The Thief Of Peace Read online

  Nicci’s legs looked endless in their wine coloured hose. He liked dark colours – deep reds and velvety purples, black to match his hair and beard and the fur that grew on his belly and between his legs. And now Teo had seen all of him, the long thighs, the slight concavities at the sides of his narrow hips, the soft but shameless dangle of his prick and balls. And he was beautiful. There was no use denying it any longer. He was desire and temptation, a thing of such perfect, glamorous darkness that only the devil could have dreamed him.

  Teo’s breath hitched in spite of himself. Nicci stirred and sat up. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Nicci touched the back of his shoulder. “Are you worried about your father?”

  Teo nodded, glad of the excuse to talk about something else. “Do you think I was right to come here?”

  “Yes,” said Nicci, without hesitation, without any sign that he was suffering the same torments in Teo’s presence as Teo was in his. “I do.”

  “It still feels like a disgrace. Abandoning my father on what could very well be his deathbed.”

  “I know it’s not easy.”

  “No, it is,” said Teo. “That’s the disgraceful part. I’m ashamed of how easy it is, to be here with you instead. I know he wasn’t the best father in the world. He wasn’t even a good one, but…”

  Nicci ran a hand down the outside of Teo’s upper arm. Did he have any idea what he was doing? “Listen to me,” he said. “Vicini’s an old stick-in-the-mud, but I think he’s right about this. If there’s a plot against your family, you’re safe here. You trust him, don’t you?”

  Teo paused for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do.”

  “You suppose?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I heard that Giacamo used to call him a viper, but that was before I even knew I was part of the family. Giacamo used to blame Vicini, you see, for the way my father played us all off against one another.”

  “Wanted to see the best in his father?”

  “Yes. Until Luca died, at least. And then he saw that it was all my father, all the scheming and game playing. Our father needed no encouragement or inspiration from Vicini. He was…is…a natural born chess player. And Vicini’s been there through it all. He knows everything. Every allegiance, every grudge. If anyone can get to the bottom of whatever’s going on, this…conspiracy or whatever it is, it’s him. I only regret that I was so awful to him before.”

  “Why?” said Nicci. “What did you do?”

  Teo sighed. “I was ungrateful. Rude. He was involved with that whole…business before I went into the monastery, and it was easy to blame him. Same as Giacamo did, in a way. I fixated on him as part of the corrupt machinery.”

  “The greased palms and payoffs, you mean?”

  “Yes,” said Teo. “That world where money buys your way out of trouble. I despised him for being a part of it, the embodiment of it, in a way. But on the other hand, it looks as though I may need him after all. If there is trouble…”

  “…that’s the man you want on your side.”

  *

  Nicci had spent the best part of his childhood in this kitchen, watching his mother at work. He’d watched her scale fish, knead pasta dough and skin rabbits, and sat fascinated by the way the fur peeled back to reveal the smooth, glistening pink muscle beneath. There were rabbits in the pot tonight, slow simmered with wine, rosemary, mushrooms and onions that had cooked down into a rich, gamey sauce. She had also made his favourite, cheese gnocchi, the puffy little dumplings light as clouds, and there was a round of her famous focaccia bread, oily and flavoured with rosemary, the top bejewelled with cracked salt crystals that shone like quartz. They drank cool dark wine, and after a couple of glasses Teo started to glow with the same dark lustre as the wine, his mouth redder and his deep blue eyes so dark they almost looked purple.

  “I can’t remember the last time I ate so well,” he said, flushed and lovely in the candlelight. “We so seldom had meat at the monastery.”

  “Sins of the flesh,” said Nicci, refilling his cup. “At the hands of a culinary temptress. I did warn you that she could cook.”

  “I’m sure it’s in poor taste to call your own mother a temptress,” said Susanna. “And in front of a monk, no less.”

  “You know me,” said Nicci. “I’ve never been concerned with the boundaries of taste.”

  “No, I’m more than aware of that.”

  “It was magnificent, madonna,” said Teo, whose manners were far better than anything ever seen in Volpaia. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”

  “It’s nothing. And call me Susanna. I’m nobody’s lady and quite happy about it. It would have been nice if he’d left me a little more money, but other than that I find widowhood entirely agreeable.” She leaned over, drunk enough to pinch Nicci’s cheek as if it hadn’t been bearded for over ten years now. “This is where sons come in handy. I’m waiting for him to become rich and famous, you see.”

  “It’s been wonderful,” said Teo. “Seeing where he grew up.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “He never talked about it?”

  “Mamma…”

  “No, it’s true,” she said. “I’m sure you didn’t.” She turned back to Teo with a tipsy smile. “Volpaia is a small town. Niccolini is…not so small. My boy always had big ambitions. Couldn’t wait to get away from me, could you?”

  “That’s not true and you know it,” said Nicci. “It’s good to be back.”

  “You’ll be bored to death by the end of the week. Anyway, it’s not good to keep on turning back on yourself. In life you should always move forward, not back. Else you find yourself going around in circles, and that’s never a pleasant experience.”

  “She says, pouring more wine.”

