It didn’t take her long to find where they were. In the middle of the tangled undergrowth was a small grotto with a stone statue of the Virgin standing on a higgledy-piggledy pile of rocks. Water gushed feebly from the dank ferns behind, but in the cave to one side of it she could make out two prostrate forms. There were sounds too: heavy breaths and whispers, the occasional giggle. Carla felt her pulses racing and was filled with guilt, but she couldn’t resist waiting to see what happened.
Slowly her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, and when the moon suddenly came out from behind a cloud and illuminated the mouth of the cave with its eerie light she almost gasped aloud at what she saw. Marco was kneeling between the upraised knees of the girl, his mouth obviously in contact with her private parts. Carla felt such an intense pang in her guts at the thought of him giving another girl that special pleasure that she doubled up as if she had a cramp, and her eyes filled with tears.
‘This is stupid!’ she told herself. ‘I’m just torturing myself by being here.’
Yet she could not bring herself to leave. The horrible jealousy was just a part of everything she felt about Marco, as legitimate as her desire, her love, her friendship. She felt a perverse urge to explore even the darker side of her feelings, to watch him making love to another woman even though she was suffering horribly.
Elena was wriggling about and making louder noises, her skirt about her waist. Carla saw the back of Marco’s head rise and then his lips sought the swelling of her breast while his fingers played with her down below. There were muttered words from her, pleading with him, and soon he was grappling with his own clothes. For a few seconds Carla witnessed the proud appearance of his cock, stiff and thick in readiness for the job in hand, and she felt sick to her stomach but she could not tear her eyes away.
Without hesitation he resumed his position between Elena’s legs and thrust straight into her, making her give the loudest cry yet. The envy that filled Carla’s whole being was so bitter she could almost taste it, like bile. Elena settled into the jogging rhythm easily, proving she was practised at this game, and her panting words of encouragement drifted out of the cave and into the silent night: ‘Mm, that’s the way, caro! Good and strong, that’s how I like it! Push, push harder now!’
The girl was shameless in asking for what she wanted, making him do it to her, and Carla was shocked. It seemed only a short time ago that she had been completely ignorant about sexual matters, and what she had learned recently had astonished her. How could that girl bring herself to behave in such an immodest manner within a few feet of the Virgin’s image? She glanced at the statue and saw it, for the first time, as something alien and forbidding, instead of the warm and comforting figure she’d been taught to believe in. Mother Mary and her faithful followers denied that women had urges like men, pretended they were as cold as stone when it came to sex. But Carla knew different, and so did Elena.
With that thought, her jealousy was subtly transformed into a kind of sisterly understanding. If she had to choose between being like one of the chaste nuns who used to frequent these gardens and being like hot-blooded Elena, she knew which she wanted to be.
The couple reached their consummation with much gasping and panting, then lay quiet like two racing horses after a chase. Carla decided it was time to slip away. She hurried back along the hidden pathways feeling exhilarated, as if something had been freed in her.
When she got home Piero was awake and seemed to have recovered from his drunken stupor. He greeted her with lustful eyes and for once she was not averse to obliging him. Seeing Marco and his whore had awoken her appetite, and she could feel that her body was hot and ready for the same sport.
‘Come upstairs!’ he grunted hoarsely, slapping her behind as she went up before him.
The instant they were alone in the garret he fell upon her with slobbering kisses. Carla hated the smell of stale wine on his breath, so she manoeuvred herself round and presented her posterior to him, knowing that he liked taking her from behind just as well as in front. It didn’t take him long to uncover her tight, round buttocks which he proceeded to bite softly and kiss while his hands travelled round to play with her engorged nipples and slippery pussy.
‘You like it like this, don’t you?’ he murmured in her ear as he pushed his thick tool into her. ‘You’re getting quite a taste for it altogether. What if I made you my wife and got some fine sons by you? I dare say you’d like that. I’m a good catch, I am, with my thriving business and all. Maybe I won’t pull out tonight, and we’ll see if we hit the target, eh? Wouldn’t you like that, my little pretender?’
