Secrecy Read Free Page A

was flattered, I thought, to have been put in charge – and several shopkeepers bowed ironically as she passed by. Outside Santissima Annunziata, I told her that until recently the church had housed wax effigies, some propped in niches in the walls, others suspended from the ceiling. Sometimes the ropes would snap, and figures would plummet feet first on to the congregation worshipping below. People had been killed by people who were already dead.
    Fiore put both hands on her hips. ‘Who is showing who the city?’
    I was quiet after that.
    Our first stop was the Duomo, or Santa Maria del Fiore – named after her, obviously – then we climbed steep steps to a tower belonging to the Guazzi twins. Simone and Doffo Guazzi made fireworks, and their enthusiasm was childlike, infectious. After exploring an abandoned fulling mill, we crossed the river and visited another church, Santa Felicità. Halfway down the aisle, Fiore turned her back on the altar and pointed to a metal grille set high in the wall above the entrance. This was the passageway the Grand Duke used when he wanted to move through the city unobserved. She had seen him once, she said, peering down into the nave. Lastly, she took me to an ornate but grimy building in the Jewish ghetto. It was here that a countess had been stabbed to death by one of her many lovers.
    Dusk fell. As we walked back to the House of Shells, through the labyrinth of streets that encircled the ghetto, Fiore went into more detail about the murder. The lover’s knife had severed both the woman’s throat and the necklace she had been wearing, and on certain nights, if you listened carefully enough, you could hear the
click-click-click
of loose pearls bouncing down the stairs. Though Fiore was still talking, I had become distracted. Most of the shops near the Mercato Vecchio were hung with sheets of oiled paper or sealed with a single wooden shutter, but I had stopped, by chance, outside an establishment whose window was made of panes of glass. Judging by the many jars and bottles on display, it was an apothecary, though it didn’t appear to have a name, or even a sign. I moved nearer. As a boy, I had spent hours in apothecaries. Whenever my mother was taken ill, which happened much more often after my father’s death, one of my duties was to collect her medicines. While waiting, I would listen to the men who gathered in the shop – they talked about their families, their careers, and about religion and politics as well – and I soon realized that if you wanted to take the pulse of a city and learn the shape of its secrets, there was no better place to be. As I bent close to the glass to examine an array of herbs used against pregnancy – I recognized mugwort and juniper – a slender hand reached down and placed a new jar in the window. Looking up, my eyes met those of a young woman. Perhaps it was the pane of glass between us that gave me licence, or perhaps it was the unlikely marriage of her black hair and pale green eyes, but I remained quite still and stared at her until, at last, with the suggestion of a smile, she lowered her gaze and withdrew into the dark interior, and I was left to turn away and walk light-headed along the damp, shadowy gorge of an alley whose air in that moment, unaccountably, had filled with the seed-heads from dandelions, fragile, transparent, and whirling downwards in their thousands, like insubstantial, half-imagined snow. It wasn’t until I reached the corner that I remembered Fiore. I looked over my shoulder and saw her hurrying after me in her derelict, ill-fitting shoes.

     
    Some days later, Signora de la Mar called through my door. ‘You have a visitor.’
    I didn’t answer. I was working on a sketch of the girl I had seen, and didn’t want to be disturbed.
    The door opened. ‘He’s from the palace.’
    I looked round. The signora’s face was flushed, and not, I thought, because she had just climbed five flights of stairs.
    She shrugged.