The Phoenix of Florence

by Philip Kazan

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I went back to the Bargello. That forbidding, impersonal place felt almost comforting as its grim smells and sounds wrapped themselves around me. Scarfa beckoned me over as soon as I walked in, but I pretended not to see him. The file I had been compiling on the Ellebori was locked in one of the drawers of my desk. I took it out. The weight of it in my hand, which still remembered the feel of Smeralda Ellebori’s own hands, took me by surprise; the papers shifted inside the binder like bones inside a dead limb. Scarfa was scowling at me. He waved at me again, but I shook my head. ‘Come with me, please, Capo,’ I called, and headed for the magistrates’ chambers.

  Cavaliere del Caccia was conferring with another magistrate when I walked in, Scarfa grumbling behind me. I dropped the file on his desk and clasped my hands behind my back.

  ‘What’s this?’ del Caccia snapped, annoyed at the interruption.

  ‘The activities of the bandit Lodovigo Ellebori and his son Augusto Ellebori, of Pietrodoro,’ I said.

  Del Caccia made an exasperated grunt. ‘This is hardly apposite, Celavini. I clearly told you that I wanted answers regarding the murders on Ponte Santa Trìnita.’

  ‘Here is your answer,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice under control.

  ‘Do we really have time for this?’ asked the other magistrate, whose name was Bondoni.

  ‘This isn’t a good idea, Onorio,’ hissed Scarfa, touching my arm.

  ‘If you’ll just give me a moment, sirs,’ I said. ‘This is your answer. I can name both victim and culprits.’

  ‘The victim was Pietro Vennini,’ said del Caccia shortly.

  ‘The true victim was Donna Zanobia Linucci,’ I said. ‘Widow of Giovanni Linucci of Pitigliano.’ Bondoni opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off. ‘Prior to her marriage she was Zanobia Orsini, daughter – illegitimate – of the Count of Pitigliano.’

  ‘Orsini?’ del Caccia repeated.

  ‘Segretario Boschi will confirm it. And, Capo Scarfa, you have the pendant that belonged to Donna Zanobia?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘It certainly bears the arms of Pitigliano,’ he said.

  ‘Orsini …’ Del Caccia seemed to have the word attached to his tongue. ‘Dear God. There’ll be such a scandal. We’ll have to tell His Highness at once. Go on, Celavini.’

  ‘She was killed on the orders of one Bartolomeo Ormani, her lover and patron. The motive is as obvious as it seems: she betrayed him with Pietro Vennini. An affair of honour. Vennini has had something like this coming to him for years, but God knows, his end was spectacular. Which cannot be said for Donna Zanobia.’

  ‘Have you arrested this Ormani?’

  ‘He left the city with his gang of assassins, if indeed he was ever here. I think it likely that he wasn’t.’

  ‘Damn him!’ Bondoni exclaimed. ‘A band of assassins in our city! Where is he?’

  ‘With respect, Cavaliere, the question is, who is he?’ I said. ‘Ormani is a false name. The Ormanis were thrown out of Florence with the rest of the White Guelphs nearly three hundred years ago, and …’ I paused and licked my dry lips. ‘And they never came back. But they hadn’t vanished from the earth. A branch of the family had thrived in the south of Tuscany.’

  ‘Then we know where to find him!’

  ‘Ah. Except that Bartolomeo Ormani died twenty years ago.’ My audience all threw up their hands in frustration. I’d caught them, all right. Crimes so rarely make for good stories. They are simply the muddy distillate of humanity’s worst impulses. And anyway, this was no different from any other crime, any other report, after all: lust, jealousy, rage, revenge, arrogance and, finally, stupidity. But I wasn’t drawing my story out for effect. It felt like each link of it was part of a chain wrapped around my heart, and the telling was a painful disgorging, as though I was purging some long-held poison. ‘The Ormanis are all dead,’ I managed, because that was the poison: the tincture of truth and falsehood which for twenty years had corrupted my true nature. For a moment I felt as I had earlier, as if I had discarded my clothes, my shell, and revealed myself. I was dead. Yet I was standing here.

