Courtesan's Lover

by Gabrielle Kimm

  The little voice from behind him was tremulous and tired; Gianni sensed the child’s exhaustion and found a smile for her. “Yes. Nearly back at the tavern, and then we’ll go up into the city.” He squeezed her fingers. “We’ll find your mamma, shall we?”

  “Do you know where her house is?”

  “I think I do, but I’ve only been there once. If we can’t find it, though, we’ll go to my house and Papa will help us. He knows where your mamma lives. I think you know my papa—his name’s Luca. He’s—he’s a friend of your mamma’s.”

  They both nodded.

  Ahead was the narrow door to the tavern. Gianni let go of the child; transferred his torch from one hand to the other; opened the door. Light from the tavern flooded into the corridor; a hum of unthinking conversation hung thickly in the smoke-filled air above them.

  ***

  Some way down the Via Toledo, Modesto stopped running. Leaning against a wall, one hand fisted against his doublet front, he felt his breath rasp in his throat. Damn his bloody chest! He had run too far today. Losing his singing career had been one thing, but possibly losing the Signora because he could no longer run for more than a few yards without wheezing like a pair of bellows was quite another. He closed his eyes and drew in several long, uneven breaths.

  “Modesto!”

  Modesto’s eyes snapped open and he stood up away from the wall. The Signore was running up from the direction of the waterfront. Alone.

  “Have you found them?” the Signore called as he ran.

  Still wheezing, Modesto shook his head. “No. But you have to come. Come with me—now.”

  The Signore frowned. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “No time to explain. Just come now.”

  Forty

  Luca dropped to his knees at the side of Francesca’s bed. With fingers that shook, he pushed her hair back from her face, picking from the gash on her cheek a few stiffened wisps that had become caught in it and soaked. Her eyes were closed. “Oh, cara…” he said, in little more than a whisper. “How did this happen? Who could have done this?”

  Francesca made no reply.

  Modesto appeared in the doorway with a pottery jug in his hand. “Water, Signore,” he said, putting the jug down on the floor near the bed. “From the house next door.” He pulled a length of linen from his breeches pocket. “And a cloth.”

  “Thank you,” Luca said. He dipped the cloth into the water and squeezed it out. Wrapping it around his fingers, he gently dabbed at the dried blood that was already crusting at the edges of the long cut. At his touch, Francesca sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. She reached up and took the hand in which he held the wet linen. “Luca,” she said softly. “Thank God…you’re here. Are they with you?”

  Luca glanced at Modesto and swallowed. “No, cara,” he said. “We…no—no they’re not.”

  Francesca sat up, eyes wide. Luca held her hands and said, “But I know we’ll find them. Let me wash this for you.”

  Pushing him away, Francesca let out a wordless, wire-thin wail that stabbed like a blade into Luca’s chest. He saw her run her fingers into her hair, but she cried out as she touched the cut on her face, and held her hands up beside her head. Moving her fingers in jerky agitation, she said, “No! We can’t stay here—we have to find them! We have to go, now, keep looking! They could be anywhere!”

  “I’ll go, Signora,” Modesto said. “I’ll go now. The Signore should stay here with you: you’re not fit to—”

  “No! Modesto, no! I have to go too! Help me up—I can’t just sit here like this!”

  Luca began to remonstrate, but a loud banging on the door interrupted him. Modesto left the room.

  Voices in the hallway. Two male voices. And then, from the stairs, a shriek, “Mamma!”

  Scrambling footsteps.

  Luca stood up. Francesca was off the bed and across the room in a second, but, unsteady on her feet, she stumbled and grabbed for the edge of the door to hold herself up.

  “Mamma! Mamma!”

