The Phoenix of Florence

by Philip Kazan

  A crooked back: that’s what Simone the steward had told me. He’d imitated a man twisted unnaturally, a man with a wound, who was still angry about his condition, though he must have come about it a long time ago. I turned over and pressed my forehead against the stone, and saw myself picking up a heavy sword, saw the man writhing on bloodied sheets, felt the weight of the sword as I lifted it above my head and brought it down across his back. I’d felt the edge bite. I’d felt his body break beneath it. I’d seen him die. He’s dead: I’d heard the men say it, before the flames rose, before …

  The rat was still scuffling outside, and bats were piping as they hunted midges through the dense air. I got up and sat cross-legged on the floor. I was trying to think but my mind felt numb. I had waited patiently in the Bargello for six years. Everyone comes to Florence sooner or later, Scarfa had said, so I had waited, like a spider in the funnel of its web. Had I really believed that Augusto Ellebori would come to me, though? I decided that it didn’t matter. I would have waited. I would have waited for ever. Two hounds for fidelity. I had been faithful. Had I been rewarded?

  I went upstairs and got dressed, binding the linen tight around my breasts, slipping on my lightest black doublet, buttoning the high collar up under my chin so that the black ruff hid most of my scar. I didn’t need to look in the mirror: I always knew when Onoria became Onorio. From one skin and into another. This morning the metamorphosis seemed incomplete, even though I studied myself again and again in the mirror. I understood: my mother’s ring around my finger. It was a gift from the dead, sent to me out of the darkness. Wearing it, I would always be a daughter. I tried to drown out these thoughts as I clattered down the stairs and unlocked the door, all manly bustle and noise.

  I wandered down to Ponte Santa Trìnita. Footsteps and horse piss had more or less erased Pietro Vennini and his attackers from the pavement, but there was still a rotten taint in the air where he had died. The sun was an hour away from rising but the sky was already a dirty orange above Vallombrosa, fine layers of cloud hanging in the air, as though a vast rubbish heap was on fire beyond the horizon. Church bells clanged sullenly. I walked over to the Pietà and let myself into the chapel. The girls were already awake: I could hear looms clattering inside the main building, and the hoarse chatter of women who should, in a just world, be lying between cool sheets, dreaming until well after sunrise. I sat on the hard, narrow pew, and after a while, the girls began to drift in and out. Some of them simply walked to the altar, dropped a quick curtsey and left. Others lit candles and knelt in prayer. One older woman prostrated herself full-length on the floor. They barely noticed me: I was a familiar face in the Pietà, a friend, a protector. I drifted in and out of prayer, holding my medal of Santa Clara of Assisi, talking to Santa Celava of Pietrodoro, asking her for help with whatever lost thing had just been found. Every now and again one of the girls caught my eye, some painfully thin child, cheekbones showing through, perhaps stifling a racking cough or scratching at a scaly rash or sore. It wasn’t an unkind place, the Pietà. Prioress Brigida was kind-hearted but overworked; there was never enough money. Girls came. Girls died. I could hardly bear to think what it must be like, spinning or weaving silk in an airless room on days like this one. I knew the girl with the bad cough wouldn’t see the first day of September. The chapel was beginning to fill up; soon the old friar who celebrated Mass would arrive. I slipped out. It was still early, but my office was always open.

  Lieutenant Poverini was the only one there when I arrived at the Bargello.

  ‘Quiet night?’ I asked.

  ‘Incredible. Not one death,’ he said wryly. ‘Four stabbings, and some unlucky chap had his ears cut off by persons unknown. But no deaths. Is that a first for this month?’

  ‘I think it must be,’ I said. Although the summer was always a time when tempers became dangerous and worse, the city had been getting more lawless recently. No one wanted to say it aloud, but since Duke Cosimo had retired and left Don Francesco in charge, violence had started to creep back onto the streets in a way that people hadn’t seen since the reign of Duke Alessandro, nearly forty years ago. ‘Listen: is anyone saying anything about the Vennini affair?’

