by S. J. Parris
‘I think you must be mistaken.’ I tried to move past him, but he shoved me hard in the chest; I stumbled and he took a step towards me. I realised then that he had come for a fight and, much as I would have liked to oblige, it would not help my reputation or that of San Domenico if I were to appear before the Holy Father on Christmas day with a black eye and bruised knuckles.
‘Do you seriously think,’ he said, through his teeth, his hand back on his sword hilt, ‘that she would be interested in fucking a dirty little Neapolitan peasant like you? How do you dare have the temerity even to look at her?’
He was almost vibrating with rage. I suspected he knew as well as I did that the lady Lucrezia had made it clear that she was extremely interested. I had done my best to ignore the slow, stroking motions of her fingers at the top of my thigh, and her murmured innuendoes in my ear; it was fortunate that the wine meant my response was muted. But I had met too many men like this Renzo in my own order – bastard sons of noblemen, obsessed with the distinctions of rank because they were so acutely conscious of their own tainted status – to take the insult with grace, especially in my cups.
‘What are you, her bodyguard?’ I stepped up to face him, my hand sliding around my back, under my cloak, before I remembered that I had left Porta’s knife behind.
‘I am going to be her husband, you dog.’ He was taller than me, but I was riled enough not to be intimidated.
‘Ah. She forgot to mention your betrothal. I’ll be sure to pass my congratulations to His Eminence, her brother. He’ll be surprised by the news, I imagine.’
‘It’s not official,’ he blustered. ‘But I will have her eventually. I haven’t spent this long courting her for nothing. I am of the royal house of Piombino, you know.’
‘Mm. Though that’s not really official either, is it?’
At that, he moved to draw his sword, but the drink had made him clumsy; it stuck in the scabbard, and as he fought to free it, I could not think of any way to stop him except to land a hard punch in his gut. He doubled over, coughing, and I ducked past him towards the door leading into the palazzo.
‘I’m going to make sure you end up at the bottom of the fucking Tiber,’ he shouted after me, when he had recovered enough to speak. ‘In so many pieces your whore bitch mother will have to spend the rest of her worthless life fishing for them. Memorise that, you Neapolitan cunt! Good evening, Your Grace,’ he added, with an unsteady bow, as an older man in bishop’s robes passed me in the doorway, looking from one to the other of us with consternation.
The night air and the confrontation had sobered me somewhat; I realised with a jolt of fear that I had narrowly avoided a brawl in the cardinal’s house, which might have ended in serious injury for one or both of us, and would not have helped my standing in Rome, or Porta’s. I congratulated myself again on having the foresight to leave the knife behind. I needed to get away before anything worse happened. I also wanted to make sure I avoided any possibility of the lady Lucrezia propositioning me directly; I did not think she would react well to an outright rejection, but the alternative would place me in an equally dangerous position. Cardinal d’Este, tolerant as he was, would be unlikely to forgive such a breach of etiquette.
I decided to find Porta and ask him to make my excuses to the cardinal. I also wanted to ask if he could spare one of his bodyservants to accompany me to Santa Maria; I was not convinced that I would find the way back easily in my present state, and although Renzo was loud and arrogant and I did not take his blustering threat literally, it was possible that he was angry enough to follow me into the streets and teach me a lesson on the way. That odd, unsettling sense of being stalked earlier in the afternoon also came back to me. Perhaps I had imagined it, but in the light of what Cardinal d’Este had told me about Rebiba and the Pope, it did not seem impossible that someone could have been set to spy on me while I was here. In the dead of night, half-drunk, my fears swelled and loomed like distorted shadows in candlelight; I did not relish the thought of walking through Rome unarmed in the dark.
In search of Porta, I soon realised I had taken the wrong staircase. I could hear the hubbub of music and conversation but I seemed to be moving away from it with every twist of the corridor. My head had begun to spin again and I felt a sudden need to sit down. To my right, I noticed a door that had been left ajar; a light flickered from within and I pushed it open to find a small chamber with a cheerful fire blazing in the hearth. Chairs had been pulled close and empty glasses lay abandoned beside them, but whoever they belonged to had disappeared. Against one wall there was a day bed piled with cushions and velvet throws. I stood by the fire to warm my hands, and decided to pause for a rest before finding Porta.
