Despite himself, Modesto began to feel a grudging liking for Signor della Rovere. This fight was about Francesca, after all, he thought, and he found that he was more than happy to applaud any man who would willingly take a battering like this on behalf of his mistress.
Cicciano’s gaze flicked over the floor around his feet. A brief second’s stillness drew Modesto’s attention and he saw, at almost the same moment as did Cicciano, the steel and silver knife, lying underneath the table, its little round “ears” glinting in the shifting light. Modesto held his breath, then edged himself to the front of the crowd.
Cicciano stepped backward, his gaze fixed upon Rovere’s face, then, with a movement far swifter than Modesto had expected, he ducked down, grabbed the knife, and stood once more.
The hydra sucked a shocked breath in through its many mouths as torchlight flashed bright along the blade and the fight took on quite another dimension.
Modesto automatically put his hand to his waist, intending to pull from the inside lining of his doublet the little leather-sheathed knife he had always kept close in case of troublesome patrons. He swore under his breath as his hand met only the linen of his shirt. No doublet.
“Let’s put an end to this tedious little fracasso, shall we?” Cicciano said softly. “I need to get going, and you have become decidedly boring.”
The Signore did not reply, but stood, chest still heaving, gaze fixed on the knife. He flicked his head sideways to shift a fallen lock of hair.
Cicciano took a step away from Rovere, toward the watching crowd. With a murmur, they parted, shuffling back quickly, all eyes on the blade. “You seem to be tiring,” Cicciano said. “It’ll be easier all round if I just leave.”
“I don’t think so,” the Signore said.
Cicciano laughed, and his gaze moved from the knife in his fist to the older man and back. He raised an eyebrow, ran his tongue over his lips, and edged forward. The hydra retreated. Rovere circled around to block Cicciano’s route to the tavern door. His hands had curled into loose fists at chest height, ready for a further assault, and Modesto could see that, despite the fatigue obvious in his face, he was still clearly possessed of a sort of weary determination. When he spoke, however, although his gaze remained fixed upon Cicciano’s face, it was not to Cicciano that he addressed himself, but to the wide-eyed faces in the crowd, and his voice was calm and clear and carrying. “Perhaps someone here would be good enough to run for the sbirri,” he said. “This man is guilty of a vicious, unprovoked attack on a defenseless and—”
“Unprovoked? Defenseless? The bloody woman’s a fucking whore!”
“And you consider that sufficient justification for—”
Michele laughed. “Ha! So you don’t deny she’s a whore? You did know!”
Even in the semi-darkness, Modesto could see Rovere’s color rise. He watched him push one hand up into his hair, heard him swear softly under his breath. Then came a moment of stillness. Both Cicciano and Rovere stood unmoving. The silence in the tavern was complete.
Modesto held his breath.
For a second there was between the two men a bunched, quivering, elastic tension such as will spring up between two hackle-risen dogs, and, feeling the bulging swell of it himself, Modesto’s pulse quickened. The wall of watching drinkers seemed to tremble.
Then Cicciano lunged toward where Rovere was standing, the knife in his upturned fist. Modesto pushed forward, elbowing his way free of the crowd, and with an audible grunt, he threw himself at Cicciano. He, Cicciano, and Rovere all fell to the floor, scattering chairs and two tables. A sharp pain ran up Modesto’s leg as one knee cracked against the floor; he was aware of a tangle of shirtsleeved arms, grunted oaths from Cicciano, and the hot, sweat-smelling bulk of both the other bodies, indeterminate in the sprawling scrimmage. Somewhere within the tangle was the knife. His hand closed on an arm—he did not know whose—and he felt it twist and wrench itself out of his grip.
***
Flat on his back on the tavern floor, Luca saw Michele jerk his wrist from Modesto’s fingers. The blade in Michele’s fist flashed for a second as he angled his arm up behind him.
Luca stared at the knife.
The scene hung frozen for a second.
And then Michele struck.
Luca squirmed sideways, but he could not move freely. Modesto’s weight was heavy across his legs as he twisted himself around; Luca felt his shoulder scrape across the stone flags of the tavern floor and then something hard hit him in the ribs, winding him.
For a moment, all was confusion and chaos. His head was filled with the shouts and cries of the crowd, the grunts of the two men tangled with him on the floor of the tavern, and the wild thudding of his own heartbeat.
Somebody screamed.
The sound tore through the tavern like a ripping sheet, and the writhing confusion that was himself, Michele, and Modesto was suddenly still and heavy. Luca’s arm was pressed in between his body and the floor; someone’s crushing weight was across his hips and he was aware, in the pulsing seconds that followed the scream, of a warm stickiness creeping in between his fingers.
A thick clot of nauseous panic lumped in his throat.
Forty-eight
Serafina Parisetto realized her mouth was open. She closed it. Her eyes wide with shock, she stared at Gianni, who said, “And then about an hour ago, Papa said he was going to try to find Carlo; he just ran out of the house and I haven’t seen him since. I daren’t go and look for him—I don’t want to leave her and those children on their own for long, with only Luigi, he’s so useless. Please come, Signora—she hasn’t asked for help, but she’s horribly pale and I’m frightened to touch the cut on her face in case I make it worse.”