  ‘Is anyone not talking about Vennini, you mean. It’s all just gossip and poisoned tongues. But we arrested that surgeon. He’s locked up.’

  ‘Excellent! I want to talk to him.’

  ‘No need. They already put him to the torture. Three lifts. He didn’t know the man he treated, and he was told to go for payment to the Banco Miniati.’

  ‘That’s the bank of Donna Zanobia’s man. Three lifts, though? Seems a bit zealous.’

  Poverini shrugged. ‘Don Francesco’s taken an interest. He told Scarfa and the magistrates that he wants a result.’

  I went to see if any of the magistrates were in, but their offices were empty. I peered through the door of the torture chamber, just in case, but it was empty too. The rack stood in one corner, and the rope for the strappado hung down from its pulley in the middle of the room, one end terminating in a leather strap, the other attached to a windlass. The surgeon, Spinelli, would have had his hands tied behind his back, that strap wrapped around his wrists, and a man, usually Pandolfo the regular torturer, would have cranked the windlass until Spinelli was dangling a few feet from the ground. It only took a minute or two before the muscle and sinew of the shoulders began to part, and arm bones started to dislocate. For a recalcitrant suspect, or an unpopular one, the man on the windlass might be ordered to let the wheel slip through his hands so that the hanging man plunged, weightless for an instant, before he was brought up short. A drop would finish what a lift had started. After a couple of drops, some men would never be able to use their arms again. Three lifts just to question a surgeon who had treated a wounded man was grotesque. It wouldn’t have been done to punish him, though, just to make sure that he wasn’t lying. It had been the hardest part of my job, the torture. Depending on the case, even witnesses friendly to the prosecution might be given a short lift, just to make them more credible. Just last week, a serving woman who had happened to witness a fight between two gentlemen had been given the strappado, just the merest of lifts but still agonising, and the poor woman had even been grateful to the magistrates as now her honesty was proved for all to see. I didn’t like to have my suspects tortured but the magistrates decided, and there was nothing I could do about it. Spinelli hadn’t deserved to suffer like that. And why was Don Francesco concerning himself with two honour killings? I decided that I couldn’t wait for the magistrates. I left a vague note for Scarfa and went out again.

  The Banco Miniati occupied the ground floor of a small palazzo between the Duomo and the Innocents’ Hospital. They weren’t open yet, but I banged on the door, and when a well-dressed clerk opened it, already scolding me for the disturbance, I held out the duke’s seal and he became a little more polite.

  ‘How can I help a comandante of the sbirri?’ he asked. Bankers can’t seem to help being unctuous, and this one was no exception.

  ‘You have a client called Bartolomeo Ormani, I believe? And perhaps another: Donna Zanobia Linucci?’ I said.

  ‘Ah. All client information is of course confidential,’ said the clerk. I just smiled and pushed past him into a neatly furnished room lined with shelves and drawers. Ledgers and stacks of documents tied with ribbons and sealed with wax or lead lined the walls behind a horseshoe-shaped counter, which was draped with new-looking Turkey carpets. A French tapestry filled one of the empty wall spaces, and a portrait of a bulbous-nosed man in last century’s headwear kept an eye on things from an ornate gilded frame. A bench and several chairs upholstered in satin with the blue-on-white crest of the Miniati. The bank had been in the family for at least two centuries. It was one of the smaller banks in Florence, and its public reputation was spotless, although I happened to know that it had narrowly avoided the scandal that, indirectly, had destroyed my predecessor, Comandante Milanesi. I leant on the counter and began to fi
ddle absently with a set of silver-inlaid scales.

  ‘Those are rather finally calibrated, signore,’ the clerk said tactfully.

  ‘I would hope so,’ I said, treating him to my emptiest grin. ‘Don’t worry. Balance is my trade.’ I picked up one of the little gilded weights and dropped it into one of the pans of the scale, which tilted, shuddering. ‘Balance. Harmony in the affairs of men.’

  ‘Justice,’ said the clerk, still smiling encouragingly, although he was eyeing the weight I was currently bouncing in the palm of my hand. ‘Justice, with her scales.’

