Immortal (11 page)

“Stop, I beg you!” he was pleading, his pale face turned up to me. “I’ll pay you anything, anything! More gold florins than you can carry!”

“A bag of gold florins? Like the silk bag you beat us children with?” I asked, fury building again within me. I released his wrist abruptly and wrapped my hands around his neck. It was intoxicating to have his life in my fingers, to feel the blue veins throbbing against my hungry palms, to know that his pulse would soon dwindle into emptiness, into my freedom. He would stop breathing and all the horrors of the last eighteen years would die with him.

Satisfaction thrummed inside me like the glorious song of a lyre in a pageant. I had killed before, knowing only the sickening burden and shame of it. For this one time, for this one evil man who had hurt so many children, I knew the intoxicating pleasure. Since that day, I have killed many men, but none with the same gusto. Just as I was going to wring Silvano’s neck like a chicken’s, something hit me. It was Nicolo.

“You leave my father alone!” he screamed. I punched him, hard, sent him flying across the room. All those years ago when I lived on the streets, Paolo with the dark gypsy looks had taught me how to punch, and I never forgot anything I learned. Nicolo grabbed his father’s knife from the floor and leapt at me. He appeared, like his father before him, slowed down to my preternaturally heightened senses. I slammed my fist into his jutting chin before he could reach me. He crumpled into a heap on the drapes. I turned back to Silvano, who was gasping and writhing on the ground. His pupils were huge with my reflection.

“Don’t kill my son,” he whispered, clutching his bruised throat. “He’s just a boy!”

“Bella was just a little girl when you cut her throat,” I said. I wrapped my hands around Silvano’s head and twisted, hard. There was a crack and his body went limp.

“Papa!” Nicolo cried. Weeping, he fell upon Silvano’s body.

“I’m going to free the other children,” I said. Nicolo attacked me again, throwing himself hard against my back. I whirled around, flung him off. He landed with a crunch against the gilded cage, and the red and green bird inside it screamed to complain. It beat its wings against its bars. “No one will be left imprisoned!” I vowed. I ran over and freed the bird. It flew around the room, shrilling and flapping its wings. I took up Silvano’s knife. “I’ll release it outside!”

“No! You won’t get my papa’s bird!” Nicolo shrieked. He jumped up and grabbed at the bird, caught it with a quick swipe and then wrung its neck, just as I had wrung Silvano’s. He swung the limp bird by its feet, laughing maniacally. “Ha, ha, Luca Bastardo, you freak whore!”

I went a little mad. Not as mad as I have been since the great tragedy that has come to define my life, but with something of the same blind hallucinatory rage. “You can’t take away its freedom!” I screamed. I danced around the room, waving the knife. “You can’t do that!” I stopped in front of Nicolo. “Since you’ve killed it, you’re going to eat it! Now!” I held Silvano’s knife to Nicolo’s throat. He picked up the bird, trembling. “Eat it! Eat it!” I screamed, over and over again, pressing the knife until a drop of blood appeared on his scrawny throat.

Nicolo jerked the bird to his mouth and bit into its neck. He chewed, swallowed, feathers and all. He lifted his pimply, tear-smeared face to me. Bubbles of snot and blood coagulated on his wisp of a mustache. His sharp nose and thrusting chin made him the image of his father, and I was tempted to kill Nicolo, to see them both closed away in small boxes, unshriven, unmourned. What stayed my hand was the thought that Nicolo was still a child, and I would prove myself unlike Bernardo Silvano, who had killed so many children.

The bird’s blood dripped down Nicolo’s chin. He vomited violently onto the carpet, forcefully ejecting sodden red feathers. I laughed, and picked up one of the red feathers. I thrust it against his forehead, and because it was wet, it stuck to his skin. I laughed and laughed.

“I will never forget this! I will never forget you, and what you have done, Luca Bastardo! Someday I will avenge my father’s death. I swear it on my own blood, on my father’s body! I will make you suffer, you will die a horrible death!” Nicolo rose up on his knees and shook his fist at me, the red feather still clinging to him. “I curse you and curse you!”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe in curses said by little girls wearing red feathers.” I stepped over his father’s body and went to confront the patrons and to open doors for the children. If I had known then how potent cruel intention is when joined to blood fury, I would not have discounted his words. Curses have power, and Nicolo’s curses ripened, marking my life forever.

