Courtesan's Lover (22 page)

He frowns and says, “
Padrona
, are you unwell?” His voice is kind.

I smile and hope I sound reassuring. “No, not at all—just rather tired.”

“Why have you asked me up here? Is there something wrong with the food? Have I displeased you in some way?” he asks, his chins wobbling like a poorly set milk pudding. Tiny beads of sweat gleam along the line of his brow and across his upper lip. My attempts at reassurance were obviously not a success. “Oh, no, Lorenzo!” I say. “Nothing like that at all. It is simply that—” I stop. I am not sure how to explain the situation to him.

Modesto steps forward from where he is standing in the doorway. “The Signora has decided to sell this house.”

Lorenzo's mouth falls open. “Why?” he asks.

It all sounds so extreme, now that the wild panicked desperation of the previous night has calmed. But I am still certain. I unfold my legs and put my feet down on the floor. “I am going…to give up the work I do here,” I say, my voice as firm as I can make it.

“Give it up?”

I nod.

“But,
padrona,
I don't understand…Just last night, you were…What has happened? Why?”

“Lorenzo
,
forgive me if I don't unravel all the details of the situation for you just now. I will soon, I promise.” I take a deep breath, which still trembles in my throat in an echo of last night's sobs. “But…something very significant happened to me yesterday—something rather complicated and uncertain and potentially far-reaching—and it seems to me that the only thing I can do to respond to this…this event…is to change the way I live, completely.”

A ridge of damp flesh pushes up between Lorenzo's brows as he frowns. Then he says, “What I am going to say may seem to you to be taking an unwarranted liberty. Perhaps it is not for a servant to say such a thing, and in another household perhaps I should not dare suggest it. We have often spoken frankly to each other, though, Signora. I beg your forgiveness if I am mistaken, but I am imagining that…could it be that you met someone last night who does not know you are…are a…does not know what you do for a living?”

I stare at him.

“And might it be that…you would prefer that this person never found out?”

Modesto says, with a flicker of admiration in his voice, “You perspicacious old bastard…”

Lorenzo raises an eyebrow and for the first time ever, Modesto looks at my cook with an expression on his face other than dislike.

I avoid a direct response. “Lorenzo,
caro,
would you…would you consider continuing to cook for me at my other house? I am not sure I could bear to lose you. But…” I hesitate, needing to know, but not wishing to give offense. “Shall you be truly able to keep my secrets?”

He shakes his head, and at first I think he is refusing my request. But then he says, “I will continue to cook for you. And I will keep your secrets, of course I will,
padrona,
but…” He pauses. “There are so very many people in this city who know who you are, and what you do. How can you swear them all to silence?”

Something of last night's panic begins to scuffle again in my head, but Modesto says quickly, in his honey-calm voice, “Listen: so far as I can see, today's tidbit of exciting gossip is nothing more than tomorrow's nugget of abandoned irrelevance. Napoli will not think of it for long. We take these changes one day at a time.”

His words ought to soothe my anxiety, but my mind teems suddenly with images of Luca. A crowd of his friends surround him, congratulating him on his good fortune in finding such a lovely new wife (my insides writhe at even the thought of such a future) and—here I see Serafina and Piero—they all tell him how fitting it is that two such deserving people have found each other after their respective bereavements. What a fortunate evening that was at San Domenico, they say; how lucky it was that you met. You both deserve happiness, after all your grief. Luca's two sons—who, in my ignorance, I imagine resemble their father—appear delighted at Luca's joy. Everyone is eating, drinking—there is noise and music and laughter. I see myself and the twins, welcomed into the family; but behind my smiles they all have no idea that I am almost choking on my guilt at such ill-deserved approbation.

And then the image shifts and I see disgust on a hundred faces—those that I know, those that I can only imagine—as they discover the true identity of Luca's new spouse, this new mother to his two lovely sons.
Luca
has
been
lying
with
a
whore
, they say to each other in hushed voices, their features distorted with incredulous revulsion.
How
could
he
not
have
guessed? Surely it shows? Did he not realize when…when they…you know?
They widen their eyes and imply the improprieties they imagine, with eyebrows lifted into their hair. They shun poor Luca as quickly as they turn their backs upon me. His friends stare at him with a jumble of pity and embarrassment splashed across their faces. They no longer have any idea what to say to him.

