Courtesan's Lover

by Gabrielle Kimm

  I can just imagine the hurt in his eyes; can see him stepping back from me, physical pain and disgust distorting his sweet features. Dear God! How can I ever tell him the truth? But then, if I don’t…how am I going to be able to live with the guilt of my deception…and with the constant fear of discovery? Every time I see Luca, I find myself searching his face for signs of a change of heart. I wonder each time if Gianni, or Filippo—or God knows who else—has told him the truth, and I have to admit that I am finding living like this not far from unbearable. I am balanced on the crumbling edge of this abyss, with incipient panic thumping away in my chest half a dozen times a day—and it is proving to be more arduous than I could ever have imagined.

  But I can’t walk away from it. It has been less than a fortnight since Filippo took me to San Domenico Maggiore and turned my life upside down, and already, I simply cannot imagine life without Luca.

  It will all quite certainly crash around me eventually. The only thing is when? How long do I have left?

  There is a knock at the front door.

  My heart balloons up into my throat, and I pull in a long breath, trying to force it back down to where it should be. I can hear the girls scrambling for the stairs, bickering; they both want to be the one to open the door. Thank heaven, they seem to have taken to Luca, and spend as much time as they can when he is here trying to sit or stand as close to him as they can reach, fiddling with the material of his doublet and peeping up at him coyly from under their lashes. He is lovely with them—funny and kind, and always seemingly interested in what they have to say.

  Little feet thud on the stairs again, coming up this time.

  “Mamma! He’s here!” Bella says, sounding breathless as she pushes open my bedchamber door.

  “Tell him to come up to the sala,” I say. “And then go and find Ilaria. I’ll be there in a second.”

  Bella runs back downstairs, and I give a last tweak to my hair, chew my lip once more, and, leaving my chamber, cross to the sala.

  Luca’s smile is wide and warm when he sees me.

  I relax.

  Before saying a word, he cups my face in his hands and kisses me—slowly and with obvious longing; one hand then slides down around my back, and I find myself arching forward and pressing up against him. Perhaps it’s as well that the girls are here or I might not be able to prevent myself from pulling his doublet laces undone.

  He stands back from me, drawing breath. “Looking forward to your boat trip?” he says.

  “Very much.”

  “I thought we might work our way round the coast to Mergellina, if you’d like to…”

  A smile and a nod.

  “The coastline round there is lovely. I know a place where we can stop and eat our food and then…well, let’s see what we want to do after that, shall we?”

  I think I know what I might want to do.

  ***

  Beata and Isabella stand on the door sill and wave an enthusiastic good-bye as Luca and I make our way up the street. Luca is carrying a bag of food—sliced pigeon breast wrapped in waxed paper, bread, cheese, grapes, a couple of peaches, and a big bottle of wine. Turning, I call back, “I’ll see you this evening. Be good!”

  They continue to wave until we are right at the end of the street. Just before we round the corner, I turn back, kiss my fingertips, and blow the kiss toward them. Bella jumps up, pretending to catch it, and Beata tries to snatch it from her sister. Luca laughs. Ilaria, however, standing behind them, stares mulishly at me for a moment before shepherding both girls back inside.

  ***

  Luca told me that Piero’s boat was small, but when we arrive at the waterfront it seems both long and heavy to me, and I’m more than a little impressed that Luca is happy at the thought of rowing it as far as he plans to. I think Mergellina is at least three or four miles away. The boat is tied up in front of the Parisettos’ house, and, much to my delight, it is painted a bright and vivid yellow. Two huge oars are stowed along its length, and two shiny, polished seats—Luca tells me they are called “thwarts”—cross from side to side. I know nothing whatever about boats, and have absolutely no idea of the seaworthiness or otherwise of this little craft, but it appears to have been beautifully made, its yellow color is sunny and cheerful, and—best of all—it offers me the prospect of a whole day alone with Luca away from the city, uninterrupted by anyone I know.

