The Girl With the Painted Face (26 page)

‘Were you not? I was expecting it to do just what it did.’

Sofia laughs.

Beppe strokes her hair away from her face. ‘Trouble is, I know your body better than I know you, now. Tell me about you. God – I told you all those terrible things about… about my father yesterday. Tell me something about you now. About your family.’

The lazy warmth of the moment chills in an instant.

Sofia holds her breath, trying to think how to tell him. Surely, she thinks now, of all people he will understand. He will know how hard it is to tell something like this.

‘It’s difficult,’ she says, wanting more time to think as a memory – her father’s voice, rough with fear – flashes into her mind.

‘For God’s sake, what’s the matter, Giacinta? Are you ill? What’s happened?’
 

Mamma will not look at him, though he holds her face in his hands and tries to force her to do so. She pulls her head away from him and stares instead at the still-open front door; the only change in her that Sofia can see is a further widening of her eyes – she can see white all the way around the brown iris. Papa takes her by the upper arms and shakes her, his voice louder now and more urgent. ‘Giacinta,
please
! You’re frightening me. Stop it! You’re frightening Sofia – look at her! Tell me what’s happened!’

‘Worse than my story?’ Beppe says softly, stroking her hair back from her face.

Sofia nods. ‘I think it might be.’

‘Can you tell me any of it, lovely girl?’

‘I’ll try.’

Beppe puts a hand on the side of her face and kisses her mouth. She responds, turning to him, pressing in against him, and, in an instant, their need for each other ignites again; for a few moments the urgency of their bodies absorbs them too intensely to think further of tales of past grief, but then, moments later, as Beppe shudders to a halt and Sofia clings to him, breathing as heavily as though she has been running, she says, in between gasps, ‘My mother was a healer.’

Beppe holds her tightly and her breathing slows.

‘She used to take curatives of her own making to sick neighbours and friends – she grew herbs and flowers, and made tinctures and salves and lozenges – and over the years she began to build a reputation. People would seek her out.’

‘And your father?’

‘Papa was a baker.’ She hesitates. ‘One day – I was about six or seven – Mamma came home from seeing one of her neighbours. It was as if she had lost her reason. She burst into the house, gasping for breath, wild-eyed, her hair loose… I was terrified. I couldn’t understand what she was saying.’

‘Sofia! Sofia! Quick! We must pack – we must pack as many of our clothes and belongings as we can carry. We have to leave, now, straight away!’
 

Mamma’s eyes are wide and blank, and a thin and shining line of spit has slid from one corner of her mouth and trickled down towards her chin. Her hair looks, Sofia thinks, as though she has not brushed it for days.
 

‘What’s the matter, Mamma?’ she says in a small voice, hoping her mother will smile at her and reassure her. But she does not reassure Sofia; she shouts at her in a hard voice that sounds as though her throat is tearing.
 

‘Just do it – don’t argue! Put your things into a bag. We have no time to lose. We have to go now.’
 

‘But what about Papa?’
 

Mamma stares at her and says nothing.
 

‘Papa,’ Sofia says again, beginning to cry. ‘We have to tell Papa.’
 

‘No. We have to go. There’s no time. We can’t wait for him.’
 

Beppe is sitting up now, watching Sofia intently. One of her hands is in his, and he is stroking it with the side of his thumb.

‘Then Papa came back and he couldn’t make sense of what she was saying either – not for ages. Finally, she came out with it. A woman she had been treating had died, and the woman’s husband had accused Mamma of poisoning her.’

‘I went there just now and she was dead.’ Mamma’s voice drops to a whisper. ‘He called me a witch, Paolo, and he says he will make sure they have me burned for what he insists I’ve done. I think he means it.’
 

‘What were you giving her?’
 

‘Lavender and barberry. For sickness and the flux.’
 

‘Nothing else?’
 

Mamma shakes her head. In a whisper Sofia can hardly hear she says, ‘It was the right thing to give her – I know it was. I don’t know why she died.’
 

