In the Company of the Courtesan

by Sarah Dunant

  Fiammetta turned on her heel, and I watched the fury collide with the fear. “What is wrong with you all?” She slapped her hands on the table, hard enough to make the cutlery rattle. “Think about it. They cannot massacre every single one of us. Those who live will save their skins by cunning as much as by any set of blunt kitchen knives—for which, you should know, I excuse you, Baldesar, because your sauces make up for the butchery of your cuts.

  “When they get here, I daresay there will be those who are still hungry for cunt and bloodshed, but there will also be others who have had enough. Hell roasts even its own devils, and it can make you sick as well as mad, this killing frenzy. So we are going to save them from themselves. We are going to open our house to them; to offer them comfort and hospitality, an art in which we are well practiced. And in return, though they will take—indeed, we will offer them—the cutlery, the glasses, the rugs, the trinkets, and anything else they can rip from the walls, if we are lucky, they will leave us our lives. Not least because when you have been on the road for years, a house to come home to can be a great solace as well as a safe place to store your booty, and the only thing better than a good whore is a good cook. And this house, I would remind you, has both.”

  In the silence that followed, I could almost hear the applause of another audience: one of clerics, bankers, or scholars, powerful men who, having eaten and drunk their fill, revel in the art of debate with a beautiful woman, especially when the elegant is spiced with the crude—a talent in which my lady excelled. But there was no one applauding now. Did they believe her? She had sounded convincing enough to me. It didn’t matter. As long as they stayed. Still no one moved.

  She took a breath. “So—for those who want it—there is the door.”

  She waited.

  Finally the cook turned, growling. “I’m on my own in there. If you want good cooking, I need the girl to help.”

  “She’s not ready. You’ll have to do with one of the boys. Zaccano. Don’t fret. You will not be separated for long. Giacomo, you get the tapers ready. I want the candles in all the holders for when dusk comes. You, Adriana, get to avail yourself of the finest cloth. Take the blue dress with the high neck from my chest and a pair of satin slippers to match. Use a little rouge on your face—but only a little. You are aiming for sweetness, not seduction. And don’t take all day about it.”

  The girl, caught now between joy and terror, made for the stairs. As the room cleared, Fiammetta sat down at the head of the table. Now, with the light on her face, I could see a fine sweat on her skin.

  “It was well done,” I said quietly. “No one will leave now.”

  She shrugged and closed her eyes. “Then they will probably die here.”

  We sat for a moment listening. The noise level outside was rising. Soon those few lost souls would be a rush of madmen.

  The doubt was there anyway. I simply gave it voice. “Can we do this?”

  She shook her head. “Who knows? If they are as starved and weary as the rumors say, then maybe we stand a chance. Let’s pray for Spaniards. I’ve never yet met one who didn’t savor the juices of life over the piety of death. If it’s the Lutherans, then we would do better to hold on to our rosaries and hope for martyrdom. But I’ll take a stomach full of jewels with me first.”

  “Then what? Shit them out in Hell and bribe the guards?”

  Her laughter flared up like a small flame of hope. “You forget I am a cardinal’s courtesan, Bucino. I’ve got enough indulgences to see me at least as far as Purgatory.”

  “And where does that leave the cardinal’s courtesan’s dwarf?”

  “Small enough to be concealed under a penitent’s shirt,” she said, and as she did so a single voice rose up from the clamor for an instant with a few mangled but recognizable words: “Casas de la gente nobile…Estamos aquí.”

  The enemy, it seemed, had arrived. If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own. All I know is Rome was a playground for destiny that day, and when they came to pile the bodies into the pits, there were as many innocent souls slaughtered as there were guilty ones who survived. About our status, I leave it to others to make up their minds.

  My lady stood up and smoothed her skirts, a finely dressed woman rising to meet her guests. “Let’s hope their captain isn’t far behind. I wouldn’t like to waste my best gold brocade on a rabble of soldiers. You’d better check Adriana. If she looks like someone’s daughter, she might survive longer than a servant. Though too obvious a virgin will undo us also.”