  As Luca took a step toward Francesca, the twins ran in and threw themselves at her. She sank to her knees; the girls sank with her, and in a moment, they had wrapped themselves around each other. Tears stung behind Luca’s eyes as he watched Francesca gather her children into her arms. None of them spoke, or cried, or moved for more than a minute. Then one of the children turned her head, reached upward, and unwittingly caught the cut on her mother’s cheek. Francesca gasped, winced, and pulled back, and the child let go of her. “Oh, Mamma—your face!” she said, her voice high-pitched with distress. The second child scrabbled around. Seeing the cut, which had started to bleed again, both children began to cry.

  Luca crouched down next to them. They jumped, and stared around at him, whimpering and clinging again to Francesca’s skirts. “It’s all right,” he said. “Mamma has hurt her face, but she’ll be fine. Shall we help her back up, and let her lie down on her bed? And then…then perhaps you can tell us where you’ve been.”

  Both girls nodded. They stood back, fingers over their mouths as Luca gathered Francesca up into his arms and put her back onto her bed. She lay back against the pillow, and closed her eyes.

  “Would you like to come and sit by her?”

  They scrambled onto the bed and sat curled up, one on either side of their mother. Eyes still shut, she put an arm around each and pulled them in close.

  “Mind her face,” Luca said, sitting on a chair near the bed. One of the girls lifted a hand and touched her mother’s cheek near the cut, with the tip of her forefinger. Francesca smiled and stroked the child’s hair.

  Luca wanted to hold her. He ached to wrap his arms around her and comfort her. But now, he told himself, was not the moment. She would marry him—he was sure of it. He had seen it in her eyes just now. There would be time enough ahead for him to hold her—for now, she needed her children and far more importantly, they needed her. He contented himself with reaching out and squeezing her fingers. At his touch, Francesca moved her hand away from Beata’s shoulder and gripped his fingers in return, turning her head and smiling at him with a melting tenderness. Then she released his hand, and pulled her daughter in close once more, closing her eyes again.

  The two male voices were still rumbling downstairs. With a stab of shock, Luca realized that he had no idea how the children had come to be here. Francesca had said this was her servant’s house. Who was that downstairs? Whoever it was must have brought the girls—but where the hell had they been? He stood up, determining to discover who the visitor was, and why they were all here, but before he could take more than a step toward the door, he heard someone running heavily upstairs, and the door to the chamber banged open.

  Looking flushed and disheveled, Gianni strode into the room. He stopped dead, staring at Francesca and the twins. “Porca Madonna!” he said, sounding hoarse with shock.

  “Gianni—” Luca began.

  “What the hell has happened?” Gianni said, staring at the blood on the bed and then up at Francesca’s cut face. “Dear God—who did that?” He turned to where Modesto had appeared in the doorway. “Who was it, Signore? Was it one of her—” He stopped abruptly, and what looked like guilt flooded his face.

  A cold stab of anxiety caught in Luca’s throat. “Gianni?” he said again.

  Gianni swallowed awkwardly. “Papa.”

  “Why on earth are you here?”

  Gianni did not answer.

  “What did you mean, ‘one of her’? Her what? One of Francesca’s what?”

  Gianni shook his head. He muttered, “Nothing, Papa,” and looked back at Francesca. She was sitting upright now, wide awake, staring at Gianni. She mouthed the word “please” at him and shook her head, almost imperceptibly. Luca looked from his son to Francesca and back. “Gianni,” he said, “what did you mean? Francesca
, cara, do you know what he’s talking about?”

  Francesca gazed up at him, saying nothing.

  Modesto crossed the room. Leaning in toward the bed, he spoke softly to the children. “Beata, Bella, could you come with me for a moment?” he said. “I want you to do something for me. For Mamma. It won’t take long.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows, his expression promising a treat, and the children nodded, slid out from under Francesca’s arms, and crossed the room to where he stood. He took one small hand in each of his. They walked with him toward the door.

  Just before he reached it, however, he stopped. Luca saw him bend down behind the bed and pick something up from the floor. He tucked whatever it was into a bag, which he swung over his shoulder. Taking the girls by the hands again, he left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Forty-one

  The silence was close and congealed: it filled the room, seeping thickly into Luca’s ears and mouth, and when he spoke at last, it felt as though he were forcibly pushing the words out into the air around his head. “What’s happening here?” he said.

