Courtesan's Lover (36 page)

Luca has not been up to this room, or indeed spoken a word to me since we arrived here nearly an hour ago. He was silent all the way back from San Tommaso. He carried me all the way here—and it must be at least half a mile—but he didn't speak to me.

Gianni and Modesto carried the girls, who were, not surprisingly, exhausted and confused and tearful. Before we left, Gianni told me where he had found them. I can hardly believe it. If Gianni hadn't been there…My poor darling little girls—left alone in the dark like that, while Luca and I were…no, no, I can't bear to think about it. And it's all my fault—oh, God, it's all my fault! I might have dressed like a duchess and feasted like a princess and been fêted like a queen for years, but it's all just a pile of shit. Behind all the tawdry trappings, I have to face the fact…that I'm nothing but a whore. I earn my
scudi
on my back. Strip me of my finery and I am no different from any street
puttana
. And my poor Beata and Bella are no more than two little whore's bastards, innocent hangers-on, who have today been lucky to escape paying the price for the depravity of their mother's life.

I don't deserve to be a mother.

I look at where they are sleeping, lying curled together on a mattress beneath a couple of woollen blankets; their eyes are tight shut, mouths slightly open. Beata's thumb has fallen from where she has been sucking it, and a glistening line of spittle has slid down her chin. Their sweet faces are, thank God, untroubled, innocent, ultimately undamaged. They're safe. No thanks to me. I've lived for years in a vicious world amongst vicious people fueled with vicious intentions, and my children have truly been fortunate to survive in it unscathed for so long.

They deserve a better mother.

And Luca deserves a better wife. I knew in my heart it would never happen. He's disgusted by me now, and I cannot blame him. How could I? I would be disgusted by me, if I were him.

I walk back and forth across this little bedchamber in which I have been left to rest. My legs and belly are still aching, but I can't sit still. Think, Francesca. Try to think. Try to think about something else, or you'll run mad. About what? The room. Look at the room. I'm not sure, but I think this room—a small one on the second floor, up under the eaves—might belong to Gianni. It's a pretty place, although it's only sparsely furnished; the walls are painted a warm crimson. There is only a narrow bed, a huge carved chest, and a table, on which stands a delicate casket, made of some sort of gilded wood. It's beautiful—I wonder if it perhaps belonged to Gianni's mother.

Luca's wife.

No—not that. Don't think about that.

There are hangings at the window—faded and obviously quite old, but they must once have been lovely.

Oh, stop it! This is just
stupid
! Why do I
care
? Why am I even noticing the furnishings in this room, when I feel as though the very walls have already fallen in upon me and are slowly smothering me? I am trapped beneath the rubble of the shattered future Luca and I might have had together, unable to move, unable to breathe, not knowing whether Luca will ever even
want
to stretch out a hand to try to pull me free, let alone be
able
to do it.

Though…if everything were indeed totally hopeless…would Luca have brought us here? If he truly despises me now, would he not have just left me with Modesto in the Via San Tommaso? This morning, he wanted to marry me.

Oh, God, I don't know—I simply don't know what to think.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, fold my arms up and over my head, and put my head between my knees, trying to stifle down the scream I can feel building up in my chest.

A knock at the door. My heart jolts. I sit up.

“Signora?” Modesto leans into the room, one hand on the door jamb. He is holding a candle in the other. His eyes are quite black in the candlelight. He smiles. “I'm leaving in a moment. I just wondered how you were, Signora.”

I shrug.

“The twins still asleep?”

I nod. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for helping with them. Helping to find them.”

Modesto nods in acknowledgment of this. Then adds, “Do you want anything before I go?”

I want to scream at him. Yes! Of course I do! I want Luca. I want him to be here in this room, with his arms around me, telling me that he doesn't care about any of this—assuring me that this appalling revelation of my lurid history is of no importance to him. I want him still to want to marry me. I want my face not to be hurting so very much, and my legs and belly not to ache. I want not to have to think about what Michele did. I want the whole of the past few hours not to have happened. But…but I suppose I'll settle for a glass of wine.

Modesto smiles when I ask him. He is absent a few moments, then returns with a pewter cup and an uncorked bottle of red wine. He pours out a generous measure and hands me the cup.

“There you are, Signora. Look, I have to go. I'll come and see you in the morning.”

We stand without speaking for a moment, and then Modesto sighs and shakes his head; he drops something that he is carrying, crosses the room, and hugs me. He holds me very tightly in his big arms, smelling reassuringly familiar—of warm leather, linen, and sweat—and as he holds me, a hollow place opens up inside my chest: a chill empty sphere of homesickness. I cling to him. With a soft splatter, most of the contents of my cup, still in my hand, spills onto the floorboards.

Pulling back from Modesto, I stare down at what I have done. He drags a large linen kerchief from his breeches pocket and crouches down to mop up the dark puddle.

“You were never a very tidy drinker,” he says with a wry grin. He refills the cup and hands it back to me. I suddenly wish with all my heart that he could stay here with me tonight. Curl up in my bed with me and hold me until I fall asleep. But before I can even finish the thought, he has reached out, squeezed my hand, and left the room.

