The Dead of Winter

by S. J. Parris

I remembered, belatedly, to close my mouth.

  ‘Your uncle lets you read his books?’

  ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t he? My uncle enjoys being unconventional. He doesn’t see why a woman shouldn’t learn. He’s not so broad-minded as to allow me into your little club, mind you, but he lets me indulge my curiosity in here.’

  ‘Do you live with him, then?’ I asked, as the blush spread down my neck. I had never met a woman who had even heard of Ficino; I was half in love with her already, just for that.

  ‘For now.’ She leaned against the book stack. ‘I am having a stand-off with my father, so my uncle thought it would reduce tensions if I stayed with him for a while. In fact, it’s made things even worse.’ She seemed delighted by this result.

  ‘Why? What is the argument?’ I could hardly believe my own daring, addressing her like this; I was not used to conversing with aristocratic women, but she seemed to care so little for the difference in our status that she encouraged an unguardedness in me. It was as if the secret library, being so far removed from convention itself, permitted us to talk naturally, as equals.

  ‘I have refused the man he wants me to marry,’ she said grandly. ‘And now all is in disarray, because neither my father nor my prospective husband imagined that I would want any say in the matter, much less that I would consider their arrangement anything other than a great honour.’

  ‘You wish to marry someone else, then?’ I felt obscurely disappointed; I had only met the girl five minutes ago, but already I found myself bristling at the prospect of a rival. I reminded myself sternly that I was a Dominican friar; hardly in a position to be her suitor, even if I were the son of a baron.

  ‘I don’t want to marry anyone.’ Her lip curled. ‘I want to be a doctor.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Medicine. What else?’

  ‘But—’ Again, I found all possible responses inadequate. ‘You’re—’

  ‘A woman?’ She smiled again, and her eyes glittered. ‘Yes, I had noticed. That is something of a difficulty when it comes to medical school. One day it will be accepted for women to become physicians, I’m sure of it. Until then, I have no choice but to join a convent.’

  I stared. ‘You want to become a nun?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not especially. But I can’t see that it would be worse than marrying some fifty-year-old fool with bad breath just because he has a title, and then pushing out his children for the next fifteen years until one of them kills me in the process. Besides, some of the religious orders allow their women quite a lot of liberty to study. I couldn’t qualify as a doctor, obviously, but I could practise as one within the convent, if I learned the skills.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you miss—’ I had been led to believe that women of good birth aspired to marriage and motherhood as their highest calling. I had never heard a woman express the same ambitions for learning as a man, and I was nonplussed. ‘Freedom?’ I finished lamely.

  She let out a scathing laugh. ‘How much freedom do you think I have now? Why did you join a religious order, then, if you see it as such a prison?’

  ‘To study,’ I admitted. ‘But I would never have chosen the religious life if I came from a family like yours.’

  ‘If you came from a family like mine,’ she said, enunciating each word carefully, as if I were slow of understanding, ‘and you were the eldest daughter of the eldest son, you would not have even the freedom to choose your own husband. You would be obliged to marry well, for the family’s sake.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You should understand me better than anyone. You had to take the religious life in order to study because you lack money, and I’ll be forced to do the same because I lack a cock. So we are in the same boat.’

  I had never met a well-born lady who talked like the girls at the Cerriglio; I hardly knew what to make of her.

  ‘All the same,’ I said, aiming for gallantry, ‘it would be a terrible waste for you to take the veil.’

  ‘Of what? My mind?’ Her expression hardened, and I saw, too late, that what I had intended as a compliment had in fact had the opposite effect.

  ‘You mean of my beauty,’ she said, before I could stammer out an answer. ‘Don’t worry, my mother says the same, as if that is my only worth. You think, I suppose, that it would be a good service to society if all the plain and ugly women shut themselves up in a nunnery, but quite wrong to deprive men of the pretty ones? You are not the first man to express that opinion.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ I looked down at my hands on the table. I was considered skilled at debate among my fellow Dominicans, but I could barely construct a sentence in my defence with this girl.

  She glared at me for a moment longer, before relenting.

