The Thief Of Peace

by Jess Whitecroft

  Here is one of the few contented souls in Christendom, thought Nicci. And I creep in here like a thief, trying to learn how I might steal his peace.

  “You need to teach me,” he said. “To be good.”

  Teo looked up, surprised. “Why would you think I know anything about goodness?”

  “Because you are. Good, that is.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re better than me,” said Nicci.

  Teo set down the pig stick and reached for the pails. “You seem very sure of that fact,” he said, picking them up and heading back towards the kitchen.

  “I am. I’ve lived a dissolute life. My previous landlady could play the flute with her pussy.”

  Teo’s laugh exploded out of him like a fart, loud, unexpected and wholly indecent. “You mustn’t tell me things like that,” he said.

  “Sorry. I told you I was a reprobate,” said Nicci, and changed the subject. “What made you want to join a monastery in the first place?”

  “Are you asking because you’re interested? Or because you’re figuring how to persuade me to leave?”

  Nicci almost flinched, caught off guard by the young man’s perception. “I’m interested,” he said, and it was only half a lie this time.

  “You know of the circumstances of my birth?” said Teo, as they crossed the small courtyard near the kitchen. There was a water pump against the wall, and he rolled up his sleeves to rinse the buckets.

  “I know that you were…legitimised,” said Nicci, marvelling at how busy Teo always seemed. He was like a cog in the guts of a clock, always working, always sure of what he needed to do next.

  “There you are, then,” said Teo. “A man can claim his natural sons after the fact. It doesn’t make them any less natural. I am still the product of an unsanctified union.”

  “What? And that’s why you became a monk? Because of something your parents did before you were even conceived?”

  “We are all at fault for something our parents did, Nicci. That’s the doctrine of Original Sin.”

  Nicci leaned against a pillar. “Never seemed fair to me.”

  “You think God is unfair?”

  “Yes. We’re not only punished for the sins of our fathers, but the sins of their fathers. And their fathers’ fathers. Going all the way back to Adam and his apple. What hope is there for us?”

  “Christ,” said Teo. “He is the hope. The Lord gave us his only begotten son as a pascal lamb for our sins. Only through him can we seek salvation.”

  Nicci thought of that limp lettuce Annunciation on the bedroom wall and wondered if Teo had ever seen it. Or what he thought of it.

  “What do you think Christ would make of all this?” Nicci said, waving a hand at the courtyard and the scurrying monks. “The monastic life?”

  Teo glanced up. With one hand he held his robes up, baring his ankles. He’d kicked off his sandals, revealing the strap of white flesh where the sun didn’t reach. His feet and ankles were beautiful, even with a strip of squash peeling clinging to his smallest toe. “I don’t know,” he said. “We follow his teaching. We embrace the poverty he preached.”

  “Maybe,” said Nicci. “But don’t you find it all a bit…passive? I’m no theologian, but I’ve painted my share of religious subjects, and I always saw Jesus as someone who was very much active in the world. Dining with prostitutes and tax collectors. Turning over the money tables in the temple. Causing trouble and getting arrested.”

  Teo straightened up, shook the water from his feet and slipped them back into his sandals. “Here we are,” he said. “Once again you urge me to take my place in the world.”

  “I’m not urging. I’m simply expressing an opinion. How can you be sure that this is the way that God wishes you to live your life?”

  “I can’t,” said Teo. “Nobody can guess at the workings of the mind of the Lord, but he shows us signs.”

  “In cucumber plants?”

  The monastery bell began to ring. Its voice was loud and insistent, and after the first two rings Nicci was already imagining how annoying it must be to hear at night. “There’s a brother here,” said Teo. “Who bleeds. From his hands and his feet.”

  “Really?”

  “Mmhm. That’s how I know Christ is watching this place.” Teo set down the clean pails by the side of the pump. “Excuse me. I have to go.”

