he cradled my head and held a spoon to my lips. His fingers smelled of sex, as if he had been pleasuring a woman. That was a bit much, I thought. Surely he could have waited until afterwards. All the same, I drank the poison down. And, almost straight away, a vicious cramp, as though I had swallowed a hand that was twisting my insides. Then a surprising revelation. There was no sudden, sickening drop into the dark. No panic or pain. No, the whole thing was far less brutal than I had imagined. I felt a kind of click. A soft jolt. Like being in a carriage when it runs over a rotten branch. There was the feeling that something had been severed. An uncoupling, then. But dreamy, stealthy. Deft. You fall away. You settle. Dust in sunlight, sediment in wine.
The assassin tucked his vial back into his pocket. Three paces took him to the window, where he stood with his back to me. There was bird-lime on his coat, just where the right arm joined the shoulder. I tried to remember what that signified. A windfall? His downfall? I couldn’t think. In any case, he hadn’t noticed. Odd that – me dead and knowing all about it, and him alive and none the wiser. His right shoulder lifted, his elbow eased sideways. Even from where I was lying, I could tell he was adjusting his testicles. The killing had excited him, perhaps. Then, as my thoughts were beginning to scatter and disintegrate, he spoke for the first time.
That’s it, sir. Just let go.
This was a man who knew his trade. They had sent a professional. Well, that was something – better, at any rate, than some cack-handed ruffian who has to hack at your throat a dozen times before he finds your windpipe …
The room went black.
Five days later, when the fever finally loosened its grip, the signora told me what an ordeal it had been.
‘You were shouting so loud,’ she said.
‘Did I say terrible things?’
‘You thought we were trying to kill you.’ She gave me a sharp look. Was she wondering if I had heard about her husband’s suspicious death?
I talked about the assassin. His small glass vial, his coat with its exaggerated sleeves. I wasn’t sure she believed me.
Fiore came and stood beside the bed. She had tucked her lips inside her mouth, and her eyes were so full of tears that they seemed to wobble. ‘I thought you were going to die.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ the signora said. ‘It wouldn’t have been very good for business.’
‘Mother,’ Fiore wailed. ‘Don’t.’
It took me almost three weeks to recover. As soon as I had my strength back, I called in at the apothecary. Giuseppe, who was grinding simples in a back room, told me that Faustina was out running an errand. I bought a bar of iris soap and some Venetian turpentine, then waited outside, on the street. I stared at the question mark above the door. The eight embedded stones were only marginally lighter than the surrounding masonry, and I wasn’t sure I would have noticed them if Giuseppe hadn’t showed them to me.
The day darkened. Rain drifted through the narrow gap between the overhanging eaves.
‘There you are …’
I looked round. Faustina was standing a few feet away. The dress she was wearing was a subtle blend of ochre and green, with just a hint of silver. It reminded me of an olive leaf. Not the part you generally see. The underside.
‘That’s a wonderful colour,’ I said.
She thanked me.
I pointed at the sign. ‘Why the question mark? Is it because people can never find it, and are always asking where it is?’
She smiled. ‘Very good. But no, I don’t think that’s the reason.’
There were various stories, she said. Some claimed the sign referred to the question most often asked by customers – Can you cure me? – but her uncle thought otherwise. Historically, apothecaries had been places where difficult and dangerous questions were raised, he had told her, and it was his belief that the sign dated from the early sixteenth century, when several influential people from the city had used the apothecary as the headquarters for an attempted coup. Even Machiavelli had been involved, apparently. She seemed about to go on, then checked herself and changed the subject.
‘You disappeared,’ she said. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘I came down with a fever. I’ve never been so ill.’ I paused. ‘I almost died.’
She smiled again, then looked past