Inamorata (5 page)

“Mr. Nelson Stafford. Do you know him?”

I shook my head. “Is he American?”

“English, I believe. But he’s a fine boy. Very handsome too.” She nudged me with a wink. “I’m certain you and your brother will like him exceedingly. He’s very quiet. I never have a moment’s trouble with him. Would you like to see the courtyard? We all share it, but I can arrange a time for you to have it alone if you like.”

It was perfect. “I would like to see it, yes.”

She took me back down to the main floor, Marco following quietly behind, and then down the stairs into the courtyard. The sun gilded the top of the fig tree; from the stairs I could smell some fragrance I had missed on the way up, something like gardenia, rich and lovely. I could imagine living in these huge rooms and coming down into the courtyard of an evening, breathing deep of that lovely scent, posing for my brother beneath the shining leaves of the fig, telling him the stories he loved deep into sunset.

When we reached the bottom, she skirted the corner, past a statue of a faun, moss-covered, half-blackened. A huge urn nearly half my height held some bushy, viney plant. I heard a strange buzzing beyond, a low hum. Bees, I thought, or perhaps a cloud of gnats.

“Mr. Stafford rather enjoys it in the morning,” she said, pushing aside a wildly tangled vine to pass into the courtyard proper. “He’s always saying to me—”

She stopped short so suddenly I crashed into her. She yelped, a little scream, and her hand went to her chest, and it was a moment before I realized that it wasn’t my stumbling into her that caused her outburst.

“Mr. Stafford!” she gasped.

There, in the middle of the courtyard, near a marble wellhead, lay a man staring vacantly at the sky while a pool of black blood congealed beneath him, covered with darting, buzzing flies.

N
ICHOLAS

A
ren’t you tired of drawing that yet?” I asked Giles, glancing over his shoulder at what must have been the four hundredth sketch he’d done of the Ponte dell’Accademia—an iron monstrosity of a bridge, to put it kindly. I had no idea what he, or any of the dozen or so artists in the Campo della Carita that afternoon, found so intriguing about it, though most of them, admittedly, were painting the view of the Salute.

“I can’t get it right,” he said, pushing his sliding spectacles back into place. “I’ll keep trying until I do.”

I refrained from saying what was true—that Giles would never get it right, and that even if he did, the bridge was so ugly that only someone with egregious taste would ever buy a painting of it—and glanced impatiently away. Art held little appeal for me right now. Nelson Stafford had never appeared for our appointment, and I feared that I’d been too late to save him.

“So where is this girl you want me to see?” I asked.

“She’ll be here,” Giles said implacably.

“I don’t have all day, you know.”

Giles chuckled. “No? What else have you to do?” Then he stiffened. “Oh, oh—there she is. No, for God’s sake, Nick, don’t stare!”

“You sound like a ten-year-old,” I said, following his gaze to where his Giulietta wandered off the bridge and onto the campo. She was, as far as I could tell, the typical dark-eyed, black-shawled Venetian girl, and like them all, she had that way about her that said she expected men to fall at her feet. I suppose men like Giles did, but then, they’d never known true beauty.

Which only reminded me again why I couldn’t linger. I turned back to Giles. “She’s quite pretty. No doubt she’ll pose for a centime or two. God knows they all will.”

“It’s tiresome how cynical you’ve become.”

“Or perhaps just realistic. There isn’t a Venetian girl these days who doesn’t know her worth as a model.”

He made a face. “How would you know? I haven’t seen you with a single girl in months. You’ve been like a monk.”

I glanced toward her again, and that was when I noticed the man crossing the bridge into the campo. He had the kind of presence that caught one’s attention, a confidence to match the kind of looks that even I recognized as stunning. His hair was dark, and he wore no hat. His white trousers were creased and grayed in places with dust. He carried a large sketchbook beneath his arm.

“Who’s that?” Giles asked, frowning.

“How would I know? I’m not the one who spends all day here.”

“I’ve never seen him.”

Nor had I, and it was true that Giles and I knew almost every artist in Venice by now. They all gravitated to the same places: here at the Accademia, the
fondamenta
of the Riva near the Public Gardens at sunset, the Zattere for its views of the Lido. They came, they went, almost all of them at one point or another wandering into the salon Giles and I frequented at the Casa Alvisi. So it was strange that neither of us had seen this one.