  I moved toward the stairs.

  “Bucino.”

  I turned.

  “Can you still remember how to juggle?”

  “You learn something early enough, you never forget it,” I said. “What would you have me play with?”

  She smiled. “How about our lives?”

  It took longer than we thought for them to get to us. But then rape and pillage is a time-consuming business, and there were so many and so much to get through. It was almost dusk when I stood up on the roof watching them flood into the street below. They took the corner howling, nine or ten of them in front, their swords out and their clothes half off them, mouths open like black pits, bodies jerky and wild, as if they were puppets strung up by the Devil and dancing to his tune. Behind them came a dozen or so more, dragging a cart piled high, and some way behind them there was a man on horseback, though if he was their captain, he was clearly no longer leading from the front.

  As they reached our piazza, they stopped for a moment. The city was filled with rich houses, all with locked doors and shuttered windows. A couple of the men were swaying on their feet. Rome had better wine than the sad countryside they had ravaged, and they must have downed barrels of it by now. A big man from behind let out a roar and grabbed an ax off the cart, lifting his arms high in the air and staggering a little as he ran before smashing the ax down on the window frame of the spice merchant’s house on the corner. You could hear the crack echo through the building and then the fluttering screams it evoked from inside. The sound drew the rest like moths to a flame. It took maybe a dozen of them ten minutes to smash their way in. Behind them, others were eyeing the rest of the square. The officer was almost off his horse as I moved from the roof to call down to my lady. But the courtyard below was already empty, and I got back to the edge in time to hear the main doors unlock beneath me and watch her move out into the twilight of the square.

  What did they see as the doors swung open to reveal her? By this time in her life, Fiammetta Bianchini had received more than her fair share of compliments, many of them substantial enough to be buried away in grand chests under a heap of dung. But for now we will keep it simple, like the men she faced. She stood tall, in the way only rich women can do, used as they are to riding with their heads above the crowd, and she was beautiful. Her skin was smooth and pale as alabaster, and her breasts pushed up from her gold-threaded bodice in a way that revealed as much as it concealed: the perfect modest seduction in a city of rich celibates who needed to pretend virtue even when they walked the streets with their cocks up like flagpoles underneath their clerics’ robes.

  Her eyes were green as new growth, her lips full and red, and her cheeks had a dusting of peach blush to them. But it was her hair that set her apart. Because my lady had hair like a golden river in spring flood, its hues as rich as the rush of the waters; streams of white gold and sunflower mixed with honey and red chestnut, so strange and yet so natural that it was clearly God’s gift rather than that of any apothecary’s bottles. And because she had no ring on her finger or husband in her house, when she entertained she wore it long and rippling free, so that on an evening when the mood took her and she flung back her head in laughter or pretended pique, this rich curtain of hair flew with her, and if you were close by, you might swear that the sun had come out for you alone.

  So, yes, those club-limbed peasants reeking of death and booze were stopped in their
tracks when she appeared. Rome was a city filled with lovely women then, many grown lovelier on its easy virtue, and each and any one of them would have been like a cool draft to men dying of thirst. But few had my lady’s wit, which was sharper than a toothpick, or her cunning when presented with a fight.

  “Good evening, soldiers of Spain. You have come a long way, and you are welcome to our great city.” Her voice was strong and her vocabulary honed on a generous handful of Spanish merchants and itinerant clerics. A good courtesan can seduce in many languages, and Rome had trained the best of them.

  “Where is your captain?”

  The man on horseback across the square was turning, but there were others nearer. Now that her voice had broken the spell, they started to move toward her, one ahead of the others, grinning and holding out his arms in jubilant supplication, the knife an added attraction to his charms.

  “I am the captain,” he said in a thick voice, while behind him the men whooped and snorted. “And you must be the pope’s whore.”