I had only intended to close my eyes long enough to clear my head. Instead, I fell into strange dreams, and when I half-opened them I believed for a moment that I was in the kitchen of my childhood home in Nola, with my head in my mother’s lap, her strong fingers raking with a soothing rhythm through my hair. I blinked hard and my vision cleared to show the lady Lucrezia stroking my head, a knowing smile playing over her lips.
‘Very ungallant of you to fall asleep on me, my little Dominican,’ she chided, running a forefinger down my cheek.
I scrambled to sit up. We were alone in the small chamber, the door shut fast, the fire and the candles burning low. I had no idea what time of night it might be, or how long I had slept. The sudden movement had set my head pounding.
‘Forgive me, I – I have to get back,’ I stammered. But she was perched on the edge of the day bed, sitting on my habit; I could not move without physically pushing her, and she knew it.
‘No rush,’ she said, placing her hand on my chest. ‘No one is going to come looking for us.’
I glanced at the door. This was not true; I was certain that Renzo Arduino was, at this very moment, urgently searching every room in the house for us, ready to defend his lady’s honour. I was more worried about my own.
‘My lady.’ I tried subtly to move, only to find that my belt had been unfastened. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m expected back at Santa Maria. I am in holy orders,’ I added, unnecessarily, indicating my habit.
She let out that raucous laugh that sounded as if it should belong to a tavern-keeper and not a noblewoman. ‘Yes, I had noticed,’ she said. ‘I never met a churchman who let those vows bother him unduly. Do you know how many mistresses my brother has? And he’s a cardinal.’
‘Well, exactly.’ I tried to sound deferential. ‘He is senior enough that such things would not damage his prospects. Whereas I am merely a humble friar—’
‘There’s nothing humble about you,’ she said, toying with the collar of my habit. ‘I watched you tonight, showing off your memory tricks. You’re very sure of yourself and your own brilliance. It’s an attractive quality.’ She leaned closer; I pressed myself back against the wall. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what do you think are my attractive qualities?’
I let my gaze flicker downwards and noticed that she had loosened her bodice. ‘Um.’ My mouth dried. The pain in my head felt as if it were bulging outwards through my eyes. ‘You are a very beautiful woman, my lady. But His Eminence the cardinal is my host, and I would not for all the world insult a lady as noble as you by even daring to look—’
She made an impatient noise. ‘I’m not offering to marry you, boy,’ she said. I wondered if she actually remembered my name. ‘And His Eminence the cardinal is my little brother, who has not dared argue with me since he was a toddler in napkins. Please don’t worry on his account. His only concern is for my happiness. Which I believe you could enhance tonight.’ She unlaced her bodice all the way and let it fall open, then reached for my hand and placed it decisively on her small, firm breast.
I stared at her, my eyes locked on hers, frozen for several moments as if my brain could not quite process what was happening. My body caught up quicker than my thoughts; as she slid a hand up my leg and bent her head to kiss me, I knew I had to move before my natu
ral responses rendered me helpless. I sprang from the bed, snatching the hem of my habit out from under her as my belt fell to the floor, and backed towards the door.
‘My lady, I can’t – I must stay pure. I am to see the Holy Father tomorrow.’
Her smile vanished. ‘Pure. Please. Who would know?’
I gestured to the ceiling. ‘God is watching.’
‘He’s seen worse.’ She stood and advanced towards me, but there was no honey in her expression now; she looked at me as if we were circling one another in preparation for a duel, and I realised that the conquest had become a matter of saving her pride. For the space of a heartbeat I considered giving in; she was, after all, a good-looking woman, standing before me half-naked, the firelight playing pleasingly over her skin. It would have been no hardship to give her what she wanted. But in the same moment I realised the price would be too high; to make an enemy of her brother the cardinal, on whose goodwill Porta depended, as well as that hot-headed thug Renzo, would not be worth a few minutes of pleasure that I was fairly sure I was not sober enough to appreciate. The insult to her vanity would be brief, and I could take comfort in the knowledge that I had done nothing deserving of reproach.