  ‘How would you feel if someone said you were too handsome to waste on the Dominicans?’

  ‘It would depend who said it,’ I replied, feeling bolder. ‘I might feel flattered – if you said so, for instance.’

  She folded her arms across her chest and allowed a reluctant smile. ‘No one would ever say that to a man, anyway, because a man is allowed to be more than just his face. I’m sure no one assumes that, because you are handsome, you are not also capable of your own thoughts.’ She sighed. ‘Since I was a little girl, I have watched the women around me and concluded that being a wife and mother would be a waste of my mind, and that would be a greater ingratitude to God for His gifts. I would far rather learn how to deliver a baby than have one myself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get much practice at that in a nunnery,’ I said.

  She raised a sardonic eyebrow, in a way that reminded me of her uncle. ‘You’d be surprised,’ she replied. ‘This is Naples, after all.’

  In that windowless room with Fiammetta, I lost track of time passing. Porta’s pile of books sat ignored at my elbow as we talked for what must have been two hours, and I forgot entirely the need to return in time for vespers. I learned some valuable lessons about how to talk to women that afternoon; the more I tried to impress her with my learning and achievements, the more I seemed to elicit a faint smile that hovered between mockery and indulgence. But when I asked about her reading and her interest in medicine, she grew animated; her eyes lit up, her gestures became dramatic, and all her careful poise dropped away as she told me of her frustration at the way the female body and its complaints were dismissed as the business of wise-women and midwives, not the proper province of educated male doctors. She wanted to change this, she said; only think how many lives might be saved and suffering spared if physicians better understood women! Her uncle Giambattista had promised that if he ever had the fortune to anatomise a female corpse, he would allow her to be present. I was amazed that any woman would actively wish to participate in such a gruesome business, but I could not tell her of my own experience in this area; instead I smiled and nodded, which she took for approval of her ambition. The room had grown darker around us as the lamps burned low; finally, one of them guttered out and I jumped up, seized with a sudden panic about the time. She came to stand in front of me, took my hands in hers and placed them either side of her face.

  ‘You have still not guessed correctly what animal my uncle declares me to be,’ she said, with a coy smile. ‘You must read my face again, properly this time.’

  ‘I do not know the science,’ I whispered. Her mouth was mere inches from mine; I could feel her breath on my lips.

  ‘Then you will have to learn by practice,’ she said, holding my gaze. So I traced my fingertips gently over her cheeks, her brow, her lips, as she closed her eyes. She must have felt my hands trembling. I had almost summoned the courage to lean in and kiss her, when we heard the click of the secret door and sprang apart. The shelf swung open in a sudden flood of sunlight. Ercole stood in the doorway.

  ‘Pardon me, my lady – I didn’t realise you were here.’ His face was impassive, though I suspected he had known very well that Fiammetta was in the library. ‘I came to see if you needed fresh lamps, sir. And also to let you know that it is almost s
ix o’clock. I have no wish to send you away, but I thought you might have obligations, and it would be best if the Dominicans did not send someone to find you.’

  He set the new lamps on the table and took away those that had almost burned out, bowing discreetly to us as he did so. ‘I will wait for you outside.’

  I turned to Fiammetta in alarm as the door closed behind him. ‘I hope he won’t tell your uncle that there was anything improper—’ I began.

  She laughed. ‘Honestly, you must relax, wolfhound. My uncle wouldn’t care. I told you he keeps an unconventional house. Ercole knows how to turn a blind eye too – and I am not just talking about secret societies of great learned men.’ She said the last three words in an affected voice, in case I was in any doubt about what she thought of that concept. ‘I can see you need further lessons in the art of physiognomonics. Come back tomorrow – my uncle is away for the next couple of days in Capodimonte, and I get bored with no one to talk to.’

  ‘What is he doing there?’ I asked, intrigued. He had mentioned research, but there was nothing on the hill of Capodimonte, as far as I knew, except a great forest, and Porta did not strike me as a man dedicated to hunting.

