In the Company of the Courtesan

by Sarah Dunant

  They rowed slowly through this maze until they hit a broader canal, where the houses grew wealthier again. Ahead, one of the sleek, black boats glided toward them, lit up this time by a hanging red lamp. The woman was instantly alert, moving to the end of the boat to get a better view. The figure in the stern ahead seemed to merge into the dark, his skin and his costume the same hue as the night, but the cabin was more colorful, decorated with gold curtains and tassels, and as the two vessels moved closer, it was possible to catch a glimpse of a young woman in fine clothes, her rising breasts and neck the color of moonlight, and a shadow of a man next to her, his fingers in her hair. As the two boats slid by each other, a ringed hand slipped out and pulled the curtain across to hide them from view, and in the still night air, the movement sent a rush of lavender and musk across the water. In the rowing boat, the woman closed her eyes, her head tilted up like a hunter’s toward the scent, and long after the boats had passed each other, she stayed that way, lost in the moment, breathing deeply. Across the length of the boat, the dwarf watched her closely.

  The silence was broken by the boatman’s voice. “How far?” he muttered, his arms aching at the prospect of the journey back. “You said it was in Cannaregio.”

  “We are nearly there,” she said; then almost to herself, “It has been a long time.” A few moments later, she motioned him into a smaller stretch of water. The channel led to a dead end, where, to one side, a three-story house loomed up in front of them, a rickety wooden bridge close by. “Here. Here. We are here.” And her voice was excited now. “You can bring the boat in to the steps. The mooring is to the left on the side.”

  He pulled up and secured the boat. The building looked forbidding, plasterwork peeling, broken shutters closed. The tide had risen during the journey, and the water was slurping over the top step. He dumped their bags on the wet stones and demanded his money roughly, and though the dwarf tried to persuade him to wait until the doors were open, he would have none of it, and by the time they started banging, he had already disappeared into the slick dark.

  The sound of their fists on the wood jumped into the air around. “Open up,” she called. “It is Fiammetta come home. Open the doors, Mother.”

  They waited. She called again. This time a light flickered on the first floor and a face appeared at the window.

  “Meragosa?”

  A woman’s voice grunted.

  “Open the door. It’s me.” Above, the figure seemed to hesitate, then pulled the shutter closed, and they heard movements as someone came down the stairs. Eventually the great wooden door swung open and an old woman was revealed, thick as a cart and wheezing with the effort, a single shaded candle in her hand.

  “Meragosa!” The woman, subdued for so long, was excited.

  “It’s me, Fiammetta.”

  “Fi-Fiammetta. Maria Madonna! I didn’t recognize you. What happened to you? I thought…well…We heard about Rome…. Everyone’s talking about it…. I thought you were dead.”

  “We might as well be, for the shape of us. For God’s sake, help us in.”

  The woman shifted a little, but not quite enough to make way.

  “Where is my mother? Is she asleep?”

  Meragosa gave a small moaning noise, as if someone had struck her. “Your mother…I…God help us, I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “Your mother…is dead.”

  “What? When? How? How could I know?”

  “Half a year ago. We…I sent a message to you. In Rome.”

  In the gloom it was impossible now to see either of the women’s eyes.

  “A message. And what did it say?”

  The answer was almost a mumble again. “Only that…well, that she had passed away.”

  There was a small silence. The younger woman dropped her eyes, and for a moment she seemed to hesitate, as if she did not know quite how to feel. The dwarf moved closer to her, his eyes fixed on her face. She took a breath. “In which case, Meragosa, it would seem you are now living in my house.”

  “No…I mean…” The old woman stammered. “Your mother…she fell sick suddenly, and on her deathbed she told me I could stay on…for all that I’ve done for her.”

  “Oh, carina.” Her voice was sleeker now, like a long caress on cat’s fur. “All these years of practice and you still lie as badly as an old whore. The rent on this house is paid for out of my loins, and we have come to take possession of it. Bucino, take our bags inside. Our room is on the first floor above the entrance—”

  “No.” The woman’s bulk blocked the way. “You can’t stay. I—I’ve taken lodgers. I—I needed the money—to keep the place going.”

  “Then they can sleep on the landing till they leave in the morning. Bucino.”

  The dwarf moved quickly by the old woman’s legs, and she screamed as he brushed past her, a word spitting from her lips.

  “What did you call him? A water rat? You should be careful, Meragosa. From where I stand, you’re the only vermin I see in this house.”

  There was a silence. Neither of them moved. Then, suddenly, the old woman gave ground, growling and standing aside to let her in.

  And so the young woman and the dwarf walked into the darkness, the water lapping greedily at the steps behind them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Venice, 1527

  My God, this city stinks. Not everywhere—along the southern wharves where the ships dock, the air is heady with leftover spices, and on the Grand Canal money buys fresh breezes along with luxury—but everywhere we are, where crumbling houses rise out of rank water and a dozen families live stacked one on top of another like rotting vegetables, the decay and filth burn the insides of your nostrils. Living as I do, with my nose closer to the ground, there are times when I find it hard to breathe.