Chapter
7

SHAKING, I STOOD AT THE LARGE DOOR,
the carved portone, to Moses Sforno’s house. It was a typical Florentine home of the time, three stories high and constructed of stone, with evenly spaced windows under arched lintels, so ordinary that it awed me, unnatural creature of the streets and the brothel that I was. The pale gold light of a candle streamed out from a window with an open shutter and made a monstrous shadow of me on the street. I reached up to grasp the doorknocker, a brass plate shaped like a six-pointed star with a ring through the center for banging. The full moon gleamed on the blood slicked all over my arms. A succulent, oniony smell wafted from the house like a deep breath blown out; it was dinnertime. How could I, a stranger covered with gore, intrude on this intimate family time?

I was stepping away without knocking when the door opened. Sforno stood there, outlined in the yellow candlelight. “I heard something, or maybe I felt it,” he said, stroking his beard. “I thought it might be you.”

“I’m free of Silvano,” I said quietly. My chest felt hollow, which surprised me. I had no idea freedom would feel so empty, after all the years that I had longed for it. What was left, if the prison was gone? How would I now fill my days? Was living with strangers really the answer?

“Come in.”

“I’m not clean,” I demurred, with a sharp spurt of the familiar fear that had dogged me at Silvano’s: the fear of breaking the rules and being harshly punished. Sforno pulled me gently into the house. I stood in a foyer on a threadbare blue and gold carpet of Saracen design. The walls and ceiling were bathed in a warm lucency by lamps set on old carved wooden chests called
cassones.
A dark-haired woman wearing a patterned blue dress and a yellow
cappucci,
a cowl, swept into the foyer.

“Moshe, who is it?” she asked sharply. She stood beside Sforno, staring. She had high cheekbones, a cleft chin, and a strong nose, was full-bodied and womanly, handsome in the way in which little Rebecca’s prettiness would mature. Small crow’s-feet radiated out from wary dark eyes that scanned me intently, taking in my bloody arms and clothes.

“My friend Luca, who saved Rebecca and me today,” Sforno said.

She smiled. “You have my gratitude. Few Gentiles would do as you did today!”

Moshe nodded. “He’s staying with us.”

“For dinner?” the woman asked.

“He’s going to live with us, Leah,” Moshe said, in a quiet, firm voice.

“What? Moshe, he’s—”

“Wife, set a place at the table for him while I take him to clean up,” Sforno said. There was a warning note in his voice and my heart plummeted.

“I don’t want to cause trouble,” I said.

“Looks like you’ve already done that,” a merry bass voice rumbled. A thick-bodied older man came up by Mrs. Sforno. He had a full gray beard that reached to his belt, and a wild mane of gray-and-black hair. His face was broad and lined and graced with the largest nose and most cunning eyes I’d ever seen. He crossed his arms over his sturdy chest and laughed.

“You look like a wolf cub who had his way among the lambs.”

“I killed no lambs today,” I growled, nettled by his implication.

“Would it be so bad if you had?” He raised a grizzled eyebrow, challenging me. “Isn’t it necessary sometimes, for the lamb’s sake?”

“You killed someone?” asked Mrs. Sforno. She turned her face away, distressed. “There will be ufficiali after him!”

“Luca saved my life. And Rebecca’s. We owe him more than we can ever repay.” Sforno laid a hand on his wife’s shoulder. Her full mouth compressed into a thin line, but she tilted her head to lay her cheek on his hand and her face softened. Then her frown reappeared. “We’ll send the ufficiali away,” Sforno said. “We don’t need to know what Luca has done.”

But if I was going to live here, Sforno’s wife should know the truth. I didn’t want to conceal any acts that could ripen into danger for these good people. “I killed the proprietor of a brothel where children were kept as prostitutes,” I said directly to the woman. If she had raised her eyes, I would have met them squarely. She didn’t. In fact, she kept her gaze from mine for the many years I lived with her family.

“Is that all?” she snapped.

“I also killed seven patrons who were using the children. I stabbed two in the back, as they lay on the children. I cut the throats of three, and two I slit in the stomach,” I admitted. I was secretly pleased to have discovered such peculiar strength in myself; at the time, it seemed far more useful than unending youthfulness. I knew my actions made me appear unnatural, but I wasn’t silenced. For years Silvano had preyed upon my abnormalities to keep alive my fear of persecution by the outside world. I realized with a shock that that old fear was gone, washed away in the blood of my oppressors. But in the absence of fear and in the presence of these good people, I felt not peace, but the weight of humiliation and guilt over what I’d done during my long indenture. That would take far longer to overcome than the fear.

