The Thief Of Peace

by Jess Whitecroft

  Vicini nodded his head against the pillow. “I’m sorry.”

  “You bastard. You took the worst thing that has ever happened to me and you used it to curry favour with the people you wanted to be your new masters? I was a child, Vicini. I was attacked. I killed that man in self-defence.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise they would be so…so stupid about it. To kill the wrong man. To send…to send that to your father…”

  Teo shook his head, sick with rage. He wasn’t sorry at all. The only thing Vicini was sorry for was that he had handed such valuable information to idiots. And he’d panicked. “When you sent me away to Volpaia,” Teo said, remembering. “I knew you were afraid, and now I see why. You sent me away with Nicci so that you could work out your next move, didn’t you? Blame it on Fiorina del Campo. Pack me off into the middle of nowhere. Oh, it must have been a gift when Nicci suggested that. Perhaps a hunting accident? Was that the plan? Or did you restrain yourself that time? After all, it was starting to look a little bit suspicious, wasn’t it? All these Albanis dropping like flies.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Vicini. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t—”

  “—don’t,” said Teo, unable to hear it even one more time. It was personal, no matter what he said. “Make your peace with God, Vicini. Only He can forgive you.”

  “Wait…”

  Teo paused at the bedroom door, desperate to get away. This was horrible. The man was inches away from death and yet all he wanted to do was wrap his hands around his neck and squeeze. “What?” he said. “You want me to forgive you?”

  “Please. I know I don’t deserve it…”

  “No,” said Teo. “You’re right. You don’t. And I can’t. Sorry, Vicini, but I’m not that good.”

  The priest was waiting outside the door. Teo waved him back into the room and walked in a daze down the hall. The old anger rose thick and dark behind his eyes and in the back of his throat. All those years at San Bendetto, all those lashes of the discipline, and the mistaken belief that he could cure his rage by placing himself in God’s hands. Now he knew it had been a doomed enterprise, because in attempting to surrender to God’s will he had only stoked the fury inside him, the seething resentment that came from being pushed around like a pawn. Sacrificed. A piece that the player could afford to lose as part of a larger play.

  Nicci was in Vicini’s study. There were papers spread out on every available surface, some of them half burned where Nicci had managed to rescue them from the ashes. “Oh, my love…” he said, when he looked up and saw Teo’s face. He was all compassion, but in that moment all his tenderness did was remind Teo of just how hurt he felt, and before he knew it his fist was flying into the wall. The pain was bright and clean and certain, and Teo went back for more, oblivious to Nicci’s pleas and reaching hands, oblivious to anything but the cracking plaster beneath his knuckles. Each flake that fell gave him some grim satisfaction, and when he saw blood on the wall he cried out as if in the act of love.

  It was this that brought him back to himself, the memory of a thing that should have caused him shame, but didn’t. And the sudden wash of shame he felt now. He’d tried to numb himself with pain a thousand times before, but this time he saw it clearly for the selfish, self-indulgent thing it was. He folded into Nicci’s embrace, appalled at the howling, bestial thing he’d been a moment ago. The inside of his heart felt as cold and dark as the bottom of a well, but a guilty pulse thrummed steadily between his legs, the opposite of the way he felt in Nicci arms, when his heart was full and his balls were empty.

  “I can’t…” he started to say, with no idea how he was going to finish his next thought without screaming. “I don’t…I can’t…”

  “Shh.” Nicci kissed his bruised, bleeding knuckles. His forehead. His mouth. “I know. I know.”

  Teo glanced briefly at the papers scattered all over the room. “Do you?”

  “I have some idea, yes.”

  Teo drew in a long breath, struggling to compose himself. “He did it, Nicci. All those years, he knew the name of the man I killed. And that he was a cousin of the Ribisis.”

  Nicci, his forehead still pressed against Teo’s, nodded slightly. “I know. He was hedging his bets.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Vicini was no fool,” said Nicci. “He knew what he was doing. It’s here…” He waved a hand at the papers. “He’s covered his tracks well. Probably burned most of it, which is why we came back to a house that smelled like a bonfire the other day, but here…look.” He picked up a letter. “From Rafaele Ribisi. Right there in ink and paper. ‘Tell me the name of the monastery and the obstacle will be removed.’”

