Veronica COURTESAN (4 page)

I get up and walk across the room, making sure I arch my body in an alluring fashion. I’m such an actress. After pouring two goblets of
vin santo
I place them on a tray and carry them back to the bed with the plate of biscuits. Settling myself next to him, I dunk a
biscotto
into the sweet wine, feed it to him, then lick my fingers, pushing them into my mouth and pulling them out again as if I were sucking a man’s prick. A trick Mamma taught me.

‘Pray tell me about yourself, Signor Jacomo.’

‘Not much to tell. I work hard, importing spices from the Levant. I have a wife at home in Ragusa and three sons. I visit her from time to time, but need to be here most of the year.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘I shall miss her less now that I have you.’

I touch his cheek. ‘
Grazie.
’

‘What about your husband? I’m surprised you’re still a maid. I hope I didn’t hurt you, by the way.’

‘Only momentarily. My husband is impotent. We no longer live together. I could get an annulment if I wanted.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘It suits me to be a signora. Paolo seems to have accepted the situation. He’s left me in peace these past weeks.’

My eyes meet Jacomo’s as I slide my hands up his chest. His prick twitches then grows. I bend and fasten my lips around it, sucking hard. Jacomo flips me over and thrusts into me.
Grazie a Dio
I’m wet again and this time I slip my hand down to my nub, pushing against it as he slams into me, and soon we reach our joy together.

Shouts reverberate from the
calle
below.

‘Veronica!’

Maria santissima!
’Tis Paolo. Will that man ever leave me alone?

I’m sitting in the
portego
, drying my hair. Nearly a year has passed since my debut. A year of lazy indulgence.

At last, Paolo accepted that he could no longer control me. It was Jacomo who convinced him. When he heard my husband shouting the first time we lay together, he threw on his clothes and ran downstairs. A silk robe around me, I crept to the window and listened.

The heavy wooden door creaked as Jacomo opened it. ‘Leave the signora alone!’

‘She’s my signora and I want her back.’

‘Veronica has chosen another path. She could get your marriage annulled, you know.’

‘Ha, she would have a hard time proving her purity.’

‘I’m prepared to bear witness to the fact that your wife was intact when I deflowered her this evening.’

I heard Paolo’s muttering and his heavy footsteps as he skulked back down the alleyway. He hasn’t shown his face since, although he still keeps my dowry.

These days, my every need is met and, after the initial novelty of Jacomo bedding me most nights, boredom has set in. I rise late in the mornings, breakfasting on pastries and fruit. Then I practise my lute and spinet, singing the songs I know. I would like to learn new ones, but Jacomo keeps me cloistered in this house. I’m not really a courtesan; I’m more like his mistress. This isn’t what I’d envisaged when Mamma taught me the tricks of the trade. She seems happy enough; she’s moved in with me and runs the household with shrewd efficiency, growing plump on roasted meats and rich sauces.

Our
casa
is in the parish of Santa Maria Formosa. Besides Domisilla and Giulia, we have a cook, Anna, and Giulia’s nephew, Maurizio, is our boatman. He and Domisilla married last autumn, and they now have a beautiful baby girl.

The house overlooks the Rio del Pestrin, the part where it widens into a proper canal, and the lease is in my name, Mamma insisted upon it. Jacomo hands her a monthly sum to administer according to our needs.

She gives Papa money to leave us in peace. He’s stayed in Sant’Agnese and Mamma pays a woman to look after him, an ex-courtesan who’s fallen on hard times. Our
portego
is bathed by the afternoon sun, which makes it hot during summer evenings, yet warms us in the winter. ’Tis spring, now, and the temperature is perfect. This room is spacious and stylish, the walls covered with brand-new tapestries of flowers, forests and fields. At night I sleep in a built-in walnut bed encased in gold curtains, and my sheets are freshly laundered every day then sprayed with my personal fragrance.
Such luxury!

That this piece of furniture is the exclusive domain of Jacomo has started to vex me. When I read him my poetry, he tries to feign interest, except I can see in his eyes that he’s bored and his actions prove he’d rather fuck me than listen to me. I would love to run soirées for men of letters where everyone talks about literature and art. But how to meet them?

’Tis the Feast of the Ascension soon, when Venice celebrates her annual marriage to the sea. We call it the Sensa in our dialect and the Doge will throw a gold ring into the lagoon by the church of San Nicolò. This year, Jacomo has a place on the state barge, the Bucintoro, and he has promised to take me to the event. I hope to find myself in courtly company then…

What to wear? We employ a dressmaker now, and no longer have to find second-hand clothes in the Ghetto. I have a wardrobe full of the latest fashions with only Jacomo to see them. Excitement wheels through me as I get to my feet and make my way to my chest. A knock at the door, and Jacomo comes in. ‘
Buonasera.
’

‘You’re early,
caro
.’

He shuffles from one foot to the other.

‘I’m sorry, Veronica, but we won’t be able to go to the festival. I’ve just received word from my wife. She’s ill and needs me to pay her a visit in Ragusa.’

The disappointment is like a punch in the gut.

A week later I’m in St Mark’s Square, dressed in masculine attire, my face covered by a
bauta
mask. Mamma’s idea, to keep me safe. She went back to our old house in Sant’Agnese this afternoon and rummaged in a chest, where she found some of my brothers’ garb from when they were my age. A silver-grey doublet of Jeronimo’s (he was the slimmest), red hose belonging to Horatio (the shortest), Serafino’s grey breeches (the most stylish) and only God knows whose codpiece, which I’ve stuffed full of cloth to make me look the part. I’ve bundled my hair into a wide black hat.

