Immortal (3 page)

“You will please the men who come to you.” Silvano’s wrist shook, and the sack slammed into my gut. I fell to my knees, retching. “Do as you are told, or I will kill you!” He struck me again and again. Water filled up my eyes, but I never uttered a sound. After a while his admonishments took on a disappointed tone. He whipped the sack at me in frustration and then left the room. I lay curled up on my side, clutching my stomach. Tears plopped past my nose, the food I’d just eaten was disgorged on me, and, yes, a pool of urine was spread out around my legs. I had respect for pain ever afterward. It can deprive even the strongest man of his dignity.

When I could see through my bleary eyes, Marco was kneeling over me. “A patron left my room and I saw Silvano going out, so I came to check on you. I was worried about you; some children don’t make it through the first beating. But you did well. You didn’t scream.”

“I wet myself like a little girl and puked like a dog,” I said, groaning as he helped me up.

“But you didn’t cry out, and it was your first time,” Marco consoled me. “Even I cry out sometimes, and I’m the best at taking pain.” He handed me a silver cup filled with wine. I took it with a shaking hand, grateful for his kindness. “Drink it all, Luca,” he urged me. “Simonetta will clean you and take you to your room. Rest. Silvano will send a patron to you later. Just lie there. That’s all they want, in the beginning. Lie there and breathe.” I bowed my head over the wine cup, hoping Marco wouldn’t see the tears stuttering the purple surface of the wine.

“What’s the bag filled with?” I asked.

“Gold florins,” Marco said. “They hurt but they don’t cut. Come now, drink. It will ease the pain. It will make you stronger.”

I managed a deep swallow. “It would have been better if I’d died on the street.”

“You can’t think that way. You get used to it. Time goes on,” Marco said softly. “Come on, you’re the bastardo who uses ingegno, that’s what you told me.”

“What good is ingegno here, now?” I sniffled.

“Use your ingegno to imagine things that will help you survive, like finding your parents.” He rose. “I have to go. I have special privileges because I’ve been here so long, but if I’m late, Silvano beats me. And he doesn’t go easy on me, like he did with you.” He left quickly, and Simonetta and Maria entered the room, holding rags, brushes, and a clean shirt.

THERE WAS BARELY TIME
for me to look around and take in the bed and the little chest. The bed was covered with a red silk coverlet which lay over sheets of yellow cloth. I lifted the sheets to see an unimaginable luxury: a mattress. It was thin and a rip in the corner revealed it to be stuffed with horsehair, but I’d never before slept on one. There was a tall window, but it was heavily draped, like all the other windows in this palazzo. A few tallow candles shed a graceless, wan light. This was my room. I’d never had a room before. Then the door opened and I jumped away from the bed as a barrel-chested man with long curling hair and silver in his beard strode in. He was expensively dressed and shod in calf-leather boots. He was the well-known head of the armorers’ guild, and I’d seen him at the market. Or rather, I’d seen him watching me there.

He smiled at me greedily and I thought of how the roast fowl must have felt when I spied it on the table. Terror and humiliation overwhelmed me, and I backed up against the wall. Out on the streets, I could run away when one of the men who paid me a soldi to touch me grew too insistent; here there was no escape. My heart scrambled. I looked around desperately, but there was nowhere to go. The armorer strode over and his hands shook as he reached toward me. I pushed his hands away, but he was strong and wrapped one thick arm around me, pinioning my arms to my sides, and ripped off my shirt. I struggled, but he didn’t notice.

“So soft, so beautiful,” he murmured, his breath gurgling in his throat. “So young.” He fumbled at his breeches and then pushed me facedown onto the bed. It was worse than dying. I screamed and screamed, kept screaming at full volume even when the breath left me. I resisted even though Silvano had made it clear that he would kill me if I did. I would have preferred to be killed, in that moment. I was too shamed to weep and could only close my eyes and pray for death. I realized that God was laughing at me again, and that He was too cruel and uncaring to let me die as I asked.