  “Like it?” Luca says.

  I nod. “It’s lovely.”

  “Piero and Serafina aren’t here, but Piero said just to take the boat and go, whenever we wanted. So…” He inclines his head toward the boat, holding out a hand to help me in. I take it and gingerly step across into the boat, which shifts alarmingly under my feet. Settling down onto one of the thwarts, I shift my bottom to free the crumpled material of my skirts and, rather awkwardly, stow the bag of food underneath my seat.

  “Comfortable?” Luca says, as he steps into the boat himself. Sitting down, he pulls off his doublet and rolls his shirt sleeves up above his elbows. He folds the doublet and pushes it out of sight.

  I nod again. As it happens, I’m not, but I should not dream of saying so.

  With the confident ease of the much-practiced oarsman, Luca unfastens the rope securing the boat to the shore, picks up one of the oars and, using the end of the blade, pushes against the jetty-edge. He takes up the other oar then, and deftly begins rowing out into open water. For a few moments the only sounds are the slap of the water against the side of the boat, and the soft “clop” of the oars dipping and lifting.

  The close-packed houses that jostle one another right down to the water’s edge begin to thin out as we make our quietly purposeful way westward. Clustered together in joyous disorder, these waterside dwellings are grubby and dilapidated but teeming with life: half a dozen bare, brown-skinned boys are jumping into the water, shouting with ebullient pleasure, pulling each other in and then slithering out up onto the decrepit old jetty, all angled arms and legs. They glitter with sun-filled water droplets as though encrusted with diamonds as they pause in their play to watch us pass, catcalling and waving at us. Several women look up from washing clothes and stare, and at least a couple of dozen men are busy preparing their boats; they take absolutely no notice of us whatsoever.

  “About another mile or two westward, and the coastline is almost deserted,” Luca says, his voice jerking a little in rhythm with the oarstrokes. “There’s a little inlet just past the main harbor of Mergellina—I’m going to take the boat up there.”

  We row on, alternating between easy, companionable silences and entertaining conversations. We discuss music and art and history, we talk about poetry and politics—wonderful, fascinating, important things about which no one, not even Modesto, has ever, ever cared to hear my opinions.

  And we talk about each other.

  Well…no. That’s not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that, in answer to my questions, Luca tells me much about himself, and in answer to his, I—well, I tell him mostly about Signora Marrone. Sparks of guilt ignite at every lie I invent, but I carefully snuff each spark out as it flares, and, as if in reparation for my deceit, I do my best to offer Luca as many truths as I can risk uttering.

  “Tell me something about what you like to do,” Luca says, smiling. “I think I asked you that day at San Domenico, but I seem to remember that you very successfully wriggled out of answering.”

  He rests from his rowing for a moment, balancing the oars horizontally under his forearms; the water running from the blades glitters like tiny shards of glass as it falls back into the sea, and the boat tilts up and over a wave.

  I hesitate, thinking fast. What do I like to do? Now I am asked, I have no idea.

  After a moment, I say, “I play the lute.” That is just about true.

  Luca’s smile widens, and he says, “I love the s
ound of a lute. Will you play for me one day?”

  “I should love to—I’m not very gifted, though.”

  “You have to be more gifted than me—I don’t play an instrument at all.” He hesitates, then adds, “Having said that, when I was a boy”—another pause—“I did learn to play the zampogna…”

  He reddens a little as he admits this, and, hearing in my head the dying-cat moaning of that tuneless bagpipe, I cannot help laughing. Putting my hand over my mouth, I try to smother my amusement.

  “You’re very rude,” Luca says, pretending to sound hurt. “I was often told I played extremely well!”

  “By whom?”

  “By my mother.”

  I imagine a sweet-faced, dark-haired little boy, awkwardly embracing his great, stiff octopus of an instrument; his cheeks bulge with the effort of producing a sound and he is squinting at a sheet of music, watched by rapt and smiling parents—who seem quite deaf to the horrible sound he is producing.

