The Thief Of Peace

by Jess Whitecroft

  “But she did.”

  “She didn’t,” said Nicci, more certain than ever. “Madonna, did you confess to what they’re accusing you of?”

  She held up her hands. “What do you think?”

  “Let her go,” he said, turning back to Vicini. “I don’t know who you talked to, what strings you pulled to put her in here, but unpull them. And do so quickly. If she spends another night in this hellhole I will consider it a personal affront. Do you hear me?”

  Vicini made a soft, incredulous noise. “Excuse me? You have no idea what you’re talking about, Volpaia. This woman is a menace.”

  “Yes, a menace who is missing several fingernails and still hasn’t confessed,” said Nicci. “Maybe, and this a wild reach here, but maybe consider the possibility that she is innocent. And that you have ordered the torture of an innocent woman.”

  Teo stepped in. “Vicini, leave us for a moment…”

  “Signor…”

  “Leave.”

  The retainer hesitated for an instant and then left the cell. Nicci felt the hairs on the nape of his neck rise. Oh, they’d wanted this – Vicini and the old man – they’d wanted Teo to leave the monastery and play the princeling, but Nicci had a sudden sense that Vicini felt that he might have bitten off more than he could chew. And that there would be consequences.

  “Madonna,” Teo said, helping Fiorina del Campo to her feet. “Please accept my apologies for this appalling situation. If I’d been in Florence at the time I would never have sanctioned this action.”

  Her forehead creased as she looked at him. “It’s you,” she said, recognition dawning. “The little one. The natural son. My, how you’ve grown.”

  “Yes,” said Teo. “I’m growing up very fast, it seems.”

  “We’re going to get you out of here,” said Nicci. “Aren’t we?”

  Teo nodded. “Of course. I’ll sent to the duke himself if I have to.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “You have to believe me: your brother’s killer is still out there. I’ll be the first to confess that my husband wasn’t the best of men, but I know he didn’t kill Giacamo. He was with me the entire night.”

  Nicci stared at her. “Why didn’t you say that?”

  She turned her head and spat against the wall. “I did,” she said. “Repeatedly, but nobody believed me because I was a whore, and because I would be destitute if he was found guilty and his property forfeit to you. But my husband didn’t leave me once that night. I know, because I was awake the whole time, and he never stopped cursing me. Him on one side of the door, me on the other. Locked and bolted. He stayed there all night, hammering on the door until his knuckles were bloody, telling me all the ways he was going to gut me and kill Giacamo. And he would have done it, too. Killed both of us. It’s not that he wasn’t capable of it, because he was, but I know he didn’t stick that knife in your brother’s back, Signor Albani. I know it was his dagger, but my husband didn’t put it there. Someone must have stolen it from him.”

  “That’s quite an accusation,” said Teo. “Do you have any proof?”

  Fiorina del Campo let out a long sigh. “I don’t,” she said. “But there was a moment that night when he was looking for it and he accused me of stealing it, so that he couldn’t cut the nose from my face. I remember we bumped into a man in the piazza. A little man. Going bald. Perhaps he picked Carlo’s pocket. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that your brother died between dinner and dawn. That’s what the podestà said, based on the time he was in the water, and I’m telling you – I knew exactly where my husband was at that time. They are not hours of my life that I am ever likely to forget.”

  12

  Nicci was walking back to the house when he ran into Giancarlo. He didn’t have time to wallow in his initial embarrassment about the way he’d left things, because Giancarlo immediately fell into step beside him and got to the heart of the matter.

  “So I don’t need to ask where you’ve been,” he said. “It’s all over town. The Prodigal Son returns.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nicci. “I should have told you, but so much has happened in such a short space of time. I didn’t mean to take off like that without saying anything.”

  “I won’t ask if you missed me.”

  “Gianni…”

  Giancarlo shook his head. He was walking very fast. “Let’s not,” he said.

  “Let’s not what?”

  “Let’s not pretend it was something that it wasn’t, between us. It’s all right. I’m not jealous—”

  “—there’s nothing to be jealous of—”

  “—but you need to be careful.”