It was then that I learned that God’s mockery sometimes contains shards of kindness, for He threw me a mote of grace. Suddenly, miraculously, I was no longer in Silvano’s. All of Florence beyond the palazzo was laid out in front of me, as if I could simply step down into the city streets. But it wasn’t just my mind that went there, it was my whole self. The boundaries between physical and imaginary dissolved, and reality seeped into both realms. There was a supernatural vaulting, first of my imagination, then of my senses, and, finally, upon seeing the pigments in the frescoes and hearing the soft voices of the choir, of my entire being into the monumental church of Santa Croce. The
Raising of Drusiana
in the Evangelist’s life was spread out before me. I had once crouched down in the pews near a priest telling the story to a Catechism class, telling how Drusiana had so loved St. John and kept his commandments that the saint had resurrected her in the name of the Lord. It thrilled me that devotion like that could result in salvation, and I resolved that one day I, too, would demonstrate that kind of love. Perhaps not for a saint, because saints would have nothing to do with trash like me; perhaps not for a person, though I’d longed to be of noble station and belong to a family and wife of my own; perhaps only for the painting itself.

The painting before me deserved my veneration. Every detail was vibrant and beautiful, from the varied emotions on the faces to the blue sky arching over them. If I put my finger to a cheek or brow, I would feel warm skin. It was as if the artist had painted real people thronged around St. John, and I was one of them, watching faith rewarded with renewed life. The artist must have leapt to that marvelous moment in order to paint it thus, just as I leapt there now.

The door closed and the guildsman departed. I slipped bonelessly to the floor. Tears crusted my face, bile soured my mouth, and whitened blood was smeared on my buttocks. I scooted along the floor to wipe it off. Then I just lay there, hurting, staring at the plastered ceiling. I knew that the guildsman was just the first. There would be others. I’d never think well of myself again. The best I could hope for was simply to live on.

After a while—I never knew how long, because time had changed for me, and would never again be the same—Simonetta came in with a towel and water. She pulled me up and cleaned me with brisk, practiced motions. Then, with sad eyes, she gently kissed my forehead.

“Marco?” I whispered. I didn’t quite trust him, though I wanted to, but he had ingegno about this place. He would know what to tell me so I could live with what had just happened to me. Simonetta shook her head.

“I’ll bring food,” she whispered back. At least I wouldn’t starve here.

The many days following that first awful night fell into a rhythm of eating, bathing, working, and sleeping. I felt so disembodied that the rhythm was present but the passage of time wasn’t. While I was working, I traveled. Mostly to Santa Croce, where I spent much time examining the frescoes. I discovered details about them that I’d overlooked when I’d seen them physically: the graceful pose of one pair of praying hands, the rapture in a devoted face, stars twinkling in a blue sky so expansive that I almost fell up into it. The paintings were always there for me, the way a family was for another person. I could belong to them, and they to me, in a way that sustained me. What the old man at Santa Maria Novella had told me was wondrously true: the gate was within me. When beauty called me, the gate opened, and I could travel anywhere. I felt lucky.

Sometimes I saw twilight figures on the stairs or darting behind doors, but other than the patrons, whose faces I tried not to look at, and Simonetta and Maria, I didn’t see anyone. Silvano kept us mostly locked alone in our rooms. I sneaked a look out my door whenever it was unlocked and spied condottieri at the end of the corridor. When I was taken from my room for a bath, I noted other condottieri patrolling the brothel grounds; the only way out was past them. There was simply no way to escape. With the silence and the isolation and the oppressive sense of being trapped, I was sad, lonely, and often bored. I was used to plentiful noise and to the boisterous company of Paolo and Massimo. I was used to the freedom of the streets.

One dusk, after about a fortnight, Marco finally ventured out to the atrium. I was glad to see him.

“How’s it going, Luca? Found your parents yet?” he asked, his jovial tone belying the black-and-yellow bruise on his cheek.

“Yeah, they’re coming for me tomorrow in a gold carriage with twelve white horses.”

“Give me a ride?” Marco returned with his ready smile. “I’m so handsome I’ll make the carriage look good.” I gave him a sardonic look. “I brought you a sweet,” he said, tossing it to me. “Though you’re getting plump now.”

“The patrons wouldn’t like it if I looked like I was made out of sticks. They like it that I’m an innocent boy,” I noted, sucking on the sweet.

“I thought you were Luca Bastardo from the street, not so innocent.” Marco grinned.

“It doesn’t matter who I am to them.”