Yet another image takes its place. I see Luca look at me. He does not smile. He opens his mouth to speak and I dread hearing what he will say, but before he can say a word, Modesto's voice cuts into my reverie.

“I'll take you back to Santa Lucia, Signora. Get yourself dressed, and we can go straight away.”

He and Lorenzo leave my chamber, and I pick up the dress that I wore last night. The dark blue, modestly cut disguise. The only garment Luca has seen me wear. He will think I dress in such clothes every day. I put it down and open a painted wooden chest. Squatting on my heels, I breathe in the scent of cedarwood and finger the extravagant silks and velvets it contains, the fur-trimmed coats and the glittering, beaded bodices, including the red and gold bodice that reveals so much of my breasts—the one I wore to seduce Vasquez. What would Luca think of me if he saw me dressed in my usual finery?

Shall I mind abandoning such gorgeous garments? Will it be possible to be content to be…
unremarkable
for the rest of my life?

I drop the things back into the chest and cross the room to the long mirror: one of my first presents as a courtesan—from the Conte di Vecchio. In its elaborate gilt frame, it reaches almost to the ceiling of my chamber; the huge sheet of flawless Venetian glass reflects the whole room. As I allow myself to think about the catalogue of acts of licentiousness that have been witnessed by this huge and sumptuous
specchio,
I undo my wrap and let it fall to the floor.

I stare at what I see.

My face is still uneven and swollen from last night's tears and my hair is tangled into a fuzzy cloud. My gaze moves downward. What is it about this body that has entranced so many men? Why do they tell me it is so beautiful? So “extraordinary”? To me—trapped inside it—it is simply the vehicle in which I go through my life. Like everybody else's body, at times it aches or pains me, it frustrates me when illness weakens it, I marvel at its patient ability to withstand all the demanding tasks I ask it to perform so regularly. Is its inexplicable attraction simply how it appears, or is it rather what I have been prepared to do with it, for them? Why should it be different to that of any other woman? Looking at myself dispassionately, I see narrow shoulders, visible
clavicola
bones, full breasts with brown nipples. My belly is still surprisingly flat and smooth, despite the twins' former residence beneath its skin. My hipbones jut, and below and between them lies the dark arrowhead of soft hair, that has pointed the way to euphoric gratification for so many, for so long.

So many.

I want now to scrub them all away. Scour out my body from the inside, to rid it of what it has contained. If there was some draught I could drink—something I could take to flush out every trace of every man who has ever paid to enter it—I would give every
scudo
I have earned across the years to obtain it. To rid myself of what has so suddenly become entirely abhorrent to me. The vague dissatisfaction Gianni's tender compassion began in me has, in the few hours since last night, become a vivid, screaming disgust—with myself, with my patrons, with my life. I realize as I stand before my mirror that from this moment, whether or not Luca will ever care for me at all, I cannot continue the life I have been leading.

This shocking, frightening, unprecedented sense of revulsion swells in my chest and I begin to feel physically sick. I think I might scream. A hot pressure builds behind my eyes until, letting out a sort of wordless yowl, I swing round and grab a big glass pot from the table near the bed and hurl it across the room. It hits the far wall and shatters into a thousand glittering shards. The noise of the glass hangs in the air accusingly and I step back and stare at what I have done, with my hands over my mouth.

I know now what it is that I want. I must at last properly admit to myself what was shut away in that locked box: what was released when it was cracked open by Gianni's tenderness. An awareness of it flashed into my mind the night it happened, but until now I have not dared allow myself to think too carefully on it.

I want to be loved.

I want to wake in the mornings, wrapped in the arms of a man who will be content to hold me, warm and lazy beneath passion-crumpled blankets; who will kiss my hair and watch me as I go back to sleep. Someone who will eat with me, drink with me, cry and laugh and love with me, someone who will treat my girls with kindness—a man who will not simply gaze at me, wet-lipped with lascivious admiration as he pushes his way between my thighs and demands his money's worth.

