In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel

by Sarah Dunant

  “Nothing’s happened,” I yelp. “Except this witch here has made fools of both of us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about theft and forgery, that’s what. Our great ruby is a fake, lifted by clever fingers and replaced by a piece of glass. It’s worthless. As are we. So maybe,” I say, jabbing my finger at her, “maybe when she comes to give us her next bill, she might offer you a small discount for making her so rich. Eh?” And I take a step closer to the creature on the bed so that she will feel the wind from my breath on her face because, yes, for all her clever words, I want to see her scared.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” My lady has her hand clutched to her mouth.

  On the bed, La Draga still doesn’t move. I am near enough now to see how pale and milky her skin is, to catch the dark circles under the eyes and watch her lips tremble. I bring my mouth close to her ear. And she is frightened enough now for she senses my closeness: I can feel it, like an animal, her body febrile and startled, frozen in the moment of tension before the jump or the run.

  “Eh? Eh?” I say, and this time I shout.

  Now at last she moves, snapping her head around and giving out a violent hiss through her teeth, like the sound some snakes make before the kill. And though I could crack her head in my hands, I jump back, for there is such wildness in her defense.

  “Oh, my God. No. Leave her alone.” And my lady is pulling me away now. “Leave her, do you hear? It isn’t her. She didn’t do it. It’s Meragosa.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Meragosa. It has to be. Oh, God, I knew it. I knew there was something wrong this morning when I saw her. Maybe even last night. Didn’t you feel it? She wasn’t interested in the dress. Couldn’t have cared less. But then when we ate she was—I don’t know—almost too happy about it all.”

  I think back, but I can remember nothing except her sour little smile and the taste of her rabbit gravy. God save me from my own complacency.

  “After you’d left this morning, she asked where you’d gone. I didn’t think to—I mean…I said you went to the Jew. She left straight after. I thought she was at the market—”

  But I don’t hear the rest of the sentence because I am already halfway down the stairs.

  Since our arrival, Meragosa had moved her carcass into a room off the kitchen. It had little enough in it to start with, but now it has even less. The old wooden chest that held her clothes is open and empty. The crucifix from the hook above the bed is gone, and even the coverings have been stripped off the mattress.

  How? When? Anytime, that is the answer. Anytime when I was out and my lady was sleeping or careless. It had been too dangerous to keep the purse with me always on the streets. Dwarves make fair game for those intent on mischief, and one with precious stones in his crotch would have ended up with no gems and no balls either. But the real fault had been in my judgment. I thought that between my fangs and the promise of wealth I had subdued her: that she would see a richer future in loyalty than in theft. And so it had seemed all these months. But she had just been biding her time. Waiting for the right moment to fleece us even as she slid the blame onto someone else. God damn it—I, whose job it is to be clever, have let myself be shafted by a vicious old slut.

  It takes me longer to climb back up to the room. When I get there, my face tells the story that my voice can’t manage.

  My lady drops her head. “Ah—the poxy hag. I swear I never left her in here on her own…. I had her in my sights the whole time…. Oh, Jesu, how stupid could we be? How much have we lost?”

  I glance quickly at the woman on the bed.

  “Oh, you can say it. We have nothing left to hide now.”

  “Three hundred ducats.”

  Her eyes close, and the moan is low and long. “Oh, Bucino.”

  I watch her face as the meaning of the loss seeps like a black stain into the colors of our future. I want to go up to her, to touch her skirt or take her hand, something, anything, to reduce the pain of the moment, but now, with all my fury spent, my legs feel like slabs of marble, and a deep, familiar ache is starting to pump itself up from my thighs along the cord of my spine. God damn my stupid, stunted body. Had I been tall and fat with a set of butcher’s hands, Meragosa would never have dared to cheat us. How she must have been laughing at us. Even the thought of it makes me murderous.

