In the Company of the Courtesan (12 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Next morning La Draga and I meet in the kitchen to negotiate the price of my lady's new head of hair. Mindful of Fiammetta's comments, I make a greater effort to be pleasant. I offer her some refreshment, but by now we are equally suspicious of each other, and she refuses, keeping to her place in the doorway while she calculates the sums of materials and the labor. Her addition is as fast as mine, and when I have checked it, it comes to more than I expected, though what do I know of the price of nuns' locks? Still, I am loath to question her outright.

“Hmm. It makes a tidy profit for the convent then, this trade in hair?”

I watch her head tilt again. Her eyes are closed today, and her mouth stays slightly open, so there is almost a quality of the simpleton about her. “The money does not go to the convent. It goes to the nuns.”

“So what? The novices are not yet properly acquainted with the custom of charity?”

“I think it's you who are not acquainted with the customs of Venice,” she says quietly, and the notion of the simpleton dissolves fast enough. “The best hair comes from the richest girls. They need the money to dress up their habits and keep their cells in good fashion.”

“In good fashion? And you can tell what is good and bad fashion, can you?” Damn it. For it comes out both faster and, I swear, crueler than I intended.

The little breath she takes in is sharper than before, but the voice remains cool. “I can tell when I'm in a room with no furniture, bare flagstones, and the smell of sweat and cooking grease, yes. And how that's different from lavender pomades and the sound of voices against soft woven carpets and tapestries. Perhaps you're one of those people who're used to seeing only with their eyes. When you next go to the Merceria, look for the rug merchant whose blind wife grades the quality of the weave. He runs a wealthy business.” She pauses. “I am asked for at the convent this afternoon. Do I buy the hair or not?”

I think of my carved dog with the honeycomb of bees in his mouth. God damn it. It is like being in the room with a swarm of them. I have lived too long with women like my lady, who are trained to charm men, always sweetening their sting with flattery. Perhaps, if she had eyes and could see the impact of her tongue, she might be more sparing with its acidity. Still, her business with me is not courtship. And neither is mine with her.

“Here.”

I open my purse for her and hold out the requisite number of coins. She registers the clink with a tilt of her head, but as she moves toward me, her body catches the leg of the chair. As I knew it would. She stumbles but holds her balance. I see a shadow move over her face. On the street the rumor is that she can fold curses in with the mix of her herbs and ointments, and for that reason it is best not to cross her. But she will not curse us. We give her too much money. I go to her and press the cold metal of the ducats into her hand, and she pulls away as if my touch burns, though the coins are already safe in her fist. Is it my imagination, or do I see her smile ripen a fraction? Every middleman I have ever known takes a slice out of the profits, and here in Venice each and every one of them is an expert. What did Meragosa tell me about her only the other day? That for all her manners, she was born poor as a whore, and that she would kill her grandmother for the right amount of gold. Of course, it is Meragosa's way to demean everyone, but the fact is, in a profession such as ours, there are always hungry ticks looking for a fat body to draw blood from, and we are too lean and weak as yet to risk such blood loss, and need to be careful.

Well, if our strategy works, we will not need her ministrations for much longer.

Meragosa, by contrast, is like some grotesque, skittish lamb, all eager and excited by the idea of our venture. Over the next few days she even starts filling buckets of water to begin scrubbing a decade of filth from the walls and paintwork, ready for our new life. Our house has ticks everywhere.

With my purse open now, the Jewish secondhand traders are lining up to serve us. Such is the quality of their stock that even those who curse them behind their backs are eager to do business with them face-to-face. I have some sympathy for them, for while there may be places in the world where dwarves make up the government and Jews own their own land, in Venice, as in the rest of Christendom, they do only the dirtier jobs, like lending money or buying what is already used, though they have become so good at it that many people resent them for it. That and the fact that they killed our Lord, which in the eyes of many makes them more fearful than the Devil himself. Until we came to Venice, the only Jews I had met were men who seemed to scuttle in the shadows, and for that reason it was easy to fear them. But this city is so full of strangers with strange religions that the Jews feel more familiar than most, and while they might be confined to the Ghetto at night, they walk the streets in daylight like any other men. Indeed, my sallow-skinned young pawnbroker has such a solemnity behind his dark eyes that I sometimes yearn to set aside the business of money and talk to him of life for a while.