  He was almost upon her now. She didn’t move, simply drew herself up a little higher, until she had maybe two inches on him. “The whores, sir, you have already had. This is the house of Fiammetta Bianchini. It offers food and lodging for men who have not yet tasted true Roman hospitality.”

  He grunted, staring at her, as if the words befuddled him. Behind him three more moved forward, smelling the kill. The captain was off his horse now, pushing his way through the knot of men who had gathered. Next to me on the roof, Zaccano’s hands were starting to shake so much that I began to worry about the gun in his grasp. You would be hard-pressed to find two brothers in Rome more beautiful, but such was the synchronicity of Giacomo’s and Zaccano’s twinned characters that it was always a danger to separate them. Without the stable boy, though, we had no choice.

  Another soldier, his face black from the soot of spent shot, shoved his companion aside and marched up to my lady, closer this time. His hand moved toward her body. She stood stock-still until it came within an inch of her breast, then, with the speed of an evening swallow, she swooped her right hand up and cracked his aside. His yelp was as much of indignation as of pain.

  “I am sorry, sir,” she said, and quick as an ink stain, her left hand had pulled out a silk embroidered handkerchief, which she held out to him. “Your hands are dirty. After you have washed, I will be happy to make your acquaintance. Please—keep the cloth.”

  He took it, and after he had briefly wiped himself, he turned on her again. But whether to give it back or to add something to it I never found out, because that was the moment when my hand slipped and Zaccano misread my panicky nudge as the sign for action. The shot rang out mercifully far above their heads. Their eyes swiveled upward. Along the line of the roof, three guns and half a dozen broomstick handles fashioned crudely to resemble gun barrels sat trained down onto the street. With the smoke of the shot still in the air, the house might even have looked defended. We have since disagreed about that moment, she and I. I say that while she had not yet lost the game, the shot gave them good pause for thought. She is of the opinion that she could have won them over without it. As it was, the hesitation lasted long enough for the captain to get himself to the front.

  He was as tall as she but skinny; even his face was more bone than flesh, and though, after he cleaned up, he lost ten years off his age, the look in the eyes never got any softer. Killing is a grown-up business, even when the young do it. A crude city map was pushed into his belt. To judge from the size of the cart, it had made them better treasure seekers than those working on blind frenzy. He and his men already had more than enough booty to make them rich, but his status and his strategies would give him the pick of the most precious things. And one of those was now standing in front of him.

  “My lord,” she said, smiling. “Please forgive my servants. They are overzealous in the protection of their mistress. I am the lady Fiammetta Bianchini, and it is my pleasure to invite you and your men to a feast in my house. Bucino!” And while her voice lifted up to me, her eyes never strayed from the captain’s face. “You hear me? We are among friends and have no need of weapons now. Throw them down from the roof and get yourselves back to the kitchen.”

  We did as we were told. Three old guns and six broomsticks hit the stone below, the soldiers yelping in delight at our pathetic subterfuge.

  “Gentlemen. We can offer you suckling pig with truffle sauce, roast capon, salted pike, and the choice of finest salamis—you would not believe their size….”

  Their laughter turned to whoops of delight, and my lady laughed with them, though not enough to take her concentration off the prey in front of her. “Followed by marzipan, milk puddings, and sugared fruits, along with the best of our cellar. We have the highest-quality beeswax candles with scented oils, entertainment with sweet lute music such as the Holy Father himself delights in, and once you have eaten and drunk your fill, you can fall asleep on clean linen over fresh straw in the rooms and stables below. While for you, Captain”—and here she paused for just a second—“there is a carved bed and a goose-feather mattress soft as a cloud. Our house is yours for as long as you care to stay. When you leave, you may take your pick of whatever riches it possesses. All we ask is that you give us your protection from those who may follow.”

  I daresay that if he was well born, he might have come across her like before. Or maybe he had lived on dreams till then. Well, she was real enough now. Each and every one of the men was watching him. While it is possible he might have done less killing than some of them—the ones who give the orders also yield something of the risk—he was clever enough to have earned their attention. And for now, at least, their obedience. Though that might have had as much to do with the smell of roasting pig flesh, which was rolling in waves through the open doors out into the square. I swear, even from the roof I could spot the drool on their lips.