  Nicci had never much concerned himself with miracles before. He’d grown up in a world where most holy places had relics, and those couldn’t all be authentic. Not unless Christ had had twelve foreskins. And there were so many skulls of John the Baptist rattling around Italy that the man must have had more heads than a hydra. As he rode back to Florence he realised that this was another obstacle in his path, because why would a monk want to leave a monastery that was home to a stigmatic?

  The sun was beginning to set when Nicci returned to the city. He handed the horse to the groom and crossed the courtyard to find two men lurking at the side entrance of the house. At first glance he took them for twins. “Can I help you?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” said the first one. “Can you? Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” said Nicci, not liking his tone. The other one fingered the hilt of his sword. His face was narrower than that of the other, who was broad boned and had darker eyes. Not twins then, but possibly brothers.

  “This house belongs to Giovanni degli Albani,” said the one with the sword. “What are you doing here?”

  “Me? Oh, well – there’s obviously been some misunderstanding,” said Nicci. “My name is Niccolò di Volpaia. I’m an artist. Signor Albani has engaged me to…” To destroy the happiness and tranquillity of his only remaining son. “…to touch up some of the old frescos in the town house. And you are?”

  He saw the man’s shoulder muscles bunch as if to draw his sword, but just then Giancarlo wandered into the courtyard. The two men gave Nicci a long, hard glare and withdrew.

  “I have a horrible feeling that you just saved my life,” said Nicci. “Who the hell are they?”

  “Rafaele Ribisi,” said Giancarlo. “And his brother, Fillipo.”

  “You know them?”

  “No, but it makes sense that they’d come sniffing around here sooner rather than later.”

  “I don’t follow,” said Nicci.

  “Old family feud, I think,” said Giancarlo. “There’s no rhyme or reason behind it so far as I can see, other than that they broke heads for different sides during the Pazzi Plot. They’re still dragging it out, like the time their drunken cousin turned up full of more holes than a pincushion and they were convinced the Albani were behind it. Went running off to the Duke demanding justice, but from what I heard they had no evidence. Cosimo chucked them out and they’ve been furious about it ever since.”

  “Then why the fuck are they taking it out on me? They should be delighted with the way the situation has played out in their favour. Influence with the Duke means nothing when you have three dead heirs and the other one is locked up in a monastery, smiling at cucumber seeds.”

  Giancarlo giggled and pulled Nicci out of sight behind a pillar. His lips were smooth, and although this wasn’t nearly as private a place as it should have been, his tongue stirred thrilling memories of last night. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Nothing,” said Nicci, recalling the body beneath the clothes. Lithe and long-legged, with that funny little tuft of red pubic hair.

  “Talking of cucumbers…” Giancarlo said, his voice low and seductive. “Did you get my drawing?”

  “That was supposed to be a cucumber? You know they’re not supposed to have foreskins, don’t you? Or balls.”

  “I draw only what my eye sees, even if it is the most curious cucumber I ever encountered. It wasn’t even green.”

  “I should hope not. I’d be very concerned if it was.”

  The boy laughed and nibbled the edge of Nicci’s ear.
“I can draw, though. Don’t you think?”

  “You can.”

  “I’d be an asset to your studio.”

  “You would,” said Nicci, who was in no mood to explain that there was no studio at this present moment. Nobody who knew of his reputation would ever have believed him, but last night with Giancarlo had represented the end of a very long drought. And it had only served to remind him of the intensity of his thirst.

  “Perhaps you’d like to see what else I can draw?”

  “I think,” said Nicci. “That I’d like that very much.”

  4

  Someone had to sweep the chapel after Compline, and tonight it was Teo’s turn. There had been a small earthquake on Tuesday and since then even more bits of tile and plaster kept falling from the roof. The hole above the altar had widened and a recent rain shower had left water trickling down the face of Christ like the tears of a miracle.

  “You should make some money from it,” Nicci had said. “Tell everyone that your statue is weeping and charge them admission. I’m sure God won’t mind if you’re using the money to repair the roof of his house. Anyway, you’ve already got a stigmatic in the monastery. Why isn’t he making you money?”