“I would want you at my back in a fight.” The older man laughed. “Wolf cub indeed!”

“He’s not some stray dog we can take in!” the woman objected. “He’s a Gentile who has killed Florentines. There will be people looking for him! I will spend my life being grateful to him for saving your life and Rebecca’s, but we have to be practical. No good can come of us harboring him. We could be forced to leave the city, or worse! They could harm our children! As Jews, we are already too vulnerable to take in a murderer!”

“Leah, without him, I would not be here. Nor would your baby,” Sforno said soothingly.

“Wolf cub, what did you do after all that stabbing and slitting?” the older man asked. His eyes sparkled at me as if it was all an amusing anecdote, as if I hadn’t basked in a sea of warm coppery life essence.

“Gave the children the money I found in the brothel and told the maids to care for them. I drove out the son of the proprietor. I told him I’d kill him if he came back. He knew I meant it.”

“You must be hungry after all that,” the older man said. “Come have dinner.”

“I should wash first,” I said.

“Come, I’ll take you,” Sforno said. His wife started to speak, but he held up a warning hand. He took a lamp and led me through the foyer to another hall, and out a side door. “My Leah’s a good woman,” he said slowly. “Don’t judge her. It isn’t easy for us Jews.”

“It’s not for me to judge anyone,” I said quietly. “Is that other man a relative of yours?”

“Not that I know.” Sforno shook his head.

“What’s his name?” I followed along a path lit by his lamp. The path led to a small crude barn of the kind people built in the Oltrarno, where not all the land was built up with homes.

“I don’t know that he has one. He’s a wanderer. He knew my father. He seems to know everyone, and he brings news of my brother and cousins in Venice. He shows up and we feed him.” Sforno threw the sash to the barn door and motioned me to enter. Two bay horses whinnied and a cow lowed as we went in. Sforno led me to a trough filled with water and placed the lamp on a small three-legged stool. “Here’s a bucket and a brush, clean yourself, Luca.” Then he went out.

First I took from within my red-spattered vestments Giotto’s precious small panel—the only thing I had brought with me from Silvano’s. I looked around for a hiding place, saw a small ledge above the door. I overturned a bucket and used it to climb up to the ledge, and then pried away a board and secreted the panel in a hollow between the barn’s outer shell and inner walls. The panel was wrapped in oiled calfskin, so I knew it would be safe from mice. I climbed back down and doused myself. The water ran onto the rough wooden floor in pink rivulets. I dumped a few more buckets over my head. I picked some horse hair out of the brush and then used it to scrub out the blood dried in my hair and the flesh caked beneath my fingernails.

Sforno returned carrying a threadbare camicia, a patched woolen doublet, hose, and a short mantello. “We’ll have to have garments made for you,” he said. He sighed. “Leah won’t like spending the money, but it has to be done. This is an old farsetto of mine.” He swung the mended vestcoat doublet back and forth. “It’ll be large, but you’ll be decent.”

“When I lived on the streets, I found clothes in the garbage, and I folded and rolled them and tied them to fit,” I said. They were old memories but still clear, perhaps more vivid now, with Silvano’s prison torn asunder. I found myself awash in the old images, Paolo and Massimo and the spot under the Ponte Vecchio where we had often huddled together for warmth in the winter, games of chance and skill and begging for coins for a meal and going to the market with an empty belly…Sforno’s voice severed into the past, and I realized he was speaking to me.

“Before Silvano’s?” he asked. I nodded. “You don’t look like the usual street urchin,” he observed. “You’re not deformed, an idiot, or dark like a gypsy. The yellow hair, your features, your strength and cleverness—you could be a nobleman’s son. I’ll wager that you are, and there’s some strange twist in your history. There are probably people looking for you even now.”

“I have often wondered about my history. But wouldn’t my parents have found me long before now, if they were looking?” I asked bitterly. I gave him a sharp glance and did not confess the secret abomination of my long youth and hardiness. Sforno was a physico, he would probably observe those for himself.

“The world is strange and full of crooked paths.” Sforno shrugged. “You’re here now. Come back in when you’re dressed.”

