Courtesan's Lover (38 page)

“Are there any depths to which you will not stoop?” Modesto heard the Signore say to Cicciano, his face twisted with dislike.

Cicciano grinned. “Well, now you mention it, I think I might have plumbed them tonight—fucking that traitorous little strumpet. I'd advise you to steer clear of her yourself, Signore, you might—”

But his words were cut short. Modesto saw the Signore swing the chair he was holding upward, scything it into Cicciano's wrist.

***

The knife flew out of Michele's hand, and Luca dropped the chair back down onto the tavern-room floor. He heard the knife clatter across the table and onto the floor; heard the sharp intake of breath from the crowd; heard Michele's gasped oath as he launched himself forward. Grabbing Michele's doublet front with both fists, he fell with him to the floor, the watching drinkers scattering out of their way. Michele was winded, and, in the second it took him to blink and begin to push himself upright again, Luca snatched at Michele's shirt collar, banged him back down onto the ground, and then hit him as hard as he could on the jaw.

Michele grunted.

The crowd gasped appreciatively.

Hot blood pounded in Luca's face.

The fire has been lit in this bedchamber. Luca's old manservant came up with me just now from the
sala
and lit it. He seemed to find the task very difficult; he took a great deal of time and effort over it, and I was astonished that the twins didn't wake, given the amount of noise he made, but, thank goodness, they're still asleep. I suppose the shock of what happened to them today has worn them out. I can feel my heart swelling inside my chest as I think about how things might have turned out; it's as though I was under sentence of death until an hour or so ago, and their return is my reprieve.

Though if Luca rejects me, it will still be a life sentence.

The crimson walls are shivering now in the leaping firelight, and on the big painted chest the pretty little casket glitters, as though it might hold unexpected treasures. On the floor near the end of the bed is a bag that I'm sure wasn't there earlier. Made of old, scuffed leather. It's not mine, but it's familiar—I think it's Modesto's. Why has he left it here? He must have dropped it before he went earlier.

I pick it up and look inside.

Books. Vellum-bound, tied notebooks.

My heart skips a beat. I look into the uppermost.
Book
of
Encounters.

Oh,
Dio
—why? Why in heaven's name has he brought these here? What was he thinking of? These books are full of the sort of lewd accounts of my past life that would damn me irrevocably in anybody's eyes.
An
Intimate
Portrait
of
a
Filthy
Bitch
would be a better title for them. So Michele would say, anyway. Luca simply
cannot
ever see them—it would be disastrous! When he left the house an hour or so ago and looked up at me from the stairs, it seemed that the very
sight
of me was physically painful for him. If he were to see this, I think it would be the end. The books have to go. I can't just throw them away, though—God knows where they might turn up, and what mischief they might cause. They'll have to burn.

Luigi has left a basket of logs, and there's a pair of bellows propped up by the edge of the grate. I'll need to build the flames up—I simply cannot risk anything being left legible. The thought of Luca's seeing even one page of any of these books makes me feel utterly sick. My explanations of Filippo's complicated predilections and…oh,
merda
!…my account of Gianni's visit, which is in here somewhere. No, no, no, this can't happen. Why the hell did Modesto bring the books here? I could kill him!

I kneel in front of the fire and poke the nose of the bellows into the wood at the base of the flames. They seem startled at the intrusion and jump up a little higher. I put on more wood, work the bellows again. The flames continue to leap. I repeat the process two or three times. It's hot now—hot enough to make my eyes water. I sit back on my heels and watch for a moment. Chewing the skin on my thumb, I stare into what has become a miniature inferno: hellish little caverns and tunnels, which shift and rearrange themselves even as I watch. I half expect to see a bunch of tiny demons poking their faces out from behind white-hot lumps of wood, beckoning to me to come and join them. Perhaps it's where I belong, after all.

I pick up one of the books, determining to thrust it into the flames, but realize with a jolt that now the moment is here, I don't want to lose them. Why, though? Why am I thinking this? I
hate
them: they represent everything that stands so implacably between me and Luca. They are the embodiment of the life I now loathe. The life I wish I could eradicate from my past. But it's strange—now that I am on the point of destroying them, I feel as though I am holding in my hands some living thing: a creature that must be sacrificed to placate the wrath of the gods. Here, after all, held fast between these smooth, skin-smelling vellum covers, is
my
life
—two and a half years of it—laid bare, stripped naked, staked out for scandal-hungry vultures to peck at. I don't remember which accounts of which encounters are in which book, and find myself tugged by an almost irresistible urge just to sit back down on the floor and immerse myself once again in my own pages, to remind myself—just one last time—of the person I was, before it is all consigned to oblivion.

But I know I have to get rid of them. And I must do it now.

