Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

I moved on. A pebble skipped over my boot.

‘I thought you were looking for Nuto,’ the boy called out.

A second pebble struck the back of my leg. I swivelled round. The children were already on their feet.

‘Any more of that,’ I said, ‘and someone else is going to lose an ear.’

The boy’s arm flashed in the dim air. A stone whirred past my head. I started towards the embankment. By the time I reached the place where the children had been standing, they were fifty yards away, on the far side of a gully filled with slimy, stagnant water. His face expressionless, the boy looked straight at me and drew his forefinger across his throat.

Earhole lived in the last shack in the row, part of it propped on wooden piles and leaning precariously over the Arno. When he answered the door, he didn’t seem surprised to see me. Had he, too, learned to mask his feelings?

There was only one room. A small child sat on the mud floor, gnawing on a twig. Probably its teeth were coming through.

‘My niece,’ he said. ‘I’m minding her.’

He handed me some wine in a clay cup. Through the cracks in the walls I could see the river sliding past, the colour of phlegm.

I told him I wanted him to follow someone. His brief would be to gather information. I drank from my cup and made a face.

‘This stuff is foul.’

He grinned. ‘It’s what my mother drinks.’

He was trustworthy, I said. He had good powers of observation, and he knew the streets. He would be perfect for the job.

He accepted the praise with a certain complacency, as if his qualities and talents were beyond dispute. ‘Who am I to follow?’

‘Stufa.’

He turned away, the ragged outline of his ear reddening. He clearly knew the name.

‘If it’s too much of a challenge,’ I said, ‘or you’re afraid to take it on, I’ll understand.’

‘I’m not afraid . I’m just not sure it’s politic.’

I smiled at his vocabulary. ‘Maybe not. But I don’t have any choice.’

‘What kind of information are you after?’

‘Something I can use against him.’

‘That won’t be easy. I imagine he’s pretty careful.’

‘He is, and he isn’t.’

Stufa was Vittoria’s protégé, I said — in her eyes he could do no wrong — and this, paradoxically, was where his weakness lay. Since he believed himself to be invulnerable, he took more risks than one might expect.

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I’ve been watching him. Besides, it’s how the powerful behave.’

Earhole looked through the gap in the wall that served as a window. Though he wasn’t entirely reassured by my answer, I thought he could see that it made sense. It’s the people who don’t have any power who have to watch their step.

The door banged open. A woman stumbled in and dropped heavily on to a stool. She laid her head on her arms, her white scalp showing through her hair. She smelled of urine and cheap wine.

‘My mother,’ Earhole said.

He gestured to me. I followed him outside. We stood near the mud embankment, and I mentioned the children I had seen earlier.

‘It’s not a very good area,’ he said.

I smiled again.

I told him what I knew about Stufa, then handed him some change as a retainer. He asked if I had cleared it with Pampolini. I said I had. I watched as he concealed the coins, one by one, about his person. He should come to my workshop, I told him, as soon as he had something to report.

He nodded. ‘All right.’

Before I left, I asked why he put the money in so many different pockets.

‘So it doesn’t jingle,’ he said. ‘So she can’t hear it.’

The day of my appointment with Bassetti arrived, and as I climbed the slope that led up to the palace its heavily barred windows and crude blocks of toasted stone seemed to bear down on me. As in a dream, I had the feeling that events were moving too fast, even though I was the one who had initiated them. I felt jumbled, scattered. Unprepared.

Located on the first floor, with windows that overlooked the gardens, Bassetti’s office was predictably lavish, one entire wall depicting the alignment of the stars at the moment when he first found favour with the Grand Duke’s family. Bassetti himself was seated, pen in hand, behind a desk inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. As amiable as ever, he told me that my request for an audience had surprised him. We knew each other too well, didn’t we, to have to resort to such formality?

‘I came here to reassure you, Don Bassetti,’ I began.

Smiling, Bassetti put down his pen.

I hurried on. ‘I’ve seen a lot of the Grand Duke this year —’

‘That’s only natural. You’re his favourite artist.’

‘He takes an interest in my work, and I find that gratifying, of course I do, but I wouldn’t want you to think —’ I broke off. This was coming out wrong, as I had feared it would.

‘I’m glad you’re here, actually.’ Bassetti leaned back in his chair. ‘I had a visitor the other day — from Sicily. Naturally enough, your name came up. He told me all kinds of stories …’

In that moment, for the first time ever, I thought I saw through Apollonio Bassetti. I was convinced that this ‘visitor’ of his was a fabrication. It allowed him to be in possession of certain inside information without appearing to have collected it himself. The effect was to render him neutral, blameless.

‘Apparently your mother had a child by your father’s employer, a man called —’ Bassetti consulted the documents in front of him — ‘Gargallo. Does that name mean anything to you?’

I felt my face flush.

‘Your father kept quiet about it, in return for which Gargallo gave you all a decent place to live. People say your father died of shame.’ He looked up from his papers. ‘I’m sorry. Didn’t you know?’ He sat back again. ‘It’s probably just idle chatter. People will say anything.’

I had to clear my throat. ‘Who told you this?’

‘There were other stories,’ he went on. ‘One of them was really quite damaging.’ The room seemed to darken, as often happens in the summer when a cloud blocks the sun; it was November, though, and the weather was overcast and grey. ‘It’s so lurid that I’m sure there can’t be any truth in it. All the same, “no smoke without roast meat”. Do you have that phrase in Sicily?’

‘We have lots of phrases.’

‘Since the Grand Duke’s reputation must be protected at all costs, I’m afraid I have no choice but to investigate the rumours. It would be negligent not to. Luckily, I have men like Stufa at my disposal —’

‘Stufa,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘He’s something of an expert in the field.’

‘I’m not sure how impartial he’s going to be.’

Bassetti’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Quite apart from his close connection with the Grand Duke’s family, Stufa’s a highly respected public servant. I’ve no reason to doubt him.’

The meeting had gone worse than I ever could have imagined. I stood up, thinking I should leave.

‘One more thing before you go,’ Bassetti said, all softness now. ‘There’s the small matter of the woman you’ve been seeing …’

My heart clenched like a fist.

‘I said “woman”,’ Bassetti went on, ‘but I suppose I should really have said “whore”.’

I reached up and touched my ear. It was important that I appeared calm. Pensive. Mildly intrigued.

‘The apothecary’s daughter.’ Bassetti’s voice was languid, almost bored. ‘I’ve seen her, actually. Quite good-looking, if you like that kind of thing.’

‘I’m not sure who you’ve been listening to,’ I said, ‘but they seem to have got their facts muddled up.’