  ‘Experiments, as always. Something to do with caves. He had the servants rounding up stray dogs before he left.’ She reached into the shelf and pulled the lever. ‘Until tomorrow, wolfhound.’

  I had missed the evening meal, and my absence had been noted. Gennaro came to find me in the cloister before compline, furious.

  ‘The prior was asking for you – I had to tell him I had sent you to our illustrious patient from last night with an emergency remedy,’ he hissed, shaking me by the shoulder. ‘Listen, I don’t care how much time you spend in Vomero, but get yourself back here for the offices so I don’t have to lie for you. The last thing we want is anyone investigating your disappearances. The Academy has placed great trust in you, Bruno, and you need to repay it with discretion, not by drawing attention to yourself.’

  I bowed my head, chastened.

  ‘I’m sorry. Will you excuse me my duties in the infirmary tomorrow afternoon, though?’

  He twisted his mouth in disapproval, but gave a reluctant nod. ‘If you swear you will be back for vespers.’

  I was so grateful I clasped him by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks, just as Raffaele passed by on the other side of the cloister, noting us with a wry look. I decided not to tell Gennaro of his threats, in case the infirmarian forbade me from visiting Porta’s villa. All through the service of compline, I was aware of Raffaele’s eyes on me, his smirking and raised eyebrows. He walked close behind me when we left the church, all the way to the dormitory. At the door of my cell, I turned abruptly.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Mind your manners, little soldier. I merely wanted to wish you pleasant dreams. You must be very tired.’

  I looked at him. What was he insinuating? Did he know that I had walked to Vomero and back, or was it a reference to my being out the night before? My best course, as always, was not to rise to it.

  ‘Thank you, Brother. The same to you.’ I slammed the door in his face. Let him sit on the landing all night watching my cell; there would be nothing for him to see.

  I should have been more careful, of course. I should have heeded Gennaro’s warning, or taken Raffaele’s spite seriously. But all I could think about was seeing Fiammetta again. The next day, as soon as the midday meal was over, I made my way to the side gate, meaning to slip out unseen, but I was intercepted by my friend Paolo da Rimini, racing up behind me with his habit hoicked above his knees as he ran.

  ‘Hey!’ His freckled face creased with mock-hurt. ‘Were you going without me?’

  ‘Merda. Sorry.’ I realised, belatedly, that we had a lesson with our Hebrew tutor that afternoon at the Augustinian convent of San Giovanni a Carbonara in the east of the city. Those of us studying for our theology degrees were sent for tuition with the leading experts in different disciplines at other religious houses in the city, to broaden our knowledge. ‘Listen, I have to go somewhere. Can you make an excuse for me? Tell him I’m ill.’

  Paolo frowned. It was not unusual for any of us to skip our lessons now and again, using our licence to leave the convent as a cover for more entertaining pursuits, but I had never played truant without Paolo; he and I had been novices together, looked out for one another, lied our way out of trouble for each other countless times. When I was accused of blasphemy by another novice for mocking his terrible poem about the Virgin, it was Paolo who defended me to the prior with such passionate testimony to my pious devotion that the matter had been dropped. I knew he would do anything for me, and I hated having to lie to him.

  ‘You’ve been elusive these past couple of days,’ he said, trying not to sound wounded. ‘I called for you the other night, but you weren’t in your cell, and you weren’t at the Cerriglio either. And yesterday afternoon you vanished. Is it some business to do with Gennaro?’

  I hesitated. I trusted Paolo implicitly, but the Academy was not my secret to confide, and I could not risk him guessing at anything to do with it.

  ‘No. It’s …’ I leaned in closer and whispered. ‘A woman.’

  His eyes lit up and he slapped my arm lightly. ‘You sly dog! You could have told me. A courtesan, is she?’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t say. You understand.’

  His expression grew solemn. ‘Ah. She’s married.’

  ‘Exactly. Her husband is away this afternoon.’

  ‘Well.’ He tilted his head to one side and grinned. ‘All right for some. I’ll get you out of Hebrew this time if you come for a drink tonight and tell me all the details.’