  ‘Go on,’ said Capo Scarfa. I realised that I’d fallen silent.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and forced myself back into the present. ‘The Ormani family was destroyed in a feud by the Ellebori family, with whom they shared the lands belonging to a village called Pietrodoro. We know – the Grand Duchy knows – the Ellebori very well.’ I laid my hand on the file of documents. ‘I can prove that the man calling himself Bartolomeo Ormani is really Augusto Ellebori, lord of Pietrodoro, bandit and outlaw. And more: that Zanobia Linucci was not his mistress but his secret wife, and that it was Ellebori’s plan to form an alliance with the County of Pitigliano against His Highness Don Francesco.’

  They all bombarded me with questions. How did I know? What proof did I have? Were there witnesses?

  ‘What is this file?’ asked Bondoni after he had banged on the desk for quiet.

  ‘Every report on the Ellebori, Cavaliere. Every mention. Every trace, going back almost twenty years.’

  ‘And why …? What was your interest in them before this sorry affair?’ asked del Caccio, puzzled.

  I kept my face impassive, though at last I wanted to smile. ‘When I was escorting the body of Don Orazio del Forese here from Rome, our company passed through the Val d’Orcia. I heard that there was an army of bandits operating beyond the laws of the Grand Duke, keeping the land in fear, harassing pilgrims on the Via Francigena, plundering mule trains and holding merchants and their goods to ransom. I’m a soldier, sirs, and I suppose I always will be. You might say it was out of habit, but whatever the reason, I began to wonder how bandits like the Ellebori – and the Piccolomini and Aldobrandeschi, who claim to be rebels but are just common thieves – could take hold of a country like Tuscany, and how they could be fought. It’s been a … a personal interest of mine. A bit of a nail in the head.’ I tapped my temple. ‘I thought that one day I might suggest a military solution.’

  ‘That would be far outside the jurisdiction of the sbirri,’ said Bondoni sternly, but Scarfa was stifling a grin.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ I said. ‘This is something I’ve done on my own time, sirs. We old soldiers’ – I glanced at Scarfa – ‘can’t help dreaming of action.’

  ‘Comandante Celavini is still young and ambitious,’ Scarfa said. ‘And he’s right, the bandits are a growing problem to the south and west. Even around Arezzo. At some point something will have to be done.’

  ‘It is not a priority for His Highness,’ Bondoni said, with a shrug that said: Nothing that we do is a priority for the Grand Duke.

  ‘No, indeed it isn’t. But this is good work, Comandante. Very good. Holy Virgin, what a mess,’ said del Caccio. ‘Now leave us, please. We need to work out how we will proceed. That bastard Vennini – even dead he’s making us all step in shit.’

  ‘That was impressive,’ Scarfa told me when we were back in the sbirri offices.

  ‘Thank you, Capo,’ I said. I felt exhausted, and the griping pain in my belly had returned, along with the first tendrils of a headache.

  ‘I mean it. You know, of course, that nothing else will happen?’ he went on. I stopped on the way to my desk and stared at him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that the criminals are no longer in Florence. They’re probably at the far end of the country by now, if they’re even still in Tuscany. The magistrates are perfectly happy that Vennini got himself killed – they’re delighted, in fact. And that poor woman …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘An adulteress. Who cares?’

  ‘Capo!’ I said, appalled.

  ‘No, really. You are a truly honourable man and the way you stand up for women is commendable, though a lot of people don’t understand exactly why you bother. We’re the police, is the general feeling, not the Umiltà. I don’t agree with them, but I think you’ve got more than one nail in your head, Onorio. Let it go. Reme
mber that we’re servants of the law, and, in the end, of the Grand Duke. Do you think for one minute …?’ He lowered his voice and came over to where I was standing. He leant and almost whispered into my ear. ‘Do you think that the Otto will want any of this to be public? The death of an Orsini in our city is a great embarrassment. The quicker this is all put to bed the better.’ He must have seen that I was dumb with shock, because he took my shoulder and shook it gently, one man talking sense to another. ‘You’ve done fine work, Onorio. My advice is this: go out, get drunk, wake up tomorrow and stretch out in bed knowing you don’t have to come back to this shithole for a month. Let Carnesecchi deal with the Vennini business.’

  ‘But, Capo …’

  ‘Go home. You’re my best officer, Onorio. After this, you’ll have everyone’s eye. I’ll wager that you could be capo one day, if you want to be. But for God’s sake, man, it is just a job.’

