Courtesan's Lover

by Gabrielle Kimm

  He stopped and turned to Gianni, and said for a second time that evening, dreading further unbearable revelations, “Why are you here, Gian? How is it that you came here to this house, with those children?”

  Gianni’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He closed it again.

  Luca’s heart beat faster. “Why, Gian?” he said again. “Where were you? Where have you been? Why were they with you?”

  Gianni swallowed uncomfortably. He flicked a glance at Francesca. “Papa, Carlo had them.”

  “Carlo?” Luca said, frowning quizzically. “Carlo? Then…where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. I left him—down in the sottosuolo.”

  “The sottosuolo? But—I don’t understand. Why? Why did Carlo have Francesca’s children?”

  Gianni swallowed again, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He breathed in slowly. Luca’s pulse raced. What in heaven’s name was Gianni struggling to admit? Francesca, he saw, was now staring from him to Gianni and back. “Why, Gianni?” he said again. “If you know, please tell me. Why did Carlo have the twins?”

  Still no answer.

  With a creak, the door to the bedchamber opened a little wider.

  Luca, Gianni, and Francesca all turned to see who was there.

  Modesto stood foursquare in the doorway. The little girls were pressed against him, one on each side, each with a wilting handful of flowers in her hand. Speaking clearly, in a voice that quivered with suppressed dislike, Modesto said, “Forgive me for interrupting, Signore, but, as I’ve just discovered, it appears that your elder son was planning on handing these two over to a privateer friend of Signor di Cicciano’s.”

  Luca could think of no reply.

  “Luca,” Francesca said into the silence, her voice quivering with tears.

  Luca turned to her.

  “Michele told me. He said he thought Carlo might have them. He just sneered at me. He said they would be taken away. Over the sea. And…sold.”

  Luca looked at the little girls. They were huge-eyed and silent, clinging to Modesto. Francesca was tear-soaked and trembling. And Gianni—across Gianni’s face Luca could see the same confused mixture of horror and guilt that he was feeling himself. That Cicciano could have spoken so heartlessly of such a proposition was terrible enough, but to think of his son—his own son—actually carrying it out…Luca thought he might be sick.

  Hardly aware of what he was saying, he looked from Modesto and the children to Francesca and said quietly, “I was going to take you back to Santa Lucia, but I think now you had better come with me back to my house. You’ll all be safe there.”

  He saw Modesto nod his approval of this suggestion.

  “But…he…he won’t be there, will he?” Francesca said.

  Seeing her fear, Luca’s insides twisted painfully. “No,” he said. “I’ll make sure Carlo doesn’t come anywhere near you.”

  Forty-two

  It soon became clear to Maria that Filippo was unhappy. Since the previous Wednesday, when her husband had crept into the house, well past midnight, trying to avoid waking her—as he had so often done on Wednesday nights—he had been uncharacteristically taciturn and lethargic. He had not been in to work, he had risen late in the mornings and retired early each evening—always to the smallest bedchamber. He had barely spoken to her, had avoided catching her eye whenever he could, and so had consequently spent much of his time in the house over the previous few days staring either at the floor or out of the window.

  “What on earth is the matter with Filippo?” Emilia said to Maria after a few days of this miserable lassitude, as the two women stood together in the kitchen, preparing vegetables for a soup.

  Maria heard the lack of compassion in her sister’s question and swallowed down a bite of irritation. “I don’t know. Perhaps he is sickening for something,” she said. Or perhaps, she thought to herself, he is sickening because of something. Or someone. She cut down hard through a chunk of carrot, gripping the handle of the knife so tightly that her knuckles stood out white.

  “You may be right,” Emilia said. The problem was clearly not troubling her excessively, for she added in a voice of supreme indifference, “If that’s the case, then a nice bowl of soup might cheer him up.”

  If he is here to eat it, Maria thought. Its being a Wednesday.

