Secrecy

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘I was hoping,’ he said, a slight tremor in his voice, ‘that she might be with you.’

  I reached into my pocket and took out her hair. ‘She sent me this.’

  He moved to touch it, but his hand stopped short in the air. His eyes had sloped down at the edges; his mouth had shrunk.

  ‘She did that once before,’ he said. ‘After her father died. She was about fourteen. When she first came to work for me, everyone thought she was a boy.’

  ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t have left you unless she had a good reason.’

  ‘You sound as if you know something about it.’

  I shook my head.

  While we had been talking, the rain had slackened. I looked over my shoulder. Tucked into a niche or recess on the other side of the street was a man in a flint-coloured cloak and downtrodden boots. His face was in shadow. Though he was hard to make out, I instinctively felt he wasn’t there to take refuge from the weather.

  I asked Giuseppe if he knew the man.

  He peered through the window. ‘My eyesight’s not too good.’

  I stepped outside. The storm had moved on, and the air had a glazed, shivery feel.

  ‘She’s gone.’ Cocking his head, the man gnawed at the skin on the side of his forefinger. ‘Neighbour told me. Right busybody. Doesn’t miss a thing.’ He eased himself forwards into the silvery light. His face was furtive and whiskery, and a glossy red cyst disfigured his left eyelid. ‘She knows all about you, for instance.’

  ‘You’re one of Bassetti’s people,’ I said.

  ‘Who’s Bassetti?’

  ‘Don’t bother denying it. You’ve got that look about you.’

  ‘There’s no need to be insulting.’

  ‘How much is he paying you?’

  The man was chewing his finger again, and didn’t answer.

  ‘Just tell me,’ I said. ‘How much?’

  He allowed himself a thin, pinched smile.

  Infuriated, I thrust my hand into my pocket and flung a fistful of loose change at him. The coins bounced off his forehead, his chest and the wall on either side of him, and dropped, jingling, to the paving stones.

  *

  About a month later, I was in my workshop when I heard footsteps outside, in the stable yard. I opened the door. Earhole was standing in the dark, hands twitching. He glanced back towards the gate, as if he thought he might have been followed, and I was reminded of myself, the way I had been for so many years.

  ‘A soldier let me in,’ he said. ‘He remembered me, from the last time.’

  As he stepped past me, into the room, I noticed that his clothes were smudged with black, and he was limping. I asked him what had happened. He didn’t answer. Instead, he unwrapped a soiled cloth containing stale bread and a piece of sausage and took a bite of each.

  ‘I haven’t eaten anything all day,’ he said.

  Since he had started working for me, he had developed a sense of his own importance, and his behaviour had become more self-conscious and high-handed. He seemed to want to emphasize my dependency on him.

  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘What have you found out?’

  He began to pace up and down. For the first few days, he said, it was exactly like before. The same old routines and rituals. The monastery, the palace. The monastery again. He was on the brink of despairing of the whole endeavour. And then, finally, he had a moment of inspiration.

  ‘It was so strange,’ he said, turning to me, face bright, hands frantic. ‘It was as though everything suddenly made sense – all the bewilderment and brutality, all the fear.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ I said.

  He could keep it to himself no longer. ‘The mystery: I think I’ve solved it!’

  That afternoon, Earhole had decided to see the monastery of Santa Maria Novella for himself. Appearing at the gatehouse, he had claimed he was thinking of becoming a novice, and his enthusiasm for the Dominican order had been so convincing that an ancient monk had taken him on a tour of the place and bored him half to death with interminable lectures on its history and ethos. He was beginning to regret having been so conscientious when he was shown into the Spanish Chapel, famous for its fourteenth-century frescoes, and it was then that he saw the dogs.

  ‘Dogs?’ I said.

  Black-and-white and savage-looking, with thick leather collars, they were at the bottom of the fresco on the eastern wall, strutting and skulking at the fringes of the crowd. When he saw them, he came to such a sudden standstill that the monk asked if there was something wrong. He had always been frightened of dogs, Earhole told the monk, ever since he was attacked by one when he was a baby. The monk said there was another reason to be frightened. The dogs represented the Dominicans in their role as inquisitors, as guardians of the faith.