The man made his way through the campo. Not arrogant, but self-possessed, unlike most of the artists here, who seemed to cower beneath the weight of Venice’s past masters. I found myself watching him, curious. He smiled at those he passed, murmuring a hello here and there. One artist caught him with a word as he went by, and he paused, leaning over the man’s shoulder, pointing at something on the easel, making a comment. The artist exclaimed and laughed, and the man moved on and took a seat on the paving stones. He pulled his sketchbook from beneath his arm and a stick of charcoal from the pocket of his deep blue coat.

There was no hesitation in him, no stopping to consider a line or a shadow. He drew as if he knew exactly what should be on the page and how he should put it there. I found myself envying his surety—I’d never had such confidence with words. But I told myself it could be only that he was very bad, unlearned enough not to know he
should
hesitate, and I was wondering if in fact that was the case when I realized that little Giulietta was sauntering over to him, having just noticed he was there.

Giles dropped the case with his pastels on the pavement, cursing as he raced to stop her, waylaying her not three steps from where the man in white trousers sat sketching. Giles said something to her, and everyone in the vicinity heard her call Giles a dog in that distinctive Venetian cantilena. She shoved him hard in the chest, sending him stumbling over the man and his sketchbook. Giles fell, the sketchbook flew from the man’s hands to skitter across the pavement, and Giulietta stalked away.

I hurried over and hauled Giles to his feet. He was red faced, sputtering, “What did I do to her? You saw it. What did I do?”

“For God’s sake, Giles, she’s a peasant,” I said. “What did you expect?”

He dusted himself off, glaring at me before he turned to the man he’d fallen over, who had risen now, and was giving us both a bemused look. “I’m sorry. You aren’t hurt?”

“Not the least bit,” the man said. “Startled only.”

I stepped to his sketchbook, and as I picked it up to hand it over, I saw what he’d been drawing. I paused, struck. He had managed to capture the languid bustle of the campo in only a few strokes. It was more than impressive. “This is very good.”

He smiled and reached for the sketchbook, which I gave to him. “Are you an art critic?”

I laughed. “Hardly.”

“An artist yourself then?”

“Not that either, I’m afraid. Giles here is the artist. I’m merely a poet.”

“A poet? Are you famous? You must pardon me for asking; I’m not much for reading. My sister would know better.”

“I’ve had a few successes,” I said, not at all modestly; there was so little to celebrate. “But as yet, true fame eludes me.”

“Are you looking for it in Byron’s footsteps, then?”

I ignored the twinge the name brought, the memory—not as faint as I might wish. “I’ve had quite enough of Venetian debaucheries and excesses.”

Giles laughed. “Debaucheries? Why, Nick hasn’t debauched at all since we’ve been in Venice. Perhaps that’s your problem, old boy. No debauching. I’m Giles Martin, by the way, and my poet friend is Nicholas Dane.”

“Joseph Hannigan,” said the man, shaking hands all around.

“Have you been in Venice long?” Giles asked.

“I arrived last night.” Hannigan glanced across the campo, toward the Accademia, shielding his eyes from the sun. “I’ve been trying to determine the best places to see. Is it worth going inside, do you think? I’ve heard there’s a good Veronese.”

“Dwarfs and dogs,” I said wryly.

He laughed. “I take it you don’t care for Veronese.”

“I haven’t the eye, I’m afraid,” I said.

“Nick’s being modest. He might not be Ruskin, but he’s got a very good eye. Everyone comments on it.” Giles looked at me with a kind of vague pride that startled me. “Why, Henry Loneghan himself asks for his opinion before he buys anything.”

“Henry Loneghan?” Hannigan asked.

“An art collector who lives in the city,” I explained. “An expatriate. And Giles exaggerates. Loneghan hardly needs my help choosing art.”

“But he asks for it anyway,” Giles said.

I was more aware than ever of the passing time and where I needed to be. “It’s a pleasure to have met you, Hannigan. But I’m afraid I must hurry off. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

“I hope so.” As he reached out his hand to shake mine, the sketchbook in his other tilted and fell, crashing again to the paving stones, pages splayed. “Clumsy,” he said with a smile, bending to pick it up, flipping the pages as if to reassure himself they were all fine, letting it stop not at the page he’d been working on, but another, a sketch of a woman—though to call it a sketch was to do it a disservice. She was sleeping, her dark hair curling and spreading over a white pillow, her pouting mouth slightly parted, her nightdress fallen down one shoulder, revealing a round, pertly nippled breast. It was beautiful, so exquisitely rendered and erotically charged that I felt stunned. Dear God, he was a singular talent, perhaps more so than anyone I’d yet seen in Venice. He was exactly what Odilé was looking for.

Giles gasped. “Good God, man. Who is that?”