  I half-ran the whole way uphill to Vomero. Ercole let me in with barely a word and led me to the library. She was waiting for me in the secret reading room, dressed in a white linen gown with a loose, jewelled girdle, her hair tied back with a blue ribbon. She greeted me with a warm smile, and nodded towards the entrance. ‘I’ve told Ercole I will call him if we need anything,’ she said, with a meaningful look. ‘He understands that we would prefer to study undisturbed.’

  ‘What are you reading?’ I gestured to the book open on the table.

  ‘This is my uncle’s encyclopaedia – have you not seen it?’ She offered the volume; I opened it to the frontispiece and read the title: Magia Naturalis. Beneath the author’s name was a drawing of a lynx. That explained why he had thought I was trying to flatter him.

  ‘We are not allowed such things,’ I said, turning the pages in wonder. ‘But – he said he was working on an encyclopaedia of natural magic – I didn’t realise he had already written one.’

  ‘He published this ten years ago, when he was not yet twenty-five,’ she said, her pride evident in her voice. ‘There are editions in five different countries. Now he means to expand it from four volumes to twenty. But he was questioned by the Inquisition about some of the contents – he will have to be more careful this time.’

  It was hard to tear myself away from Porta’s book; I would have given much to spend an afternoon immersed in it, not least to discover what the Inquisition had found to object to; the thought that Porta had already attracted their attention troubled me. But Fiammetta had her bright, mischievous eyes fixed on me, a secret smile playing around her lips, and the look she gave me suggested that reading was not her first priority that day.

  We did not talk of medicine and natural magic. I put my hands to her face again, guessed a falcon, a dolphin, a doe – any animal I hoped might possess sufficient grace and beauty not to insult her. It was all prelude to the inevitable. Laughing, she shook her head at each suggestion, and then she kissed me. Her skin smelled of rosewater and her mouth tasted faintly of salt. She wrapped her fingers in my hair and arched her head back to let me kiss her throat, and I wondered if she had done this before, with other protégés of her uncle, or if some quality in me had proven irresistible.

  She let me unlace her bodice and kiss her
small breasts, but she could not let me take her virginity, she explained candidly, since that was all she had to barter with over her future. Without it, she would be worth considerably less to the nuns or to a prospective husband, but there were other things we might do to bring each other pleasure. I did not ask how she knew of such matters. Instead, I let her show me, and I learned much in that hot, windowless library as the lamps burned low. It was not my first time with a woman, but my previous attempts had been rushed, clumsy affairs by comparison. Fiammetta taught me to take my time, as well as introducing me to new aspects of the female anatomy that I could not have learned from any textbook. If I felt a twinge of guilt, it was only over the books Porta had set out for me, abandoned on the table as I explored other avenues of forbidden knowledge.

  ‘I must not miss vespers this evening,’ I whispered afterwards, as we lay on the Turkish carpet, breathing hard, sweat slick on our skin in the lamplight. ‘There’s enough suspicion of me already – I can’t lead the Dominicans to your uncle.’

  ‘Go, then,’ she said, leaning forward to gently bite my lower lip. ‘But come back tomorrow.’

  I promised I would, though that evening I scrambled into vespers a minute after the prayers had started; my late arrival occasioned a stern glare from the prior over the rim of his lectern, a furious scowl from Gennaro and a narrowed, knowing look from Raffaele. But the next day, giddy and reckless with desire, I returned to Vomero. Fiammetta met me herself at the door in the cliff, and led me through the underground tunnels to a different exit, through a grotto in the gardens.

  ‘I thought it might be pleasant to be outside,’ she said, slipping her arm through mine as she led me along a path through a grove of lemon trees, away from the villa. I darted an anxious glance over my shoulder.

  ‘Where is Ercole?’

  ‘Indoors, I expect. He won’t bother us.’

  ‘You’re sure he won’t say anything to your uncle?’ I had the impression that, beneath his veneer of spotless civility, Ercole disapproved of me, and I could not help but worry that my place in the Academy might be at risk if Porta thought I had taken advantage of his generosity to despoil his niece. I did not want to have to choose between them.