In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel

by Sarah Dunant

  “It’s an infection; it comes from the glass. I have had it for many years. There is a remedy I use, a liquid to soothe it. Without it…well, you’ll be pleased to know that I see almost nothing now.”

  “Oh, no,” I say. “No. It gives me no pleasure at all.”

  From the next cell the thudding comes again, and then the moaning, louder this time. Then, from somewhere else, a voice yells out abuse, a chorus of madness.

  She lifts her head to the sound. “Faustina? Don’t be frightened. You are safe. Lie down, try to sleep.” And her voice is soft, like the one that spoke of glass souls to a dwarf drowning in pain. She turns back to me. “She bangs her head against the walls. She says it makes the thoughts go away.”

  The moans turn to a whimper, then stop. We sit for a moment, listening to the silence.

  “I—I have brought you something.”

  “What?”

  “Put your hand out.”

  As she does I see the bloodied marks left by the ropes on her wrists and lower arms.

  “They are Mauro’s sugared cakes. Each one has special syrup inside it, to help you.”

  “Who made up the dose?” And her head tilts upward in that way I know so well.

  “You did. It’s your recipe. From the one we mixed with grappa. Mauro made a syrup paste from it. He’s tested them. One will dull pain and make you sleepy, two will drug you enough to…to rise above it.”

  She holds the parcel in the palm of her hand. “I…I think I will try a little now. But only half of one. Mauro’s sauces were always rich for me.”

  I take one from her and break off a part—more than a half—and feed it to her slowly, mouthful by mouthful. She chews it carefully, and I see her smile slightly at its sweetness.

  “They hurt you?” I put a finger onto the weal on her arm.

  She looks down at it, as if somehow the arm belonged to someone else. “I’ve seen worse in others.” She grunts. “It stopped me thinking about my eyes for a while.”

  “Oh, God, oh, Christ, I am sorry,” I say, and once it starts, it comes out in a great river of anguish. “So sorry…I didn’t inform on you, you must know that…. This is never what…I mean, I did break into your house, yes. After I saw you that day on Murano…I—I opened your chest, and I found the book and the glass circles. But I put them back, and I didn’t show them or talk about them to anyone. As for the bones, well, I didn’t—I mean…they were in my hand, and the sack fell as I was trying to move…. This was never meant to happen….”

  She is sitting very still now, in that way only she can, so much so that in the end it is her quietness which stops my chattering.

  “Elena?”

  “Don’t talk about it anymore, Bucino. There is nothing to say. The glass is broken and the liquid is spilled. It’s not important anymore.” Her voice is quiet, no anxiety, no emotion at all, though it is too soon for the drug to be working. “The woman across the canal had been angry with me for a long time. I tried to help her with a baby that died in the womb. When I couldn’t save it, she decided I’d killed it. She was shouting it loudly enough everywhere she went—it was only a matter of time before someone heard.”

  “What about the bones?” I say after a while. “Where did they come from?”

  She says nothing. Now, in the set of her lips, for the first time I see an echo of the old La Draga, the one I used to fear, the one whose silence spoke of secrets and hidden powers. If she resisted the rope, she will surely resist me. Maybe they came from her? Or maybe, like a priest, she is keeping other people’s secrets? God knows there are women enough in this city hiding swelling bellies under their skirts to save their reputations. And babies die as they are squeezed and spat out of the womb every day.

  “You must have known they would condemn you for it?”

  She shakes her head a little, and her face softens. “I never could tell the future, you know. I just threw the beans and told people what they wanted to hear. Easy money. As for the past, well, nobody can change that. Oh, you could charge a lot if you could do that….” She falters. “Then I could have given you your ruby back. My grandfather said it was the best copy he ever made.”

  We sit for a moment without speaking. No doubt we are both remembering.

  “Still, I was worried that you would notice before you took it to the Jew.”

  “Hah…Well, I didn’t. You grandfather was right. It was a most superior fake.”

