I can hear voices from the floor below: a deep rumble that I imagine must be Luca and Gianni.
Opening the door to the bedchamber a little wider, I stand just outside the room, straining to hear what is being said downstairs. Gianni’s words are hard to distinguish, but Luca’s deeper voice carries easily. My heart starts thudding up in my throat.
“…actually admitted that was what he was planning to do?” Luca says.
Gianni’s reply is inaudible.
“But how did you know where he was?”
An indistinguishable murmur.
“…left him down there?”
More from Gianni that I cannot hear.
“I have to go and see if I can find him. You stay here with Francesca and the children.”
The door bursts open and Luca strides out, shrugging his arms down into his doublet sleeves as he goes. He glances up—and sees me standing there. For a brief moment he stops and stares. His mouth opens a little. Even from here I can see that he is holding his breath. I feel as though I have been turned to stone. I cannot move at all. I can’t even blink. Neither, it seems, can Luca. We stare at each other for endless seconds, and then Luca drags his gaze away from my face as though it hurts to do so, rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand. He shakes his head and winces, and then runs downstairs and leaves the house through the front door, banging it shut behind him.
I stare down at where Luca was just standing. My longing for him feels like a fist in my chest: tight, hard, punched through from the outside, but, somewhat to my surprise, after all my recent tears, I find that I no longer seem to be able to cry.
Gianni glances upward and sees me. Dear God, he looks like his father.
“Come down here, if you’d like to,” he says stiffly.
I do not reply but, after glancing back into the bedchamber to see that the girls are still sleeping, I walk down the short flight of stairs, toward where Gianni is standing. He goes back into the sala, and when I enter the room, he is standing with his back toward the fireplace, though there is nothing in it at present but ash.
There is a long pause. I can think of nothing to say to him and, as he too remains silent, I can only imagine that he is experiencing a similar problem. I pull in a long breath like a wobbly sigh, and then let it out again.
Gianni has the corner of his thumbnail in his mouth. He bites at it for a moment or two and then finally he speaks around his thumb. He says, “I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean?”
He takes his hand away from his face. “I’m sorry for what I said. I gave away your secrets. You asked me not to.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “You didn’t mean to.”
He shrugs. “But I’m sorry, anyway.”
I swallow and say, “Thank you,” almost inaudibly. And then, dreading the answer, I say, “Has he said anything?”
Gianni raises an eyebrow and when he speaks, his voice sounds hard. “Did you really expect him to? He’s just found out that the first woman he’s taken an interest in since my mother died is not the sweet little thing he had presumed her to be, but has in fact been fucking everything that moves for years. Including his younger son. He’s also just discovered for certain, after suspecting it for a long, long time, that his elder son is an amoral little shit. What do you think he’s going to say? Especially to me.”
Tears sting. I have no idea how to answer.
“Why did you have to interfere in his life?” Gianni says. “Wasn’t it enough for you, what you had before? You seemed happy enough, the day that I…” He trails off, reddening, and drops his gaze to his boots. He starts chewing his thumbnail again. “I’m sorry,” he mutters around his thumb a few seconds later. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“Don’t apologize. I deserve everything you’ve said. It’s all true.” I sit down on one of the folding chairs and run my fingers along the grain of the wood of the table. A cat appears from the shadows. He pushes up against my skirts, purring, and stretches his head toward my hand, clearly yearning to be stroked. Reaching down, I scratch between his ears with the tips of my fingers; his tail lifts and sways sinuously, and the purring intensifies.
“No,” Gianni says. “I am sorry.”
“Look, I wasn’t expecting to feel the way I do about your father, Gianni. It was as much of a surprise to me as to anyone.”
Gianni says nothing. He looks very young.
I say, “I agree that I must have seemed happy enough, the day that you came to see me; I think that perhaps I was, in a way. But then you made me see things differently—”
He sucks in a shocked breath. “So it’s all my fault?”
“No! No—that’s not what I meant!”
“Then what?”