  The obstacle. Teo pressed his nails into his palms. The pain in his knuckles had settled into a fierce throb now. “He kept that as evidence, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, no doubt. If it had all gone wrong he would have had what he needed to drop Ribisi in the shit, but the whole thing was getting out of hand. Too many witnesses. Too many loose ends. I think that’s why he panicked and tried to get rid of Giancarlo. It looks as though he told the Ribisi brothers to threaten Giancarlo, to use him to spy for them…”

  “…rather than dealing with them directly. Yes. I see.” Teo blinked down at the letter. The scratches on the page barely seemed to be writing at all, for all the sense they made. “He liked to make sure there was at least one link in the chain between him and the results of his actions.”

  “Exactly,” said Nicci.

  “How is he? Giancarlo?”

  “He’s fine. It looked a lot worse than it was. Lucky the skinny little bugger was wearing a padded doublet.”

  Teo sighed and dragged his unhurt hand over his mouth. “Vicini really lost his head, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Seems as though even the ice water in his veins had a boiling point in the end.”

  “He was just sitting on that information, Nicci. Waiting to use it. He said the extinction of my family was inevitable. The way he said it…” Teo shivered. “As though he would have held a pillow over my face if it happened to be expedient.” A terrible thought suddenly occurred to him. “You don’t think…?”

  “Your father?” said Nicci. “Who can say, at this point? You know, I remember that moment in Prato, when your father collapsed. Vicini was thinking, and he was thinking hard and fast. I could almost hear him ticking, like the guts of a clock.” He tapped the nearest letter. “It’s all here, if you can read between the lines. I think he panicked when they killed Armando.”

  “He did,” said Teo. “He said so. And he certainly wasn’t expecting to receive a pair of balls. He was as shocked as the rest of us when that happened.”

  Nicci nodded. “Hedging his bets again. When he realised they’d killed the wrong monk he sought to distance himself. Protect you. His new cash cow family had just turned out to be idiots, so the smart thing to do was scurry back to the old one, double-down on his loyalty and pretend he had nothing to with the mistake. Luckily for him Fiorina del Campo had already talked herself into trouble with that sacking needle tongue of hers, and I handed him an extra opportunity when I suggested taking you away with me to Volpaia. Gave him time to change course, come up with a good explanation, and probably yell at the Ribisi brothers for being such fools.”

  Teo reached for the wine on the desk, conscious that in a strange way he owed Rafaele and Fillipo Ribisi a debt of gratitude. If Vicini had chosen smarter accomplices then he, Teo, would have been dead already. But Vicini hadn’t chosen the Ribisi family for their brains. He’d chosen them because Duke Cosimo’s grip on the consigliere was loosening, and because the Ribisi had the favour of the new duke, Francesco. Vicini had been so used to serving powerful families that he didn’t seem to know how to do anything else.

  “I’ve been piecing it together,” Nicci said. “I don’t think he was part of the plot to kill Giacamo, but he saw something fishy about it. Maybe the bruises on Giacamo’s neck, or del Campo’s conv
eniently placed dagger. I think that’s why I pounced on it. I couldn’t get it out of my head, how eager he was to pin the blame on Fiorina, then she said something about how he needed her to confess…”

  “When did she say that?”

  “Oh, before we went to the Palazzo Vecchio. Before we realised it was all about the consigliere, I think. I didn’t have time to discuss it any further, but I remember being relieved that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t trust Vicini.”

  “You were right,” said Teo.

  “Based on a feeling,” said Nicci. “Nothing more than an instinct. Pretty sure that’s why I ended up in the Bargello, by the way. I was useful to Vicini when I offered to take you to Volpaia. Not so useful when I started questioning and confronting him about Fiorina. I suspect that was when he told the Ribisi to lean heavily on Giancarlo, to make him accuse me. Always making sure he was several links down the chain, and never directly accountable.” He picked up another letter. “Here. This is where I think it is. The proof that he knew something about Giacamo’s death. I think what happened is that he figured out just enough to confront the Ribisi about it.”

