Courtesan's Lover

by Gabrielle Kimm

  She decided to leave.

  Standing, she edged herself out into the aisle, bobbed a hasty genuflection, and left the building, The Book of the City of Ladies held in one hand. She would, she thought, finish her reading out here, in the cool of the shadow of the church.

  A low stone bench stood along a nearby wall, and on this Maria seated herself. She opened the book and counted the pages she had left to finish. Less than a dozen. That would not take her long. Tucking the calfskin strip inside the cover, she leaned back and began to read.

  But she had barely completed a page when a flash of vivid red caught her eye and she looked up.

  The opulent woman was leaving the church.

  She was tall, Maria thought, struck by how slow and careful and elegant the woman’s gait seemed; the crimson skirts billowed out behind her as she walked, like the sails of a galleon. Maria stared as the woman turned left and began to make her way toward the top corner of the square. It seemed as though it would be no more than seconds before she was lost from sight, when in an instant she tripped, stumbled, and fell heavily forward, sprawling full-length upon the ground with an audible grunt.

  Maria stood up.

  The woman sat up awkwardly and pulled at her skirts; she fumbled with the fabric and then took out from under the material a shoe, unlike any shoe Maria had ever seen. Its upper was of scarlet leather—an embroidered slipper—but it was the sole that astonished. Some six or seven inches in depth, the gilded sole was a slim-waisted column, shaped like an elongated hourglass. Maria was astounded that anyone could walk at all in such footwear and wondered why any woman would choose to wear something that so effectively hobbled her movements. She was not surprised this woman had fallen.

  And then she saw her face: there were tears in the dark-rimmed eyes, and her mouth was twisted in pain. Several people passed her: some stared, a couple sneered, but none offered assistance. Dropping her book as she ran, Maria hurried across the square and crouched down. “Are you hurt, Signora? I saw you fall, and…”

  “It’s nothing,” the woman said with her eyes fixed upon her foot. “I have wrenched my ankle, no more. It’s my stupid chopines—they are quite impossible to walk in. I hate the damned things—in fact, I think I’ll throw them away when I get home. But—” She hesitated. “Thank you for your kindness, Signora.” She gave Maria a damp smile, wiped her eyes, and stood clumsily, bending to pick up her discarded shoes. Without the impractical chopines, the skirts of the woman’s red dress trailed on the ground, and she seemed dramatically diminished by the reduction in her height.

  “There. I don’t think I have damaged anything too badly,” she said and took a tentative step. With a gasped-in yelp, however, she stopped quickly, her face pinched into a grimace.

  “Oh, Signora—” Maria said, stepping forward again.

  “Oh, merda! Cazzo! I am so sorry…do you think you might be able to help me over to where I can sit down?” the woman said.

  Maria was startled by the profanity, but nonetheless placed one of the woman’s arms around her shoulders, and, putting her own arm around the woman’s back, held her by the elbow. She was aware of a faint smell of peaches. Together they walked with difficulty back to the stone bench, the woman limping badly. Maria helped her to sit. As she slid her arm from where it had been around the woman’s waist, Maria saw The Book of the City of Ladies, spine up on the ground a few yards away across the square. The red calfskin strip lay nearby.

  “Oh! Excuse me a moment, Signora—I must rescue my book.” She hurried over and picked it up, tenderly smoothing the ruffled pages. Bending and snatching up the leather strip as she returned, she hurried back to the stone bench and sat next to the voluminous red damask skirts.

  “I’m sorry. Is your book badly damaged?”

  “No. It is of no consequence—I have almost finished it, anyway.”

  “What is its name?”

  Maria showed her the book.

  “And its subject?”

  Maria smiled then and said with enthusiasm, “Well…it was written by a woman, and among other things, she describes the creation of an imaginary city for virtuous women and—oh, it’s wonderful, Signora—she praises the many contributions women have made—and make still—to…to civilization. It is a remarkable book and most reassuring—I have nearly finished it.”

  “Could I see?” the woman said.

  Maria held it out to her. She watched as her companion opened the cover and began to flick through the first few pages, frowning in concentration as her eyes moved across what she read. She nodded a few times, as though she agreed with the sentiments she saw expressed, and then, apparently startled, drew in a sharp breath.

  “Signora, is your foot hurting?”

  A shake of the head.

  Maria said, “What troubles you?”

  The woman did not answer; she continued reading.

  Maria stared at her, watching her absorption in the words she read. She looked again at the flamboyant red dress, at the woman’s braided hair and painted face. She took in once more the bright stones on fingers, ears, and throat. The discarded chopines suddenly took on a new significance, and something hot slid over itself in Maria’s belly as she realized what this woman’s occupation must be. An occupation that would most probably be decidedly unwelcome in the City of Ladies. She recalled a line from the beginning of the book: Only ladies who are of good reputation and worthy of praise will be admitted into this city. To those lacking in virtue, its gates will remain forever closed.

  A jumble of disturbing images danced into Maria’s mind and she was profoundly shocked to realize that what she felt was not disapproval. It was envy.

  Her face flamed.

  The woman looked up and saw her embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, Signora,” she said, pushing the book back into Maria’s hands.