Joseph Hannigan glanced down at the sketch. “Do you like it? It was the first thing I drew when I got here.”

“You mean she’s
here
? In the city?” Giles asked.

I heard myself say, as if from far away, “Given that sketch, I think you’d be wasting your time with Veronese.”

“Well then, what should I look at instead? Where should I go? I’ve been hoping to find a guide—not one of the
valets de place
. I’ve no interest in shopping or restaurants. I’d like to find someone who can show me something new. Do you know of anyone who might serve? I can pay. Not much, but if a few centimes would do—”

“Something new?” I managed. “For what?”

“Inspiration.”

“I would think you’d already found it in those arms.”

Something I couldn’t read flickered through Joseph Hannigan’s eyes before he said with a quick smile, “She’s my sister. My twin, actually.”

“Your sister?” Giles was obviously as surprised as I.

Hannigan nodded as if he saw nothing odd in it. “She often poses for me. She’s a good model, don’t you think?”

“Most assuredly,” Giles said with fervor, and I knew he’d already forgotten his Venetian girl. “She’s here with you?”

“Yes. And she’s as anxious as I am to discover Venice.”

That the model was his sister only made his skill more amazing; the sensuality he’d managed to invent spoke to an imaginative talent of the kind Odilé was always searching for—now more intently than ever. Less than a month left . . . she needed a man like Joseph Hannigan. Young. Attractive. Charming. And with such talent . . . she would sniff him out in moments, and once she did, she would choose him. If I was ever to get my life—my talent— back, I could not fail again. If she were to get what she needed from Joseph Hannigan, her strength would be fully restored and the cycle would begin anew.

I could not let it happen. Not now, not so close to an end. Which meant I must keep Odilé from finding him. I must keep him too busy to wander the city. He wanted inspiration, and I would make certain he found it—in the places of my choosing.

“Giles and I could show you what there is to see in Venice, couldn’t we, Giles?”

Giles nodded with alacrity. “Oh, absolutely we could. What we haven’t seen isn’t worth seeing. And we’d be happy to show your sister about too.”

Joseph Hannigan smiled, obviously pleased. “I don’t wish to impose.”

I smiled back. “It is no imposition. Truly, we’re happy to do so.”

We made plans to meet later that evening, and I hurried off in search of Stafford, but Joseph Hannigan did not leave my mind. It seemed fate was smiling on me at last.

O
DILÉ

T
here are moments in Venice so sublime you cannot breathe for the sheer beauty and weight of them. The mournful pas de deux of the gondoliers’ songs is one of those things, a phenomenon of melancholy summer nights. Though this time, as I stood listening at my open balcony door, unable to sleep, it had a different effect. My hunger was raging and restless now in a way that I dreaded and feared, and I was unsoothed by the beauty of “La Biondina”—no matter how lovely were its echoes and harmonies, one line sung close, another answering from far away, back and forth, until it faded and was gone. I remembered the woman it had been written for—the Countess Benzoni—who had charmed and beguiled her way through Venice. But though the melody stayed with me all that night and into the next day, it wasn’t Benzoni I was thinking of. It was Paris.

And Madeleine Dumas.

Some memories fade to tender nostalgia, and some fade altogether, and after living nearly three hundred years, I had forgotten so much. But my memory of Madeleine never dimmed. To think her name was to see her standing as vibrantly before me as she had all those years ago, splendid in jewels and silks. It seemed she sparkled even in the dimmest light. She was the one who’d told me that what I most wanted was in reach.
You can have it all,
cherie
, but you must have the will to take it.

By then, I’d been on my own for many years—since I was twelve, in fact. But twelve was not so young then, and I’d been trained to tricks and pleasure long before my whore of a mother sold my virginity to an old, rich man. I had thought to treat him as any pretty adolescent treats older men—as if I could enchant and beguile my way to anything, as if he were too stupid and addled to see my manipulation.

I had been disabused of that idea within moments. He was inside me nearly before he’d cleared the door, holding me down, saying through clenched teeth as I screamed at the pain of it, “Shut up, little dove. I’ve just paid a fortune to fuck you first, and I mean to enjoy it.”

He hit me then, over and over, savoring my cries and moans. He took me twice more that night, finally leaving me half dead on the floor and sick with the knowledge that I was nothing—less than nothing. He was gone without a backward glance—I was not worthy of a second thought.

