by S. J. Parris
Donato paused, as if catching his breath. The mood in the room shifted; you could feel it like the charge in the air before a storm. He leaned across the table.
‘I have no idea what you are talking about. But if you accuse me of anything in public again, I will see you before the magistrates for slander. Now get out.’ He allowed a pause for effect, before adding, cold and deliberate: ‘Jewess.’
The word hung between them like the smoke that follows a shot. The girl stared at him as if she had been struck. A sharp intake of breath whistled through the crowd, followed by a startled cry; in a heartbeat, the girl was up on the table, silver flashing in her hand. Fra Agostino pushed Donato out of her reach, a lamp rolled to the floor and smashed, someone screamed, and then the doorkeeper they called L’Orso Maggiore (for obvious reasons) shouldered his way into the mêlée and wrenched the girl’s right arm behind her back, sending her knife clattering to the ground. She carried on yelling and spitting curses as he dragged her off the table and towards the threshold, as easily as a bear would pick up a rabbit.
‘Where is her locket?’ she roared, at the door. She repeated the same question, louder, as L’Orso hurled her out into the street. You could still hear her cries, even when the door slammed after her. Gradually, the hubbub of conversation resumed until it drowned her out.
‘Donato really should learn to take more care where he puts it,’ remarked Paolo, shaking his head as he reached for the wine. ‘He’ll ruin his father with paternity suits one of these days.’
‘Paternity suits?’ I turned to look at him.
‘Some neighbourhood girl accused him a couple of years ago, threatened to make a fuss. His father had to pay the family off. Sounds like he’s at it again.’ He gestured towards the door, then glanced at me. His brow creased and he laid a hand on my arm. ‘Madonna porca – are you sure you’re all right, Bruno? You’re white as a corpse.’
‘I need some air,’ I said, pushing the table away.
Donato was bleeding from a surface cut on his forearm where the girl had made contact before she was hauled off. His hangers-on fussed around him while the rest of the tavern stared as they exchanged animated whispers. Signora Rosaria, who owned the Cerriglio, was berating L’Orso for not stopping the assault sooner; the crowd pressed in for a better view of the drama. No one had noticed the girl’s knife lying on the tiles under a neighbouring table. I ducked down and slipped it into my sleeve on the way to the door.
There was no sign of her in the street. I walked a little way along between the tall houses, towards the corner of the next alley, thinking I had lost her, when I caught the sound of muffled sobs. She was crouched in a doorway, her right arm cradled against her chest. After the initial shock of seeing her in the tavern, my frantic thoughts of vengeful spirits had given way to a more logical explanation, but I was still afraid to speak to her.
Alerted by my footsteps, her head snapped up and she sprang back, her hands held out as if to ward me off. The street was sunk in darkness, except for the dim glow from a high window opposite and the streaks of moonlight between clouds. The girl’s face was hidden in shadow.
‘I think this is yours.’ I offered the knife to her, hilt first. Her eyes flicked to it and back to me; for a long time she didn’t move, but I stayed still and eventually she began to approach, wary as a wild dog, until she was close enough to snatch it. She levelled it at me; I raised my empty hands to show that I was now unarmed.
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘What is it to you?’ She bared her teeth. ‘I know you are one of them. I have seen you here before.’
‘Them?’
‘Dominicans.’ She spat on the ground at my feet. ‘God’s dogs.’
‘You know Latin?’ I said, surprised. It was an old nickname for the Order, a pun on Domini canes, the Hounds of the Lord, but I had not expected to hear it from a woman, especially one who was clearly not high-born.
‘Yes. You think a woman cannot read? Hypocrites.’ I thought she was going to spit at me again but she restrained herself. ‘Look at yourselves. You take vows of poverty and chastity, and yet there you are, night after night, dicing and whoring like soldiers. And they made you the city’s Inquisitors, the ones who decide whether others are practising their religion to the letter, and if they should die for it.’ She let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘God would spit you out of His mouth.’ She was lit up by her fury, illuminated from within, every inch of her taut and quivering. She wanted only the slightest provocation to stick that knife in me, I was sure of it.