  Teo took the letter and smoothed it out on the desk. He stared – unseeing – at the words. “He needed a new family to serve. New secrets to keep.”

  “Yes. And he’d already figured out their latest secret – that they killed Giacamo. If his confrontation started as a kind of blackmail, I think he quickly saw an opportunity to stay close to those who would be the future of the consigliere. A whole new alliance.”

  “And I was a bargaining chip,” said Teo. “A test of new loyalty.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. “He said he didn’t know about Giacamo’s murder.”

  “He’s lying. He knew enough to know you were in grave danger if he told them about the Cesaro cover-up.”

  “And he told them anyway.” Teo sighed long and hard. “Does it make me a monster if I can’t forgive him?”

  “No. It makes you human. You don’t have to strive to be a saint anymore, remember?”

  Nicci came over and filled Teo’s cup again. The wine had taken the edge off, and the pain in his knuckles had settled into a dull, steady throb.

  “This will all come out, won’t it?” said Teo. “In the trial?”

  “Yes. We’re going to have to be extra discreet.”

  Teo reached out, his hand on Nicci’s arm. He suddenly felt very tired, so that it was an effort to pull himself up from the chair. He swayed into Nicci’s arms like a drunk. “But not tonight,” he said, wanting nothing more than a bed and a warm body beside him, as he sank into deep, silent sleep. “Please. I need you. Say you’ll come to me tonight?”

  Nicci kissed him softly on the mouth, his beard tickling. “I will. You know I will.”

  19

  The summer was almost over.

  In the garden at Prato the crickets chirred and the late bees droned. The sunlight had turned buttery gold, lending a gilt hue to the rainbows in the splashing fountains. Nicci walked arm in arm with Teo along the neat gravel paths, the dogs sniffing and scampering around them.

  Teo loved the semplici – the herb garden – more than anything. He loved the tall fronds of dill, fluffy cumin, blue flowering hyssop and late lavender. “The basil’s almost over for the year,” he said. “It always dies at the very first whisper of frost. And the sage not long after.” He trailed his hand over the tall stalks of rosemary, releasing its fragrance into the air.

  “My mother always says basil is the herb of love,” said Nicci. Somewhere a pheasant called and the piebald greyhound cocked an ear. “She said if a woman hands a man a sprig of basil, then that man will be faithful until death. Have you ever heard that before?”

  Teo shook his head. “Can’t say I have.” He squeezed Nicci’s arm. “Does the superstition still work if both of the lovers are men?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He smiled, the tip of his pink tongue darting out to moisten his full lips. His cheek was flushed, and in the yellow autumn light it looked more peachlike than ever. “You know, I was planting basil the first time I met you. The seedlings I handed you…”

  “Ah,” said Nicci. “Is that why I’m still here?”

  “I’m afraid so. It looks as though I might have bewitched you by accident. You’re stuck with me now.”

  They moved beneath a grape vine arbour. “Such a hardship,” said Nicci, turning to face Teo and cupping his face in his hands.

  “How will you ever endure it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nicci, who would have been happy to be bewitched for a hundred years in this place. With him. The corners of Teo’s eyelids were like silk beneath his thumbs, Teo’s parted lips soft beneath his own. “Somehow.”

  “Somehow,” Teo echoed, returning his kiss. He made a soft, deep sound in the back of his throat as they embraced and tasted one another, a low hum of contentment and love, a lighter, daylight version of the hungry, appreciative growls that rumbled in his chest at night, when they were skin to skin, with nothing between them. Nicci murmured back at him, wordless and tender, feeling the sound vibrate back and forth between their open mouths and licking tongues. He felt Teo’s lips curve in a smile, felt the gust of a soft laugh between them.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Teo, winding both arms around his neck. “Do you ever realise that we sometimes have whole conversations where we say absolutely nothing? We just coo back and forth to one another like a pair of turtledoves. And yet other times you’ll look at me and say nothing, but your eyes and the touch of your hand seems to say everything. All at once. Is that normal, do you think?”