It should not have been a surprise. I’d been born in a brothel and raised among whores, and I knew how ephemeral was such a life. Women often disappeared in the hours between twilight and dawn without explanation. They were never thought of again. I had always believed I was not meant for such a fate, as did my mother, a Belgian farm girl who’d run away to Paris and ended with an opiate-sotted life of pain and degradation instead of the exciting one she’d hoped for. On the days she remembered I was even there, she would comb my thick hair with her graceful fingers and whisper to me, “Your beauty is your fortune, my love. You won’t be like the rest of us. You will be something fine.”

But that terrible night, as I stared up at a stained ceiling, gasping with pain, tears wet on my cheeks, I knew it wasn’t true. I knew I was no different than the rest of them, and in the end, my beauty would not save me.

My mother died two months later. She was found in a ditch in the backstreets of Paris, strangled. No one ever investigated her death. No one cared. I only knew what had happened because I’d gone looking for her. We always checked the city morgue first in those days, and there she was, pale and cold on a slab. I did not even claim her body—what would I have done with it? As far as I knew, she was buried in a potter’s field along with a hundred other nameless, faceless souls. I was the only evidence she had existed, and even I chose not to acknowledge her at the end.

The fear of such a destiny haunted me. I tried to tell myself she was right, that my beauty must mean something. Why else had it been given to me? Surely I
was
meant for something fine. Surely I could not die unseen and forgotten, just another anonymous body in a pauper’s grave.

In those days there was only one real way for a woman like me to be known in the world. It was a hard ladder to climb, but I was determined. I meant to become one of Paris’s famous courtesans. I meant for the name of Odilé León to linger forever, to never be forgotten.

By the time I was fifteen, men vied for my favors. They sent me candy wrapped in franc notes, jeweled toys and fine perfumes. By seventeen, I held the lease on two houses. I had caskets of jewels, silks and expensive laces. I had my own carriage with four matched gray horses. At nineteen, I was the most coveted courtesan in Paris. It was rumored that I was an exiled princess, an aristocrat in hiding, a slave escaped from an Oriental harem, stories it pleased me to never deny—in fact, I planted some of them. Mystery and allure were all-important. Rich men needed to feel as if they possessed something of unique value.

I decorated my rooms in Byzantine splendor long before it was fashionable to do so. I scented it with exotic incenses and served the best wines and foods that were aphrodisiacs. I was said to have skill enough to bring back any man’s vigor. I taught young men how to be good lovers, and now and then a young woman hired me to teach her the ways to please a husband. I chose my patrons well; I became a luxury only a few could afford, a prize that only the most well-connected could win.

I thought I had beaten my fear at last. Surely my name would be remembered now? And for years, I had no reason to think otherwise. I was the best and the most expensive. Everyone knew who I was. But time is no woman’s friend. I began to notice the fine wrinkles at the corners of my eyes, the faint sag at my jaw. Strands of gray began to appear in my dark hair; I could not go to sleep at four a.m. and rise at eight without looking as if I’d done so. I began to lose my favorite lovers to younger women whose eyes sparkled guilelessly, whose breasts were more pert, whose skin was whiter and more fine.

I began to feel afraid again—and that, too, showed. Men sense desperation; they are like animals, wanting always to be at the top. I was thirty-six. My influence was waning, and they felt that too. I was no longer the prize I’d been, but a fading symbol of another time. I began to notice the way men looked past me when I came into a room, and I realized I had not beaten my fear after all. In a few more years, it would be as if Odilé León had never existed. It was too late to change the path I’d taken—I was destined for my mother’s fate, for the one I’d seen as I lay bleeding on a barren floor.

But then I met Madeleine Dumas. The great courtesan, Ninette, held a salon to showcase an artist everyone was talking about—his newest canvas was scandalous and brilliant, and it was rumored that he meant to bring with him the woman who’d inspired it. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to know what she had done to win such immortality. But when I arrived, the artist was alone. There was no woman hanging on his arm and none he seemed to adore, and so I did not suspect that his lover and his muse was Madeleine, though I should have known the moment I saw her across the room, sparkling and smiling, jewels bedecking every inch. That night, she’d worn a gown so crusted with tiny rubies and beaded with pearls that I wondered how she could walk in fabric so heavy. Golden combs had glittered in her blond hair, but her eyes . . . her eyes had been dark as obsidian. Eyes I’d been drawn to, unable to look away from. I thought I saw something strange in them, something captivating and exciting. She’d smelled of confidence and lilies. She was my age, and yet she had what I did not—a lack of care or fear.

I wanted to be her, which was something I had never felt before—why should I have ever felt envious of another woman? The singularity of the emotion brought me up short, the sheer, brutal longing.

