The Thief Of Peace

by Jess Whitecroft

  Desperate, Teo sent a message to D’Angelo.

  “It was the only thing I could think of to do,” he said, at dinner. “Beppe Tornato is guilty as sin, but appears to have more lives than a cat.” He sat back and admired the sketch now sitting on the window seat. Nicci had produced a remarkable likeness, which was something, even if Teo’s head was so full right now that he could no longer even remember how Fiorina del Campo’s identification of Beppe even fit into the picture. “How like the Ribisi to hire the thief who always gets caught. This is the infuriating part. They’re not even clever, Nicci. They hire an incompetent thief and assassinate the wrong monk, and yet still they manage to run rings around us.” Teo took a mouthful of wine and sighed. “I can’t stop thinking that there’s something we’re not seeing.”

  “Something that ties it all together, you mean?” Nicci said, wiping his fingertips clean with a napkin. “I know. I have the same feeling. Like we’re only scratching the surface.”

  “Do we even know if we’re scratching in the right place?”

  “No idea. My whole theory is founded on the notion that they also killed your half-brother. If I’m wrong then all of this is pure speculation, but right now it feels like the best we’ve got.” Nicci poured out more wine and passed Teo the cup. Their fingers touched. Nicci’s eyes were black in the candlelight and Teo suddenly wanted nothing more than to take him to bed and forget everything that wasn’t love and its delights. Love and sleep. He needed both more than anything right now.

  “Did you find out anything else at San Bendetto?” Nicci asked. “When you went back? Did you go to the pigsty? Look at the scene?”

  Teo shook his aching head. “No,” he said, and it felt like a further admission of failure and incompetence. Rossi was right. They had no evidence. “I know I should have, but I didn’t. Besides, I doubt there’d be anything incriminating left. I’m fairly sure the abbot hushed things up on purpose. A murder would have deterred pilgrims, and they’re still making a fat pile of coin off Brother Sandro’s body. And to be honest I was…I was off balance.”

  “Off balance? What do you mean?”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. The abbot accused me of killing Armando myself. I sort of expected it, really. It’s the obvious conclusion, isn’t it? If someone is murdered, it’s only natural that the finger of suspicion is going to point to the person who disappears the same night.”

  “True, but why on earth did he think you would kill Armando?” said Nicci.

  “Concealment. He believed that Armando knew my secret.”

  “That you killed a man?”

  “No,” said Teo. “That I was in love with you.”

  “Ah.” Nicci’s lips curved in a knowing smile, a welcome taste of warmth after a day that had made Teo’s temples throb and his neck stiff from bending over books.

  “The abbot knew, too,” said Teo. “He said I made sheep’s eyes at you whenever you came.” Nicci said nothing, letting him squirm for a moment. “I didn’t, did I?”

  Nicci laughed. “Perhaps,” he said. “A little sheepish.” He was dark and glittery and gorgeous and Teo wanted him more than food, than water, sleep or air. “Not that I noticed. Or dared to dream that you might love me back. I was so in love with you, you see.”

  “Was?”

  “Still,” said Nicci. “Always. Forever.”

  *

  Thighs. That was all.

  Nothing but the heated, narrow space between them, slicked with sweat and spit. Teo was there, his whole self consumed by the need to fuck into that warm, unexpected harbour. Nicci lay stretched on his side, knees tight together, his body taut and his cock – blood hot, silken, ready to burst – in Teo’s hand. “Please,” he whispered, turning his head towards his own shoulder, seeking Teo’s lips. Their gasping mouths met once more and then it all happened very fast: Teo felt Nicci spill over his grasping fingers, and the confirmation of his lover’s pleasure awoke an irresistible sympathy within him. One day I’ll really fuck him, he thought, and exploded, his teeth in the back of Nicci’s shoulder and his hand still clutching Nicci’s gently pulsing cock.

