by Philip Kazan
‘Thank fuck you’re here, Renzi!’ he said, then scowled at me. ‘Who’s this?’
‘The new comandante, Nencio.’
‘Shit.’ Nencio saluted hurriedly.
‘So …’ I had no idea what I was supposed to do here. ‘What happened?’ I asked, because I had to start somewhere.
‘A whore knifed her customer, sir,’ said Nencio. ‘Upstairs.’
‘Right, then. You’d better show me.’
‘Bring her out here!’ someone yelled from the street.
‘Yes! Bring us the slut! We’re the magistrates now!’
‘Shut that door, and keep it shut,’ I told Nencio, and started up the stairs, looking around me as I climbed. The house was quite old and cheaply built, judging by the creaking stairs and smell of damp. There was a large room on the ground floor – I had glimpsed it through a stone arch – decorated with garish frescoes. There were more frescoes in the stairwell: writhing women with strange proportions and blancmange-like flesh, men endowed with both muscles and paunches, brandishing gargantuan members. The painter seemed to have had limited experience of the human body, which struck me as strange, given that he had been working in a bawdy house. His work reminded me quite strongly of Maestro Vasari’s frescoes inside the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, but with copulation involved. I had seen worse, both in the pamphlets and chapbooks that circulate in soldiers’ camps, and in life. This wasn’t the first bawdy house I had been in, though before this I had always been there to retrieve deserters and stragglers from my company. There were real women at the top of the stairs, herded against the flimsy-looking bannister by more policemen. There must be a full patrol here. The whores stared at me as I came up the stairs. I suppose I looked like a client: my sword marked me out as a nobleman, or at least as someone who could pay the hefty licence to carry one. But they didn’t flirt, they glared. The youngest was no more than fifteen; the oldest probably older than fifty. Her breasts, barely hidden by a silk shift, were hanging flat against her chest. The youngest had elaborately braided hair pinned against her scalp. She was strongly built but pale, like the girls from the Pietà. Every one of them carried some mark of the French pox: a sore on a lip, a blistered nipple. They watched me in silence, and I realised that they were not cowed, they were angry.
‘In here, Comandante,’ said Renzi. He opened a door, one of a row along one long, lavishly frescoed wall. I stepped into a narrow room which looked startlingly like a convent cell but for the crudely coloured Venetian prints framed on the back wall: scenes cut from the infamous book I Modi, dog-eared pages of which could be found in most cavalrymen’s saddlebags.
A man was sitting on the rucked-up sheets of the bed in nothing but his shirt. He had a hand clamped around his arm above the elbow, and there was some blood on his forearm. Sprawled at his feet was a naked woman. She was lying face down, her arms flung out. The floor was dark wood planking, and it took me a moment to realise that she was surrounded by a thickening pool of blood. I bent down and touched her shoulder. She didn’t move, and her skin was only just warm.
‘This woman is dead,’ I said, and looked up to see Renzi and the man on the bed regarding me as if I had just said something incredibly stupid. ‘I … Constable Renzi, you reported that a man had been knifed here.’
‘So I have been,’ said the half-naked man petulantly. ‘Look what she did to me!’ He took his hand away to reveal a gash about an inch long on his arm. It was only skin deep; it wasn’t even bleeding any more. Then I noticed a bloodstained knife on the bed next to him, a wooden-handled country blade like a fishmonger might use. ‘There, you see?’ the man said, following my eyes. ‘She cut me with that, the little bitch!’ Renzi rolled his eyes and nodded with obvious sympathy.
‘And you killed her,’ I said. He stared at me as if I was an idiot. I could smell wine coming off him, and that sour stink of men in rut as I bent down and gently turned the body over. She was young, and her eyes were open and round with the final shock of violent death. She might have looked surprised, but it would hardly have been a surprise to her, would it, to come to this end. She had been stabbed at least five times in the chest, a ragged scatter of wounds from her left shoulder to her left breast.
‘Why?’ I asked the man.
‘She went mad.’ He shrugged.
‘And again, why?’
‘I wanted to do it in the other place. You know. She wouldn’t let me. I even told her I’d pay a little more. For God’s sake! I began to take my pleasure anyway, and she took a knife from under the mattress and did this.’ He squeezed his arm and pouted in self-pity.