  She offered more to Teo, who thanked her but covered his cup with his hand. Her eyes lingered - as they often did - at the corner of the kitchen wall behind Teo’s head, where the plaster was darker and cracked. “You see that?” she said, pointing it out, so that Teo turned to look. “You see how the one wall is a completely different colour to the other?”

  “…Mamma, Teo doesn’t want to hear this story…”

  “…oh, no, I do…”

  “…almost burned the place to the ground,” she said, jerking a thumb at Nicci. “No, really. He was an apprentice to the potter at the time. Had quite a gift for it, too, but he wasn’t happy throwing pots and dishes.”

  “It was boring,” said Nicci. “Speaking of going around and around in circles.”

  “…so he started making these little clay birds. Lovely things…” She got up from the table and went to a shelf beside the fire. He hadn’t noticed it before, but there was one of his early creations, a swan with upstretched wings. She brought it to the table and handed it to Teo, who took it with a cautious tenderness that made Nicci’s heart twist and throb.

  “So delicate,” Teo said.

  “Very,” said Susanna. “They shattered in the kiln most of the time, or exploded and ruined everything else that was in there. And that was the end of that apprenticeship.”

  “I had to improvise,” said Nicci, embarrassed. “So I built my own kiln.”

  “Badly,” said his mother, and leaned forward for the punchline. “I told him to build it further from the house, but he wouldn’t listen. One night the entire side of the kiln collapsed, the embers rolled downhill and…” She waved a hand at the wall. “Had to rebuild half the kitchen.”

  Teo gasped, eyes wide. “You didn’t?” he said.

  Nicci shrugged. “Told you I was trouble.”

  “Trouble, but talented,” said Susanna, stroking a finger over the swan’s wing. “That’s my boy.”

  Teo stifled a yawn. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I expect you’re used to early nights.”

  “I am, yes. And unused to wine. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

  Nicci watched
him go, anxious but somewhat relieved that Teo was no longer afraid to be alone again. Susanna refilled the cups and sat quiet, holding her tongue in a way that Nicci knew she wouldn’t hold it much longer.

  “Go on then,” he said. “Say it. Whatever you’re going to say.”

  “He’s very beautiful. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  This was his cue to say yes and tell her he knew everything, but for once he couldn’t find it in him to do so. He shook his head. “No. I don’t know half of what’s going on around me, Mamma. I may as well admit that much. All I know is that he needs me. I get the impression that he’s never been anything other than lonely.”

  She set down her cup. The dark surface of the wine trembled in the candlelight. “You haven’t touched him, have you?”

  “No. God, no. He’s a monk. Or he was a monk. I don’t even know any more. Everything is so confusing.”

  “Things generally are, when you’re in love.”

  “I’m not in…” He stopped himself and sighed. There was no point denying it anymore. He’d been falling ever since he first saw Teo smiling over his seedlings. And now he was going to have to go up that path and spend another night lying inches away from someone he desired more than wine or water or air.

  “Whatever business you have with him,” said his mother. “End it. Go to Milan, Niccolini. You don’t need the aggravation. Artist’s boys are one thing, but sons of the nobility are quite another.”

  “I know.”

  “They have the power to crush people when they’re no longer interested in them, or people who have outgrown their use.”

  Nicci shook his head. “No, Mamma. He would never do that to me. Never. That much I do know.”

  “All the same, you must know nothing good can come of this.”

  Teo came back and they went up to bed, lighting their way with an old lantern, the candle flickering inside its enclosure of smoky glass. Nicci went outside to piss, his cock already thick with anticipation of another night spent beside Teo. He stroked it to full hardness and flashed back on happy memories – Giancarlo’s hollowed cheek and wet lip – but with that came the anxiety of what was going on back in Florence. “Oh, come on,” Nicci said, under his breath, knowing he would never be able to sleep next to Teo without getting this out of his system first. He imagined Teo coming looking for him, catching him at it, and this turned out to be the thing that sharpened his desire to the point where it could be – at least temporarily – silenced.

  Nicci carried the little lantern back inside. It offered scant light and the night was as dark as velvet. When he stepped into the hut the space was smaller and swallowed the light less greedily, and he could make out the shape of Teo’s hip and shoulder beneath the light bedcover. Teo stirred and blinked up at him, eyes dark and mouth still stained with wine.

  “I thought you were asleep,” said Nicci.

  “No. I was waiting for you.”

  Waiting for what? He could have been a lover already, one so familiar that they thought nothing of sharing a bed any longer. Nicci stripped to his shirt and slipped into the bed beside Teo, who – to his surprise – had taken off the hair shirt and now lay, like Nicci, in a regular shirt of linen.

  “What happened?” Nicci asked, indicating the blank space above Teo’s heart where usually there would have been sackcloth. His skin bore the marks of irritation.

  “It was itchy.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  Teo rolled over on his back. “I sometimes wonder if there is a point.”

  “To what?”

  “To all my prayers. All my mortifications. Sometimes I feel as though no matter how many times I offer myself to the Lord, He always rejects me. Places another obstacle in my path. And I know that’s how it supposed to be, but sometimes I chafe at it, you know? Why shouldn’t it be easy to be good? Why should we worship saints who were shot and burned and torn to pieces, when Christ was supposed to have suffered enough for all of us? Why can’t we thank Him for his sacrifice and simply live lives of kindness and love in imitation of Him? Why this focus on pain and hurt and…” Teo sighed. “Isn’t life full of enough pain without inflicting it on ourselves for no real reason?”