  Gianni and Francesca both immediately looked away from him. Francesca dropped her gaze to her hands, and Gianni stared at the floor; his color deepened. Francesca was paler than ever, and the gash on her cheek stood out black against her pallor. A sharp jab of fearful anger caught painfully in Luca’s throat. “Santo cielo!” he said, his gaze flicking from one to the other, “What the hell is going on? What are you two hiding from me?”

  Francesca put her hands over her face.

  “Gianni?”

  Gianni shook his head.

  Feeling now as though he were facing an adversary in court, Luca heard himself say, deliberately calmly, but feeling his voice tremble as he spoke, “Francesca, do you know who hurt you this evening? Was it someone you know?”

  Putting her hands back down into her lap, she nodded.

  “And…do you know why this person might have done this to you?”

  Another nod.

  Gianni’s gaze was still fixed upon the floorboards.

  Struggling to keep his voice steady, Luca said, “Do you think you might be able to tell me anything about it? Gianni seems to have some idea already…but…”

  With a sickening twist in his belly, he stopped speaking, it having suddenly occurred to him that it could have been Carlo who had hurt Francesca, but, in a voice barely more than a whisper, he heard her say, “It was a man called Michele di Cicciano.”

  Gianni gasped.

  Luca frowned. “Cicciano? But…but I know that name. Cicciano’s a friend of Carlo’s. How do you? I…I had no idea that you knew him.” Oh, Dio—she had another lover. Dreading what she might say, he said, “Has there been something between you and this man? Did you—do you—love him?”

  He steeled himself, ready to see guilty confusion on her face at his question, but to his relief, a naked, transparent dislike was all too obvious in the shudder that shook her and in the twist of her mouth as she said, “No. I don’t love him. And I never have. Never.”

  “Then how—”

  She interrupted him. Held up both hands. Drew in a long breath. And, in a voice that shook, she told him how.

  It took several minutes.

  He could not take his eyes from her face as she told him what he realized immediately was the truth: as she shattered into razor-edged fragments the exquisite, blown-glass bubble of the past few weeks. Her voice was low and—almost—steady, but she trembled visibly as she spoke, and Luca felt—for the second time in his life—a liquefying sense of disbelief that tore through him and left him lightheaded and terrified. He stood unmoving, as he had done ten years before at the foot of his wife’s bed, gazing down at Lisabeta’s newly lifeless body—and he knew again the suffocating enormity of a truth too big to comprehend. “Then,” he said, trying to order his thoughts, “how was it that you came to be at the play at San Domenico that day?”

  “It was just a stupid idea of Filippo’s, something that he suggested when his wife didn’t want to come with him.”

  “Filippo? Then…?” Luca could not finish his sentence.

  Her eyes brimming with tears, Francesca nodded.

  The smothering silence draped itself over the three of them again. Eventually, Luca looked away from Francesca to where Gianni still stood, hunch-shouldered and stiff in the doorway, and, as he caught his son’s eye, Gianni reddened still further and bit his lip.

  The liquefaction in Luca’s belly turned in an instant to ice.

  He stared at his son and then at Francesca. “Oh, God, no. Please, Francesca, tell me I’m mistaken…”

  Nobody spoke.

  Luca felt sick. “When?” he said. “When, Gianni?”

  After another long, screaming silence, Gianni said to the floorboards, “A few weeks ago.”

  Fighting to keep his voice steady, Luca said, “Just once?” He faltered. “Or was this a regular occurrence?”

  An almost inaudible mutter. “Just once.”

  Luca saw that Francesca’s face was now slick with tears.

  “I gave it all up the day I met you,” she said, her voice distorted with the effort of controlling her weeping. Her lower lip was visibly quivering. Despite everything, seeing that quiver sent a hot little thread of wanting down through his belly.

  She said, “I gave it all up because I had met you. I sold this house—my house, not Modesto’s—sold all my things, knew I would never have any more to do with any of it.”

