by S. J. Parris
‘From the man’s seed.’ I was unsure if he was addressing the question to me, nor even if my answer was correct, but I needed the distraction.
‘Ah, but does it?’ He looked at me, seemingly pleased. His cheek was streaked with blood where he had touched it. ‘Opinion is divided. There are those who say the womb is merely the field of Nature in which the seed is planted, and others who think there is some additional element contributed by the woman, without which the seed cannot germinate. What think you?’
‘I imagine these elements are so small as to be invisible. So that we can only study the effects and must work backwards to infer the cause.’
He nodded and wiped his hands on his apron. ‘It may be that we will never unravel the mystery of conception. But that does not mean we should not try, eh? I shall study this further.’ He patted the sealed lid of the jar containing the foetus. I had to look away.
From somewhere beyond the thick stone walls of our underground mortuary came the distant tolling of a bell. My head snapped around and I met Fra Gennaro’s eye. Neither of us had noticed how long ago the sand had run through the hourglass. I glanced down at myself; my habit was daubed with the girl’s blood and God knows what else.
Gennaro pulled his apron over his head. ‘I need fresh water and new candles,’ he said, decisive. ‘I will tell the prior you are taken sick and unable to attend Matins. Close the hatch and draw the bolt after me and do not open the door to anyone until I return. I will give three sharp knocks.’
Before I could object, he was gone. I climbed the stairs and slid the bolt across, shutting myself in with the girl. She lay splayed out like a carcass at the butcher’s, yellow fat and livid red organs bright against her pale skin. I drew closer to the table, torn between fascination and fear. In Gennaro’s absence, I felt emboldened to test the theory of the killer’s image by looking into her eyes, but all I saw was naked terror and my own reflection. It seemed apt, in a twisted way; I could not escape the feeling that we were as guilty of her destruction as the man whose fingers were imprinted around her slender neck. I backed away, chilled by an irrational fear that she might suddenly turn her head and fix me with those eyes. I tried to intone the psalms but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I turned over the hourglass and watched the sand drain through in a fine dust. The minutes that passed until I heard Gennaro’s knock were some of the longest of my life.
‘We need to dispose of her before first light,’ he said, brisk again. ‘I will need your help.’
‘How?’
‘We must take her to Fontanelle.’
‘But the city gates will be locked until dawn.’
He slid me a sidelong look. ‘They can be opened.’
He crossed to the far side of the room and unlocked a wooden door in the back wall. I had been so intent on the girl I had not noticed it before. A breath of cleaner air filtered through and I saw that the door opened on to an underground passageway.
‘Part of the network of tunnels and cisterns belonging to the old Roman aqueduct,’ Gennaro explained. ‘It links to another tunnel beyond the boundary wall and comes out on the other side of Via Toledo. Here – help me with this.’
From the passageway Gennaro dragged a cheap wooden casket into the room. I grabbed the other end and helped him position it alongside the table. When he opened the lid, I saw that it was lined in oilcloth, and the inside was already bloodstained. He drew out a coarsely woven cloak from beneath the lining, such as the poorest wear in winter. It smelled thickly of decay.
‘There is one thing I need to do before we transport her,’ he said, draping the cloak over the casket and turning to face me with a stern look. ‘You may prefer not to watch this, Bruno. I have to skin her.’ He turned back to the table and selected a knife with a thin, cruel blade.
Again, that strange lurch in my gut, as if I had missed a stair. ‘Why?’
‘So that she cannot be recognised. People may be looking for her.’
‘You said there was no one to mourn her.’ I heard the accusation in my voice.
‘Mourn her, no. But if she was a whore in this neighbourhood, her face will be known. The remains we send to Fontanelle must not be identifiable.’
‘It’s barbaric.’
He made an impatient noise with his tongue. ‘Perhaps. But it is also prudent. What we have done here tonight would be hard to explain to the city authorities. I think you see that.’
I bowed my head. ‘Then no one will ever be brought to justice for her murder.’
