Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

Later, as she emerged from a shop with two tallow lanterns, the bell for the night hour began to ring.

‘If we’re not careful,’ I said, ‘we’re going to get —’

My sentence was cut off by the thud of the gates closing and the metallic crash of iron bolts being slammed into their sockets.

Faustina only grinned.

She led me to a grand, grim building in the ghetto’s north-east corner. Looking up at the windows, I saw that each storey had been divided horizontally. You could fit more families in that way. Some of the apartments had such low ceilings, she said, that only small children could stand up straight.

By the time we reached the fifth floor, the murmur of voices had died away. The upper storeys were uninhabitable, she told me. As we climbed higher, she advised me to watch my footing. There were stairs that had rotted clean through.

We came out at last into a drawing room or salon. I crossed to the window. The street was so narrow that I could almost have stepped on to the roof of the building opposite. I faced back into the room. A sofa stood against one wall, its springs and stuffing showing, and an iron chandelier lay on its side in the middle of the floor. These traces of splendour didn’t surprise me; before the buildings had been requisitioned by the Grand Duke’s family, they had belonged to some of the most famous names in Florence — Pecori, Brunelleschi, Della Tosa.

‘No one’s going to find us here,’ I said.

‘And if they do, they’ll probably be criminals,’ Faustina said, ‘like us.’ She lifted her lantern higher. ‘Did you see the fresco?’

On the far wall was a pastoral scene, with groups of nymphs and goatherds arranged against a landscape of pine trees, streams and hills. The clouds above their heads were edged in pink and gold. At first glance, it looked like a thousand other frescoes, but then I noticed that the figures were all looking to their left, and that their expressions varied from nervousness and apprehension to outright alarm. It wasn’t possible to know the reason, though. At some point in the past a wall had been built across the room, and half the fresco was missing.

I asked Faustina what she thought they were frightened of.

‘It could be a wild animal, I suppose.’ She studied a girl in a lilac dress who had thrown up an arm as if to fend off what was coming. ‘But I like not knowing, actually. It’s more powerful that way.’ She looked at me, her face glowing in the burnt-orange light of the lantern.

‘You’re beautiful,’ I said.

She made a joke about the fact that I could hardly see her.

I went and stood by the window. When I was with Faustina, I always had the feeling that this was something that wouldn’t happen again — that this was all there was, or ever would be. I found it exhausting to have to treat each new encounter as though it might well be the last. It was partly the times we lived in, of course, which had made criminals of us, as she had said, but it was also specific to her, it arose out of her character, and if I paid her too many compliments — something she had noticed, and seemed to feel ambivalent about — it was perhaps because I was trying to bring her nearer, trying to turn what we had into something a little less unstable.

‘I think you’ve ruined other women for me,’ I said, staring out into the fog. ‘I used to look at women all the time. Since I met you, though, I don’t do it any more. What’s the point? I know there’s no one who’ll come close.’

She came up behind me. ‘You almost sound sad.’

I smiled. ‘I’m not sad.’

‘I told you before. If you keep on like this, you’ll run out of things to say.’

I turned to face her. ‘I’ll never run out.’

We sat down on the sofa, and Faustina loosened the drawstring on the goatskin bag that Vespi had given her, the bag she had used for her spells and potions. She had brought some of the wine that was traditional on San Simone, a loaf of bread, green olives in a twist of paper, and half a dozen slices of porchetta . She uncorked the bottle and poured us both a cup. The wine was so young I could taste the grapes in it.

‘This is what my father drank,’ she said, ‘the last time I ever saw him.’

It was around the time of her thirteenth birthday, and Remo stayed for three whole days. One afternoon, he went out hunting with another man from the village. When he returned, his lack of awkwardness with her and his exaggerated attempts to appear alert told her that he had been drinking. That evening, he settled at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine. Leaning against the wall with her hands trapped behind her, she watched him so closely that she could see the pulse beating in his neck. He had entered Tuscany illegally, he said, through the hills near Chiusi. He had risked everything to see her. If the authorities found out he had crossed the border, he would be thrown into prison, or even hanged. In the past, she had always let him speak, but this time she interrupted. She didn’t understand, she said. Why wasn’t he allowed to cross the border?

He drained his glass and poured another, then he said something that sent a thrill right through her.

‘You don’t know it, but you’re asking how you came to be born.’

When he was in his early twenties, he said, he had worked as a groom on one of the ducal estates. This was during the time of the Grand Duke’s famously tempestuous marriage.

‘It was a magnificent villa,’ he went on, ‘with its own private theatre, formal gardens, and a river nearby, but it was in the middle of nowhere — at least, that was how it seemed to the Grand Duke’s wife. She had become increasingly hysterical in Florence, and the Grand Duke thought that if he sent her to the country she might calm down, but she felt lonely and frightened. She was at the height of her beauty, and she was being buried. What if her light went out, the light that made her who she was? It was around that time that she started wearing black; she was in mourning for her life. She would come down to the stables every day — riding was her only consolation — and we would talk. She told me not to call her “Your Highness”. She wanted me to treat her like anybody else.’

Faustina asked what they had talked about.

Remo laughed. ‘Well, actually, she did all the talking. I just listened.’

She told him about visiting the court at Fontainebleau, and how she had fallen in love with her cousin, Charles. She showed him the ring Charles had given her. It was an opal, she said, a stone that stood for passion and spontaneity. I lost my wedding ring in the first week of my marriage. I still have this one, though. What does that tell you? How she had loved Fontainebleau! There was boating at midnight on candle-lit canals, dancing on carpets of rose petals. There were banquets that lasted from dusk till dawn. They drank snow-cooled wine, and dined on peacocks’ tongues and teal soup with hippocras and pies that sang because they were filled with nightingales. Beef was served in a gold leaf sauce. You ate gold? Yes. To make us strong . She talked about those days as old people talk about their youth — and she was only twenty-one! But it was a time when she had been happy — deliriously happy — and she seemed to know that it would never come again.

One wet afternoon, while he was polishing saddles in the tack room, the curtain of rain in the doorway parted to reveal the Grand Duke’s wife, a lilac umbrella open above her head, her eyes glowing underneath.

‘I’ve given Malvezzi the slip,’ she said.

Malvezzi, her chamberlain, had been instructed to follow her everywhere and report on her behaviour. Ever since his arrival at the villa, she had delighted in torturing the poor man by going on walks that lasted hours, knowing full well that he was overweight, and had no chance of keeping up.