  “Careful of what?”

  “I can’t…” Giancarlo glanced anxiously across the street and started to move away. Nicci turned to look, but couldn’t see anything. “Him. Be careful of him. He may look like an angel, but he’s a devil’s worth of trouble.” He started to hurry away.

  “No, wait. You can’t say a thing like that and…no, don’t walk away.”

  Giancarlo turned on his heel. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t say any more.” And he turned again and fled.

  Wonderful. Something else to keep him up at night. Ever since he’d woken to find Teo standing beneath the window, Nicci had felt as though he was seeing the world in pieces, like the mosaic unearthed by the plough one spring back in Volpaia. Little fragments of a bigger picture peeking through the soil – a hand holding a wine cup, a wing, a sandaled foot, part of a chain border. He had never seen the full picture. They dug it over and went on sowing, sustenance being more important than picking over the dust of their ancestors.

  Now there were new fragments, all of them considerably less beautiful than the mosaic. The bloody testicles, Fiorina del Campo, Teo’s unfounded assertion that someone was trying to kill him, and that the monk Armando had died in his place. Nicci slept poorly on account of all of these things and more. More because of Teo, and the usual torments of unsatisfied lovers.

  When he reached the house, Teo was waiting there for him on the doorstep. He stood in a beam of sunlight that had slipped through the gaps between the buildings, and it shone directly on his hair, lighting up strands of chestnut and copper like filaments in a halo. There was gold in there, too, because Nicci had seen it. He’d seen it glitter in the still soft hair that grew on Teo’s chin, and on the fine ends of his eyelashes. The sun caught the peach fuzz on Teo’s cheek and made him glow like a pearl against the black velvet of mourning. Nicci once again kissed goodbye to wit and reason, his poor, foolish heart bursting beneath his ribs.

  “There you are,” said Teo.

  “Here I am,” said Nicci. “Did you need me?”

  “Albani?” someone said, and Nicci turned to look.

  A man in a red cloak stood in the street before the house. Nicci had seen him somewhere before, and with recognition came the familiar and unwelcome thought that Nicci might have owed him money.

  “Can I help you?” asked Teo.

  The man bowed. “Rafaele Ribisi,” he said, and Nicci remembered where he’d seen him. No, didn’t owe him money, but that hadn’t made their meeting any more pleasant.

  Teo, of course, knew nothing of this. “Signor Ribisi, how are you?”

  “Sad to hear of your recent loss,” said Ribisi. “I know our families didn’t exactly have the best relationship, but he was a lion, your old man.”

  “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say so.”

  Ribisi nodded. His eyes met Nicci’s for a moment. Did he remember the last time? Nicci had the feeling that he’d just unearthed another fragment, but one that made the hidden picture even more confusing.

  “Think nothing of it,” said Ribisi. “My condolences.” And he went on his way.

  “Well, that was strange,” said Nicci, as they watched him walk away.

  “What was strange about it? I thought it was rather decent of him.”

  “Maybe,” said Nicci. “But don’t your family have some
kind of ongoing feud with them?”

  Teo frowned. “What are you saying? That the Ribisi are responsible for everything that’s happened? That was generations ago. And why now? There’s no reason for them to stir things back up. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “So let’s add it to the pile of other things that don’t make sense. Lately I feel like a horse that’s been led around with blinders on.”

  “If only I had such a thing. I could do with not seeing some of the things that are going on around me. Especially since I don’t understand most of them.” Teo sighed. “I’d give anything to have a bell that rings and tells me where to go and what to do. What verse to sing, what prayers to pray.”

  “We need to go back to San Bendetto, Teo. If only to find out what happened to Armando. If we know how he died then we might be able to find some answers.”