Serafina tried to speak. Each of several attempts failed. Then, sounding hoarse, she managed to whisper, “A…a courtesan?”
She felt a twinge of shame in her belly, even saying the word.
Gianni nodded.
“Does Filippo know?” A pause. “I mean…his cousin.”
Serafina saw Gianni flush and her face flamed. She said, “Oh, no. She’s not his cousin, is she?”
Gianni shook his head.
Serafina felt sick. “Oh, cielo—poor Maria. And poor Luca.” Another, longer pause. She remembered the morning she had spent with—as she had thought then—her new friend, out on the belvedere. She had liked her so much. Pressing steepled fingers against the sides of her nose, she muttered, “Oh, dear, I…I don’t know what to think…” She felt as though she were standing in fog on the edge of an unexpected cliff.
Gianni twitched his weight from one leg to another. “Can you come now? I don’t know how long Papa’s going to be, and—”
“Of course, caro. Of course…” Serafina reached out and laid a hand on Gianni’s sleeve.
Leaving him standing in the hallway, she ran up the stairs to where Piero sat by the fire in the sala. He frowned curiously as she came in, but Serafina held both hands up in front of her as he opened his mouth to speak. “No—Piero, please—don’t ask. It’s too complicated, and I have to go. Now. It’s just—do you remember Francesca?” She hesitated and then managed to say, “Filippo’s cousin? From the play?”
Piero nodded.
“Gianni’s at the door—he says she’s…she’s been hurt. He wants me to come and see her.”
Piero stood up. “Hurt? What’s happened? Where’s Luca?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell you more when I get back, caro. Please—I just want to get going. You’ll have to stay here with the boys.”
Piero nodded again. “But it’s late,” he said. “Gianni must walk you there and back—all the way, Fina. I don’t want you out on your own this late.”
Serafina nodded over her shoulder as she hurried out to the kitchen. Rummaging through several drawers, she put a hand
ful of small squares of linen, a couple of bunches of thyme, and some sprigs of lavender into a basket, then picked up a corked bottle of lavender water and a small jar of honey, putting them on top of the herbs and the cloths. She laid another square of linen flat on the table; opening a stoneware jar, she scooped three spoonfuls of salt onto the linen, where it lay in a neat cone shape. She lifted the corners of the linen square and tied them tightly across the diagonal, first one way, then the other, making a secure bag for the salt. This she put into the basket with the other items. Then, pulling a brown, sleeveless, fur-trimmed coat from a hook on the back of the door, she swung it around her shoulders.
***
“She’s up on the second floor,” Gianni said. “In my room. Just opposite the top of the staircase.”
Serafina drew in a long breath and climbed the stairs with her heart thumping. The openings to a dozen different versions of a possible conversation jostled and tumbled untidily in her mind; each she discarded in turn as rude, ignorant, embarrassing.
She knocked tentatively on the closed door.
A pause. Footsteps. The door latch lifted.
In the few moments it had taken Serafina to walk from her house to this one, she had built up in her mind a picture of the woman she now knew to be…a courtesan. In her mind Francesca’s new expression was salacious and knowing, she was dressed in provocative and revealing clothing; she was to Serafina now entirely alien. Even frightening. But, as the real Francesca opened the door to Gianni’s bedchamber, and Serafina saw her pallor, her fatigue, her tangled hair, and the ugly gash running up the side of her face, all her anxieties and embarrassment vanished. She dropped her basket onto the floor, put her arms around her friend, and held her. She stood still and unspeaking, aware that the woman in her embrace had begun to shake with slow, silent sobs.
“Oh, cara, don’t cry,” Serafina murmured. “Please, please don’t cry.”
Francesca did not reply, but a sound seemed to force itself out of her—a long, low, animal groan, that instantly reminded Serafina of the cries she herself had made in childbirth: a wordless, guttural expression of exhausted desperation. Serafina tightened her hold. She stroked Francesca’s back in little soothing circles, aware as she did so of her own smallness; used to the size of her two tiny boys, who were the people whose tears she most regularly dried, it suddenly seemed incongruous to be thus mothering a woman at least a head taller than she was herself.
“Gianni’s told me everything,” she murmured. “All about it. He came to find me just now, because he was so worried about you.”
“Is Luca with you?” she heard Francesca say.
“No.” Serafina stood back from her, reaching for and holding both Francesca’s hands inside her own. “No. I…I don’t know where he is.”
Francesca looked at her without speaking for several seconds, then she said, “You must despise me.”
Serafina stared at her. “I think I meant to,” she said. She was surprised at her own honesty. “I think I meant to, as I walked over here, but now it has come to it, I find that I don’t.”
“I hated deceiving you. I wished I could tell you the truth.”
Serafina imagined herself with such a secret: knew how impossible it would have been to have divulged it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Don’t think of it. Let me see that cut.”
She motioned to Francesca to sit back down on the edge of the bed, and then, holding a candle up close to Francesca’s face, she peered at the wound left by Michele’s knife and said, “Oh, cara, that must be so very sore—can you let me put some salts on it? There’s a chance it will turn poisonous if we just leave it.”
