could smell roses, but there was also a pungent element, something almost fiery, like a type of pepper. On returning to my lodgings that evening, I asked the signora if she could tell me what it was. She put her nose to the bottle, then straightened up. She had no idea. She had never smelled anything like it.
A day or two later, I called at an apothecary located in a shabby arcade on the south side of the Ponte Vecchio. The three men sitting by the window fell silent as I walked in.
‘Beanpole?’ one of them called out.
The woman who ran the place was so short that the top of her head was on a level with the counter. When I put the bottle down in front of her, she had to look round it to see me. I asked her if she’d be kind enough to identify the contents.
‘Is it yours?’ Her eyes were a bleary blue-black, like unwashed plums.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was a gift.’
I sensed the men behind me, craning to catch a glimpse of what I had brought.
The woman removed the stopper and inhaled once or twice. She muttered to herself; a smile drifted across her wrinkled face. She poured a few drops into a spoon, touched a finger to the clear, oily liquid, and tasted it.
‘Who gave it to you?’ she asked.
I hesitated.
‘Was it a woman?’
‘I think so.’
She nodded. ‘I can’t say I’m familiar with this particular recipe, but when I prepare my own concoctions, which are much in demand, especially among men of a certain age –’ she peered over the counter at her three clients, who shifted and chuckled on their chairs like chickens in the presence of a fox – ‘I tend to favour nettle seeds. Musk too, just a pinch. And –’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but what’s it for?’
She knocked the stopper back into the bottle with the heel of her hand. ‘In my opinion, it’s to increase your potency.’
This was so unexpected that I couldn’t, for a moment, think how to respond.
‘You anoint your parts with it,’ she said.
‘My parts,’ I said faintly.
‘Your root. Your yard.’ She paused. ‘Your pego.’
‘All right, Beanpole,’ one of the men said, laughing. ‘I think he’s got the point.’
I pocketed the bottle and made for the door.
‘She likes you, whoever she is,’ the man added as I left the shop.
‘Careful,’ said another.
On a dark February afternoon, I was summoned to the Grand Duke’s winter apartment. The wind was blowing hard again, and as I hurried across the courtyard at the back of the palace I thought I could smell the river, dank and green. I climbed a flight of stairs to the first floor. It was draughty up there as well; the tapestries, though heavy, were shifting on the walls.
When I was ushered into the Grand Duke’s presence, he was standing at the window, hands clasped behind his back. By his feet was a cockerel, a leather strap running from one of its legs to the leg of a nearby chair. Its comb trembled in the shadows like a small red flame.
‘I haven’t seen you at court,’ the Grand Duke said, staring out over the city. ‘At least, not recently.’
I told him I was sorry. I talked about my work, and how I tended to get lost in it.
‘I understand.’ He sighed. ‘I sometimes find the whole business rather tiresome myself.’
Only a few days earlier, while visiting my workshop, Pampolini had launched into a series of scurrilous jokes about the Grand Duke, jokes that referred to his Austrian lips, his sexual proclivities, and so on. Later, though, he had become more serious. In Pampolini’s opinion, Cosimo would have made a superb cardinal, but he didn’t have what it took to rule a duchy. It wasn’t his fault, Pampolini said. When he was growing up, his mother had surrounded him with priests – bigots like Volunnio Bandinelli – who taught him to treat the secular world with disdain.
‘Take a seat,’ the Grand Duke said.
Dipping his hand into the barrel that stood next to the window, he scattered a few bits of grain, which the cockerel fell on with a kind of mechanical ferocity. I was curious to know what it was doing in the room, but couldn’t think how to phrase the question. When I looked at the Grand Duke again, he was studying me with his usual glum expression, which always gave me the feeling I had disappointed him.
‘I’ve just come from the chapel,’ he said.
I