She gestured to me as if she’d seen me staring at her. I went as if compelled. She smiled at me and asked me who I was, and when I told her, her smile broadened. She tilted her head in amusement, though all I’d told her was my name. “I know you, don’t I?”

“I think we’ve never met,” I said. “I would have remembered.”

“Perhaps not.” She glanced across the room, to where her artist-lover was engaged in animated conversation with some other man, and she leaned close to whisper to me, “I am the one who made him everything he is. Do you believe me?”

“Of course.”

“How he loves to ignore me in public.”

“But he will not be ignoring you when you are home,” I reassured her.

“No, not if I am there, which I have not quite decided yet.”

“You mean to leave him?”

She shrugged; it was a pretty, elegant gesture. “I leave all of them. It is
my
life, is it not? Mine to live. Mine to manage. Why give it to them to squander?” She paused. “What do you think of his talent?”

“I think he will be very famous.”

“Oh, I mean for him to be famous. That is never in doubt. But I wonder: do you think he will
last
? Will men laud him centuries from now?”

I considered her question. “I don’t know. Perhaps. But while he is very skilled, he is showing nothing truly new, so perhaps not.”

Madeleine sighed. “So I have thought. I wonder if perhaps it is a flaw in me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have done this before. So many times. Before him, there was a musician. He was just the same. He had a great deal of talent, but he was penning songs for school children. I took him up. I was his muse, his inspiration. His new compositions were well received by the church, published in psalters, and for a time, he was very famous indeed. And quite rich.”

“He must have been glad,” I said.

“For the money?” she asked.

“For fame,” I said, unable to keep the envy from my voice. “People knew his name. They remembered him.”

She looked at me, and I saw something in those black eyes, a piqued interest. “You wish that for yourself?”

“To not die in obscurity? Yes, of course. Who does not wish to leave a mark on the world?”

Her gaze slid away. “Ah.”

I didn’t know what I’d expected from her, but her response disappointed. I felt I’d lost her attention, and I wanted nothing more than to call it back. “What happened to him? The composer?”

“His songs have fallen out of favor. He has not had the influence I thought he should.” She leaned close again. “I think I do not have the eye. Do you think you could do better, given the chance?”

“Me?” I laughed. “I hardly know.”

Her words lingered throughout the nights that followed. I had been enraptured and ensorceled. Madeleine had shown me how small was the world I’d lived in. She had shown me how much more there was, how much to be had.

What do you most desire, Odilé?

Even as I stood on my Venetian balcony and smelled Venice, it was Paris that was in my head. Paris, and Madeleine. I thought of everything she had given me, the years as I had known them, but I no longer felt a sense of wonder. Only exhaustion. There were times, like now, when the curse of my nature overwhelmed everything. It was too late in the cycle for joy. My hunger cramped, squeezing tight and painfully. Time was running out. Somewhere in this city must be the man who could inspire a world. Somewhere. And if I did not find him—

Barcelona flashed through my mind. A vision of waking from a nightmare only to discover that it was no nightmare at all, but real. Real and terrible, and I was nothing but darkness writhing, a vortex of need, and him standing in the doorway, haloed with sunlight, a look of horror on his face, the monster I had become reflected in his gaze. . . .

I closed my eyes, forcing the memory away. He was not even here. He had not found me. I had days yet to make a choice without fear of his intervention. He could not destroy me, but what he
could
do, what he could force me to become. . . .

Another stab of pain, worse this time. Enough of memories; it was time to hunt. Usually I liked the Rialto—it was one of the busiest places in Venice, and I never failed to find someone there—if not true and lasting talent, then at least someone to ease my hunger for a time. But today I had something else in mind. I remembered the faint strains of music I’d heard coming from a church last week, sweet and alluring. The sound of possibility.

I called for Antonio to ready the gondola, and I was just stepping into the boat when he said, “He is dead,
padrona
.”

For a moment I had no idea whom he was speaking of. I’d already forgotten the writer, you see.

“Signor Stafford,” Antonio said.

“Oh. How do you know this?”

“He was found in his courtyard.”

Gossip in Venice never lacked speed. The gondoliers knew everything nearly the moment it happened.

Antonio made a slicing motion across his wrist. “Suicide.”

Another one. I did not have to manufacture my dismay or my sorrow. I had not wanted this. I never did. I thought of the poet as I’d seen him last, collapsed on the floor. The tears in his eyes when he realized I was banishing him. My appetite surged at the memory. Antonio put his hand suddenly to his heart, frowning—and I felt a rush of nourishment and remembered with a start his gondolier’s songs. A bird calling from a nearby cage went suddenly silent.