We returned to the sofa. Some Jewish women were required to shave their heads when they married, Faustina told me, so they did not tempt other men. Those women tended to wear wigs. It was an extreme custom. You hardly ever saw it in Florence.
‘Why did you decide to tell me who you are?’ I said. ‘I mean, why tonight?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She paused. ‘Maybe it’s to do with the lovely things you said earlier. It reminded me of what my father said to my mother — in that stable, in the rain …’
My words echoing the words that had brought her into being, the words that had made it necessary to pretend she didn’t exist.
My love like a poultice, drawing out that sweet, sweet poison.
*
‘Actually, it’s a miracle I was born at all,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I can’t believe I’m here. Surely I must be imagining it all. Them. This. Even you.’
When her father opened the second bottle, she went on, he jumped nine months to the next part of the story. Banished from Tuscany, he had crossed into the coastal state of Piombino, where he had found a job in a lead mine. It was hard work, and he would console himself with memories of the Grand Duke’s wife — and all the time, though he did not know it, she was pregnant with his child. Then, in the depths of winter, a letter arrived from her lady-in-waiting, telling him that she had given birth, and that he was to come for the baby. He arrived at the villa five days later, his mind whirling. The lady-in-waiting told him that the Grand Duke’s wife was indisposed, and could not see him. She asked what his intentions were. He said his sister would take the child. She seemed to approve of the idea. He set off for his sister’s house in the south-east of the duchy. A wet nurse — Vanna — travelled with him. When they stopped to feed the child — in lonely places, usually: mountain passes, forest glades — Vanna told him about the pregnancy, and how it had been concealed from all but the most trusted servants. Fortunately, the Grand Duke had been abroad for most of the year, in Germany, almost as if he were co-operating with the deception, but his prolonged absence had prevented his wife from claiming that the child was his, which would have saved everyone a great deal of trouble — though it was Vanna’s impression that she hadn’t wanted the baby to grow up as a member of the Grand Duke’s family. Anything but that.
It took Remo and Vanna more than a week to reach Torremagna, and snow fell as they rode. He was afraid his daughter would catch cold. He was afraid she would die. He kept looking down into her face, which was no bigger than a saucer, her eyes a misty, marbled blue. She hardly made a sound, even when she was hungry. It was as if she understood her predicament, and knew better than to give herself away.
The snow had eased by the time they arrived at Ginevra’s house. During the journey, Remo had grown to care for his daughter, and as he stood on the narrow, curving street something hot poured through him at the knowledge that he could not keep her, a kind of scalding of his heart. He whispered all sorts of things to her in their last moments together, as much to strengthen his resolve as anything else. It’s not because I don’t love you. You won’t remember any of this. I’m sorry, my little one. He knocked on the door, then looked down once again. Her mouth, which didn’t know how to smile. Her eyes, which still couldn’t shed a tear. A single snowflake landed on her forehead like a blessing. She blinked. She didn’t cry. He was glad she wasn’t any older.
The door opened.
When Ginevra saw her brother standing on the doorstep she understood that he was about to ask an enormous favour, and she shook her head angrily, not because she was going to turn him down, but because it confirmed her low opinion of him. He was feckless, spoiled. Impossible. But it was impossible to say no to him. His charm got him into trouble, and then out of it again.
He handed the baby to his sister.
She became a mother.
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked.
‘A girl.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘I don’t know.’ He glanced at Vanna, the wet nurse. ‘She hasn’t got one yet.’
‘You haven’t named her?’
He stared at the ground. He couldn’t believe how empty his arms felt. How light.
‘I’ll call her Faustina,’ Ginevra said.
‘Faustina?’ he said. ‘Why Faustina?’
‘It means “lucky”.’
Was this sarcasm, the scathing part of her character, or had a seam of compassion opened up in her? At some deep level, he couldn’t help but feel she might identify with the child she had inherited. After all, she too had been rejected once.
Remo was about to continue with his story when the front door opened and Ginevra walked in. He grinned. ‘I was just talking about you.’
‘A lot of rubbish, probably,’ she said, ‘judging by the amount of wine you’ve drunk.’
Remo turned to Faustina. ‘You see? I told you I was talking rubbish.’
The next day, as he prepared to leave, he told her that Ginevra had always been disapproving. It was her way.
‘I know,’ Faustina said. ‘But it doesn’t make her any easier to live with.’
Her candour startled him. ‘She was very kind, you know, to take you in …’
Just then, Faustina came close to siding with Ginevra against her father — she was suddenly aware of how weak and slippery he could be — but she saw him so seldom that she couldn’t bring herself to voice the barbed words that were lining up inside her. She couldn’t ruin the rare and precious moments they had together, nor could she risk saying something that might make him think twice about returning. She loved him so much that she could never be herself.
Not that it would have mattered greatly, as things turned out. Crossing the Maremma di Siena in an attempt to avoid detection, Remo contracted a fever and died later that year.
‘So,’ Faustina said, ‘now you know the whole story.’
I ran my hand over the sofa’s shabby velvet. ‘Do you believe what he told you?’
‘Why? Don’t you?’
‘I’m only asking.’
‘It’s all I know about myself. It’s all I’ve got.’ The flame in one of our lanterns fluttered and went out. In the dim light, Faustina looked at me across one shoulder, as apprehensive as one of the figures in the fresco. ‘You’re not going to take it away from me, are you?’
‘Of course not.’
She stood up and walked to the window. ‘There have been times when I’ve doubted it myself. The whole thing could be one of my father’s fantasies — the stable, the rain, the wet umbrella … The trouble is, I don’t have anything to replace it with.’ She was facing away from me, the fog drifting past her, into the room. ‘What makes it seem possible is the fact that Marguerite-Louise had lots of affairs. They still talk about it here. And there’s something in me that seems to belong elsewhere, to come from far away …’
‘Does your uncle know?’
She shook her head. ‘My father wouldn’t tell him. He thought it was safer. He didn’t even tell Ginevra.’
‘He was probably right,’ I said.