In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel

by Sarah Dunant

  “I didn’t go alone,” I say. “I was dragged by the crowd.” The coughing comes again. Only now with it there is a short, stabbing pain in my left ear. “Aaagh.”

  “I got you out as fast as I could. Though you lashed and thrashed like a great fish. You had taken in a lot of water. We pumped you out and brought you home, but it will make you sick for a while more.”

  And sure enough, as he finishes his words I throw up again.

  “Good,” he says, and he is laughing now. “You of all people should know that Venetian water is not for drinking but for pissing in. You are fortunate that liquid is all you swallowed.”

  I am alert enough now to take in the room, with its closed shutters and the candle on the side. “How long have I been here?”

  “A few hours, perhaps more. It was hard to get you here. The city was mad with it all. Don’t worry. I am sending a message to your mistress. You are at the same house, yes?”

  “Yes…but…” And the coughing comes again. He waits patiently for me to stop.

  “But?”

  “Don’t send it yet.” For if she is told, she will surely come, and I am not ready to see her. I think this is what I think, though perhaps I also want her to wonder a little where I am and why I am not back yet. “She will be worried if she hears. I will be better soon enough.”

  He studies me for a moment, as if he is not sure, but gets up and pats my hand. “Very well. Maybe you should sleep some more. I will come to you later.”

  When his servants wake me again, my head still feels full, but my stomach at least is empty. They bring me a thick, sweet drink, made with cloves and cinnamon, and help me up, giving me a robe, one of his long, trailing gowns that I must bunch up in the middle with a sash so that I do not trip as I walk. He laughs at the sight of my clumsiness as they guide me out to sit with him in the inner courtyard.

  The air is warm still with a hint of twilight, and the place I find myself in now feels more like I imagine the Orient might be than the city of Venice. In the middle of the courtyard, there is a marble fountain with the water cascading into a series of descending bowls, so that the sound of moving water is everywhere, reverberating like soft music. There are great pots and urns of plants and flowers all around, perfuming the air, and every wall has been tiled so cunningly, each tile with its own intricate pattern, that joined together they make you feel as if you are living in a world of brightly colored foliage and flowers. I have met travelers who say there are palaces in Constantinople where the courtyards smell sweeter than the countryside and where you need never leave the house to feel you are living amid nature. So much beauty, so much green and growing art, yet not one sign, or statue, or image of their God. Alas, they will suffer for it eventually, for the gray wastes of pagan Hell will, I suspect, cause them as much pain as any pit of flames. But I am pleased enough to be with him now, for there is a serenity here after the mayhem of the streets.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Glad I am not a water rat.”

  “Hmm. I think there were those who thought you were, or would have watched you drown for the sport of it. They were taking bets on how much water you could swallow. You should take up my offer, Bucino. I am back with a full purse. Why let yourself be ridiculed when you could live in a place where you would be exalted?”

  “Alas, how would I understand the compliments?”

  “Ah! You will learn fast enough. You think I understood a word of your gummy language before I set foot here? I will teach you on the voyage home.”

  “Oh, no. Not another boat.”

  “Ah, it is only Venetian galleys that sink. Turkish vessels rule the sea.”

  “Yet, strangely, you still boast like a Venetian.”

  “They learned it from us. That is one of the reasons why I know you would feel at home there.”

  I smile, and I notice that the movement hurts my ears a little. We have played this game before, he and I. Aretino was right. It seems that men of my stature are prized in the sultan’s court, so that along with silks, glass, and jewels, dwarves are high on Abdullah’s market list. He has wooed me often enough with stories of Constantinople: how it would be both exotic and familiar to me, with its palaces and gardens and festivals, its library fit for a scholar, plundered from Hungary, and its great statues of Diana and Hercules, booty from Rhodes. It is, of course, the mark of great cities to filch their most treasured possessions from somewhere else: Venice herself is a perfect example, since half the pillars of the basilica and the triumphant snorting horses that grace its front stolen from no less a place than Constantinople itself. Still, for all that his God may be heathen, it seems he comes from a culture where I would be treated as a man of substance rather than a freak. And today of all days, I drink deep on the seduction, for it is not only my body that is shivering.