  ‘Dio di merda!’ I said.

  Despite his limp, Earhole was almost dancing on the spot. ‘You see? You see?’

  I fetched the jar down off the shelf. We put our faces to the greenish glass and stared at the sinister, floating piece of skin.

  ‘The snout, the ears, the teeth …’ Earhole’s hands were twitching furiously at the edge of my field of vision. ‘It’s the same as the fresco. It’s all exactly the same.’

  I looked past him, into the darkness of the stable yard. Things came together with such velocity and force that I almost lost my balance. I was thinking of the man I had killed on that windy night in 1692, and the words that he had muttered: water, black cloak, naked. Earlier that same night, though I had not known it then, the girl had died – or been murdered – and had ended up on a piece of waste ground near the river. Had I inadvertently done away with the only witness to the crime? And had I then, equally inadvertently, come to the aid of the murderer by disposing of the body? I flashed forwards to Stufa staring at the jar just before he hit Fiore. I played all these moments off against his nickname, Flesh.

  ‘What if Stufa killed the girl?’ I said.

  Deep lines appeared on Earhole’s forehead, and I had a glimpse of how he might look when he was in his thirties or forties. ‘We don’t know she was murdered,’ he said. ‘And even if she was, we wouldn’t be able to prove it.’

  ‘Maybe not. But it’s grounds for suspicion, isn’t it?’ I gave him a couple of scudi. ‘You’ve done well, Earhole. Really well.’

  He thanked me and pocketed the money as carefully as usual. Almost immediately, though, the corrugations on his forehead were back again. ‘I can’t work for you any more.’

  ‘Is it your leg?’

  There was an aspect of the afternoon, he said, which he had so far failed to mention. Eager to submit his report to me, he had rushed away, leaving his guide dumbfounded. As he rounded a corner near the library, though, he ran straight into Stufa. In the collision, Stufa dropped the books he was carrying, and Earhole was knocked clean off his feet. The monk who was with Stufa – a smaller, fatter man – seized Earhole by the collar and asked him what on earth he thought he was doing. Before he could answer, Stufa, bending to pick up the books, looked into his face.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ he said, straightening. ‘I know this boy. I’ve seen him before.’

  ‘I work at the hospital,’ Earhole said. ‘Just over there.’ He pointed in the rough direction of Santa Maria Nuova.

  ‘Just over there.’ Stufa imitated Earhole’s fearful voice, then laughed unpleasantly. ‘In fact, I’ve seen him more than once.’ He took hold of Earhole’s chin and tilted his face towards the light. ‘Do you know something? I think he’s been following me.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ the small monk asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stufa said. ‘Maybe he’s taken with me. Maybe he likes my looks.’

  The small monk grinned.

  In that moment, Earhole felt the grip on his collar slacken, and he was able to jerk free. Luckily, he remembered where the gatehouse was. He was out of the monastery in seconds. Thinking the monks were after him, he did what any criminal would do: he made for the ghetto. Down Via de’ Ba
nchi, on into Cerretani, a right turn, a left turn, and he was there. Once inside that warren of passages, staircases and walkways, he found a burnt-out building and hid among the blackened beams until his heart slowed down. Later, as he re-emerged, a rotten floorboard gave beneath him, and he twisted his ankle. It had taken him an hour to reach the palace.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting Stufa to be there, you see?’ he said. ‘Recently, he’s been spending his afternoons with the Grand Duchess, up at Poggio Imperiale.’ He shook his head. ‘All the same, if I hadn’t been running, it would have been all right.’

  ‘You got away,’ I said. ‘That’s the main thing.’

  But Earhole was standing in front of me, his hands quite still. His lips had turned blue. ‘He knows me now. He knows who I am.’

  I asked if he wanted to spend the night in my house. He said no. If he didn’t go home, his mother would fall asleep at the table – or, worse still, on the floor – and his niece would go hungry.

  ‘At least let me look at that leg,’ I said.