  “I know. Believe me, I know, but I’m afraid to return. What they must think of me.” Teo sighed again. There were shadows under his eyes. “Let me just bury my father first, Nicci. Please. There’s so much to do.” He gave a small, brave smile, but it softened too fast and his gaze lingered too long. Somehow Nicci had resisted the temptation to knock on Teo’s bedroom door. Instead he settled for turning it over and over in his head, that perfect moment where they had been nothing more than the sum of their tenderest instincts. And how – if they hadn’t been interrupted – they could have loved one another so completely that neither would ever need anybody else again.

  “Anyway,” Teo said. “I was looking for you. I want to show you something.”

  “Oh?”

  “Come with me.”

  Teo led him back down the street, across the piazza to the church. One of many in this city of churches, it had the red roof and decorative brickwork of the others, but perhaps hadn’t been as lavishly endowed. All over the city Vasari and his pupils were painting and sculpting at the orders of Duke Cosimo, but there was no work in progress here, only an open tomb.

  The Albani rested in a side chapel to the left of the nave. Here lay Teo’s three half-brothers, and their mother, soon to be joined by their father. The family arms, a boar’s head over crossed spears, were carved in poor quality marble above the entrance to the crypt. The wall was decorated only with a simple lattice pattern, and there were no sculptures.

  “I suppose this is where I’ll end up, one day,” said Teo.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “We all die, Nicci. I was going to rest in a monastery graveyard one day, but I can’t go back now. It’s like your mother says – have to keep moving forward.” Teo stretched his arms out, gesturing to the chapel around him. “And this is where I find myself. Bound to my filial duty, even though I’m only a natural son. My father always balked at giving too freely to the church, but now I must make up the deficit, for the sake of his soul. I must beautify this chapel in his name.” Such a shy, searching smile, the same one that had played on his lips on those first sunny, innocent days in the monastery. “What do you think it needs? Sculptures? Frescoes? A new window?”

  “Teo…”

  “Can you do it?”

  Oh, he could do it. That lattice wall was a perfect canvas. What would be the subject? The Resurrection, the empty tomb and the angel, tears drying on the salt-softened cheeks of the bereaved, bewildered women? If he was feeling spiteful, perhaps a Last Judgement, a final fuck you to a man who hadn’t acknowledged his gift in life, but perhaps that was too much. He could afford magnanimity now, now that he’d won.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said.

  “Say yes, Nicci,” said Teo, drawing closer. “Say yes. I can give you this, at least.”

  At least. Because he couldn’t give him what he really wanted. Funny how it worked out. Not so long ago, an opportunity like this would have represented Nicci’s wildest dreams of patronage, but his dreams had veered off in a different direction these days. By night, Teo came to him, slipping under the sheet beside him like a ghost, requesting instructions in unthinkable whispers. Show me. Teach me. Fuck me. I want to learn all the ways there are to love you.

  The real Teo drew close now. He took Nicci’s hands, as if he trusted even a reprobate like Nicci not to commit the blasphemies of lust on sacred ground. “Will you do it?” he said. “Say yes, and you’ll have everything you want.”

  Everything? “All right,” Nicci said. “Yes. And thank you.”

  Teo shook his head, his eyes that perfect deep, expensive blue. “Don’t thank me,” he said, releasing Nicci’s hands with lingering brushes of his fingertips. “It’s only what you deserve. You’ve been ill-used for too long, Nicci. It’s time to put you to your rightful purpose.”

  “As the artist to your patron, you mean?”

  “I think we have to define our relationship in some way,” said Teo. “People talk, after all.”

  “Oh yes,” said Nicci, with a sigh. “Oh yes, they do.”

  Teo touched his elbow. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said, with a muted smile. “Let me know what you need.”

  “Will do.”

  Nicci stayed there for a while. He stared at the lattice patterned wall, a picture already forming in his head. A tomb for Giovanni Battista degli Albani. Not a Resurrection, or a Last Judgement, but what about a Baptism? The moment where a wild-haired John the Baptist submerged the Lord in the River Jordan, and a dove flew overhead. And the window – the window could be a series of panels depicting the story of the Prodigal Son.

  Let me know what you need.

  It came to him in a flash. Some of the things he needed were forbidden, after all, and he knew he could never ask Teo for them.

