I shook my head. “I have no freedom. But I have a friend who needs, well, freedom and kindness. A great kindness I don’t know how to give.”
“So you were praying.” He nodded. “I see.” He fell silent and I went back to the panels, devouring them with my eyes. Giotto said, “My friend Dante would have said that the greatest freedom is love, particularly the love of God. It’s what moves the orbs in their spheres. We don’t find it in this body. We find it when we surrender the things of the flesh for the will of God.”
I thought about the men who came to my room and of Silvano, who did anything they wanted, even committing murder with impunity. I myself had killed a friend, and the only consequence of that act was my own guilt and sadness. God’s will appeared to have nothing to do with love, only with pain. I doubted Giotto’s words, but he was Giotto, so I took him seriously. I said, “Someone told me that death would give him freedom.”
“That’s an extreme case,” Giotto said, in a somber tone. “Sometimes it’s the only way, I suppose. This life on earth can be cruel like that, full of forces beyond our control and our understanding, until death releases us into heaven. I like to think my old friend is free now. But there are other ways to achieve freedom. Devotion, for one.”
“What if devotion isn’t the answer?” I asked, shuddering. It was the cardinal’s devotions that were going to torment Ingrid.
“Then you’re right, there’s always death.” Voices called out and a pair of men beckoned to him from the nave of the church. Giotto turned, sighing, and lifted his hand to acknowledge them. “Duty pursues me. I take leave of you, pup, you and your weighty questions.”
“Will I see you again?” I whispered.
“I make my way back to Florence, despite the rich nobles who would have me always painting their portraits and tombs,” he said dryly. He trudged toward the men, calling out hearty greetings and embracing them. I turned back to the two incredible paintings that had been so generously gifted to me. My gaze fell on the little dog staring up at St. John. I raced after Giotto.
“Master! Master!” I called. Then I noticed how richly dressed his friends were, and I was overcome with shame. I could not imagine what impression I made on them.
Giotto was unconcerned. “Excuse me, I must speak with my young friend,” he said, clapping his companions on their backs. He stepped back toward me and raised an eyebrow.
I swallowed. “The dog…”
A sly, pleased smile spread over Giotto’s face. “Yes?”
“It’s, ah, blond. Like me. Its fur is dark blond with a little orange, like my hair!”
“So this young whelp they call Luca Bastardo is no fool,” Giotto said, approving. “You’ll find a way to help your friend, don’t worry.”
I drew myself up and held aloft the two panels. “Thank you,” I told him, with all the dignity I had. He winked at me and rejoined his friends.
THE NEXT DAY, as I was working and my spirit was winging into the blue heavens with Giotto’s Evangelist, it suddenly came together for me. Perhaps it was another mote of grace from the Laughing God, the deity whose hand was set upon me, alternately squeezing me and flicking me away like a piece of garbage. And like most of the moments of grace that came to me in my long life, it was laced with sorrow. But I suddenly knew how to protect Ingrid from the cardinal’s ministrations: as I had freed Marco. But not by the river’s auspices. I had to find a way so she didn’t suffer, so she didn’t even know, so her little heart wouldn’t struggle in terror’s vicious jaws. And I had to protect myself, as well; Silvano wouldn’t forgive the loss of a fortune.
When the patron was done and Simonetta had cleaned me, I was free to go out. I went back to the loose floorboard behind the drapery where I had stashed one of Giotto’s panels. I stored them in separate hiding places, in case Silvano discovered one. I touched my forehead reverently to the Madonna’s beautiful face. I didn’t know if there had been a virgin who had sinlessly borne a child; I didn’t believe in anything immaculate. This earth was too tainted for anything pure to have existed upon it. But the beauty with which Giotto had painted her deserved my veneration. I slipped the panel into my tunic and left the palazzo. I hid in a nearby alley and watched to see if anyone had followed me, and when I was certain that none of Silvano’s minions had tailed me, I sped on my way.
I knew where I was going because I had run an errand there once, back when I lived on the streets and would do anything for food. Anything except what I was doing now, that is. But once, a stoneworker ambitious to move up in his guild had sent me to a distant part of the city. He’d taken what I’d returned with, smiled, tucked a few soldi into my palm, and told me to forget I’d met him. Within a day, I’d heard that his competitor was dead.