The front door bangs a moment later.

I sit down on the edge of the bed with the cup held in both hands, staring down into the dark-red liquid.

I can hear voices from the floor below: a deep rumble that I imagine must be Luca and Gianni.

Opening the door to the bedchamber a little wider, I stand just outside the room, straining to hear what is being said downstairs. Gianni's words are hard to distinguish, but Luca's deeper voice carries easily. My heart starts thudding up in my throat.

“…actually
admitted
that was what he was planning to do?” Luca says.

Gianni's reply is inaudible.

“But how did you know where he was?”

An indistinguishable murmur.

“…left him down there?”

More from Gianni that I cannot hear.

“I have to go and see if I can find him. You stay here with Francesca and the children.”

The door bursts open and Luca strides out, shrugging his arms down into his doublet sleeves as he goes. He glances up—and sees me standing there. For a brief moment he stops and stares. His mouth opens a little. Even from here I can see that he is holding his breath. I feel as though I have been turned to stone. I cannot move at all. I can't even blink. Neither, it seems, can Luca. We stare at each other for endless seconds, and then Luca drags his gaze away from my face as though it hurts to do so, rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand. He shakes his head and winces, and then runs downstairs and leaves the house through the front door, banging it shut behind him.

I stare down at where Luca was just standing. My longing for him feels like a fist in my chest: tight, hard, punched through from the outside, but, somewhat to my surprise, after all my recent tears, I find that I no longer seem to be able to cry.

Gianni glances upward and sees me. Dear God, he looks like his father.

“Come down here, if you'd like to,” he says stiffly.

I do not reply but, after glancing back into the bedchamber to see that the girls are still sleeping, I walk down the short flight of stairs, toward where Gianni is standing. He goes back into the
sala
, and when I enter the room, he is standing with his back toward the fireplace, though there is nothing in it at present but ash.

There is a long pause. I can think of nothing to say to him and, as he too remains silent, I can only imagine that he is experiencing a similar problem. I pull in a long breath like a wobbly sigh, and then let it out again.

Gianni has the corner of his thumbnail in his mouth. He bites at it for a moment or two and then finally he speaks around his thumb. He says, “I'm sorry.”

“What do you mean?”

He takes his hand away from his face. “I'm sorry for what I said. I gave away your secrets. You asked me not to.”

“It's not your fault,” I say. “You didn't mean to.”

He shrugs. “But I'm sorry, anyway.”

I swallow and say, “Thank you,” almost inaudibly. And then, dreading the answer, I say, “Has he said anything?”

Gianni raises an eyebrow and when he speaks, his voice sounds hard. “Did you really expect him to? He's just found out that the first woman he's taken an interest in since my mother died is not the sweet little thing he had presumed her to be, but has in fact been fucking everything that moves for years. Including his younger son. He's also just discovered for certain, after suspecting it for a long, long time, that his elder son is an amoral little shit. What do you think he's going to say? Especially to me.”

Tears sting. I have no idea how to answer.

“Why did you have to interfere in his life?” Gianni says. “Wasn't it enough for you, what you had before? You seemed happy enough, the day that I…” He trails off, reddening, and drops his gaze to his boots. He starts chewing his thumbnail again. “I'm sorry,” he mutters around his thumb a few seconds later. “I'm sorry—I shouldn't have said all that.”

“Don't apologize. I deserve everything you've said. It's all true.” I sit down on one of the folding chairs and run my fingers along the grain of the wood of the table. A cat appears from the shadows. He pushes up against my skirts, purring, and stretches his head toward my hand, clearly yearning to be stroked. Reaching down, I scratch between his ears with the tips of my fingers; his tail lifts and sways sinuously, and the purring intensifies.

“No,” Gianni says. “I
am
sorry.”

“Look, I wasn't expecting to feel the way I do about your father, Gianni. It was as much of a surprise to me as to anyone.”

Gianni says nothing. He looks very young.

I say, “I agree that I must have seemed happy enough, the day that you came to see me; I think that perhaps I was, in a way. But then you made me see things differently—”

He sucks in a shocked breath. “So it's all
my
fault?”

“No! No—that's not what I meant!”

“Then what?”

I hesitate, and then say, “The life of a courtesan is one of glitter and glamour and exhilarating excitement—but that's like a…like a sparkling crust over a swamp. Under the crust it's different. It's dark and dirty and dangerous. It's like an endless rush toward the inevitable wreck of your life, in a runaway cart, unable to stop however clearly you see the dangers around you.”

Gianni watches me silently.

“You slowed the cart for a moment, Gianni, that day you came to me in the Via San Tommaso. Slowed it enough to make me start thinking about what I really wanted. And then I met your father, and he tipped it over entirely. Just before it reached the cliff edge.”

There is a long pause, and then Gianni says, “I suppose it would be hard to get back into it again after that.”

I nod.

The two of us sit in silence for a while now, and then Gianni clears his throat. “I'm sorry for what Cicciano did to you.”

