Secrecy - By Rupert Thomson Page 0,1

for a barber-surgeon who told him his liver was failing, and that he wouldn’t last the month. But he did last the month. On his arrival in Paris, however, the king’s physician had confirmed the diagnosis.

‘I knew you were ill,’ I said. ‘Something about the way you stepped out of your carriage.’

Zumbo reached up and rubbed at the side of his head with the flat of his hand.

‘I found your letter intriguing,’ I went on. ‘But that was your intention, wasn’t it? You told me just enough to secure yourself an audience.’ The wind moaned in the chimney; smoke from the fire stole into the room. ‘I’m afraid I’d never heard of you, though. I had to make enquiries.’

He gave me a hunted look. ‘What did you discover?’

‘There’s some dispute about your name.’

‘I was born Zummo,’ he said, ‘and I’ve been called Zummo for most of my life. I added the ‘b’ when I started having dealings with the French. They found it easier.’

This seemed suspicious, but I let it pass.

‘You make things,’ I said. ‘Out of wax.’

‘Yes.’

‘Some see you as a master craftsman. Others say you’re a sorcerer. You’re mysterious, obsessive. Controversial.’

Eyes lowered, Zumbo nodded.

‘At first I thought your coming here was my husband’s idea,’ I said, ‘and when I learned that you used to work for him – that he had been your patron, in fact – well, you can imagine.’

‘Why did you agree to see me, then?’

‘Oh, I was curious, and bored, and not even a man as naïve as the Grand Duke would think of sending an artist to plead on his behalf.’

Zumbo smiled to himself.

‘So anyway,’ I said, impatient suddenly, ‘what’s this news that I’m supposed to find so interesting?’

His head came up slowly, his whole face tightening in such a way that I could sense the bones beneath the skin. ‘It’s about your daughter.’

‘Anna Maria? What a disappointment that girl was. A fright, really. But no wonder, with a father like –’

‘Not her. The other one.’

Though I was sitting still, I felt I was whirling backwards. The walls of the present gave, and the past flowed in – turbulent, irrepressible, choked with debris. ‘How do you know about that? No one knows about that.’

He didn’t reply.

Still giddy, I rose from my chair and moved to the window. Outside, the rain was slanting down like vicious pencil strokes, as if the bleak landscape east of Paris was a mistake that somebody was crossing out.

‘Tell me,’ I said at last, affecting a nonchalance I didn’t feel. ‘It’s not as if I have anything better to do.’

‘All right,’ he said.

TWO

It ought to have been one of the most exciting moments of my life. There I was, high on a ridge, looking down on Florence for the first time. Late afternoon. April the eighteenth, 1691. A burnt-orange sun dropped, trembling, from behind a bank of cloud, like something being born. No more than an hour of daylight left. Gazing at the buildings clustered below me, the jutting, crenellated towers veiled by the mist rising off the river, I felt a piece of paper crackle in my pocket, a letter of invitation from Cosimo III, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and yet – and yet what?

Even as my eye was caught by the tilt and swirl of birds above the rooftops, I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder. Nothing there, of course. Nothing there. Only the quiet grass, and the pines, austere and dense, and the mauve vault of the sky, soaring, vast … More than fifteen years had passed, and still I couldn’t forget what lay behind me, what followed in my tracks. I had always feared there would come a time when, as in a dream, I would discover I was unable to run, or even move, as though I were up to my waist in sand, and then it would be upon me, and all would be lost.

I had left my hometown of Siracusa in 1675, the rumours snapping at my heels like a pack of dogs. I was only nineteen, but I knew there would be no turning back. I passed through Catania and on along the coast, Etna looming in the western sky, Etna with its fertile slopes, its luscious fruits and flowers, its promise of destruction. From Messina I sailed westwards. It was late July, and the night was stifling. A dull red moon, clouds edged in rust and copper. Though the air was motionless, the sea heaved and strained, as if