  “But you knew it was me, yes? Afterward, when you found out?”

  I see us again, her sitting on the bed, frozen like an animal, me with my lips close to her ear. I remember the texture of her skin, the dark circles around her eyes, the way her lips trembled slightly. “Yes, I knew it was you.” But the fact that I was right gives me no satisfaction now. “Was it your idea?”

  She hesitates. “If you mean have I always been a thief, no.”

  “Why then?”

  “Meragosa and I decided on it together.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Why? I want to say it was because she found out about me. About my eyes and what I was doing, and, knowing it, she made me steal the stone.” She stops. “But that’s not how it was. We did it together because we could and because at the time—well, at the time I needed the money.”

  “So did you steal from her mother too?”

  “No, no! I didn’t. I never did that.” And she is suddenly very agitated. “I knew nothing about her mother. Meragosa never came to me for help—and I could have helped, there were things I could have given to soothe the suffering. I told that to Fiammetta, and you must believe me. I knew nothing about her illness or death.”

  “It’s all right, it’s all right. I do believe you.” I put my hand on hers to steady her, and for a while it rests there in silence. “I know you are not cruel.”

  “Oh, but I would have been to you if I could have, Bucino.” And her voice has some of the old La Draga spirit in it now. “I was angry with you at the beginning. That much I do admit. Those first months I worked so hard for her—for both of you. But you never trusted me, never. As soon as her hair was grown, you would have had me out of your lives. Meragosa saw that as well as I did. We’d never have been good enough for the two of you. That was what she said.”

  Too late for lies now. Especially to myself. For all her foulness, Meragosa was right. We had come as a partnership, my lady and I. And I had been determined that no one would join us. Even those whom we needed most.

  “If that’s what you felt, why did you come back? You knew I suspected, yet you came and helped us again. My God, I was so impressed by you then.”

  She doesn’t say anything. In the silence, the moaning returns. Now that I know what is happening, the force of the thud against the stone is almost worse than the cry that comes after it. Once, twice, then again and again.

  “Faustina?” She moves her hand to locate the rest of the cake, then stands and shuffles her way to the bars. I get up to try to help. “Faustina. Can you hear me? Put your hand through the bars. Are you there?”

  After a while in the gloom I see a long, thin arm stretch itself out, like the limb of some dismembered supplicant. Elena pushes the cake into the palm and closes the fingers over it. “Eat it. It is sweet, and it will make you sleep.”

  Now, as she moves back toward the bed, she puts her hand on my shoulder for support. I can’t tell if it is weakness or the potion working.

  “Your size makes you a good walking stick, Bucino. I often wanted to lean on you when my back was hurting from pretending to be so bowed. But even when I stopped being angry with you, I was too afraid of your grumpiness.”

  I watch as the smile moves over her face. She has always teased me, right from the beginning. Yet there had also been an edge to it, and in her as in me it was not only anger; it was as if she was afraid of something in herself. See—I have always known what she is feeling: anger, mischief, fear, guilt, triumph. I have seen and read every emotion as it moved across h
er face. Just as she must have done with mine. My God, how could we have mistaken so much?

  We sit together on the pallet now, though there is barely enough straw in it to tell it from the floor, and she leans back against the wall.

  “I still don’t understand. You stayed with us and helped us. And you never took anything else,” I say after a while.

  “No…” She stops. “Though you have a rude fortune inside your silver lock.”

  “What?”

  “One-five-two-six.”

  “My God. When did you find it?”

  “When do you think? When was I ever allowed into your special chamber?”

  “You broke the code?”

  “I’ve always been good at things like that.” She pauses. “Does she use them for her men?”

  “No. It is an investment. We will sell it to pay for our old age.”

  “Then I hope you get a fat sum. When you get old, you’ll have to be careful with your joints, Bucino. They’ll grow stiff faster than most men’s.”

  And her concern curdles my insides again. “Did you always know so much about dwarves?”