  His right ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. I dressed it in a poultice of arnica and ice, and bound it tightly.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  He put his weight on the injured foot and winced. ‘I’ll manage.’

  I went out to the street with him. Toldo had been replaced by a soldier I didn’t know. A brooding feeling to the evening: a sky of soot, a red vent near the horizon. I watched Earhole hobble off up Via Romana, then I closed the gate and returned to my workshop.

  Towards the end of February, I went to visit Cuif. It was a long time since I had seen the Frenchman, and I had missed his jaundiced opinions and his sardonic wit. There were several matters I needed to discuss with him. I had been thinking about Faustina’s description of her father riding – not literally, but as a metaphor. A perfect understanding, she had said. Harmony made visible. You had to harness yourself to the times you lived in. That was the secret. For every hidden thought or action, there had to be a corresponding thought or action that was apparent – and not only apparent, but harmless, mild. You had to wash over people’s minds as water washes over rocks, leaving them unchanged. This, I felt, was where I might have fallen down. Cuif, too, had made mistakes, though he might not be prepared to admit it. If pressed, though, I was sure he would have plenty to say on the subject. I also wanted to seek his advice. Without being too specific, I wanted to suggest that I had acquired certain information that could be used against Stufa. Did one need hard evidence in a city like Florence? Or would inference and suspicion be enough?

  I crossed the small courtyard at the back of the House of Shells and climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. As usual, the last flight felt claustrophobic, and I was breathing hard by the time I arrived outside Cuif’s room. To my surprise, the door was open. I knocked anyway, then stepped inside. There was no sign of him in the first room, so I moved on through the archway. The second room was quite as monastic as the first, with a single round window and a straw pallet pushed against the wall. The cage holding the cricket hung from a hook above Cuif’s bed, but the mulberry leaf was gone, and had not been replaced. Though both rooms were unoccupied, I called his name. After all, this could be part of the act he had been working on: an open door, an empty room – a temporary invisibility … But no, he wasn’t there. I began to laugh. He wasn’t there! His moment had come at last, and he had gone out to take his rightful place in the world – and judging by his wash-bowl, which was overturned, and a dropped piece of clothing, he had left in a hurry, excited by the prospect of a new, untrammelled life.

  Downstairs again, I found the signora sitting by an unlit fire, her back to me, a black shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Cuif wasn’t in his room, I said. Did she know where I could find him? She looked up. Her eyes were swollen.

  ‘He’s been arrested,’ she said.

  I stared at her. ‘What for?’

  ‘Adultery.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous –’

  ‘That’s what I said. They didn’t listen.’

  If the Office of Public Decency was behind the arrest, as seemed likely, Bassetti would be involved. Stufa too. I hadn’t forgotten the box-like carriage with its barred windows and its soiled floor. Since I was employed by the Grand Duke, and had become part of his inner circle, they would find it difficult to target me directly, but they might have decided to make life uncomfortable for the people I knew and cared about, people who were far less well protected.

  In ten minutes I was standing outside the Bargello, where the majority of civil offences were tried and sentenced, its high, blunt tower tilting against the sky, its walls dauntingly sheer and bristling with iron bolts. Two soldiers guarded the entrance. I asked if the Grand Duke’s secretary was inside. They didn’t answer, or even move, but merely regarded me with supercilious curiosity. When I repeated my question, the taller of the two men took a step towards me. ‘What’s it to you? Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘My name’s Zummo. I work for the Grand Duke.’

  The tall soldier looked at his colleague. ‘Did you hear that? He works for the Grand Duke.’

  ‘Impressive,’ the second soldier said.

  The tall soldier turned back to me. ‘You sound foreign.’

  Cool air swirled out of the courtyard behind the two men, and I thought I smelled blood. I shivered at the implication.

  The tall soldier addressed his colleague again. ‘Do you think he sounds foreign?’

  ‘He’s not from round here, that’s for sure,’ the second soldier said. ‘What did you say your name was? Zugo?’

  The tall soldier guffawed. Zugo meant ‘simpleton’ – among other things.