‘That man you attacked,’ I said, keeping my voice steady. ‘What has he done?’
Her lip curled; she reminded me again of a dog that knows it is cornered and is readying itself to fight. ‘I suppose he is your friend? Did he ask you to make me repeat it, so he could accuse me of slander?’
‘He is no friend of mine. I only wanted to help you.’
‘Why?’ The word shot back, quicker than a blow. She took a step closer, holding the knife out as if I had threatened her.
I shrugged. ‘Because we are not all hypocrites.’
Her eyes narrowed; she did not believe me. She was right not to, I reminded myself: I was the biggest hypocrite of all.
‘My sister,’ she said, in a subdued voice, just as I had assumed she was about to walk away.
‘Your twin?’ The words were spoken before I could stop them; she stared at me, her mouth open.
‘Why do you say that? Do you know her?’
‘No … I …’ I blushed in confusion. ‘I don’t know why I thought that.’
‘Yes, my twin,’ she said, lowering the knife, as if the fight had gone out of her. ‘That friar –’ she nodded past me in the direction of the tavern – ‘he saw me in the street one day and followed me to our shop.’
‘What shop?’
‘My father keeps a shop on Strada dell’Anticaglia, off Seggio di Nilo. He is a master goldsmith. That man started coming into the shop to court me. I refused him. I would not be the mistress of a monk, for all his money. I have no respect for your kind.’
‘So you have said.’
A muscle tightened in her jaw. ‘He would not take no for an answer. Then one day he came into the shop when my father and I were out and found my sister instead.’
‘He took her for you?’
‘I don’t think he cared either way. But Anna was always flattered by the attention of men.’
Anna. I thought of a flayed leg thrown into a makeshift coffin like an animal carcass, stripped to the crimson muscle and white bone. She had had a name. Her name had been Anna.
In this girl’s face I saw again the lineaments of her dead twin. A whore, Fra Gennaro had said. Was that his lie, or Donato’s? My skin felt cold, despite the warm wind.
‘And she went with him?’
‘She started sneaking out after dark to meet him. She never told me where she was going, but I followed her one night. She made me swear to secrecy. She knew it would break our father’s heart.’
‘He would have been angry?’
‘He would have killed her.’ As soon as she had spoken the words, her hand flew to her mouth. I felt something lurch in the hollow under my ribs, some pulse of hope. The girl’s father found out, he killed her in a fit of rage, perhaps by accident; so Fra Gennaro’s story could be true. Even as the idea formed, I knew it was absurd.
‘I meant only …’ she faltered, through her fingers. ‘He has never lifted a hand to either of us in our lives. But the shame would have destroyed him.’
‘Back there, you accused the friar of killing her,’ I said. ‘Was that a figure of speech too?’
She drew her hand slowly away from her face and took a deep breath. It escaped jaggedly, like a sob. ‘My sister is missing. She went to him last night and she has not returned. I know she has come to harm.’
‘Perhaps she has run away.’ As I spoke, I felt as if there was a ball of sawdust lodged in my throat. My voice sounded strange to me.<
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The girl shook her head. ‘She would never have done that. In any case, I followed her last night too. I was afraid for her.’
The ball in my throat threatened to choke me. I feared she could hear the thudding of my heart in the silence.
‘To the Cerriglio?’
‘No. She went to San Domenico and waited for him by the gate. I saw her go in and she never came out.’
A warm breath of air lifted my hair from my forehead and cooled the sweat on my face. Beneath my feet the ground felt queasy, uncertain, as if I were standing on a floating jetty instead of a city street.
‘You must have missed her,’ I said, but the words barely made a sound.
‘I waited until first light. I could not have our father wake and find us both gone. I would swear she did not leave. Unless there is another entrance. But then, why did she not come home?’
I felt my palms grow slick with sweat at her mention of another entrance. I should have let her go then, but I had to be sure of how much she knew. ‘Why do you think he meant her harm, if they were … involved?’