It was a mild winter day with a speckled, milky sky like fragments of a broken robin’s egg shell, so I walked along the banks of the Arno with its wool-washing houses to the Ponte Vecchio with its small wooden shops and sweeping views up and down the river. I crossed there to the Oltrarno, the other side of the Arno. I took a circuitous route to throw off Silvano’s watchers, walking around the church of Santa Felicita and doubling back over the Ponte Vecchio, then back to the Oltrarno over the Ponte Santa Trinita. I wandered past silk workshops and goldsmiths, past the monastery of the monks of San Romualdo, through narrow streets until I came to a small bottega deep in the southern environs, the camoldoli where wool carders, beaters, and combers kept their slum shops and where the foreigners and Jews lived. The shop was marked as if it were simply one of the dozens of tailors’ shops in Florence, though I knew it was not, and it was shuttered, but I knew it was open. I rapped on the door impatiently.
A tall blond man opened the door. He saw me and his eyes narrowed, then his square-jawed face changed. He was a man from the distant north with a good memory, and he remembered me. He ushered me into his shop. He slid a heavy bolt into place behind us as I scanned the room. It was empty of the assistants who should have been sitting on the floor with laps full of fabric and thread. There was no long table for cutting cloth and no wooden mannequins, no clasp knife and scissors and needles, no bolts of the coarse linen cloth that tailors used for fittings. There was only a small rough-hewn table for conducting business and a few chairs. The northerner turned to me with a sharp look.
“That thing I came for once before, I am charged to obtain more,” I said softly.
“You have payment?” he said, in his slow, heavily accented voice. I pulled the small panel from my shirt. My heart felt a pang of reluctance and would have held on to the Madonna, so I brought to mind the image of little Ingrid, cut and burnt, and the torture that had led Marco to demand his own death. Ingrid had called me good, the only person in my life to have done so. I had promised myself not to let anyone hurt her. I had to keep my promise. My hands thrust the panel at the northerner. The man exclaimed and sat down at the table, examining it. He ran his fingers over it as if he couldn’t restrain himself. He murmured, “This will do.”
It will more than do, I thought fiercely. It will buy you out of your unspoken business and send you back to the cold land you came from with a fortune in your hands. I thought about him returning to his distant homeland and remembered that the monk Pietro had told me to ask in the Oltrarno about my own origins. “Sir,” I asked politely, “you’ve been in Florence for a long time?” He nodded, unable to tear his eyes from the panel. I continued, “I was wondering if you’d ever heard of someone losing a child. Years ago. Foreign people, nobles maybe.”
He looked up with obvious reluctance. His pale blue eyes fixed on me sharply. “You think you were such a child.” I shrugged. He nodded. “There was something, five years ago, maybe. A tale floating about the market. Something about a lost child, lost by the Cathars maybe. I didn’t pay attention.”
“Who are the Cathars?”
“Heretics, they believe in a good God and an evil God, so the Church kills them.” He shook his head. “The parents weren’t Cathars. I remember that
. They had a secret that kept them in the company of Cathars. But I don’t know where they came from or if they have any relation to you.” Cradling the panel, he disappeared into a back room and then returned with a small vial.
“I have been told to ask if it can be mixed into a sweet,” I said. I looked into the dark doorway beyond which lay my exquisite painting. A part of me mourned. I knew I would prize the remaining panel twice as much.
“It’s best that way, it’s sweet also,” he said. He thrust the vial into my hand. “Use it all. It’s one application, painless and undetectable.” He unbolted the door and pushed me out onto the steps, into the cold evening of winter in Florence, with a moonless sky rippling into violet and plum clouds and a biting breeze promising a colder day tomorrow. I walked back through narrow streets overlooked by the tower houses and fortified residences, all the private dwellings where happy people lived lives of peace and safety with their loved ones.
At noon the next day Silvano summoned me. He sat at his dining table, sucking the marrow out of veal bones. “I am having a visitor today,” he said. My eyes darted around the room, seeking the heavy silk bag. I didn’t see it. Silvano tossed down a bone and scratched the underside of his pointy, bearded chin. “An important visitor. Unfortunately, the visitor will be disappointed. In fact,” he continued, his tones growing acid, “I must return to him a substantial deposit.” He turned his face toward me and his bladelike nose quivered, as if trying to sniff some truth out from me. “That does not please me!”
