my thumb and forefinger. My breath caught in my throat. Wasn’t she the girl I’d seen in the apothecary window?
I looked round, but she had disappeared – to the kitchens, most likely – and for one reckless moment I thought of following her. At the same time, I knew that since the entire evening was being staged in my honour people would be watching me. I sat back in a kind of daze.
Sitting opposite me was the Grand Duke’s younger son, Gian Gastone, his eyes watery and pink, his jaw-line lost in folds of fat. It was astonishing to think that he was only twenty. I watched him reach for his wine. He was so drunk that his hand described a semi-circle in the air and came back empty. He stared at it with bleary suspicion, as though it had played a trick on him. Before I could look away, he noticed me, and lurched forwards, over the table.
‘Are you a spy?’
Then, all of a sudden, the girl was standing next to me, leaning down. I turned my head sideways, my nose close to her hair, and tried to breathe her in. I thought I smelled cinnamon – or was it nutmeg? Once again, I remembered the afternoon of Fiore’s tour. Was this really the same girl? My hand was resting on the tablecloth, and as she reached past me to remove a plate the underside of her forearm brushed against the back of my hand, and I felt a shock go through me, all the way to a small, surprising place in my left heel, but she moved on without acknowledging that anything had happened, without even seeming to have noticed.
*
During an interval between courses, I walked over to Bassetti. He was talking to the Grand Duke’s librarian, Magliabechi, a man famed for his learning, his lack of interest in hygiene, and his love of hard-boiled eggs.
Bassetti turned to include me. ‘I trust you’ve settled in?’ In repeating the words I had used at our first meeting, he was mocking me gently.
I smiled. ‘Everyone’s been very kind.’
Magliabechi gave me a caustic look. ‘Remember what it says in the Politica. “Do they seem friendly and trustworthy? Watch out!”’
I was about to reply when Gian Gastone, who was sitting nearby, snatched his wig off his head and used it as the receptacle for a sudden, forceful jet of vomit.
‘Never a good idea,’ Bassetti murmured, ‘to try and keep up with the English.’
He covered his nose, and the two men moved away.
Towards the end of the banquet, the Grand Duke made a speech in which he described the profound effect my teatrini – my little theatres – had had on him. I was not only a visionary, he told the gathering. I was a moralist. I captured the spirit of the times.
Later still, when even the English were beginning to stagger, their eyes astonished and blank with wine, I excused myself, but instead of following the corridor that led to the front entrance, I set off in the direction of the kitchens, determined to track down the waitress I had seen earlier. Perhaps the English weren’t the only ones to have overdone it, though, for I somehow ended up in a part of the palace I didn’t recognize, and as I came stumbling down a wide flight of stairs, trying to make my way back to the banquet, I heard voices.
I crept towards the balustrade and peered over. Some thirty feet below was a large bare hallway, illuminated by a single iron chandelier. Two men stood facing each other. I was so high above them that I could only see their shoulders and the crowns of their heads, but I knew one of them was Bassetti. Nobody else spoke in such voluptuous tones. The second man was taller than Bassetti, with broad shoulders; his bald patch was ringed with black hair. Judging by the way they addressed each other, I would have said Bassetti was the more powerful, and yet the bald man didn’t sound particularly subservient.
‘– the documents tomorrow,’ he was saying in a voice that was quiet but slightly hoarse, almost as if he had been shouting.
‘Anything else?’ Bassetti said.
‘What about the Sicilian?’
The Sicilian? Had I heard him correctly?
Bassetti turned and walked over to the wall. ‘What about him?’
‘You mentioned him the other day.’
‘Did I? In what connection?’
‘You’re getting forgetful in your old age.’
‘And you, Stufa, are getting insolent.’
The bald man laughed. ‘You want me to look into it?’
‘Not yet.