nauseous simply by association.

And
then
—
an image of the baker's daughter. On her back, bent-kneed, she smiles, hitching flour-whitened skirts up into a bolster around her waist with eager fingers, framing her invitation to him. Her breasts push forward. Her mouth is wet and her eyes promise uninhibited entertainment. Michele's hands slide up the insides of her thighs, his fingers dark against the creamy skin. Her legs crook wide.

His
cock
swells
as
he
remembers
.

“I said why? Michele?” His father will not be ignored.

“I…I was tired.” He stares at the ground, unable to think of a better reply. The baker's daughter's nipples look like cherries and they taste of yeast, and the black threat of celibacy looms as an infinite, shrivelling incarceration in a mold-stained cell.

“We all have our place in life, Michele. At some point we must all shoulder the responsibilities meted out to us by God. And God has called you most specifically. A second son's privilege, Michele. We cannot afford to defer responsibility because of…of something as pitiful as fatigue. Antonio has already begun to—”

At
the
mention
of
his
elder
brother, Michele stops listening entirely. The soft skin on the baker's daughter's thighs is slick with sweat as she wraps her legs around his waist and her roughened heels catch on his back. He no longer hears his father.

***

As Michele threw his doublet down across the chest at the foot of his bed, a branch shifted in the fireplace and collapsed, throwing a walnut-sized knot of burning wood out onto the rug. Reaching forward, he caught it between thumb and forefinger and flipped it back into the grate. He wiped his fingers on his breeches and straightened, crossed the room, and picked up a dark-red glass decanter from where it stood on the deep window ledge. Held it up to the firelight to see how full it was. Pouring the contents into a large goblet, he raised it to his lips, emptied the glass without taking a breath, then refilled the glass.

“A second son's privilege,” he said softly.

Suddenly aware that his bladder was full, he opened the door to the tiny privy that jutted out from the farthest corner of his bedchamber and aimed down through the hole in the seat; the liquid pattered softly into the ash pile below.

***

Antonio
frowns
at
the
papers
laid
out
in
front
of
him
and
then
gazes
up
at
his
father, rigid-backed with respectful attention. Michele sits on the floor in front of the fire, scratching behind the ears of a mangy wolfhound and trying to ignore his sister.

“Will you play something with me, Michele?”

He
shakes
his
head, trying to hear what his father and Antonio are discussing. He has not been invited to join them at the table.

Caterina
pulls
at
his
sleeve. “Will you play
Zara
, or Pluck the Owl? Please?”

“I will need you to come with me on the twenty-seventh, Antonio, because it's really time that you met Signor da Maiano and his daughter. He was most insistent about progressing the betrothal. It is about time you—”

“Please, Micco…”

Michele's voice comes out much louder than he had intended. He smacks her hand away from his arm and, in his irritation, he forgets for a moment that his father is in the room. “Oh—
stai zitto
, Caterina! Leave me alone! You know I hate bloody ‘Fuck the Owl'!”

Caterina
gasps
at
his
profanity
and
his
father
turns
around. He says coldly, “Go to your room, Michele, if you cannot behave like a civilized human being. Caterina, go and find your mother.”

The
little
girl
begins
to
cry,
and
Michele
walks
past
her
and
leaves
the
sala without a word. The dog scrambles to its feet and follows him, its nails click-clicking on the wooden floor.

***

Michele stretched, then stripped off breeches, hose, and shirt and threw them, too, across the chest at the end of his bed. He sat on the edge of his mattress; stared at the fat little flames now licking lazily around the embers; rubbed without enthusiasm or interest at his crotch. The heat pushed out from the fireplace against his feet and shins. His eyelids were stiff and his mouth felt dry and sour.

He must, he presumed, have been a consistently deep source of disappointment to his father since early childhood. Countless scoldings, numberless beatings, an almost constant atmosphere of thunderous disapproval—
when, when,
when
, Michele? When are you ever—ever—going to show any sign of fulfilling family expectations? Think about Antonio…Antonio tackles his adult responsibilities with admirable application, and…

Michele turned away from the fire, swung his legs onto the bed, and lay back on his pillows. Smug bastard, Antonio—not even the imagination to commit the most unimpressive minor indiscretion
.
Michele pictured his brother—a head shorter than he, dark, softly fleshy—and tried to imagine something he had never seen: Antonio intoxicated. A soft puff of a laugh pushed its way down his nose. He tried to picture Antonio's ample buttocks bouncing above a splay-limbed whore; attempted to see in his mind his brother's normally humorless face cracked wide with laughter at a vulgar joke. And then, despite his anger, Michele grinned as he thought of an unlikely scenario: Antonio in the master's cabin on the
, trying to engage the taciturn
in polite conversation, innocently unaware of the beady little sailor's…
unorthodox
method of earning his gold.
Charming
ship, Signore, charming. Fast, I imagine? Yes, I should think it keeps you one step ahead of many of the other merchants. Have you done well this year, Signore? Tell me—exactly what is it you trade in?
Michele laughed aloud at the thought.

He lay awake for an hour or more, curled on his side, blankets hunched over his shoulders, watching the fire slowly die, with gritty eyes that, despite their heavy lassitude, refused to close. He finally slid into sleep as the first soft line of pinkish light appeared along the horizon, Francesca's dark-red silk shoe held loosely in the fingers of one hand.