  “Why do you apologize?”

  The woman hesitated. “I’m imagining…by your expression…that…that you have just worked out my occupation,” she said. “And that perhaps, having determined what it is that I do, you no longer wish me to look at your book.”

  Maria felt her color deepen still further. She put a hand up to the side of her face, the heel of her palm across her mouth. And then an idea struck her. This woman would know. Maria drew in a breath, held it for a moment. She might never have the opportunity again. She had to do it. Her need for information became so intense she felt quite breathless. She felt her mouth opening and closing, but the words seemed to have jammed somewhere at the back of her throat; it was as though they had braced themselves against eviction and were determined to stay put. There was a long silence. Maria saw the woman shift her weight uncomfortably and wince as, presumably, the twisted ankle pained her.

  She felt a tear spill over and run down her cheek. The woman reached out and took her hand, but, embarrassed, Maria pulled away from her grasp. The woman said, “Signora, what is it? What’s the matter? Why are you crying? Is it something I said?”

  Her voice sounded kind.

  Maria began to mutter, more to herself than to her companion, “I can’t ask anyone I know—I simply can’t! There’s no one. But you’ll tell me—I’m sure you will. You’ll understand. You’re…you’re a…” The final word faded away, and Maria stared down at her lap, winding her wedding band around and around her finger.

  “Ask what?”

  Maria looked up at the woman. She imagined her questions, hanging loud in the quiet air between them, and her courage drained away. She shook her head and said nothing.

  The church bell tolled the hour, and the woman in the crimson dress glanced up at the clock. “Oh,” she said. “I really should be getting back to my children.”

  Maria’s heart pinched with envy. “You have children?”

  “Two. Twin girls.” The woman picked up her chopines and made
to stand, but she stumbled on her first step, gasped, and then swore again under her breath.

  Maria stood too. “Please—let me help you home. Do you live far from here?”

  The woman explained.

  “That’s no distance. I can go with you. Take my arm, Signora.”

  The woman smiled at her.

  ***

  A matter of yards from the Via Santa Lucia, in sight of the sea, the two women saw a small group of people outside a tavern. A young girl, no more than sixteen, Maria thought, dressed in an extravagant and tattered orange dress, was leaning insolently against a wall, clearly enjoying the admiration of a group of young men in varying stages of inebriation.

  The woman in crimson stopped. “Look,” she said. “I’ve had an idea. Can you wait a moment?” She raised her voice and said, “Excuse me…” and the group turned as one to see who had spoken. The girl, still leaning on the wall, raked her from head to foot with an appraising, disdainful sneer; Maria she ignored completely. The men’s attention shifted quickly from the girl to Maria’s companion—their stares were unabashed and openly lascivious. Maria’s skin crawled, but her companion seemed to take no notice. “Might you be able to find a use for these?” she said, holding up the shiny chopines.

  The girl’s pretense of superiority vanished. Like a greedy child, she gasped, and her eyes stretched with longing.

  “Don’t you want ’em?” she said, staring at the shoes. “Whass wrong wiv ’em?”

  “Nothing. They don’t fit me anymore.”

  The girl stepped forward and snatched at the shoes. With her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth, she kicked off her own wooden pattens and slipped a grubby foot into one of the chopines. Then, wobbling a little, she balanced on the impossible shoe and put on the second, smiling widely. Her admirers clapped. She made no attempt to thank her benefactor, and after a few seconds, the woman in crimson turned to Maria. “She seems happy enough, Signora. Shall we go?”

  Maria smiled and nodded, and the two women limped on, leaving the young men eagerly assuring the girl that they needed to see a very great deal more of her legs to appreciate fully the beauty of the strange new footwear.

  Sixteen

  Luca della Rovere eased his arms into the sleeves of the doublet Signora Zigolo held out for him, pulled the two halves of the front together, and roughly laced it closed. He flexed his shoulders, raised and lowered his arms, twisted from side to side. He smiled at the seamstress.

  “It’s perfect, Signora. Thank you so much. I imagine it must have been something of a challenge to mend?”

  “Ooh, nothing I could not manage, Signore,” Bianca Zigolo said happily. She raised a plump forefinger in cheerful admonishment. “And I had not forgotten it, Signore, though it was a pleasure to see your son when you sent him to see me the other day to remind me about it. It is to be quite an evening, from what he tells me.”

  Her face radiated curiosity. Gianni could not have told her much—he knew next to nothing about the night to come himself. Luca said, “Yes, it will be an impressive gathering, Signora. Though it doesn’t happen often, when it finally organizes such an occasion, the university does like to create a spectacle.” He raised his hands in mock apology and smiled as he said, “I am afraid that as a mere lowly academic I am not thought important enough to be party to any of the details, though I believe there is to be performance of a play and a quite certainly overindulgent and disgustingly extravagant meal, which we will all no doubt thoroughly relish.”

  The seamstress blew an appreciative breath out through pursed lips, shaking her head as though struggling to accept the idea of such opulence.

  Luca said, “And I shall enjoy the evening all the more for being so finely dressed, Signora. Thank you again. Now…how much do I owe you for your labors?”