  I was still a soldier – God help me, would I always be a soldier? – so I obeyed my superior’s order and went home. But first I stopped at the Pietà and knelt in the chapel. I prayed for the soul of Zanobia Linucci, and for Smeralda Ellebori, asking the Virgin to bring them peace. The house was empty, though my housekeeper, Gherarda, had left the place swept and smelling faintly of lemon and rosemary. I tied a cloth between my legs, went to the kitchen, lit a small fire in the stove and boiled some water. I steeped dried motherwort leaves and caraway seeds, and drank the hot tisane from a bowl, sitting on the lichen-crusted stone bench in the courtyard. Sparrows piped busily in the bushes, and martens swooped down and around the walls on scissored wings, shrilling with what seemed like delight but was perhaps something else entirely. Perhaps, for the martens, this was just a job.

  I didn’t go out and get drunk. Instead I went to Zanobia Linucci’s funeral. Wearing my best black doublet and hose, black sleeves damasked with silver and a simple black velvet cap, and carrying only a dagger, I waited in the shadows near the church of San Biagio until I heard the clang of a muffled bell coming down Via Pellicceria. First came the usual gaggle of street children, out when they should have been long asleep, skipping in front of Father Iacopo and behind him, the figures draped in long black cloaks, hoods drawn down over their faces, each carrying a long white candle. It was a still, close night and the flames barely wavered as the marchers came on, treading slowly to the pulse of the bell. I watched as the coffin, draped in silver-spangled black velvet and carried by six hooded brothers of the Misericordia, swayed into the little piazza in front of the church. There weren’t many mourners. As the coffin bearers climbed the steps into the church, I recognised the usual professionals, men and women who made their living by following the coffins of the unpopular or the lonely. But mingled with these familiar faces were others: Simone, Donna Zanobia’s steward; Lisabetta, her maid; and some of the other servants, although Riccio the cook had absented himself. Smeralda was not there, but that wasn’t a surprise. The Salvuccis wouldn’t want any association with scandal.

  Another man, in inconspicuous clothes, slipped into the church behind Father Iacopo. I recognised his hollow eyes and neatly clipped beard: a secretary from the Signoria who acted as one of Don Francesco’s intelligencers, a gatherer of information whose gleanings were sometimes shared with the magistrates of the Eight but never with us humble policemen. As I came up the steps behind him I nodded familiarly, and he nodded back with blank politeness, as though I was a stranger, though he knew my face very well.

  It was a short funeral. Father Iacopo did little to hide his disdain for the proceedings, and very soon Zanobia Linucci was being lowered down into oblivion through a hole in the floor, a dark rectangle lit from below by the dirty red glow of the sextons’ torches as they waited for the coffin. I could hear them scraping and shunting it unceremoniously into some less cluttered part of the crypt as I left the church, a corner of a room crowded with the bones and dust of countless strangers. It was a long way from Pitigliano, but then again, as the illegitimate sister of a count, it had always been her destiny to be forgotten, no matter how brightly she had tried to burn. The thought lowered my spirits even further, and I paused on the threshold and said a prayer to Santa Celava, asking her to watch over the lost woman. When I came out onto the small landing in front of the church door, I found the piazza still crowded with people, most of them professional mourners waiting for Simone the steward to pay them. Two Misericordia brothers were chatting with Father Iacopo, and the usual curious drunks and beggars of the neighbourhood were drifting around the edges of the crowd. I didn’t want to linger: my stomach was cramping, and my breasts were aching and swelling uncomfortably inside their binding. I was thinking of another tisane and my bed as I jogged down the steps, and so I wasn’t paying attention when a figure slipped out of the dark alley that led down to Via del Terme. Most people coming from there at night looked furtive, and usually for good reason, so I gave him no more thought. I was making my way through the mourners, hoping that no one would notice me leaving, when there was a shrill scream. I spun around and saw, outlined against the torchlit wall of the building opposite, a raised hand and the flash of metal. The crowd was flinching in one collective movement, like a shoal of minnows when a pebble is dropped into their midst, and I was suddenly leaning against moving bodies, but I still heard a voice, pitched loud enough to carry above the confusion.

  ‘My brother sends you this payment, with his regards!’