  ***

  But, much to Maria’s surprise, Filippo stayed at home that evening, and it was quickly apparent that the bowl of soup he had been offered had done little, if anything, to raise his spirits. He pushed his spoon about in the bowl a great deal more than he lifted it to his lips, and he shredded far more of his bread than he ate. Maria watched him; she said nothing, but felt, as she watched, a strange tension in her limbs and a tightness within her chest as though she were physically restraining her own body from reacting to her husband’s obvious misery. Though why don’t I react, she thought, as her left leg began to twitch. Why do I not just ask him what’s troubling him? Hold his hand?

  She thought through some of the things she had written in her vellum-bound book. She had read and reread her own sentences so many times she knew many of them by heart: unfettered outpourings of bitter self-criticism, tentative explorations of her own opinions, and of course the long passages of vivid—if clumsy and probably ignorantly inaccurate—descriptions of what she had imagined her husband had been doing during his regular Wednesday evening absences. Looking at him now, as she had done countless times, she pictured Filippo, doing those things she had described; imagined his hands; imagined—with a shard of ice in her throat—the expression on his face as he did them. Imagined the unknown woman. Having no idea who the woman might be, but finding that she needed to put a face to the invisible threat, Maria had, over the weeks, begun to picture her husband’s anonymous lover as the beautiful whore in the crimson dress, who had fallen that day outside the church of San Giacomo. The woman who had told her to write. Her leg twitched a little faster and her heartbeat quickened.

  It was the first Wednesday in well over a year, Maria thought, that Filippo had remained at home. There had to be a connection between that alteration to his routine and this palpable misery. Had the woman—whoever she was—told him that she no longer wished to see him? Another thought struck her: had she perhaps died? Maria felt slightly sick. Was Filippo grieving for whoever it was? This thought hurt in her chest, like a painful breath dragged in after too much running.

  “I’m very tired, Maria. I think I’ll go up to bed,” Filippo said then.

  Maria looked at him. He held her gaze.

  “You didn’t eat your soup,” Emilia said from the other side of the table.

  Filippo shook his head and, though he answered his sister-in-law politely, he still looked at Maria. “No. I’m sorry—I don’t seem to have much of an appetite just at the moment. Nothing to do with the soup—it…it was a very good soup.”

  Maria breathed in slowly.

  The woman in crimson had told her that day that writing down her thoughts—even her most shameful, forbidden thoughts—might help her to unlock the barricades behind which she had hidden herself for so long. And for weeks now, she had done what the woman had said—she had written, page after page, in her vellum-bound book. Much of it, whenever she read it back, embarrassed her very much and made her insides creep, as though she had a fever, but she knew that somehow the woman had been right. Committing to paper what had been festering inside her for so long had changed her. She might still be sequestered behind her barricades, but, even if they were still locked, Maria thought that she might now have fashioned herself a key. She just had to summon the courage to use it.

  She said, her eyes still fixed upon Filippo’s, “I had thought I might go for a bit of a walk before I go to bed, Filippo. To get some air. Would you like to come with me? It might help you sleep.”

  Filipp
o didn’t answer, and Maria wondered if he had heard her. She wondered too if he could “hear” anything of what she was not saying, and, fully expecting a refusal, she sighed, feeling her shoulders droop.

  But Filippo said, “Yes. I think a little air might do me good.”

  “What?”

  “Thank you. I’d like a walk.”

  Maria’s pulse raced. “Good,” she said. “I’ll fetch my coat.”

  ***

  Above them the sky was the greyish blue of the heart of a candle flame, but nearer the roofscape of the city, the blue had softened and blurred into a deep, pinkish red. The sun had already sunk out of sight. Within minutes, Filippo thought, it would be quite dark. They walked without speaking for some moments along the Via Santa Chiara, Maria’s skirts rustling rhythmically with her steps. Filippo found himself soothed by the sound.

  After a time he looked sideways at her, just in time to see her risk a glance at him.

