Courtesan's Lover (6 page)

Emilia's arms were tightly folded, and her bottom lip pushed forward sulkily as she stood and watched. “What if it were to become generally known how many hours in a week you devote to your books?” she said. “And that book in particular. I do not believe I know any other woman who does what you do.”

“It is no secret,
cara
—” Maria began, but Emilia interrupted.

“Well, it ought to be, Maria. It does not seem—I do not know what the word should be…”

“Well, perhaps if you read a little more widely yourself, you would be able to find the words you seek with more ease,” Maria said sharply. “Come, let us go and take the air—and no more criticism of how I choose to spend my time. As we go, I will tell you something of de Pizan…perhaps her story will convince you that it is quite proper for women to choose to improve their minds.”

“I doubt very much that Filippo cares for your studies…” Emilia muttered.

Maria flushed. “I think that what passes between a wife and her husband should remain their business alone, do you not agree, Emilia?” And, tucking another curl back under her cap with fingers that shook, she stood and strode past Emilia to the door.

The two sisters walked in silence through the narrow streets.

Maria sensed rather than saw the sideways glances that Emilia threw toward her every few moments, but she made no attempt to talk to her. The stuff of their stiffened skirts whispered as they walked, as though in muffled conversation together, but other than this, the two women made no sound at all; each seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.

But now it was no longer her book that occupied Maria's mind: she thought instead of her husband.

She was sure that Filippo believed she did not love him.

The Sisters who had raised her so carefully after the death of both her parents had done their work well, she thought. As well as instructing her in the faith, they had taught her to read, to write both in Latin and Italian, to be intelligently curious about the world around her—and to regard the “will of the flesh' with dark dread, in case it should lure her into irreparable sin. Even now, more than ten years a respectable wife, Sister Annunziata's dire indictments still whined inside her head if ever she sensed Filippo's gaze begin to wander to her mouth or her breasts. Great iron gates would clang down around her, and she would feel her face close in upon itself, shutting her away from him behind a carefully practiced mask of untroubled elegance.

Wincing, Maria saw herself each time as Filippo must see her: repulsing his advances, turning from his kisses, cold and apparently unaware of his need for her. He still wanted her. Although she was unsure why, after so long with no encouragement, she knew that her husband did still look at her with longing.

And though she never responded, it was not because she did not wish to.

He had leaned past her at dinner only yesterday, reaching for a wine bottle. They had been sitting together, with Emilia facing them across the table, and Filippo had inadvertently pressed against her side as he had stretched across her. She had sensed his warm bulk and smelled his comfortable male smell of woodsmoke and sweat. Glancing at his hand gripping the neck of the bottle, Maria had held her breath. How easy it should have been, she thought angrily, to have smiled at him then, to have perhaps reached across under the table, out of sight of her sister, and stroked his thigh for a moment, just to show him that he was loved. That he was desired.

But she had not been able to move.

***

It
is
not
long
after
midday
prayers, and the sun is fierce. Sister Antonia has closed the shutters in the big room which Maria and Emilia have shared for nearly a year, but little white slivers of light are pushing their way through the gaps between the slats, dappling the walls and sliding over Maria's bed.

The
room
smells
—
as it always does—of beeswax and dust, and there's a faint, faint whiff of mold from the stone walls, which to Maria has always seemed somehow more of a taste than a smell.

“I think you two children should stay in for a while now—it is too hot to go out this afternoon,” Sister Antonia says, and it's true—the sun has been baking down all morning. Although it is windy, there is no respite from the heat: the wind is hot, like air pushing out of an unwisely opened oven. Sister's big dough-colored forehead glitters with glass beadlets of sweat, and the dark hairs on her upper lip are shining. Her face seems too fat for her coif. It bulges, and the stiff, stained linen edges dig in all around her face. Maria imagines that when Sister Antonia undresses at night, her coif must leave a deep groove all around her face as though she were wearing a mask.

“Have a little rest now,” the big nun says, as she leaves the room. “You can come down later and help prepare the evening meal.”

She
bustles
out
of
the
room
like
a
pillow
in
a
habit.

Maria
lies
still
for
some
moments
with
her
knees
crooked
up and watches the light playing across her dress, little pools of creamy whiteness that shift and move across the blue linen as the branches of the tree outside rustle uncomfortably in the hot wind; then she shuts her eyes and listens.

Emilia's breathing has slowed: she must already be asleep. Her sister always sleeps easily, Maria thinks with a pang of envy. She herself knows all too well the unnerving mixture of stifling boredom and unpredictable fears that can fill a wakeful night.

Outside, cicadas chirr rhythmically—on and on without pause, a ceaseless accompaniment to the afternoon; though sometimes they do suddenly stop—inexplicably all together—for seconds at a time, leaving a silence like a ripped hole in the noise they have been making. When they start again each time, Maria imagines the sound as grains of sand, trickling back into the hole.

