“What for, Papa?”
He pulled back from Gianni. “For Christ’s sake!” Luca heard his voice rise in volume, but felt unable to control it. “A man is dead! My God, Gianni. Dead because of me! I could have walked away from that tavern, and he would still be alive, and—”
“No,” Modesto’s voice cut across him. “No, you listen to me.”
***
“Oh, God. Luca’s back. That’s his voice.” Francesca twitched her head away from Serafina’s hand and stood up, listening. “And that’s Modesto. I…I have to go down there. I have to talk to Luca. I can’t just stay up here.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Francesca turned to Serafina. Serafina saw the cut on her face—clean now and dressed neatly—but still standing out stark against the paleness of her skin; she was struck by the determination in Francesca’s gaze and could not help but admire her courage.
“Yes, please,” Francesca said, and Serafina was touched by her dignity. “Thank you. I should like that.”
“Here.” Serafina held out a hand. As Francesca took it, Serafina squeezed her fingers, suppressing a moment’s curiosity as she found herself picturing all the other unmentionable things that Francesca might have done with this same hand. Would she ever be able to be in Francesca’s company again without such thoughts?
And, more to the point, she supposed, would Luca?
Together, the two women crossed the room and went down the stairs toward the sala. Voices within the room were raised now. Francesca stopped outside the closed door. She bent forward to listen but almost immediately gasped, pulled back, and put her fingers over her mouth.
“Oh, Serafina!” she whispered. “Oh, God! He says he’s killed Michele!”
Serafina frowned, uncomprehending, a nauseous swirl of shock trickling down through her insides.
***
Modesto looked steadily at Luca.
“So, don’t you start imagining things that might not have happened. Look. We don’t actually even know if the bastard’s dead, but if he is, then I killed him. Me. Not you.” Modesto stood up, an emphatic forefinger jabbing the air. “He had that knife. I…I don’t know just how it happened, but I got his wrist, and then, then…” He paused, and then burst out, “I couldn’t just stand there and let him kill you—and he would have done, Signore, he’d have finished you for certain. I didn’t mean him to die—dear God! Despite what he’s done, I hope he’s still alive. I just wanted to stop him, before…” He hesitated. “If he’d killed you…it’d just have broken her heart.”
Luca looked at him without expression.
Modesto drew in a breath and said, “She loves you, Signore.”
Luca’s gaze was steady, but he said nothing.
Modesto said, “I know what you must think about what you’ve found out. But you’re wrong if…if you think that what’s she’s done in the past dictates what she is now, in the present.” He ran the heel of his hand across his forehead. “Signore, I’ve known her for more than three years, and I understand her better than anyone else does. She and I have been through a great deal together—we’ve shared laughter and tears, rage, terror. Make no mistake, things have been bad in the past before—very bad. I’ve seen her frightened and angry and unhappy—but I’ve never seen her like this. Never.” He jabbed the accusatory forefinger up toward the floor above. “She’s sitting up there now, broken into pieces, unable to bear the thought of losing you.”
He saw Luca wince.
“Don’t let her go, Signore.” He paused. “You’ll not meet many women like her in your life.”
Luca put his head in his hands.
Modesto began to pace, his gaze fixed upon Luca. “I know what you’ve been thinking,” he said, feeling a hot mixture of jealousy, loyalty, and resentment bubbling up behind his voice. He pointed back at Luca accusingly. “You’ve decided she’s scum. Oh, you thought her beautiful and charming and sensitive and lovable when you met her. Just the woman for you, you thought, and almost straightaway you considered marriage, didn’t you? And all the delights of a life ahead in the company of an exquisite creature like her. What luck, you thought, to have found someone so lovely, when you had resigned yourself to the life of a widower. But then it all changed, didn’t it? You discovered that she’s not quite what you thought she was.” He paused. “You found out that she’s been fucking for money since the age of seventeen”—he saw the boy start, and Rovere shook his head, his face still hidden behind his fingers—“and then the bubble burst and now you have no idea what to say to her. You don’t even know how to look at her anymore.”