  “Because Brother Sandro is a person,” Teo had said. “Not a curiosity from a country fair. We don’t wheel him out to solicit donations, and I’m offended by the idea that you’d imagine we would.”

  Nicci had apologised, but the bad taste lingered in Teo’s mouth even now. It was the same sour flavour that had inspired heresy over the years. The Church had supposed to be rectifying its past mistakes, but they still persisted. Pope Paul had been all about reform, but his bastards were still made Dukes of Parma. And Julius, who had started the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s, was another one of that brood of Della Rovere nephews who had followed their uncle Sixtus to Rome and taken over the Curia.

  The rot was too deep, root and branch. At the top it was cardinals bribing and badgering their ways into the shoes of the fisherman. At the bottom it was those travelling friars who sold fingerbones of the Magdalene and vials of duck blood purporting to have flowed from the side of Christ at Calvary. Teo felt the Church’s shame as acutely as his own, and was relieved that their abbot had never sought to make an exhibition of old Brother Sandro.

  Sometimes he fantasised about what might have been, if his brothers had lived and his father had found a use for him within the Church. What would have awaited him then? A bishopric before he even had hair on his chest, or a cardinal’s hat when he turned twenty?

  No. He wouldn’t have been there on merit or piety. He would, like all the other younger sons of Italy’s ruling families, been there on the strength of his family name and his connections. Or his willingness to cast the right votes when the time came to elect a new Pope. And worse, he would have been exposed.

  He was safer here, sweeping up broken roof tiles in a monastery chapel, where nobody knew where he was or who he was.

  The debris scraped against the floor as he swept, then he felt the bristles bump up against something small and soft. Teo squatted between the pews and saw that it was a bird – perhaps the same sparrow that he’d watched in the rafters the other day at Vespers, the one that had decided to remain safe inside while the other one had flown out to run the gauntlet of hawks and little boys with slingshots.

  It was dead.

  He knew that before he’d even picked it up. The tiny bundle of feathers was motionless. It was cold to the touch and light as air. He let out a faint cry and let it fall back to the floor, shocked by the depth of his own distress. Who knew he was here? Was this a warning? A threat?

  You’re mad. How would anyone besides God know that you watched the sparrows play in the roof whenever your mind wandered from your prayers?

  Teo gathered himself with some difficulty. It was a bird. That was all. The poor thing had probably got trapped in the roof and died from hunger and thirst. The hand of God was not at work here. Or the hand of anyone else.

  He finished sweeping and scooped up the dead bird. He placed it under the rosemary bush outside the chapel. The pungent herb made his head spin and his knees folded gently from under him, the same way they had when he’d been obliged to play the young nobleman and accompany his father on a boar hunt.

  Even the smell of rosemary couldn’t quite blot out the memory of the blood. He saw his father’s hand reaching out towards him, the thick fingers red and dripping, shining in the sunlight. He felt them rub across his cheek, with enough pressure to distort the corner of his mouth and let the blood run in. How he’d tried so hard not to taste it, to keep it on the outside of his teeth somehow, but the taste – meaty, indecently raw – had found his tongue and set him retching.

  If only they knew how he’d been punished. These days he fainted like a girl at the sound of a lamb being slaughtered. The death of a single sparrow had brought him here, dry heaving on his knees outside the chapel.

  Still trembling slightly, Teo got to his feet.

  “Brother Teo?” It was the abbot, stepping out of the deepening shadows. “Is everything all right?”

  “Fine, Father. Thank you.”

  The abbot drew Teo into the candlelit doorway to look at him. “Are you sure?” he said, and Teo hoped the old man hadn’t seen him swoon. He could imagine the well-worn conclusions that the abbot would come to, having seen countless boys grow up under his care. He knew the sins that kept them up at night and made them yawn all the way through Matins.