Carla felt a pang of despair travel through her, chilling her to the bone. If he got her with child she would have little option but to wed him, and her dream of some day loving Marco would be shattered. She said nothing, but fervently hoped she could manage to avoid such a fate. Piero was banging away lustily, pulling her hips towards him at every thrust so that her buttocks pushed against his stomach, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before he shot his load.
Wiggling her hips to feel the hard length of him more keenly, Carla listened to his heavy gasps until they seemed to reach a crescendo. Then, just as she thought he would be able to hold out no longer, she lunged forward onto the bed and he slipped out of her. There was a dribbling sensation over the back of her thighs and knees accompanied by a curse and she knew that she had timed it accurately.
Piero slapped her hard on the behind, making her flesh smart. ‘Thought you could give me the slip, did you girl?’ he grunted. ‘Well, there’ll be another chance don’t you worry. I’ll get you with child yet and then you’ll be mine or take the consequences. I fancy you won’t take long to choose between a roof over your head and a life on the streets.’
But Carla privately vowed that, if it came to it, she would find somewhere else to go. She had money now, stashed under the floorboards beneath her bed where no one knew about it. Not a fortune, but enough to give her a start. Perhaps she would leave Piero’s when Marco went. The idea of becoming Marco’s apprentice was very appealing, especially since the only other option Piero now seemed to be offering was motherhood.
Next morning she joined the other apprentices at their meal and found them discussing the night’s business. Giovanni was loudly proclaiming the virtues of one Simonetta, a particularly buxom whore who enjoyed her work immensely.
‘She’s particularly good at cock-sucking,’ he was saying. ‘She has a big mouth, for one thing, and a tongue that’s long, thick and very agile. She’ll bring you off that way first, then get you ready again in no time at all. Then once you get inside her she’s as tight as a cat’s arse. She knows plenty of good tricks, like squeezing you with her pussy until she milks you of everything you’ve got. And the tits on her are good for a wank, if that’s your inclination. She’ll let you stick your cock in her mouth at the same time, and she loves drinking your spunk. Can’t get enough of it.’
While he spoke, Giovanni kept giving Carla covert glances as if he wanted to impress her. She mistrusted the way he seemed to be always getting at her, in one way or the other. But then he turned his attention to Marco. ‘How did you get on? Was she experienced, that girl, or just an amateur? Did you have to pay her?’
Marco laughed. ‘No, it didn’t cost me a penny! I reckon she was just hot for it, and she liked me. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, either, although she didn’t know any fancy tricks like your Simonetta. Sometimes it’s more refreshing to have a girl like her, though. She seems more sincere, and she enjoys it more than a woman you have to pay.’
‘Give me a whore any time,’ Luigi piped up. ‘They know what they’re doing, they don’t get involved, and they know how to dose themselves if they get a disease. If you just pick up a girl on the street you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.’
‘Remember Lodovico?’ Matteo said. ‘He had an affair with a woman who turned out to be a man. It took him three months to find out because
he wouldn’t let him fuck her – him!’
‘What happened when he found out?’ Giovanni asked.
‘You don’t want to know!’
Carla, listening in to their frank discussion, suddenly realised that she was privy to things most women would not even dream of. Through their acceptance of her as a boy artist she had won their confidence and now they talked about anything under the sun in her presence. But what if they should discover she was a woman, what then? Would they be outraged that she had eaves-dropped on their male secrets, been treated as ‘one of the lads’? Perhaps even Marco would be disgusted to think that she had heard him talking in detail about his sexual exploits. She gave a big sigh, so loud that everyone noticed.
Giovanni turned to her with a grin. ‘What’s up, greenhorn? Tired of hearing us talk about sex when you’ve not had a go at it yet? I did offer to take you to a whore, remember, but you turned me down.’