I hesitate, and then say, “The life of a courtesan is one of glitter and glamour and exhilarating excitement—but that’s like a…like a sparkling crust over a swamp. Under the crust it’s different. It’s dark and dirty and dangerous. It’s like an endless rush toward the inevitable wreck of your life, in a runaway cart, unable to stop however clearly you see the dangers around you.”
Gianni watches me silently.
“You slowed the cart for a moment, Gianni, that day you came to me in the Via San Tommaso. Slowed it enough to make me start thinking about what I really wanted. And then I met your father, and he tipped it over entirely. Just before it reached the cliff edge.”
There is a long pause, and then Gianni says, “I suppose it would be hard to get back into it again after that.”
I nod.
The two of us sit in silence for a while now, and then Gianni clears his throat. “I’m sorry for what Cicciano did to you.”
He has hunched his shoulders again, and his arms are folded tight across his chest. The quick-flicked glance he now makes down toward my breasts, and the uncomfortable way he swallows, makes it clear to me that Gianni has guessed just what revenge Michele chose to take upon his traitorous whore. Gianni looks at me as he did that night when he discovered my scar—with a sort of anguished compassion, as though he is ashamed of the brutality I have experienced at the hands of others of his sex; as though he feels somehow responsible and wishes he could find a way to atone for it.
I wonder if his father will ever be able to see it as he does.
Forty-four
A pallid puddle of light from the lantern lay across a few feet of the tufa rock, bobbing softly in a faint draught. Carlo sat on the ground for some moments after Gianni and the children had left the tunnel, staring at the light, feeling along his split lip with the tip of his tongue. It was swollen and salty. He touched it gingerly with a finger and winced.
He had to get out. Whatever he had said just now, Gianni might even at this moment be alerting the sbirri, and should that be the case, Carlo was in little doubt that his life would be in danger. If they picked him up…if he was tried and found guilty…he knew that there was a fair chance he would hang. Or burn. He shivered. He had to leave Napoli. Even if Gianni said nothing, it would probably only be a matter of time. It was going to leak out, somehow—he had told that whining little Marco what he was planning to do, when Marco had seen him with the brats near the waterfront, for one thing. A knot of fear tightened, high in his chest.
It took him some moments to get to his feet; the strength of Gianni’s fists had been a clear indication of his brother’s opinions. Carlo wished now that he had never taken the children. It had been a stupid idea. Pointless. Ill thought out. It had seemed safer than the more obvious demanding of a ransom, like had said.
He swallowed. The air in the tunnel was thick and stagnant; he needed to get out. Walking to the tunnel entrance, he lifted the lantern to head height and looked out into the cavern. To his left was the central tunnel that led down to Posilippo—he could go back down there n
ow, as he had been planning to do before, with the children in tow, and signal to the , which was still anchored offshore. would certainly take him onboard and ferry him to some safe port. But, he reasoned with himself, what if he could not be seen from onboard? He did not want to be found on the hillside in broad daylight. Like a sitting target. He would probably do better to get back up into the city. Easier to lose himself there, and escape undetected overland.
Picking his way over the rubble-strewn floor, holding the lantern up high, Carlo started across toward the tunnel entrance on the far side of the cavern.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered to himself as he walked. “Get a move on.” His gaze fixed upon the tunnel entrance, he increased his speed.
And tripped.
Sprawling full length upon the rocky floor with a grunt, he dropped the lantern, which rolled away from him and went out.
The darkness was absolute.
Carlo swore. His pulse raced, thudding in his ears and making him feel sick. He could see nothing at all. Nothing. He lifted his hand; held it a few inches before his face; waved it back and forth. Nothing. Frantically trying to remember in which direction the tunnel entrance had been, he got to his feet and began to shuffle slowly, with his arms stretched out in front of him, toward where he prayed his way out of the cavern would be. Once in the tunnel, he knew it was a straightforward—if lengthy—route back to the tavern.
He stumbled again and fell onto his knees. Swore again.