  She flicked her gaze back to the street in front of her feet, with a little jerk of her head, but then looked back up at him and said, “I’m sorry you are not feeling well at the moment.”

  “I’m not unwell.”

  “But you are not happy.”

  “No.” Filippo gave Maria a tight smile. “No, I’m not very happy at the moment. I’m sorry.”

  There was a short pause, and then Maria said, “Is it anything I have done?”

  Filippo answered with an emphatic negative straight away, but realized, in the brief hiatus of silence that followed his reply, that he supposed the entire situation was in fact—at least partly—his wife’s fault. Then, feeling that thus apportioning complete blame would be horribly unfair on Maria, he allowed that his own appetites were probably to some degree equally as responsible for his current unhappiness as was Maria’s lack of them. These thoughts, though, made him feel confused and awkward, so he kept his eyes on his shoes as they continued walking. At every step a deep horizontal crease appeared across each shoe, the leather creaked quietly and a little corner like a dog’s ear pushed in and out as each foot rose and fell.

  He knew Maria was curious. Tension was emanating from her like heat; she was, he thought, almost crackling with it. And, much to Filippo’s surprise, he found this tension fleetingly arousing. He looked across at her again and saw, with a jolt of his insides, that she had tears in her eyes.

  “What on earth is the matter?” he said.

  Maria ran the tip of her finger under her lashes: first one eye and then the other. “I hate to think of you being unhappy,” she said.

  Filippo stopped and turned toward her. In a flash of confused emotion, he saw not Maria but Francesca as she had been the other day, crying and begging him to keep her secrets from Luca. He saw himself, putting his arms around his courtesan and comforting her even as he acknowledged his own yawning fear of a future without her ministrations. He felt again Francesca’s warm body trembling within his embrace.

  And then he saw Maria.

  His wife.

  His face burned as he remembered how long it had been since he had last held Maria in tenderness, as he had held Francesca that final time. Every touch he and Maria had shared—for years—had been tainted with tension, taut with anxiety, weighted down with the threat of yet another possible failure. He had been quite hollow with loneliness for a week, wrapped up in his own misery, but now it struck Filippo that he had not given a thought—in nearly two years—to her possible feelings of isolation. A cold drench of shame washed over him.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t cry.”

  And he reached out toward her.

  She stared at him for a moment, then stepped forward. Filippo folded his arms around her and held her in close to his body. She was small and angular, and the points of her shoulder blades jutted against his forearm.

  Forty-three

  Luca has not been up to this room, or indeed spoken a word to me since we arrived here nearly an hour ago. He was silent all the way back from San Tommaso. He carried me all the way here—and it must be at least half a mile—but he didn’t speak to me.

  Gianni and Modesto carried the girls, who were, not surprisingly, exhausted and confused and tearful. Before we left, Gianni told me where he had found them. I can hardly believe it. If Gianni hadn’t been there…My poor darling little girls—left alone in the dark like that, while Luca and I were…no, no, I can’t bear to think about it. And it’s all my fault—oh, God, it’s all my fault! I might have dressed like a duchess and feasted like a princess and been fêted like a queen for years, but it’s all just a pile of shit. Behind all the tawdry trappings, I have to face the fact…that I’m nothing but a whore. I earn my scudi on my back. Strip me of my finery and I am no different from any street puttana. And my poor Beata and Bella are no more than two little whore’s bastards, innocent hangers-on, who have today been lucky to escape paying the price for the depravity of their mother’s life.

  I don’t deserve to be a mother.

  I look at where they are sleeping, lying curled together on a mattress beneath a couple of woollen blankets; their eyes are tight shut, mouths slightly open. Beata’s thumb has fallen from where she has been sucking it, and a glistening line of spittle has slid down her chin. Their sweet faces are, thank God, untroubled, innocent, ultimately undamaged. They’re safe. No thanks to me. I’ve lived for years in a vicious world amongst vicious people fueled with vicious intentions, and my children have truly been fortunate to survive in it unscathed for so long.