  I drew my knife and pushed Father Iacopo to one side. One of the long white candles fell across me, spattering my clothes with wax. I grabbed it with my free hand as I almost tripped over a man on the ground. I glimpsed the tangled eyebrows of Simone. His eyes were screwed shut and his tongue was sticking straight out between his teeth. Above him stood a man holding a dagger blade downwards in his fist, poised to strike again.

  ‘Ho!’ I yelled, and swung the candle backhanded at his head. It struck him on the ear and snapped in two. The man, unhurt but surprised, lurched backwards. I saw his eyes register the knife in my hand, saw him hesitate. And recognised … something. I took the guard of the unicorn, blade above my head, and took a step across Simone’s body. But instead of coming on, the man turned and, shoving aside a couple of professional mourners who were still waiting with their purses in their hands, took off at a sprint up Via Pellicceria. ‘Call out the sbirri!’ I shouted to the nearest person, a Misericordia brother who was hurrying towards Simone. Then I set off after him.

  Via Pellicceria runs straight north into the Mercato Vecchio. The man was dashing along it, the few passers-by jumping out of his way when they saw the knife in his hand. Soon he was crossing the Mercato itself, still crowded with empty stalls and strewn with rubbish. He was taller than me, and younger. Two years younger. I knew I wasn’t going to catch him. Then I saw him slow down to pass a throng of people outside a tavern. Something about his movements told me that he thought he’d lost me. I ducked behind a row of stalls and ran as quietly as I could to the tavern. There he was, half a street ahead of me. He had sheathed his dagger and was moving at a fast walk, a young man late for an assignation. I followed, keeping to the shadows.

  He stopped at the corner of Via dei Pecori, looked up and down the street, and then turned left. He had slowed down, and I realised that he hadn’t quite got his bearings. Pausing at the next corner, he looked around again, and started up Via de’ Vecchietti. At the end he paused again, crossed the street and turned right towards the baptistery. When he hesitated at the corner of Borgo San Lorenzo, I realised where he was going. By the time I had reached the corner myself, he was already at the door of the Palazzo Salvucci. I heard him knock, and as I began to run, saw the glint as he drew his dagger.

  ‘Girolamo Ellebori!’ I yelled. He turned, and I drew my blade. The palazzo door was opening. ‘Stop!’ I yelled again. He looked from me to the door, turned, and sprinted off up the street. I flew past Smeralda Salvucci’s door, seeing only the puzzled face of a servant peering into the street, and followed him into the squa
re in front of San Lorenzo.

  ‘Family, to me!’ I shouted, because there was often a police patrol around here, but there was no answer. Girolamo Ellebori was gaining on me again.

  And then he made a mistake, one that a Florentine perhaps would not have made. Instead of carrying on up Via de’ Ginori, which was straight and empty, he crossed the square at an angle and darted into Borgo la Noce. Perhaps he had shied away from the empty streets and, hearing the sound of a crowd up ahead, thought that he would more easily lose me there. He must not have known that Borgo la Noce was one of the officially licensed brothel streets in the city. It was crowded, all right, but at this time of night it was full, not with people going about their peaceable business who would be frightened by an armed man but with young men inflamed by drink and by the entreaties of the women leaning out of windows, wearing nothing but gauzy tunics that hid nothing of their bodies, or calling to them from the doorways of taverns from which even more noise – laughter, singing and often fights and despair – spilt out.

  I followed him. He was still a good twenty paces ahead of me and drawing away all the time. But almost at once his path was blocked by a knot of young fellows who were all looking up at three women leaning far out of a window, shaking their breasts and flicking their long plaits of hair like fishing lines. The man barged into them like a football player, sending them flying. I had to jump over one of them, and when another stepped in front of me I yelled ‘Sbirri!’ in his face and short-armed him out of my way. A little further on a group of young aristocrats was standing in front of a tavern. They were all wearing swords and had certainly paid for that privilege. I might perhaps have written out their licenses myself. My quarry was forced to dodge around them in the narrow street, and as he passed he must have caught one of them with his elbow because all at once there was an explosion of oaths and threats. Someone put out his foot and the running man went down, landing heavily on his face. Two or three of the gentlemen had drawn their swords. I was still running towards them. The man rolled and sprang to his feet. His dagger was lying a few feet away from him. He picked it up and turned to run again, but I pushed past the gentlemen, who were standing over their friend in drunken confusion, and faced him.