‘Yes, Venice. She was killed by Angelico Vespucci.’
Nino could see some semblance of coherence returning, but as it did so, he could feel a heightening of the draught coming from under the door, and he had the sudden and unpleasant sensation of someone having entered; someone who was now listening to their conversation.
‘Did someone come to see you today?’
‘I don’t know.’
Nino dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Did someone come to see you?’
‘No. No …’
‘Who was it?’
‘No one,’ Greyly blathered. ‘There was no one … no one … There’s no one left. No one …’ His voice slid off, his head sinking on to his chest as he passed out.
Uneasy, Nino stood up, looking around for anything he could use as a weapon. Picking up a poker from the grate, he moved silently towards the door and opened it, standing back in case anyone rushed out at him. But there was no one there, only the draught, coming stronger and stronger. Stealthily he passed through the library, moving into the kitchen beyond. The room was in semi-darkness, but there was enough light to see a door swinging open.
A door which led out into the yard beyond.
56
Rachel Pitt knew it wasn’t ideal, that he would probably never leave his wife. All married men said they loved you. That one day, when the time was right, they would tell their wives about you. Of course there never was a right time. If they ever did pick a day then one of the children would be ill, or the wife would be having a bad time at work, and he couldn’t, just couldn’t tell her now. He would, in time. But not this time.
It wasn’t as though Rachel hadn’t set deadlines over the previous two years. If he hasn’t left his wife by June, she swore, I’ll finish the relationship. But June always slid into July, then tripped the light fantastic down to Christmas. Which she always spent alone. A few times she had gone home, but her mother was divorced and Rachel could hardly see herself confiding. The grim reality of her mother’s life – of her hatred of men and her increasing isolation – served as a mirror to her own existence. Was this to be her lot? If her lover didn’t leave his wife, would she find herself too old and too bitter to find someone else?
There was no escaping the fact that she loved Michael and found snatching moments with him more palatable than having another man a hundred per cent of the time. Rachel had chosen her life, and she was sticking to it because the chance to walk away had passed. He was too close to her now. Too much a part of her. Too entrenched in her life to consider amputation. Everything she did she made a note of to tell him when they spoke. Her words, her actions, her thoughts centred around this one man who would never be hers.
Rachel had often wondered if she was a masochist. If she was, in some perverse way, punishing herself for some subconscious fault. Her appeal was obvious, so why attach herself to a man already attached? But she had stuck with Michael, even after she found out he was married. She should have walked away then, but he was charming and he made her feel secure and happy, and he understood her the way no other man had understood her before.
He was a marvellous lover too, and she knew that also kept her tied to him. And if, sometimes, she was jealous of his wife, he would reassure her. They hadn’t been sleeping together for years. She didn’t know him, love him as Rachel did. They stayed together for the children … Oh, she knew all the clichés by rote.
The same hackneyed phrases came out year after year, and even when Rachel ceased to believe them, she pretended she did. After all, the relationship wasn’t completely onesided. Michael had helped her out financially many times over the previous five years, and paid most of her rent. And when she had left her job and gone back to study full-time, he had supported her. Not that he couldn’t afford it. Being in banking he was rich enough to carry two women, even three. Even three … She wondered about that sometimes. If he could cheat on his wife, could he cheat on her? He travelled around the world – surely attractive women constantly crossed his path? Younger women, prettier women, women he hadn’t known for five years and become used to. Women fresh and flirty, who never thought about wives or children.
But Rachel did. It haunted her, the fact of his family. She might be able to dismiss his wife or count her as a harridan, but his children were omnipresent, a constant reminder of what she was doing. If the affair was ever discovered, she could imagine the fallout. The trauma for the children. The break-up of the marriage … No, who was she kidding? It would make the marriage stronger. Everyone knew how expensive divorce was, how prohibitive it was to split up shared properties, funds, bank accounts. And children. Whatever Michael promised her, whatever he assured her, he would stay with his family if it came to a choice. Men might like to stray, but in the end the duvet at home always sucked them back in.
Glancing back at her work table, Rachel noticed the time – nine p.m. Another evening spent alone. Why? She could be anywhere. She was moving in different circles, had studied theatrical design and contemporary playwrights, and was newly employed in a small London theatre. Assistant Stage Manager – maybe fully fledged, in time. But how much time? Did she really want ambition to dictate the way she lived? Did she want to be hanging about in dingy theatre wings while she waited for Michael’s texts, or his furtive, hurried phone calls?
And lately they had been so short-staffed at the theatre that Rachel had been asked to widen her scope. Already ASM, she was drafted in to help with the reading of all the plays submitted. She had never realised how many people wrote. Words, scenes, whole complete, fascinating existences captured on sheets of A4 paper. She had never realised how extraordinary some lives were, or could be. Some lives, even her life. If she had chosen differently.
The light was fading as she sat, fingering some papers and staring at the photograph of her lover. It was close to Christmas again. Close to the time when families came together, if only to fight. Close to the time when all the motorways, airports and shops would be blocked with activity and people getting busy for the holidays. But not her.
And she had only herself to blame.
So when the phone call came half an hour later to say that Michael would not be able to see her as arranged, Rachel was expecting it. Without rancour, she wished him a happy Christmas and rang off. For a while afterwards she stood looking around her, smiling bitterly at the decorations he would not see, the turkey he would not eat. The one she was going to have to put in the deep freeze for some other occasion he would dodge. Slamming the freezer door closed, Rachel walked into the bedroom and realised that nothing would make her spend another Christmas there. Not alone. Not again.
In less than an hour she had packed and hired a car, a small Renault she could easily drive. Rachel Pitt was going to take herself away for the holidays. Away from her lover, her mother, her phone, the television, internet and newspapers.
She needed time to think. And she needed to think alone.
Venice, 1555
Pomponio came to his father’s house around midnight on the 26th of December. He came with his shoulders rounded, wearing priest’s vestments, a hood over his head. It was raining heavily, so heavily the water skittled from the roofs and splattered into the bloated canals below. A moon, white and round as a milk penny, glowered in the icy sky.
The fog had been gone for several days. In its stead came a cold so punishing Venetians stayed in their homes, the sky crackling with stars, a comet flying low over the Doge’s Palace. It was an omen, they said. After three months, after three killings, there was always talk of omens. Of death, of weather that had already taken many of the old.
The cold came like another plague, but no fever this time; this was a sickness which sank into the bone, smothered all heat from the blood, bled down the flesh, and crept out through a hundred doors laden with souls too young for St Michael.