The floor of the cave was rough and littered with tufa rubble. Crawling now, Carlo inched a painful way across rough rock projections and sharp-edged pebbles, catching knees, shins, and palms at every step. Panic was bubbling up in his throat, and he found himself speaking aloud into the blackness: a chattering monologue of muttered attempts at self-encouragement.
It ought to be no more than twenty yards to the tunnel entrance. Terrified that, in his disorientation, he might have set off in the wrong direction, Carlo fumbled with searching fingers across the ground beneath him, his eyes stretched pointlessly wide in the utter darkness.
Endless minutes passed.
The cave, it seemed, was far bigger than he had presumed.
Then he reached a wall.
He groped upward and stood, pressing his body up against the rock, breathing heavily, leaning his face against the cold, mold-smelling stone. It was not the tunnel entrance but it was better—immeasurably better—than the awful nothingness of the open cavern. Taking a few creeping steps toward where he prayed the tunnel would be, he tripped yet again, scraping the side of his face and grazing his knuckles as he fell. He crouched back onto all fours, feeling along the ground where the wall met the floor.
Dust. Grit. Large blocks of tufa. Smaller, angular chips.
And then something quite different.
He fingered it curiously.
A conical pile of stones, like a little cairn.
For a moment Carlo sat on his heels and wondered, then he remembered Michele, crouching down at the tunnel mouth, grinning at him and piling pebbles. Remembered his own irritable question:
“What in hell’s name are you doing, Cicciano?”
“I want to be quite certain,” his friend had said, “of finding my way out…”
Carlo bent down and, cupping both hands around the cairn, he kissed the topmost stone. Several of the pebbles dislodged and clattered down onto the floor. A short sob caught in his throat as he straightened, stood again, and reached out with waving arms. One hand caught the wall where it folded around into the tunnel entrance. Cursing, and tucking the banged wrist under the other armpit for a moment, he then pressed his hands against the two sides of the entranceway and waited for his painfully leaping heartbeat to settle enough to start the long walk back up to the surface.
Forty-five
Luca banged the front door shut behind him and stood on the step for a second, eyes closed, struggling to steady his breathing. Looking up at Francesca just now, he knew he had been perilously close to crying. It seemed, almost literally, unbearable. There she was, in his house, standing at the top of his stairway, exquisitely, astonishingly, unbelievably beautiful: so vulnerable…and so entirely unlike how he had always presumed a whore would look.
A whore.
She was a whore.
It was ripping him in two. Even after so short a time, the idea of life without her was appalling—her hesitancy at his proposal this afternoon had sent panic coursing through him—but, just at this moment, he had absolutely no notion of how he was ever going to reconcile himself to this discovery of Francesca’s past life. He pictured her as she had been in Mergellina: her hair falling around her face, her beautiful mouth lipping down his belly. Holding his breath, he felt again her tongue on his skin.
He walked fast, away from the house, down toward the tavern by the docks.
She must have honed her skills over years, he thought bitterly as he walked. Had been paid to do so. Handsomely. She had, after all, earned enough—on her back—to own two houses and employ a handful of servants; enough to dress herself in silks and gemstones, enough to furnish her houses in a style that would not disgrace a nobleman. On her back. Fucking like a common trollop. The thought made him feel sick and, with a sudden swoop of furious, vertiginous lust, he kicked out at a small and rather shabby handcart that had been abandoned at the side of the street. The heel of his boot crashed into the painted side of the cart; it swung round away from the blow and tipped over with a clatter, sending a wooden bucket and half a dozen onions rolling across the cobbles. Horizontal now, the upper wheel rotated pathetically, creaking its protestations, but Luca paid it no heed and strode on, hands balled tight.
His rage was thick and acrid and hung about him like a fog.
