Luca’s jaw drops.
“I ran away from him when I was seventeen. I went to Ferrara and…after nearly a week of miserable starvation and fearful sleepless nights curled in doorways, I was presented with a way of making enough money to live on. Not an easy way, not a pleasant way, and certainly not the way I would have chosen, had I been offered an alternative, but I didn’t feel that I had a choice. It was at least something I seemed to be able to do, and something I could sustain.” I pause and then add, “I just wanted to survive.”
Luca is staring at me, his eyes now huge and glittering.
I say, “My mother raised me with tenderness. She wanted to see me safely married—to someone who would treat me with more care than she had ever known. She taught me to read and write, and to pray, and to deal with those around me with compassion and tolerance. But circumstances prevented the seeds of those lessons from bearing much fruit—ale-stinking, iron-fisted circumstances that ploughed in between me and my mother’s wishes, like a runaway bull.” My voice cracks then, as I say, “If you’re drowning, Luca, you grab at whatever floating branch comes near you, however filthy and diseased and cracked it might be—you just don’t have time to wait for the nicely polished, carefully cleaned one to come bobbing past.”
I put my face in my hands.
Luca crosses to where I am standing and puts his arms around me. His body is hot and damp; his shirt smells of woodsmoke and blood and the acrid tang of fear-tainted sweat. My arms slide around him and, grabbing fistfuls of linen, I cling to him, pressing myself against him. One of his hands cups the back of my head and he holds it in close to his shoulder; I can hardly breathe, my face is buried in Luca’s shirt, the heat of his fingers is in my hair and his arm lies heavy around my back. And then I pull back and our eyes meet, and, for the first time, we look at each other in total truth.
There is nothing left to hide.
He bends his head, seeking my mouth with his. I tilt my head back and he kisses me; speaking and kissing at the same time, he murmurs into my mouth incoherent, salt-wet declarations of love. His poor split lip tastes of blood and must be painful, but still he kisses me. One of his hands holds the unhurt side of my face, the other he pushes up into my hair. We kiss and kiss: two parched desert travelers newly come to an oasis. I silently bless Modesto for insisting that I should never lie with my patrons gratis. Thanks to him, I’ve never bedded a man without money changing hands. Ever. Luca will be my first. I am a virgin again.
***
Luca takes his mouth from mine, slowly, slowly, drawing away from me, as though the normal division of time into seconds has lost pace and each is taking five times as long as usual to run its course. Holding me by the shoulders for a moment, he looks into my face, then hugs me close again. He is lover, brother, father, friend; he is everything I have longed for him to be from that first moment at San Domenico—and he is all those things despite my terrible truths. My tears slide between my face and Luca’s shirt, hot, wet and salt-slick.
“Don’t cry,” he says into my hair. “Please, cara, don’t cry.”
I turn up my face toward his and smile. He returns it—wincing as his lip cracks open again. Bunching up a handful of his shirt, he wipes along below my eyes, first one side, then the other.
“Enough tears now, I think,” he says, stroking my hair. “For ourselves, at any rate.” He pauses; his smile fades and his face darkens as he adds, “We have Carlo to cry about now.”
Fifty-two
It is just after dawn: the light sliding in through a crack in the shutters is a flat, shadowless grey, and as yet, the streets outside are still silent. The insistent activity of every Neapolitan day is still some hours from beginning, but somewhere out there, striding away toward the edge of the city, wearing an old doublet of Luca’s and with no more than a handful of Luca’s money, and a knot of ribbon from the sleeve of my dress in his pocket, is Modesto. A fugitive from justice. Or rather from injustice; there’s no justice in this. None whatsoever. For any of us.
My stalwart, faithful, funny, tragic, dearly loved servant has gone.
I can only presume that God must truly wish to make me pay for the wickedness of my past. Perhaps my sins have been greater than even I had thought. I had foolishly imagined myself forgiven when Luca kissed me yesterday evening: God, I thought, had decided that I had suffered enough to make sufficient reparation for my years of decadence. But no. It seems I have more to endure. What has been given with one hand has been snatched away with the other.
I can hardly bear to imagine how Modesto is feeling. What he said a few moments ago shocked me. I’ve had my suspicions, I suppose, but I’ve just pushed them well out of sight: hidden them in some dark inhospitable corner of my mind where I’ve known I would not have to encounter them unexpectedly while I’ve been busy dealing with other supposedly more pressing problems.
***
“But, Modesto—why? Why do you have to go like this? There’s nothing to prove that you…that you…killed Michele…” Killed Michele? I can’t quite believe what I am saying. “And anyway, even if you did, it happened because you were trying to save Luca’s life, didn’t it? Surely no one can blame you for that?”
Modesto’s face creases with a mixture of incredulity, pity and irritation. “Oh, Signora, those bastards simply aren’t interested in mitigating circumstances—they just want justice.” He checks, and then says, “Well, no, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that they want someone to hang. And enough people saw that fight—”
“Then they’ll have seen that you didn’t start it,” I say.