  “…I tell you, Bucino, such was the abundance of wonder that the sky did not become night for four days from the light of fireworks. They strapped rockets to the backs of the elephants, and they roared and trumpeted as the lights exploded. There were a thousand acrobats on stilts or rope-walking between the obelisks, so many of them in the air that when you looked up it was like a vast spider’s web. It was the greatest festival man has ever seen. For there is nothing, nothing, that Venice has that we do not have better or richer.”

  “Nothing? Then what could you possibly be shopping for this time, Abdullah? Apart from myself?”

  “Ah! Well, there are a few odd objects. Trinkets, really. Jewels, glass, fabrics—nothing more.”

  And he laughs at his own exaggeration. I cannot think of another city in Christendom where he and I could sit and talk like this. For all that the Venetians and the Turks spit fire and death at each other at sea, neither side lets religion interfere too much when it comes to trade. Two great powers each looking over its shoulder at the other. There are those who say that it is only a matter of time until Portuguese traders and the New World bullion start to bite into Venice’s wealth, and that when that happens, the Ottomans will take the oceans from her. But I see no sign of it now; indeed, Doge Gritti’s own bastard son lives as a jewel merchant in Constantinople, and thanks to Abdullah Pashna, and as a result of that night at Aretino’s, the great sultan Suleiman now has a portrait of himself painted by Venice’s greatest living artist, Tiziano having taken the likeness from a medallion. I thought it was rather pompous and lifeless myself when I saw it, but then what do I know about art? His Magnificence was delighted enough that everyone involved, Aretino included, was richly rewarded. As no doubt I would be if I chose to become one of his retinue of court wonders.

  I sip at my drink, still rich with spice. But I wish it were hotter, because despite all the wild warmth of the Turk’s descriptions, I am cold.

  “You know what I think, Bucino? It is not what you might find there that scares you. You are too clever to enjoy the contempt that is shown toward you here, and your appetite is, I think, too big to be afraid of new things. No. I think it is the sadness of who you would leave behind that stops you. I am right, yes?”

  I shrug. At this moment I don’t even want to see her again, for her selfishness and deceit make me so angry.

  “We have a partnership,” I say feebly.

  “I know that. I have seen it at work. And very fine it is too. Maybe I should take you both. Believe me, it is always the foreign women in his court who are the most venerated. She is not as young as some, but then neither is his favorite, and that one rules like a harridan. Your mistress could make herself a court of her own if she won his soul. The rewards for that for all of us would be great indeed.”

  “What—you mean living in state in his seraglio?”

  He laughs. “You Christian men always say that word with such fear and awe. As if it were the most terrible thing in the world that a man should be given more than one woman. Yet everywhere I go in your ‘Christendom,’ the cities are full of brothels, where men cannot wait to lie with any number of women other than their wives. I
believe you disapprove so much because you envy us.”

  It is hard to marry one’s terror of the Turks with the fact of Abdullah Pashna. The stories—which are legion—curdle the blood: piracy, butchery, the enslavement of whole villages, men with their balls cut off and stuffed into their mouths, children skewered like pieces of roasting meat on sabers. Yet in his company I find a mind as clear as fresh water and sufficient wisdom about life that it seems to me that if he wasn’t a heathen he would make an excellent Christian.