‘Because she—’ Her face darkened and she turned away. ‘Her situation had changed. She was going to ask him for something he could not give.’
‘Money?’
The slap came out of nowhere; she moved so fast I barely had time to register that she had raised her hand. Rubbing my burning cheek, I reflected that at least she had not used the hand that held the knife. I stretched my jaw to assess the damage, but she was already stalking away around the corner.
‘Wait!’ I ran after her, into another, narrower alley. She turned, eyes blazing out of the darkness.
‘My sister was no whore, whatever he says.’ She paused, and I saw that she was fighting back tears. ‘She believed herself in love with him.’ She swiped at her eyes with her knuckles. ‘What is any of this to you? Why are you following me?’
‘If your sister was inside the walls of San Domenico last night, someone must know something.’ I was surprised at how level my voice sounded, how carefully I controlled my expression. Only a few months since my vows, and already I had acquired the Dominican talent for dissembling. Though it was a skill that was to serve me well in later years, in that moment I despised myself to the core. ‘What is your name?’
‘Maria.’ Most of the women in this city are called Maria, but she hesitated just long enough for me to understand that she was lying too. ‘Yours?’
‘Bruno.’
‘Well then, Bruno. You know where I can be found. But I will not hold my breath – I know your kind always stick together. Whatever has happened to my sister, he will not face justice for it. Not in this city. A family like mine, against a man of his name?’
I wondered what she meant by that, and recalled the quiet, deliberate cruelty of Donato’s last insult to her. ‘Why did he call you – that?’ I asked.
Her expression closed up immediately. ‘I expect it was the worst abuse he could think of.’
We looked at one another in silence for a moment, her eyes daring me to question further.
‘What about the locket?’
Her mouth dropped open, the fury in her eyes displaced by fear.
‘What do you know of that?’
‘Nothing. Only that I heard you accuse Fra Donato of taking it.’
Her hand strayed to her throat; an involuntary gesture, I supposed, as she thought of her sister wearing the locket. I could think only of the bruises around the dead girl’s neck.
‘If he has taken it …’ She faltered. I sensed that she was weighing up how much to say. ‘It has little value for its own sake. But it belonged to our mother. I must have it back.’ The note of desperation in her voice told me she was withholding something. She feared that locket falling into the wrong hands – but why?
I stood foolishly staring at her, wishing I could offer some consolation, cursing the weight of what I knew – the truth she would spend the rest of her life raking over and not knowing. Or so I had to hope.
‘You know where to find me if you hear anything,’ she said again, with a shrug. I was about to reply when, silent as a cat, she turned and disappeared into the blackness between the buildings.
I crashed through the door of the infirmary, careless of the hour, careless of the noise I made. Fra Gennaro was bent over the bed of old Fra Francesco by the light of a candle, applying a poultice to his sunken chest to ease the fluid on his lungs. Gennaro started at the sound of the door, but as soon as he realised it was me, his expression told me he had been expecting this.
I glanced along the length of the infirmary, my ribs heaving with the effort of running through the back streets. Four beds in the row were occupied by elderly friars who wheezed and grunted in concert; they might have been asleep, but they might also have been quite capable of hearing and understanding. It was all I could do not to blurt out my accusations; Gennaro saw the urgency in my face and gestured me towards the dispensary, whispering words of reassurance to Fra Francesco as he stood to follow me.
‘She was not a whore, was she?’
He closed the door behind us and set his candle down on the dispensary bench, signalling for me to lower my voice.
‘I told you only what was told to me,’ he said. His tone was clipped and cold, tight with suppressed anger.
‘And you chose not to question it.’
He was across to me in one stride, his hand clamping my arm, face inches from mine.
‘As I recall, Fra Giordano, you also swore an oath to ask no questions. Who have you been talking to?’
‘I didn’t have to talk to anyone.’ I dropped my voice to an urgent whisper. ‘Tonight her mirror image walked into the Cerriglio and accused one of our brothers of murdering her twin.’