  The peace afterwards was delicious, a softness that suffused his veins and filled his heart, until he felt as though they could melt into one another, made liquid by the sun of love. Nicci, oversensitive now, whimpered and reached down to uncurl Teo’s fingers. Teo released him and wiped his hand on Nicci’s hip, pushing himself one last time between Nicci’s legs, a fond farewell until the next time he had the chance to do this. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “I can’t believe just putting it between your thighs felt so…mm…”

  “Good, isn’t it?”

  “Very good.” Teo leaned over Nicci’s shoulder and kissed the side of his mouth, conscious of his sticky hand. “Messy, though.”

  “Mmm. Better clean up. Don’t want to give the maids reason to talk.” Nicci reached for the washstand next to the bed.

  “Here. Let me do that.”

  Nicci obligingly spread his legs to let Teo wipe the stickiness from the inside of his thighs. The sun had risen while they made love and thin strips of daylight slipped through the shutters and striped Nicci’s secret places, all black hair and dusky skin. His balls were soft and round in Teo’s hand now, not hard and high the way they were just before he gave up his seed. Teo kissed them, his eye drawn to the dark shadowed crack beneath. Even though he had only just come he felt a shudder deep down in the root of him, something damnable and utterly indecent, because he knew what lay between those cheeks, and he wanted that, too. It would send him to Hell, if he hadn’t done enough already (and he probably had) but he wanted it all the same. If simply being squeezed between Nicci’s thighs had been enough to make his head spin, he could only begin to imagine how it would feel to be inside him. Somehow he knew it would be exquisite enough to mitigate an eternity of suffering.

  He kissed the drooping head of Nicci’s spent cock, kissed the hair at the root, kissed his navel and kept going up until he met his lips once more. “We should get up,” Nicci said, after a long, lingering kiss, his fingers in Teo’s hair.

  “In a minute.”

  “The sun’s up. Which means Vicini is, too. Can you imagine if he’d found out I’d debauched you?”

  Teo stifled a laugh. “Debauched? I don’t like that word.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not accurate. It makes me sound as though I was unwilling, and we both know I was anything but.”

  Oh, he was lovely in the new minted sunlight, squinting into a stripe that had fallen across his eyes. In this light Teo could see the brown in them, rich as velvet. “Whether you were willing or not makes no odds to Vicini,” Nicci said. “He’d be delighted to have me thrown out of the house.”

  And there was yet another thing that didn’t make sense. So much for the respite of sleep. Already Teo could feel the weight of the world settling on his shoulders again. “And yet he knew of your reputation when he told me to go with you to Volpaia. Why do you suppose he did that if he thought you were so wicked?”

  “Who knows?” said Nicci. “Maybe he was afraid. We all were.” He nudged with his hips and rolled Teo over beneath the covers. “Anyway, why are we spending our last few precious minutes together talking about your father’s thin-lipped retainer?” He nuzzled into Teo’s neck, his beard scratching pleasantly against the sensitive skin. “We should be talking of nothing but love.”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Mm. Counting the ways we’ll ache until we can be in each other’s arms again.”

  So many ways. Teo ran his hands over Nicci’s body, frantic with love for every hair and pore, for muscle and bone and the exquisite ridge above the slight, sweet rise of Nicci’s hip bone. It reminded him of a treasure he’d seen in his father’s house at Prato, a Greek vase, perhaps thousands of years old, moulded by the potter’s wheel when the walls of Troy still stood. Someone had dug it up and painstakingly placed it back together, piece by piece, reveali
ng a picture whose indecency had only added to the object’s fascination. It depicted Zeus abducting Ganymede, only the boy hardly seemed to be struggling at all. Instead he was swooning in the god’s arms, his eyes fixed on Zeus’s face and his prick risen in a gentle upward curve that drew attention to that ridge of muscle where the hip met the torso. Teo, who had been about thirteen at the time, remembered feeling a flicker of something he’d barely understood, but already some inborn wisdom was whispering to him that here was a thing that was going to make his life complicated.

  “I wish I could make time stand still so that it would always be night,” he said, his hands still roaming over Nicci’s chest and belly, the sparse flanks and slender hips. “You make me so greedy. It must be a sin.”

  “You know it’s a sin. Mortal, too.”