“You’re right, you don’t matter. Realizing that is the start of surviving. So just keep getting fat. You’ll keep Silvano happy. Me, I’m going for a walk in the Piazza Santa Croce.”

“You’re going out?” I asked, astonished, rising partly in the tub.

“Silvano gives me privileges. Because I’ve been here for so long, and I work good. And because boys look better when they’re active outside. They look like, you know, real boys. Regular boys. Patrons like that.”

“I didn’t know it was possible for one of us to leave this place! You could run away from Florence, escape forever!”

“I have to come back.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said in a quiet voice. Simonetta lifted her big, tired face and stared at me.

“I tried to leave once,” she said. Her voice was soft but compelling, because she rarely spoke. “Before this place, I was saving to open a tailoring shop with my cousins. I was a seamstress, I was good at it. My cousins sold me to Silvano for money to open the shop. The patrons didn’t like me because I’m not pretty. But I was good at taking care of the children and sewing things, so Silvano kept me. One day the condottieri at the door got drunk and fell asleep, so I snuck out. Silvano caught me at the gate and beat me. I couldn’t walk back inside. He left me out there bleeding overnight, then had me dragged in.”

I was horrified to think of big, soft Simonetta hurt so badly. “You’re pretty to me,” I said fiercely, touching her hand. She took my palm and rubbed it gently across her cheek.

“No one’s prettier than me,” Marco said, with an exaggerated sniff and lift of his nose, which made Simonetta and me smile. Marco ruffled my hair. “Don’t worry, Luca, you’re almost as handsome as me. But it’s your ingegno that makes me like you!” Then he sobered. “Simonetta is lucky. Those bodies in the river, that’s how he usually handles escape attempts.”

“There must be a way,” I argued. “There are places to hide, and people go out into the
contado;
you could get a ride out on a peddler’s cart. I used to think about that, but I decided to stay in Florence, where I knew how to take care of myself. How stupid was I? You could dress so you look different. You could disguise yourself. It wouldn’t be easy to find you outside the city!”

For a few beats Marco’s black eyes were trained on me like a diving falcon’s. He came and stood close to me, trailing one of his long, elegant fingers in the bathwater. In a low voice, he asked, “How would I dress differently? I have no money to buy clothes.”

“That’s easy!” I laughed. “Any beggar will exchange clothes with you. Look in the garbage, or steal from a washerwoman’s line. Even some of the churches have clothes. There are a hundred ways to score a camicia and a mantello. No one on the street has to go naked!”

“I could get clothes from the garbage,” he mused. “I wouldn’t want anyone to know what I was doing, or a report could get back to Silvano. He has a lot of spies.”

“Not just paid spies. People owe him favors, so they tell him things,” Simonetta warned. “Silvano hears everything that goes on in Florence. He knows everything. It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s more dangerous to stay. Here, death is the only way out! If Marco gets away from Florence, he has a chance,” I argued. “Look in the alleys behind the palazzi for clothes. The nobles toss their garbage there. You’ll find what’s left after the servants have picked through it.”

“And after disguising myself, I should go to…”

“The Ponte alla Carraia. There are lots of carts there, people coming in from the contado with their wares and going back to the countryside with empty carts,” I said.

“There must be a way to free you,” he said softly. “You’ve given me this plan; I can’t leave you. I want you to come with me. Neither of us has to be alone in exile from Florence!”

I wanted to believe that Marco could be my family, that he could care about me as I’d once imagined Massimo and Paolo did. Massimo’s betrayal made it hard for me to trust anyone, but Marco was kind. He seemed genuine. I nodded with all the earnestness in my being. “How can I convince Silvano to let me go outside, as you do?”

Marco shook his head. “He has to offer it and tell the condottieri to let you pass. For a long time, I wanted to die. So I stopped eating. That’s when Silvano let me go out, as if giving me some small freedom would make me grateful to him and I could work better.”

“So I won’t eat,” I said. “I’ll starve and look sickly.” Even after all the excruciating time I’d spent hungry, it was better than what I faced now.

“That might do it,” Marco said slowly. “Patrons won’t pay for a sick-looking boy, and he doesn’t like to lose money. He’ll want you to regain your color. When he lets you go outside, I’ll come back to the Ponte alla Carraia. We can go together to Siena or Lucca, start over!”