  The silence is heavy around us. On the bed, La Draga sits completely motionless again, her head tilted into the air, her face like wax, as if she is absorbing the drama and pain around her through the pores of her skin. God damn her, too. But I have spent enough time being stupid, and among the many ways in which the world is turned upside down is that she is now a confidante in our disgrace, and without the ruby’s ducats we will be among her creditors soon enough.

  I take a step toward her. “Look,” I say quietly, and from the way she shifts her head, it is clear that she knows the word is meant for her. “I—I am sorry…I—I thought—”

  She starts to move her lips in silence. Praying or talking to herself? I glance at my lady, but she is too locked in the misery of our misfortune to pay me any heed.

  “I was wrong. I got it wrong,” I repeat hopelessly.

  Her lips continue to move, as if she is almost reciting or incanting something. I have never given credence to the power of curses: I have been cursed enough by my birth not to be afraid of being further hammered by words, but even so it chills me to watch her.

  “Are—are you all right?” I say eventually.

  She shakes her head slightly, as if my words are disturbing her. “You have been running, yes? Are your legs aching?”

  Her voice is harsher than before, concentrated, almost as if she is talking to someone else, someone inside herself.

  “Yes,” I say quietly. “My legs are aching.”

  She nods. “Your back will be starting to throb too. That is because your leg bones are not strong enough to carry your trunk. So it presses down like a great stone at the bottom of your spine.”

  And as she says it I feel it, pain like a fat pulse near my fat ass.

  “What about your ears? Has the cold got in yet?”

  “A little.” I glance at my lady, who is recovered enough at least to be listening now. “But not like before.”

  “No? Well, you must be careful with that, for when pain flares inside the head, it is the worst of all.”

  Yes, there it is already, in my memory: the taste of my own tears as the red-hot skewers twist into my skull.

  She frowns slightly. Her face is tilted upright now, the eyes half closed, so I see only the smooth paleness of her skin.

  “It seems there is a great deal wrong with you, Bucino. So what, I wonder, is right about you?”

  It is the first time that she has ever used my name, and coming so close on my humiliation, it takes me aback, so that I flounder for a moment. “What is ‘right’ about me? I…er…” I look to my lady, and I feel sympathy there now, but she says nothing. “Well, I—I am not stupid. Ha—not usually. I am determined. And I am loyal and…while I shout, I do not bite. Or not to any effect, it would seem.”

  She is quiet for a moment. Then she sighs. “It was not your fault. Meragosa hated everyone,” she says, and her voice is soft again. “It came off her like a bad smell. I am sure you are not the first or the last that she has destroyed with her greed.”

  She starts to gather her pots together, feeling for their lids, slipping them on, pulling her bag toward her. “I will come back to finish the hairline another day.”

  I make a move toward the bed, I suppose to offer help if she needs it. But she stops me in my tracks. “Keep away from me.”

  She is still packing when the noise rises from below. What do I think? That Meragosa has had a change of heart and come back to apologize?

  By the time I reach him, he is already on the turn of the stairs. He is dressed for visiting, in a fine cloak with a fresh velvet cap on his head, dry enough to have come by cover o
f boat, although for him to know the way to our house someone else would have had to nose it out before him. God damn it. Is there any end to my carelessness?

  There is no point in trying to stop him now. I move back into the room quickly, mouthing his name to Fiammetta. She pulls herself upright, and as she turns to greet him, she lets the new fire of her hair slide around her face so that it masks the panic I see there just before the smile comes.

  Secondhand dress, secondhand hair, still first-class beauty. No doubt about that. I read it in the shine of his eyes.

  “Well, well…Fiammetta Bianchini,” he says, moving the words around his mouth as if he can taste her in them. “What a totally expected pleasure it is to see you again.”

  “Yes, I imagine it is,” she replies softly, and you would think from the ease of her tone that she has been waiting this whole morning for him to walk through the door. It is a marvel to me still: how even when the world is crumbling around her, the kind of challenge that would have most people pissing in fear seems only to make her more relaxed, more vibrant. “It is a big place, Venice. How did you manage to find us here, Pietro?”

