In the Company of the Courtesan

by Sarah Dunant

  It is a feast day, and the mood on the streets is high. We arrive early so we can watch the congregation gather. The stone floor is alive with the rustle of silk skirts and tapping wooden heels. Of course, not all the women are professionals: in a city where rich women are sequestered, a great church is also a marketplace for pursuing possible marriage contacts, and to this end even respectable girls are allowed to try a little harder with their wardrobes to get themselves noticed. Still, any man with eyes in his head would be able to tell the difference soon enough.

  According to my lady, the first trick is the entrance: “You can tell a successful courtesan from the moment she walks in. A good church will have four, maybe five hundred men gathered for Sunday Mass, and I warrant at least sixty or seventy of them will be as interested in the women as in the prayers, though some may not even know it yet. That’s why the best courtesans dress for the space as much as for the watchers. You have to give the men time to study you as you come in, so they will know where to find you again during the rest of the Mass.”

  There are at least four women in San Zanipolo today who know how to make an entrance, two dark, two fair. All of them I have seen before, and they come with their heads high, their dresses so full that in effect they carry their own stages around them, which means they can walk as slowly as they like, their skirts held delicately high over raised shoes and ankles as they pick their way across the flagstones.

  They settle in the seats of their choice and spread their skirts, arranging their shawls carelessly, carefully, to show a glimpse of skin, though no breast—too much flesh too fast in church and a man can be reminded of Hell as easily as Heaven. One of the fair ones, with her hair in a golden net, soars above the crowd, for her stilt clogs are even higher than the rest. I would need a ladder to get even as far as her waist, but fashion makes perfect silliness of sense, and there are already a few tongues hanging out at the sight of her.

  The Mass begins, and I glance across to where my lady sits, eagle-eyed, reading their posture as carefully as she has studied their wardrobe. I hear her voice in my head.

  The trick now is to keep the men’s attention on you even while you do nothing. So you follow the prayers, head erect, voice sweet but not too loud, eyes on the altar, but always aware of what others are seeing. The side or back of your head is as important as your face. While you dare not wear your hair loose, as the virgins do, you can tease a few curled strands down here and there, and weave or braid the rest into gilded or jeweled veils in ways that make it as interesting to study as any altarpiece. And if you’ve washed and dried it that morning with the right oils—the best courtesans take longer to get ready for Mass than any priest—then its scent can rival the incense. Though you should also have your own perfume, mixed especially, and when no one is looking you should waft it around a bit with your hands. In this way the front pews as well as the back will know you’re there. But all this is just preening and preparation for the real test—which is the sermon.

  The way my lady tells it, for this moment to work you first need to know your church, because, though it might be filled with the wealthiest men in the city, if the priest is a hellfire preacher who delivers his threats blunt and fast, then any whore worth her salt might as well give up and go home. But get a scholar who’s never heard of an hourglass, and every courtesan in the church is already in Heaven.

  As we are now; for though the preacher in San Zanipolo is a Dominican who avows purity, he is particularly fond of his own voice, which is a grave mistake, since it is a thin and reedy instrument that stupefies more souls than it saves. By ten minutes in, the older heads are going down onto their chests. As the snoring starts, the rich virgins come to life, slipping their veils aside and sending out glances like coy cupid darts while their mothers wrestle with the weight of a dozen biblical quotations.

  All this fluttering makes for a perfect screen for more serious business. While my lady is hawkeyed for the women, I am also interested in the men and what is going on in their heads. I try to imagine myself in their place.

  I pick out one figure—I noticed him when he came in. He is tall (as I would be in another life), substantial in girth, maybe forty years of age, and by his dress one of the ruling Crow families, the sleeves on his black coat lined with sable and his wife as rich and square as a four-poster bed. I sit myself in his seat. One of the dark-haired courtesans is in front to the left of me. Zanipolo is my regular church. If things go well, I am hoping to endow a small altar and intend to be buried here. I go to confession every month and am forgiven my sins. I thank God regularly for my good fortune and give him back his share of it, for which, in turn, he helps bring home my investments safely. This morning I have meditated on my Savior’s wounds on the cross before praying that the price of silver will stay high enough for me to fund a share in another vessel to leave for Tunis in the spring. In this way I will raise a good dowry for my second daughter, who is ripening fast and must be protected from contamination, because young men do so lust for the crevices in young women’s bodies. As, indeed, do older men at times, for there is great and comforting sweetness to be found there…

  (Ah—see! So it happens: inch by inch, thought by thought, the slip-slide from the spirit to the flesh.) The air is grown stuffy now, and the priest’s voice drones on. I shift a little to give myself more space, and as I do so I spot her, five or six rows away, upright amid a sea of slumped shoulders, her fine head high in the air. Of course, I knew she was there—I mean, I had noticed her before, when she first came in, how could I not?—only I had promised myself that today I would not…Well, never mind. We have sorted things out, God and I, and a man deserves a little pleasure now and then. I give myself time to really look at her, and she is indeed lovely: ruby dark hair—how lush it would be cascading down her back—golden skin, full lips, and the glimmer of flesh as she adjusts her shawl where it has slipped a little over her breast. Oh, she is so lovely that you might think God himself has put her here so I could appreciate the sublime perfection of his creation.