Luca’s hands were pressed together, the tips of his fingers below his nose. As though he were praying.
“But whatever she’s done, the truth is that she is all those things, Signore. She is beautiful and charming and sensitive and lovable. And she’s clever, too. You’re a lucky man; she loves you. She’d do anything for you. You’d be a fool to lose her.”
A bottle of red wine stood on the table amidst the remains of the meal Gianni had been eating. Modesto reached across, picked it up, poured some into an empty glass, and drank it down. An ember shifted in the fireplace with a soft crumbling scuffle, and a puff of hot air hissed quietly down into the ashes.
The grudging respect for the Signore that had flickered into being as he had watched the brawl in the tavern had, in the past few moments, solidified and confirmed itself in Modesto’s mind. He knew—with reasonable certainty—what he, Modesto, had done back there. He knew what he would have to do now, and he knew, too, that he would have to be quite sure that Francesca would be cared for and truly loved in his absence. He swilled the last of his wine around in the bottom of the glass for a moment, staring down into it, as it washed pinkly around the bowl, and then said, “You might think that whores are scum, Signore. Well. Some of them are—I’ve met a fair number. But she’s not. After all, all she’s ever done is attempt to give people pleasure—however hard it is to square that with your own personal notions of morality.” He paused, waiting for a few long seconds, before he loosed his final shot. “I suppose it’s not really for me to say, but it just seems to me that you might want to think for a moment or two about your elder son before you condemn the Signora too harshly.”
Fifty
As Carlo reached the top of the sottosuolo steps, there was far more noise in the tavern than he would have expected: the normal thrum of conversation was sharper, louder, more jagged and confused than usual. He stared about him warily. A large number of people were on their feet, several tables had been pushed aside, and a couple of chairs lay tipped over on the floor. Even as he registered all this, Carlo heard running feet, and the sound of the door to the tavern being opened and then slammed shut.
He paused. The climb back up to the surface from the hell of that lightless cavern had been long and tiring; he had had to sit in the blackness and rest several times, feeling giddy and with his head aching, and—though he would never have admitted it—he had been very frightened to be so entirely wrapped in that smothering darkness for so long. He felt sick with relief at his arrival back in the smoky, smelly familiarity of his favorite tavern; he needed a drink to steady his nerves and he wanted time—time to decide what best he should do. But, to his irritation, there seemed to be some sort of drama going on in the middle of the room: a drama that appeared to be absorbing everyone’s full attention, something which might very well mean that his chances of being served promptly would be considerably reduced.
Determining to find the tavern-keeper and demand the grappa he craved, he wormed his way between the jostling bodies and peered through to see what it was that was so fascinating everyone, but, on actually seeing the cause of the disturbance, he stopped short. A body lay sprawled on the flagged floor and, as he stared down at it, several thoughts struck Carlo almost simultaneously. The first w
as that there was something indefinably and irrevocably broken about the silent figure in front of him; it lay quite still, crumpled and bent in a manner no living person could have sustained for more than a second or two. The second thought was that it was, quite clearly, Cicciano. The third was that Marco was standing on the far side of where Cicciano lay, his arms folded tightly, his usual dirty cloth draped over his shoulder. Marco was staring at Carlo, a ragged wince of undisguised dislike twisting his face into a grimace. Carlo stared back for a second or two, and then, unthinking, he pushed through to crouch down beside where Cicciano lay motionless.
He put his hand to Cicciano’s neck and felt for a pulse. The skin was still warm, but he could determine no movement of any sort, and there was a heavy solidity to the flesh beneath the skin that proclaimed no life. The linen of Cicciano’s shirt was stained red below his armpit, and, seeing this, a sick wash of dizziness swept over Carlo and he put a hand down to the floor to steady himself. The wooden boards on which he leaned were wet and sticky; snatching his hand back up again, he wiped his fingers on his shirt.
