In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel

by Sarah Dunant

  “Nothing.” I shrug. “Except that holding the pose has given her a crick in her neck that I have to massage out each evening. Without me, you wouldn’t have a model.”

  “Ah! Very well. But you look and then you go. What you see is not for gossip, understand?”

  “Gossip? The only thing I talk to is my account book. Everything else goes on over my head.”

  His studio is within the house, with a shed next door where he dries his canvases. I follow him upstairs to a room on the piano nobile where two great stone-trimmed windows let in a river of light and where the view can take him home sometimes without the journey. The canvas is on a great easel in the middle of the room, and if it is not finished, I cannot see what is left to be done. But then I am something of a blockhead when it comes to art. I have been present at a handful of entertainments where I have heard great men—and the odd show-off courtesan—wax lyrical about Tiziano’s “genius” with such verbal flights of fancy that what they describe seems to grow more out of their own imaginations than out of anything I see on the canvas. “Oh! Oh! See how he sanctifies the human body with his art.” “In Tiziano’s colors God has placed Paradise.” “He is not a painter but a miracle.” Their flattery is as sticky as honey, and I sometimes think the reason Tiziano favors my lady as a model is that she does not torment him with such prattle and so gives him room to let the brush fly.

  As for this, his latest work—well, to minimize the confusion, I will keep the words simple.

  The setting is the room itself—in the background you can see part of the window, with a luminous sunset streaking the sky; on the walls are tapestries and in front, two decorated chests, by which two maids, one kneeling, the other standing nearby, are sorting clothes.

  But while you see them, they are not where your eye lingers. For in the foreground of the painting, so close that you might almost touch her, is a naked woman. She is lying propped on a pillow on a bed of red floral mattresses covered with rumpled sheets, and at her feet a small dog is snoozing, curled head to toe. Her hair is falling across her shoulders, the nipple on her left breast, firm and pink, stands out against the dark velvet of the curtain behind, and the fingers of her left hand curl over the cleft of her sex. While all this is lovely enough and—as far as I can tell from bits of flesh I already know—a perfect replica of my lady’s body, it is familiar even to a dunce like myself, for the pose of Venus reclining has long been a popular one for sophisticated palates.

  What is different in this painting, though, is her face. For while every Venus I have ever seen is asleep or gazing out into the distance, modestly ignorant of the fact that she is being observed, this Venus, my lady’s Venus, is awake. And not simply awake but staring directly out at the viewer. As for the look in her eyes—well, this is where the simple words break down and I feel a flight of Aretino fancy coming upon me. For her gaze is one of such…lassitude, such lazy erotic energy, that it is hard to tell whether she is savoring memories of past pleasures or issuing a more direct invitation for what is to come. Either way, she is honest enough about it. There is not one iota of shame, embarrassment, or coyness in her face. This lady, my lady, is so at ease with herself that however long you stare at her, she keeps on staring back.

  “So?”

  He is standing impatiently behind me as if he doesn’t give a damn what I think but just wants me to say something so I will leave and he can get on with it. What can I tell him? I have spent most of my working life applauding bad poets, laughing at dreadful jokes, lying to second-rate musicians, and flattering stupid rich men who think their arguments are intelligent. One could say that I have grown incapable of telling the truth. I look at it again.

  “It is wonderful,” I say firmly. “You have created a great Venetian Venus. It would beat that poxy French ambassador on a bet between painting and sculpture any day.”

  “Tschar!” And the disgust is rich in his throat. In conversations about his genius, Tiziano is always the most silent one.

  I sigh. “Oh, look, Tiziano, why bother to ask me? You know I know nothing about art. I am a pimp. A high-class one, certainly, but a pimp nevertheless. You want to know what I see? I see a beautiful courtesan, as luscious as if she were lying here before me. More than that I have no idea.”

  “Hmm. One more question and then you can go. Do you know what she is thinking?”

  I look again. Do I know what is she thinking? Of course I do. She is a courtesan, God damn it. “She is thinking whatever one wants her to be thinking,” I say quietly.

  He nods. And picks up the brush. It is clear I am dismissed.

  My lady comes in and waves to me before moving toward the couch. While I have studied every inch of her body now, I will leave before she takes off her gown.

  I get as far as the door. But it keeps on nagging at me.

  “There is one other thing.”

  He turns. “What?”

  “It’s not her, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’re color-blind, but Fiammetta Bianchini’s eyes are emerald green. Not black.”

  He gives a great laugh, and I see her face light up with a grin.

  “Well—you wouldn’t want every man who sees her in my studio to come knocking on your door, would you?”

  And as she drops her robe, I go out the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I arrive back to find a boat docked at our mooring. For a moment I think it might be the fledgling Foscari, for the canopy is splendid enough and the trouble he is causing has been on my mind as I walk, but Gabriella meets me at the door and announces a stranger who has been sitting in the portego for the best part of an hour. “He wouldn’t leave a message. He says it is important and that he must speak to you alone.”

