‘And my friend?’
He pushed out his lips, then shook his head.
Staring at the ground, I nodded to myself. There would be no apology, no justice. No attempt at reparation. Cuif would join the hordes of cripples and beggars who slumped against the walls of the city’s many charitable institutions with crude paintings of John the Baptist round their necks.
‘Those who are for us,’ the Grand Duke said, ‘and those who are against us cannot be measured on the same set of scales. Enemies have more urgency, more focus. They will always tip the balance.’
I was pretty certain that Cuif’s arrest and torture had been intended as a warning to me, and a lesson. What had not occurred to me — not, that is, until that moment — was the idea that he might have been a decoy, and that Faustina might be the real target. In a hurry to leave suddenly, I thanked the Grand Duke for his patience and his advice, and apologized once again for having interrupted him.
‘Do your work,’ he said. ‘That, after all, is why you’re here.’
The sky had darkened, and thunder began to roll and tumble in the hills behind San Miniato. In the street below, I heard a child cry out in terror. I backed away down the corridor. The Grand Duke was eyeing me with regret, it seemed, or even, possibly, nostalgia. Just then, he leapt towards me, doubling in size, and becoming brighter, almost silver, and I thought for one demented, panic-stricken moment that he was attacking me. Then I realized he hadn’t moved.
It was just sheet lightning flashing through the window to his right.
It was just the beginning of the storm.
In the fading light I saw Siena up ahead, and I remembered how it coiled on its hill like the shell of a snail, with hardly a straight street to be found, and how the subtle but recurring bends and curves gave the city an atmosphere of mystery, a discreet sense of the infinite.
The day after my encounter with the Grand Duke, I had called on Magliabechi. When I knocked, a small panel slid open at head-height, and I heard the librarian’s irritable voice: ‘If it’s not important, you can go away.’
I spoke through the hatch. ‘It is important.’
The latch clicked, seemingly of its own accord, and the door swung inwards. Magliabechi was sprawled on his back in the middle of a large dusty room, not in a chair, but in the kind of wide, shallow cradle that one might use for sorting pears or peaches. He was surrounded by books, all stacked in vertiginous, fragile towers. As I approached, he reared into a sitting position. ‘Careful! Don’t hurt my spiders!’
In the grey light that fell in a column from the window above him, I saw that his cradle was linked to the piles of books by dozens of cobwebs.
‘Did you know that a spider can survive for months without food?’ Magliabechi peered at me as if I were a lesser species, chin jutting, bits of egg-white wedged in the gaps between his teeth.
‘No, I didn’t know that.’
I passed him the jar that contained the piece of the dead girl’s skin. He grasped it in both hands, his fingers hook-like, scaly.
‘Interesting specimen,’ he said. ‘My first thought? Domini canes. It’s a pun. Domini canes means Dominicans, obviously, but it also means “Hounds of the Lord”.’
‘That’s precisely the answer I was hoping for,’ I said.
He handed the jar back to me.
Talking of Dominicans, he said, had I by any chance heard about Stufa’s vigil? He had sat beside Vittoria’s body for more than a week, and had prayed without ceasing. He had hardly slept. His mind was beginning to unravel.
‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ I said. ‘She was like a mother to him, apparently.’
‘And more than that, some say.’ Magliabechi gave me a wily, tantalizing look, but wouldn’t elaborate.
Later that day, I walked over to Santa Maria Novella, intent on seeing the dogs for myself. Once in the Spanish Chapel, I approached the eastern wall. There they were, with their long, pointed muzzles and their teeth set in fierce, even rows. One of them had savaged a wolf and drawn blood, wolves symbolizing the unbelievers who threatened the fold. As I stood in front of the fresco, struck by the dogs’ uncanny resemblance to the crudely decorated piece of skin inside my bag, I heard footsteps and turned to see Stufa standing at my elbow.
‘The Exaltation of the Order of the Dominicans,’ he said. ‘Andrea di Bonaiuto at his most inspired.’
‘So it’s not true that all art leaves you cold.’
Stufa’s face looked even bonier than usual, and his eyes, though piercing, were lightless. His vigil had taken its toll, and he was still grieving, of course, but it also seemed likely that the death of his protector had left him feeling unanchored and exposed.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said.
‘Is that why you came? To gloat?’
‘Actually, I wasn’t expecting to see you. Since you’re here, though, there’s something I want to put to you.’
‘Really?’ Stufa sounded sceptical, sarcastic. He clearly doubted I could say anything that would be of interest to him, and that prompted me to be more blunt than I had intended.
‘You’re a murderer,’ I said.
I had expected him to be startled, but he held my gaze. ‘What happened? Did that spineless Frenchman die?’
‘No, he didn’t. Not yet, anyway.’
‘In that case, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’ve got evidence that connects you to the death of a girl.’
‘What girl would that be?’
‘She was found by the river. In Sardigna.’
‘As it happens,’ he said slowly, ‘there is a girl I’m interested in. It seems we’re destined to be together. Look inside her name. I’m there.’ He waited for me to understand. ‘You don’t see it? My name, her name — the one inside the other.’ His lips were thin and bloodless; his tongue showed between them, dark as a parrot’s. ‘I’ve already penetrated the girl you’re in love with. I’ve already had her.’
‘You’re just playing with words.’ But he had ruined Faustina’s name for me, and he knew it.
‘People like us should share things, don’t you think? That’s what you said, remember? People like us.’
I turned away, making for the cloister.
‘Are you going already? Don’t you want me to tell you where she is?’
I kept walking.
‘Put it like this. Tomorrow I leave for the south-east of the duchy. There’s a little village, on a hill …’
He was claiming to know where Faustina was, and I couldn’t afford not to believe him.
That afternoon I told my mother I was going to look at the gypsum quarries near Volterra, and that I might be gone for as long as a fortnight, then I borrowed a mare from Borucher, strapped a sword to the saddle and rode south to Siena, forty-seven miles down that lonely, stony switchback of a road, the sky low and dark, the weather unseasonably cold for March. In making for Torremagna, was I protecting Faustina or was I putting her at risk? I had no idea.
As I approached Siena’s northern gate, my path was blocked by two men on horseback, their breath steaming in the icy half-light. At first I assumed they were working for a local hostelry — they would offer me low prices, clean linen, fine wine; they would offer me the world if only I agreed to choose their establishment over all the others — but as they drew nearer I saw that they had a jittery, flamboyant look about them that had nothing to do with honest business. The man who rode in front was tall and angular. His grizzled, greying beard didn’t match his hair, which was chestnut-coloured and luxuriantly wavy. The other man had a lazy, laconic air, as if he was used to people finding what he said amusing. One of his eyes didn’t open properly.