Courtesan's Lover (37 page)

Luca banged the front door shut behind him and stood on the step for a second, eyes closed, struggling to steady his breathing. Looking up at Francesca just now, he knew he had been perilously close to crying. It seemed, almost literally, unbearable. There she was, in his house, standing at the top of his stairway, exquisitely, astonishingly, unbelievably beautiful: so vulnerable…and so entirely unlike how he had always presumed a whore would look.

A whore.

She was a whore.

It was ripping him in two. Even after so short a time, the idea of life without her was appalling—her hesitancy at his proposal this afternoon had sent panic coursing through him—but, just at this moment, he had absolutely no notion of how he was ever going to reconcile himself to this discovery of Francesca's past life. He pictured her as she had been in Mergellina: her hair falling around her face, her beautiful mouth lipping down his belly. Holding his breath, he felt again her tongue on his skin.

He walked fast, away from the house, down toward the tavern by the docks.

She must have honed her skills over years, he thought bitterly as he walked. Had been paid to do so. Handsomely. She had, after all, earned enough—on her back—to own two houses and employ a handful of servants; enough to dress herself in silks and gemstones, enough to furnish her houses in a style that would not disgrace a nobleman. On her back. Fucking like a common trollop. The thought made him feel sick and, with a sudden swoop of furious, vertiginous lust, he kicked out at a small and rather shabby handcart that had been abandoned at the side of the street. The heel of his boot crashed into the painted side of the cart; it swung round away from the blow and tipped over with a clatter, sending a wooden bucket and half a dozen onions rolling across the cobbles. Horizontal now, the upper wheel rotated pathetically, creaking its protestations, but Luca paid it no heed and strode on, hands balled tight.

His rage was thick and acrid and hung about him like a fog.

And then he thought of Francesca's discovery of the disappearance of the children: her panic, her desperation to find them, and then her touchingly dignified ecstasy at their safe return. She was a devoted mother. The wrenching anger in his chest changed, and despair at the prospect of losing her lanced through him. His fists uncurled and he pushed the fingers of one hand up into his hair. He knew—quite clearly—that he loved her, but this knowledge was now unbearable. He had no idea how to love a whore.

She had had a terrible time today. He knew that. He thought through everything that had happened after their return from Mergellina. It had seemed to all of them, for hours, as though the children might be dead. Or worse. And then that bastard Cicciano…Even as he began to think about this, an idea pushed itself into the forefront of his mind. He had been sickened with shock on discovering what Cicciano had done, but now he found himself wondering whether that particular ordeal was perhaps less terrible for a whore than it would be for a virtuous woman. Francesca had said that she didn't care for Cicciano, and Luca believed her. But for years, so he understood, she had endured Cicciano's regular attentions—for a fee. Perhaps had even encouraged them. She had grown rich, had she not, bedding (amongst who knew how many others) a man she said she didn't even like, so could what had happened tonight be
so
much worse an experience than those regular encounters?

But then Luca pictured Francesca as he had seen her not more than a few hours before, crumpled and bleeding on the bare-mattressed bed in the house in the Via San Tommaso d'Aquino, and immediately felt lightheaded with shame. In that first shocked second he had thought her dead: how arrogant could a man be, to describe so dreadful an ordeal—even to himself in private—as in any way insignificant?

Both hands now laced in his hair, he gripped his skull, as though trying to prevent his chaotic thoughts from physically bursting out through the bone. He heard a long, guttural groan, and only seconds later realized that it had come from his own mouth.

Reaching the top of a dingy alleyway, he paused, breathing as heavily as though he had been running. At the far end of the street, there was a gap between the tight-packed buildings, and through it Luca could see a narrow strip of sea; points of light from the last of the sun were dancing on the very tops of the waves. Luca saw several people, apparently somewhat the worse for drink, leaving what he knew to be the tavern most often frequented by Carlo—the place where Gianni had said Carlo had entered the
sottosuolo
. The place where Carlo might be now.

Carlo.