He laid down his knife and looked at me with an air of incomprehension. ‘You think they would otherwise? A street whore?’ He shook his head. ‘I admire your fervour for justice on behalf of the weak. It is, after all, part of our Christian duty,’ he added, as if he had only just remembered. ‘But it is not our concern here, Bruno. There will be no justice for her in this life. Pray God grant her mercy, and retribution to those who wronged her in the next.’
With this, he grasped a hank of her lush hair and sliced it through cleanly at the roots, as I turned my face away.
All through the long journey to the Fontanelle cavern, he did not say a word to me, except once, to ask if I carried a dagger. When I said yes, he gave a dry laugh. ‘Of course you do. This is Naples. Even novice nuns carry a blade beneath their habits.’ I wondered if he was afraid the girl’s killer might still be lurking nearby. I tried to shut out the thought that Gennaro knew more about the murderer than he was letting on.
We took turns pushing the cart with the makeshift coffin, the two of us wearing old servants’ cloaks with the hoods pulled up close around our faces, despite the warm night, so that we would not be recognised as friars. I could not tell if Gennaro was angry with me for questioning him, or for my squeamishness, or if he was just tired. Reducing the girl to hunks of bloodied meat had not been an easy task. The human body is tougher than it looks; limbs need to be wrenched from sockets, bones sawed through, joints separated with a hammer. Gennaro must have been exhausted, but he did it all alone, while I sat with my back against the wall and my head in my hands, trying to shut out the sounds. What he packed into that box, wrapped carefully in oilcloth to stop the blood dripping through the wood, was no longer human. I stole glances at the casket as he led us through the twisting back streets in the dark, his face dogged and clenched in the light of my lantern.
A couple of times we turned a corner to find a group of young men staggering home from the taverns, arms slung around one another’s shoulders, half-empty bottles dangling from their hands. Each time I braced myself, my hand twitching to my knife in case they should decide to have some sport with us, but they looked at the cart and steered a wide berth around it, their raucous songs faltering away to nothing as they eyed the box. No one wants to be reminded of death in the midst of their revels. I suppose they took us for those men who clear the beggars off the streets. At the Porto San Gennaro I saw the glint in the darkness of coins changing hands as the infirmarian exchanged a few words with the guards, who seemed unsurprised to see him. One of them nodded, before unlocking a small side gate and gesturing us through.
The road began to slope steeply upwards into the Capodimonte hillside. With the incline and the stony track the cart became harder to move, as if it were resisting its destination; we had to put our backs into the work and within minutes I was soaked with sweat beneath my cloak. I had no idea how far it was to Fontanelle – it was not a place I had ever thought to visit – and I did not like to risk Gennaro’s anger by asking him. I knew only that it was a great cavern up in the hills, left behind by the excavation of tufa for building. In the early years of the century, the Spanish authorities had begun clearing the city’s churchyards to make room for more bodies, and the old remains had been taken to the Fontanelle cave. Since then it had become a dumping ground for the city’s outcast dead: those who could not afford or had been denied burial in consecrated ground. Lepers. Sodomites. Suicides. The lazzaroni – the nameless poor who died in the streets
. Plague victims were thrown in, whenever there was an outbreak. Fontanelle had become a great charnel-house of the unwanted; people said you could smell it from the north gate if the wind was in the wrong direction.
I caught the stench as the incline grew steeper and the track widened out into a plateau; rotting flesh and stale smoke, the kind of bitter ash that hung in the air and worked its way into your nose and mouth as you breathed. A man lurched forward out of the shadows to greet us; again, the chink and flash of money from somewhere inside Fra Gennaro’s cloak. A small brazier burned by the entrance to the cavern. In its orange glow, I saw that the man’s face was badly deformed, though his body looked strong; his brow bulged low over one side like an ape’s and he had been born with a cleft palate. Perhaps this was the only place he could find work. At least the dead would not throw stones at him in the street, or shout insults. He and Gennaro spoke in low voices; I had the sense that they too were familiar with one another. I watched as the man took the cart and wheeled it towards the mouth of the cave, a maw of deeper shadows that swallowed him until he disappeared from view.