  “Oh, I’m an idiot,” he said, aloud. Love had made such a fool of him that it had only occurred to him until now. Or perhaps it was because lately there were so many questions that it was hard to keep track of them all.

  He left the church and started walking. As he moved deeper into the maze of streets the buildings became poorer, the smells sharper and stronger, blown by the breeze from the river. It was cooler here, but that didn’t do much to mitigate the smell, which hit him long before he reached the place he was looking for. It was unmistakable, slightly sweet and stomach turning. Even when you made a conscious effort to breathe through your mouth it would slither over your tongue like an unclean thing and find the back of your nose, where it settled like an uncomfortable insinuation. Memento mori.

  Berto was sitting outside, fanning away the flies in the heat. “Oh no,” he said, when he saw Nicci. “Not you again.”

  “Me again.”

  “I’m not doing that anymore. I told you.”

  “Relax,” said Nicci, joining him downwind. As he passed the door of the deadhouse he saw feet poking out from under coarse sheets, the soles marbled and the toes already turning black. “I’m not looking for bodies. Especially not in this weather.”

  “Then what?”

  “Weird question,” said Nicci. “But bear with me. Has anyone come around here looking for balls?”

  “Balls?” said Berto.

  “Balls. Testicles. Has anyone come by your morgue asking you for a pair of balls? Or have any of your corpses had theirs removed?”

  Berto gave him a long, baffled look and then shook his head. “I wouldn’t know about that kind of thing.” He sucked in air through the wide gap between his two square front teeth. “Unless I had something to jog my memory, of course.” He eyed Nicci’s purse, for once relatively full.

  “You must be joking,” said Nicci.

  “I’m not. I’m still paying off the fine from the last time I got caught selling body parts to artists. Don’t talk to me about things costing an arm and a leg. I found that one out. Literally.”

  Nicci sighed and dropped a coin into his hand. “Balls, Berto?”

  Berto took the coin, bit it and shook his head. “Can’t help you with that one, I’m afraid,” he said. “All bollocks present and correct, as far as I know.”

  “Really?” said Nicci. “You
took my money even though the answer was no?”

  “You wanted an answer, I gave it to you. That’s the God’s honest truth, Volpaia. It’s not my fault if it wasn’t the answer you wanted, but that’s how it is. No body parts have left this morgue, and especially not balls.” Berto looked him up and down. “Besides, you look like you’re doing all right for yourself. New clothes?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” said Nicci, realising another way to get his money’s worth. “What about Giacomo degli Albani?”

  “Who? What now? What are you on about?”

  “Giacamo Albani,” said Nicci. “Murder victim. It was earlier in the year. He was having a fling with that…”

  “…del Campo woman,” said Berto, with some relish. “Oh yes. I remember her. And him. Fished him out of the river with a knife in his back.”

  “And?” said Nicci. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was important somehow. The brutal treatment of Fiorina del Campo had left a deep impression upon him, and he didn’t even know why that should be. Some itch had settled into the centre of his brain, the kind that could seize him for weeks at a time when his brush or charcoal simply wouldn’t do what he needed of it, and convey the image of a hand or foot or expression the way he’d conceived it in his mind. And he would fixate on that detail, because he knew that the finished picture would never be perfect without it.

  Berto had his hand out again. Nicci dropped another coin into it. “Details,” he said. “What did he look like?”

  “Dead,” said Berto. “Wet. Bit bloated. Knife in the back.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Berto. I know you’re not.”

  “There was a fair bit of bloating, like I said. He’d been in the water all night. Oh, and discolouration. Face down. The blood settles, you know. I would have missed it if I hadn’t touched his throat, but now you mention it, there was something strange.”

  “What?”

  “His throat,” said Berto, squeezing his own Adam’s apple to demonstrate. “Felt like a bag of broken glass. All the little bones and stuff. Smashed to pieces. I didn’t open him up to look. Didn’t want to make any more holes in him than he had already, but if you ask me he was already dead when they stuck the knife in his back.”