‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’
I swung round.
Towne came forwards, smiling. ‘You went to see Marvuglia, didn’t you? He told me.’ One hand on my shoulder, he guided me back into the other room. ‘What did you think?’
I spoke about Marvuglia’s colours, and how they conveyed injury and torment.
‘And the man himself?’ Towne said.
‘I imagine he’s got enemies.’
Towne nodded.
Our conversation turned to the prints and drawings that were his stock-in-trade. I was curious to know what sort of work the Grand Duke had bought from him. Towne looked at me steadily. A two-headed calf, he said. A dwarf. Anything deformed or freakish. I remembered the armless German and fell silent, wondering what place I occupied in the Grand Duke’s collection, but when Towne produced a folio of drawings of people who had contracted syphilis I was suddenly glad that I had come. I had been planning a series of pieces based on pleasure and its consequences, and the drawings would be invaluable as reference. Towne was a hard bargainer. At last, though, we agreed on a price.
To celebrate our transaction — the first of many, he hoped — he insisted that I dine with him. In my opinion, we had less in common than he supposed, and I was eager to get away, but he wouldn’t listen to my excuses. He took me to the Eagle, an eating-house near Via Tornabuoni. To my dismay, the first person I saw when I walked in was Stufa. He was sitting at a table with Bassetti. Before I could suggest a change of venue, though, Towne had called out a greeting. It appeared he knew them both.
After the initial courtesies, during which Stufa acted as if I wasn’t there, Bassetti turned to me. ‘I hope your mother’s settling in.’
‘She is. Thank you.’ I hadn’t told the Grand Duke about my mother’s arrival, let alone Bassetti, but this was his way of reminding me that nothing escaped his attention.
‘She was lucky to survive,’ he said.
‘Yes, she was.’
‘And lucky to have someone to turn to, someone to take her in.’
‘I’ll do my best for her.’
‘Apparently,’ Stufa said, his eyes still lowered, ‘she’s a bit unhinged.’
I faced him. ‘I would like to apologize for what happened in the gardens.’
Though Bassetti was still eating, the angle of his head had altered.
‘I shouldn’t have threatened you,’ I said.
‘You were upset by the news of the earthquake.’ Stufa’s delivery was unconvincing, flat; he might appear to be making allowances for my behaviour, but he was keeping his true feelings hidden.
‘All the same,’ I said.
Stufa studied me. ‘I don’t think you’re being entirely honest with me.’
‘No?’
‘You haven’t forgiven me for what I did.’
‘What did he do?’ Bassetti’s voice was mild, almost uninterested.
I looked at the red silk curtains that hung against the windows. When I told Signora de la Mar what had happened, the blood had rushed to her usually pallid face. You should have slit the bastard’s throat right there and then. Fiore’s father hit her when she was little, she said later. Fiore was never quite the same after that. I had promised her that Stufa would answer for his actions. As yet, I had no idea how to keep that promise.
But Stufa was talking again. ‘You haven’t forgiven me, and you’re not going to. It’s not in your nature. I know what you’re like, you people from the south.’
‘In my opinion,’ I said, ‘it’s usually a mistake to generalize.’
A smile registered on Bassetti’s lips.
‘It means you have an overly simplistic view of the world,’ I went on. ‘It can affect your judgement. Lead to mistakes.’
Stufa adjusted the position of his fork. ‘But you’re not denying it.’
‘I’ve said what I wanted to say.’ I stepped back from the table. ‘Enjoy your meal.’
When we were seated, Towne gave me a look of mingled admiration and surprise. ‘There aren’t many who would speak to Stufa like that.’
‘I’m sorry. Was I rude?’
‘You don’t need to apologize to me.’
‘Aren’t you a friend of his?’
Towne’s laugh was no louder than a sniff. ‘Friend? I doubt the word’s in his vocabulary.’ He reached for the wine. ‘What was that all about, anyway?’
We drank heavily that night, and were the last to leave the place. By the time I turned off Via de’ Serragli into the side street where I lived it was after midnight and a steady rain was coming down. I was so tired that I decided not to look in on my mother. Instead, I climbed the stairs, thinking I would fall straight into bed. As I reached the first-floor landing, though, I sensed that something wasn’t right. In my drawing room the candles had burned down, but not so low that I couldn’t see the chair that was lying on its side. I stepped warily through the half-open door. The locked drawers in my writing desk had been forced, and my notebooks lay scattered across the floor. At first glance, it didn’t seem as though anything had been taken. My most precious possession — a terracotta statue of Artemis from the Hellenistic period — still stood by the fireplace, and there was money on the mantlepiece. I realized it was my personal papers that had interested the intruder. In one of my notebooks there was a ragged edge where a page had been torn out. I looked at the preceding page, and the page before that. It was my portrait of Faustina that was missing.
Sober suddenly, I crossed the room and stared at the palazzo opposite, its shutters fastened, rain tipping off its eaves. What would somebody want with a drawing of Faustina? Of everything I owned, why that? As I stood at the window, it dawned on me that my mother might be responsible. Gripped by anxiety, perhaps, or terror, she might have been looking for something that belonged to her, something she had lost in the earthquake. She might have rifled through my possessions, not knowing whose they were, or where she was … I hurried back downstairs. In her room, there were lighted candles on every surface. Though it was stifling, she was lying in bed with the covers pulled up so high that only her face was visible. Eight fingers showed beneath her chin, as if she were clinging to a precipice.
‘Jacopo?’ she said.
‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Gaetano.’
Her eyes darted about, and the tip of her tongue kept flickering over her top lip.
‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘Where’s Lapa?’
She looked at me, her gaze unfocused, vague. ‘I thought it was them again.’
I lowered myself slowly on to the bed. ‘Has someone been here?’
‘There were three of them — or maybe four. I can’t remember. I didn’t see.’
‘Who were they?’
She looked beyond me. ‘They knocked loudly — so loudly. Lapa answered the door. Then they were in, like a whirlwind.’ She tightened her grip on the covers. ‘They were monks.’
‘What kind of monks?’
She shook her head.
‘Please try and think,’ I said. ‘What were they wearing?’
‘Black. And white.’
‘You’re sure?’ The flames of the candles swerved as a draught went through the room. ‘Have you seen any of them before?’
‘I don’t think so. But they were past me before I knew it — and there were so many.’
‘They didn’t harm you?’
‘No. They told me to stay in here, and I did, but I could hear them upstairs, laughing —’
‘I’m here now.’
‘They were laughing.’ My mother closed her eyes.
Back upstairs, I righted the furniture and put my papers in order. As I crossed the room I caught sight of my face in the mirror, and was surprised how calm I looked. In the past, if something like this had happened, I would have started packing immediately. I would have been gone before dawn. North to Bologna or Genoa. Or on to a different country altogether. France, perhaps, or even England. But there was a new stubbornness in me: I was no longer willing to do anything to avoid a confrontation. What’s more, people I cared about were implicated, and I didn’t feel I could abandon them.