Luca adds, “Apart from which, it might just as easily have been me. We were all in that melee together—there’s no proof it was you that—”
Modesto interrupts him. “There’s rather more to it than whichever one of us killed Signor di Cicciano. It may have been me, it may not. It may have been you. He may have done it himself. To be honest, I don’t really care.”
He seems to be struggling to say something that is causing him some distress.
“Modesto, what is it?” I ask.
“I…I…” He turns his face up to the ceiling, sucks in a long breath, and juts out his jaw as though trying to summon up the courage to speak, then he turns to me and says, very softly, “Look, Signora, I can’t stay here with you—whichever one of us killed Cicciano. It would just be too hard for me to be here with you now.”
“But…” I say, stupidly, not understanding what he means. “Why? Is it something I’ve done? What?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, but his gaze moves from me to Luca, and then back to me again. He says, “Do you remember a conversation we had some time ago, when I told you that I would have to ‘accustom myself to sobriety’ or whatever it was I said, if your relationship with the Signore were to develop?” He inclines his head briefly toward Luca, then says to me, “And I told you, didn’t I, that…you and I…would have to be prepared to put a stop to how things have been in the past…because it’s…well, let’s just say it’s not been the usual sort of relationship between mistress and servant, has it?”
I remember the conversation, and nod.
“Well,” Modesto says, quietly, examining his fingernails before raising his gaze back up to my face, “after thinking carefully about it, I don’t think I’d be able to cope with your new circumstances, after all. I don’t think it would be as easy as I had at first thought.”
“But…I don’t understand. Why?”
“Oh, don’t be obtuse, Signora!” Modesto says with something of his old irritability. “Can’t you work it out?”
I can do no more than stare at him.
***
Luca understands, thank God. I’m so grateful that he hasn’t tried to comfort me, or to tell me “it will all be for the best”; he hasn’t attempted to kiss me or hold me since Modesto we
nt, but I can see in his eyes a tender, compassionate comprehension of the extent of my loss.
He was standing behind me on the door sill just now, as I clung to Modesto. I felt Luca’s warm bulk at my shoulder, as my manservant and I embraced and I heard Modesto mutter next to my ear, “Didn’t I tell you you would be greater than all of them?”
I pulled back from him. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Emilia Rosa, Malacoda, and the others. I told you you’d outstrip the lot of them.”
“But…”
“Do you not think they would change places with you, Signora, given the choice?” He smiled. “Just think about it.”
I wrapped my arms as tightly around him as I could manage, and he said, his voice muffled in my hair, “Don’t you bloody dare cry, Signora. Just don’t do it. Bloody whores…overemotional…sentimental…you’re all the bloody same.”
I gripped more tightly round his back.
His words buzzed against the side of my head as he murmured, “He loves you. You do know that, don’t you? You know I wouldn’t leave here unless I was sure of it.” He let go of me, stood back a step, and held me by the shoulders. Looking over at Luca, he grinned, then turning back to me, said, “Show him what a lucky bastard he is, Signora.”
Luca said, “Don’t worry—he knows. He knows exactly how lucky a bastard he is.”
I couldn’t speak but managed a watery laugh.
Then Modesto said, “I’ll be back. I promise. To visit.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. When everything dies down, I suppose.” He paused, then added, “Hug those little girls for me. Tell them…tell them I’ve gone exploring, and that when I get back, I’ll bring them each a very special present. Tell them I’ll try to bring them in time for their birthday—but it might be a little longer.”
I nodded, wondering what sort of understatement that might turn out to be, in the end.
And then he gave me one more fierce, brief hug, turned on his heel, and began to stride away up the street. He did not look back, but raised a hand in farewell just once, before he turned the corner and was lost from sight. I’m glad Luca was standing behind me, with his hands on my shoulders, or I might have run after him and begged him to stay.
***
Something is bothering Gianni. In the hours since Modesto’s departure, he has been restless and fidgety; he has paced from room to room, and more than once, the twins have asked me what the matter is with the nice man who brought them back from the cave.
They cried, of course, when I gave them Modesto’s message and delivered his promised hug, but, as I am sure he intended, within a very short time, they had begun discussing with each other where their friend might be going to explore, and—even more exciting—what sort of presents he might be bringing them when he returns.
The girls and I have been keeping ourselves busy on this early morning, sweeping and dusting the downstairs rooms in Luca’s house—I can only imagine that Luca’s old servant is losing his eyesight, as it seems that half the dirt of the street outside has found its way unchallenged into the darker corners of the house. Though cleaning and tidying is not my usual wont, I feel so entirely disconnected from reality just now that the tedious domesticity of this task seems to be providing a sort of comforting crutch; the girls, on the other hand, each seem to be genuinely enjoying wielding their oversized brooms and pretending to be “wives.” Outwardly, they seem very much as they always are, and only an uncharacteristic desire on their part to cling to my skirts and not to let me out of their sight gives any indication that they have so recently suffered such a fearful experience.