I turned to see Gennaro studying me.
‘Are you all right?’ he said.
Beneath my robe, my legs were trembling as if with cold. I told myself it was the climb. I gestured towards the cave.
‘What if he tells someone?’
‘He won’t.’
‘How do you know? Surely you can’t see a body in that state and not ask questions?’
‘Part of his job is knowing not to ask questions.’ Gennaro squinted into the darkness and pulled his cloak tighter. ‘Besides, he won’t bite the hand that feeds him.’
I did not immediately grasp his meaning, until I thought of the coins chinking quietly into the man’s hand, their familiarity. Of course: this would not be the first time Gennaro had brought a dismembered body here for disposal under cover of darkness, no explanations required. I wondered how many other illegal anatomisations he had carried out in that little mortuary under the storehouse, with its convenient tunnel for ferrying bodies out unseen.
The man returned with the cart and the empty box.
‘I’ll let you know if I find anything suitable,’ he muttered, darting a wary glance at me. Gennaro gave him a curt nod and turned again towards the road.
A pale glimmer of dawn light showed along the eastern horizon as we walked back down the track, the city a dark stain below us.
‘Does he sell you bodies?’ I asked bluntly.
Gennaro looked sideways at me. ‘Remember your oath, Brother.’
We walked the rest of the way in silence. Under the cloak I could feel stiff patches on my robe where the girl’s blood had dried. I wondered how I would explain that to the servant who came to take my laundry.
‘I prescribe a hot bath for this fever that has kept you from tonight’s services, Bruno,’ Gennaro said, as if he had heard my thoughts. ‘I will instruct the servants to fill the tub in the infirmary. Clean yourself well. I will see to your clothes.’
‘Will you write about this?’ I asked him, as we approached the gate.
He smiled, for the first time since we had set out. ‘Of course. This is one of the most important anatomisations I have ever performed. To study a child in utero is a rare piece of luck, as I told you.’
Not for the child, I thought. ‘But you cannot publish your account, surely?’
‘True. At least, not in Naples, and not under my own name. Eventually, however, who knows …’ His voice tailed off and his eyes grew distant. Perhaps he was dreaming of a book full of his experiments and discoveries.
‘But in the meantime – are you not afraid someone will find your notes?’
He smiled again, like a child holding a secret. ‘I keep them very safe. And I trust you, as I said.’
I forced myself to return his smile, though he meant that I was now as deeply implicated as he was. In ways I could not yet fully comprehend, I felt irreversibly altered by what we had done that night. Despite scrubbing myself with scalding water and a bristle brush until my skin grew raw, I could not erase the smell of blood, nor the memory of the girl’s wild death stare. Fra Gennaro made me up a bed in the infirmary, so that I was excused the office of Lauds on account of my supposed fever, but I could not rest. If I closed my eyes I saw her walking towards me with her hands outstretched, pleading, before she reached up and tore the skin from her own face until it hung in tatters from the bloodied pulp beneath.
The following night, I barely waited until the sun had set before slipping out of the side gate and through the alleys to the Cerriglio. I needed company, drink, the easy conversation of my friends. Pushing open the door, I was assaulted by its familiar heat and noise, the animated shouting of a dozen different arguments, its odour of charred pig fat and young red wine and sweat. In the back, someone was strumming a lute and singing a love song; his friends were filling in bawdy lyrics, howling with laughter. I stood still for a moment on the threshold, allowing the tavern’s chaos to crash over me, pulling me back to the world I knew. I had not been able to eat all day, and now the smell of hot bread and meat tickled my throat, filling my mouth with salt and liquid.
At least half the Cerriglio’s customers were young friars from San Domenico and their companions. Gaudy women moved among the tables, stroking a forearm or sliding a finger under someone’s chin as they passed, gauging the response. One caught my gaze as I stood there and I blinked quickly away; when I looked at their painted faces, all I could see was the bone and gristle beneath the skin.
