the room and peered out into the night. On the flat roof of the building opposite, a woman was pacing up and down, her face tilted skywards, her hands in front of her, clutching at the air. She was talking to herself in a language I took to be Hebrew. A man stepped out on to the roof, moving with such caution that it might have been a frozen pond. On his suit of dark clothes I could just make out the yellow badge all Jews were supposed to wear. The woman began to shout at him, then seemed to tear her hair out by the roots and fling it on the ground. For a moment, I couldn’t believe what I had seen. Then I understood. It must have been a wig. The man tried to reason with the woman, but she shook him off and pushed past him, back into the building. The man remained where he was, head bowed.
We returned to the sofa. Some Jewish women were required to shave their heads when they married, Faustina told me, so they did not tempt other men. Those women tended to wear wigs. It was an extreme custom. You hardly ever saw it in Florence.
‘Why did you decide to tell me who you are?’ I said. ‘I mean, why tonight?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She paused. ‘Maybe it’s to do with the lovely things you said earlier. It reminded me of what my father said to my mother – in that stable, in the rain …’
My words echoing the words that had brought her into being, the words that had made it necessary to pretend she didn’t exist.
My love like a poultice, drawing out that sweet, sweet poison.
*
‘Actually, it’s a miracle I was born at all,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I can’t believe I’m here. Surely I must be imagining it all. Them. This. Even you.’
When her father opened the second bottle, she went on, he jumped nine months to the next part of the story. Banished from Tuscany, he had crossed into the coastal state of Piombino, where he had found a job in a lead mine. It was hard work, and he would console himself with memories of the Grand Duke’s wife – and all the time, though he did not know it, she was pregnant with his child. Then, in the depths of winter, a letter arrived from her lady-in-waiting, telling him that she had given birth, and that he was to come for the baby. He arrived at the villa five days later, his mind whirling. The lady-in-waiting told him that the Grand Duke’s wife was indisposed, and could not see him. She asked what his intentions were. He said his sister would take the child. She seemed to approve of the idea. He set off for his sister’s house in the south-east of the duchy. A wet nurse – Vanna – travelled with him. When they stopped to feed the child – in lonely places, usually: mountain passes, forest glades – Vanna told him about the pregnancy, and how it had been concealed from all but the most trusted servants. Fortunately, the Grand Duke had been abroad for most of the year, in Germany, almost as if he were co-operating with the deception, but his prolonged absence had prevented his wife from claiming that the child was his, which would have saved everyone a great deal of trouble – though it was Vanna’s impression that she hadn’t wanted the baby to grow up as a member of the Grand Duke’s family. Anything but that.
It took Remo and Vanna more than a week to reach Torremagna, and snow fell as they rode. He was afraid his daughter would catch cold. He was afraid she would die. He kept looking down into her face, which was no bigger than a saucer, her eyes a misty, marbled blue. She hardly made a sound, even when she was hungry. It was as if she understood her predicament, and knew better than to give herself away.
The snow had eased by the time they arrived at Ginevra’s house. During the journey, Remo had grown to care for his daughter, and as he stood on the narrow, curving street something hot poured through him at the knowledge that he could not keep her, a kind of scalding of his heart. He whispered all sorts of things to her in their last moments together, as much to strengthen his resolve as anything else. It’s not because