the ache I had thought I was used to, the wound I carried no matter where I went …
The waves grew louder, and I lifted my head and looked around. Earhole was asleep on the divan, his knees drawn up towards his chest, one hand beneath his cheek. The night was quiet but for the push and pull of his breathing; it was his breathing I had heard inside my dream. I stood up and crossed the room. His fretful face, his poor mank relic of an ear. I fetched a blanket. Drew it over him.
The flames of the candles paled and then became invisible as the window high above me brightened. The moulds for the legs and feet were finished, and I was working on the girl’s right arm. The casting of her right hand alone had taken more than an hour, requiring seven interlocking piece-moulds. As I straightened up and stretched, I heard Earhole shift behind me.
‘I’ve been asleep!’
He sounded amazed, as if sleep was a feat he had attempted many times, but had never quite achieved.
The ice had melted, I told him. Could he fetch another load?
I began to mix a new batch of plaster.
Usually, when you had a votive image made, you chose the part of the body that was injured or diseased. You reproduced the part you wanted cured. In this case, though, her whole body had become a votive image. Whether her death had been accidental, self-inflicted, or the result of an assault, she would almost certainly have suffered. In recreating her, I wasn’t seeking a cure – obviously it was too late for that – but I was restoring her to her former self, before whatever happened, happened. I would be preserving the dog’s head, though, so I would be capturing the moment of violation too. There was that hidden hint of a dark future. When the time came to cast the back of her neck, I would blow on the wet plaster to make sure it absorbed every detail, no matter how minute. Later, I would brush a glistening scarlet wax into the cuts and scratches I had so faithfully recorded. Since the girl would be lying on her back, the dog’s head would remain a secret. At the very least, it would constitute a homage to her anonymous existence. At best, it would act as evidence. If the girl was an object of beauty, she was an object of violence as well. She was youth, but she was also death. Perhaps the piece would have more in common with my other work than the Grand Duke had imagined: it would be a vision of what lay ahead, even though, on the surface, it appeared to be the opposite. Would it be enough to protect me? Would it really be enough? I had to hope so.
By mid-morning, I had cast the limbs. Out in the stable yard, I plunged my head into a bucket of water to jolt myself awake, then went for a walk in the gardens.
October. A crisp blue sky, a heap of leaves smouldering nearby. Such a stillness after the wind of the night before. I thought once again of the man I had killed. His stink in my nostrils, the blood seeping from the wound …
I began to tremble.
The narrow street, the shadows swooping. Then the knife. It had all happened so fast. What else could I have done, though? I shook my head, then crossed myself.
I remembered looking at my father after he was dead. Jacopo had insisted on it. My father’s body had been laid out in a back room in our house. He was uncovered, perhaps because he had just been washed. I tried to turn away, but Jacopo wouldn’t let me. No, look. He forced me closer. Smell. It was a hot day, and my father’s belly had begun to bloat. A fly stood on the white of his left eye. He didn’t blink. I watched as the fly rubbed one leg against the other, unhurried, finicky. My father stared past it, at the ceiling, intent on something only he could see. Jacopo was breathing noisily behind me. You did it, he whispered. It was you.
Smoke floated past, a blue shawl in the air.
Though I barely had the stomach for it, I had decided to dismember the girl. I was under no illusions about how difficult it was going to be. What’s more, I didn’t feel she deserved further mutilation. As a rule, I