I want that man to be Luca.

But there is something else. Something that I have never known and never expected. I want Luca to know that I will love him, too. He needs to be loved. I saw in his eyes in that first moment at San Domenico a sort of stoic vulnerability, a loneliness, that has made me want to pull him into my arms and comfort him. I want us to be lovers, yes—oh God, yes—but perhaps even more than that, I want us to be friends.

If I chose to, I am quite sure I could seduce Luca, as Modesto suggested last night. I could with ease break down his barriers of gentility and virtue and persuade him to lie with me and learn to revel in the heady delights of harlotry. But to do that I would have to change him. And once changed, he would no longer love me. He would become like all the others. He would see me as they do. Oh, God, I know he may
never
love me! I may be pathetically deluding myself, and entirely mistaken in imagining Luca has any sort of regard for me. But surely it would be better to know that he had never loved me, than to discover that he had indeed once done so, but that his feelings for me had been destroyed by disgust at my pleasure-seeking attempts to corrupt him. He will love me on his own terms or not at all, I know that.

The door pushes open, and Modesto peers around. I see the whites of his eyes glint in the glass as he stands in the gloom by the chamber door, but I do not turn around. I continue to stare at my naked self in my mirror.

“What happened? Did something break?”

I shrug.

I watch Modesto's reflection eyeing the mess of broken glass on the floor.

“I'll find a broom,” he says softly.

I don't move.

“Are you…quite certain that you still want to do this, Signora? None of them knows anything. You don't have to go on with this. Everything could just continue as it always has—Signor di Cicciano's due tomorrow. The Spaniard is expecting you on Saturday and—”

“No!” His words make me nauseous again. I drop my arms to my sides and curl my hands into fists.

“You are quite sure…”

I nod again. Behind my reflection, at the back of the room, Modesto's gaze rests on my buttocks. Looking up and catching my eye, he swallows and says softly, “The new Signore is a very lucky man. He'd be a fool not to want you. I'll be back in a moment with a broom.” There is a pause and then he says, “Be careful not to tread on the glass,” as he pads noiselessly out of the room.

A tear trickles across the bridge of my nose as I bend to pick up my wrap. I clutch the silk in both hands as though I mean to tear the thing into two pieces, and then press it hard against my cheek.

“What do you mean she's not here?”

“The Signora is unwell, Signor di Cicciano. I'm very sorry to disappoint you. I know you were expecting to see her this evening, but I am afraid she is…indisposed.” Modesto's voice was calm. He stood in the doorway, one arm across the width of the frame, hand resting on the jamb.

“What's wrong with her, then?”

“I believe she ate something that disagreed with her.”

“How long is she expecting to be ‘indisposed'?” Michele di Cicciano's voice sounded scornful and unsympathetic.

“She has a high fever. I doubt she will be fit to leave her house before the best part of two weeks has elapsed, Signore.”

“Two weeks?” The Signore's eyes flashed and his mouth tightened to a thin line across his face. “Send word when she is well again,” he said abruptly. Turning on his heel, he strode away up the street.

Modesto raised his eyebrows and shook his head as he watched the visitor round the corner and disappear. “She's well rid of you, if nothing else,” he said. “Arrogant, self-opinionated, conceited bastard
.
” He spat onto the dust of the street, pulled the front door closed, and went back into the
sala
where, sitting down on one of several folding chairs, he pulled a quill from an iron ink pot.

***

Several sheets of paper lay in a loose pile in front of him; he straightened the pile and frowned down at what he had written, the end of the quill against his bottom lip. Having perused his scratchy lines of writing for some moments and added a word here and there, Modesto then put the quill back into the pot, picked up the papers and pushed his chair back from the table. As he stood, though, the door to the
sala
pushed wide and Lorenzo's doughy face peered in.

“Are you hungry?” the chef asked.

“Are you offering some form of remedy for that, if I am?”