  Neither of them spoke for a while. A barn owl hissed nearby, and a moment later Nicci heard the feathered rustle of its wings as it took flight. Beautiful creatures, drifting pale as angels through the night. The candle inside the lantern drowned in its own wax and blinked out, plunging them into a darkness so complete that it was hard to tell up from down.

  “Are you asleep?” said Teo, his voice hushed in the dark.

  “No.”

  “Then why aren’t you arguing with me?”

  “Because I agree with you,” said Nicci. “God made all of you. Your face, your body, your heart, your humours. Why should you spend your whole life apologising for your own flesh? Your flesh is wonderful.”

  “Don’t say things like that.”

  “Why? It’s true. Do you know how fascinating you are? Your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, your brain. Especially your brain. All those impressions and emotions, contained in an organ that looks no more remarkable than a cauliflower. You’re an extraordinary work of nature, Teo. Here for barely the blink of an eye, but so intricate, so infinitely complicated that the workings of your body…” He knew he’d said too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “That’s why it’s forbidden, I think, because there’s so much to know. It can be ugly work, taking apart a human being, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like a fresh bite of the apple every single time.”

  There was a long silence. It spun out and out, stretching into a breathless space where Nicci’s mind ran riot, seizing on bare feet, strong wrists and pretty eyelashes. He lay perfectly still, feeling the blood rise again between his legs, and knowing it was impossible.

  “You’re drunk,” said Teo, like an excuse. Like permission.

  “So are you,” said Nicci, and his heart rolled over as he felt Teo’s hand touch his in the dark. Fingers lacing between his.

  Oh, he could. He could roll over, kiss those plump, wine-stained lips, swallow the gasp of surprise – or perhaps even anticipation – and show this poor mortified boy what his flesh was really for. He could do that, but then what?

  Nicci took a long, deep breath and squeezed the hand in his. And he said it silently, in his head, so nobody would ever hear. I love you. I love you. I love you.

  11

  Hands on his skin.

  The morning light was deep red behind his eyelids. The colour of flesh. He was surrounded by skin. His skin. Nicci’s skin. Not a hair shirt between them, linens crumpled, bellies and thighs bared and cocks raised in silent, urgent salutes. Somehow, in the night, they had fallen into one another’s arms and now they lay like lovers, hard and wanting even in their sleep, legs tangled.

  Teo lay very still, barely daring to breathe. Nicci was mere inches away, his eyes and mouth closed and his thin, high-bridged nose whistling quietly in tune with his sleeping breaths. His shirt was bunched up above his navel and beneath it he was thick and hard and flushed with eager blood. Almost as hard as Teo. They were so close that Teo fancied he could feel the blaze of heat from Nicci’s cock against his own. Just the slightest motion of his hips would be all it took for them to touch.

  He realised he’d been holding his breath and it hitched in a gasp. The ragged black fringes of Nicci’s lashes trembled, and then it was too late, because his eyes began to open. Dark, unfocused slits at first, then – when he realised how they were entwined – opening wider in alarm.

  “No,” said Teo, grabbing a fistful of Nicci’s shirt before he could pull away. “Please. I’m…” Damned. He was damned and he didn’t even care anymore, because those eyes would drive him mad. “I’m…” I’m what? Yours? Yes. Yours. God help me, I’m yours.

  He wasn’t even sure which one of them moved – the motion was so slight – but the next thing he knew they were touching
. Head to velvet head. Utterly damnable.

  Nicci leaned closer, his eyes all glitter and darkness. “You want this?” he whispered, and the breath of his words fanned Teo’s lips like a caress.

  “Yes.”

  Even as he said it Teo felt something burn away inside him, something that should have been carved in stone, a monolithic Thou Shalt Not, but it yielded like paper to a flame. And then Nicci’s hand was on him, on both of them, squeezing their two hot, hard indecencies together into something even lewder and immeasurably delicious. A small, soft cry escaped his lips and Nicci leaned forward as if to kiss, but didn’t. He just hung there, his forehead and nose touching Teo’s, his breath a butterfly kiss in contrast to the shockingly intimate touch below.

  He hasn’t even kissed me yet.

  Would he? Was that allowed? Was that how this worked? All Teo knew in that moment was that he wanted to be kissed. Wanted, wanted, every fibre of his being straining towards it in a way he’d never desired anything before, not even (oh no) the love of God.

  “Oh…” Nicci said, under his breath, moving his head so that his lips grazed Teo’s cheekbone, over the blushed, burning curve of his cheek. “Oh, you…”

  His mouth brushed the corner of Teo’s, his fingers still tight around them, swollen flesh pushed together. As his lips teased, ghosting feather light touches against Teo’s, his hand gently squeezed and slackened, steady as a pulse. His tongue flickered out and wet Teo’s upper lip, and Teo – unable to stand it any longer – curled his hand around the nape of Nicci’s neck, desperate to claim his kiss.