Then the door to the tavern banged open again, and four heavyset men shoved their way into the room, scattering any drinkers in their path. Dressed in scruffy, ill-assorted black doublets and breeches, and each brandishing a broad-bladed knife, they had a thuggish air about them, and Carlo—recognizing them immediately for what they were—scrambled to his feet and backed away from Cicciano’s body. The forcible maintenance of the law in Napoli might have been the nominal function of the sbirri, but Carlo knew as well as every other man in the room that he would most likely be treated by them with an unthinking, heavy-handed lack of justice.
“Everybody stay where you are!” one of them shouted.
At least a dozen people ignored the command completely, and in a noisy scramble of poorly fitting shoes and panicked gasping, they barged past the newcomers and ran for the door of the tavern. One of the sbirri followed them, and, although failing to stop any of the escapees, he turned and stood square in the doorway. Holding his knife point upward, he leaned his other hand against the door jamb and glared around him at the occupants of the tavern, jaw jutting mulishly. Nobody spoke. Nervous looks were shared; throats were cleared; feet shuffled and clothing rustled.
Another of the new arrivals—a bear of a man with an unruly black beard and unwashed, over-long hair—took the position just vacated by Carlo, down beside the body on the floor. Holding Cicciano’s chin between thumb and fingers, the sbirro flipped the head over to face in the other direction and back, staring down at the blank features with a frown of compassionless curiosity.
“What happened here?” he said, glaring up at the crowd. “Who did it?”
The silence in the room became absolute. Nobody moved.
“Well?” the sbirro said again, a bite of aggression in his voice. “Someone must have seen something. This man’s been knifed, and not more than a few moments ago, I’d say—some bastard in this room must have seen who did it!”
Suddenly aware, with a cold thrill of fear that slid from the back of his throat down into his belly, that his freshly split lip, grazed cheek, blackened eye, and bloodstained hand might well appear suspicious, Carlo began to edge slowly backward, aiming to slide through the crowd toward the steps to the sottosuolo. He would, he thought, go back down into the tunnel and wait, a few yards in, in the darkness, until the sbirri had left.
He caught Marco’s eye again.
There passed between the two young men a wave of almost palpable antagonism. Carlo heard again in his head the conversation that had followed their final coupling; remembered Marco’s whining entreaty as he had sulkily refastened his breeches, wiping his eyes and nose with the back of his hand. “But from everything you said—right from the start—I was sure that you felt more for me than just—” Irritated, Carlo had held up both hands and interrupted what had surely been set to become an embarrassingly trite outpouring. “For God’s sake, Marco,” he had said, “what did you think? That I was in love with you or something? Proficient in a number of…useful methods of entertainment you may well be, but, well, Marco, I do have standards.”
And then…then he had been foolish enough to boast of his plans a few hours ago, down at the dockside.
Marco stared at him across Cicciano’s body for several seconds, then, turning away, he took a step toward the nearest sbirro and said, in a clear and carrying voice, pointing back toward Carlo, “That man over there. The one with the black eye and the thick lip. The one with blood on his hands. You might ask him about it.”
Fifty-one
Modesto sounds angry. I stand, quite unable to move outside Luca’s sala door, looking at Serafina and listening to my manservant’s tirade. Of Luca, I can hear nothing at all. Serafina’s mouth has opened and she is fiddling unthinkingly with her lower lip.
“You might think that whores are scum, Signore,” Modesto is saying. “Well. Some of them are—I’ve met a fair number of them. But she’s not.”
Scum. Flotsam. Fragments of stinking rubbish lying on the surface of stagnant water. Is this what I’ve been all this time? Is this what Luca thinks I am?
“You might want to think for a moment or two about your elder son before you condemn the Signora too harshly.”
Oh my God.
How has he dared to say such a thing? I wait for the explosion—for Luca to shout at him and order his immediate departure, but there is only a horribly empty pause. Serafina reaches for my hand.
And then at last I hear Luca’s voice. He says, “I do love her.”