  “A little. I learned more after I met you.”

  “I wish…I wish I had taken more time to learn about you.”

  She shakes her head. “We haven’t time for that now.” She puts out a hand, and it connects with the top of my head. “It’s not really an eggplant, you know,” she says. “I only said it to get you angry that first time when you asked me how blind I was. Remember? Oh, you were always so eager to fight with me….” And now, suddenly, I feel a shakiness in her. “I don’t…”

  “Shush.” I bring my hand up and put it over hers again, then pick it up, holding it carefully between both of my own. I stroke her skin, running my finger gently along the wrist where they have applied the rope. “You’re right. We don’t need to talk about the past.” Her fingers helped me so much. Made the ocean tides of pain drain away. I would give anything to do the same for her now.

  “I think…I think I’m tired. Maybe I will lie down for a while.”

  I help her as she stretches out, and as I do the smell of her, sweet and sour, is like heady perfume all around me. I watch a long shiver pass across her form. “Are you cold?”

  “A little. Will you lie with me? You must be tired too.”

  “I—I…Yes, yes I will.”

  I try so hard to be careful, arranging myself so I do not disturb her, but as soon as my body comes into contact with hers, I feel myself start to grow hard. My God, they say men get erections when they drop the trap on the scaffold. Did Adam have more control over his own body before the apple? I think if God wanted us to behave better, he should have helped us more. I draw away quickly so she will not feel me.

  We lie that way for a moment, then, gently, I move my arm across and over her body. She takes my hand and holds it in hers.

  Her voice, when it comes next, is sleepy, blurred with the power of the draft. “I’m afraid I was never good at such things, Bucino. I only ever did it a few times, and I never grew to like it.” She lets out a long breath. “Still, I would not take it back. For her sake.”

  So at last I understand it all. Now, when it is too late. “Oh, I think you have little enough to regret,” I say, and I squeeze her hand gently. “Believe me, I have seen enough of it by now to know it is more a thing of the body than a thing of the soul. You have done more for people in your life by taking away their pain than by giving them pleasure.”

  “You think so?” And I daresay, if she were not so tired, she might tell me more, for it is a conversation long overdue. But I can feel her slipping away. I pull her closer to me and hold her, feeling the rhythm of our breathing, rising, falling, until her body goes slack against mine. She sleeps. As does the sad Faustina in the cell next door. And, while it is not my intention, for I want to remember every second of this night, it seems that I sleep too.

  Dawn does not penetrate underground stone, and the candle has long ago sputtered out. So it is noise that wakes me: his thumping footsteps and the angry clank of the keys. I sit up because I do not want to be found like this, but I cannot extract myself properly, for she has hold of my hand still and even in her sleep does not let it go.

  He is at the door, his candle poking into our intimacy. “Time’s up. I’m out of here, and if you don’t go now you’ll be underground for the rest of your life.”

  “Elena. Elena?”

  I feel her moving beside me.

  “Had a good time, eh?” He lifts the lamp above him so that it throws light on us both. “Well, everyone deserves a last fuck. Especially if they pay for it.”

  She is sitting up now, though her eyes are so caked and closed that I’m not sure she can see me at all.

  “Elena,” I whisper. “I have to go. I’m sorry. Listen to me. Remember the cakes. One for the pain and two…two or three for before they take you…. It will help. You can remember that, yes?”

  “Hey! Get yourself out, quick now.” Now that the money has run out, I am a cockroach again.

  Only now it is I who cannot let go of her hand.

  “It is all right, Bucino. It’s all right.” And she withdraws it gently herself. “We are not fighting anymore. You can go now.”

  I get up and walk stiff-legged through the half-open gate. I see the jailer’s smirk. And at that moment I want to kill him, throw myself at him, sink my fangs into his neck, and watch the blood spurt.

  “Bucino?”

  Her voice calls me back.

