Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

‘A soldier let me in,’ he said. ‘He remembered me, from the last time.’

As he stepped past me, into the room, I noticed that his clothes were smudged with black, and he was limping. I asked him what had happened. He didn’t answer. Instead, he unwrapped a soiled cloth containing stale bread and a piece of sausage and took a bite of each.

‘I haven’t eaten anything all day,’ he said.

Since he had started working for me, he had developed a sense of his own importance, and his behaviour had become more self-conscious and high-handed. He seemed to want to emphasize my dependency on him.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘What have you found out?’

He began to pace up and down. For the first few days, he said, it was exactly like before. The same old routines and rituals. The monastery, the palace. The monastery again. He was on the brink of despairing of the whole endeavour. And then, finally, he had a moment of inspiration.

‘It was so strange,’ he said, turning to me, face bright, hands frantic. ‘It was as though everything suddenly made sense — all the bewilderment and brutality, all the fear.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ I said.

He could keep it to himself no longer. ‘The mystery: I think I’ve solved it!’

That afternoon, Earhole had decided to see the monastery of Santa Maria Novella for himself. Appearing at the gatehouse, he had claimed he was thinking of becoming a novice, and his enthusiasm for the Dominican order had been so convincing that an ancient monk had taken him on a tour of the place and bored him half to death with interminable lectures on its history and ethos. He was beginning to regret having been so conscientious when he was shown into the Spanish Chapel, famous for its fourteenth-century frescoes, and it was then that he saw the dogs.

‘Dogs?’ I said.

Black-and-white and savage-looking, with thick leather collars, they were at the bottom of the fresco on the eastern wall, strutting and skulking at the fringes of the crowd. When he saw them, he came to such a sudden standstill that the monk asked if there was something wrong. He had always been frightened of dogs, Earhole told the monk, ever since he was attacked by one when he was a baby. The monk said there was another reason to be frightened. The dogs represented the Dominicans in their role as inquisitors, as guardians of the faith.

‘Dio di merda! ’ I said.

Despite his limp, Earhole was almost dancing on the spot. ‘You see? You see?’

I fetched the jar down off the shelf. We put our faces to the greenish glass and stared at the sinister, floating piece of skin.

‘The snout, the ears, the teeth …’ Earhole’s hands were twitching furiously at the edge of my field of vision. ‘It’s the same as the fresco. It’s all exactly the same.’

I looked past him, into the darkness of the stable yard. Things came together with such velocity and force that I almost lost my balance. I was thinking of the man I had killed on that windy night in 1692, and the words that he had muttered: water, black cloak, naked. Earlier that same night, though I had not known it then, the girl had died — or been murdered — and had ended up on a piece of waste ground near the river. Had I inadvertently done away with the only witness to the crime? And had I then, equally inadvertently, come to the aid of the murderer by disposing of the body? I flashed forwards to Stufa staring at the jar just before he hit Fiore. I played all these moments off against his nickname, Flesh.

‘What if Stufa killed the girl?’ I said.

Deep lines appeared on Earhole’s forehead, and I had a glimpse of how he might look when he was in his thirties or forties. ‘We don’t know she was murdered,’ he said. ‘And even if she was, we wouldn’t be able to prove it.’

‘Maybe not. But it’s grounds for suspicion, isn’t it?’ I gave him a couple of scudi. ‘You’ve done well, Earhole. Really well.’

He thanked me and pocketed the money as carefully as usual. Almost immediately, though, the corrugations on his forehead were back again. ‘I can’t work for you any more.’

‘Is it your leg?’

There was an aspect of the afternoon, he said, which he had so far failed to mention. Eager to submit his report to me, he had rushed away, leaving his guide dumbfounded. As he rounded a corner near the library, though, he ran straight into Stufa. In the collision, Stufa dropped the books he was carrying, and Earhole was knocked clean off his feet. The monk who was with Stufa — a smaller, fatter man — seized Earhole by the collar and asked him what on earth he thought he was doing. Before he could answer, Stufa, bending to pick up the books, looked into his face.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said, straightening. ‘I know this boy. I’ve seen him before.’

‘I work at the hospital,’ Earhole said. ‘Just over there.’ He pointed in the rough direction of Santa Maria Nuova.

‘Just over there.’ Stufa imitated Earhole’s fearful voice, then laughed unpleasantly. ‘In fact, I’ve seen him more than once.’ He took hold of Earhole’s chin and tilted his face towards the light. ‘Do you know something? I think he’s been following me.’

‘Why would he do that?’ the small monk asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Stufa said. ‘Maybe he’s taken with me. Maybe he likes my looks.’

The small monk grinned.

In that moment, Earhole felt the grip on his collar slacken, and he was able to jerk free. Luckily, he remembered where the gatehouse was. He was out of the monastery in seconds. Thinking the monks were after him, he did what any criminal would do: he made for the ghetto. Down Via de’ Banchi, on into Cerretani, a right turn, a left turn, and he was there. Once inside that warren of passages, staircases and walkways, he found a burnt-out building and hid among the blackened beams until his heart slowed down. Later, as he re-emerged, a rotten floorboard gave beneath him, and he twisted his ankle. It had taken him an hour to reach the palace.

‘I wasn’t expecting Stufa to be there, you see?’ he said. ‘Recently, he’s been spending his afternoons with the Grand Duchess, up at Poggio Imperiale.’ He shook his head. ‘All the same, if I hadn’t been running, it would have been all right.’

‘You got away,’ I said. ‘That’s the main thing.’

But Earhole was standing in front of me, his hands quite still. His lips had turned blue. ‘He knows me now. He knows who I am.’

I asked if he wanted to spend the night in my house. He said no. If he didn’t go home, his mother would fall asleep at the table — or, worse still, on the floor — and his niece would go hungry.

‘At least let me look at that leg,’ I said.

His right ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. I dressed it in a poultice of arnica and ice, and bound it tightly.

‘Can you walk?’

He put his weight on the injured foot and winced. ‘I’ll manage.’

I went out to the street with him. Toldo had been replaced by a soldier I didn’t know. A brooding feeling to the evening: a sky of soot, a red vent near the horizon. I watched Earhole hobble off up Via Romana, then I closed the gate and returned to my workshop.

Towards the end of February, I went to visit Cuif. It was a long time since I had seen the Frenchman, and I had missed his jaundiced opinions and his sardonic wit. There were several matters I needed to discuss with him. I had been thinking about Faustina’s description of her father riding — not literally, but as a metaphor. A perfect understanding, she had said. Harmony made visible. You had to harness yourself to the times you lived in. That was the secret. For every hidden thought or action, there had to be a corresponding thought or action that was apparent — and not only apparent, but harmless, mild. You had to wash over people’s minds as water washes over rocks, leaving them unchanged. This, I felt, was where I might have fallen down. Cuif, too, had made mistakes, though he might not be prepared to admit it. If pressed, though, I was sure he would have plenty to say on the subject. I also wanted to seek his advice. Without being too specific, I wanted to suggest that I had acquired certain information that could be used against Stufa. Did one need hard evidence in a city like Florence? Or would inference and suspicion be enough?