  “Ah…I am sorry,” he says with a grin, and throws a fast glance at me. “I did not mean to break my word, Bucino. But you are such a visible addition to any city. As soon as one knows you are here, it is not difficult at all to find out where you have been and where you return to.”

  Secondhand clothes merchants and pawnbrokers. He is right. It can’t have taken much. Whoever followed me home, I hope they are coughing their guts out from a fever caught in the rain.

  He turns back to her, and the look between them holds. “It has been a long time.”

  “A long time, yes.”

  “I must say, you are as…radiant—yes, radiant—as I remember.”

  “Thank you. You, on the other hand, seem to have spread a little. Though I daresay you are rich enough to go with it.”

  “Ah, ah.” His laugh is too spontaneous to be anything but pleasure. “There is nothing in the world so sharp and sweet as the tongue of a Roman courtesan. Bucino told me you escaped, but I am glad your wit is as unscathed as your body, for I have heard the most terrible stories. You know I predicted it would happen, of course. My prognostico written in Mantua last year said as much.”

  “I am sure it did. And therefore you must have been delighted to hear how the army flooded in reciting your very words on the degradation and corruption of the Holy See.”

  “I…No, no. I didn’t know that…. Is that true? Did they? My God, you did not tell me that, Bucino.”

  He glances at me, and I try to keep my face neutral. But he is too sharp not to read it.

  “Ah. My lady Fiammetta. How cruel to play upon a poet’s sensitivities. But I forgive you, for the barb was…excellent.” He shakes his head. “I must say, I do believe I have missed you.”

  She opens her mouth to throw back a witticism, but there is something in his tone that makes her stop. I watch her falter. “And I you, sir…in my fashion. You survived Giberti well enough?”

  He shrugs and lifts up his hands, one of which he holds folded in on itself. “God is generous. He gave me two hands. With a little practice, the left can tell as much truth as the right.”

  “More, I would hope,” she says a little tartly.

  He laughs. “Oh, you don’t still hold a few lines of poetry against me?”

  “Not the poetry. Only the lies. You were never in my bed, Pietro, and it was sly of you to pretend that you were.”

  He glances at me and for the first time seems to notice La Draga, who is curled rock still and silent.

  “Well…” He is, I think, just a little embarrassed. “I daresay my recommendation did you no harm. But, cara, I have not come to open old wounds. God knows I have enough of those. No. I am here to offer you my services.”

  She says nothing. I need her to look at me now, for there is a conversation to be had between us, but her eyes stay fixed on him.

  “I am a fortunate visitor in Venice. I have the use of a house. On the Grand Canal. And it is my way to entertain sometimes: the literati, a few of the great merchants, some of the more artistic nobility of this extraordinary city. In this endeavor I am joined by a number of charming women….”

  I see her eyes spark with fury.

  “Of course, no one of your caliber, but successful enough in their way. Ifyou would like to join us all one evening…I am sure…”

  He leaves it hanging in the air. Ah, the precise art of insult. Even though our very future is at stake, I cannot help but enjoy myself, for it has been a long time since I have watched my lady with so worthy an opponent.

  The room has grown cold under her stare. She gives a small laugh and moves her new hair prettily around her shoulders. Thank God for greedy nuns.

  “Tell me, do I look in need of charity, Pietro?”

  And the risk takes my breath away. “Ah, no. Well, not in person, never. But…” And he waves his good arm around the room.

  “Oh!” And my lady’s laugh is like the sound of silver tapped against glass. “Oh, of course. You were following Bucino, and so you think…Oh, I am so sorry. This is not our home.”

  And as my eyes grow wide at the audacity of the lie, she turns to La Draga. “May I present to you Elena Crusichi. A gentlewoman of this parish and a kind and good soul to whom, as you can see, God has given a different kind of sight so that she may be blind to the ills of the world and closer to his truths. Bucino and I visit her often, for she is in need of comfort and conversation as well as clothes and vitals. Elena?”