“There is a large quantity of pork, which the
padrona
has not even touched, and which ought to be eaten by the end of today; there's the remainder of that soup, and a couple of loaves of bread which will be fit for nothing by tomorrow morning.” Lorenzo was strangely deflated; his skin seemed to hang more loosely around his great moon face. Modesto felt a stab of sympathy for a man he had never liked and said, “I'll come down to the kitchen in a moment. I just want to make sure I have finished this room.”

“When does the
padrona
need the inventory finished?”

“She hasn't said, but I want it done by tomorrow morning—I have a lawyer meeting me here at midday and I want to have everything clear in my own mind before he arrives.”

Lorenzo nodded and left the room.

The cook's footsteps receded; Modesto crossed the room to the window. “There's no point in even thinking about it,” he said aloud after a few moments. “It's what she wants.” He tried unsuccessfully to suppress the thought that was swelling up into his head like a black thundercloud, and attempted to rationalize the situation. He had (at times literally) witnessed her bedding countless customers. For years he had watched her—seducing the reluctant, enthralling the enthusiastic, and exhausting the unprepared—and though it had often been difficult for him, he had always been comforted by the fact that though she
liked
some of her patrons well enough, she had
loved
not a single one of them. It had always been a job to her. Nothing more. None of them had ever touched her heart. That boy had come close, he admitted to himself—she had been quite distracted for days after his visit. But until now it always had been the two of them: him and her, the eunuch and the harlot, ranked together
contra
mundum
.

He realized now how precious that solidarity had been to him.

Modesto was acutely aware that living in the opulent shadow of so much exuberant and immoral sexual activity had somehow mitigated the miserable absence of it in his own personal experience. The voice of an angel, they had all said he had had as a child. And angels don't need to fuck, do they? They have better things to do, generally. He had always been revolted by his perception of his own “otherness” and, though he understood that many
castrati
did in fact manage some form of physical union, he had never had the courage even to try to find out if it were a possibility for him. He was too frightened of the humiliation of failure. Especially with her. After his singing career had faded, Francesca's offer of this position had, he knew, rescued him from a life as the butt of predictable jokes about his lack of sexual potency; his intimacy with a creature of the Signora's beauty and standing had drawn grudging admiration and envy from many that he met, despite their understandable horror at the thought of his affliction.

But now this was all about to be taken from him and he would—if the Signora's hopes were fulfilled—be reduced to the status of a formal manservant, kept at arm's length, spoken to with politeness and warmth; still well-liked, perhaps loved, but no longer taken into intimate confidences. Pictures raced through his mind: Francesca climbing into his bed and holding him while he wept; the two of them sitting side by side on the staircase, leaning against each other and laughing aloud at some piece of pointless nonsense that had caught both of their imaginations; himself, standing in her chamber watching her unabashed nakedness, shaking his head in wonder at the perfection of the exquisite body.

He might never be allowed to see it again.

If the future were to unfold as she wished, these were all things she would share only with the new Signore, and her bond with this man would be of an entirely different order from anything either she or Modesto had yet experienced. Something inside Modesto's chest swelled painfully as he contemplated the future, and he was ashamed to admit to himself that he felt certain that he would find it difficult to like the new Signore, whatever sort of man he turned out to be.

***

“Yes, Signore, I understand. As soon as possible.” The lawyer leaned back in his chair and frowned down at Modesto's inventory.

“Do you know of any potential buyer?” Modesto asked.

“It is not really within the remit of what I do, Signore—I am not a broker. But, as it happens—in the course of a case I am handling at present, I did the other day happen to hear of a gentleman who might indeed be interested, and I will certainly be happy to inform him—”

Modesto interrupted. “We need to move fast, Signore. My mistress would like to sell the place as quickly as possible.” He could see curiosity fighting propriety across the man's face, but he did not offer any enlightening information. A few seconds passed, then the lawyer said, “Might your mistress be interested in letting the house? There are always far more people in Napoli willing to take on a place for a short time; finding someone to buy the house outright may well prove much more difficult, if my gentleman turns out not to be interested.”

“I would have to ask her, Signore. She is, I know, wanting to sell it.”