  They deserve a better mother.

  And Luca deserves a better wife. I knew in my heart it would never happen. He’s disgusted by me now, and I cannot blame him. How could I? I would be disgusted by me, if I were him.

  I walk back and forth across this little bedchamber in which I have been left to rest. My legs and belly are still aching, but I can’t sit still. Think, Francesca. Try to think. Try to think about something else, or you’ll run mad. About what? The room. Look at the room. I’m not sure, but I think this room—a small one on the second floor, up under the eaves—might belong to Gianni. It’s a pretty place, although it’s only sparsely furnished; the walls are painted a warm crimson. There is only a narrow bed, a huge carved chest, and a table, on which stands a delicate casket, made of some sort of gilded wood. It’s beautiful—I wonder if it perhaps belonged to Gianni’s mother.

  Luca’s wife.

  No—not that. Don’t think about that.

  There are hangings at the window—faded and obviously quite old, but they must once have been lovely.

  Oh, stop it! This is just stupid! Why do I care? Why am I even noticing the furnishings in this room, when I feel as though the very walls have already fallen in upon me and are slowly smothering me? I am trapped beneath the rubble of the shattered future Luca and I might have had together, unable to move, unable to breathe, not knowing whether Luca will ever even want to stretch out a hand to try to pull me free, let alone be able to do it.

  Though…if everything were indeed totally hopeless…would Luca have brought us here? If he truly despises me now, would he not have just left me with Modesto in the Via San Tommaso? This morning, he wanted to marry me.

  Oh, God, I don’t know—I simply don’t know what to think.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed, fold my arms up and over my head, and put my head between my knees, trying to stifle down the scream I can feel building up in my chest.

  A knock at the door. My heart jolts. I sit up.

  “Signora?” Modesto leans into the room, one hand on the door jamb. He is holding a candle in the other. His eyes are quite black in the candlelight. He smiles. “I’m leaving in a moment. I just wondered how you were, Signora.”

  I shrug.

  “The twins still asleep?”

  I nod. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for helping with th
em. Helping to find them.”

  Modesto nods in acknowledgment of this. Then adds, “Do you want anything before I go?”

  I want to scream at him. Yes! Of course I do! I want Luca. I want him to be here in this room, with his arms around me, telling me that he doesn’t care about any of this—assuring me that this appalling revelation of my lurid history is of no importance to him. I want him still to want to marry me. I want my face not to be hurting so very much, and my legs and belly not to ache. I want not to have to think about what Michele did. I want the whole of the past few hours not to have happened. But…but I suppose I’ll settle for a glass of wine.

  Modesto smiles when I ask him. He is absent a few moments, then returns with a pewter cup and an uncorked bottle of red wine. He pours out a generous measure and hands me the cup.

  “There you are, Signora. Look, I have to go. I’ll come and see you in the morning.”

  We stand without speaking for a moment, and then Modesto sighs and shakes his head; he drops something that he is carrying, crosses the room, and hugs me. He holds me very tightly in his big arms, smelling reassuringly familiar—of warm leather, linen, and sweat—and as he holds me, a hollow place opens up inside my chest: a chill empty sphere of homesickness. I cling to him. With a soft splatter, most of the contents of my cup, still in my hand, spills onto the floorboards.

  Pulling back from Modesto, I stare down at what I have done. He drags a large linen kerchief from his breeches pocket and crouches down to mop up the dark puddle.

  “You were never a very tidy drinker,” he says with a wry grin. He refills the cup and hands it back to me. I suddenly wish with all my heart that he could stay here with me tonight. Curl up in my bed with me and hold me until I fall asleep. But before I can even finish the thought, he has reached out, squeezed my hand, and left the room.

  The front door bangs a moment later.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed with the cup held in both hands, staring down into the dark-red liquid.