  The old man who measures the level of the well in our campo every morning says that the smell is worse because of the summer drought and that if the water falls any lower, they will have to start bringing the freshwater barges in, and then only those who have money will be able to drink. Imagine that: a city built on water dying of thirst. According to him, this summer is so bad because war has brought in a flood of refugees and with them the threat of the plague. Those travelers who arrive from the sea with the contagion, he said, are found out because the city sends officers aboard every merchant ship looking for fever or boils, and if they discover symptoms, they cart the suspects off to one of the outer islands for quarantine. That’s why there’s no leprosy in Venice anymore, just a few remaining mad souls watching their limbs rot away in an old hospital fenced in by water. But they can’t stop everyone, and these days the mainland holds as many dangers as the open sea. He stares fixedly at me as he says all this, because he suspects that’s how we got here. Gossip travels faster than smell. Across the thin canals, women cackle and squawk at one another like so many hungry seagulls, and the arrival of a dwarf brings out nosiness in the most taciturn of souls. I have been gaped at by every trader for miles around, and across from our house, a squint-eyed old bat with no teeth sits at the window, day in, day out, eyes going in both directions at once, so that if my lady and I speak of anything that is not the weather, we must close the windows, for there are no such things as secrets when words dance so freely across water.

  But whatever the rumors, the old man still talks to me, no doubt because he is lonely and because age has bent him as double as I am small, so my mouth comes close to his deaf ears and he can hear me better than he can others. He has lived in the same quarter of the city for eighty-one years, and he remembers everything, from the great fire in the shipyards started by the spark from a horse hoof to the great Battle of Agnadello, almost twenty years ago, when Venice was defeated by an alliance of Italian states and the government was so ashamed, he says, that it prosecuted its own generals and all you could hear for days was the sound of people wailing in the streets and on the water.

  Venice, as he never ceases to tell anyone willing to listen
, was the greatest city in the world then, but now prostitutes threaten to outnumber the nuns, and there is only blasphemy, ridicule, and sin. While it would give me the greatest pleasure to believe him—the city he describes would surely make our fortune—impotence often makes grumblers of old men, for as death gets closer, it is more comforting to imagine that they are leaving Hell for Heaven rather than the other way around.

  Still, in those first months, when my lady was housebound and I was negotiating my way between the canals, his gossip was sweet to my ears and made him both my historian and my first guide.

  To begin with, though, there was only sleep, a great, deep well of it, our bodies greedy for the oblivion that comes with safety. In the room above the canal, my lady lay upon her mother’s bed like a dead woman. I took a pallet by her door, my body acting as a lock against the old woman’s malevolent curiosity. I think sometimes now about that sleep, for I have never experienced anything like it before or after: it had such a sweetness that I might be tempted to trade Paradise for the promise of such profound forgetfulness. But we were not ready to die, and on the morning of the third day, I woke to spears of light through broken shutters and a stabbing hunger in my gut. I thought of our kitchen in Rome; of roasted fish, its skin crisp and bubbling from the oven, the thick taste of capon stuffed with rosemary and garlic, and the way the warm honey oozed from Baldesar’s almond cakes, so that you almost had to eat the tips of your fingers to be satisfied; my hand went out to the bulge above my groin the size of a small volume of Petrarch and a purse of emeralds, rubies, and pearls, a shape more reassuring to me now than any stirrings of desire.

  My lady was still sleeping, her face half buried in the mattress, the filthy turban clasped to her head. Downstairs, in the dank kitchen, Meragosa greeted my arrival with the scream of a stuck parrot, as if the Devil’s incubus itself had come into the room. In a pan over the fire, there was a steaming liquid that may once have held the richness of animal bones, though there was little to show for it now. When I asked what else there was in the house, she flapped and yelped again, spitting insults through her panic. While there are many cruel things in life, there is nothing quite as mean as an old whore, for as their bodies go slack their appetites stay sharp, tormenting them with memories of full bellies and rich clothes, which they know they will never have again. So when I asked her directions to a good pawnbroker, the battle between suspicion and greed was writ large on her face.

  “Why? What is it you have to sell?” she said, her eyes moving cunningly over my body.

  “Enough to put meat in your gruel.”

  “The only lending here is done by Jews,” she said flatly, then gave me a sly glance. “But everybody knows that they cheat foreigners. You had best let me do the deal.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Where do I find them?”

  “Where? Oh, here in Venice they have their own ghetto. It is easy.” She grinned. “If you know your way around.” And she turned her back on me, giving her attention to the stove.