Cleaned and dressed and filled with anxiety, I made my way back into the house. Overwhelmed by how different I was from these people, by both blood and experience, neither of which I could ever wash from myself, I walked timidly along the hall. Wooden beams ran above my head, and paintings of the flowing canals of Venice were hung on the walls. Everything about the place sang with the ordinariness of a cozy family, something I had never known. Even among an exiled people, I stood out, a bruised fruit in an orchard of flowers. Moshe Sforno was taking me in out of a sense of obligation, but I couldn’t stay here forever. I would have to form a plan for myself. I didn’t want to go back to the streets, especially with the Black Death slaughtering more wantonly than I had this night. Nor would I ever go back to the work I had done at Silvano’s. I heard voices, high girlish timbres interwoven with Sforno’s resonant tones, and I stepped into a dining hall. The conversation ceased. Before me stood a tall wooden chest painted with faded grapes beneath an arching of strange letters. Beside it, the dining table was a long rectangle, with plain, columnar legs but made of well-polished walnut. There sat Sforno, his wife, four girlchildren, and the Wanderer. A plate was laid down between Sforno and the Wanderer. They all stared at me except for Mrs. Sforno, who studied the table, which was set with lit candles, silver goblets, a roast fowl, fragrant sautéed greens, a golden loaf of bread, and a carafe of plum-colored wine. Rebecca, the littlest daughter, slid down from her seat and skipped over to hug me. Her breath on my cheek was warm and milky.

“Look at him, a Gentile through and through.” Mrs. Sforno threw up her hands. “What are the neighbors going to say? They’ll think badly of us for having him around our daughters!”

“Whatever they say, you aren’t saying kaddish. Sit down, Luca.” Sforno’s resonant voice was kind. Rebecca led me to the empty spot on the bench next to her father.

“Four daughters,” I murmured. The four girls inspected me in open fascination. They were unabashed and unashamed, completely unlike the cowed and beaten girls I had known at Silvano’s or the unheeding ones I had witnessed on the streets. I flushed and stood straighter, fidgeted with Sforno’s farsetto to pull it to a tighter, better fit.

“Even the great Rashi had four daughters and no sons,” Sforno said, with an air of both love and resignation. The girls giggled. Their laughter was such an exotic sound that I gaped. For many years, I had not once heard the bright laughter of girls. The poet Boccaccio whom I’d met on the street earlier today was wrong: women were not trivial baubles. Even the young ones were far more than that. They had a special grace because divine music played in their laughter. Sforno stroked Rebecca’s cheek. He sighed. “One accepts God’s gifts as they are given.”

“What’s a killer whore?” six-year-old Miriam asked in a lilting voice. Sforno groaned and slapped his hand over his eyes.

“Hush, Miriam!” the serious eldest sister, Rachel, said.

“Someone cruelly used, who decides to change his fate,” I answered grimly.

“Change is the only constant,” the Wanderer said. “I think I’ll stay for a while, Moshe. I’ll make the kiddush, yes?” He held up his goblet of wine and sang some words in a language I did not understand.

And so began my first meal with the Sfornos, and the beginning of my living in a family. It was tangential to real domestic intimacy, it wasn’t my family, and I was an alien thing still. But it was the closest I’d ever come.

THE NEXT MORNING I AWOKE FROM A NIGHTMARE
of fire and ache, dead patrons and freed birds, and a beautiful woman with a fragrance of lilacs sinking beneath black water. It was dawn and I lay on a pallet of straw. My heart was stuttering in my chest, which was no longer numb with submission, and an ordinary green garden snake was slithering away through the straw. I gulped air, and then, as the rhythms in my body slowed, I unwrapped myself from the woolen blanket Moshe had given me. The gray barn cat who’d slept purring in my armpit darted off after a field mouse, or perhaps after the little snake. I stretched and took a deep breath of earthy animal scents, sweaty fur and dusty feathers and fresh dung, mouse droppings and insect carcasses and damp straw. Here the air was not scented with perfumes and there was no bed with fancy linens like at Silvano’s. I wondered when the smell of those perfumes and the luxurious hand of those fabrics would dissolve, or if they’d cloy my senses forever. I felt confusion and gratitude toward Sforno, and then the anguish of the dream reared up like an unruly horse. It reminded me of my promise to his wife, to be helpful. I grabbed a shovel and started cleaning out the horses’ stalls. I worked awkwardly, having practiced other skills these last many years. I hoped this new work would shatter the dream that encased me like dark glass. Then the Wanderer came in, his wooden clogs clattering on the unfinished timbers of the barn’s floor.