The Secret Dead (8 page)

Ten minutes into the service, I heard a disturbance at the
back and turned to see Agostino rush in, his face blanched and stricken, the
door clanging behind him. With no regard for propriety, he pushed through to
Fra Gennaro and whispered in his ear; Gennaro immediately snatched up his
candle and followed Agostino out of the chapel. The prior was furious at the
interruption, his face slowly turning the color of ripe grapes, but he mastered
himself, exchanged a few words with the sub-prior, and disappeared after the
troublemakers. The younger novices were almost bursting with excitement at the
unknown drama and the sub-prior had to call us back to order several times. It
was a small miracle that we managed to complete the office as if nothing were amiss.

Paolo was waiting for me in the cloister when I returned
from Matins. I had never seen him look so shaken.

“Did you hear? Donato is dead.”

“What?” I stared at him. “When?”

“An hour ago. At the Cerriglio.”

Heedless now of the watch brothers, I followed him to his cell
and made him tell me everything.

Donato had taken a room upstairs at the tavern and engaged
the services of one of the girls. After she left, he had called for hot water
and towels to wash himself before returning to the convent. When the servant
took the basin of water up to him there was no answer from the room. She
knocked louder and then opened the door, to find him lying on the bed, naked,
with his throat cut. You could have heard her screams at the top of Vesuvius,
Paolo said. No one had noticed any disturbance from Donato’s room earlier,
though one of the other customers thought he had seen a new serving girl, one
he did not recognize, loitering on the stairs by the back door shortly before
the body was found. But Signora Rosaria had not hired any new serving girls
recently, and this man was quite far gone in his cups, so his word was not
worth much.

“They brought in the whore Donato was with, of course,”
Paolo said, his voice still uncertain, “though she swears blind he was alive
and well when she left him a half-hour earlier. What’s more, she didn’t have a
speck of blood on her, and you couldn’t cut a man’s throat like that without
being drenched in it. I suppose that will not count for much, if they decide to
accuse her.”

The strangest thing, he added, was that Donato’s purse had
been sitting there on top of his habit on a chair by the bed, in full view, and
had not been touched. He shuddered. “Think of it, Bruno. Naked and defenseless.
Throat cut right across. It could have been any one of us.”

“Donato went out of his way to make enemies,” I said,
carefully. “I don’t think you need to worry.”

“All the same,” he said, rubbing his neck with feeling, “I
think I might give the Cerriglio a miss for a while. Wouldn’t hurt me to stay
in and pray more often. I could learn from your example.”

“I would be glad of the company,” I said, forcing a smile.

*
* *

The furor took a long time to die down. Fra Donato’s father,
Don Giacomo, was almost felled by grief; Naples had not seen such an
extravagant and public display of mourning in decades. In return for hushing up
the ignominious circumstances of Donato’s death, the prior of San Domenico received
a handsome donation, for which he was grateful, particularly since he knew it
would be the last. Don Giacomo had intended his money to ensure his son’s
smooth ascent to election as prior one day; now there was no longer any purpose
to his bequests. The whore Donato had been with before he died was arrested and
quietly spirited away. Some days after the murder, they had found the
bloodstained dress of a serving girl stuffed into a well a few streets from the
inn, which was considered good enough evidence against the word of a whore. I
never learned what became of her; I suppose she was hanged. No one else was
ever found guilty of the crime.

The following spring, not long after the Feast of Candelora,
as I was crossing Strada del Seggio di Nilo, I saw a young woman moving toward
me through the mass of people, and for a moment my breath stopped in my throat.
She carried a leather satchel across her body; a fall of glossy dark hair
rippled around her shoulders, burnished in the sun, and she walked gracefully,
with an air of self-possession. I withdrew into my hood and turned my face
aside as she approached; I did not want to be recognized. If she saw me, she
gave no sign of it, but as she passed, a splinter of sunlight caught the golden
crucifix locket she wore around her neck, blinding me with a flash of
brilliance. When I looked up again, she had vanished into the dust and crowds
of Naples.

THE END