‘So you took the knife from her …’
‘I was defending myself, signore,’ he said, as though it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
I had been here before, of course. Not this exact room, with this exact corpse. But in other places: Brussels, Trieste, a village near Orléans, a garrison town on the Hungarian border. I would have found some man from the company spattered in blood, either slack-faced with drink or ready with his defence, his excuse. Those men would be hanging in the town square or from a prominent tree by morning. I had made sure of that – mercenary justice is expedient and swift. Other companies allowed their men to rape and murder, but mine did not. Here, though, I wasn’t the judge. Here, there was an angry mob waiting to lynch a woman who had already been executed for the crime of refusing to be sodomised.
‘Your name?’ I demanded.
The man blinked. ‘Rienzo di Giovanni da Empoli,’ he said.
‘Take him to the Stinche,’ I told Renzi. The constable extended a friendly hand to the man on the bed.
‘Better get dressed, mate,’ he said.
‘No!’ I barked. ‘Take him like this. And tie his hands.’ Renzi looked at me in amazement.
‘But the crowd outside—’ Renzi began.
‘You’ve got a full patrol here,’ I told him. ‘If you can’t deal with a few drunks, you can hand in your resignations in the morning. Or you can suggest that they lynch this piece of dung instead. Your choice, Constable.’
I left Renzi and the killer muttering to each other and went to find the madam, who Renzi told me was called Mother Chiara. She was downstairs, standing in the corner of what passed for a kitchen, a dark little room with bare brick walls stained black with smoke, smelling of boiled kale and old onions. A fleshy woman in third-hand clothes that had, perhaps ten years ago, been the height of fashion in Venice. When she turned around I saw that she was in early middle-age, wide-faced, wide-bodied, the white lead with which she had painted her cheeks streaked with tears and spattering her exposed neck and chest with chalky blotches. One of her hands was gripping the sleeve of her dress so hard that her nails had gone through the cloth.
‘My name is Onorio Celavini. I’m comandante of the sbirri of the Otto di Guardia,’ I said. The woman glared at me. ‘I’m sorry that this trouble has come under your roof,’ I went on. ‘The man is under arrest and will be taken to the Stinche. Can you tell me the name of the poor girl upstairs?’
The woman still glared, though her expression was less hostile now and more surprised. ‘Her name?’ There was a long pause. ‘It was Sofia.’
‘And was the man who …’ I saw the woman flinch in anticipation of my words. ‘Was he a regular customer of hers?’ I asked.
‘No. He’s never come in here before now,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse and heavily tinged with the accent of San Frediano across the river.
‘He tried to make her do something she didn’t want,’ I told her. ‘She refused and pulled a knife on him.’
‘What is his name?’ the woman said, raising her head and staring at me with so much anger that I almost stepped backwards.
‘Rienzo di Giovanni da Empoli,’ I said.
The woman hissed. ‘May his guts be eaten by snakes!’ She spat on the floor in front of her. ‘I know that name. He is a rapist and a sodomite. He’s caused trouble in other houses. He should never have been allowed
through our door. I wasn’t here. I … Oh, Holy Mother! I went out to fetch a bottle of wine from Falco down the street. One of the girls must have let him in …’ She let go of her sleeve and began to tear at her elaborately plaited and pinned hair. It came loose and fell around her like sleek brown snakes, which she gathered up and pressed against her face, her shoulders heaving with sobs.
‘It was this Rienzo who killed the girl, signora,’ I said gently. ‘No one is to blame except him. He will face justice.’
‘What justice?’ she burst out. ‘He will pretend remorse and be fined a month’s wages! Damn his soul!’
‘I will do everything I can to see that he is given what he deserves,’ I said. ‘I give you my word.’
‘Your word?’ She let go of her hair and it fell loose, wet and plastered with white lead. She was smiling, an awful, joyless curl of her mouth. ‘I’ve not seen you before, Signor Comandante. You don’t seem to be new to brothels, but you are plainly very new to Florence. So don’t talk to me about justice. You are a man, and he is a man. Your loyalty is to that thing between your legs, which you share with Rienzo di Giovanni, and with the magistrates of the Otto, and every man who comes in here quivering like a dog who’s smelt a bitch. Justice doesn’t apply to a man’s cock if its owner has money. That pig has enough money to spend in brothels, so he has enough to pay a little fine. So to hell with your justice.’