For the fourth time in not many more minutes, Gianni puts his head round the door, says nothing, and goes out again.
Then, a little while later, Luca comes in. “Cara, can we talk for a moment?”
My heart turns over. Has he changed his mind?
He looks at the twins.
I say, “Bella, Beata…can you go upstairs? The little room where we are sleeping…all the blankets are in such a muddle. Could you go up and try to fold them for me?”
They glance at each other, anxious at the thought of leaving my side, but I promise them that both Luca and I will be up to see how well they have done in just a few moments. Looking somewhat reassured, they hurry toward the stairs.
I look at Luca. “What is it?” I ask.
“Gianni.”
“I thought he seemed rather agitated just now—what’s wrong?”
Luca hesitates. His color has deepened slightly and he seems decidedly ill at ease. “He has just been talking to me. It’s…well, since Modesto told you why he wanted to leave…” There is a pause. “Gianni is…I think he has something of the same problem as your manservant.”
I frown at him, thinking of castration and not understanding.
“He’s explained it to me, but I think he’d like to talk to you about it himself.”
“Luca, what is this?”
“He’s in the sala—go and find him, will you?”
He takes my hand and we leave the room and climb the first flight of stairs together. At the door to the sala, Luca bends and kisses my mouth. “He’ll explain,” he says, winding a strand of my hair around one finger.
Gianni is standing over by the window, staring down into the street below. He turns round as I enter the room, looking every bit as awkward and embarrassed as he did that first day I met him in the house in San Tommaso.
Neither he nor I say anything for several seconds. The silence is robust and elastic and I am unsure how to break it, so I just watch Gianni and wait for him to speak.
In the end, he says, looking from me to his interlocked fingers and back, “I’ve been talking to Papa.”
He does not continue; I cannot think of anything to say in reply, so again, I say nothing.
After a few seconds, Gianni says, “I’ve tried to explain to him…why…why I want to break from my studies for a year or so, and to leave Napoli.”
“Leave?” I say, and my voice sounds too highly pitched.
“When…when your servant explained why he needed to get away, it made me think,” Gianni says. “Made me realize.”
“Realize what?”
“That I’m not sure I can do it either.”
“Do what?”
“Be here—with you and Papa.”
“Oh, Gianni…”
Gianni shakes his head. He opens his mouth and tries to speak, but no words seem to come to him and he puffs out a little sigh of exasperation at his inarticulacy. Trying again, he manages to say, “After…after everything we did together, you and me, on that first evening…at your house…I think I am going to find it difficult…to be able…” He pauses, and swallows, awkwardly. “I think it might be hard for me to have to watch you and Papa together.”
“But, Gianni, this is your home! I don’t want to be responsible for chasing you out of it.”
He manages a rather wan smile. “You won’t be chasing me out of it. I’m choosing to go. And I’ll come back—it’s just—” He bites his lip, choosing the next words carefully. “You and Papa need some time alone, to begin with, I think. To find out all those things about each other that people need to find out, before they can settle down and just be together.”
I am touched—as I have been before—by Gianni’s compassionate wisdom.
He continues, “I can see in your face, and in Papa’s too, that each time you set eyes on each other, it’s like a shock that shoots right through you: your insides turn over and it’s as if you are struggling to breathe for a second.”
I stare at him, unable to speak.
“It was like that for me—that day I saw you and Papa, on the floor in the sala. It hurt like a knife cut inside my chest.” He presses a fist
against his doublet front, his gaze quite steady, almost fierce. “From everything I’ve heard, though, I don’t think that feeling lasts forever. From what I remember of Mamma, I don’t think it can have been like that every day between her and Papa, although they loved each other very much. I suppose after years together they were just used to each other and so they didn’t surprise each other all the time, anymore.” He pauses. “When you and Papa aren’t surprising each other anymore, and can just be together calmly, then I think I could come back.”
I can feel sharp tears behind my eyes yet again.
There is a soft knock on the door of the sala. Luca comes in. It is as Gianni says: at the sight of him, a now-familiar needle-thrill of shock shoots down through me and my heart turns over. Gianni smiles. “I’m right, aren’t I?” he says, raising an eyebrow.
I smile back, and in that instant Gianni and I become friends. “Yes,” I say, with a little laugh. “Yes, damn it, you are.”
“Right about what?” Luca asks.
“Surprises,” Gianni says.
He is just about to expand on this when we are all startled by a frantic knocking at the front door. Luca races downstairs, Gianni and I following. My heart is thudding wildly all over again—something about the urgency of that sound presages yet more unpleasant shocks.
Luca fumbles with the latch, then pulls open the door. There on the door sill, breathless, disheveled and frightened, and wearing the same green doublet in which I first saw him, stands the young man with the overlong hair who arranged my meeting with Gianni, that day on the low wall outside the Castel Nuovo.
“Nicco,” Luca says. “What on earth?”
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