‘Leave him be,’ Marco said.
But Giovanni would not give up. He came close to Carla and looked straight into her eyes with a searching, mocking expression. ‘What is it, then?’ he asked softly. ‘You’re not one of those queer types, are you? The sort that would rather have a man’s dick in their arse than stick his own cock in a woman?’
‘He shares a room with Piero,’ Matteo reminded them all, with a grin. ‘And we all know what a randy bugger he is. He’d stick it in anything, provided it was warm and wet!’
‘Well?’ Giovanni’s tone was insistent, menacing. ‘What do you have to say for yourself, pretty boy? Are you and the master having it away up there every night or what?’
Carla shrank from him in terror, not knowing what to say. His eyes gleamed wickedly at her and she was terribly afraid that he would do something physical. But then Marco pulled him back with a laugh, ‘Come on, Giovanni! In my opinion a man’s sex life is his own business. What harm has Carlo ever done you?’
The man growled. ‘It’s queers – I can’t stand them. If I knew for sure I was living under the same roof as one I’d . . .’
‘What would you do, Giovanni?’
All eyes turned to the door where Piero was standing, hands on hips. He had evidently overheard the last few seconds of conversation, but Carla could see Giovanni running the last minute or so back in his memory and turning pale as he recalled what he had been saying.
Piero came up close to his oldest apprentice, very close, his belligerent jaw thrust into Giovanni’s white face. ‘N – nothing,’ he stammered, retreating until his back was against the wall. ‘I – I didn’t mean anything. It was – just a joke!’
‘I never did like your sense of humour! You know, if you’re not happy here Giovanni you could always leave. You’ve finished your apprenticeship and you’re only here by my grace and favour. You do understand that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he replied sullenly, his eyes downcast.
‘Good. Well my conditions are that you work twice as hard as anyone else and make half the noise. Is that clear? Otherwise you’re out on your ear.’
Carla had never seen Piero pull rank so forcefully and she was impressed. He had come to her rescue, in a roundabout way, and for that she was grateful. Yet one look at Giovanni told her that she was still in danger from the man. She suspected that if she gave him the slightest opportunity to do her down he would take full advantage of it. From now on she would be especially wary of him.
The work on the Annunciation continued through the week, with Carla learning a great deal as she watched Piero fashion the angel into an ethereal beauty with birdlike wings and an exquisitely sensitive face. Her own efforts were acclaimed too, not only by Piero but by the other apprentices when they were invited to take a look, since their master encouraged them to learn from each other.
‘You have painted Our Lady in your own likeness!’ Matteo exclaimed, at once. ‘How extraordinary!’
‘It was what Father Giacomo wanted,’ Carla explained, modestly. ‘I had to do it by looking in a mirror.’
After that, self-portraits became all the rage. The mirror was passed around and each of the younger apprentices had his turn at gazing at his blurred image and trying his hand at reproducing it. Suddenly there was a familiarity about the faces of the saints, angels, classical figures and bystanders in all the paintings that issued from Piero’s workshop.
‘Enough is enough!’ the master announced at last. ‘We shall flatter our patrons more by reproducing their likeness than our own.’
Carla had almost forgotten about pretty Elena, so she was shocked to find her hanging around outside the door one day, asking for Marco. Luigi conveyed the message with a wink.
‘Your girl’s outside,’ he said, twisting the knife in Carla’s already tormented heart. ‘Better find out what she wants, Marco. It could be good news – or bad!’
The others waited with their ears cocked, obviously wondering if he had got her with child. But it seemed that she was only after another assignation.
‘You want to watch her!’ Giovanni sneered. ‘If she’s got her claws into you there’s no telling where it will end. You don’t want to get saddled with a woman at this stage in your career.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Marco said. ‘She just wants a bit of fun, that’s all. And I know how to give it to her.’
‘Well mind you pull out in time, that’s all.’