I don’t seem to be able to move.
Modesto says, his voice emphatic, “Then tell her so, Signore. Please. Before you lose her. She needs you. She really needs you. Now. Because, after what has happened this evening, I am…” He hesitates. “I am going to be leaving Napoli, straight away, before they catch up with me, and—”
I do not hear the end of his sentence. I don’t care whether they all realize that I have been blatantly eavesdropping. I crash open the door to the sala with my heart thumping in my ears, and my voice comes out as something near a shriek as I say, “Leave? Why? When? Modesto, you can’t!”
All three turn and stare at me.
Luca has a cut above his eyebrow and his lip is split and bleeding. Modesto’s face is smeared with blood, his shirt is torn and bloodstained. Neither man is wearing a doublet. Gianni, his gaze flicking from one to the other, seems entirely bewildered.
“Leaving Napoli?” I say.
Modesto pushes his hand through his hair and nods.
“But why?” My voice cracks.
“Did you hear what I said just now?” Modesto asks—not crossly, but because he wants to know.
I nod.
He says, “Well. I’m pretty certain I did kill that bastard. If I stay, and they find out that I’m responsible for his death, then there’s little doubt that I’ll hang. Or burn. So I need to get out of Napoli—probably tonight.”
I look from Modesto to Luca and back.
I’m not sure I can remember how to breathe.
Modesto is looking at Luca. “Just talk to her, Signore,” he says quietly, then adds, to me, “I’ll be downstairs. I promise I’ll not go anywhere without telling you.” He lowers his voice still more and says, “Did I leave that leather bag in your room? With your books in it?”
I nod.
He puffs out relief. “Thank God for that. I wasn’t sure what I’d done with them. Keep them safe. They are your bloody insurance, Signora, and don’t you forget it.” He doesn’t give me time to tell him that I’ve burned most of the books, but, turning away, he nods at Gianni and Serafina and jerks his head toward the door, inviting the two of them to follow him out. All three leave the room, leaving Luca and me together.
Several heavy seconds pass. I can feel my pulse in the cut on my fac
e. I have no idea what to say, and I can see Luca is struggling too. Then we both speak at once, each almost instantly stumbling into a clumsy apology for interrupting the other. Another silence, and then Luca says, “I’m so sorry.”
“What for?”
His gaze moves from me to the floor, to the ceiling, to the fireplace and then back to my face again. For a second he reminds me forcibly of Gianni that first night, staring around my bedchamber in an agony of embarrassment and a clotted sob rises thickly in my throat.
Luca says, “I’m sorry for what Carlo did. For what I’ve done. For being small-minded and narrow and not understanding what—”
I interrupt him. “There’s a lot not to understand.”
He smiles then—a tight, uncomfortable smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Your servant says I should be careful not to lose you.”
“Do you agree with him?”
He does not answer directly. He says, “Can you forgive me?”
“Me forgive you?” His question surprises me. “For what?”
“For having failed as a father. For having raised a son who could have done something so…so abhorrent. To your children.”
I hesitate, then ask the question to which I’m not sure I want a reply. “Is what he did more abhorrent then, than my being a whore?”
Luca pulls in a trembling breath, and his words slide out through the sigh of its release. “Before today, I’m not sure how I would have answered that question. But now…”
I see he has tears in his eyes.
“Now,” he says, “the answer is easy…but I can hardly bear to give it.”
“You are not your son, Luca.”
“But I raised him!” Luca’s face is anguished.
“Aren’t we all of us comprised of much more than just our raising?”
Luca says nothing.
“I was raised well. By a mother who loved me,” I say. “She truly loved me and she did her best for me, but she was a fragile thing—she had neither the strength nor the courage to defend me from my father; his drunkenness ruled both our lives for years. It killed her in the end, after which I was the sole target for the beatings and the ranting insults and…” I stop. Feeling sick, I manage to admit it. “It was only by chance that he managed to avoid siring upon me his own grandchild.”
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