  “Perfectly normal,” said Nicci. “When you’re in love.”

  They kissed once more, before untangling themselves and stepping out of the shade of the arbour. One of the greyhounds was digging in a bed of clary sage. Teo called, but the dog only glanced up for a second before returning to its urgent scrabblings. Nicci whistled, and the greyhound came running.

  “How did you do that?” said Teo. “They took to you so quickly.”

  “That’s just dogs. They can tell when you love them.”

  “I think they might have picked you out for their new master. That means you’ll have to stay, by the way. The poor dogs have been through so much already, and I wouldn’t want them to miss you.”

  Nicci, who had been petting the greyhound’s ears, straightened up. “So the dogs want me to stay, do they?”

  “Very much.”

  “Oh well,” Nicci said, and took Teo’s arm again. “I’m a soft touch when it comes to animals. I suppose I’ll have to stay, then.”

  “That’s kind of you. They like you.” Teo’s smile was all sweetness in the rich, afternoon light. “And I might…love you. Just a little bit.”

  “People will talk, you know.”

  “Let them. You’re an artist, I’m your patron. Besides, it’s long past time the Albani family poured money into beautifying the churches of Florence. We’ll build, too. Almshouses, hospitals.”

  “The poor you will always have with you,” said Nicci.

  “Precisely. Which is why you should never stop giving.”

  “And take a moment, don’t you think?” said Nicci. “To stop and smell the flowers. When Jesus said that he also said, ‘you will not always have me,’ as a rebuff to the disciple who told off the woman for pouring out the expensive oil.”

  “He said she was preparing his body for burial,” said Teo. “The story comes before the Passion, and I think maybe he knew. He knew what was coming next, and it was a moment of fear, like the fear that nearly consumed him that night in Gethsemane. Knowing that his time of being flesh, being human, was coming to its end, and that he would suffer in bringing about God’s will.”

  “A brief moment of pleasure, then. Before the agony ahead.”

  Teo glanced at up at the sky. Pale clouds on autumn blue. “He was human, after all,” he said. “Incarnate. Sometimes I think the Ch
urch loses sight of that, makes him too much God and not enough Man, when the whole point is that he was both. But there…that’s probably heretical of me to say so, and I love my fellow man too well and too carnally to gain the Kingdom of Heaven. I expect that’s what they’d say, but let them talk. Now I have the money to do things my way.”

  At night they went to bed in separate rooms, for appearances sake, but soon after Nicci would hear bare feet on the floor and there would be the flicker of a rushlight, a rustle of dropped linen and then Teo would be in his arms again. Or sometimes – depending on what they had agreed – he would go to Teo, creeping into the palatial bedroom and into the big bed where generations of Albanis had been conceived, born, bedded down as newlyweds or closed their eyes forever in death. Sometimes he lay awake wondering how Teo would fit into that continuity, if he’d truly be happy to put an end to it, or if one day there might have to be a bride, and babies. But if he lay awake and shivered at the thought then Teo would usually stir, bite gently at the flesh of his shoulder or push a thigh between his, and they’d be off again, as if trying to test the very limits of love’s pleasures.

  “I think we should pay a visit to Volpaia,” Teo said, one night when they were lying sticky and satisfied, top to tail. “See your mother. Spend the night. Maybe several nights.”

  Nicci laughed, leaned over and kissed his hip. “I know why,” he said, thinking of the distant hut where they had first woken up together. “You want to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere, don’t you? Somewhere you can raise your voice. Cry out loud while I’m fucking you.”

  Teo loved to make noise. All those years of quiet contemplation had left him eager to laugh, to pant and to yell. There were times when he did all three at once, like the very first time he’d been inside Nicci. His loud, open mouthed breaths had turned to dizzy, incredulous laughter at the severity of his own sacrilege, then there were only a few shallow thrusts of his hips before he cried out, came and quickly apologised for his eagerness.