  “I…There is something I have to tell you. Her name…her name is Fiammetta.” She stops for a second, as if it is all too much of an effort. “And I came back because I missed you. Both of you. And because I wanted to be part of it.”

  The door slams behind me, and she turns her face to the wall again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I spend the night of her execution propped in my chair in the loggia, high enough to see the water, the rooftops low enough to catch the first gray before sunrise. Time moves slowly. I do not sleep, and I do not think. Or if I do, I cannot remember what or about whom. I am up in anticipation long before the moment. The hour before the dawn always has an edge to it. The hour of the last wager, the hour of the final intimacies of the night, the hour of prayer before the matins bell.

  The house is silent as I move down the stairs to the bottom and out onto the wooden dock. The current slaps carelessly against the sides of our gondola, and I edge myself to the very end of the wood, until the canal is beneath me. Dawn is in the air now, if not yet in the sky. I can feel it, like a great winch, pulling the sun slowly up to its breaking point above the horizon. I look down into the water. I am still frightened of it. Even though I know it is perhaps no deeper than the height of a room, it still feels fathomless to me. I am right to be scared. I have been inside it now. I know that drowning will be the most awful death in the world.

  But Elena Crusichi will not drown. She will hear the hollow slap of the water against the wood as they row her out into the middle of the wide Orfano Canal. And though Mauro’s fruit will have made her drowsy, she will feel the panic rising. But she will never feel herself sucked down into the black depths. Because as she sits there, next to the priest, with her hands tied in front of her, waiting, without warning the man behind her will slip a rope over her head and around her neck, and, with two or three hard, fast twists, choke first the breath and then the life out of her. Of course garroting is not nothing. As with every form of death, there are degrees of proficiency: it can be long or short, a bloody semidecapitation or a sudden, intense throttling. It all depends on the skill and experience of the executioner. And we have been promised the very best. She will gasp and retch for breath, and the struggle will be sharp and over soon enough.

  Only her body will go down into the deep. Elena Crusichi will already be gone.

  That is what Mauro’s rich sauces, my lady’s pleading and her open legs, have done for us. There was no last-minute pardon. Lore
dan did not lie to us. He did what he could, but he said it himself: at another time, perhaps; but an inflammatory crime in an inflammatory moment calls for a stern response. There will be no gloating, no spectacle. The point is not cruelty but stability. Venice the peaceful demands Venice the just.

  As for what comes next, well, as I stand here, I am comforted by a memory—my God, it is so sharp, down through so many years—of a poem that Aretino read to me once in Rome, when he and I were both new to my lady’s house and he would come into the kitchen to practice his vernacular wit among the servants. Oh, he was outrageous then; pretty, almost like a girl, clever, strutting, willing to fly into the face of the sun, and I was young and angry enough with my deformity to want to fly with him, to find the idea of rebellion against the Church and even God intoxicating. I remember his voice, so caustic and strong.

  From summer to winter the rich

  Are in Paradise, and the poor are in Hell.

  And the blind fools who await the dove

  With fasting and absolutions and Our Fathers

  Serve only to fatten the orchard

  For friars for their cloisters.

  “So, Bucino! If that is true, which of us should be afraid of death now? Those who have it all already or the ones who go without? Imagine it. How would it be if the end was not Heaven or Hell but just an absence of life? My God, I swear that would be Heaven enough for most of us.”

  I am sure he confessed such heretical notions long ago, for he writes with a certain beauty about God now, and it is not, I think, just to keep him in the good books of the state. Revolution is a young man’s fantasy; there is so much of life ahead in which to change your mind. Yet I am no longer young, and I still think of that poem, still wonder about the man who wrote it, if his absence of life proved also an absence of suffering.

  The air is warm and gauzy. In front of me the sky is stained with pinks and mauves, mad colors, too wild for the moment—just like the morning when I set out from my lady’s house in Rome to try to find the cardinal. So many died then. Thousands of them…like broken fragments in the mosaic floor.