He could hardly make himself think about what his elder son had done. On top of every other thing he had discovered today, this was the final drop of water and the jug was now fully overflowing. Pouring out and soaking everything around it. For a long moment, Luca stood staring at the tavern, feeling drained and despairing.

Then, sucking a long breath into a chest that felt as though it were heavily strapped, he walked toward where light and noise was spilling from the open tavern door, out onto the cobbled street.

***

It was only when Modesto had all but reached the Via Santa Lucia and a sharper breeze blew in from the sea, raising gooseflesh on his arms, that it occurred to him that he was no longer wearing his doublet. He thought back over where he might have left it and realized that the last time he had been conscious of its presence was when he had taken it off and draped it over Francesca, back in the house in the Via San Tommaso, some hours earlier.

“Damn!” he muttered, looking back up the street and trying to decide whether he could be bothered to retrieve the doublet. The rest of his clothes, including another two coats, were now at Santa Lucia, but the missing doublet was his most comfortable, and he knew he would almost certainly want it the next day. Huffing out an irritable sigh, he turned on his heel and set off at right angles, down a steeply sloping, brick-stepped street, taking the shortest route back toward San Tommaso.

The events of the day played themselves out in his mind as he walked; he experienced again faint echoes of the fear he had felt as he had run through the streets searching for the twins; his gut-churning shock at the discovery of Francesca's injuries; his rage at Cicciano's depravity. And then he contemplated once more the emerging prospect that Francesca's hopes of a future with the Signore now seemed set fair to crumble. Disturbed by uncomfortably conflicting emotions, he began muttering aloud, “You are a truly unpleasant and selfish individual.” He paused, bit his lip, and shook his head. “She loves him. Yes, you poor, sad, bollockless excuse for a man—
she
loves
him
. Face the fact! You really want him to abandon her? When she so obviously adores him? You want him to throw her back onto the stinking dungheap she's so nearly escaped from?”

His voice must have increased in volume as he spoke. Passing an open front door, he heard a snort of laughter. A grubby boy of about twelve was sitting on the door sill, fiddling in the dust with his fingers; he smirked and said, “Who's your invisible friend then,
Pazzo
?”

Modesto ignored him. Doing no more than casting the boy a fleeting glance, he continued, in a hissing whisper, “If you care about her at all, you bastard, you'll want what
she
wants. Not what you want. And what she wants is
him
. The Signore. Him—and an end to how it's been for so long. No more patrons. No more having to fuck for a big fat fee, night after night.” The volume began to rise again. “No more having to placate spoilt, arrogant little noblemen with more money than cock in their oversized, overstuffed codpieces.”

He elbowed past two richly dressed, elderly men, who turned scandalized faces to stare after him as he strode on. Ignoring them too, he carried on his furious monologue, now gesticulating with both hands as he spoke. “And
him
! Gutless intellectual. First hint of trouble and he's backed right off. Oh, yes—might have guessed! What's his problem? Scared of the pox? Frightened of scandal? She's better off without him—he can't care two pins for her—not like—”

The obvious end of the sentence, he left unsaid.

Modesto strode on, hardly noticing where he was, until he was brought up short by a heavily laden cart, traveling fast down the street, which crossed the end of the lane in which he was walking. The carter, oblivious to everything around him, was urging his horse to ever greater speed; the cart clattered past Modesto, missing him by little more than a foot. His hair was lifted by the wind of its passing. A cabbage bounced over the tailgate onto the ground, rolling past where Modesto stood and banging into the wall behind him with a deadened thwack. Staring up the street after the cart, Modesto saw it veer abruptly round to the right some moments later and it lurched off up toward the Piazza Francese. Turning back, he caught sight of a tall figure standing outside a tavern some yards down the road, looking in at the open door, seemingly unwilling to enter.

“So. Left her at home and come out to drown your sorrows, have you?” Modesto muttered. “Not quite got the nerve to go in?” He snorted out a derisive laugh, and decided that he might just wander down to the tavern and—hopefully unobserved—watch a little more closely just what the Signore was intending to do. He saw the Signore square his shoulders and enter the tavern, and he walked a little faster.