‘We need to get out tonight,’ I said to Mamma this morning. ‘The city is celebrating. I’d like to join in. Please, Mamma. I’m going mad cooped up in this house. Jacomo will never find out. What say you?’

‘If you promise not to stray from my side. Mind you, there’ll be crowds.’

And, indeed, there are. Everywhere. People haggle at the stalls selling lace, embroidery, paintings, furniture, textiles, carpets, and objects of glass, gold and silver. Mamma lingers, but I take her hand and pull her towards the stage under the loggia of the campanile. A choir of smooth-faced castrati are singing like angels, their unbroken voices high and pure. There’s a lump in my throat and tears sting my eyes; sadness washes over me for the castration of these poor men when they were only boys.

‘Come, Veronica,’ Mamma says. ‘We can’t stand here all evening. Let’s go and see what’s happening by the lagoon.’

We buy some sugared fruits from a stall in the piazzetta next to the Doge’s Palace. The great wharf at the end is filled with long ships, their masts festooned with hanging lamps so that it looks as if the sea itself is on fire. Flags depicting the great lion of St Mark hang from the buildings, and, in front of the two pillars, a troupe of acrobats is forming a human pyramid four storeys high to be finished off with a dwarf at the top. They have set poles with firebrands all around so the spectacle is well lit, and the first three tiers are already complete.

I worm forward. The final two men are scaling their way up now, careful, like cats, while at the side the dwarf is perched on the shoulders of another single acrobat, waiting for his turn. When the top tier is secure, the two of them move over to the pyramid, the dwarf waving to the crowds and swaying dramatically as if he’s about to fall. He’s dressed in yellow and red, and his grin reminds me of my brother Serafino’s when he would tease me in our childhood. The dwarf hooks himself onto the back of the existing second storey. In the torchlight, the sweat on the acrobats’ bodies glistens, their muscles twitching as they strain to hold the shape of the pyramid against his extra weight.

The dwarf is up as far as the third storey now, and the structure is shaking with his clumsiness. One of the men at the bottom lets out a yell, and the dwarf grimaces and flaps his arms. Is he in trouble? No, he’s jesting. When he finally gets to the top and secures himself, out of his doublet he pulls a piece of coloured silk on a small stick like a flag. He gives a triumphant wave; then he sticks it onto his back, bending himself over until he’s crouched like a dog, his hands and feet balanced on the shoulders of the two men below him, so the flag now flies like a standard above him.
Maria santissima!
In the light of the firebrands, his pose is a mirror image of the great stone winged lion at the top of the pillar, its wing standing up like its own flag from the ridge of its back.

There’s a group of smartly-dressed men next to me, laughing at the dwarf. One of them, tall, blonde, with a wispy beard, catches my eye.
Oh, Gesu Cristo!
Where’s Mamma?
I’ve left her behind in the crowds. ‘What a pretty boy,’ the man says.

His friends form a circle around me, hustling me away from the crowd towards the Doge’s Palace. ’Tis well-known that bands of men go about the city at night, getting up to all sorts of unholy mischief in the dark alleyways. Mamma said males delight in sticking their pricks into all our orifices, and these men think I am a boy so the desired orifice is obvious. My heart is in danger of pounding out of my chest…

They’re herding me towards the bridge on the other side of the palazzo. All of a sudden the crowd starts shouting, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’

A mass of flailing bodies, and we grind to a halt; there’s nowhere else to go. I know what’s happening; I’ve heard about the battles that take place on feast days between men from one half of the neighbourhoods of Venice against the other half. The Castellani against the Nicolotti. They’re shouting and singing: slogans, war chants composed around the names of different fighters.

If I drive myself through the throng and can get to the edge of the water, I’ll be able to clamber onto one of the pontoons covering the canal. They’re made from boats and gondolas lashed together and floored with wooden planks as viewing platforms for the richer citizens: merchants, politician crows, even some white-frocked clergy and friars. They’ll have paid highly for their viewpoints; the fight will be a savage one and there are small fortunes to be made from betting on the outcome.
Madre di Dio!
I have no coin on me, but I’ll cross that bridge (ha! ha!) when I come to it.

There must be a hundred idiots on the
ponte
, with at least as many more crammed onto the ramps, screaming and pushing from behind. Those in the middle can only move forwards by knocking their opponents down and trampling them, or throwing them into the canal. The battle is simple: one side has to drive the other backwards far enough to take the bridge. Some of them are brandishing weapons, long sticks with sharpened ends, but there’s no room to wield them effectively, and most of the men are using their fists. In the middle of the bridge, a small space has opened up around two of the combatants, big fellows stripped and sweating, both heavy with muscle and clasped in a fierce embrace, their legs knotted together.

I see my chance and start to elbow my way past them. Except, I’m being pushed towards the edge of the bridge.
Dio mio!
I’m about to fall in and drown. ‘Help!’

Someone grabs me and pulls me against him. ’Tis my blond admirer. ‘Stupid boy coming up here,’ he says.

I hang onto him; we’re being squashed by the crowd. He’s taller than me, and can see his way clear. He carries me with him and soon we’ve popped out of the throng, to land back on the waterfront before the Doge’s Palace.

He gives me a stiff bow, his eyes warm. ‘My name is Ludovico Ramberti, and, unless I’m very much mistaken, those were a pair of tits I felt just now.’

I colour, about to drop a curtsey which I rapidly change into a bow. ‘
Grazie
for coming to my rescue, Signor Ramberti. I’m Veronica Franco and I’d be grateful if you’d kindly escort me home to my mother. She’s probably worried to death about me.’