  How much of who a man is comes from the God he believes in? Did Catholic Spaniards dice fewer fingers off their Roman hostages than German heretics? Will the Jews and the Turks suffer different hells for different heresies? Or will the worst agonies be saved for the Lutherans, who were born into the true faith but then twisted it into another? For years there have been reformers in Venice saying openly that our Church must change. That our appetites are grown into decadence, that salvation can never be for sale, and that, when it comes to the gates of Heaven, the raising of rich buildings is less important than charity toward others who are less fortunate. Yet tell that to the great clerics we entertained in Rome. And what happens if, when you reach the tribunal of Heaven, the God you meet there disagrees? Ah…some thoughts are better left unspoken. It is as well that Venice is more tolerant than other cities and that the Inquisition cannot see inside our minds, for if it were otherwise, I am sure I would not be the only one to find myself in the clutches of the magistrates.

  I shake my head and find that my ears do not like that movement either. And I know now I am in trouble. “Maybe. Still, somehow I don’t think my lady would cope well with being one of many. She has not been trained for such humility.”

  He laughs. “I think you are right. Also, I think she does not conceive—I am right in that, yes?—which would damage her power terribly. So, I’m afraid you would have to give her up to make your own fortune. And that, I suspect, you cannot, will not, do. A shame, but there you are. Don’t worry. I will go to Mantua instead. I hear they are breeding families of dwarves there, for the lady who runs the court has a hankering for them. They will not have your wit or soul, but they will do.”

  We sit for a while and listen to the sound of the water. I want to think more about what he has said to me, but I can’t find the words.

  I shiver.

  “My friend, I think you should go home. You do not look so well. Come, I will walk with you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  He is right. I am not well. It is not far from his house to ours, but the clogged-up feeling in my head affects my balance now, so that it seems as if I am walking on the deck of a moving ship. Still, I will not go by boat. Not for all the gems in the mountains of Asia. Instead we walk: step by slow step. At any other time it would be a fine evening. The light is honeyed as we cross the Rialto, and Tiziano’s luscious nudes glow off the side wall of the German Fondaco. He told me once that, until he could afford the company of courtesans, most of what he knew about women’s bodies came from the work of his master, Giorgione, whose own fiery, fleshy figures light up the front façade. I daresay it’s true enough, for he was much younger then. Though not as young as our damned pup. The evening is warm enough for the Turk to be without an overgarment, but even huddled in a cloak I am shivering, though the worst is my ears, which are humming like the high note of a tuning fork. And every now and then there comes a stab of pain.

  I growl it away. I am alive, and I refuse to be felled by something as ordinary as earache, though even as I think it I am terrified of what it might become. I swallow and yawn and use my fingers to massage the flesh under my lobe. In the past these things have sometimes helped. They will again today.

  When we reach the door of our casa, he is hesitant to leave me. “You are sure you are all right?”

  I nod.

  “I can come in with you?”

  “No. If you come, people will fuss, and it will disturb the house, and we are busy tonight. I will go to bed. If I sleep, it will be better. Trust me—I know what to do.”

  He turns to leave.

  “Abdullah Pashna. Thank you. I think you may have saved my life.”

  He nods his head. “Of course I did. I wanted you to be beholden to me. Remember my offer. Look after yourself, my fat little juggler.”

  I open the door gently. The inner hall is empty, though through the back window of the ground floor I see the water moorings are full, and there is a loud chorus of voices coming from above, with the smell of roasting venison and spices seeping out from the kitchen. I move quietly up the main stairs toward my room. To reach it, while I do not have to brave the portego, I must move along the corridor close to it.

  The doors are open, and the room is alive with light and sound. The table is filled with seven or eight people, all busy with plates and chatter, so no one notices a small, squat man hovering in the gathering gloom outside. My mistress has her back to me, but in the mirror on the wall opposite, I catch a reflection of her laughing and talking to our client, an elderly man, on her left. I had forgotten that tonight our work started early, at the end of a lecture he was giving to visiting naval luminaries. But the menu is long planned with the wines already chosen, and I would not be worth even my small weight as a majordomo if such a simple entertainment couldn’t run without me.