  Teo wrapped a black curl around his finger. “I know,” he said. “But I’m damned anyway. I took a life.” He sighed. “I could have beat myself bloody in that monastery for the rest of my days and never spared myself the flames.”

  “Teo…”

  “I know. My faith is in ruins. At some point I’ll have to figure out how to rebuild it, or even if I can rebuild it, but not now. I have so many other things to think about.”

  He heard a door creak open somewhere in the house, and Nicci stiffened. “Come on,” he said. “You’d better sneak back to your bed. And then come down to breakfast, and we’ll do our best to try not to look as though we’ve been fucking like weasels all night.”

  Teo reluctantly got up from the bed, conscious of Nicci’s heated gaze upon him as he walked naked around the room in search of his shirt. “What are you looking at?” he said.

  “The artwork,” said Nicci, teasing. “I’m thinking how much I hate that painting behind you.”

  Shirt in hand, Teo turned to look at the Annunciation on the wall behind it. “You know it was the work of one of my ancestors?” he said, deciding to tease right back.

  Nicci looked suitably awkward.

  Teo laughed. “Joke.”

  “Not funny,” said Nicci.

  “Got you just the same.” Teo slipped his shirt over his head and paused to glance at the fresco. “What is it that you hate about it?”

  Nicci got out of bed and slunk up behind him, lips on his shoulder, bare arms around his waist. “Everything,” he said. “The angel’s wings look like cabbage leaves. And look at that Madonna. She looks like she’s been carved from an old drop spindle. Everything’s pale. Flat. No depth at all.” His hands moved over Teo’s belly and sides. “A body in a painting needs to look as though you could reach out and embrace it. Feel the heat of the skin. The movement of the muscles beneath. You can tell that whoever painted that didn’t have even the first clue about anatomy.”

  Teo twisted in Nicci’s arms and turned to face him. As much as he tried to be open minded he still struggled with the picture of Nicci in a charnel house, slicing and opening and rummaging around in the flesh of the dead like some kind of ghoul. “Is that why you break the law?”

  “The laws of God and man,” said Nicci, kissing his lips. “What I’ve seen of the human body…some would call it abomination. Desecration. And yet I wouldn’t be the only one to commit such crimes. Did they scream desecration when they saw Michelangelo’s David? Or did they hire him to sculpt tombs for popes and paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Seems like a little sacrilege can slide if you’re doing it for the glory of God.” He claimed another kiss and nudged Teo towards the door. “Now go. Before we get caught.”

  After breakfast Nicci went off to seek an audience with Fiorina del Campo. There was a message waiting for Teo, from the infamous D’Angelo, who was interested in Beppe Tornato’s case. “Well, it’s not a pardon,” Teo said. “But it might help loosen his tongue.”

  He hesitated at the door, trying to think of the last time he’d walked alone through the streets of the city. As a boy he’d walked for miles, wandering past taverns and stalls, taking in every impression, meeting friends and inventing mischief. But that had stopped abruptly. In the space of a single night he’d been forced to grow up, the night where he’d learned that the streets of Florence were no longer an innocent boy’s paradise but a place where danger hid around every corner and in every shadow. After it happened he stayed in Prato, then went straight to San Bendetto where he had honestly meant to live out the rest of his life. He had never imagined he’d walk the streets of this city again.

  Teo buckled on a sword, just to be safe, and started out for the Bargello. His heart was beating too fast and the faces he passed in the street looked ugly and calculating, as though the people were all thinking about the ways in which they could do harm to him. The crenellations of the Bargello looked like teeth in the mouth of Hell. He suddenly regretted ever leaving the monastery. What use was he here, when he could barely walk a yard without feeling overwhelmed?

  Someone was walking behind him. Light steps, following his too closely. His fear was like a baited bear by now, enraged, terrified, unable to do anything but bite and swipe. He wanted to plead with the person behind him to stop, leave him alone, for their own good if nothing else. His mouth dry, Teo glanced over his shoulder, caught sight of a dark, hooded figure and reacted.