‘Forgive me,’ I stammered again, fumbling for the latch, and fled before she could lunge at me, leaving her staring in disbelief and fury as the door swung shut. I ran for the nearest set of stairs, tore along an empty corridor and found myself in an outer courtyard by the stables, where boys were saddling horses by torchlight, ready for whenever the last guests chose to depart. The sounds of music and singing carried from the house behind me. My breath steamed in the air; I glanced up to see stars pin-bright in a clear sky. I shivered, realising I had forgotten to collect my cloak, but I did not dare return to the main entrance in search of it. I had lost my belt too, and had to hitch my habit up to keep it off the frosty ground. The thought of it in the lady Lucrezia’s hands, as evidence, gave me a cold sensation in my stomach, as if I were the one with something to feel guilty about.
‘You look frozen, Fra Giordano,’ said a woman’s voice softly, behind me. I jumped, turning with my hands up in defence; the Ferrara accent was so like Lucrezia d’Este’s that I feared she had followed me. But when the figure stepped forward from the shadows, I saw that it was her sister, the lady Leonora. She was wrapped in a heavy cape of fur, with matching mittens on her hands.
‘I left my cloak,’ I said, with an anxious glance at the house.
‘I came out to escape the noise,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘I like to look at the stars. I find them reassuringly indifferent to our petty concerns, don’t you?’
I nodded, with a shiver, though in that moment my concerns seemed far from petty; I had insulted the sister of a cardinal, whose suitor had threatened to kill me, and the next day, on no sleep, I was to appear before the Pope, who was apparently planning to trap me into condemning myself and my convent for heresy.
‘Do you ever imagine what it would be like to fly among the stars?’ she murmured, her head tilted back. ‘Your friend Porta told my brother he is working on a device with lenses that would allow him to see the heavens as if they were mere yards away.’
‘Did he?’ I felt it best not to admit to knowing anything of Porta’s experiments, though his optical device was among the more harmless.
‘I hope he does not succeed,’ she said, smiling. ‘I prefer the heavens to remain a mystery. I find this desire men have to measure and categorise everything to be at odds with awe and beauty. Suppose we could see the stars up close and find they do not look like diamonds on a velvet cloth after all? How disappointing that would be.’
‘But there is wonder in understanding how the universe works, my lady,’ I said, thinking at the same time that I was probably too drunk for a conversation that might stray dangerously close to heresy. ‘The knowledge of how to measure and map the oceans has allowed men to discover new worlds over the sea in our lifetime – might the same not be true of the heavens?’
She turned to me and frowned. ‘You think there are other worlds in the heavens? I have never heard such an idea.’
But I had. In Porta’s secret library I had found books by Nicholas of Cusa and the Polish astronomer Copernicus proposing the theory that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, that it circled the Sun, a star like any other star, and if that were the case, why should every other star we see not also have its own worlds in orbit, just like ours? Those books and their hypotheses were strictly forbidden by the Inquisition; it was pure folly even to hint at them to the sister of a cardinal.
‘No. That would be blasphemy,’ I said quickly. ‘Forgive me, my lady – I talk too much.’
‘My sister Lucrezia always says the same of me. By the way – she was looking for you earlier,’ Leonora added, giving me a sidelong look. ‘She seemed quite determined to find you. Did she?’
I lowered my eyes. I could not think how to answer, though I felt discretion was my best defence. A dull pain throbbed behind my eyes; if I had not been so cold, I might have fallen asleep right there on my feet.
‘I see.’ She continued to watch me. ‘Luigi said he warned you. You turned her down, yes? That’s why you’ve come running out here without your cloak?’
I nodded miserably. She glanced around the yard, then clapped her hands together briskly.
‘Then you need to leave immediately. My sister doesn’t like to be thwarted – she tends to lash out.’
‘How do you mean?’ I snapped my head up, alarmed.
‘Do as I say. Get yourself away from here while her anger is hot, so none of her poison darts can land. By tomorrow she’ll probably have forgotten the whole thing. I’ll have your cloak sent on.’ She called over one of the grooms. ‘You, sirrah – take one of the cardinal’s horses and see this young friar safely back to Santa Maria sopra Minerva, quick as you can. Go the back way.