***

The fireplace was belching out smoke, and a greasy haze hung over the crowded tables. Luca stood in the doorway and stared into the room, searching through the fog for his son. His eyes stung as he gazed around the room, unsure which would be worse: for Carlo to be here, or for him not to be.

But there was no sign of him anywhere.

A boy of about Gianni's age—skinny, unkempt, with his hair scraped back into a dirty pigtail—raked him up and down with a dismissive glance and turned away, a filthy cloth hung over one shoulder.

Luca edged farther into the room, wondering if there might be any other, smaller space not visible from the entrance where Carlo might be concealed. He sidled between two tables, frowning through the smoke, but saw nothing but a narrow staircase descending out of sight in one corner of the room. He checked, remembering Gianni's description of his fight with Carlo in the darkness of the
sottosuolo
. This, he thought, must be the entrance-way the boys had used. What if Carlo was still down there, confused and frightened and unable to find his way back? Smothering a stabbing thought that if that was the case, then his amoral son deserved his fate, Luca determined to find a light and start searching.

He turned toward the torches burning in brackets on the walls; he had just taken a step toward the nearest, when a bright flash caught his eye and he spun round, peering through the smoke haze to see what had distracted him.

A long-legged, broken-nosed young man with close-cropped curls was leaning back in his chair, one booted foot up on the edge of the table. Luca realized who it was almost immediately. An empty glass stood in front of the man, next to a three-quarters-empty bottle of
grappa,
and he was holding up a small, silver-handled knife; the blade gleamed steel blue in the torchlight. He was testing its needle tip on the ball of his thumb; then as Luca watched, he ran the knife from point to hilt between his fingers, lazily flipping it over and over, repeating the action almost lovingly—as though he were caressing the blade. He was smiling.

Luca's pulse was loud in his ears.

He pushed his way through the crowded room until he stood within feet of the man with the knife.

“You fucking bastard…” he said softly. He saw a moment's blankness in a gaze blurred by drink, then Michele gripped the dagger by its handle and scraped his chair back across the flags. Luca eyed the blade.

“You have a problem, Signore?” Michele said.

The buzz of conversation in the tavern died to silence. Several people stood, pushed back their chairs, and backed away, leaving an empty space like a little arena around Michele and Luca.

“No,” Luca said, “I don't have a problem. You do.”

Michele laughed.

***

Modesto pushed his way around the edge of the tavern room, his gaze fixed upon the two men who were now standing facing each other, some feet apart. Cicciano held his knife loosely in one hand, and the Signore had both fists clenched. Cicciano took a step backward and bumped into his chair. Without taking his eyes from the Signore's face, he kicked out behind him and sent the chair sprawling.

An expectant buzz ran through the watching drinkers.

The Signore said softly, “I'll see you put away, Cicciano.”

Cicciano smirked. “Yes? What for?”

“You know.”

Cicciano paused, ran his tongue over his lower lip, then caught it between his teeth. He said, “The treacherous little whore owed me: I collected my debt—no more than that. It's still allowable within the law to recoup your losses, I believe.” He smirked again, then started theatrically. “But, oh, dear,” he said, eyes widening in obviously artificial surprise. “Maybe this is news to you. Carlo's told me all about your liaison with
La
Bella
Felizzi
, but perhaps”—he dropped his voice to a forced whisper—“you're not yet aware of her profession? Your son knows, Signore. Knows
intimately
, as I understand it. Your younger son, that is. Carlo, of course, has…very different tastes.” He flicked his eyebrows up and down.

Modesto saw the Signore redden. Saw his right hand brush against the back of a chair, and then grip its top bar, white-knuckled. Modesto edged in closer, worming his way through the bright-eyed crowd, who were, he saw, eagerly awaiting some sort of action. He pushed in next to a squat, broad-shouldered man in a leather apron.