‘Is the Grand Duke’s secretary here?’ I said patiently. ‘If he is, I need to see him. It’s urgent.’
‘We’re under strict instructions not to let anyone in,’ the tall soldier said.
‘I have to see Bassetti. Or Stufa. Whoever’s in charge.’
‘Didn’t you hear me, Zugo? No one’s allowed inside.’
‘Tell them I want to see them,’ I said in a loud, clear voice, ‘or I’ll go straight to the Grand Duke himself.’
Sighing, the tall soldier spoke to his colleague. ‘Tell them Zugo’s here.’
‘Zummo,’ I said. ‘The name’s Zummo.’
The second soldier set off across the wide, paved courtyard.
‘Satisfied?’ the tall one said.
I stood facing the street. The day brightened suddenly, the sky bleak and stringent, like the light on the blade of a knife.
Two more soldiers arrived. Scruffier and more thuggish than the pair on duty by the entrance, they marched me across the courtyard, through a door, and down a steep flight of stairs. The stone walls gleamed with damp, and greasy black fumes uncoiled from the tallow lamps. I began to cough. The deeper we went, the clammier it became. I had been in the Bargello for no more than a few minutes, but the idea that a sun might be shining outside already seemed fantastical.
At last, when we were far underground, in a labyrinth of galleries and recesses that resembled a catacomb, one of the soldiers opened a door that was reinforced with horizontal metal bands. In front of me, on the far side of a wide room, Cuif was suspended in mid-air, his arms forming a triangle above his head, and it seemed for a moment that I had walked in during the execution of a daring somersault, a somersault so new he hadn’t showed it to me yet, but then I saw a burly, bald man in a leather apron stationed nearby, holding the end of a rope, and my stomach lurched. Cuif’s hands had been tied behind his back. A rope had then been looped through his bound wrists, and he had been hoisted to a height of about ten feet. His head hung limply on his neck. He appeared to have fainted.
Stufa lifted his eyes from the ledger he was studying. ‘This particular technique is known as the garrucha. Are you familiar with the garrucha?’
His abrasive whisper matched the surroundings perfectly. I didn’t answer.
‘It’s Spanish,’ he went on. ‘You make sure the rope is taut, then you jerk it suddenly, which causes instant and often severe dislocation of all the joints in the upper body.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like a demonstration?’
‘Not necessary,’ I said.
‘Is there anything you can tell us that might spare him further pain?’
‘About what?’
‘About his immoral behaviour. Why else would he be here?’ Stufa exchanged a look with the bald man in the apron. Their faces were smooth, comfortable, expressionless.
‘But that’s a fabrication,’ I said. ‘What’s the real charge?’
Stufa’s head came up sharply. ‘Are you saying he’s guilty of something else?’
‘I’m saying he’s not an adulterer.’
‘You think our intelligence is false?’
Once again, I didn’t answer. Probably I had already said too much.
‘You look a bit off colour.’ Stufa turned and signalled to his crony. ‘All right. That’s enough.’
Rather than lower Cuif to the ground, the bald man simply let go of the rope. Cuif dropped through the air and landed in a crumpled heap. The bald man bent down and freed Cuif’s wrists. Cuif cried out every time he was touched.
‘I don’t know what it is about the French,’ Stufa said. ‘They don’t seem to have any backbone.’ He closed his ledger. ‘You can take him away.’
I crossed the room. Cuif lay in a pool of blood and urine. It was obvious that he couldn’t stand, let alone walk. Bending over, I took hold of one of his arms and heaved him up on to my back. His shriek was so loud that it rebounded off the wall like something solid. Shocked at how little he weighed, scarcely more than a child, I had no choice but to ignore his groans and whimpers as I carried him up the stairs and out into the open air. The soldiers on duty at the entrance smirked as we passed. Ignoring them, I set off along the street. The sky had a strange, muted dazzle to it, the winter sun lighting the white cloud cover from behind; I felt as if hours had gone by. I talked to Cuif in a low voice, telling him that he was with me now, and that he was going to be all right, but he lost consciousness several times on the way to Santa Maria Nuova, even though it was close by.
When I laid him on the slab in Pampolini’s operating theatre, his face was paler than the marble, and I was afraid he might already be dead. Pampolini used a pair of scissors to cut off the jacket, shirt and breeches. Cuif’s shoulders had been wrenched out of their sockets, and his right kneecap was shapeless, a mass of congealing blood and shattered bone.
‘Can you do anything for him?’ I said.
‘Not much. Even if he lives, I doubt he’ll walk again.’
‘I don’t want to live,’ Cuif murmured.
I leaned down close. ‘Don’t say that. You’ll be fine. You’re in good hands.’
Pampolini asked Earhole to fetch the dwale. It was a tincture made from henbane, mandragora, hemlock, mulberry juice and pape, he told me. It would put Cuif to sleep. After that, he would see what he could do. He filled a spoon with the brown liquid, lifted Cuif’s head and tipped the contents into his mouth.
I glanced at Earhole. ‘How’s the ankle?’
‘Much better, thanks.’
‘This man was one of the great entertainers of his age,’ I said. ‘His somersaults were legendary. I was lucky enough to watch him once, rehearsing in his room. But now they have destroyed him …’
‘They?’ Earhole said. ‘Who?’
Pampolini frowned. ‘Never you mind.’
I left Cuif with Pampolini, asking that the Frenchman be given the best available care and promising to cover all expenses. On my way home, I called in at the House of Shells to let the signora know what had happened. She began to cry again, her face buried in one of her elaborately embroidered shawls.
By the time I opened my front door, I was close to tears myself. A lighted candle wavered in a red glass lantern, and dark pink roses floated in a bowl that stood on a low table by the wall, but the air still smelled of my mother’s poultices and potions. My house had become a shrine to her distress.
‘Who’s that?’ she called out.
I put my head round the door. ‘It’s me.’
She was sitting up in bed, shuffling a pack of miniature cards.
‘Where’s Jacopo?’ she said.
‘He died, mother. In the earthquake.’
Her face emptied; the cards fell still between her fingers. The simplest exchanges were fraught with confusion and misunderstanding.
Then a brightness flooded back into her face, and she looked younger, almost girlish. ‘How’s your work going?’
‘I didn’t work today,’ I said.
She reached for her tumbler of acquerello. When she had taken a sip, she put the tumbler back on the bedside table and looked at me again, a smile precariously balanced on her lips, her eyes an eerie, bewildered pale-brown.
‘And what about your work, Gaetano? How’s it going?’
She could ask the same question three or four times in a single conversation, but since she seemed unaware of the fact that she was repeating herself it made no sense to point it out, and I tended to treat each new repetition as an original remark. I told her my work was going well. She needed to be reassured that things were stable.
That week I had trouble sleeping. One night, I was woken in the small hours by a terrible screaming. What a wind, I thought. I couldn’t remember hearing anything like it, not even on Ponza in 1688, when I was trapped on the island by a storm. It occurred to me to go outside and inspect the damage — I imagined trees uprooted, shattered roof-tiles, boats ripped from their moorings — but just as I was about to leave my bed a silence fell, and I heard the murmur of voices in the distance. These would be people like me, I thought, people who had been woken by the gale.