‘I’m sorry, signora. I swear I’ll do my best,’ I said. I was trembling, full of my own rage and my own sadness. She was right, though she didn’t know why. I shared nothing at all with Rienzo, least of all my anatomy, but I wasn’t the capo of a mercenary company now, I was a paid functionary. A servant of the Grand Duke, on thirty-five scudi a year. I had some power, but I didn’t yet know how much. In the brothel kitchen that night, I felt almost as helpless as I had ever felt in my life.
‘I will make sure that the Misericordia are informed, so they can collect your girl.’
‘The Misericordia? Why, signore, would the Misericordia come for her, as though she were a nameless corpse pulled from the river? Sofia will stay here tonight. This is her home.’
‘I only meant …’ I searched for something else to tell her, some fragment of consolation. ‘I would be glad to pay for a decent funeral,’ I said.
‘You think I can’t pay?’ she whispered. ‘You think I … I would not pay? For my own girl to be properly buried?’ She groaned and bit her lip, her whole body quivering as she strained to keep control, to stay on her feet. Her lip split, and a bead of blood ran down and collected in the white lead crease of her chin. ‘Sofia was my daughter. There, signore. Now please, get out and leave us in peace.’
I stayed a little longer, talking to the women who were willing to answer my questions. By the time I left, the crowd had wandered away. A dead whore promised no entertainment for them when there were live ones all around. I visited each brothel on the street and questioned the women about the murderer. Then I went back to the Bargello and wrote a report for the magistrates, making sure that every detail of Rienzo di Giovanni’s life, his character and his habits were there to help with his interrogation, which I recommended should be as thorough as his evil reputation deserved. There were wounded girls, violated women, even a missing girl whose disappearance trailed Rienzo’s name. It was getting dark by the time I left the Bargello. Borgo Ognissanti was still bustling. Girls were returning to the Pietà like shabby bees to a hive. Bells started ringing all over Florence. The door to the Pietà’s chapel was ajar, and something made me stop in the middle of the street, hesitate, and go inside. It was a plain, whitewashed space with a beamed ceiling. A dreadful painting of the dead Christ in his mother’s arms, done in cheap colours and unskilled lines, hung behind the altar, which was just a table, though covered with a gorgeous silk cloth of intricate detail. A few girls were sitting in the plain black pews. I took a seat at the very back and bowed my head. I prayed, as I always did, to the Virgin and Santa Celava, holding her medal in my hand as I listened to the comings and goings in the home next door. Looms were still clacking, and the air was full of the smells of smoke, steam, wet silk, boiling cabbage. Yesterday I had passed a little funeral, a coffin of rough pine boards leaving this chapel, trailing a short procession of girls. An older woman in black robes led the coffin. They headed up the borgo towards the city walls and were soon enveloped by the morning throng. Here in the chapel, one of the girls was coughing, a deep, wet cough that she was trying to stifle but could not. Another, sitting almost opposite me, had clear signs of the French pox. They were all thin, and pale from their lives spent working in dark rooms. Yet they came into the chapel arm in arm, some of them; I could hear merry voices and laughter in the house, and somewhere above me, I could faintly hear singing: a bawdy tune that was doing the rounds of the Mercato Vecchio. Then the older woman I had seen leading the funeral came in. Some of the girls got up and curtsied. There was a chorus of soft voices: ‘Good evening, Sister Brigida!’ I couldn’t help noticing that there were smiles, that Sister Brigida touched the girl with the cough gently on the shoulder as she walked past. She saw me, and her serene expression didn’t change, but she came over and sat down next to me.
‘Welcome to our church, signore,’ she said. She was older than I had thought. Her face was deeply lined, and age had thinned her lips and revealed the sinews of her neck, but she gave off a sort of calm vitality. Her voice was surprisingly rough, and she spoke in the accent of this eastern quarter. ‘We welcome guests, although perhaps a man might find himself out of place, or indeed in the wrong place.’
‘I hope I’m not out of place,’ I said. ‘I have not been in Florence long. My name is Onorio Celavini. I’m one of the comandantes of the Bargello sbirri.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said, frowning. ‘None of my girls is in trouble, I hope.’