It is his uncle who runs the clothes business that we pick, for everyone knows the other here. He arrives from the Ghetto with his two assistants carrying huge bundles on their backs, and when they undo them, my lady's room is transformed into a market stall of cloth: rainbows of velvet, brocades, and silks; dresses with clouds of white lawn breaking out from their tight-cut sleeves and low bodices fringed with temptations of lace; yards of petticoats; swirls of cloaks and shawls; filigree-veined gold and silver veils; and high-laced clogs, some as tall as a hod of bricks to raise a beautiful woman out of the threat of high tides and lift her head into the heavens. During the years when such luxury had been commonplace to us, I had become fluent in the language of women's clothes, understanding how a certain color or cut might suit my lady better than another. While it is not a talent most men would boast of, since their purpose in life is more to remove such garments than to put them on, I have found honesty in this matter more effective than flattery when it comes to winning the trust of a beautiful woman. Or at least the one I have grown to know best.

My lady, though, does not waste time indulging herself but becomes instantly as sharp a trader as the man in front of her, not least because inside this riot of secondhand cloth there is always a selection of cut-price new garments. (In this the Jews are like everyone else in Venice: while they obey the laws in the spirit, they are not averse to a little commercial enterprise if both sides gain and neither is found out.) She moves through the piles, plucking one thing up and throwing down another, pointing out flaws, asking prices, tutting and moaning over what isn't there, balancing quality against price, and even smell—“This one you should give to the dogs, it has the smell of the pox about it”—though careful to praise and drool over enough pieces, usually ones she does not want to buy, to keep their spirits up.

Just as she has her job, now I have mine. I have become again the majordomo, the capo, the accountant, and the keeper of the purse. I sit with paper and pen in front of me watching the cloth fly. The buying pile grows higher, and as fast as they do their sums, I do mine, so when the time comes to pay, it is I who do the talking, while my lady sits pretending fits of the vapors over the ferocity of the haggling and the price. And in this way we all acquit ourselves with enough deceit for the transaction to be honorable and for them to leave as content with what they have not sold as we are with what we have had to spend.

That night we eat spiced rabbit stew in new old clothes, she in green brocade that sets off perfectly the color of her eyes and I in an outfit of new hose and velvet doublet, with specially altered sleeves so that at least it fits me—for no dwarf can serve a woman of substance in a suit whose slits are more of wear than of style. Meragosa is pleased with her gown too, for though it has more of the kitchen than of the salon about it, it is in addition to the one I promised and have already delivered to her, and that evening she goes out of her way to feed us well, so all three of us share a sense of high spirits at the thought of what is to come.

Next morning La Draga arrives early, carrying shining falls of golden hair, accompanied by a young woman whose eyes are as alive as our healer's fingers. The day before, my lady had bought a second shawl from the Jews (her idea, not mine), and as she puts it into La Draga's hands now, the healer's pale face lights up like a candle. Yet almost immediately she becomes unsure of herself, caught between pleasure and embarrassment by the compliment my lady pays her. As for me, I am polite but get out as soon as I can, for I will not risk another encounter. Today I am more interested in business than in beauty anyway. I have already retrieved our purse from between the slats of the bed and am off to meet my dark-eyed Jew to exchange the last of our jewels.