  Tonight’s company is brought together by our scholar client and best designer, Vettor Fausto, another wrinkled prune of a man whose body is collapsing faster than his desire. Whether he will stay tonight depends on how much he drinks and how lusty he can feel with half a haunch of venison in his gut. Whatever he decides, he doesn’t need my help to fail at it. The evening will run itself. I can sleep. And in the morning, when I am recovered, she and I will talk again.

  I lock my door after me and crawl onto my bed, too cold and too tired to remove my borrowed clothes. I pull the blanket over me. My head is full and buzzing, and I feel earache, like a stalking cat, at the edge of my consciousness. If I can sleep before it gets me in its grip, the rest may help.

  I cannot tell if it is the chill or the pain that wakes me. All I know is that my clothes are soaking as if I have a fever, but the sweat is cold, and though I pull the blanket around me closer, I feel my teeth start to chatter. Inside my head there is a pulse of pain, as if a cord is stretched tight between my ears with someone plucking at it every second, a drumbeat on an open nerve. I try to swallow, but that only makes it come in stronger waves. I try to yawn, but it hurts so much I cannot open my mouth properly. God damn it, the filthy water of Venice has seeped in through my ears and poisoned me.

  I am a veteran of head pain. When I was young, it tormented me so frequently that my father told me I must make it my friend. “Welcome it, Bucino, talk to it. Make it your own, for if you fight it you will lose.” But though I talked, it would not listen to me, pleasuring itself instead by spiking me so badly that sometimes all I could do was lie and sob. I think he wanted me to have courage so I would prove to him that though my shape was deformed, my spirit at least was unharmed. But you can be only as brave as your body lets you. “It is the way your head grows,” he said. “The fault of your deformity. You will not die of it.” But I did not believe that then. Now, when I watch the men being pulled through the streets to the gallows howling as their tormentors nip bits out of their flesh with hot tongs, I wonder if their agony is worse than mine, because that is what it felt like to me, that skewering and squeezing of soft pulp with hot pincers. Except that my pain left no marks anyone else could see. Eventually, after hours, sometimes after days, it would lessen and in the end fade away. Each time I would be left dazed and flattened, like a new blossom after a rainstorm. And each time, when I felt it coming again, I would resolve to be braver than before, but by then I was afraid of the idea of the pain as much as the pain itself, and each time I failed. My father and myself.

  But he was right. It was about my growing. For years I have not suffered it like this. If I am to cope, I must find so
me way to dull the horror. We keep a sleeping draft locked in the pantry, one of La Draga’s concoctions disguised within the taste of grappa, our secret weapon against the more rowdy customers, for the right dose can turn a bull into a baby softly enough that he never knows he has been felled. What would I give for that oblivion now?

  I force myself to sit up and try to imagine that this in itself makes me feel better. I dig out my keys and get as far as the door. But the pain skewers my balance so badly now that the ship is listing dangerously and I have to hold the wall as I move. My lady’s door is closed with no telltale snoring, though Fausto is quieter than most, for his aging frame is as thin and frayed as a piece of weathered rope from one of his beloved galleys.

  Elsewhere the house is silent. The evening is long finished.

  Mauro is asleep in a room off the kitchen, but nothing short of the Second Coming will disturb him. I fumble with the lock and retrieve the jar containing the draft. I have no time to measure but gulp it straight from the bottle, too much rather than too little; no one has died on us yet, and the longer I am unconscious the less I will feel. I am locking the door again when I hear the noise. It comes from the entrance. Near the water doors.

  Our scholar leaving? When he could be curled around soft flesh dreaming of potency? I do not think so. If I looked from a window, I doubt I would see any boat arriving now, for it would have dropped its cargo farther along the fondamenta and be keeping to the shadows away from our mooring. Our door, of course, would have been locked when the last guest left. Until someone opened it from the inside. Though my brain is singing with pain, I am not stupid with it yet.

  I slide a carving knife out from its holding place on the wall and reach the stairs before him. I blow out the candle so that by the time he reaches the bottom I am halfway up, clothed in darkness. My head is in a vise grip now. I want to howl, but it is easier to whimper.