had waited on me at the banquet. I couldn’t forget how her arm had grazed the back of my hand, igniting that secret place in my left heel. She had chosen not to look at me, it seemed, and yet the atmosphere between us had thickened and crackled, like the air when a thunderstorm is coming. It had been months since I had seen her last, and the interval between the two encounters had been so long that I had begun to think I might have been mistaken. There might be two entirely different girls. If that was the case, though, which one had left the package at the House of Shells? With its blind alleys and its dead ends, the maze seemed to embody my frustration.
The sun dropped behind the trees; light drained from the gardens. I was following a path that led back to the gate on Via Romana when I sensed that I was not alone. I stopped. Looked round. A man stood at the entrance to a covered walkway, his glittering eyes perched on ledges of bone, his complexion sallow, damp-looking. I had the curious impression that he was there because of me. That something in me had summoned him. Brought him forth.
‘Did I scare you?’ His voice was quiet but scratchy, harsh.
My vision darkened and began to pulse, a black flower slowly opening and closing its petals.
‘No,’ I said.
‘You’re lying.’
I stared at the man. He seemed familiar, and I couldn’t work out why.
‘I can smell it on you,’ he said.
That rasping whisper – I had heard it before, on the night of the banquet, when I was hiding on the stairs.
‘I know who you are,’ I said.
It was dusk now, and his face hung like a mask among the leaves, his high square shoulders hunched, the rest of his body invisible. ‘Oh? Who am I, then?’
‘You’re Padre Stufa.’
‘And you are?’
I felt sure he knew exactly who I was, but I told him anyway. His thin-lipped mouth stretched sideways. I thought of Tacitus, and his famous description of the emperor Domitian, who was never to be more feared, apparently, than when he smiled.
‘You’re the artist,’ Stufa said. ‘You make those sculptures.’
He took a step forwards and peered at me as if I were half in shadow. He was wearing a white scapular and a black hooded cloak. The emerald on his left hand hoarded the last of the light.
‘Not that I have much time for that sort of thing,’ he added.
Though his features were gaunt, almost starved, his body was big and hollow-looking. His ribcage would be the size of a barrel.
In the distance one of the Grand Duke’s peacocks screamed.
‘I mean, what can you show me,’ he went on, ‘that I can’t see every day, out on the street?’
‘Maybe I can show you yourself.’
Before he could speak again, I walked away. Perhaps I should have been more diplomatic, but there was an abrasiveness in him that provoked retaliation, and I began to understand why Bassetti had snapped at him on the night of the banquet. Even as I approached the avenue of cypresses and laurels, I could feel his gaze on me, the inner canthus of his eyes unusually sharp and curved, like the knives used in the harvesting of grapes. Only then did I realize that he was the man who had brushed past me, the morning of Bassetti’s visit to the House of Shells.
Spring brought rain and grey skies, the redness of the poppies startling the fields. I paid Ambrose Cuif another visit. When he had poured us both a glass of wine, I told him I had finally met Stufa.
Cuif’s mouth twitched. ‘What did you think?’
I described the scene in the palace gardens.
‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ Cuif said. ‘He’s like that with everyone.’ He paused. ‘It’s almost as if he’s got a grudge against the world.’
I didn’t follow.
The Grand Duke’s mother had found him on her way to Pisa, Cuif told me. It was around the time of the Epiphany, and the boy was standing by the roadside. His face had turned grey with the cold; his eyes were black, opaque. He would only say one word – stufa, or ‘stove’. Was he referring to the burns on his arms and legs, or was he seeking warmth? No one could tell. In any case, Stufa became the name he answered to. He had no other.
Cuif sipped his wine. ‘He probably made the whole thing up. To make himself sound more interesting.’
‘Or