Courtesan's Lover (4 page)

“Signora?”

“Modesto,
caro,
can you run this round to Bianca for me? Oh…I suppose it's too late now?”

He nods.

“In the morning then.”

His eyes rest for the briefest of moments upon my breasts and then he reaches for the paper I hold out, nods a token bow, and backs from the room.

“Why do you not cover yourself up when he comes in,” says Filippo. There is a bite to his voice, which I ignore. He has asked me this too many times. I say, as I always do, “Oh, he's seen all I have to offer far too many times. You know perfectly well that I can't see the point in dressing and undressing just for him.”

“And do you…
entertain
him, too?”

I climb back onto the bed and sit on my heels, one knee on either side of Filippo's legs. I smooth his hair back from his forehead. “As I've told you before, it doesn't suit you to be jealous, Lippo. When you're here, you know that I'm all yours. And you understand Modesto's circumstances—you must see that that's one of the reasons I want him here to work for me.”

He huffs a reluctant acquiescence.

***

“Do you wish me to walk you home, Signora?” Modesto asks after Filippo has left. His fingers grip the edge of the door as he peers into my chamber. I am sitting at my table, with my head leaning heavily on one hand. My backside is hot and stinging; the rest of me is beginning to feel cold, but my wrap is hanging on a hook on the far side of the room, and I haven't the energy to walk across and fetch it.

“No,” I say. “I have had far too much wine, it is much too late, and Ilaria and the girls are not expecting me back until tomorrow night. I'll stay here. Michele will be here before noon. Oh, dear…” I groan at the thought. “I must sleep, but I'm hungry. Is there anything to eat?”

“A few slices of yesterday's pigeon breast, a couple of orange-poached sardines, and those peaches.” He points to a large wooden bowl half-full of fruit, then adds, “And a great deal of bread.”

“How horrible. Is that all?”

Modesto glares at me. “I am afraid so, Signora.”

I take a peach from the bowl and bite into it. The juice runs down my chin, and I tip my head back, wiping my face with the heel of my other hand and sucking at the dripping scoop of peach flesh. The wet pulp catches against the end of my nose. “What have you been doing all evening?”

“There's little food in the house because that great fat lump of a cook hasn't been here for a couple of days—as you know—and, unsurprisingly,
I
have been doing what you pay me to do, Signora. After what happened the other week with the Conte di Vecchio and that little
stronzo,
da Argenta, I'm surprised you even ask. I've been sitting outside your chamber with my knife in my hand, listening to you shrieking and gasping, ready to come in if the screams start to sound too alarming,” he says drily.

“You know Filippo,
caro.
He would never hurt me.”

“So you say. Stand up for a moment, Signora.”

Somewhat reluctantly, I stand.

“Turn around.”

I turn away from him. He makes an irritable noise with his tongue. “Have you seen the state of your buttocks? You say he doesn't hurt you? Why do you let him do that?”

I shrug. I feel very tired and rather sick. “He needs to.”

Modesto rolls his eyes in disbelief and shakes his head, but he none the less crosses the room to a carved table below the window, upon which stand a number of Murano glass bowls and pots. Picking up one of these, he holds it in the palm of one hand, scoops two fingers into the contents, and walks back to me. I lean on one arm upon the table, and Modesto (none too gently) rubs the mixture onto both buttocks while I finish my peach. Despite his lack of finesse, the smarting skin feels cooled. Taking my wine with me, I cross to my bed and lie down on my stomach.

“You let that man go too far too often, Signora. It is unwise. How do you think you are going to be able to sustain the image of this…this…” he struggles to find the words “… this
termagant
with whom Signor di Cicciano so loves to fight—or the reincarnation of Aphrodite that the
Maestre
de
Campo
has practically started to
worship
, if every time you turn your back on the pair of them, they see that you have some other man's red stripes across your arse? They won't want you—either of them—if they see you as a victim. And you can't afford to lose either one of them.”

“I won't lose them. I have them too firmly hooked.” My words are muffled from where my cheek is pressed into the pillow, but I am too tired to lift my head. “Stop being cross with me, will you? Why are you angry?”

“Because you never seem to know when you are well off, that's why. It's just like with Argenta and the Conte di Vecchio—you're risking the patronage of two wealthy new devotees, both of whom are happily paying through the nose for their pleasures, just so you can indulge some poor creature who can't actually afford you. You forget, I know
exactly
how little he pays.” Modesto jabs a finger in my direction.

