The assassin tucked his vial back into his pocket. Three paces took him to the window, where he stood with his back to me. There was bird-lime on his coat, just where the right arm joined the shoulder. I tried to remember what that signified. A windfall? His downfall? I couldn’t think. In any case, he hadn’t noticed. Odd that — me dead and knowing all about it, and him alive and none the wiser. His right shoulder lifted, his elbow eased sideways. Even from where I was lying, I could tell he was adjusting his testicles. The killing had excited him, perhaps. Then, as my thoughts were beginning to scatter and disintegrate, he spoke for the first time.
That’s it, sir. Just let go.
This was a man who knew his trade. They had sent a professional. Well, that was something — better, at any rate, than some cack-handed ruffian who has to hack at your throat a dozen times before he finds your windpipe …
The room went black.
Five days later, when the fever finally loosened its grip, the signora told me what an ordeal it had been.
‘You were shouting so loud,’ she said.
‘Did I say terrible things?’
‘You thought we were trying to kill you.’ She gave me a sharp look. Was she wondering if I had heard about her husband’s suspicious death?
I talked about the assassin. His small glass vial, his coat with its exaggerated sleeves. I wasn’t sure she believed me.
Fiore came and stood beside the bed. She had tucked her lips inside her mouth, and her eyes were so full of tears that they seemed to wobble. ‘I thought you were going to die.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ the signora said. ‘It wouldn’t have been very good for business.’
‘Mother,’ Fiore wailed. ‘Don’t.’
It took me almost three weeks to recover. As soon as I had my strength back, I called in at the apothecary. Giuseppe, who was grinding simples in a back room, told me that Faustina was out running an errand. I bought a bar of iris soap and some Venetian turpentine, then waited outside, on the street. I stared at the question mark above the door. The eight embedded stones were only marginally lighter than the surrounding masonry, and I wasn’t sure I would have noticed them if Giuseppe hadn’t showed them to me.
The day darkened. Rain drifted through the narrow gap between the overhanging eaves.
‘There you are …’
I looked round. Faustina was standing a few feet away. The dress she was wearing was a subtle blend of ochre and green, with just a hint of silver. It reminded me of an olive leaf. Not the part you generally see. The underside.
‘That’s a wonderful colour,’ I said.
She thanked me.
I pointed at the sign. ‘Why the question mark? Is it because people can never find it, and are always asking where it is?’
She smiled. ‘Very good. But no, I don’t think that’s the reason.’
There were various stories, she said. Some claimed the sign referred to the question most often asked by customers — Can you cure me? — but her uncle thought otherwise. Historically, apothecaries had been places where difficult and dangerous questions were raised, he had told her, and it was his belief that the sign dated from the early sixteenth century, when several influential people from the city had used the apothecary as the headquarters for an attempted coup. Even Machiavelli had been involved, apparently. She seemed about to go on, then checked herself and changed the subject.
‘You disappeared,’ she said. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘I came down with a fever. I’ve never been so ill.’ I paused. ‘I almost died.’
She smiled again, then looked past me. A door slammed further up the street. The clatter of pigeon wings.
‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Any ill effects?’
‘None at all — not unless you count some dreams about strange-coloured animals.’
‘They stuck in my mind as well.’
I asked if she would come for a walk with me. She said she couldn’t — she had to help her uncle — but she could meet me the following Friday, if I wanted, beneath the column in the Mercato Vecchio.
One evening shortly afterwards, I went downstairs with presents for the signora and Fiore. I wanted to thank them for nursing me through my fever. I gave the signora the soap I had bought in the apothecary, and I had made a wax baby for Fiore, which she wrapped in a leaf from the yard. The signora insisted that I stay for supper.
We had finished eating and I was telling them about Pampolini’s love for the one-eyed woman who ran his local tavern when we were interrupted by a loud knocking. The breath stalled in my lungs. Though I had been free of Jacopo for almost two decades, I was always half expecting him to explode into my life. I sat motionless while Fiore answered the door. When she returned, she said the Grand Duke wanted to see me, and that a carriage had been sent. I let my breath out in a rush and stood up from the table.
‘Will you be long?’ she asked.
I said I didn’t know.
Outside the front entrance was a curious box-like vehicle with barred windows. The driver, a man with a pinched, pockmarked face and chickens’ feet for hands, seemed lifted straight from one of my recent hallucinations. I asked if he was waiting for me. He grunted. I opened the door and climbed into the dark interior. At first I assumed I was alone, but then a rustle came from the far corner, and a hand reached up and tapped on the roof. A strip of white appeared, then a hollow cheek, a lipless mouth.
Stufa.
I murmured good evening. He didn’t return the greeting, or even acknowledge me. The carriage jerked forwards.
As we crossed the Piazza del Gran Duca, a wash of weak moonlight splashed through the bars, and I noted the crude iron rings in the sides of the carriage and the dark stains on the floor.
‘We use it for transporting those accused of lewdness and debauchery,’ Stufa said.
I said nothing.
His mouth grew wider, thinner. ‘Not applicable tonight, of course.’
Cuif had told me that people called Stufa ‘Flesh’, but when I looked at him I saw a man driven by abstinence and self-denial. Was the nickname a sardonic response to his physical appearance? Or did it reflect the jealousy and resentment his air of privilege aroused? Was it, in that case, a genuine attempt to smear his reputation? I remembered Torquato Accetto’s advice, namely that one should conceal oneself beneath a veil made up of ‘honest shadows and violent defences’. That was another possibility. What if Stufa’s nickname described his concealed self?
The carriage lurched over the Ponte Vecchio and into Via Guicciardini.
‘I hear you’re making something special for the Grand Duke,’ Stufa said.
I kept my face expressionless. What could he be referring to? Though the casting of Fiore’s hands had proved successful — the plaster from Volterra had captured every bitten nail, every little scar — I hadn’t started work on the commission itself as yet. It was only a week or two since I had talked to Pampolini. It might be months before he could fulfil my request. And anyway, there was still the problem of how I was going to incorporate an element of ambiguity.
‘Everything I make is for the Grand Duke,’ I said, ‘or for his son, Ferdinando.’