“Sir?” I said. I clasped my hands behind my back, gripping my palms tightly together, so I could feel myself in my body, alive and still Luca.
Silvano leapt up, pointed his face toward the ceiling, and screamed like a dog at the moon. “One of my girls was found dead this morning! A girl who had been paid for!” He threw his plate of bones at the wall. He howled again and threw a bowl of soup at my head. I ducked so that the bowl missed me, though the hot soup splattered all over me. Panting, Silvano held up his knife and shrieked, “Do you know anything about this girl’s death, clever Bastardo?”
“How could I, sir?” I shook my head so hard that my chest rattled, or maybe that was fear batting around my heart the way a cat slapped a mouse before consuming it.
“Perhaps the frescoes at Santa Croce told you.” Silvano waved his knife. His face was red with rage. “Perhaps someone at Santa Felicita told you! I think you know all kinds of things. I think you hide things. I think you stay awake at night and think things. I think you have secrets!”
“No, sir,” I whispered, backing up to stand in the threshold so I could run, if necessary.
He slammed everything off the table with a sweep of one arm. As dishes clattered, he leapt toward me and held his knife to my throat. I held very still. He dug the tip of his knife in beside my Adam’s apple. I felt something wet, a drop of blood, travel down to the hollow of my throat. I wondered if I was about to join Marco and Ingrid, after all; I was surprised at how calm I was. Silvano growled, “I am a very good judge of people, Bastardo, that’s why I’m successful.”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered again.
“I would slit that white throat of yours, maybe gut you like the little pig that you are, even if you are the unholy get of some fancy foreign aristocracy. But I don’t want to lose any more of my workers. We can’t have our tender family destroyed, can we, Bastardo?” He threw back his head and snarled, his mouth drawing back around his teeth like a rabid dog. His blade shook in my flesh. He screamed, “I have lost a small fortune because of this child’s death! It is unacceptable! My reputation for providing whatever my patrons want has been threatened! Somehow you have caused this! I know that you snuck into her room. I can’t prove anything, but I am going to watch you. Closely. You’re to stay inside. No more going out!”
He stepped away, still brandishing his knife. “I don’t know where you went after Santa Felicita, but you won’t go back for a while.” I dipped my head, hiding my eyes so he couldn’t see the tears of anger and contempt in them. I pulsed with fury, and with gratitude for still being alive. I also ached for Ingrid, whom I would never again see; something about Silvano’s accusations gave her death finality. He didn’t say anything else and I backed out the door.
“One more thing, Bastardo,” he called. He slammed his fists on the table. “I already know about your parentage. But I’ll find out more. I’ll know what you know, and what you hide. I’m going to uncover your secrets. All of them!”
Chapter 4
DAYS CRAWLED BONELESSLY INTO MONTHS, which eased like a slow-acting soporific into years, and Marco’s words bore fruit. I got used to the work. People get used to anything, if it continues for long enough. It was more than growing accustomed, though; there was also the way I numbed parts of myself to survive, and the way I focused on the tiny shards of grace that came my way: the journeys to great paintings, the freedom to go out when Silvano again granted me that privilege, the good food, the warmth in the wintertime. I thought little about the work itself. It was palatable only once.
A regular patron, a high-ranking member of the guild of furriers, banged open the door to my room, looked at me with lust, and then grabbed his thick left arm. He fell to his knees, groaning and panting. His eyes were wild and foamy spittle wet his beard. Curious, I watched from the bed. The pores on his broad face opened and rivulets of sweat ran down to where his cheek was pressed against the floor.
“Help me,” he gasped. “Help me, boy.” He had a thick country accent and I shrugged as if I didn’t comprehend. I rose and drew aside the heavy crimson, cut-velvet curtain, the fabric of which had been meant for export to a harem in Turkey, but which Silvano had acquired for this establishment. After all, a brothel was the perfect place to flout the sumptuary laws. A triangle of brilliant yellow light bisected the patron’s face. It was a late-summer afternoon, after the markets had closed and before dinner; a voluptuous time of day much in demand in this work. The furrier gagged a few times and vomited a small pool of green bile. His pale lips moved in the light, motes of dust spinning above his head, but his voice was no longer audible. I seated myself on the floor near him, drew up my legs, and clasped my knees with my arms, waiting. I was on friendly terms with Death and knew his approach.
