Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

‘Mother,’ Fiore wailed. ‘Don’t.’

It took me almost three weeks to recover. As soon as I had my strength back, I called in at the apothecary. Giuseppe, who was grinding simples in a back room, told me that Faustina was out running an errand. I bought a bar of iris soap and some Venetian turpentine, then waited outside, on the street. I stared at the question mark above the door. The eight embedded stones were only marginally lighter than the surrounding masonry, and I wasn’t sure I would have noticed them if Giuseppe hadn’t showed them to me.

The day darkened. Rain drifted through the narrow gap between the overhanging eaves.

‘There you are …’

I looked round. Faustina was standing a few feet away. The dress she was wearing was a subtle blend of ochre and green, with just a hint of silver. It reminded me of an olive leaf. Not the part you generally see. The underside.

‘That’s a wonderful colour,’ I said.

She thanked me.

I pointed at the sign. ‘Why the question mark? Is it because people can never find it, and are always asking where it is?’

She smiled. ‘Very good. But no, I don’t think that’s the reason.’

There were various stories, she said. Some claimed the sign referred to the question most often asked by customers — Can you cure me? — but her uncle thought otherwise. Historically, apothecaries had been places where difficult and dangerous questions were raised, he had told her, and it was his belief that the sign dated from the early sixteenth century, when several influential people from the city had used the apothecary as the headquarters for an attempted coup. Even Machiavelli had been involved, apparently. She seemed about to go on, then checked herself and changed the subject.

‘You disappeared,’ she said. ‘I was worried about you.’

‘I came down with a fever. I’ve never been so ill.’ I paused. ‘I almost died .’

She smiled again, then looked past me. A door slammed further up the street. The clatter of pigeon wings.

‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Any ill effects?’

‘None at all — not unless you count some dreams about strange-coloured animals.’

‘They stuck in my mind as well.’

I asked if she would come for a walk with me. She said she couldn’t — she had to help her uncle — but she could meet me the following Friday, if I wanted, beneath the column in the Mercato Vecchio.

One evening shortly afterwards, I went downstairs with presents for the signora and Fiore. I wanted to thank them for nursing me through my fever. I gave the signora the soap I had bought in the apothecary, and I had made a wax baby for Fiore, which she wrapped in a leaf from the yard. The signora insisted that I stay for supper.

We had finished eating and I was telling them about Pampolini’s love for the one-eyed woman who ran his local tavern when we were interrupted by a loud knocking. The breath stalled in my lungs. Though I had been free of Jacopo for almost two decades, I was always half expecting him to explode into my life. I sat motionless while Fiore answered the door. When she returned, she said the Grand Duke wanted to see me, and that a carriage had been sent. I let my breath out in a rush and stood up from the table.

‘Will you be long?’ she asked.

I said I didn’t know.

Outside the front entrance was a curious box-like vehicle with barred windows. The driver, a man with a pinched, pockmarked face and chickens’ feet for hands, seemed lifted straight from one of my recent hallucinations. I asked if he was waiting for me. He grunted. I opened the door and climbed into the dark interior. At first I assumed I was alone, but then a rustle came from the far corner, and a hand reached up and tapped on the roof. A strip of white appeared, then a hollow cheek, a lipless mouth.

Stufa.

I murmured good evening. He didn’t return the greeting, or even acknowledge me. The carriage jerked forwards.

As we crossed the Piazza del Gran Duca, a wash of weak moonlight splashed through the bars, and I noted the crude iron rings in the sides of the carriage and the dark stains on the floor.

‘We use it for transporting those accused of lewdness and debauchery,’ Stufa said.

I said nothing.

His mouth grew wider, thinner. ‘Not applicable tonight, of course.’

Cuif had told me that people called Stufa ‘Flesh’, but when I looked at him I saw a man driven by abstinence and self-denial. Was the nickname a sardonic response to his physical appearance? Or did it reflect the jealousy and resentment his air of privilege aroused? Was it, in that case, a genuine attempt to smear his reputation? I remembered Torquato Accetto’s advice, namely that one should conceal oneself beneath a veil made up of ‘honest shadows and violent defences’. That was another possibility. What if Stufa’s nickname described his concealed self?

The carriage lurched over the Ponte Vecchio and into Via Guicciardini.

‘I hear you’re making something special for the Grand Duke,’ Stufa said.

I kept my face expressionless. What could he be referring to? Though the casting of Fiore’s hands had proved successful — the plaster from Volterra had captured every bitten nail, every little scar — I hadn’t started work on the commission itself as yet. It was only a week or two since I had talked to Pampolini. It might be months before he could fulfil my request. And anyway, there was still the problem of how I was going to incorporate an element of ambiguity.

‘Everything I make is for the Grand Duke,’ I said, ‘or for his son, Ferdinando.’

Stufa glanced at me, and then away again.

‘Those boxes of yours,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen them. They remind me of nativities.’

I had never thought of my plague pieces as nativities. It was a troubling interpretation, subversive even; in Stufa’s eyes, I had replaced the divine with the human, birth with death. Turning to the window, I was relieved to see that we were approaching the palace.

‘I find them gratuitous. Histrionic.’ Stufa paused. ‘It’s not art at all, really, is it? It’s showmanship.’

I opened the carriage door and stepped out.

‘Thank you for the lift,’ I said.

On entering the Grand Duke’s apartment, his major-domo, Vespasiano Schwarz, told me His Highness was bathing, and that I should go straight in. In the bathroom doorway I hesitated. The Grand Duke’s voice emerged supernaturally from the swirling clouds of steam.

‘Zummo? Is that you?’ Once he had apologized for the lateness of the hour, he asked me how the commission was going.

‘Rather slowly, I’m afraid,’ I said.

The Grand Duke nodded, as if this was the answer he had expected. ‘I have been thinking about my wife. And love — I have been thinking about that too.’ Through the steam I saw his eyebrows lift; though the words were his own, they seemed to have caught him unawares.

He began to talk about the day he first set eyes on Marguerite-Louise. It had been his intention to meet her when she landed at Livorno. He had wanted to show his support for her, he said, as she entered unknown territory. Not just Tuscany, he meant, but wedlock. He had been recovering from measles, though, and his mother thought it wiser if he waited at the Villa Ambrogiana, near Empoli. Things went wrong from the outset. He sprained an ankle as he left the palace. One of his dogs was sick in his carriage. Then it began to rain. Not knowing what to do with himself when he arrived at the villa, he ate lunch twice. Instant stomach pains. He took to his bed, where his dreams were mundane, exquisite tortures of his own devising, a catalogue of missed appointments and lost possessions. He woke in a cold sweat, convinced his bride-to-be was pacing up and down in an adjoining room. Not so. She had been delayed on the coast. Some irregularity in the health papers of certain of her entourage. He threw on the fashionable clothes he had ordered from Paris in the hope that he might impress her. A wide-brimmed beaver hat with flowing plumes and ribbons. High-heeled dancing shoes.