Now, I have always regretted telling Modesto why I choose to ask Filippo for such a small fee—he pays little more than half the amount the others give me each time. When I admitted it to him on that one thoughtless occasion, Modesto just stared at me in disbelief.

“He reminds you of your uncle?”
I remember him saying, shaking his head as though doubting my sanity.
“Your
uncle
? Dear God, Signora, what was this? An incestuous childhood liaison or something?”

“Don't be disgusting!”

“Well, what then? What is it about your uncle that could possibly make you wish to make a charity case out of Signor di Laviano?”

I tried to explain it to him. It was not because of any great virtue of my Uncle Bigo's—he was just kinder to me than anyone else was, I suppose. He made me laugh. Before my mother died—before I became the newly preferred target for my father's drink-fuelled ill temper—my big, bulky, silver-haired Uncle Bigo's visits were frequent and eagerly anticipated. After her death, however, he stopped coming. I was never told why. I haven't seen him since I was seventeen.

I glare at Modesto. “It's my choice what my patrons pay me. I like Filippo,” I say. Modesto does not. “And he needs me.”

“You are worth far more than this, Signora—you could be greater than all of them: greater than La Rosa, than da Mosca; certainly
far
greater than Alessandra Malacoda, and she's fucked
royalty
—though God alone knows what anyone sees in that stick-thin little trollop. All this misguided charity will do your reputation no good in the end—even if the man does remind you of some long-lost relative.”

“Very well, I'll ask Filippo to wield his belt more gently next time. Happy?” I can feel a scowl crumpling my face as I reach across and pick up my glass with fingers now sticky from the peach juice. I drain the last few mouthfuls and feel my head become woolly. My eyelids begin to close of their own accord, and I can feel the room circling slowly around me.

“Oh, go to sleep, Signora,” Modesto says then in a voice much gentler than before. “Come on, I'll wake you in good time for Signor di Cicciano in the morning. You'll be fit for nothing at this rate.” He crouches down beside the bed and strokes my hair back away from my face, saying in little more than a whisper, “I know you're tough, Signora—God knows, you need to be—and I know that you pride yourself on the fact that you never cry, but let's do our best to keep it that way, eh? We don't want any unnecessary cause for tears, do we? Come on, let's both get some sleep and get ourselves ready for tomorrow.”

I feel Modesto's hands underneath me, freeing the blankets from under my body, and then a comforting warmth as he pulls them up and over me. I hear him moving about my chamber. He reaches under the covers, picks up each of my hands, one by one, and wipes the sticky juice from them with a damp cloth. He dries both carefully. I am almost asleep as he leaves the room, but he might have said as he goes, or perhaps I am dreaming it, “Bloody whores. God—there are times when I'm almost glad I'm a eunuch.”

Shaking his head in amused disbelief, Modesto went down to the kitchen. With the cook away, only cold ash lay in the fireplace, and there was a chill in the air. A brightly painted plate, on which lay several slices of cold pigeon, stood next to three large flat loaves of bread on the longest of the shelves, and half a dozen thickly glazed sardines stared mournfully up at the edge of their tin-glazed dish. Among the clutter on the table stood several bottles of wine, one uncorked, which Modesto now picked up; he drank straight from the bottle and wiped his chin on his sleeve. Sitting down on a long bench at the side of the table, he put his head in his hands.

He sat lost in thought for some moments, then, the heaviness of his eyelids confirming the lateness of the hour, he stood, stretched, and left the room. Climbing the stairs to a long, low room at the top of the house, he put his candle down on the table and crossed to the windows. He closed and fastened the shutters. Heeling off his shoes, he pulled his knife from his belt and laid it on the table in front of the candle. He unfastened his doublet, pulling the laces through the holes and easing open the stiffened front. Leaving the doublet still laced to his hose, he stepped out of the whole thing in one piece and hung it all over the chest at the end of his bed; the empty legs of the hose lay on the floorboards like flaccid brown snakeskins. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he cupped a hand around his genitals and rubbed, unsticking where the soft flesh had been crumpled inside his hose, and wondered as he did so if he would ever be able to touch himself without remembering.

***

When
his
mother's first scream wakes him, he is upstairs in the cramped and damp-smelling room in which they all sleep. He, Sofia, and Giulia are well used to the ineptly smothered creaks and cries of their parents; for a long while, Modesto thought his father was hurting his mother every night, and he would lie wide-eyed in the dark beside his sisters with cold threads of terror creeping through his head, listening to his mother's guttural groans and his father's grunts. At those moments, he hated his father. He knows now, though, what it is that his parents do, and when he hears his mother scream downstairs, he feels no fear, just wonders why it is that they are coupling down there instead of in their bed.