  He is sitting below the mirror, which, now that the light is dying, is become a dark hole in the gloom. I must say I had not expected him so soon. But then men going on long journeys often seek comfort before they leave. He gets up quickly to greet me, which makes him too tall, but it is a nice enough gesture, for believe me, not all of our customers bother. I catch sight of us both in the glowering glass, a bean pole and a runt, but I am prepared for the sight of myself now.

  “Signor Lelio, you are welcome. How was your meeting?”

  “It went well. The ship is ready. We sail the day after tomorrow. To the Indies.”

  “The day after tomorrow. So soon? Please—sit down.”

  He sits. But his limbs stay rigid. His nerves are palpable. If he is here for an appointment, I know already that there is no space for him. But he was good to me once in his way, and it is my job to afford him the same due care as any man with a purse and an appetite. “Is this your first time? To the Indies, I mean?”

  “Ah, yes—no. I went east a year ago. Aleppo and Damascus. But to the markets. Not the mountains.”

  “So, you have not seen the places where the stones come from?”

  “No. Not yet.” He smiles, for he remembers it all as well as I do. “But this time, God willing, I will.”

  The room is darker now. Gabriella knocks and comes in with a taper. As she moves around us, a shower of candle flames leaps up and starts to dance in the mirror. “Will you bring us some wine, Gabriella?…You will take something to drink?”

  “Oh, no, no!” He shakes his head. “I—I mean, I cannot stay….” And his eyes dart nervously.

  “Don’t worry, Signor Lelio,” I say gently as she leaves. “Our business here is as discreet as yours once was.”

  But he is not placated. “I…er…” He looks around. “It is a fine house. I did not expect…”

  “Such wealth?” I smile, and I am back again for a moment in a dingy room as his father puts down the eyeglass from our ruby and in his eyes I see our future draining away. Even now the memory spikes me. “We are lucky. Though everything you see here was once owned by someone else. And no doubt will be again. I think your family would remember our bargaining well enough.
How is your father, by the way?”

  He hesitates. “He died some years ago.”

  I want to ask him if it was before or after his conversion, but it feels too cruel a question. While it is not unknown for Jews to take on the Christian faith, the only stories I have heard are of young women star-crossed in love or tempted by a fat dowry from the Church, eager to promote the true faith. For a grown man to leave would be a much greater betrayal of the community. “I am sorry for your loss. Did he settle his argument with the state?”

  He shrugs. “The contract was renewed. Only the price changed. But such negotiations are endless.”

  As is the debate about the Jews. You hear it in the taverns and on the Rialto daily: those who believe that the Devil resides in Jewish loins and that usury pollutes the soul of any Christian who takes their money versus the merchants, for whom pragmatism is a virtue and who need Jewish purses to keep their businesses afloat. I think every Venetian has a bit of both men in him somewhere, though the merchant has the louder voice these days, and as long as Venice lives by her ships, everyone knows that, in some way or other, the Jews will remain. With his father dead, he would have been one of the elders now, responsible for negotiating his community’s future.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He looks at me, because of course he knows what the question is.

  “You want to know what made me convert?” He stares at me for a moment, then drops his eyes. “I—I found Jesus Christ in my heart,” he says quietly.

  I nod and keep my look grave. I spend my life making money out of sins of the flesh. The odd lie is a small enough business to me. But it seems to worry him more.

  “I mean…it…it is hard…to speak about. Always…I have always…Well, the Ghetto is very small.” He shakes his head. “And the world is so big. I think I have always been looking out the window. Even when I was a small child.”

  “You are lucky,” I say mildly. “I could never see that high.”

  “You should know I am not ashamed of myself,” he says, and his voice is firm now. For all his nerves, he has more confidence than that young man with his sad look and eyeglass. “A man must make his way in the world. My business brings money into Venice. I pay my taxes and obey the laws of the state as well as the next man. I am a respectable man.”

  “I’m sure you are.” More so than I will ever be, certainly.

  “I have memories…of your visits to our shop. You were always most polite to me.”

  “You were giving me money. It would hardly have done to offend you.”

  “That consideration did not influence most people.” He pauses. “The last time we met…I mean, the book you brought me. Did you find someone else to take it?”

  “What book?” I say calmly. “There was no book. That was my mistake.”

  “I see.” He smiles. “You do not need to worry. I have told no one about it.” There is a silence. “Though I must say I have thought about it sometimes…. As I say, the world was very small where I came from.”

  I wonder how long it will take him to spit it out. I could help him if I wanted. God knows, at first glance The Positions would have been surprising to more men than just him. Though once they had seen inside it, they would never be as surprised again. That was its power. Our power. We had had more in common than I had realized, he and I: both of us making our living trading in the forbidden. Sex and usury. How clever of the state to keep itself pure by giving the servicing of sins to those already damned.

  “I must tell you, Signor Lelio—my lady is not here at present,” I say. “So I cannot introduce you, and I—”

  “No, no—you don’t understand. I didn’t come for her…I mean…for that.” He is up on his feet again now. “I came because…because I have something I must tell you. Something that has been weighing on my mind for a long time now. When I saw you this morning, well…” He shakes his head and takes a breath. “You see, I know about your jewel. The one that was stolen from you.”

