‘Maybe not. But it’s grounds for suspicion, isn’t it?’ I gave him a couple of scudi. ‘You’ve done well, Earhole. Really well.’
He thanked me and pocketed the money as carefully as usual. Almost immediately, though, the corrugations on his forehead were back again. ‘I can’t work for you any more.’
‘Is it your leg?’
There was an aspect of the afternoon, he said, which he had so far failed to mention. Eager to submit his report to me, he had rushed away, leaving his guide dumbfounded. As he rounded a corner near the library, though, he ran straight into Stufa. In the collision, Stufa dropped the books he was carrying, and Earhole was knocked clean off his feet. The monk who was with Stufa — a smaller, fatter man — seized Earhole by the collar and asked him what on earth he thought he was doing. Before he could answer, Stufa, bending to pick up the books, looked into his face.
‘Wait a moment,’ he said, straightening. ‘I know this boy. I’ve seen him before.’
‘I work at the hospital,’ Earhole said. ‘Just over there.’ He pointed in the rough direction of Santa Maria Nuova.
‘Just over there.’ Stufa imitated Earhole’s fearful voice, then laughed unpleasantly. ‘In fact, I’ve seen him more than once.’ He took hold of Earhole’s chin and tilted his face towards the light. ‘Do you know something? I think he’s been following me.’
‘Why would he do that?’ the small monk asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Stufa said. ‘Maybe he’s taken with me. Maybe he likes my looks.’
The small monk grinned.
In that moment, Earhole felt the grip on his collar slacken, and he was able to jerk free. Luckily, he remembered where the gatehouse was. He was out of the monastery in seconds. Thinking the monks were after him, he did what any criminal would do: he made for the ghetto. Down Via de’ Banchi, on into Cerretani, a right turn, a left turn, and he was there. Once inside that warren of passages, staircases and walkways, he found a burnt-out building and hid among the blackened beams until his heart slowed down. Later, as he re-emerged, a rotten floorboard gave beneath him, and he twisted his ankle. It had taken him an hour to reach the palace.
‘I wasn’t expecting Stufa to be there, you see?’ he said. ‘Recently, he’s been spending his afternoons with the Grand Duchess, up at Poggio Imperiale.’ He shook his head. ‘All the same, if I hadn’t been running, it would have been all right.’
‘You got away,’ I said. ‘That’s the main thing.’
But Earhole was standing in front of me, his hands quite still. His lips had turned blue. ‘He knows me now. He knows who I am.’
I asked if he wanted to spend the night in my house. He said no. If he didn’t go home, his mother would fall asleep at the table — or, worse still, on the floor — and his niece would go hungry.
‘At least let me look at that leg,’ I said.
His right ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. I dressed it in a poultice of arnica and ice, and bound it tightly.
‘Can you walk?’
He put his weight on the injured foot and winced. ‘I’ll manage.’
I went out to the street with him. Toldo had been replaced by a soldier I didn’t know. A brooding feeling to the evening: a sky of soot, a red vent near the horizon. I watched Earhole hobble off up Via Romana, then I closed the gate and returned to my workshop.
Towards the end of February, I went to visit Cuif. It was a long time since I had seen the Frenchman, and I had missed his jaundiced opinions and his sardonic wit. There were several matters I needed to discuss with him. I had been thinking about Faustina’s description of her father riding — not literally, but as a metaphor. A perfect understanding, she had said. Harmony made visible. You had to harness yourself to the times you lived in. That was the secret. For every hidden thought or action, there had to be a corresponding thought or action that was apparent — and not only apparent, but harmless, mild. You had to wash over people’s minds as water washes over rocks, leaving them unchanged. This, I felt, was where I might have fallen down. Cuif, too, had made mistakes, though he might not be prepared to admit it. If pressed, though, I was sure he would have plenty to say on the subject. I also wanted to seek his advice. Without being too specific, I wanted to suggest that I had acquired certain information that could be used against Stufa. Did one need hard evidence in a city like Florence? Or would inference and suspicion be enough?
I crossed the small courtyard at the back of the House of Shells and climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. As usual, the last flight felt claustrophobic, and I was breathing hard by the time I arrived outside Cuif’s room. To my surprise, the door was open. I knocked anyway, then stepped inside. There was no sign of him in the first room, so I moved on through the archway. The second room was quite as monastic as the first, with a single round window and a straw pallet pushed against the wall. The cage holding the cricket hung from a hook above Cuif’s bed, but the mulberry leaf was gone, and had not been replaced. Though both rooms were unoccupied, I called his name. After all, this could be part of the act he had been working on: an open door, an empty room — a temporary invisibility … But no, he wasn’t there. I began to laugh. He wasn’t there! His moment had come at last, and he had gone out to take his rightful place in the world — and judging by his wash-bowl, which was overturned, and a dropped piece of clothing, he had left in a hurry, excited by the prospect of a new, untrammelled life.
Downstairs again, I found the signora sitting by an unlit fire, her back to me, a black shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Cuif wasn’t in his room, I said. Did she know where I could find him? She looked up. Her eyes were swollen.
‘He’s been arrested,’ she said.
I stared at her. ‘What for?’
‘Adultery.’
‘But that’s ridiculous —’
‘That’s what I said. They didn’t listen.’
If the Office of Public Decency was behind the arrest, as seemed likely, Bassetti would be involved. Stufa too. I hadn’t forgotten the box-like carriage with its barred windows and its soiled floor. Since I was employed by the Grand Duke, and had become part of his inner circle, they would find it difficult to target me directly, but they might have decided to make life uncomfortable for the people I knew and cared about, people who were far less well protected.
In ten minutes I was standing outside the Bargello, where the majority of civil offences were tried and sentenced, its high, blunt tower tilting against the sky, its walls dauntingly sheer and bristling with iron bolts. Two soldiers guarded the entrance. I asked if the Grand Duke’s secretary was inside. They didn’t answer, or even move, but merely regarded me with supercilious curiosity. When I repeated my question, the taller of the two men took a step towards me. ‘What’s it to you? Who are you, anyway?’
‘My name’s Zummo. I work for the Grand Duke.’
The tall soldier looked at his colleague. ‘Did you hear that? He works for the Grand Duke.’
‘Impressive,’ the second soldier said.
The tall soldier turned back to me. ‘You sound foreign.’
Cool air swirled out of the courtyard behind the two men, and I thought I smelled blood. I shivered at the implication.
The tall soldier addressed his colleague again. ‘Do you think he sounds foreign?’
‘He’s not from round here, that’s for sure,’ the second soldier said. ‘What did you say your name was? Zugo?’
The tall soldier guffawed. Zugo meant ‘simpleton’ — among other things.