  “Your parents must have been very proud of you,” I say, loving the image and meaning what I say.

  “No prouder than yours must be of you.”

  Oh, God. The shock of this is like a douse of cold water and quite wipes the smile off my face. My father, proud of me?

  I cover my discomfiture with a counterfeit cough, and hope that the color I can now feel flaming in my cheeks will be taken by Luca as self-conscious modesty, rather than the biting shame it really is.

  I have to change the subject.

  “Do you like to read?” I say.

  “Oh, dear. I should read much more widely than I do—but there always seems to be so much legal documentation to fight my way through, preparing work for my students.” Luca pauses a moment and then adds, “Do you know, I’m not sure I would have said so before, but since the day of the play at San Domenico, I think I have something of a fondness for Ariosto.”

  I smile at him. “I couldn’t say what I think of his work,” I say. “I don’t think I listened to a word of that play.”

  “I’m not sure I did either, now I come to think about it.” He is looking at my mouth. “I was concentrating on quite other things.”

  “Perhaps, if we had listened more carefully,” I say, and Luca’s gaze lifts back to my eyes, “we would find that we neither of us care much for Ariosto at all.”

  “Perhaps not, but I shall always be particularly grateful to him, whatever the quality of his verse.”

  He leans forward, over horizontal oars, now seeking my mouth with his own. He tastes of salt, and his lips are cool and wind-dry.

  ***

  I sit on my uncomfortable thwart, watching Luca’s hands on the oars, feeling as content as I think I have ever felt in my life. The rhythmic sounds of the oars are comforting, pleasing. Droplets of water flick from the blades as Luca rows, landing like little cold needles on the sun-warm skin of my arms and the light dazzles as it catches on the ruffled surface of the water. Luca rows on and on. I watch the muscles in his forearms shifting as he pulls at the oars. Our knees bump together on every stroke.

  Mergellina, when we arrive, proves to be a tiny fishing village nestling between a bank of imposing rocky hills and the sea. The harbor is small and neat, and is packed with little boats, both moored and sailing. There seem to be no more than a couple of streets leading away from the waterfront, and a ribbon of a road leads out of the village, obviously heading back toward Napoli.

  We row on past the harbor entrance.

  “There,” says Luca, holding the ends of both oars with one hand and pointing. “Can you see over there behind that big rock?”

  A pause, while I follow his outstretched finger, and nod.

  “Just between the rock and that dark patch of headland—that’s the inlet. We’re almost there. Hungry?”

  Oh, yes, I think as I nod. Yes, I am. Very. But not necessarily for food.

  Thirty-three

  Beata and Isabella Felizzi sat on the doorstep, each girl’s face wearing an identical scowl. Beata scuffed at the dust with the heel of her shoe and watched as a pebble skittered away from her. Bella picked irritably at a scab on the back of her hand.

  “I’m glad Ilaria is going. And Sebastiano,” Beata said. There was a short pause and then she added, “Sebastiano smells of fish.”

  “And Ilaria’s always cross,” her sister agreed.

  “Always.”

  “I’m glad Modesto will be coming here instead of them,” Bella said. “And Lorenzo.”

  “Even if he is so fat.”

  The girls, despite their ill temper, looked at each other and smothered a snorted giggle.

  “I wish Desto was here already,” Bella said, her smile fading again.

  Beata fiddled with the fastening of her shoe. “Why don’t we go and see him?” she said.

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Ilaria won’t want to go.”

  Beata paused, licked her lips, and then said quietly, “Ilaria needn’t come. It can be just us.”

  “Ilaria told us to stay here,” Bella said.

  “She won’t notice if we don’t stay too long at Desto’s house. She hasn’t spoken to us for ages.”

  The twins stared at each other as the enormity of their disobedience mushroomed up between them. They both turned and looked over their shoulders in at the open front door. Ilaria was nowhere to be seen.