  And now—oh my, and now—she moves her head in my direction, though she is not looking at me directly. I see the hint of a smile and then, then, the slow flick of her tongue moving to moisten her lips. She must be thinking of something, something pleasant no doubt. Something very pleasant. And before I know it, I am hard as a rock under my coat, and the line between redemption and temptation is already behind me, though I cannot for the life of me remember when I crossed it. Just as I don’t really think about the fact that those moistened lips and that secretive smile are not for me only but also for the banker on my left, who has already enjoyed more than her looks and is eager to see her roll her tongue for him, not to mention the young admiral’s son five rows behind, who is recently parted from a lady and is on the lookout again.

  And so, as my lady would put it, “Without a word being said, the fish swim into the net.”

  Mass ends, and the church is filled with busyness as the crowd starts to push out. We move fast and, once outside, place ourselves on the small stone bridge overlooking the campo, from where we can watch the final act of the performance. It is cold and the sky threatens rain, but that does not deter the crowd.

  The space is so perfect for courtship that you might think the women had designed the campo themselves. To the right of the church as you leave, the shining new façade of the Scuola of San Marco is an excuse for all kinds of dalliance, since to appreciate the cleverness of its marble reliefs, you have to loiter in certain places, moving your body a little to the left or the right, tilting your head until you get the exact effect. You’d be amazed how many young, sweet things are suddenly aflame for the wonder of art. Farther into the center, other knots form around the great horse statue. The rider was some old Venetian general who left his fortune to the state on condition they immortalize him and his horse. He asked for San Marco, but they gave him Zanipolo instead. He sits up here now, all bellicose and bronze, boastful, oblivious of the action undern
eath him as young men and women exchange looks while pretending to study the straining muscles in the horse’s metal thighs. I like the animal better than the man, but then Venice is a town that favors mules as much as horses, and while I’m safer on the streets these days, I still miss the stomping, snorting power of the great Roman breeds.

  My lady’s metaphor of the fish is an apt one, for now the whole congregation is out, with small shoals gathering around the more exotic species. Some of the men swim straight in; others hover at the edge, as if they have not yet decided in which direction they are headed. At the center the women turn and float, keeping track of all around them. They carry handkerchiefs or fans or rosary beads, which sometimes slip from their fingers to fall at the feet of a particular man. They smile and pout, tilting their heads as conversations start, covering coral lips with white, manicured hands when a certain compliment or comment causes a spurt of laughter in them and those around them. But while their mouths may be closed, their eyes are talking loudly.

  At my lady’s instruction, I move off the bridge into the square to observe them better. It’s a mark of the excitement that the only people who notice me are a few elder statesmen and their warty wives, who cannot decide whether to stare at me or to shiver with distaste. Though I am not the only dwarf in the city (I’ve seen one in a troupe of acrobats who perform in the piazza sometimes), I am unusual enough to be a spectacle, which is another reason why it is better we are not seen together, or at least not until we are in business again, when my ugly exoticism can become part of her attraction.

  I concentrate on the women in the crowd I know from other visits: the dark-haired beauty with the flashy yellow skirts and snapping fan, and the pale, willowy one with the skin of a marble Madonna and what looks like a net of stars in her frizzy hair. For these I have already discovered names and gossip. The rest I am still studying. If I were not so squat and ugly, I might try to play the acolyte to a few of them now, along with the rest of the suitors. But their game is too tall and quick for me, with glances and smiles darting to and fro as the women divide their time between the converted and the still tempted.

  And so the attracted meet the attractive, and in this way is the trade begun.

  I am about to turn back to my lady when something catches my eye. Maybe it is the way he holds his arm, for the story was that the attack left him maimed in the right hand. He is behind two other men now, and my view is blocked by their girth. He appears for an instant close to the woman in yellow, then disappears again. He is bearded, and I catch his face only in half profile, so I still cannot be sure. The last I heard of him he had fled Rome for the safety of Mantua and a patron whose wit was as crude as his own. Venice would be too stern for him, surely. But there is a certainty that comes more from the gut than from the brain. And I feel it now. He has his back to me, and I watch him and another man making their way toward the woman with the stars in her hair. Of course. He would like her. She would remind him of someone, and in the book there would no doubt be some entry about her wit and cleverness.

  I turn back to the bridge, but while my lady has the eyes of a falcon, her view would be obstructed by the plinth of the statue.

  I take a last look, but he is nowhere to be seen now.

  It cannot be him. Fate would not do this to us.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “No flattery now, right, Bucino? This is not the time.”

  We are sitting together near a thick seawall. The water of the lagoon in front of us is as flat as the surface of a table. With the crowd dispersed, we have made our way across the arched bridge by the Scuola of San Marco, then north along the waterway that cuts upward from the Grand Canal to the shore until we are at the very top of the north island. The sky has cleared, and while it is too cold to loiter, the air is clear and bright, so that we can see past the island of San Michele as far as Murano, where a hundred glass foundries belch thin columns of smoke into the pale air.