‘No. Not at all. I’m simply your neighbour, and …’ I took a deep breath. ‘Another girl was murdered today. A prostitute,’ I went on, not entirely sure why, but feeling oddly secure next to this woman. ‘She was murdered. By a man, a client, and no one …’ I shrugged and looked down at my knees. ‘I wanted to see a place where women seemed safe, I suppose.’
Sister Brigida looked at me in surprise. ‘Girls aren’t safe anywhere, Signor Comandante. Here we simply do the best we can. We rely on charity and most of all on God’s kindness. The one is hardly sufficient and the other I accept with a glad heart, though He seems to want to take my girls to Himself when I should like to keep them here with me. But you are welcome here. It will be good to have a gentleman of the sbirri who looks at my girls with kindness and not with suspicion. Or greed,’ she added. ‘Who is that?’ She nodded at the medal that was hanging against my doublet.
‘Her name is Santa Celava,’ I said.
‘Santa Clara?’
‘No, signora. She’s just a local saint from where I was born. People there call her the patron of lost and hidden things.’
‘Would that not be Saint Anthony?’
‘People used to say that Saint Anthony had enough work to do. Celava listened to us because she had been one of us. They also used to say that women are better at finding things.’
We both smiled. ‘Well, you may pray to her here as often as you wish,’ said Sister Brigida. ‘I think the Pietà has great need of a patron for the lost.’
She nodded to me, rose and went down to the front of the chapel. Soon afterwards, a priest came in, a Dominican. As he began to celebrate Mass, I retreated into my thoughts. What did I want for the dead girl in Chiasso di Malacucina? Justice? Or simple revenge? It was both, I supposed. Justice for Sofia, and for Mother Chiara, though scant, very scant. Revenge for me. Or was I just feeding my ghosts, giving them the blood they craved? I couldn’t stop myself imagining Sofia’s last moments, because I had lived them myself. Except that I was here, still breathing, though strangely transformed, so much so that I had not recognised a grieving mother, nor she a bereaved daughter. And yet it was my signature on the
report that damned her killer. There was power there after all. Hidden, yes – it would take me a while to find out how to wear it. But it was there.
BOOK III
CHAPTER NINETEEN
For a while I lay curled up on the bed, cradling the tiny rind of gold to me as if it were a child. The ring that Zanobia Linucci’s murderer had given her, that her cook had stolen, which I had taken from a fence in a dirty Florence warehouse. I had carried it all day without knowing what it was. But when I had recognised it in the chapel of the Pietà the past had come crashing in on me like the roofbeam of a burning house.
It was my mother’s betrothal ring. I slipped it onto my finger and put it to my lips. Two hounds: Maria Capacci and Amerigo Ormani. I could hear their voices telling me: ‘See here. That is Mamma, that is Papà.’ I had teethed on that ring, mumbled my sore gums against the stone and the hounds. Two hounds for fidelity. I could barely remember my mother’s face. The last time I had seen her, she had looked as Zanobia Linucci had looked this morning. Or perhaps that had been another murdered woman. I had seen so many. I sometimes wonder if I’m the only one who sees each poor dead woman as a person, not as a chattel, an inconvenience, a stain on someone else’s honour. Then again, I suppose they are always Maria Ormani.
I didn’t sleep that night, the night after Zanobia Linucci’s murder. It was stiflingly hot, and the miasma of the dyeworks and the river mud had finally managed to creep into the house. The stench curled itself around me, ripe with rot and sharp with minerals, as clinging and insistent as the memories that wandered through the empty rooms, whispering in my ears. My nightshirt felt like a lead sheet and itched. When I sat down, the wood of the chair seemed to suck at my skin. I went out into the courtyard, but the air was thicker there, and a rat was fidgeting around in the dry fronds of the date palm. At last I lay down on the flagstones in the kitchen and floated in a twilight where the cold stone brought relief but was painful as well; however, I couldn’t have one without the other. At some point in the early hours I felt something unfamiliar on my hand and found that I was wearing my mother’s ring. When had I put it on? I couldn’t remember. I twisted it around my finger, the contours of the faithful hounds rolling like a familiar, distant landscape. Golden hills seen from above, beautiful and safe. And then I saw my mother, sprawled on a floor like I was sprawled now, like Zanobia had lain, like a broken doll. Augusto Ellebori killed my father in his sleep, and when my mother had woken, had killed her too as she fought to understand if she was still dreaming. Then he had come for me.