  Of the labyrinth that is this city I will tell more later. It is its own legend anyway, made up from stories of rich visitors too mean to hire guides on their arrival, only to be found later floating in back canals with their throats cut along with their purses. I went on foot. Our back door opened onto a street barely wide enough for two people to pass each other. This in turn led to another and over a bridge to another, which finally gave onto a small square, or campo, as they call it. It was here I came across my old man next to his beloved well, and while his accent was coarse, his gestures were simple enough. Later, when I faltered, the streets were busy with people on their way to and from church, and the merchants I asked gave exact instructions, for as I soon learned, it is not uncommon for the Venetians to go straight from God to the Jews to raise money, the sacrament of commerce being in its own way holy for a state founded on trade.

  The Ghetto, when I found it, was like a small town within a town, cordoned off by walls and great wooden gates; inside, houses and shops huddled and scrambled together. The pawnbrokers’ shops were marked by blue awnings over their fronts flapping like sails in the wind. The one I picked was run by a young man with soft, black eyes and a long face made longer by straggling curls. He took me into a back room, where he studied our last two emeralds long and hard under a special lens, Venice being a city of the most expert glass, for both magnifying and faking. Then he explained the terms of the bond as laid down by the state, gave me the document to sign, and counted out my coins. Through all of this transaction, he treated me with admirable care, exhibiting no surprise at my stature (his attention was more on the jewels than on me), though as to whether he cheated me or not, well, how would I have known, except by the feeling in my gut, which in this case was too confused by hunger?

  Outside, in the heat, the smell of my own unwashed body became as pungent as the city around me. From a secondhand shop on the edge of the Ghetto, I bought a jacket and trousers that I could butcher to fit me and some fresh slips for my lady. For food I chose things easy to digest: whitefish broiled in its own juices, stewed vegetables, and soft bread, egg custards with vanilla, and half a dozen honey cakes, less moist than Baldesar’s but enough to make me drool as they sat in my hand. I ate one on the streets, and by the time I found my way back, my head was spinning with the sweetness. Through the darkness of the stairwell, I called out for Meragosa, but there was no answer. I left a portion of the food on the table and carried the rest with a bottle and chipped glasses of watered wine to the chamber.

  Upstairs, my lady was awake and sitting up in the bed. She glanced at me as I came in but turned her head away swiftly. The shutters and the windows were open, and her body was free from its wrappings, with the light behind her. It was the first time in many weeks that she had felt safe enough to disrobe, and her silhouette now showed clearly the ravages of the journey. Where her flesh had once been pillow plump, her collarbones now stuck out like planks of wood, while her ribs were the skeleton of a ship’s hull pressing hard against her thin slip. But it was her head that was the worst: with her turban unraveled, one’s eyes were drawn instantly to the scabby, cropped mess that was her hair and the jagged scar that began on her upper forehead and zigzagged its way into her hairline.

  For months we had been too focused on survival to give much thought to the future. That early optimism of the night in the forest had dissolved fast enough as we got back onto the road. With the army dropping away, the refugees had become as eager to rob one another as to save themselves, and by the time we reached the port to take a ship for Venice, most of the boats had already been commandeered by soldiers with Roman booty. In the sweltering weeks that followed, my lady had been felled by a fever, and while I had done the best for her wounds with whatever salves I could find, it was clear now, in the crueler light of our security, that it had not been enough.

  From the look in her eyes, I knew that she knew it too. God knows, she was still not ugly: the cut glass of those green eyes alone would have caught the attention of any man on a street. But great cities are full of women who can earn their next meal by raising their skirts. It is the ones who keep you in thrall to more than their snatches who command the houses and the gowns to go with them. And for that they have first to love themselves.

  I busied myself with the food, laying out the fish, vegetables, and wine, though I could find only a blunt knife and a broken fork, which I laid with careful ceremony on her knees, and next to it a clean gown. From this close, I could smell that the hangings around the bed held the odor of her mother’s last sickness in their folds. The morning contained more than the loss of her looks.

  “It is Sunday,” I said cheerfully. “And we have slept for three days. The sun shines, and the pawn merchants here are Jews who give fair prices for fine gems.” I pushed the plate nearer to her fingers. “The flesh is tender, though the flavor a little weak. Take it slow to start with.”

  She did not move, her eyes still fixed intently on the window.


  “You don’t like it? There is custard and honey cake if you would prefer.”

  “I am not hungry,” she said, and that voice, usually so expert at melody, was flat and dead.

  She told me once, not long after we met, how at confession she was often hard-pressed to decide which sins to admit to first; for while vanity, along with fornication, made up a necessary part of her profession, it was gluttony that she saw as her greatest weakness, because ever since she was a child she had loved her food. “That is because your stomach has shrunk. The juices will ease it open once you start,” I urged.

  I clambered onto the end of the bed with my own plate and started eating, cramming my mouth with fish flesh, licking the sauce off my fingers, concentrating on the food but always keeping her hands in sight so I could see if they moved. For a few moments the only sound was that of me chewing. One more mouthful and I would try again.

  “You should have told me.” And now there was sharpness in the voice.

  I swallowed. “Told you what?”

  She clicked her tongue. “How many jewels have we left?”

  “Four pearls, five rubies, and the one great one from your necklace.” I waited. “More than enough.”