  He nodded, then glanced around him and grinned. “Roman hospitality! What did I tell you about it?” He yelled, and the roar rose up around him. “Put the cart into the courtyard and sheath your weapons. Tonight we sleep on soft beds with the lady Bianchini as our host. Let’s show her how Spanish manners can match Roman wealth.”

  Then he turned back to her and held out his hand. And, though it was no less bloody and stained than that of the man before, she laid her own gently within it and bowed.

  As for me, well, I went back to juggling. In lieu of balls, after our guests had stuffed themselves stupid, I took half a dozen of my lady’s pricked copper pomades and spun them through the air in the candlelight, though their musk perfume offered scant relief against so many gaping mouths belching bad breath. Drunken men can be a dwarf ’s worst enemies, for their curiosity turns easily to violence, but these had had their fill of blood, for a while at least, and wanted only to be entertained. So they yelled and applauded my skills and grinned at my devil faces and guffawed as I waddled around the room with a napkin the shape of the papal crown on my head, blessing everyone who approached to touch my robes, each of them by now too drunk and raucous to know what else he might be missing. So it was that Adriana kept her virginity, the cook his kitchen knives, and our mistress her pearl necklace and her best Murano glasses. For that evening at least.

  Not everyone survived, though. Before the night was out, the bloodlust returned and two men had skewered each other over the dining table. Ours was a house that had seen cardinals and diplomats gamble away the tribute of a small town over which of them should share my lady’s bed that night, but no one before had died from pique over who should drink from the wineglass and who from the silver goblet. Within seconds one had his fingers around the other’s throat, while his adversary was flailing at him with a knife. By the time the captain got down from the bedchamber, his clothes half on and his sword unsheathed, it was already over and both of them were on the floor pumping blood into puddles of red wine. They were so drunk that if it had been sleep rather than death, I daresay neither of them would ha
ve remembered it in the morning. We rolled them up in old sheets and bumped them down the stairs to the coolest part of the cellar. Above, the party continued unabated.

  Eventually, excess exhausted them. In the yard, even the pigs slept, their great carcasses rolling and snorting over our hidden riches. The smell in the house was much the same. The place reeked of belches and urine, each room filled with heaving, snoring men, some in blankets, some on straw, some lying where they had fallen. At least they were loyal enemies now. Our doors were locked and bolted, with the posted sentries semicomatose, empty flagons by their sides. In the kitchen, the cook was asleep under the sink, while Adriana and the twins were inside the larder, the temptation of their various beauties locked out of harm’s way for the night, and I was sitting on the table, picking scraps off pig bones and teaching Spanish swearwords to my lady’s parrot, whom, though he would never thank me for it, I had saved from roasting earlier that evening. Outside, the sounds of the city were a ragged chorus from Hell: distant blasts of gunshot mixed in with staccato yelps and howls.

  Somewhere in the dead of the night, the horror got closer when a man in one of the neighboring houses started screaming: a single, protracted screech of agony followed by moaning and shouting, then another scream, and another, as if someone was chopping off his limbs one by one. Those who keep their houses locked have something to save apart from their skins. Where does a rich merchant hide his coins or his wife her jewels? How many cuts do you have to suffer before you tell them where to look? What point to jeweled rings when you have no fingers left to wear them on?

  The banging came at the side door at the same instant.

  “Bucino? Adriana? Open up! For God’s sake…” A rasping voice, then a more rasping cough.

  One of the guards growled, then snored on. I opened the door, and Ascanio fell into my arms, his chest catching for breath and his face shiny with sweat. I helped him to the bench, and he gulped down some watered wine, the liquid slopping out of the cup with his trembling. “My God, Bucino,” he said, taking in the chaos of the kitchen. “What happened here?”