Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

I told him I had been praying for his mother’s soul.

‘But that’s not what brings you here,’ he said.

‘No.’ I took a breath. ‘I’ve never bothered you with anything personal before —’

I saw his gaze turn inwards. Had I lost him already? I should have prepared the ground with more subtlety, more care. After all, he had only been awake for a few seconds. But then I heard Cuif shriek in agony as I raised him up off the dungeon floor, and I pressed on regardless.

‘Bassetti has ordered the arrest and torture of a friend of mine,’ I said, ‘a man who is innocent of all charges.’

The Grand Duke brushed at the front of his tunic, then stood up and walked off down the corridor, towards the Ponte Vecchio. Uncertain of the protocol, I remained where I was.

‘My friend’s life has been ruined. He might even die.’ I paused. ‘The interrogation was unjustified and brutal.’

Some distance away, the Grand Duke turned to face me. In his sombre mourning clothes, he seemed to fill the narrow space. ‘I wonder if you realize what you’re saying.’

‘I’m simply describing what I saw, Your Highness. Such violence — and all for nothing.’

‘These are serious allegations.’

Allegations . His choice of words told me everything I needed to know. He had decided not to back me in the matter. What on earth had made me think he would? I was overwhelmed by dizziness. The grey air prickled.

‘Bassetti occupies a position of trust,’ he said, ‘and he has occupied that position for many years.’

‘I know. Of course. Your private secretary. Your uncle’s too. And more than that, by all accounts.’

‘More than that?’

‘He guards your values. He enforces morality. He encapsulates the very spirit of your reign.’ I was babbling. Worse still, my Sicilian accent had returned. I sounded abrasive. Foreign. I doubted he could understand a single word.

‘And yet,’ the Grand Duke said, ‘you appear to be finding fault with him —’

‘Not finding fault, Your Highness. Not with him. No, no. I just think he might have been poorly advised — on this occasion.’

Better. But not good enough.

The Grand Duke adjusted the extravagant curls and scrolls of his black wig and then strolled back along the corridor towards me. As I flattened myself against the wall to let him pass, I was enveloped in the English fragrance he used — a heady concoction of primrose, eglantine, and marigold. He stood in the alcove, close to the iron grille, and gazed down into the nave of Santa Felicità. I heard him sigh.

‘Perhaps you’re not aware of this, Zummo — in fact, I’m sure you’re not — but I have already showed my support for you by choosing to ignore certain information that has come to light —’

Madonna porca . I bit my bottom lip so hard I tasted blood.

‘Information which, if true,’ he said, still peering down, ‘would make your position here untenable.’

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

‘I have vouched for you personally because you’re important to me. I have given you the benefit of the doubt. All this behind your back, without you knowing, because I didn’t want to distract you from your work. But if you lodge a complaint against the very people who are making accusations …’ He faced me, his eyes solemn beneath their heavy lids.

‘And my friend?’

He pushed out his lips, then shook his head.

Staring at the ground, I nodded to myself. There would be no apology, no justice. No attempt at reparation. Cuif would join the hordes of cripples and beggars who slumped against the walls of the city’s many charitable institutions with crude paintings of John the Baptist round their necks.

‘Those who are for us,’ the Grand Duke said, ‘and those who are against us cannot be measured on the same set of scales. Enemies have more urgency, more focus. They will always tip the balance.’

I was pretty certain that Cuif’s arrest and torture had been intended as a warning to me, and a lesson. What had not occurred to me — not, that is, until that moment — was the idea that he might have been a decoy, and that Faustina might be the real target. In a hurry to leave suddenly, I thanked the Grand Duke for his patience and his advice, and apologized once again for having interrupted him.

‘Do your work,’ he said. ‘That, after all, is why you’re here.’

The sky had darkened, and thunder began to roll and tumble in the hills behind San Miniato. In the street below, I heard a child cry out in terror. I backed away down the corridor. The Grand Duke was eyeing me with regret, it seemed, or even, possibly, nostalgia. Just then, he leapt towards me, doubling in size, and becoming brighter, almost silver, and I thought for one demented, panic-stricken moment that he was attacking me. Then I realized he hadn’t moved.

It was just sheet lightning flashing through the window to his right.

It was just the beginning of the storm.

In the fading light I saw Siena up ahead, and I remembered how it coiled on its hill like the shell of a snail, with hardly a straight street to be found, and how the subtle but recurring bends and curves gave the city an atmosphere of mystery, a discreet sense of the infinite.

The day after my encounter with the Grand Duke, I had called on Magliabechi. When I knocked, a small panel slid open at head-height, and I heard the librarian’s irritable voice: ‘If it’s not important, you can go away.’

I spoke through the hatch. ‘It is important.’

The latch clicked, seemingly of its own accord, and the door swung inwards. Magliabechi was sprawled on his back in the middle of a large dusty room, not in a chair, but in the kind of wide, shallow cradle that one might use for sorting pears or peaches. He was surrounded by books, all stacked in vertiginous, fragile towers. As I approached, he reared into a sitting position. ‘Careful! Don’t hurt my spiders!’

In the grey light that fell in a column from the window above him, I saw that his cradle was linked to the piles of books by dozens of cobwebs.

‘Did you know that a spider can survive for months without food?’ Magliabechi peered at me as if I were a lesser species, chin jutting, bits of egg-white wedged in the gaps between his teeth.

‘No, I didn’t know that.’

I passed him the jar that contained the piece of the dead girl’s skin. He grasped it in both hands, his fingers hook-like, scaly.

‘Interesting specimen,’ he said. ‘My first thought? Domini canes. It’s a pun. Domini canes means Dominicans, obviously, but it also means “Hounds of the Lord”.’

‘That’s precisely the answer I was hoping for,’ I said.

He handed the jar back to me.

Talking of Dominicans, he said, had I by any chance heard about Stufa’s vigil? He had sat beside Vittoria’s body for more than a week, and had prayed without ceasing. He had hardly slept. His mind was beginning to unravel.

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ I said. ‘She was like a mother to him, apparently.’

‘And more than that, some say.’ Magliabechi gave me a wily, tantalizing look, but wouldn’t elaborate.

Later that day, I walked over to Santa Maria Novella, intent on seeing the dogs for myself. Once in the Spanish Chapel, I approached the eastern wall. There they were, with their long, pointed muzzles and their teeth set in fierce, even rows. One of them had savaged a wolf and drawn blood, wolves symbolizing the unbelievers who threatened the fold. As I stood in front of the fresco, struck by the dogs’ uncanny resemblance to the crudely decorated piece of skin inside my bag, I heard footsteps and turned to see Stufa standing at my elbow.

‘The Exaltation of the Order of the Dominicans,’ he said. ‘Andrea di Bonaiuto at his most inspired.’