  ‘Ah. Well, you see, Messer … Messer …’

  ‘Giardini,’ he supplied. ‘I am the head clerk here.’

  ‘You see, Messer Giardini, you say justice. Blind justice, impartial and fair.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that at all.’

  ‘Ah—’ Giardini blinked.

  ‘Harmony. My job is to restore harmony here in the city. From the greatest to the smallest. A dispute between neighbourhoods, guilds. A feud between two families. A petty dispute between petty street traders. All these things upset the balance of life. Robbery. Murder.’ I dropped the weight into the already tilting pan and the arm dropped with a loud clunk. Giardini blinked again, more rapidly. His smile had grown more artificial.

  ‘You look like a man of integrity,’ I told him. ‘A man who isn’t interested in gossip. So perhaps you haven’t heard that Donna Zanobia was murdered the night before last, around the same time that one Pietro Vennini was cut to ribbons on the Ponte Santa Trìnita. Vennini, a brave swordsman to the last, managed to kill two of his assailants and gave at least one more of them a nasty wound, right here.’ I smacked my arse, and the clerk winced involuntarily. ‘Nasty enough that he had to be treated by a surgeon here in Florence before making his escape. A surgeon called Spinelli, who was told to collect payment for his services from the Banco Miniati, on the account of one Bartolomeo Ormani. Who was also the lover and benefactor of Donna Zanobia. The Otto di Guardia believe that the men who committed the murders were paid by Messer Ormani, and seeing that he appears to put all his expenses through this bank, it would be interesting to see, in the interests of harmony, whether the Banco Miniati has been complicit – unwittingly, no doubt – in a double and extremely sensational murder, and the incidental deaths of at least two other men.’

  Giardini had gone milk-white. ‘You would need a warrant from the Otto. And besides, Messer Orlando Miniati, my employer, is travelling at the moment. Without his—’

  ‘That surgeon I just mentioned? The Otto arrested him last night. They gave him three lifts of the strappado; and he’d already told them all he knew. Three lifts!’ I held up my hands in disbelief – not entirely feigned, but Giardini wasn’t to know that. ‘On the other hand, the magistrates like cooperation. They value it very highly.’

  ‘And … umm … are the Otto going to request this information officially?’

  ‘Yes. But the level of officially depends quite a bit on how cooperative you are with me now.’

  Giardini took off his silk cap and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Is there anything you particularly need to know?’ he asked after a heavy silence.

  ‘The Ormanis.’ Only when I said the words did I realise how much I had been keeping myself in check, how much emotion had built up inside me. ‘I want everything you know about the Ormani family. Who this Don Bartolomeo is. Where he is from. What business he’s involved in. The same for Donna Zanobia. I – we – want to know every last detail.’

  ‘I can’t give you figures or …’

  ‘I don’t care about figures. Just tell me about the people.’

  Giardini took a deep breath. ‘Please,’ he said, indicating one of the upholstered chairs. ‘Take a seat, Comandante. I will bring you what you need.’

  The next few minutes passed as slowly as any in my entire life. I fidgeted. I ran my fingernail up and down the wire wrapping of my sword hilt until the little ratcheting noise put my teeth on edge. The linen binding around my breasts was digging into my skin below my armpits, which in turn made me aware of my nipples, aching and sore. I would begin to bleed tomorrow or the next day. I shifted in the chair, trying to ease the discomfort. It was as if Onoria was trying to get out. When Giardini came back, I jumped to my feet as if an invisible string had jerked me upright. The clerk didn’t appear to notice. He held a book and a sheet of paper with some hastily scribbled lines on it. I had to bite the inside of my mouth to resist the urge to snatch it from him.

  ‘You promise to keep this in the strictest confidence?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll share it with the magistrates only.’

  Giardini seemed as satisfied as he was going to be. He locked the main door and sat down beside me. ‘The Ormanis have banked with us for ten years. First, they were clients of our Siena branch. Then …’ He opened the book and held it at an angle, so that I couldn’t quite see the figures. ‘About ten years ago, the account was transferred here. The principle client is Bartolomeo Ormani, though we handle transactions for one Smeralda, wife of Messer Ditto Salvucci, who lives here in Florence. Ormani has made it known that Donna Smeralda is his sister.’