  “Everything is fine, Father,” said Teo, almost wishing that he was suffering the shame of that mundane sin. “Thank you again for asking. I was just going to put the broom away and then go to bed.”

  “You seem distracted lately,” said the abbot. “With this…visitor of yours.”

  “Volpaia?”

  “Yes. A worldly gentleman, as I’m led to understand.” The abbot scanned Teo’s face intently. “If you need me to forbid his visits, all you need to do is ask.”

  “Why?” said Teo, suddenly nervous once more. “What have you heard about him?”

  The abbot shook his head. “One never learns anything good from gossip, my son.”

  Teo exhaled, fighting to stifle his panic. He might have known he’d find himself knocking his head against a wall of opaque piety. “If you must know,” he said. “Volpaia has been asking me for instruction in how to be a better man.”

  “Oh. Well, this is a place of miracles, after all.” The abbot smiled at his own little joke and touched Teo lightly on the arm. “Well, my offer still stands if you require it. You’ve made great progress in your spiritual well-being. I’d hate to see it disrupted for no good reason.”

  “Thank you, Father. I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “Now, to bed.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Teo went back to his cell, rage edging out fear for a moment. He had the sense that there were forces at work beyond his knowledge and he didn’t like it one bit. He lay down on the hard, narrow bed and clenched his fists tight, tight, trying to feel the pain of his fingernails pressing into his palm.

  But his nails were broken and bitten. There was no relief to be had. No external pain to punish the sin of Wrath. He pulled his belt tighter, making the hair shirt bristle around his waist. The abbot had suggested this, after Teo had gone too hard with the whip and passed out at breakfast. Father Abbot prescribed the cilice for all the young men, because young flesh was wayward flesh, as Teo knew all too well. Sometimes in the night his body woke him, pulsing and spurting when he was powerless to prevent it.

  Not tonight, though. As his fury subsided, fear nettled his skin like a second hair shirt. Teo stared up into the darkness above him and tried to empty his mind.

  *

  The boy was out of sorts today.

  He was scowling over the soap he was making, giving answers in sour, clipped tones. “Mind the lye,” he snapped, as he almost splashed the stuff all over Nicci’s sleeve. “It burns.”

  Nicci
stepped back from the table. He knew little about the internal lives of monks, but he guessed they were supposed to be at least as prayerful as their outer lives. And while he was no expert on theology, he was pretty sure that Wrath was one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

  Was it wrath or simple frustration, he wondered? When he was Teo’s age he’d been a holy terror – brawling, drinking and falling in love far too easily. Giancarlo, too, was only a couple of years younger than Teo and he was a lovely, lively creature who could shake off a hangover as easily as sneezing and come five times a night. Teo, by contrast, existed in an unnatural state. Here he was at the pinnacle of youth and beauty, at an age where he should rightfully have been spilling his seed, breaking hearts and throwing up in gutters, and instead he was here, singing psalms with a bunch of old men.

  It seemed only natural that such an arrangement should make him snarl like a caged lion from time to time.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?” Nicci said, in a sad attempt to ingratiate himself.

  Teo gave him a blazing, sidelong look. “What do you mean?”

  “You plant seeds, you tend pigs, you make soap. You make me feel quite useless.”

  “Everyone has their purpose.”

  “That’s a very monkish answer.”

  Teo went on pouring the oil into the moulds, his plump lower lip pushed out. “All right,” he said, setting down the pail and wiping his hands. “Then here’s a question. What is your purpose, Niccolò di Volpaia? Why are you here?”

  “I told you. First I came because your father requested it of me, and then I decided to come back.”

  “What? To improve yourself?” said Teo. “Really?”

  “I feel there’s room for improvement.”

  The boy still looked sceptical. “Why?” he said. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” He leaned back against the edge of the huge wooden table and folded his arms. “Go on. Tell me your sins. All of them. And don’t try to amuse me with stories about girls who play the flute with their…you know. If you’re sincere, tell me. What’s the worst sin you have ever committed?”