  ‘Is the Grand Duke’s secretary here?’ I said patiently. ‘If he is, I need to see him. It’s urgent.’

  ‘We’re under strict instructions not to let anyone in,’ the tall soldier said.

  ‘I have to see Bassetti. Or Stufa. Whoever’s in charge.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me, Zugo? No one’s allowed inside.’

  ‘Tell them I want to see them,’ I said in a loud, clear voice, ‘or I’ll go straight to the Grand Duke himself.’

  Sighing, the tall soldier spoke to his colleague. ‘Tell them Zugo’s here.’

  ‘Zummo,’ I said. ‘The name’s Zummo.’

  The second soldier set off across the wide, paved courtyard.

  ‘Satisfied?’ the tall one said.

  I stood facing the street. The day brightened suddenly, the sky bleak and stringent, like the light on the blade of a knife.

  Two more soldiers arrived. Scruffier and more thuggish than the pair on duty by the entrance, they marched me across the courtyard, through a door, and down a steep flight of stairs. The stone walls gleamed with damp, and greasy black fumes uncoiled from the tallow lamps. I began to cough. The deeper we went, the clammier it became. I had been in the Bargello for no more than a few minutes, but the idea that a sun might be shining outside already seemed fantastical.

  At last, when we were far underground, in a labyrinth of galleries and recesses that resembled a catacomb, one of the soldiers opened a door that was reinforced with horizontal metal bands. In front of me, on the far side of a wide room, Cuif was suspended in mid-air, his arms forming a triangle above his head, and it seemed for a moment that I had walked in during the execution of a daring somersault, a somersault so new he hadn’t showed it to me yet, but then I saw a burly, bald man in a leather apron stationed nearby, holding the end of a rope, and my stomach lurched. Cuif’s hands had been tied behind his back. A rope had then been looped through his bound wrists, and he had been hoisted to a height of about ten feet. His head hung limply on his neck. He appeared to have fainted.

  Stufa lifted his eyes from the ledger he was studying. ‘This particular technique is known as the garrucha. Are you familiar with the garrucha?’

  His abrasive whisper matched the surroundings perfectly. I didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s Spanish,’ he went on. ‘Yo
u make sure the rope is taut, then you jerk it suddenly, which causes instant and often severe dislocation of all the joints in the upper body.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like a demonstration?’

  ‘Not necessary,’ I said.

  ‘Is there anything you can tell us that might spare him further pain?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About his immoral behaviour. Why else would he be here?’ Stufa exchanged a look with the bald man in the apron. Their faces were smooth, comfortable, expressionless.

  ‘But that’s a fabrication,’ I said. ‘What’s the real charge?’

  Stufa’s head came up sharply. ‘Are you saying he’s guilty of something else?’

  ‘I’m saying he’s not an adulterer.’

  ‘You think our intelligence is false?’

  Once again, I didn’t answer. Probably I had already said too much.

  ‘You look a bit off colour.’ Stufa turned and signalled to his crony. ‘All right. That’s enough.’

  Rather than lower Cuif to the ground, the bald man simply let go of the rope. Cuif dropped through the air and landed in a crumpled heap. The bald man bent down and freed Cuif’s wrists. Cuif cried out every time he was touched.

  ‘I don’t know what it is about the French,’ Stufa said. ‘They don’t seem to have any backbone.’ He closed his ledger. ‘You can take him away.’

  I crossed the room. Cuif lay in a pool of blood and urine. It was obvious that he couldn’t stand, let alone walk. Bending over, I took hold of one of his arms and heaved him up on to my back. His shriek was so loud that it rebounded off the wall like something solid. Shocked at how little he weighed, scarcely more than a child, I had no choice but to ignore his groans and whimpers as I carried him up the stairs and out into the open air. The soldiers on duty at the entrance smirked as we passed. Ignoring them, I set off along the street. The sky had a strange, muted dazzle to it, the winter sun lighting the white cloud cover from behind; I felt as if hours had gone by. I talked to Cuif in a low voice, telling him that he was with me now, and that he was going to be all right, but he lost consciousness several times on the way to Santa Maria Nuova, even though it was close by.