When the bearded man noticed me looking at his incongruous hairpiece, he reached up and stroked it. ‘A whore I fucked and killed in Poggibonsi. And here’s something else I got.’ He undid the buttons on his tunic. A strip of bloodstained fabric showed.
‘Is that silk?’ I asked.
He nodded, then glanced down. ‘It was white before I gutted her.’
‘Nothing like a bit of silk to keep you warm on a cold night,’ I said.
These were men for whom violence was as ordinary and natural as sleep.
He told me there was a fee for entering the city, which should be paid to him and his colleague directly. It wasn’t my intention to enter the city, I said. I wasn’t even passing through. I was bound for Torremagna, a village forty miles to the south-east.
‘There’s a fee for that as well,’ he said.
‘I thought you might say that.’ I reached into a pocket and took out Faustina’s hair, which I had tied with a piece of ribbon. ‘You’re not the only one who’s killed a whore.’
He came forwards on his horse and held out a hand.
‘No,’ I said. ‘This trophy’s mine. Kind of a coincidence, though, don’t you think?’
The two men stared at me, either curious or just plain foxed, and I realized I had to keep talking, otherwise the spell would break.
‘Are you on the road most days?’
They watched me with the appearance of shrewdness, as if they suspected there might be a right answer, but weren’t sure what it was.
‘There’s a man coming this way,’ I went on. ‘He’s a monk.’
The bearded man muttered something under his breath.
‘Have you seen anyone like that?’ I said.
He shook his head. A wind sprang up, and a few strands of his gruesome wig drifted across his face. He pushed them back behind his ear.
‘You couldn’t miss him. He’s a big man, dressed in black and white.’ I paused. ‘They call him “Flesh”.’
The man with the lazy eye wanted to know why. I mentioned a partiality for choirboys and suckling pig. In that order. The two men looked at each other, and I saw a thought pass between them, amorphous, yet coiled, feral.
‘And he’s a monk?’ the bearded man said.
‘A Dominican. Hence the black and white. You’re sure you haven’t seen him?’
They were sure.
‘He’ll be here soon,’ I said, ‘and he’ll have money on him.’ I paused again. ‘He wears an emerald. It was a gift from the Grand Duke’s mother. That’s got to be worth a bit.’
The bearded man picked at a tooth. ‘He’s hunting you, isn’t he?’
He wasn’t without a certain sly intelligence; I was almost proud of him.
‘If he asks about me,’ I said, ‘tell him I went to Torremagna.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘I want him to find me.’
I glanced over my shoulder. Night had come down while we had been talking, and the woods I had passed through earlier were already sunk deep in the murk. Ahead of me, the walls of Siena rose behind the two road agents, lights showing in windows that seemed randomly arranged. I remembered the striped churches, the curving streets, the penniless nobility.
I asked the bearded man how much he wanted. He mentioned an amount. I told him it was more than I could afford. He should remember that I was no different to him — a man trying to make his way in the darkness, a man with hair in his pocket and blood on his hands. I took out a drawstring purse where I kept such money as I was prepared to lose and tossed it to him, then watched as he loosened the string and poked at the coins that lay inside.
‘The monk will make up the difference,’ I said.
Tugging on the reins, I pressed my heels into my horse’s flanks, then rode past the two men. I was careful not to look back, not to hurry. I didn’t want to trigger a pursuit. I didn’t even want the idea to enter their heads.
Once I had gained the high ground to the south-east of Siena, I began to look for a place to sleep. By then, I was in the crete, as they were known, a series of chevron-shaped ridges and ravines that were often bare, revealing an unearthly, greyish clay-like soil. There was almost no vegetation. Sometimes a row of cypresses, sometimes an olive tree so gnarled that it looked biblical. The wind roamed the landscape unimpeded.
I came across an abandoned cart and tethered my horse to its one remaining wheel, then I walked a few yards off the track and lay down on a patch of couch grass, my sword beside me. He was good with a sword, Earhole had said. I wasn’t, though. I didn’t know why I had brought it. Pointless, really. The raw air skimmed across my upturned face.
I saw the road agents confronting Stufa, all three men on foot. The sun rinsed the countryside in stringent yellow light. Stufa produced a roncolino, a short, curved knife designed for cutting ripe grapes from the vine, and drove the rust-pocked blade into the bearded man’s abdomen, then jerked it upwards through the complex, tumbling parcel of guts. Nobody had even asked him for money. Nobody had had the chance. He was supernaturally fast and violent.
Right hand enamelled with the bearded man’s blood, shreds of red silk trailing from the blade, Stufa rounded on the man with the lazy eye. There was nothing laconic about him now. Stufa dropped his weapon in the grass and wrapped both hands around the man’s thin neck. That was the last place he ever stood. A brackish wind stole through a nearby stand of cane. The dry stalks clicked and rattled.
Later, I saw Stufa sitting with Faustina in a brown room filled with firelight and shadows. He was an old friend of mine, he said — we had known each other for years, since we were theology students — and because I was too busy to make the journey from Florence — You know how it is with artists! — he had been sent on ahead to watch over her. Judging by the indulgent, almost sleepy way she looked at him — exactly the way my mother used to look at Jacopo — she believed every word. She didn’t know his name was hidden inside hers. She didn’t know his name at all. I reached for the door handle that led to the room, intent on warning her, and woke up grasping at the nothingness in front of me.
I slept again, and woke to find Stufa’s knife lying near me, but the crust of dried blood on the blade was the night sky and the silk tatters clinging to the hilt were dawn’s red streaks showing in the east. I had visited the hospital before I left. Cuif would live, Pampolini said, though it seemed unlikely he would regain the full use of his arms. There had been too much internal damage. To my astonishment, Pampolini had saved Cuif’s leg. Not that the knee would ever function properly again. When I looked in on Cuif, he gave me a sickly smile. Tell that German to watch out. He’s got some competition now. I sat up, rubbed my face. The land unfolded to the south, its corrugations the colour of mould on cheese, no trees for miles. My dreams had felt so earthed in what was real that it was hard to believe in the world that lay before me, so unthreatening, so empty of people, and so quiet.
Perhaps that was why the events of that morning caught me unprepared. I had been riding for an hour or two when I passed a stone dwelling that crouched in the shadow of a crumbling tufa cliff. The ground all round looked worn and patchy. A man waved from the doorway. I waved back. A woman appeared. Then some children. In no time the whole family were swarming across the threadbare land towards me. At first I took this to be some kind of welcome — a traveller was a rare sight, maybe — but when I saw how starved they were, their eye-sockets hollow, almost bevelled, their skin moistureless and slack, I realized it was Borucher’s mare they were after. A horse was food — no, more than that: a feast — and they would kill me for it. I jabbed at her flanks with my heels. She reared, and then sprang forwards. The woman spun sideways with a shriek, her arms outstretched. I smelled her famine breath. The man lunged at me, and caught my thigh with the tip of a sickle. Then I was beyond them, wind roaring in my ears.