 

As do the proprietors of every other business, the pawnbrokers open their shutters with the Marangona bell. It is raining, and I am not the first to arrive. A man in a cloak and hat is already waiting with a bag held inside the folds of his garment, trying to look as if he is not really here. I have come across his like before. In a city where trade is glory, the difference between a ship that docks with a fortune in its hold and one that falls prey to piracy or bad management is bankruptcy for the merchant who financed the trip with money he didn't have. Those who belong to the ruling Crow families have the advantage of their birth and breeding, for even the poorest of them can sell their votes to richer, more ambitious nobles looking for a step up into one of the smaller governing councils or senates that make up the pyramid of this celebrated state. (It is a mark of the sophistication of Venice that, while every ballot at every level of government is secret, every appointment can nevertheless in some way be rigged. It makes Rome's more obvious corruption feel almost honest in comparison.) But for the citizen traders, there is no such safety net, and the move from grace to disgrace can be dizzyingly fast. When we come to pick our rugs and chests and dinner service, we would do better not to speculate on whose failed lives we will be buying secondhand.

The pawnbroker lets us both in, and I wait in the shop front while the two of them conduct their business in the back. The man leaves about a half hour later with his head down and his bag empty.

Inside the sanctum, I clamber onto the stool, take out my purse, and empty the jewels onto the table between us. He goes straight for the great ruby, and I am pleased to see his eyes flicker at its size. As he turns it over in his hand, I try to imagine the price. It must indeed have choked her to swallow, but it will be worth it now. Depending on its quality, it might be as much as three hundred ducats. Which, along with the others, might give us almost four hundred. The memory of my lady captivating the Turk and the sight of her in finer clothes again had brought back some of the lost confidence of Rome, so that now even I can imagine us renting a house near the Grand Canal for a few weeks. Rich bait to catch richer fish.

Across the table, the pawnbroker is studying the gem through his special lens, the muscles in the right side of his face creased up to keep the glass in place. What age is he? Twenty-five? More? Would he be married? Is his wife lovely? Is he ever tempted by others? Maybe the Jews have their own prostitutes inside the Ghetto, because I cannot remember seeing any Jewesses on the streets. He takes the glass from his eye and puts the stone down.

“I will be back in a moment,” he murmurs, and the creases in his forehead are deeper.

“Is there something wrong?”

He gives a shrug and stands up. “Please, wait. I leave the stone here, yes?”

He goes out of the room, and I pick up the gem. It is perfect. Not a flaw in it. It came from a necklace given to my lady by a banker's son who developed such a passion for her that he became a little deranged, and in the end his father offered her money to let him go. He was later sent away on business and died in Brussels of the fever. I daresay his ruby came closer to her heart on its journey through her insides than he himself had ever done in real life, though she was never cruel to those who pined for her. It was—and, I hope, will be again—one of the hazards of the profession. She will—

The thought is stopped by the opening of the door. My doe-eyed Jew ushers in an old man, with a shock of silver hair and cap, who moves slowly to the table, his eyes on the floor. When he is seated, he pulls the stone toward him and fixes the eyeglass.

“He is my father,” the pawnbroker says, acknowledging his lack of grace with a small smile. “He knows a great deal about jewels.”

The old man takes his time. The air is beginning to feel stiff—though I can't tell whether it is from the smallness of the room or my growing anxiety—when the old man says: “Yes…it is very good, this one.”

I let out a sigh, but it sticks in my throat when I see the younger man's face. He mutters something in his own language, and the father looks up and replies sharply. There are more curt, angry exchanges between them, and the old man pushes the ruby back across the table to me.

“What?”

The young man shakes his head. “I am sorry. The jewel is a fake.”

“What?”

“Your ruby. She is made of glass.”

“But…but that's impossible. They all came from the same place. You saw the others. You bought them. You told me yourself they were high quality.”

“And they were. I still have two of them here. I can show you the difference.”

I stare into its heart. “But—it's flawless.”

“Yes. Which is why I was not sure. That along with the cut. You heard my father. It is good, this fake. In Venice there are many who are very clever with glass. But once you see it…”

But I am no longer listening. I am in the room, feeling my hands under the mattress for the purse, thinking, sifting through a thousand images and memories. It doesn't make sense. The gems left the room only when we did. And when my lady slept, I slept too. Or was that true? Of course there had been times when she was there alone. But she would never have left them, surely. And for whom? Meragosa? La Draga?