‘Merry Christmas to you, Fra Giordano,’ Leonora said, as I mounted behind the servant and the gates were opened for us. ‘May the Christ child and His Holy Mother bless your audience with His Holiness tomorrow. And don’t worry about my sister. I will speak in your defence.’
I thanked her with a tight bow from the saddle, but all I could think was: defence against what? I feared that, of the two impossible choices put before me in that small, firelit chamber, I had made the wrong one.
I woke abruptly into grainy grey light, to find myself shaken by the officious novice from the day before.
‘Fra Agostino sent me to fetch you,’ he said. ‘You’ve overslept.’ He seemed pleased but unsurprised by this most basic shortcoming.
I sat up gingerly, touching my fingers to my temples. My skull felt like the shell of an egg that might fracture with the slightest unexpected movement. I did not remember much about how I got home; I recalled the horse, the solid bulk of the cardinal’s servant as I clung to him through twisting back streets; the knowing nod of the old gatekeeper at Santa Maria as he unlocked the door for me. I had no idea what time that might have been, or any recollection of how I had found my way to my bed.
‘Can I get some hot water?’ I asked the boy. ‘I would like to wash before I see Fra Agostino.’
‘No time for that,’ the boy said, smirking. ‘He’s waiting for you to go to early Mass at San Pietro.’
Madonna porca. I managed to keep the curse under my breath. I stood, steadying myself as waves of dizziness blurred my vision and the pain threatened to split my head in two. I felt as if I had barely closed my eyes. Never again, I thought, furious with myself; it was all I could do to remember my own name, never mind swathes of scripture.
‘What time is it?’ I asked.
‘Six.’ He opened the door and held it for me. Somewhere beyond the cloister a bell was ringing. ‘I heard you didn’t get back until four.’
I passed a hand through my hair. I didn’t want to think about what I looked like. It was then that I realised my habit was trailing on the floor.
‘Can I bo
rrow your belt?’ I said.
‘What?’ He looked me up and down. ‘No. Don’t you have one?’
‘I lost it. Come on – I can’t go to San Pietro like this. It would reflect badly on our order.’
He hesitated, his cheeks primly sucked in, as if he couldn’t imagine how someone could be such a hopeless mess. After a moment, he rolled his eyes and unfastened the cord around his waist. ‘This is only so you don’t make Santa Maria look bad,’ he said. ‘Although from what I hear it will take more than a belt.’
I decided not to give him the satisfaction of asking what he meant by that.
‘Dear God in Heaven.’ Fra Agostino assessed me from head to foot and shook his head in dismay. ‘Your face is actually green. Are you going to be sick?’
‘I think it must have been something I ate,’ I mumbled. ‘Probably the wrong season for shellfish.’
He gave me a long look. ‘I don’t think it’s what you ate. You reek of wine. I hope you didn’t do anything to disgrace yourself?’
‘Of course not.’ Jagged shards of memory jabbed uncomfortably at me; my hand on Lucrezia’s breast; punching Renzo in the stomach; suggesting to the lady Leonora that I believed in other worlds. ‘It was all quite uneventful.’
‘You can tell me all about it on the way. Oh, and this was sent for you by messenger from the Este house early this morning.’ He held up my cloak. ‘You must have left in a hurry. Like Joseph fleeing from Potiphar’s wife.’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘No, nothing like that. I just forgot it.’
‘Really? I thought you were the memory expert.’
I shrugged the cloak around my shoulders and avoided his eye.
We walked to the Vatican with other senior brothers from Santa Maria, accompanied by several armed servants; Fra Agostino had brought with him a purse from which he distributed Christmas alms to the beggars and workless men who lined the streets with their hands out, hoping for a scrap of seasonal charity from those on their way to Mass at San Pietro. Agostino quizzed me all the way about what I had seen and heard at Cardinal d’Este’s the night before; he was disappointed with my claim that I had been seated at a far end of the table among persons of no note and had overheard little of interest.