Carla was staring wistfully at him and caught his eye. Marco smiled and came over to put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Maybe I’ll see if she has a friend for you, Carlo. Would you like that?’
She shook her head, but had to suffer Giovanni’s taunts once again. Feeling that her situation was becoming unbearable, Carla went upstairs to put the finishing touches to her Madonna. Piero was out, so she had the attic room to herself and she soon settled into the dreamy state where she became totally immersed in her work. This was what she loved best, this almost mystical communion with her muse. She could forget about everything else: nothing in the world mattered except her art, and for that she would put up with a great deal.
Chapter Nine
FATHER GIACOMO SENT word that the ‘little model’ for the Madonna should bring the painting to his house himself when it was done because he wished to ‘congratulate him on his handiwork in person’. Carla heard the news with a sense of foreboding. Piero insisted on Luigi accompanying her as far as his door. With such a valuable painting she needed a bodyguard, and Luigi was the burliest of the apprentices.
‘Once you’re inside, you watch your back,’ he warned, echoing her own unspoken fears, when Carla set out with the panel wrapped in cloth under her arm. ‘Some of those priests have a reputation for liking young boys. If you sense that he wants something more from you than your artistic skill make a quick excuse and run for it, that’s my advice.’
So it was with some trepidation that Carla rang the bell of the priest’s house. He lived alongside his church and a pretty servant boy opened the door doing nothing to allay Carla’s fears. She was shown into Father Giacomo’s study, a pleasant room overlooking cloisters. In a few minutes the priest arrived, already beaming.
‘Ah, the young maestro!’ he began, stretching out his fleshy hands towards the painting. ‘I can hardly wait to see what your master has made of my request to fashion the Virgin’s features after your own. Unveil your handiwork, child, and let the dog see the rabbit for I’m raring to go!’
Carla found his enthusiasm strangely unsettling. She was half afraid he would be disappointed when he saw her efforts, but there was more to it than that. The gleam in his eye was almost lascivious and she guessed that he had some hidden motive for wanting to have his ‘Virgin’ modelled on a boy.
Her fears redoubled as she drew back the cloth and set the painting on a stool for him to see. Father Giacomo gave a guttural groan and pressed his hands together as if in prayer, his brown eyes filled with an unnatural light. ‘Oh, superb!’ he murmured, raptly. ‘What an aid to devotion this work shall prove! I cannot wait to see it in the
chapel with a votive light before it. Such innocence! Such subtle charm! Tell me, which parts of the painting did you execute yourself?’
When the priest heard that she had done her own self-portrait his admiration knew no bounds. He flung his chubby arms into the air exclaiming, ‘What immoderate talent in one so young! Tell me, child, has Cortoni taught you everything you know?’
‘He has taught me a great deal, but I have always loved to draw. Painting I could not do until I joined Piero’s workshop, but I enjoy it greatly now.’
The priest’s round, flabby jowls came close to Carla’s face, making her cringe inwardly.
‘And what else has your master taught you, eh boy? Come, you can speak frankly to me. Imagine you are in the confessional. Does he lie with you at night and bid you perform dark deeds for him?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Father!’ Carla said, but her blushes betrayed her.
The priest’s fat finger tickled beneath her chin as he continued, ‘Oh, I think you do! But never mind, that is your own business. I would like to show you our church and the chapel where your painting shall hang. Will you come this way?’
Carla followed through a side door and found herself in the cloisters. They were cool and pleasant in the heat of the day with a shady cypress in the middle of herb gardens, and she began to feel more relaxed. The priest led the way into the church which was almost empty, except for a few old women praying in the side chapels.
It was a long time since Carla had entered a church that was not thronged with people and the peaceful atmosphere stirred her soul. Since she had left home so much had happened that her old devotions had been almost neglected and now she felt pangs of guilt. Perhaps she should make her confession to this priest after all. But the thought of telling him about her life with Piero made her quail, and how could she confess her greatest secret, that of her gender, without getting into real trouble?
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