“It's a fairly reliable source of income, you might tell her—letting, I mean.”

Modesto nodded.

“It's a lovely house. Well-maintained…and the decorations are…well, they are almost
opulent
, aren't they?”

Modesto raised an eyebrow and watched the lawyer gazing around the large, low-ceilinged
sala.
He seemed impressed. In other times, perhaps, this well-heeled gentleman might have been a potential new patron.

***

Out on the roof garden at the Via Santa Lucia, the setting sun was turning the white-painted walls of the house a rich ochre, and the bustle of the city was just beginning to die down. On the low table several candles were burning. Moths fluttered into and out of the pools of light; one of them caught the tip of a wing in a flame and instantly fizzled into powdery nothingness.

Modesto watched his mistress run the heel of her hand over her forehead. Her eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep and she was chewing at the corner of her lip.

“I don't know,
caro
. I did really want to sell the place outright—I want it out of my life. I don't want to have to think about it. About all the things that have happened there.”

“I know you don't. But it's a source of income, if—”

“Don't say it!”

Modesto reached for her hand. Gripping her fingers, he said, “I
will
say it, because it has to be said. Listen to me—letting that house will give you a source of income, something you and those little girls can rely on, if all this comes to nothing.”

“Please don't say it.”

“Do you want to see them on the streets?”

He held her gaze for several seconds. She looked appalled.

Modesto said, “You have to be practical. You've set everything in motion now. You've written to Vasquez—I delivered the letter not an hour since; I've said I'll tell Signor di Cicciano myself, which in his case I think will be more effective than a letter, and you can inform Signor di Laviano in due course, because obviously you can't write to him at his house, but I think with him, it'll come better directly from you than from me. So, now that—”

“But—”

“No, it's simple, Signora. You listen. You're risking everything—everything!—on what's actually nothing more than a possibility. You're about to pull your own house down around your ears—I just think you have to put as many practical props in place as you can before you pull out the last of the cornerstones, don't you?”

A flurry of footsteps on the stairs startled them both.

“Mamma! Look! Look what we've got!”

“Ilaria gave them to us!”

Modesto watched the two little girls run from the stairs, across the roof garden to where Francesca sat, both waving what looked like a little bouquet of white feathers, each bunch tightly tied to the end of a small cane.

“Ilaria said they're for dusting!”

“Can we do dusting up here?”

Modesto saw his mistress smile, though her eyes gleamed with a sudden flash of tears.

“No,” she said. “Not up here—but why don't you dust the bedchambers instead?”

Both girls murmured their approval of this suggestion and wheeled round as one, heading back toward the stairs.

“You could dust me before you go, if you like, just to practice,” Modesto said with a grin, and the girls squealed with delight and stopped in their tracks. Giggling, and holding their little clumps of feathers up in front of them, they flicked them over Modesto's upturned face, neck, and shoulders, down his doublet front, along the length of his thighs and over his knees, while he maintained an expression of statuesque ecstasy.

They completed their task. Modesto shook his head and, jutting his lower jaw, blew upward over his nose. “Oh, my goodness, that's better,” he said, as the girls stood back, breathless with laughter. “I haven't been that clean for a long time. Thank you! What marvelous dusters you both are. I'll look forward to seeing the bedchambers in a few minutes! Go on, get on with it! I'll be in to check how well you've done, before you can say ‘feathers'!”

Giggling again, they both ran off.

“You are so sweet with them,” Francesca said, running one finger along under her lashes.

“They are sweet children.” Modesto leaned forward and pointed a forefinger at her. “And if you want them to continue to have nothing more frightening to do in bedchambers than
dusting
for the next few years, then you had better bloody well listen to advice and agree to let that house of yours.”

There was a long pause.

Francesca put her face in her hands for a moment, then looked up. “Very well. Just arrange it, will you? And…thank you,
caro
.”

“Huh…” Modesto said gruffly. “I'm off, now. And you can spend a bit of time practicing being a proper Neapolitan housewife. Your servants need telling a thing or two—that Ilaria is a lazy trollop. You'll be well rid of her.”