‘I didn’t understand what she was saying.
Have her burned?
I thought she meant like the time I’d burned my arm on a hot pan. I couldn’t understand why someone would want to do that to another person deliberately.’

Beppe says nothing, but his eyes are huge and unblinking and his gaze is fixed upon Sofia’s face.

‘Papa agreed that we should get away – even if it was just for a short time – so we packed a bag with essentials and left the house.’ Sofia pauses. ‘Of course, we had no idea of what was to come, but —’

She is about to continue when the barn door crashes open, morning sunlight floods in and disturbs the hens; they flap their wings and scold the intruder with a barrage of irritable clucks and croons. Beppe’s dog barks. One of the horses snorts. Startled, Sofia clutches her blanket to her chest; her heart is racing. She is in a stranger’s barn and she is naked. Beppe puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head. ‘Don’t move,’ he mouths soundlessly.

Sofia’s memories hang fragmented in the air as the newcomer moves about below them.

Whoever it is begins to whistle. Tuneless and lilting, his song jolts and jerks as he works noisily: banging and thudding, then grunting with exertion as, so it sounds to Sofia, he lifts something heavy and shifts it across the barn.

‘Hey, hey, hey… good morning, good morning, good morning… up you come… come on then…’

Sofia thinks she recognizes the ale-man’s voice.

‘Ooh, but you are one lazy, ill-smelling, bad-tempered pile of old dog-meat,’ he says, in a tone far more affectionate than his words might imply. ‘Come on, out you come – good girl. That’s it. I’m not shifting twenty-five barrels on my own – come
on
.’

Beppe and Sofia glance at each other.

A scuffle of hoofs, a jingle of harness buckles, a half-hearted mumbling attempt from the mule at a discordant bray; several indistinguishable, muttered comments from the ale-man. Then Sofia hears man and mule cross the barn floor, and the great door closes behind them.

And opens again a second later.

A familiar voice. ‘Beppe? You in here?’ Sofia cannot see him, but Vico sounds as though he is grinning. ‘We’re moving on, Ago says, and we need to get the wagons hitched up straight away – thought you might have sneaked out here last night. You weren’t in the upstairs room and half the blankets were missing and – well, you had to be
somewhere
…’ He clears his throat. ‘
Er hem
. Both of you. I’ve looked everywhere else.’

‘We’ll be down in a moment,’ Beppe says, and Vico laughs. Sofia closes her eyes, inwardly shrivelling with embarrassment.

‘Glad to see my instincts are as fine as ever,
amico
,’ Vico calls cheerfully. ‘Hope you had a…’ He clears his throat again. ‘… had a… er… a good night.’

And, whistling loudly, he leaves the barn.

‘Tell me the rest of your story later, lovely girl,’ Beppe says. ‘We’re going to have to get up and it’s too important a tale to rush.’

Thoroughly disconcerted now, Sofia nods.

‘A few more minutes more won’t hurt, though…’ Beppe adds quietly, pulling her on top of him, running his hands over her buttocks and kissing her once more.

20

Bologna

Marco da Correggio – slight, dark, hollow-cheeked and brown-eyed – is indeed in the tavern, sitting on a low seat near the fire, a large tin cup of ale in his hands, but as soon as he sees Sebastiano, he scrambles to his feet and does his best to leave by the little door at the back of the downstairs room, knocking the cup onto the floor with a clatter. The ale splatters dark across the dusty flags. Elbowing his way between drinkers, he mutters thoughtless apologies as he bangs into shoulders and backs, slops drinks and knocks chairs; grabbing for the latch, he struggles to open the door, but, unfortunately for him, it catches on the uneven floor below and refuses to open wide enough to allow him to squeeze out.

Sebastiano, shoving past the same disgruntled tavern-goers – ignoring their protests – reaches Marco before he can wrestle the door any further, snatching at his cousin’s arm and tugging him back into the tavern’s room.