A pair of tongs lies at the side of the fireplace. I pick these up and, two-handed, take hold of the first—the oldest—book. Screwing my face up against the heat, I reach forward and put it down onto the flames. A branch shifts and settles under its weight: I hold the tongs out, ready to catch the book if it falls, but it stays balanced where it is. Within seconds, though, the cover begins to distort: it twists and writhes as though it feels the pain of its burning. If it could give voice, I think it would scream. The creamy vellum begins to blacken, and tendrils of thick, grey, acrid-smelling smoke, like ringlets of unwashed hair, creep out around the edges of the cover. The vellum starts to shrink into a glistening black lump, pulling away from the paper beneath. My own words stare up at me from the newly revealed page:

And
into
the
hidden
crevices
of
how
many
men's lives will I have to poke my fingers before I learn enough to justify the title of “cortigiana onesta”? Will it ever happen? How different shall I be then from the grubby little strumpet I am today? Can…

Checking over my shoulder, I snatch up the poker and push the book farther down into the fire. With a muffled crackle, the wood crumbles and flames flare around their sacrificial victim. The page blackens, glows red around the edges, and then catches. My words disappear into flame. The page beneath follows suit, and then the fire takes the book and cradles it tenderly, wrapping it around and consuming it.

I let out the breath I only now realize I have been holding in.

The heat stings against the cut on my cheek as I reach out with the tongs toward the second book. I touch the cut with the tip of my finger; the edges feel dry and slightly stiff already, and at my touch, they flash with a thin, white-cold pain. I ignore this, and grip the second book with the tongs. I place it carefully on top of the burning corpse of its brother. It groans and heaves and arches its spine: the cover shrinks, the pages buckle and scorch; then flames lick along the ash-frilled edges and slick out across the flat of the paper.

Two gone.

One left.

I reach out for the last and newest volume—one I began writing in not more than a couple of months ago. I know which one it is by the long dark blemish in the vellum on the front cover.

The book is scarred, as well as the writer.

I pick it up, but my fingers are slippery with soot from the tongs and it slides from my grasp and falls, splayed out and spine-up, onto the floorboards. I snatch for it, turn it upward, and examine the now-crumpled page on which it has landed.

Surely I will never need this carefully hoarded store of ammunition again? What possible use could it ever be? I imagine its most likely purpose now would be to cripple any fragile bond of trust that might possibly grow back between Luca and me. I ought to fear it: of course it should follow the others onto the pyre. But—a new thought trickles cold across my scalp—maybe I've just made the wrong decision. Perhaps I shouldn't have burned any of it. Then maybe I could have blackmailed the lot of them: Michele, Filippo, Vasquez, da Argenta, Salerno—all of them. One by one. Saved myself from penury that way. My heart gives another painful jolt. A few shriveled and glistening lumps are all that remain of the first two books. No point in thinking about them—nothing will bring them back, but, though I don't understand it, I think I am going to listen to this little voice.

But here in Luca's house, to be in possession of a thing like this is like standing amongst fizzing fireworks holding a gunpowder keg. Where should I put it until I can take it back to Santa Lucia? I look around the room and see the twins. I'll wrap it in something and then tuck it in with their clothes. Luca is bound to leave their belongings to me to pack up—if he sees the book, I hope he will presume it to be something of theirs.

But where has Luca gone? Will he ever come back? To this house? To me? He left looking so anguished, so distressed. I start to picture him: drowning his misery in ale at a tavern; wandering the lightless docks and contemplating oblivion in the black water between the great hulks of berthed ships; staring after some disease-ridden, dead-eyed little
puttana
and thinking of me at my worst.

I want him back. Oh, God, I want him back—so much I feel close to retching at the thought of having to live without him.

The circle of watching drinkers had become a single being, Modesto thought: a many-headed hydra, gasping and exclaiming with one voice. All twenty or so heads followed the movements of the combatants in uncanny unison, shifting forward together in greedy expectation as the two men got slowly to their feet for the fourth time. To see a pair of such well-dressed and obviously well-bred gentlemen brawling across a tavern floor like any one of them was truly an entertaining sight for the end of a Saturday evening.

Many of the table candles had gone out, and the room was in semi-darkness, lit now only by a couple of torches in brackets on the walls.

Modesto looked from Signor della Rovere to Cicciano. Both had discarded their doublets, and Cicciano's shirt was torn. Rovere had a split and swollen lip, and a cut above one eyebrow: Cicciano's nose was bleeding, one tooth was chipped, and a bruise was lifting puffily under his left eye. Both were breathing heavily. Much to Modesto's surprise, they appeared to be well matched: as the fight had begun, he had presumed that Rovere—the “gutless intellectual”—would have neither the skill nor the inclination to fight a man like Cicciano, but he had to admit that he was impressed by the way in which the Signore certainly seemed to be holding his own, even if this might in part be due to the significant amount of
grappa
the younger man had already consumed before the altercation began. And, Modesto thought bitterly, due to the energy Cicciano had already expended on…other activities.