But
the
second
scream
is
sharper,
and
now
Modesto
is
afraid.

“No! You shan't do it!” Her voice is high and thin.

“Agnese, stop it! The decision has been made, and they have come to do it tonight. We need the money.”

“I won't let them. Oh, God, please, Giuseppe, please stop them. They'll kill him…”

“We will have to take her away—she will scare the boy. It will be far more difficult if he is frightened,” says a deep voice Modesto does not recognize, and these words are followed by a confusion of scuffling and more panicked protestations from his mother. The door to the street is opened—a blurt of sound from outside—and then closed.

Sofia
and
Giulia
are
awake
now,
and
the
three
children
listen
silently
to
what
is
happening
below
them. Male voices rumble indistinctly. Giulia holds Modesto's hand. Her grip tightens as the chamber door opens. Their father stands in silhouette and says, “Modesto, get up and put some clothes on. You are needed downstairs—some people have come especially to see you.” His voice is stiff and sounds unfamiliar.

Fear
congeals
in
Modesto's throat as he dresses and follows his father; the cold lump of it swells when he sees three unknown men in long black clothes in the room at the bottom of the stairs. They all turn toward him expectantly, but they do not smile when they see him.

“Is this the boy, Giuseppe?”

Modesto
sees
his
father
nod.

“How old?”

“Ten, Father.” One of the men crouches stiffly and speaks to Modesto in a strange accent he does not recognize. “We have been told what a beautiful voice you have, boy. Do you like singing?”

Modesto
nods.

“Yours is the voice of an angel, they tell me. Now, would it not be a shame to lose that divine gift? In a few years' time, your voice will change, will it not? If God has given you a voice like this, should you not do everything you can to make sure you take care of it? It would be a sin to risk its disappearance as you grow up…”

Modesto
nods.

“We can help you to make sure that you keep your beautiful voice all your life. What we must do is not difficult, and it will not take long. Come now.” And the man takes Modesto's hand. He holds it too tightly, and Modesto wriggles his fingers to try to free them, but the man is too strong; when the man and his two companions leave the house, Modesto has no choice but to go with them.

***

Modesto shivered and pulled the covers up and over himself, tucking them in snugly around his neck with one hand. Pulling his knees up toward his chest, he pushed his other hand down between his legs and held his empty scrotum protectively. The unwanted pictures poured in as though a dam had ruptured, and he pressed his head against the pillow, clamped his thighs around his wrist, and let out a soft noise of distress.

***

There
is
a
huge
tub
in
front
of
the
fire. Made of wood, in slats like a barrel, it has a sheet draped over it, and it seems to be almost filled with water. A woman is turning from the fire with a steaming jug in her sacking-wrapped hands. She adds the water to the tub, puts down the jug, and leaves the room, staring at Modesto as she goes. He does not like the expression on her face.

“Sit down, child,” says one of the men in black clothes.

Modesto
sees
a
chair
near
the
tub
of
water. He sits on it.

“Here,” says one of the tall men. “Drink this.” He holds out a glass to Modesto, who stares up at him and does not move. “Come on, child, drink it.”

Modesto
shakes
his
head.

“It is part of our plan to help keep your marvelous voice safe for you.”

Another
shake
of
the
head.

“I am not offering you a choice, boy—drink it.” The voice is suddenly sharper and more urgent, and Modesto is very frightened. The man pushes the glass into the hands of one of the others, takes Modesto by the wrist, and pulls him to his feet. In one swift movement, he pulls Modesto in toward him so he is standing with his back pressed against the stranger; the man's arm is holding him in tightly, wrist still held firm. With his other hand, he holds Modesto's hair and pulls it backward, turning his face up. Modesto sees someone else's fist holding the glass up in front of him, tilting it toward his mouth. He shuts his lips tightly and turns his face away, but the second man reaches out and grips Modesto's chin and he cannot help it—his mouth opens. Liquid pours into it, and he chokes. But despite his retching, most of the bitter contents of the glass goes down his throat, and then the men sit him back down on the chair.

“We need to wait about ten minutes,” Modesto hears one of them say. They all stand around him. They are very tall in their black clothes, and they do not smile.