He has hunched his shoulders again, and his arms are folded tight across his chest. The quick-flicked glance he now makes down toward my breasts, and the uncomfortable way he swallows, makes it clear to me that Gianni has guessed just what revenge Michele chose to take upon his traitorous whore. Gianni looks at me as he did that night when he discovered my scar—with a sort of anguished compassion, as though he is ashamed of the brutality I have experienced at the hands of others of his sex; as though he feels somehow responsible and wishes he could find a way to atone for it.

I wonder if his father will ever be able to see it as he does.

A pallid puddle of light from the lantern lay across a few feet of the tufa rock, bobbing softly in a faint draught. Carlo sat on the ground for some moments after Gianni and the children had left the tunnel, staring at the light, feeling along his split lip with the tip of his tongue. It was swollen and salty. He touched it gingerly with a finger and winced.

He had to get out. Whatever he had said just now, Gianni might even at this moment be alerting the
sbirri
, and should that be the case, Carlo was in little doubt that his life would be in danger. If they picked him up…if he was tried and found guilty…he knew that there was a fair chance he would hang. Or burn. He shivered. He had to leave Napoli. Even if Gianni said nothing, it would probably only be a matter of time. It was going to leak out, somehow—he had told that whining little Marco what he was planning to do, when Marco had seen him with the brats near the waterfront, for one thing. A knot of fear tightened, high in his chest.

It took him some moments to get to his feet; the strength of Gianni's fists had been a clear indication of his brother's opinions. Carlo wished now that he had never taken the children. It had been a stupid idea. Pointless. Ill thought out. It had seemed safer than the more obvious demanding of a ransom, like
had said.

He swallowed. The air in the tunnel was thick and stagnant; he needed to get out. Walking to the tunnel entrance, he lifted the lantern to head height and looked out into the cavern. To his left was the central tunnel that led down to Posilippo—he could go back down there now, as he had been planning to do before, with the children in tow, and signal to the
, which was still anchored offshore.
would certainly take him onboard and ferry him to some safe port. But, he reasoned with himself, what if he could not be seen from onboard? He did not want to be found on the hillside in broad daylight. Like a sitting target. He would probably do better to get back up into the city. Easier to lose himself there, and escape undetected overland.

Picking his way over the rubble-strewn floor, holding the lantern up high, Carlo started across toward the tunnel entrance on the far side of the cavern.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered to himself as he walked. “Get a move on.” His gaze fixed upon the tunnel entrance, he increased his speed.

And tripped.

Sprawling full length upon the rocky floor with a grunt, he dropped the lantern, which rolled away from him and went out.

The darkness was absolute.

Carlo swore. His pulse raced, thudding in his ears and making him feel sick. He could see nothing at all. Nothing. He lifted his hand; held it a few inches before his face; waved it back and forth. Nothing. Frantically trying to remember in which direction the tunnel entrance had been, he got to his feet and began to shuffle slowly, with his arms stretched out in front of him, toward where he prayed his way out of the cavern would be. Once in the tunnel, he knew it was a straightforward—if lengthy—route back to the tavern.

He stumbled again and fell onto his knees. Swore again.

The floor of the cave was rough and littered with tufa rubble. Crawling now, Carlo inched a painful way across rough rock projections and sharp-edged pebbles, catching knees, shins, and palms at every step. Panic was bubbling up in his throat, and he found himself speaking aloud into the blackness: a chattering monologue of muttered attempts at self-encouragement.

It ought to be no more than twenty yards to the tunnel entrance. Terrified that, in his disorientation, he might have set off in the wrong direction, Carlo fumbled with searching fingers across the ground beneath him, his eyes stretched pointlessly wide in the utter darkness.

Endless minutes passed.

The cave, it seemed, was far bigger than he had presumed.

Then he reached a wall.

He groped upward and stood, pressing his body up against the rock, breathing heavily, leaning his face against the cold, mold-smelling stone. It was not the tunnel entrance but it was better—immeasurably better—than the awful nothingness of the open cavern. Taking a few creeping steps toward where he prayed the tunnel would be, he tripped yet again, scraping the side of his face and grazing his knuckles as he fell. He crouched back onto all fours, feeling along the ground where the wall met the floor.

Dust. Grit. Large blocks of tufa. Smaller, angular chips.

And then something quite different.

He fingered it curiously.

A conical pile of stones, like a little cairn.

For a moment Carlo sat on his heels and wondered, then he remembered Michele, crouching down at the tunnel mouth, grinning at him and piling pebbles. Remembered his own irritable question:

“What in hell's name are you doing, Cicciano?”

“I want to be quite certain
,
”
his friend had said, “
of
finding
my
way
out…”

Carlo bent down and, cupping both hands around the cairn, he kissed the topmost stone. Several of the pebbles dislodged and clattered down onto the floor. A short sob caught in his throat as he straightened, stood again, and reached out with waving arms. One hand caught the wall where it folded around into the tunnel entrance. Cursing, and tucking the banged wrist under the other armpit for a moment, he then pressed his hands against the two sides of the entranceway and waited for his painfully leaping heartbeat to settle enough to start the long walk back up to the surface.