A
new
noise.

Above
the
scratch-scratch
of
the
cicadas
comes
a
grunt. Scuffling and leaf-rustling.

Maria
crosses
to
the
window
and
puts
her
eye
to
one
of
the
gaps
in
the
slats.

The
boy
from
the
village
is
climbing
the
big
tree
again. He often spies on her in the gardens when she is outside and tries to see in through her window when she is indoors. She watches him now: long, thin brown legs sticking out of tattered breeches, grease-spiked black hair, and a prominent nose like a goose's beak. His skin seems dusty. He both intrigues and repulses her: his eyes are bright and knowing, and his stare often sends a little warm worm of embarrassment down through her guts, but there is something of the mantis about him, she thinks now, as he moves from branch to branch with slow deliberation, bare toes seeking the next foothold, hands reaching and grasping, craning toward her window to try and see in through the shutters.

She
knows
it
is
probably
sinful
to
think
it, but she likes the idea that the boy wants to look at her.

There
is
a
whip-crack of splintering wood.

“No!” Maria gasps and presses her face to the gap in the shutter, feeling her nose flatten against the resin-smelling wood, but the boy is falling away from where she can see. She hears another grunt, several more cracks, and a deadened thud. Then nothing.

Fumbling
with
the
fastening
of
the
shutters, Maria unlocks them and throws them wide. Hot sunlight pushes into the room, making her wince, and for a moment she is quite blinded. But then she sees a crumpled angular shape on the ground. Unmoving.

“What is it? Mia? Why have you opened the—?”

Maria
ignores
her
sister and, panting, scrabbles her way out of the room.

***

The
sisters
say
he
has
broken
his
neck. Maria and Emilia have not seen the boy—they have been forbidden to go to the sickroom, but they've heard the sisters whispering, have seen them shake their heads and cross themselves, have heard the endless chanted prayers in the chapel. Four days ago, Maria heard Sister Cecilia say he still cannot move at all. Sister said he might die.

Maria
wants
to
see
him. A lump of guilt like a cold plum has been lodged uncomfortably in her chest for days.

Emilia
says, “But it's his own fault, Mia; he was being nosy. It's very sad, if he has hurt himself, but—”

“How can you say that?”

“Well, it's true. It's nothing to do with you.”

Maria
stares
at
her
sister
for
a
moment, then turns on her heel and makes for the door.

“Where are you going?”

Maria
ignores
her.

The
plum
has
shifted
up
into
her
throat. She has to see the boy.

She
walks
down
two
long
corridors, out into the sandy square, dimpled all over with footprints, that lies within the cloisters, and in through the door on the far side. The sickroom is around the next corner.

The
door
is
open.

Maria
walks
up
to
it, slowly, slowly, heartbeat thick and loud in her ears.

She
hesitates. Holds her breath. Peers into the room.

Sister
Angelica
is
standing
in
front
of
a
table, her back to the door, ladling soup from a pewter jug into a small bowl. The boy is lying on a truckle bed in the corner of the room: an abandoned marionette, all strings severed. His face is now ashen and slack, and the goose-beak nose stands out, as though it has been stuck on as part of a disguise. His mouth is crooked, his lips loose and too wet. A thin line of dribble has slid from the corner of his mouth, down his jaw toward his ear like a snail's trail. And his eyes are enormous: wide and dark with fear.

He
sees
her.

Stares
at
her.

No
longer
insolent
and
knowing, his gaze moves jerkily across her face, and up and down her body. Pleading. Maria feels sick. He reminds her of a rabbit she once saw in a trap: wire pulled tight around its throat, it lay still and trembling, passive and unresisting in the torpidity of all-encompassing terror.

Sister
Angelica
crouches
down
beside
the
boy
and
gently
lifts
a
spoonful
of
soup
to
his
mouth. His eyes move then from Maria to the elderly nun, and Maria sees them bulge slightly as he tries to take the soup from the bowl of the spoon. A few drops seem to trickle past his teeth, but most of it runs down his chin. He cannot move his head. He cannot even open his mouth.

Maria
tries
to
imagine
the
suffocating
horror
of
being
imprisoned
like
this, locked silent and frightened into a coffin of flesh. The beseeching expression in the boy's eyes makes her feel light-headed. She can feel her stomach churning.

***

Glancing across at her sister, Maria said, “Emilia, do you remember the boy with the broken neck?”

Emilia frowned. “Which boy?”

“At the convent. The one who couldn't move. The one who died.”

“Oh, yes,” Emilia said with surprise in her voice. “That poor creature. He fell out of a tree, didn't he? I haven't thought of him for years. What made you remember him?”

“I don't know,” Maria lied. “What a terrible thing, though, do you not agree? To be trapped like that inside a body that cannot do what you ask of it.” Her voice shook a little, but her sister did not seem to notice Maria's unease.