  “So. Let’s start with the one in yellow, the one who couldn’t keep her head still, even in church. She is either famous or desperate to become so.”

  “Her name’s Teresa Salvanagola. And you’re right, it’s fame that’s making her brazen. She has a house near the Scuola of San Rocco—”

  “—and a list of clients as big as her tits, I have no doubt. Who are her keepers?”

  “There’s a silk merchant and one of the Council of Forty, although she also entertains outside. Most recently she has taken up with a young bachelor from the Corner family—”

  “—at whom she was making eyes during the raising of the host. She needn’t have bothered, he is well enough hooked. She is lovely, though the plasterwork on her face probably means she’s starting to show her age. All right, who’s next? The young, sweet one, in the deep purple silk bodice and crimson lace. Delicate, with a face like one of Raphael’s Madonnas.”

  “The rumor is she is from out of town. There’s not much I could find out about her. She is new.”

  “Yes, and very fresh. And still finding it all great sport, I suspect, as if she can’t believe her luck. Was it her mother next to her? Oh, it doesn’t matter. For now let’s assume it was. She can’t be doing it alone so young, and as they came out, I thought there was a certain similarity around the mouth. But did you see her then? Oh, there was spice in that innocence. Like honey to the bees, buzz buzz…Who else? There was one I couldn’t see properly in the square because the statue was in the way. Fair, frizzy hair and shoulders like bed pillows.”

  “Julia Lombardino,” I say, and I see again his limp and the glimpse of a beard as he moved through the crowd.

  She waits. “And? Even I could find out her name, Bucino. You are not to be congratulated yet. What else?”

  Not now. There would be no point unless I was sure. “She is native Venetian. Clever, known for her education.”

  “Outside the bedroom as well as in, I presume.”

  “She writes verses.”

  “Oh, God, save us from whore poetesses! They are more boring than their clients. Still, from the flock she had gathered around her, it appears she must flatter as well as she rhymes. Was there anyone else there I should know about?”

  And because I cannot be sure it was him, I say nothing. “No one serious, not today. There are others, but they all operate in different parishes.”

  “So let me hear about them.”

  I talk for a few moments. She listens carefully, asking only the occasional question. When I am finished, she shakes her head. “If they are all successful, then there are more than I expected. Rome was not so full.”

  I shrug. “It’s a sign of the times. There were more beggars too when we came. War breeds chaos.”

  She slips a finger up to her forehead. The scar is almost invisible to the eye now, but I daresay she can still feel it. “Is there any news, Bucino? Do you know what’s happening there?”

  We do not talk about the past, she and I. It has seemed better for us to be looking forward rather than back. So I have to think before I speak, because it is hard to know what to tell and what to leave out.

  “The pope is fled to Orvieto, where he struggles to raise his ransom and where his cardinals are forced to ride on mules as if they were the first Christians again. Rome is still run by soldiers, and bad water and rotting flesh have brought pestilence and cholera.”

  “What of our people? Adriana, Baldesar?”

  I shake my head.

  “If you knew, you would tell me, yes?” she says, and does not let me look away.

  I take a breath. “I would tell you.” Though I do not tell the stories I have heard of the pits dug near the city walls where a hundred corpses a day were pushed into quicklime; no names, no tombstones.

  “What about the others? Did Gianbattista Rosa get out?”

  “I don’t know. Parmigianino, it seems, is safe, as is August Valdo, though his library is lost. The Germans used it to light their stoves with.”

  “Oh, my Lord. What of Ascanio?”
>
  I watch him again, darting into the mayhem, his fancy little book left behind him. “No news.”

  “And his master, Marcantonio?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then he must be dead. If he had survived, he would have made it to Venice by now. The best printing presses in the world are here.” She pauses. “And our cardinal? He is dead too, yes,” she says, and there is no question in her voice. I say nothing.

  “You know, Bucino, sometimes I think about that night when you came back from the walls. If we had known how it was going to be, I wonder if we wouldn’t have given up then and there.”

  “No,” I say quietly. “If we had known, we would have done exactly what we did.”

  “Ah, Bucino, sometimes you sound like my mother. ‘Regret is a rich woman’s luxury, Fiammetta. Time is short, and you must run with it rather than against it. Always remember that the man yet to come could be richer than the one before.’ ” She shakes her head. “Just think, Bucino. Some mothers teach their children prayers to go with the rosary beads; by my first confession, I already knew things I couldn’t tell any priest. Ha! Well, it’s as well she can’t see us now.”

  Behind us the hulls of the boats crack against the stone quays. Though the sun is out, the wind is sharp. I can feel it ringing in my ears, and I lift my shoulders to protect them. When I was young, I would sometimes suffer from pains that would worm deep inside my head, and I fear the winter might bring them on again. In Rome you hear horror stories of the North: how sometimes people’s fingers freeze at night so that they have to crack them back into life in the morning. But my lady is almost recovered now and will soon be making heat in all kinds of places.