He stared at me, his grip slackening.
‘She was never found in the street by soldiers. She died inside these walls, didn’t she? That’s why you would not speculate on who killed her. Because you already knew.’
He breathed out hard through his nose, his eyes fixed on me for a long pause, as if I were a favourite son who had disappointed him. Eventually he let go of me and rubbed his hands quickly over his face like an animal washing.
‘Where would we be, you and I, if we were not here?’ he said, looking up.
I blinked at him, unsure whether it was a rhetorical question. He raised his brow and I realised he wanted an answer. ‘If you had not come to San Domenico, Fra Giordano, what would you have done with your life?’
‘I would have tried to obtain a place at the royal university,’ I mumbled.
‘Would you? The son of a mercenary soldier? With whose money?’
I looked at my feet.
‘My father was well born, but he died desperately in debt to a Genoan banker,’ he continued. ‘If I had not come to San Domenico, I would most likely have had to beg for a position as a tutor to idle rich boys. And you, Bruno – I doubt you would now be the most promising young theologian in Naples, whatever you claim.’
I said nothing, because I knew he was right.
‘We are alike, you and I.’ His voice softened. ‘Neither one of us, in our hearts, desired the constraints of a religious life. But it was the only door open to us. You acknowledge that, surely?’
I gave the briefest nod.
‘Then you also understand that it is not the likes of us who keep San Domenico afloat. Our scholarship may contribute to its reputation, but it is men like Fra Donato, with his name and his father’s vast endowments, who ensure its continued prestige and wealth. We are the beneficiaries, and we would do well to remember that.’
‘So he must be protected, at any cost. Whatever he does. This man who might be prior one day.’ I turned away in disgust.
‘What else would you do? Call in the magistrates? Destroy the whole convent and college with a scandal, for the sake of one foolish girl?’ He rubbed the flat of his hand across his cropped hair. ‘I admire your sense of justice, Bruno, I have already told you that. But y
ou are young. If you want to make your way in this city, you must learn to be a realist.’
I wanted to tell him that folly did not deserve death, that her name was Anna, and she did have people to mourn her. I wanted to protest that a rich and well-connected young man was not entitled to snuff out a life merely because it had become inconvenient to him. But I could say nothing without revealing that I had been asking questions. My gaze shifted away to the rows of glass bottles and earthenware jars ranged along the shelves. The dispensary always smelled clean, of freshly crushed herbs and the boiling water with lemon juice that he used to scrub down his table and instruments, a contrast to the stale fug of sickness and old bodies that hung over the infirmary. Somewhere in here a tiny, half-formed child was suspended in alcohol, in a jar. Donato’s child.
‘Suppose someone knew she came here last night, and comes in search of her?’
Gennaro’s brow lowered; he fixed me with such a penetrating stare that I almost feared he could see my deception.
‘Why should you imagine that?’
‘Her clothes did not look like those of a whore. Perhaps,’ I added, as if I had just thought of it, ‘when you first found her, she was wearing some jewellery that might identify her? If we knew who she was, we might be better prepared to defend ourselves against any accusations.’
He sighed, as if the conversation were keeping him from something pressing. ‘The girl came here alone last night. Donato took her into the lemon grove – they argued, and he grabbed her by the neck to frighten her into silence, he said, for he feared she threatened to make a scene and rouse the whole convent. She resisted, and he held her harder than he intended. Her death was an accident.’
‘You know that is a lie,’ I said, quietly. ‘He meant to silence her all right. She must have told him she was with child.’
He brought his hand down hard on the table. ‘The business is done now, Bruno. There is no evidence that she was ever here.’
‘Did he ask you to help dispose of her?’ My voice sounded small and uncertain in the thick silence of the dispensary. ‘Did he know what you were going to do?’ With every question, I was unpicking the fine thread of trust that existed between me and Gennaro, but I could not stop myself. I wanted the truth. He had brought me into that room with her corpse last night; I felt it was the least he owed me. A sigh rattled through him and he leaned back against the workbench as if he needed support.