I scanned the room, looking for my friend Paolo. Laughter blasted across from the large table in the centre, where Fra Donato was holding court, as usual. He glanced up and saw me standing alone; his eyes narrowed and he leaned across and muttered something to Fra Agostino beside him, whose lip twisted into a sneer. Neither of them troubled to hide the fact that they were talking about me. I had barely spoken to Fra Donato, but I knew his reputation. His father was one of those Neapolitan barons who had managed to cling on to his land and titles under the Spanish, which led people to speculate about what he offered them in return. But he was a valuable benefactor to San Domenico, and his son was regarded as a prior in the making, despite the boy’s obvious distaste for the privations of religious life. Fra Donato was tall and unusually handsome, with the blond looks of a northerner; it was said he was a bastard and his mother a courtesan from Venice, or Milan, or even, in some versions, France or England. Whatever the truth, his father indulged him generously and he, Donato, had certainly learned the trick of buying influence. He was a few years older than me; I had not expected to attract his attention, but recently I had been aware of his scrutiny in services and at chapter meetings. I guessed I had been pointed out to him as a potential troublemaker, and that this had piqued his interest. Now, though, hot with the fear that people could smell the girl’s blood on my skin, I could not help but interpret any suspicious glances as proof that someone had seen me last night and knew my dreadful secret. I felt the colour rising in my face as Donato and his friend continued to whisper, their eyes still fixed lazily on me.
‘Bruno!’
I whipped around at the sound of my name and saw Paolo at a corner table with a couple of his cousins, a jug of wine between them. He raised a cup and I hurried over, grateful to be rescued.
‘I thought you had a fever?’ He poured me a drink and handed it over.
‘It broke in the night. I’m fine now.’
He grinned. ‘Well you look fucking awful. Are you sure you should be out of bed?’
I gulped down the wine, feeling its warmth curl through my limbs. I was about to make some light-hearted comment to fend off any further questioning, when I was prevented by a commotion from behind us. Voices raised in anger; glass shattering, the crash of furniture hitting the floor. I turned, and I swear that, just for an instant, my heart stopped beating.
The dead girl stood in the centre of the tavern, in front of Donato’s table. She had knock
ed over a chair, it seemed, and dashed the glass from his hand. A blood-red puddle spread across the table and dripped slowly on to the floor. She was shaking with rage, her right hand extended, pointing at him. The hubbub of music and conversation died away in anticipation; people always enjoyed a good fight at the Cerriglio.
It was her; there was no question about it. The same glossy fall of black hair, the marble skin, the delicate features and wide-spaced eyes as unspoilt as they would have been in life. The same slender throat, unmarked now. But she had knocked over the chair; how could that be, if she was a spirit? I held myself rigid with fear, my hand so tight around the cup I feared it would crack, though I could not will myself to move. I did not believe in spirits of the dead and yet, buried deep, I had not shaken off the childhood memories of my grandmother’s tales, of revenants and unhallowed souls returning to be revenged on the living.
The girl balled her fists on her hips and cast a defiant glance around the room. I froze as her eyes swept over me, but there was no flicker of recognition. If she had come for vengeance, surely I would be her first target? But she turned her blistering gaze once more to Donato, threw her head back and spat in his face.
A cheer went up from the onlookers, all except Donato’s comrades. He wiped his cheek with a sleeve, but his movements were those of a sleepwalker. He was staring at the girl with a mixture of horror and disbelief.
‘Where is she?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who!’ The girl quivered with rage.
Donato rose to his feet and attempted to recover some dignity. ‘You have me confused with someone, puttana. I do not think I know you. Unless I was more drunk than I remember last night.’
This won him a smattering of laughter from the crowd. The girl tossed her hair and her eyes flashed.
‘Oh, you know me, sir. And I know who you are.’
‘So do most of your sex in Naples.’ More laughter.
‘Have you killed her?’ Her voice was clear and strong; she made sure everyone could hear.