  Luca stared at her. His mind was quite numb. He had no idea what to think. He listened to what she said, but hardly heard her. He continued to stare at her but hardly saw her. A courtesan. She was a courtesan. Had been. Was. Which was it? Did it matter? She had lied to him. Not a widow. A courtesan. A whore. He thought back a few hours, remembered how the two of them had spent that morning—could it possibly be only that morning?—lying together on the springing grass in the little clearing at Mergellina. A judder of irrepressible longing physically shook him as he remembered Francesca’s fingers and mouth moving over his body, awakening his senses in a way he had never known before. He had been astonished at her inventive dexterity, entranced by the touch of her lips and her tongue and her fingers on his skin, marveling at the thought that fate had introduced him to such a creature and that such a creature actually seemed to care for him.

  And then she had wept and, at the sight of her tears, he had cursed himself for causing them, for compromising her reputation so thoughtlessly. Luca felt another wash of nauseous anger sweep through him. Her reputation! “Reputation” was hardly the word; “notoriety” might be more apposite. She was a professional. An amoral professional. Had she done these same extraordinary things…to Gianni…a few weeks ago? Here? In this room? And to Filippo—how many times had she entertained him in that way? And Carlo’s friend Cicciano, who had been so angry at the withdrawal of his pleasures that tonight he had exacted this painful revenge? What had been his preferred choice of activity? And—Luca could hardly bear to even think it—how much had all these men paid her? They and how many others?

  A horrible, distorted image of Francesca pushed its way into his mind. She was facing away from him, naked but for a glittering, beaded wrap that hung loosely, low on her back; jewels glittered at her throat and wrists, and her hair was down. She turned to look at him over her shoulder and he saw that the sweet smile he had come to love so much in these last few weeks had gone—in its place was a twisted mask of lascivious invitation.

  A sense of betrayal and anger, of confusion and incredulity swelled and billowed in Luca’s head. He raised his hands, balled them into fists, and held his breath, as the sensation expanded within him.

  “No! Papa, please!”

  At the sound of Gianni’s voice, at the sight of his son stepping forward protectively from the doorway, the glit
tering courtesan he had conjured vanished, and he saw instead an exhausted, frightened, ash-pale woman, flinching and pulling back from him to sit huddled against her pillow, her face soaked and swollen with tears. Her mouth had opened, and she was staring at his fisted hands, holding her breath, quite obviously in expectation of being struck.

  For a moment he stood irresolute, his insides crawling, then he uncurled his fingers and put his hands over his face. He pressed in hard against his skull. For long seconds he stood unmoving, in the hot palm-darkness, feeling the rise and fall of his rib cage against his elbows, then he lowered his hands.

  “Were you…were you ever going to tell me?” he said.

  She nodded. “I wanted to. From the first moment. I’ve hated lying—but I didn’t know how—I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to do it.”

  A long pause.

  “No. I can see that.”

  “After everything that happened this afternoon, after…what you asked me,” she said, “I had decided to tell you as soon as we arrived back at the house. Whatever the outcome, I was going to tell you the whole truth. I wanted you to know everything.

  “Whatever it meant. And then we arrived back, and…” She trailed off.

  Luca looked across at Gianni. Through the numbness that seemed to be paralyzing him, he felt a sudden flare of naked jealousy: for a second Gianni was not his son, but simply another man—a rival—and a fierce and painful desire to knock him down filled Luca to the point that he struggled to breathe. But then a tear swelled, broke, and ran down Gianni’s cheek into the soft fluff of hardly visible downy beard that ran around the edge of the boy’s jaw, and Luca’s anger left him.

  He was empty. Dry and hard and empty like a shriveled gourd skin. If he moved now, he thought, his insides would rattle inside him like a handful of desiccated seeds. “I’ll take you home,” he said to Francesca. “You need time to rest and heal. You can’t stay here, in this empty house—you or the children.”

  The children…