I watched the triangle of light creep across the furrier’s body until its tail like a scorpion’s curved up on his torso and its head rested on the floor. Finally it lazed into a honeyed slant on the floor.
I searched the body. He had a purse with some silver coins. I reached inside his fine silk doublet, snapping off his neck the gold chain with its pearled crucifix that I had seen when he’d once bared his chest. I didn’t take his rings; Silvano, who missed nothing, would have noted them. So I took some of the soldi, not all, and hid them with the chain in a hole mice had made behind the chest of drawers. Then I opened the door and called for Simonetta.
She came quickly, in her slow-seeming way, with a question in her eyes. Her glance fell on the furrier and she clucked her tongue and uttered some invectives interspersed with prayers. She turned the body over onto its back and laid her soft hand over the mouth.
“Trouble,” she said. “I don’t want you hurt, Luca!”
“I didn’t kill him,” I said, stroking her blond braid.
“Will that matter?” She made the sign of the cross and went to get Silvano. I sat on the bed to wait for him. This waiting wasn’t as easy. The passage of time, though shorter, was frozen by the anticipation of pain. I wondered if I could send myself to Giotto’s paintings while I was being beaten. Usually I couldn’t muster the concentration when Silvano was swinging his sack of florins. But I had new hope: Giotto was in Florence, overseeing the campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore. The cathedral was meant to crown our glorious city, and everyone was excited that purpose had come to it again, after thirty years of lackadaisical construction. So I got to see the great Master every few days, though I didn’t speak with him so often. He was busy with matters far more
important than a scrap of street trash like me.
“You’ve killed a patron.” Silvano’s sly voice interrupted my reverie. He came down the hall in front of Simonetta, who had a fresh bruise under her eye. She kept her gaze on the floor. Her fingers twined together and jerked apart in her full blue silk sleeves. “How clever of you to get out of working! Did you enjoy it? Did you revel in the God-like power to take a life? I find it better than carnal climax. You’re like me, Luca, one of the elite, without the qualms that weaken other people.”
“I didn’t kill him.” I stayed where I was on the bed, out of reach of his hands, which could wield a knife faster than I could blink. There was still a tiny white mark on my throat from where he’d insinuated his knife into it when Ingrid had died.
“Too bad, I might have been proud of you emulating me, I might have rewarded you with money to spend in the mercato, you so enjoy that.” Silvano bent over the furrier, examining him with quick, dispassionate poking. “You watched him die for the better part of an hour, I’ll wager,” he said. “And I always win my wagers.” He opened the furrier’s purse and took the remaining soldi, then slid the rings off the furrier’s fingers, leaving only the signet ring, which the man’s family would claim. Finally he straightened and looked at me. I met his eyes for a few beats, but it was too much like staring into the frigid jaws of hell, so I turned away.
“Oh, you’re not squeamish, Bastardo,” Silvano mused, stroking his chin.
“My work doesn’t allow it,” I said. He laughed, a wheezing sound like bat wings against an icy wind, and it was more terrifying than his words.
“You have an answer for everything,” he sneered. “You’ve been with me for more than four years, haven’t you, boy?”
“Yes, sir.” I nodded. Was four years too long? Did Silvano mean to dispose of me now?
“Yet you look exactly as you did when you arrived: like a boy of nine years,” Silvano said. “You haven’t aged a day. It’s not from lack of feeding. You eat almost as much as you earn.” He stepped over the furrier’s body and grasped my chin. He tilted my face up and bent close, as he had the first day I’d met him. Then he pulled out my camicia and stared at my chest as if searching it for something. I focused on the gray in his beard, steeling myself not to quail as his perfume assailed me. In all the years that followed, because of Silvano and the patrons, I could never bring myself to wear perfume, even when I had the riches to buy the best of it.
Immortal Page 7