  The sword stuck in its scabbard. Too late Teo realised it was the one Nicci had handed him in Volpaia, the one that probably hadn’t been sharpened since Florence was still a republic. He stumbled and so did the figure, the hood falling back to reveal a head of fair hair. It was Giancarlo.

  “What are you doing here?” Teo said, regaining his breath and his balance.

  Giancarlo, his back to a wall, stood with both hands raised. “Trying not to get stabbed. Were you going to attack me?”

  “You were following me,” said Teo. “Anyway, you were supposed to be in Naples by now. What happened to that?”

  Giancarlo lowered his hands and shook his head. “Changed my mind,” he said. “My life is here. My work. My ambitions. And Nicci was right: he said we should stick together.”

  “Yes, very laudable.” It would have been nice if Nicci could follow up those fine words with some actual actions, like sharpening his sword once in a while. “You’re lucky I was still carrying his sword and not mine. This thing couldn’t cut butter.” Teo sighed. “What are you doing here, Giancarlo? You’re risking your life.”

  “I know.” Giancarlo reached into his trousers and pulled out a purse. The same one Teo had handed him in Pisa. “I wanted to give you your money back.”

  “No. You don’t have to do that.”

  “I do,” he said. “Take it, Albani. If you can construct a case against the Ribisi then I don’t want anyone to be able to say that my testimony was tainted with gold.”

  It was a good point. Teo took the money. “Thank you.”

  “It was yours anyway,” said Giancarlo, with a shrug. “Where’s Nicci?”

  “He’s gone to find Fiorina del Campo,” said Teo. “She’s the woman my brother was in love with. It’s a long story. Walk with me? I have to go to the Bargello.”

  “Who’s in the Bargello this time?”

  “A thief. A pickpocket named Beppe Tornato. With the right attorney and the necessary inducements we might be able to get him to give up the Ribisi brothers.”

  “For the murder at the monastery?”

  “No,” said Teo. “But for another murder that might connect them to the murder at the monastery.” Giancarlo was frowning already and Teo could hardly blame him. “Like I said, it’s a long story.”

  They approached the guard at the door of the prison. “Excuse me,” said Teo. “I have a letter from an attorney. For the thief, Beppe Tornato.”

  The guard reached for a writing slate behind the door and frowned. “Beppe who?”

  “Tornato. Perhaps you have him down as Giuseppe Tornato?”

  “Uhh, yes,” said the guard. “Why? Was it important?”

  “Very,” said Teo, growing impatient. “Is there a problem?”

 
; “Slight problem,” said the guard, with a grimace. “They brought the date of his execution forward.”

  “To when?”

  “Last night. Sorry.”

  Teo reeled back from the door. He felt as though he was going to be sick again. The air was too thick, heavy with brick dust from the huge building site that stretched from here to the river. Giancarlo’s hand was on his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he kept saying, as if to convince himself, too. Of course he knew what this meant. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Teo. “It’s not all right at all. This isn’t a coincidence, Giancarlo.” He shook his head. “Oh, you should have gone to Naples.”

  17

  Fiorina del Campo’s fingernails had not yet grown back. She had covered them with jewellery, intricate enamel work fake nails that clipped onto the ends of her fingers with silver bands. Nicci admired them as she took the paper from him and nodded at the portrait of Beppe Tornato. “Yes,” she said. “That’s him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. That’s the man who bumped into us on the street. I wouldn’t forget a face like that, especially not those eyes.” She handed him back the drawing. “Is this him? Is this the man who killed Giacamo?”

  Nicci shook his head. “No, but he knows who did. I have a theory that the Ribisi brothers paid him to steal your husband’s dagger and I think with the right inducements…”

  “The right inducements? What does he need? Money?”

  “We’re working on the inducements,” said Nicci. “But your identification would be very useful to us. Come with me to the Palazzo Vecchio and we will prove this once and for all.”

  Fiorina hesitated. She still wore black for her husband, but those nails were bright – red and blue and gold – the colours like a flash of the woman she intended to become once the mourning period was over. “Very well,” she said. “I owe you a favour. When would you like to go?”

  “Right away, if that’s convenient. I’m supposed to meet Teo in the piazza at eleven.”