  Smeralda. Smeralda … ‘Where?’ My throat had suddenly tightened, and my voice was hardly more than a hiss. Giardini handed me the sheet of paper.

  ‘All the relevant details are here.’

  I barely glanced at the paper. ‘The Ormanis.’ I tried to swallow, but it was as if my throat was full of molten lead. ‘They aren’t from Florence.’

  ‘No indeed. From the south. Signor Ormani is the lord of Pietrodoro. A place I have never heard of.’

  The picture that had been forming inside my head since before dawn, a painting of lost things found, of reunions, redemption, painted in the bright colours of hope, dissolved like a sheet of burnt paper which, though it looks almost perfect, falls to dust the moment it is touched. I thanked Giardini for his willingness to help the Eight and left, walking out into the street feeling strangely disembodied, as though there was nothing inside my clothes but aching and a growing sense of dread.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The clerk had written an address for Smeralda Salvucci. I had to blink a few times before his elegant but studiedly illegible handwriting made sense to me. Borgo San Lorenzo: a fashionable street behind the old Palazzo de’ Medici. Not far. I walked fast, sword bumping against my thigh, wrappings chafing beneath my doublet, the first nagging pain in my ovaries.

  The Palazzo Salvucci was an old patrician mansion from before the time of the Medici, the front decorated with worn stone shields blazoned with cockerels and crescent moons. I knocked on the door, and a smartly dressed slave girl opened it. Her master was travelling, she regretted to inform me. Her mistress was at church and would return around eleven of the clock. Would I leave my name? I said I would come back later and left before she could see that my hands were trembling.

  Secretary Boschi was perched on a high stool behind his desk at the tax office. He scowled when he saw me, and I probably did the same in return. I was still in a sort of daze, almost drugged by the riot of thoughts in my head. My skull felt like the inside of the Duomo after a busy service, filled with the chatter of thousands. I had to force myself back into the shell of Onorio Celavini.

  ‘Do you have anything for me, Segretario?’ I asked.

  Boschi sucked in his cheeks and narrowed his eyes. ‘This Zanobia Linucci, who was murdered,’ he said. ‘Do you know who she was?’

  ‘Obviously not, Segretario,’ I said, forcing my mouth into a rigid smile. ‘I’m presuming you remember our conversation yesterday.’

  ‘She was Zanobia Orsini, daughter – illegitimate – of Niccolò Orsini, Duke of Pitigliano. Widow of Giovanni de Giorgio Linucci of Pitigliano, knight, who died eleven years ago in the service of the King of Spain.’

  ‘And what about Ormani?’

  Boschi frowned, plainly annoyed that I wasn’t more impressed by his
information. ‘You sent me on a wild goose chase, Comandante. Your Bartolomeo Ormani owns no property in Florence or anywhere else in the Duchy. Admittedly some records were lost in the recent flooding, but to find nothing …’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No. But I admit that the search threw up a few interesting bits and pieces. I’d assumed the Ormani name to have been extinct for centuries, but it seems that a line, rather an obscure one, had survived in a place called Pietrodoro. One Amerigo Ormani, hereditary knight, three dependants, paid taxes until 1557, and then payments cease. No mentions after that. Fascinating, though. Some offshoot of the family must have taken root down there after the White Guelphs were expelled. I don’t suppose that interests you, though, Comandante.’

  ‘I assure you that it does, Segretario,’ I said, barely able to form the words. ‘You have … you have answered all my questions.’

  I found myself back at the Bargello. One of the magistrates, Messer Alessandro del Caccia, was waiting for me.

  ‘What in Christ’s name is going on, Celavini?’ he demanded.

  ‘Good morning, Cavaliere,’ I rasped. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘This damned Vennini business. The city is full of it. I don’t want that bloody fornicator to become some sort of hero. They’re already printing pamphlets about him.’