A
strange
noise
soon
begins
in
Modesto's ears—a soft hissing—and his face prickles. He begins to feel very sick; his eyelids are heavy. His eyes close, but he stretches them open again and rubs them, afraid to sleep in the company of these men. He wants to run from them, but his limbs will not move now, and soon he closes his eyes again. This time, they stay closed. He leans against the side of the big tub, and his head droops: he no longer has the strength to lift it, though his mind is still clear.

Imprisoned
now
inside
his
body, he feels himself being lifted from the chair. Fingers fumble with his laces, and someone takes off his doublet and shirt. He wants to stop them doing this and shouts at them to leave him alone, but the shout crawls out of his mouth as a mumble, and nobody listens. His shoes and hose are taken off, and someone lifts him up—big hands grip under his armpits and knees. Hard fingers dig in.

He
is
put
into
the
water. It is warm and comes up to his chest. He lies in the water for some time.

“Is he asleep?”

“Yes.”

No,
I'm not! Modesto screams at them silently through cold lips that will not move, and he tries to open his eyes, but the lids are too heavy.

“Be quick, Paolo—the quicker you are, the less likely we are to lose him.”

Another
pair
of
hands
pushes
his
knees
apart; he experiences a brief feeling of terrifying, wide exposure and then big fingers grope between his thighs and grip, a white hot pain cuts through the suffocating torpor, and Modesto's eyes snap open. The noise he makes is not a scream—he cannot do it; it is more of a groan. And the water in the tub reddens around his legs.

***

It was particularly vivid that night. Although virtually no day passed in which he did not think of what had happened to him, it was rarely so painful. He seldom recalled the details with such intensity. He screwed his eyes shut, and an animal noise came from him as he remembered once again the howling enormity of his loss. He was unaware of crying out, but moments after the sound had left his mouth, his door opened and Francesca said, “Dear God, Modesto, whatever is it?” in a voice pitched high with anxiety.

She was untidily bundled in her wrap and wildly tangle-haired. She held the edges of the wrap bunched together in the fingers of one hand and crossed the long room to the bed where Modesto lay curled in a tight bunch of stiffened limbs.

“
Caro
, are you ill?” He turned his face away from her and felt rather than saw Francesca drop to her knees beside his bed. She stroked his hair and murmured words he could not catch. He began to weep then: hard, reluctant sobs that coughed their way out of him as he stiffened in shame to be seen so by her. She rose from her knees and slid under his bedcovers; pushing him across the bed to make room for herself, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled his head onto her chest. Despite himself, Modesto clung to her, and she held him tightly as he wept, one arm around his bulky body, fingers gripping his back, the other hand cupping his head. He could feel her cheek resting on his hair, as her own hair fell around his face.

She held him without speaking for a long while; later, they slept.

***

Modesto opened swollen eyes to find his head still pillowed on his mistress's breast. Her wrap had fallen open, and his cheek was pressed against her skin. Her arm was heavy and warmly sticky upon his back; her legs were scissored around his body.

She still smelled of peaches.

He could feel his face moving gently up and down as Francesca breathed and was struck by a bitter irony: how singular it was, he thought, that he—a mutilated gelding—should be held
gratis
in the arms of this beautiful woman, when other whole men regularly paid a king's ransom for the same privilege.

He could, he knew, have done more than just lie in her arms. She had offered—several times—at the beginning. On hearing his story that first time, she had gazed at him, her lovely mouth part-open in shock. “Oh,
caro
,” she had said in a whisper. “Why? Why would anybody do such a thing? How
could
they?”

He had had no answer.

“What happened, after…”

“I was very sick, for some time. Where they cut me became infected, and I had a fever. For weeks. They thought I would die.” She said nothing, but a single tear swelled, spilled over, and ran down toward the corner of her mouth. “When I was better, they sent me away. To train my voice. It took nearly eight years. And then I began to sing for a living.”

She had stared at him without speaking for a full minute. “And then you met me,” she said. “In Salerno.”

“I did.”

“And…have you ever…” she paused “… ever lain with a woman?”

His face burning with shame, he shook his head. Catching the inside of his cheek between his teeth, he bit it, trying to keep his face steady, and he saw her gaze move to his mouth. “If…if you ever want to…to try,” she said, her fingers fiddling absently with the knot of laces at her breast. “If you ever want to try,
caro
, you have only to ask. Just tell me.” She should have phrased the question differently. He
wanted
to try almost every day, but wanting to and feeling able to are, he realized, two very different things. The thought of trying, and failing, and…of her witnessing his failure, made him feel quite sick.