  As smooth as the pile on the richest of velvets, La Draga lifts herself up and turns to him with a dreamy smile on her lips and her eyes more open than I have ever seen them, so that a man could not help but fall into the depths of their milk blindness.

  “Have no fear, my lord.” My lady’s voice is soft as silk. “Her grace is not contagious.”

  But though her blindness has taken him aback, he is not afraid. Instead he too starts to laugh. “Oh, madam. How could a man have made such an elementary mistake? To follow a dwarf bringing secondhand clothes to a secondhand house and think it could be connected with your good self.” He pauses while he studies, rather obviously, her not quite new enough dress. “And to you, Madam Crusichi, I can only say I am honored to be in your sightless presence. It will be my pleasure to have a basket of food delivered to you later so that you might intercede with the Lord on my worthless behalf also.”

  He turns to my lady. “So, carissima. Is the charade between us complete now?”

  She does not reply, and for the first time I fear for her. The silence grows. We have almost no money, and no way of getting more. And the man who might help us at the price of our pride is about to walk out the door.

  But it is now, as he turns to go, that something truly marvelous happens. From the bed a voice sings out clear and deep, like the bell that calls nuns to prayer in the middle of the still night. “Signor Aretino.”

  He turns.

  She is smiling in his direction, her lips slightly open as if they were already in conversation, and the smile is so sweet, so pure under the fathomless cloud of her eyes, and it lights up her face with such joy, that for that moment it is as if the grace of God himself is shining through her skin. Though whether or not I believe it…“Please. Come to me. Here.”

  He looks confused, as do we all. But he does as he is asked. As he reaches the edge of the bed, she draws herself up on her knees and puts her hands onto his upper chest, moving her fingers to his neck, to where his scarf has slipped a little so that the top of the scar is visible. She finds it with her finger. I glance at my lady, but her eyes are fixed on them.

  “This wound has healed better than your hand,” La Draga says quietly. “You were lucky. But”—her fingers slide down across the doublet—“there is something not right here, a weakness within.” And she puts her palm close to the place where his heart is. “You must be careful of this. For it will f
ell you someday if you do not take notice.”

  It is so serious, the way she says it, that while he laughs, he also glances nervously away from her. For my part, I cannot take my eyes off either of them: for if this is neither God nor witchcraft, then all I can say is she is the best trickster I have ever come across in my life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  For the first few days, we mask our despair with bickering. We, who have faced Spanish pikes and Lutheran furies, have been tricked by a fat, old slut who even now is pushing silver across a table in payment for roasted boar and good wine. The pain of her triumph turns us as sour on the inside as the world now feels bitter around us, so that we disagree not only about the past but also the future.

  “I’ve told you, I won’t do it.”

  “Let’s talk about it at least. We cannot just sit here and do nothing. You say yourself you can match any woman in the city. The fact is that whatever the humiliation of Aretino’s house, we know the rewards will be big enough.”

  “Not necessarily. It will be a catfight. You know his taste. It is the ink in which he dips his pen. He revels in watching women purr and scratch for men’s attentions. I have never performed for him, and I won’t start now.”

  “You have never been this unemployed, Fiammetta. If we don’t start somewhere, we are doomed.”

  “I would rather be on the streets.”

  “If you stay this stubborn, that’s where we will end up.”

  “Oh, really? It seems this loss is down to both of us, but only I am called upon to right it.”

  “And what would you have me do? Become a juggler while you become a street whore? Together we’d make barely enough to buy the bread we need to keep on opening our legs and lifting our hands. I didn’t steal from you and you didn’t steal from me, Fiammetta. But unless we are going to face this together, we might as well give up now.”

  “Together? You think we should face it together. As partners. Is that what you mean?”