by S. J. Parris
‘I was here last night,’ I stammered. ‘He told me to come back, to use the library.’
The door opened wide enough for me to pass into the welcome cool of the passageway. The servant Ercole admitted me with a nod, and I followed him through the chambers from the night before, where he offered me the chance to wash my face and hands in the underground spring. He did not speak a word to me as we passed along another network of tunnels on the other side of the meeting room. The final passage ended in a flight of stone steps; at the top he unlocked a door into an unmarked room inside the villa. Looking back, I saw that as he closed this door, it blended seamlessly into the painted wooden panelling of the wall, so that from inside you would never guess it existed.
‘Don Giambattista is away,’ Ercole said, as he led me down a richly decorated corridor and pushed open another door at the end. ‘But he says you may stay in the library as long as you wish.’
I craned my head up to look around the room we had just entered. It was two storeys high with a mezzanine gallery running around three sides, accessed by a spiral staircase, with arched windows at intervals filling the space with light. The domed ceiling was painted with allegorical scenes of the goddess Athena, and every wall was packed with shelves of books and parchments; my mouth hung open as I approached the first stack, hardly knowing where to start. But I was quickly disappointed; there was nothing to see but expensive editions of the most respectable books: Aquinas, Aristotle, Saint Augustine.
Behind me, Ercole gave a discreet cough.
‘Upstairs. Come.’
I followed him to the gallery. At the far end, where the window allowed a view over the city and the bay beyond, he reached his hand into a stack of books. I could not see what he did, but I heard a satisfying mechanical click, and the entire shelf stack swung out towards me on a pivot so well engineered that it moved almost silently. I stared at Ercole and he nodded me through the gap that had opened. Here, inside, was a room under the eaves with no windows, containing further shelves of books and a writing table. I blinked, trying to adjust to the gloom. Ercole followed me, and from somewhere in his clothes he brought out a tinderbox and lit a series of lamps in alcoves between the stacks.
‘Enjoy your studies, sir,’ he said. Like all good servants, he was impeccably polite, and inscrutable. ‘There is a jug of fresh spring water on the table in case you are thirsty. Please keep it away from the books. My master has taken the liberty of selecting a few volumes he thinks may be of interest to you. When you have finished here, pull the lever inside the shelf.’
With that, he left me in this darkened cave of treasures and the entrance closed behind him.
I took a long draught of cold water straight from the jug and began to look around Porta’s secret library. Here was every volume on the Inquisition’s Index of Forbidden Books, a trove of all the authors I had longed to read and feared I might never be allowed to set eyes on. It was only as I spoke the titles aloud, in awe, that I fully understood the weight of the trust he had placed in me. Owning any one of these books would be enough to see him interrogated; even his wealth and family name would not protect him from the consequences of a whole library full, if anyone should report him. I realised again what an extraordinary and dangerous undertaking the Academy was. To have brought together all those like-minded men, each determined to further the boundaries of knowledge in his own field, and maintain their work in defiance of the Church and the Inquisition was no small matter. What might we achieve, through mutual encouragement and challenge? We could become like those adventurers who crossed an ocean, driven only by their faith that there was more to the world than had yet been seen, and were rewarded with new continents! Since my earliest memories I had been consumed by a great hunger to find out what lay beyond the horizon, in every sense. Finally, in being invited to the Academy, I had found a place where that desire was no longer considered sinful, or disobedient, or wrong. Determined to prove to Porta that I was worthy of the confidence he had placed in me, I turned my attention to the pile of books on the writing table, all concerned with the art of memory and its occult uses.
Perhaps half an hour passed; I was so immersed in Cornelius Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, parsing each sentence twice over so I might have it by heart, that I did not even hear the bookshelf swing open.
‘Who are you?’ said a woman’s voice, sharply.
I jerked my head up, taken aback; she was standing by the entrance to the secret room, like a saint in a painting, her long hair gold in the lamplight. I guessed her to be about my own age, though she moved with a self-possession I could not hope to emulate. Because she was very beautiful, I fixed my gaze on the book to stop myself staring.
‘Fra Giordano Bruno of Nola, at your service,’ I said, darting a glance at her face. She eyed my habit.
‘A Dominican. I did not expect that. I am Fiammetta della Porta. He didn’t tell me anyone was here.’
‘I’m sorry. Your husband invited me to use the library today …’ The sentence tailed off as her face softened into a grin.
‘My what?’
‘Don Giambattista. You are not his – lady?’ I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks.
‘I’m his niece.’ She turned away and idly began to run her finger along the spines of the books in front of her. ‘And you are his latest protégé, I suppose.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ The way she said it needled me; I wanted to believe that Porta had seen something special in me, not that I was one more in a line of promising young men he chose to patronise. I wondered if this was the niece whose character had transformed for the better after discovering that she was beautiful.
‘Well, he must admire you, if he’s let you in here,’ she said. ‘Not many get to see the holy of holies. What animal does he say you are? No – let me guess.’ She came closer and peered at my face. I felt my colour rising under her intense stare. ‘Hm. A wild dog, am I right?’
I nodded slowly. It seemed my resemblance to a dog was universally agreed upon. ‘He said a wolfhound. He’s taught you well.’
‘I know what he looks for. What do you think he says of me?’ She twirled a full circle on the spot so that I could admire her from all angles. I considered, with a quick glance at the door in the hope that someone might appear and save me from having to answer; there was significant potential to cause offence here. This Fiammetta was small in stature, and slender; her face a pale perfect oval, with a high forehead and pointed chin, her features neat but unremarkable. It was her eyes that gave her face beauty; they were wide and expressive, bright with the promise of mischief, and the same clear tawny gold as her uncle’s; I should have spotted the family resemblance straight away. I racked my brains for some creature that would flatter her, when she tossed her loose, curly hair back and breathed impatiently through her nose.
‘A horse,’ I said, and immediately wished I could take it back.
‘A horse? Well, thank you.’ But she was smiling. ‘What kind? A carthorse? Or do you mean a mule, perhaps, or a donkey?’
‘No, I – I was thinking of a thoroughbred,’ I said, desperately trying to retrieve the situation, ‘like those Andalusian pure breeds that are taught to dance in the viceroy’s processions, they’re very elegant—’
‘Oh, I’m a dancing horse now? That makes all the difference. You should stop there before you dig yourself any deeper, Brother. What are you reading?’
‘Agrippa,’ I said, relieved to change the subject, though I expected the name to mean nothing to her.
‘Ah. I like Agrippa,’ she said, spinning back to me. ‘But really you should read Marsilio Ficino, if you are interested in Neoplatonist magic.’ She caught my expression and laughed. ‘Quite well-read for a woman, aren’t I, Giordano Bruno of Nola? Are you impressed? My father finds it disgusting.’
I remembered, belatedly, to close my mouth.
‘Your uncle lets you read his books?’
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t he? My uncle en
joys 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 six 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.’
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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 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.’