  She told him, and (privately astounded that anyone could survive on so pitiful an income) Luca paid her, inclined his head in a brief bow, and left the shop with the newly mended doublet over his arm.

  He walked slowly back to the house, thinking about his sons.

  The continuing tension between the two boys was unsettling. In itself, it was not unexpected: Carlo and Gianni had been uneasy playmates since early childhood. Over the years there had been frequent, usually petty quarrels (most often occasioned by Carlo) and seldom had they seemed truly to enjoy each other’s company. Their troubled relationship saddened Luca, more acutely since Lisabeta’s death. His sweet-natured wife had always been able to reconcile the differences of her two sons—either with smiles or scoldings—and whatever their issues with each other, both boys had unreservedly adored their mother. He saw again in his mind their uncomprehending devastation on the day of her unexpected death and thought with tearing guilt of his own inability to comfort them from within the shattered shell of his own grief.

  He too had adored Lisabeta.

  With the loss of the woman he had so fiercely loved howling around him and deafening him, he knew now that as that first year of bereavement had trailed past, he had entirely failed to hear the plaintive pleas of his sons for his attention.

  When, months later, the tumult died down and he could step outside his head again, he turned his thoughts back to his boys. But he found unexpected changes. Seven-year-old Gianni’s cheerful confidence had shriveled without his mother; nervous and mistrustful, he now watched the world through wide eyes and spoke little, and Luca found that he missed Gianni’s happy chatter almost as much as he missed his wife. And there was worse: clever, vivid little Carlo seemed to have withdrawn—even in those short months—inside a hard carapace Luca could not now penetrate. Carlo hardly spoke to his father. Within his shell the boy had become devious, manipulative, cunning, and Luca found himself almost afraid of his older son, whom—to his great distress—he found he no longer entirely trusted.

  He remembered thinking at the time that something like this must be the experience of sailors who come back from months—years—at sea, to find that in their absence their home life has altered beyond recognition and that they no longer know people they thought irrevocably familiar.

  He walked on for some moments, tangled inside a buzzing jumble of uncomfortable thoughts.

  “Oh, Luca, how lovely to see you!”

  Luca started at the voice, and then smiled to see the diminutive figure of his friend, Serafina Parisetto, crossing the narrow street toward him. Hardly taller than a child and impossibly narrow shouldered: it always amazed Luca that such a tiny woman could have successfully borne two children. She stopped close to him, placed a hand on his arm, and smiled up into his face. He had to stop himself from crouching to bring himself down to her height.

  “I have been wanting to see you for weeks, Luca—ever since you sent us that invitation. I know Piero has told you we should simply love to come, but I’ve been very anxious that you have been thinking me most dreadfully remiss not to have spoken to you myself.” She hesitated, and then her mouth opened and she sucked in a little gasp, as though she had just thought of something very shocking. “He did speak to you, didn’t he?”

  Luca laughed. “Yes, Serafina, I saw him some two or three weeks ago.”

  Serafina puffed a breath out again. “Santo cielo—I thought for one frightening moment that he might not have done and then you should have thought us the rudest friends anyone could possibly have.”

  “Which of course you are…”

  Serafina caught her lip between her teeth to stop herself smiling, and smacked Luca’s forearm. “You are a horrible man, Luca della Rovere,” she said. “I don’t know why Piero and I ever agreed to come to this play with someone so totally unlikable!”

  Luca laughed again.

  Serafina said, “But, seeing that we are being forced to spend an evening with such a canaglia impenitente, perhaps you can tell me a little more about what we may expect…”
>
  Her phrase “unrepentant scoundrel” made Luca think unwillingly of Carlo. He pushed the picture of his elder son back out of sight.

  “Do you have the time to come back to the house, Serafina?” he said.

  “I most certainly do. Piero’s mother is at home.”

  “I’ll tell you as we walk then.”

  ***

  Despite the fierceness of the sunshine outside, the light in Luca’s small sala was cool and dim. The shutters were, as usual, firmly closed to keep out the heat of the afternoon; they would not be opened again until the morning. Little of the bustling noise of the street below penetrated either, and the sala had a peaceful, composed air about it—rather as though the house were drowsing in the warmth with a shady hat over its eyes. Several large tapestries, depicting busily peopled scenes from mythological stories, covered two of the three un-windowed walls, and a long, scrubbed table ran the length of the room. The day being so warm, the fireplace was empty—clean and cleared of the detritus of the previous blaze, though a faint smell of burned wood still hung in the air.

  “And shall you be coming to this marvelous evening of entertainment, Gianni?” Serafina asked. She replaced her glass on the table and folded small hands in her lap.

  “Possibly, Signora.” Gianni flicked his hair out of his eyes. Pushing back his chair, he crooked one foot up onto the other knee, resting one arm on his thigh, hand hanging loosely.

  Luca watched as one of the cats appeared and stood in the half-open doorway for a moment. It crossed the room to the table, where it snaked around the legs of Gianni’s chair and pushed its head up into his palm. Gianni fingered the creature’s ears for a moment. The cat began to purr.