me. A door slammed further up the street. The clatter of pigeon wings.
‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Any ill effects?’
‘None at all – not unless you count some dreams about strange-coloured animals.’
‘They stuck in my mind as well.’
I asked if she would come for a walk with me. She said she couldn’t – she had to help her uncle – but she could meet me the following Friday, if I wanted, beneath the column in the Mercato Vecchio.
One evening shortly afterwards, I went downstairs with presents for the signora and Fiore. I wanted to thank them for nursing me through my fever. I gave the signora the soap I had bought in the apothecary, and I had made a wax baby for Fiore, which she wrapped in a leaf from the yard. The signora insisted that I stay for supper.
We had finished eating and I was telling them about Pampolini’s love for the one-eyed woman who ran his local tavern when we were interrupted by a loud knocking. The breath stalled in my lungs. Though I had been free of Jacopo for almost two decades, I was always half expecting him to explode into my life. I sat motionless while Fiore answered the door. When she returned, she said the Grand Duke wanted to see me, and that a carriage had been sent. I let my breath out in a rush and stood up from the table.
‘Will you be long?’ she asked.
I said I didn’t know.
Outside the front entrance was a curious box-like vehicle with barred windows. The driver, a man with a pinched, pockmarked face and chickens’ feet for hands, seemed lifted straight from one of my recent hallucinations. I asked if he was waiting for me. He grunted. I opened the door and climbed into the dark interior. At first I assumed I was alone, but then a rustle came from the far corner, and a hand reached up and tapped on the roof. A strip of white appeared, then a hollow cheek, a lipless mouth.
Stufa.
I murmured good evening. He didn’t return the greeting, or even acknowledge me. The carriage jerked forwards.
As we crossed the Piazza del Gran Duca, a wash of weak moonlight splashed through the bars, and I noted the crude iron rings in the sides of the carriage and the dark stains on the floor.
‘We use it for transporting those accused of lewdness and debauchery,’ Stufa said.
I said nothing.
His mouth grew wider, thinner. ‘Not applicable tonight, of course.’
Cuif had told me that people called Stufa ‘Flesh’, but when I looked at him I saw a man driven by abstinence and self-denial. Was the nickname a sardonic response to his physical appearance? Or did it reflect the jealousy and resentment his air of privilege aroused? Was it, in that case, a genuine attempt to smear his reputation? I remembered Torquato Accetto’s advice, namely that one should conceal oneself beneath a veil made up of ‘honest shadows and violent defences’. That was another possibility. What if Stufa’s nickname described his concealed self?
The carriage lurched over the Ponte Vecchio and into Via Guicciardini.
‘I hear you’re making something special for the Grand Duke,’ Stufa said.
I kept my face expressionless. What could he be referring to? Though the casting of Fiore’s hands had proved successful – the plaster from Volterra had captured every bitten nail, every little scar – I hadn’t started work on the commission itself as yet. It was only a week or two since I had talked to Pampolini. It might be months before he could fulfil my request. And anyway, there was still the problem of how I was going to incorporate an element of ambiguity.
‘Everything I make is for the Grand Duke,’ I said, ‘or for his son, Ferdinando.’
Stufa glanced at me, and then away again.
‘Those boxes of yours,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen them. They remind me of nativities.’
I had never thought of my plague pieces as nativities. It was a troubling interpretation, subversive even; in Stufa’s eyes, I had replaced the divine with the human, birth with death. Turning to the window, I was relieved to see that we were approaching the palace.
‘I find them gratuitous. Histrionic.’ Stufa paused. ‘It’s not art at all, really, is it? It’s showmanship.’
I opened the carriage door and stepped out.
‘Thank you for the lift,’ I said.
On entering the Grand Duke’s apartment, his major-domo, Vespasiano Schwarz, told me His Highness was bathing, and that I should go straight in. In the bathroom doorway I hesitated. The Grand Duke’s voice