  They stood up.

  “We don’t know if Desto will be at his house…” Bella said.

  “If he’s not, we can just come home again.”

  “We must be back before Mamma gets home.”

  Imagining her mother’s anger, and determining to avoid provoking it, Beata nodded and took Bella’s hand; they glanced up and down the street, checked behind them once more, and set off, hand in hand, toward the house in the Via San Tommaso.

  ***

  Ilaria sat heavily down onto the taller of the two stools in the kitchen. Reaching toward the basket of cannelini beans, she grasped a handful of beanpods and dropped them into her lap. She ran a dirty thumbnail down the outer seam of the pod, pushed her thumb into the slit, levered it open down the length of the bean, and pattered the contents out into a small pewter bowl.

  “A disgrace!” she muttered. “Two good years I’ve given that woman and now it’s dismissal without a word of warning! A disgrace, that’s what I call it…When you think of what I know about her and her carryings-on. Shameless, she is. Quite shameless!”

  Ilaria flung the now empty pod onto the floor at her feet.

  The pile of podded beans in the small pewter bowl grew steadily larger, the heap of pods on the floor spread wider, and Ilaria continued to mutter angrily under her breath as she worked.

  She paid not a moment’s heed to the two children she had last seen sitting on the front door sill as she had passed through the hallway from the sala upstairs.

  ***

  Weighing the pommel of a short-bladed, damascened sword in the palm of his hand, Carlo della Rovere, a calculated sneer of pitying incredulity on his face, said to the armorer, “You’re actually being serious? You’re expecting me to pay that much—for this?”

  The armorer shrugged; entirely unconcerned by Carlo’s critical tone, he scratched the back of his neck with a short length of unworked iron. “If you don’t wish to buy it, Signore, there are plenty who do.”

  “Good. I’m delighted to hear it. I’ll leave it to them, then.” Carlo stared at the armorer for several seconds. The armorer, tall, bulky and solidly muscular, stared back, unabashed. Finally, Carlo handed back the sword. He turned away and began to walk down the Via San Giacomo, sensing the armorer’s gaze upon his back. Fully aware that he had lost face, he tried to swagger, attempted to present an unconcerned back view, but nonetheless ducked down the
first side street he came to. He pushed his hands into his breeches pockets and strode on past covered shops and stalls, ignoring the handful of chickens and ducks that scattered out of his way with a clatter of irritable wings as he walked.

  Some few seconds farther on, however, he checked, as two little girls started and sidestepped at his approach. Seeing them there, he recognized them at once, and, realizing that this time they were alone, he smiled. An entirely mirthless smile. The ill-thought-out plan for retribution against Signora Felizzi that he had suggested to Michele the other day—a plan which, until this moment, he knew had been little more than an intoxicating idea—seemed suddenly entirely possible. Fate appeared to be smiling upon him, for a change. The hairs on his arms rose as he remembered the details of the conversation he had had that day with .

  ***

  “So, tell me, Signore,” he says to the little privateer, “tell me about your most…interesting…voyage over the last few months.”

  stares at him without speaking for a moment, twisting the little plaits beneath his up-tilted chin around his forefinger, then says, “I prefer not to discuss past successes, Sinjur.” He smiles—a twisted smile, showing the gap in his teeth. “We seamen are superstitious, Sinjur. The sea is a capricious mistress and we try never to do anything to annoy her; anything that might ever tempt her to exact any sort of revenge upon us. Boasting of past exploits might seem to her to be…presumptuous.”

  “All right then,” Carlo says. “Tell me about something you might do in the future.”

  “Mmm. Well. That would be asking for trouble too, do you not think?”

  Irritated now, Carlo swallows the remains of his grappa and says, “Well, just tell me something interesting. Anything.”

  A pause.

  “I suppose I might be able to tell you about a discussion I had a few months ago.”