And then he thought of Francesca’s discovery of the disappearance of the children: her panic, her desperation to find them, and then her touchingly dignified ecstasy at their safe return. She was a devoted mother. The wrenching anger in his chest changed, and despair at the prospect of losing her lanced through him. His fists uncurled and he pushed the fingers of one hand up into his hair. He knew—quite clearly—that he loved her, but this knowledge was now unbearable. He had no idea how to love a whore.
She had had a terrible time today. He knew that. He thought through everything that had happened after their return from Mergellina. It had seemed to all of them, for hours, as though the children might be dead. Or worse. And then that bastard Cicciano…Even as he began to think about this, an idea pushed itself into the forefront of his mind. He had been sickened with shock on discovering what Cicciano had done, but now he found himself wondering whether that particular ordeal was perhaps less terrible for a whore than it would be for a virtuous woman. Francesca had said that she didn’t care for Cicciano, and Luca believed her. But for years, so he understood, she had endured Cicciano’s regular attentions—for a fee. Perhaps had even encouraged them. She had grown rich, had she not, bedding (amongst who knew how many others) a man she said she didn’t even like, so could what had happened tonight be so much worse an experience than those regular encounters?
But then Luca pictured Francesca as he had seen her not more than a few hours before, crumpled and bleeding on the bare-mattressed bed in the house in the Via San Tommaso d’Aquino, and immediately felt lightheaded with shame. In that first shocked second he had thought her dead: how arrogant could a man be, to describe so dreadful an ordeal—even to himself in private—as in any way insignificant?
Both hands now laced in his hair, he gripped his skull, as though trying to prevent his chaotic thoughts from physically bursting out through the bone. He heard a long, guttural groan, and only seconds later realized that it had come from his own mouth.
Reaching the top of a dingy alleyway, he paused, breathing as heavily as though he had been running. At the far end of the street, there was a gap betw
een the tight-packed buildings, and through it Luca could see a narrow strip of sea; points of light from the last of the sun were dancing on the very tops of the waves. Luca saw several people, apparently somewhat the worse for drink, leaving what he knew to be the tavern most often frequented by Carlo—the place where Gianni had said Carlo had entered the sottosuolo. The place where Carlo might be now.
Carlo.
He could hardly make himself think about what his elder son had done. On top of every other thing he had discovered today, this was the final drop of water and the jug was now fully overflowing. Pouring out and soaking everything around it. For a long moment, Luca stood staring at the tavern, feeling drained and despairing.
Then, sucking a long breath into a chest that felt as though it were heavily strapped, he walked toward where light and noise was spilling from the open tavern door, out onto the cobbled street.
***
It was only when Modesto had all but reached the Via Santa Lucia and a sharper breeze blew in from the sea, raising gooseflesh on his arms, that it occurred to him that he was no longer wearing his doublet. He thought back over where he might have left it and realized that the last time he had been conscious of its presence was when he had taken it off and draped it over Francesca, back in the house in the Via San Tommaso, some hours earlier.
“Damn!” he muttered, looking back up the street and trying to decide whether he could be bothered to retrieve the doublet. The rest of his clothes, including another two coats, were now at Santa Lucia, but the missing doublet was his most comfortable, and he knew he would almost certainly want it the next day. Huffing out an irritable sigh, he turned on his heel and set off at right angles, down a steeply sloping, brick-stepped street, taking the shortest route back toward San Tommaso.
The events of the day played themselves out in his mind as he walked; he experienced again faint echoes of the fear he had felt as he had run through the streets searching for the twins; his gut-churning shock at the discovery of Francesca’s injuries; his rage at Cicciano’s depravity. And then he contemplated once more the emerging prospect that Francesca’s hopes of a future with the Signore now seemed set fair to crumble. Disturbed by uncomfortably conflicting emotions, he began muttering aloud, “You are a truly unpleasant and selfish individual.” He paused, bit his lip, and shook his head. “She loves him. Yes, you poor, sad, bollockless excuse for a man—she loves him. Face the fact! You really want him to abandon her? When she so obviously adores him? You want him to throw her back onto the stinking dungheap she’s so nearly escaped from?”
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