Francesca said nothing, but sat still and quiet, watching while her companion busied herself taking her herbs, honey, and salt out of her little basket. Serafina laid them carefully on the chest at the end of the bed, then crossed to the door, opened it, and called down the stairs, “Gianni!”
There were footsteps, and Gianni’s face, oddly isolated in a pool of wobbling candlelight, appeared in the hallway.
“Could you boil me some water, caro, and bring up a cup and a spoon, too?”
Gianni nodded and disappeared.
When she turned back into the room, Serafina saw that Francesca was crouched down next to her children; stroking one girl’s forehead, she was crooning a softly whispered song, murmuring them back to sleep.
Gianni appeared a few moments later with a pewter bowl in one hand and a small stemless cup in the other. This he put down on the chest, next to Serafina’s herbs and salts. He hesitated a moment, then pecked a quick nod to Francesca and left the room again.
Serafina dipped the cup into the hot water, then stripping off some of the lavender and thyme leaves, she pushed them down into the water to steep. Into the rest of the hot water, she tipped the salt and stirred it around with the spoon.
“We’ll leave that to cool for a moment,” she said. “I’ll wash the cut with it. The salt will help to clean it—it might sting a little, though. And then I’ll dress it with honey.”
Francesca shrugged but said nothing. She sat silently while Serafina cleaned her torn face with one of the linen squares, soaked in the hot salt water. Other than stifled winces, she neither moved nor spoke.
Forty-nine
“Quick!”
Luca felt a hand close around his wrist.
“We have to get out of here—now!” Modesto jerked at Luca’s arm. “Come on, Signore—you have to move. The fucking sbirri will be here any moment.”
Luca’s fingers were red and sticky. Retching, he wiped them on his breeches: they left a dark, untidy smear across the top of his leg. He looked up at the manservant. “Cicciano…is he?”
“I don’t know, but we have to get out of here fast.”
“I can’t! For God’s sake…he’s been hurt! We have to—”
“No, we bloody don’t. We get ourselves away from here as quick as we can, believe me.”
Modesto’s face was smeared with blood, and the protuberant eyes were wide and anxious; when he spoke again, his voice was shaking. “You think the sbirri will listen to a word you say, Signore? They’re a load of bloody thugs—you know how it is! They’re as like to torture the victim of a crime as the perpetrator to get what they want—we wouldn’t stand a chance. They see a body here, and they’ll—”
Luca froze.
“Come on!” Modesto’s voice sounded almost frantic.
Luca was pulled to his feet, and together he and Modesto pushed into the throng of people now staring down at where Cicciano lay sprawled on the floor of the tavern. Much to Luca’s surprise, nobody tried to stop them; the crowd parted silently, moving back as though the two of them were diseased, the various faces all wearing the same round-eyed look of shock. Luca gave one last glance toward the figure on the floor, then he turned and ran with Modesto out of the tavern, out into the dark street and back toward his house in the Piazza Monteoliveto, running at full tilt until his breath dragged and the sharp stab of a stitch dug into his side. The front door opened as Modesto thudded up against it; both men stumbled into the hallway, then Luca closed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily through an open mouth.
Gianni appeared at the top of the stairs, silhouetted in the doorway to the candlelit sala. He stared down at the new arrivals for a second, then, taking the stairs two at a time, ran heavy footed down into the hallway, his face puckered with anxiety.
“Papa?” he said. “What? What’s happened? Is Carlo with you?”
Luca shook his head, still struggling to calm his breathing, quite unable to speak.
“What’s happened to you? There’s blood all over your shirt…Your face…Have you been fighting?” Gianni sounded incredulous.
“Cicciano,” Luca said indistinctly.
“You found him?”
/> A nod.
“Oh, God. Is he…? Have you…?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Papa, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Luca tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and drew in several long, shuddering breaths.
“Come upstairs, Papa,” Gianni said. “Both of you. You can’t just stand here.”
Luca followed his son and Francesca’s servant up the stairs. The fire in the sala was almost out, though several candles were still burning in brackets on the walls. The hangings had been drawn shut and, Luca thought, as Modesto and Gianni pulled out chairs and sat down, his usually tranquil room seemed in a moment to have taken on the secretive and threatening atmosphere of a bandit’s lair. Not feeling able to sit down, he walked across to stand by the fireplace, his heart still racing. His thoughts were tumultuous, chaotic, fragmented, unstoppable: he felt lightheaded. What was he going to do? It seemed that Cicciano might well be dead, possibly at his—Luca’s—own hand. Luca felt breathless. He might have…might have…killed someone. Killed someone. The words echoed soundlessly in his head.
“Papa…” Gianni began.
Luca saw the compassionate candor in his son’s eyes and the ground began to fall away under his feet. He leaned his head against the mantelshelf and closed his eyes. He heard a chair scrape on the wooden floor; heard footsteps crossing the room, and then felt a hand on his arm. Gianni stood at his shoulder. Luca turned toward him, and pulled him in close to his body. He said, “I’m sorry.”
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