‘Come with me,’ he mutters. ‘Just come outside with me now, and —’

‘
Vaffanculo!
’ Marco says. ‘I haven’t got it, Sebastiano, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

Sebastiano drags him by the wrist, bending his arm acutely to pull him in close, and hiss-whispers into his ear: ‘You know you don’t have a choice, Marco. I’m having that money.’

‘Piss off! Let go of me – I haven’t bloody got it, and I don’t have a chance of getting it either.’

Sebastiano has brought Marco right across to the entrance door now, and, yanking it open, he hauls his cousin out into the street; every eye in the tavern is upon the pair as they leave the room. Marco now snatches his arm out of Sebastiano’s grip, but Sebastiano grabs him by the front of his doublet and slams him up against the outside wall of the tavern. ‘I have no intention of falling foul of my creditors, Marco. You know what will happen if you don’t pay.’

‘You’ll have to give me time.’

‘I don’t
have
time. Let me spell it out to you – just in case you’ve forgotten any of the details in the fog of the ale you’ve clearly been downing back there – I lent you one hundred
scudi
last year, did I not? After you proved how indubitably poor your gaming instincts really are and lost most of your inheritance within a few hours.’

Marco says nothing.

‘Make no mistake, that was a hundred
scudi
I could ill afford. I only gave it to you because you are my father’s brother’s son and you promised to pay it back within two months. What a fool I was. That was eleven months ago – and you’ve given me… what is it now?’ Sebastiano scratches his head and screws up his face as though trying hard to remember an evasive fact. After a pause for effect, he says, in a voice thick with contempt, ‘Nothing. Not one single stinking
baioccho.
I’ve waited and waited, been more patient than I would have thought possible, but things have changed. I
need
eighty-five
scudi
– for reasons I have no intention of going into with you. And I need them now. This week. I intend to have what you owe me, one way or another.’ Taking a handful of Marco’s doublet, he continues, ‘Now you listen to me… My cousin you might be, but you are also a vicious little ponce who’s been discovered one too many times with his cock inside the breeches of an underage
bardassa
with the morals of a tomcat. And – dear God, how grubby this becomes! – this particular underage and amoral
bardassa
just happens to be someone to whom we are both closely related. Our other delightful cousin Fabio – that unprincipled disgrace to the family name – is worryingly well known to the authorities, I think you’ll agree…’

Marco swallows uncomfortably, wincing as though Sebastiano has spat at him.

Sebastiano continues, ‘… and I think you’ll remember I’m now armed with written testimony from several of Fabio’s other…
friends
… even if’ – he shrugs and pulls a face – ‘even if that evidence might perhaps have been extracted under some… duress. I have acquaintances in high places, as I’m sure you’re aware, and one or two of them are acquaintances who would pay handsomely for the sort of evidence of debauchery in this city that I could give them – in sumptuous detail.’ He pauses. His voice drops to a cold and expressionless whisper. ‘It would probably be the
strappado
, don’t you think? For the pair of you. For the decidedly indelicate, if titillating, combination of sodomy and incest.’

Marco looks stricken, clearly imagining the agonies of broken arms and dislocated shoulders. Sebastiano and Marco have both witnessed the horrors of public
strappado
punishments. ‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ he mutters, white-faced.

Grinning unpleasantly now at his cousin’s discomfiture, and ignoring the threat, Sebastiano says, ‘I’ll have that eighty-five – either from you, or from my high-ranking acquaintances. It’s up to you.’

Pushing his fingers up into his hair and gripping a fistful, Marco stares at his cousin. ‘I’ll find it for you by the end of the week,’ he says in a voice flattened by defeat.

Sebastiano smiles, and when he speaks again, his voice has lost its menace and now sounds bright and conversational. Reaching out, he pats Marco twice on the cheek with the flat of his palm. ‘Marvellous! I knew you’d see it my way. Bring it with you to Franceschina, why don’t you? The travelling players are coming to the castle in a couple of days – come and see the show.’ He grips Marco’s shoulder. ‘Stay for a few days – it’s going to be spectacular.’