a blow. He went and stood at the window, and when he spoke to our mother his back was turned, and his voice was hard and cold. You shouldn’t have let him in.
He’s my son, she said.
Is he? Is he really?
Yes.
Because there are stories –
Jacopo … She was reproaching him.
What’s wrong with everyone today? He was still gazing out over the rooftops. Your son, as you insist on calling him, has brought nothing but shame on this family.
That was a long time ago, she said. And besides, we’re not even sure what happened.
Nothing, I said. Nothing happened.
Jacopo swung round. You keep quiet.
You haven’t changed, have you? I said. Still throwing your –
He seized me by the collar and whirled me, one-handed, along the corridor and down the stairs. Though I struggled, I knew I had no chance of freeing myself; it was his fury, I thought, that kept him strong. He hurled me down the front steps with such force that I landed on my back and bit my tongue.
Get out of my house, he said, and stay out.
Your house? It was difficult to speak through the blood that was welling up in my mouth. It’s not your house, it’s our mother’s, and you have no right to –
I have every right, he said. I’m head of the family, and I know what’s best. What’s best is that you’re not here, not ever. What’s best is that you’re far away – or, preferably, dead.
Is this about Ornella?
His face flushed. Don’t bring my wife into this.
It’s because I knew her first.
He began to stroll, loose-shouldered, down the steps, a swagger he had perfected at his military academy. I scrambled backwards, towards my horse. Reaching sideways, I pulled an arquebus out of its holster. I had just noticed it was there. Or perhaps, as in a dream, it had only materialized when it was needed.
Jacopo stopped in his tracks and smiled – partly, I suspected, out of shock, but partly, knowing Jacopo, with a kind of relish. It was as if I had just raised the stakes in a game he was confident of winning. Put that thing away, he said.
I aimed at his legs and fired.
Jacopo’s head flew backwards, and he dropped to the ground so heavily that the paving stones appeared to shudder. Blood soaked the right leg of his breeches.
Coward! he yelled.
No, Jacopo, I said calmly. You’re the coward.
The colour left his face. Sodomite, he muttered. Degenerate. Then, almost as an after-thought, Necrophiliac.
These were no longer accusations. These were facts.
I slid the gun back into its holster and vaulted up on to my horse. My mother was standing at the top of the steps, by the front door. Her mouth opened, then closed again. I said I was sorry for what had happened, and that I loved her, but she was shaking her head. I’m glad your father isn’t here to see this.
Would he have protected me? The venom in my voice surprised me. Well, would he?
She looked away.
I tugged on the reins, which were warm from the sun, and rode off down Via Dione. Then north, towards Catania.
It was a fantasy, of course.
All fantasy.
I glanced at my hands, white with plaster. I could taste blood, and I was shaking. At least I knew why I felt such anger, though. Could Jacopo have told me the origin of his? I doubted it somehow. Probably he had been born with it. Probably he had been tugged, red-faced and raging, from the womb.
The door opened, and I jumped.
‘It’s only me,’ Earhole said.
Though I knew where I was, I could sense the blue sea at the end of the street, between the buildings, and I could feel the jolt of the gun in my trigger hand – a gun I hadn’t even realized I owned! – and I imagined that my brother would walk with a limp for the rest of his life, or even lose his leg altogether, like Faustina’s friend. He would become a bitter man – a bully to his wife and mother, an ogre to his children. I had done nobody any favours. I should have shot him full in the face and sent the back of his head careening sloppily across the street. I should have ended it, once and for all.
I heard a cough. Looking round, I saw Earhole with another barrow full of ice.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was miles away.’
The girl’s body had been delivered shortly before midnight on Friday. At dawn on Sunday, and