Despite himself, Modesto began to feel a grudging liking for Signor della Rovere. This fight was about Francesca, after all, he thought, and he found that he was more than happy to applaud any man who would willingly take a battering like this on behalf of his mistress.

Cicciano's gaze flicked over the floor around his feet. A brief second's stillness drew Modesto's attention and he saw, at almost the same moment as did Cicciano, the steel and silver knife, lying underneath the table, its little round “ears” glinting in the shifting light. Modesto held his breath, then edged himself to the front of the crowd.

Cicciano stepped backward, his gaze fixed upon Rovere's face, then, with a movement far swifter than Modesto had expected, he ducked down, grabbed the knife, and stood once more.

The hydra sucked a shocked breath in through its many mouths as torchlight flashed bright along the blade and the fight took on quite another dimension.

Modesto automatically put his hand to his waist, intending to pull from the inside lining of his doublet the little leather-sheathed knife he had always kept close in case of troublesome patrons. He swore under his breath as his hand met only the linen of his shirt. No doublet.

“Let's put an end to this tedious little
fracasso
, shall we?” Cicciano said softly. “I need to get going, and you have become decidedly boring.”

The Signore did not reply, but stood, chest still heaving, gaze fixed on the knife. He flicked his head sideways to shift a fallen lock of hair.

Cicciano took a step away from Rovere, toward the watching crowd. With a murmur, they parted, shuffling back quickly, all eyes on the blade. “You seem to be tiring,” Cicciano said. “It'll be easier all round if I just leave.”

“I don't think so,” the Signore said.

Cicciano laughed, and his gaze moved from the knife in his fist to the older man and back. He raised an eyebrow, ran his tongue over his lips, and edged forward. The hydra retreated. Rovere circled around to block Cicciano's route to the tavern door. His hands had curled into loose fists at chest height, ready for a further assault, and Modesto could see that, despite the fatigue obvious in his face, he was still clearly possessed of a sort of weary determination. When he spoke, however, although his gaze remained fixed upon Cicciano's face, it was not to Cicciano that he addressed himself, but to the wide-eyed faces in the crowd, and his voice was calm and clear and carrying. “Perhaps someone here would be good enough to run for the
sbirri,”
he said. “This man is guilty of a vicious, unprovoked attack on a defenseless and—”

“Unprovoked? Defenseless? The bloody woman's a fucking whore!”

“And you consider that sufficient justification for—”

Michele laughed. “Ha! So you don't deny she's a whore? You did know!”

Even in the semi-darkness, Modesto could see Rovere's color rise. He watched him push one hand up into his hair, heard him swear softly under his breath. Then came a moment of stillness. Both Cicciano and Rovere stood unmoving. The silence in the tavern was complete.

Modesto held his breath.

For a second there was between the two men a bunched, quivering, elastic tension such as will spring up between two hackle-risen dogs, and, feeling the bulging swell of it himself, Modesto's pulse quickened. The wall of watching drinkers seemed to tremble.

Then Cicciano lunged toward where Rovere was standing, the knife in his upturned fist. Modesto pushed forward, elbowing his way free of the crowd, and with an audible grunt, he threw himself at Cicciano. He, Cicciano, and Rovere all fell to the floor, scattering chairs and two tables. A sharp pain ran up Modesto's leg as one knee cracked against the floor; he was aware of a tangle of shirtsleeved arms, grunted oaths from Cicciano, and the hot, sweat-smelling bulk of both the other bodies, indeterminate in the sprawling scrimmage. Somewhere within the tangle was the knife. His hand closed on an arm—he did not know whose—and he felt it twist and wrench itself out of his grip.

***

Flat on his back on the tavern floor, Luca saw Michele jerk his wrist from Modesto's fingers. The blade in Michele's fist flashed for a second as he angled his arm up behind him.

Luca stared at the knife.

The scene hung frozen for a second.

And then Michele struck.

Luca squirmed sideways, but he could not move freely. Modesto's weight was heavy across his legs as he twisted himself around; Luca felt his shoulder scrape across the stone flags of the tavern floor and then something hard hit him in the ribs, winding him.

For a moment, all was confusion and chaos. His head was filled with the shouts and cries of the crowd, the grunts of the two men tangled with him on the floor of the tavern, and the wild thudding of his own heartbeat.

Somebody screamed.

The sound tore through the tavern like a ripping sheet, and the writhing confusion that was himself, Michele, and Modesto was suddenly still and heavy. Luca's arm was pressed in between his body and the floor; someone's crushing weight was across his hips and he was aware, in the pulsing seconds that followed the scream, of a warm stickiness creeping in between his fingers.

A thick clot of nauseous panic lumped in his throat.