Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

January came.

Only a few days after Epiphany, Earhole delivered his first report. He had learned next to nothing, he said, largely because Stufa had spent much of the past two months in Pisa, with the Grand Duchess.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘She’s been ill.’

On the rare days when Stufa was in Florence, he moved between Santa Maria Novella and the Grand Duke’s palace. He went to Mass, he called in at libraries and bookshops. He visited the needy. It was almost as if he knew he was being watched, Earhole said, and was deliberately leading a model existence.

‘Nothing unusual, then?’ I said.

‘He’s good with a sword. Did you know that?’

I shook my head.

‘He practises every morning, in a cloister at the back of the monastery.’

Although I praised Earhole for his persistence, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at how little he had given me. In trying to build a case against Stufa, perhaps I was attempting the impossible.

I didn’t hear from Faustina until the third week of January, and then only in the most elliptical of ways. One morning, as I left for work, I found Fiore standing on the street outside my house. Her hair was plaited with animal bones, and she had a knapsack over her shoulder. I could still see the place where Stufa’s ring had marked her face, and though it was little more than a small triangular indentation in the skin, I was reminded of my vow to the signora.

‘Walk with me,’ she said.

I looked at the sky. Clouds hung over the city, and it was oddly humid, not cold at all. ‘Where would you like to go?’

She linked her arm through mine. ‘The gardens.’

I took her to the Grand Duke’s menagerie, where she was delighted by the parrot, recently imported from Brazil. By the time we reached the Viottolone, the day had brightened; the sun struck through the double rows of cypress and laurel trees, and the sloping avenue was patterned with alternating stripes of black and white. There was a fountain at the bottom of the hill, I told her. The granite base had been quarried on Elba, then shipped up the Arno; it weighed so much that it had taken twenty-five pairs of oxen to haul it the last few miles to the palace. As we circled the fountain, she collected some of the delicate, pointed acorns that lay scattered on the ground and slipped them into her knapsack. I asked her what else she had in there. She put a hand over her mouth. She had completely forgotten, she said. It was a package, from a boy. That was the reason she had come.

‘A boy?’ I said. ‘Did he give you a name?’

‘No name.’

‘How old was he?’

She shrugged. She wasn’t good with that kind of question.

‘It wasn’t Earhole?’

‘No. This boy was nice.’

I smiled.

We sat on a bench, a grove of ilex at our back. The package Fiore handed over weighed almost nothing. This frightened me. She watched as I cautiously undid the paper. Inside was something soft, dark and glossy, which I took at first to be the wing of a bird. Then I realized it was human hair. I leaned down and smelled the hair. Faustina. This boy was nice. I imagined Faustina had delivered the package to the House of Shells herself, and that Fiore had been fooled by the disguise. I felt around in the wrapping, but couldn’t find a note.

‘When did the boy deliver this?’ I asked.

‘A week or two ago,’ Fiore said. ‘He told me there was no great rush.’

Sitting back, I let my breath out slowly. I seemed to see the world through glass — not the costly crystal of the palace windows, but glass that was poorly made, full of swirls, air-bubbles and distortions. The hills to the south showed above the city walls, their slopes forested, blue-grey, the sky an opaque lard-white. She had chosen not to write a note, which was entirely in character, but she would also have been aware that the package might fall into the wrong hands. A week or two ago . Given Fiore’s wayward sense of time, that could easily mean three or four. Faustina would be gone by now — and, obviously, she had tried to alter her appearance. Where was she? Was she safe?

Fiore touched the contents of the package. ‘It’s hair.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I need it for my work.’

She, too, leaned back and stared towards the hills, suddenly seeming much older than her thirteen years.

‘You work so hard, my husband,’ she said. ‘When are you coming home?’

*

The following afternoon, as I left my house, the sky blackened, and it began to rain. I hurried over the Ponte Santa Trinità, the surface of the river pearly in the half-light. By the time I reached the apothecary, the rain had grown so heavy I could hardly see, and it was pale, too, almost white, as if it had chalk in it. I walked in, water streaming from my clothes. Giuseppe eyed me from behind the counter. He was alone.

‘I was just about to close,’ he said.

‘I won’t keep you.’ I took out a handkerchief and wiped my face and neck. ‘Have you seen Faustina?’

‘I was about to ask you the same thing.’

She had disappeared suddenly, he said, about two months ago. He was disappointed in her. She had always been independent, even wilful, but it wasn’t like her to let him down like this. She knew he couldn’t manage on his own.

‘Could she have been arrested?’ I asked.

He had made enquiries at the Bargello, he said, and at the hospital — he had been worried — but no one had been able to tell him anything.

‘I was hoping,’ he said, a slight tremor in his voice, ‘that she might be with you.’

I reached into my pocket and took out her hair. ‘She sent me this.’

He moved to touch it, but his hand stopped short in the air. His eyes had sloped down at the edges; his mouth had shrunk.

‘She did that once before,’ he said. ‘After her father died. She was about fourteen. When she first came to work for me, everyone thought she was a boy.’

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t have left you unless she had a good reason.’

‘You sound as if you know something about it.’

I shook my head.

While we had been talking, the rain had slackened. I looked over my shoulder. Tucked into a niche or recess on the other side of the street was a man in a flint-coloured cloak and downtrodden boots. His face was in shadow. Though he was hard to make out, I instinctively felt he wasn’t there to take refuge from the weather.

I asked Giuseppe if he knew the man.

He peered through the window. ‘My eyesight’s not too good.’

I stepped outside. The storm had moved on, and the air had a glazed, shivery feel.

‘She’s gone.’ Cocking his head, the man gnawed at the skin on the side of his forefinger. ‘Neighbour told me. Right busybody. Doesn’t miss a thing.’ He eased himself forwards into the silvery light. His face was furtive and whiskery, and a glossy red cyst disfigured his left eyelid. ‘She knows all about you, for instance.’

‘You’re one of Bassetti’s people,’ I said.

‘Who’s Bassetti?’

‘Don’t bother denying it. You’ve got that look about you.’

‘There’s no need to be insulting.’

‘How much is he paying you?’

The man was chewing his finger again, and didn’t answer.

‘Just tell me,’ I said. ‘How much?’

He allowed himself a thin, pinched smile.

Infuriated, I thrust my hand into my pocket and flung a fistful of loose change at him. The coins bounced off his forehead, his chest and the wall on either side of him, and dropped, jingling, to the paving stones.

*

About a month later, I was in my workshop when I heard footsteps outside, in the stable yard. I opened the door. Earhole was standing in the dark, hands twitching. He glanced back towards the gate, as if he thought he might have been followed, and I was reminded of myself, the way I had been for so many years.