  Now it is my turn to stare. “The ruby—you know about our ruby?”

  “Well, I…of course, I cannot be absolutely sure it was yours, but it was the same size and the same cut, perfect, right down to the fire in its center.”

  “You saw it? When? What happened?”

  “Someone came to me. Wanting to pawn it. A woman—”

  “Old—ugly, yes?”

  “No. No, she was quite young.”

  “What did she look like?” And just for that second, La Draga’s dreamy white face rises up before me. “Did she limp, was she blind?”

  “No. No. I remember no limp and she was—I don’t know—quite sweet-faced. I mean, her head was covered by a shawl so I could not see much. But—”

  “Was she alone?”

  “I don’t know. I saw only her.”

  “What happened?”

  “She told me the ruby was from a pendant of her mistress. A family jewel. But that her mistress needed the money to pay some private debts for a while. She could not come herself for fear of being recognized abroad, so she had sent her maid in her place.”

  “Did you take it?”

  “It was not our policy to take stolen goods.” He pauses. “But it was a beautiful stone. True right through to its heart. Someone would have bought it.”

  “And paid what for it?”

  “Three, maybe three hundred and fifty ducats.”

  I had been right. A small fortune. The bitterness flows back like bile into my mouth. What could we not have done with that much money then?

  “When was this?”

  He hesitates. “It was that last afternoon. When you came to see me with the book.”

  “The last afternoon?”

  He sighs. “Yes. After you left, I was about to close the shop so I could attend to your lock when someone rang the bell. It was her.”

  And I am walking in fogbound streets again, people slipping in and out of the mist like ghosts, the fear of poverty all around me.

  “Of course, as soon as I saw it I thought of you. I told her that I would take it but that I needed to check with my father first because the amount was so large. I asked her to come back after I had closed and said I would do the deal then. I was going to tell you when you returned. But then, after she had gone, I opened the book, and it…well…I mean, I had not seen anything like that before….”

  “That is because there has not been anything like it before,” I say quietly. “So what happened when she came back?”

  “I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I closed up the shop before she came. I never saw the stone or her again.”

  We both sit for a moment in silence, and I find myself wondering if his old faith would have explained the capriciousness of destiny any better than his new one.

  “What more can you tell me about her? Do you remember anything else?”

  “I’m sorry….” He pauses. “It was a long time ago.”

  After he leaves, I sit and watch the night come in. I have stopped looking for Meragosa long ago. Instead, I have used our success as a kind of salve for the wound she left in me. In my mind I have decided that she is long dead, have killed her off with the pox or a bout of the plague, the remains of her stolen luxuries no defense against the diseases of sin. But with his story, the pain of her theft now cuts as sharp as a knife again.

  Of course, she would never have taken the stone to a pawn merchant herself. She was not that stupid. Even though I had been careful to keep my contacts in the Ghetto secret, she would have known well enough the ones that gave good prices. Instead of going herself, she would have sent someone else. As far as I knew, Meragosa was a woman without a past or a family. In all the time we lived together, she never talked to or about another living soul, save a few of the other crones in the local marketplace. So this must have been an accomplice picked for the moment; a young woman, pretty enough to catch the eye of the Jew she had to spin the story around, who would no doubt have got a small cut for her pains and her l
ying.

  Three hundred and fifty ducats. He was right. It was a long time ago, and as Fate would have it, things had turned out well enough without it. Indeed, you might argue it had been the making of us: the finding of the book, the connection with Aretino, the pact, the evening, our present success. But it doesn’t stop the anger when I think about the moment, when I see again her room open and empty and read the horror on my lady’s face. If Meragosa were to walk back into our lives now…

  I cannot wait to tell my lady about it. But she does not return in time for supper. Maybe they are celebrating the end of the painting, or the smell of the pork was too succulent to miss. Or maybe she needs to show further her displeasure with me. Whatever the reason, by midnight there is still no sign of her, and in the end I retire to bed.

  My dreams are full of precious stones falling from my fingers into dank canal water and sinking into stinking mud. I wake suddenly, though it is still dark, and it takes a moment for me to register the sound: a cry of some kind—voices, rising then hushed. Our casa sits near enough to the Grand Canal for revelers to use it as a shortcut home sometimes. My window looks out onto the water with a view of our dock, so I can note the traffic of suitors. I step up on my stool and open the catch. But the dock is clear. Our boat is not even there. My lady must have stayed overnight at Tiziano’s.

  I am halfway to my bed when the noise comes again. A voice, or voices, definitely. From inside the house. In the early days, before our household was as secure as it is now, my inventory had located a slow leak from the kitchen supplies. The rat that Mauro and I found in the middle of the night was wearing our boatman’s uniform and carrying a sack. He left the house by water but without a boat.

  I open the door and move out to the landing to trace the sound better.

  For a moment there is only silence above and around me. Then I hear it again, quieter than before, almost a murmuring, as if whoever is talking is aware that others will be sleeping nearby. And now I locate it exactly. It comes from my lady’s chamber.