The Thief Of Peace Read online

  When Nicci’s tongue pushed into his mouth – a sweet, soft moan behind it – Teo at once understood how this was going to go. Hands and tongues and squeezing and beard scratch. Such a tiny thing for such a huge sin, but it had to happen. Nicci’s tongue moved against his own, flesh against flesh, still sour from last night’s wine, but yet as raw as if Teo could somehow bury his face in Nicci’s chest and taste the shape of his heart. Oh, what else could mouths do?

  Nicci froze suddenly. He pulled away and raised his head, his grip slackening.

  “What?” Teo said. “What is it?”

  “You hear that?”

  Teo listened. Footsteps. Soft and distant, but distinct, scuffing up the side of the hill.

  “Shit,” said Nicci, pulling down his shirt. He sprung up from the bed and reached for his clothes. “Get dressed.”

  “Why? Who do you…?”

  “Get dressed.”

  Shaken, Teo wriggled into his borrowed clothes. Nicci, blunt sword in hand, stood at the door, looking outwards. “Who the fuck are you?” Teo heard him say.

  “Sir, you’ve seen me at Prato before…”

  Teo looked out to see a messenger standing there, letter in hand.

  “Signor Albani? I bring word from Vicini.”

  “Thank you.” Teo took the letter. “Could you give us a moment, please?”

  Teo broke the seal on the letter and read. His ears rang with the same strange tone that had filled them in Prato, when he’d rolled out of his sickbed and gone wandering through the large, too-bright rooms. Nothing felt real anymore. “It’s my father,” he said. “He’s taken a turn for the worse. They’ve given him the last rites.”

  Nicci, who had been guarding the door, lowered the sword and came to him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “There’s more. Vicini says he has some woman in custody. Giacamo’s lover. He thinks she was responsible for the…the package that was sent.” Teo exhaled. “I need to go.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  No hesitation. Only the acknowledgment that they would do this together. No, nothing felt real, nothing except the taste of Nicci’s mouth still lingering in his. Teo lunged forward, mouth open, desperate for more, but Nicci stopped him, hands on his shoulders.

  “No. We’re not alone.”

  Teo stood stunned, mortified by the expression he felt on his face. Want. Need. How far he’d fallen in such a short space of time. And how little he suddenly cared. The world was cold and ugly and full of death and disaster, but just ten minutes ago it had been all hot blood, warm hands and a sin so sweet that it had to be love.

  Nicci softened under his gaze, then kissed the tips of his first two fingers and touched them to Teo’s lips. “We have to be discreet,” he whispered. “And now’s not the time.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” Nicci ran his thumb over Teo’s cheekbone, fingers brushing the lobe of his ear. “We’ll talk. Later.”

  They saddled the horses and rode back to Prato, arriving just before noon. Sweating horses, sweating men. The sun was a hot, angry eye, glaring down on them as they approached the house. They barely had time to dismount before Vicini stepped out of the door, and the expression on his face said it all.

  “When?” said Teo.

  “An hour or so ago,” said Vicini. “He never opened his eyes again. Slipped away. It was peaceful.”

  Teo sighed. “I could have rode faster.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” said Nicci. “Not in this heat.”

  “He’s right,” said Vicini. “You couldn’t.”

  Teo shook his head. He felt nothing.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Vicini.

  “My loss? What of yours? You’ve served him far longer than I ever did.”

  They went into the house. It had the same bright, feverish edge of unreality that Teo remembered from before, and he wondered which absurdly famous Medici was going to greet him this time. The Queen Dowager of France, perhaps, or the duke’s younger living son, Ferdinando, who was just seventeen and already a cardinal. Or he’d find the pope himself saying prayers at his father’s bedside. To his horror he almost laughed, an even more monstrous version of the giggle that swelled up like an erection whenever he needed to be serious. Worse, the obscenity only made it more irresistible, and by the time they reached the bedroom where his father lay, Teo was close to tears. The wrong kind of tears.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” Nicci said, and he was so serious. So, so very serious. And that was funny, too, and shouldn’t have been.

  I almost fucked him this morning.

  “No,” Teo said, mortified by the contents of his own head. His lips were hopelessly disobedient: they kept threatening to squirm into a smile. “I think I need to do this alone.”

  “All right. I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  Teo nodded, for once glad he was unable to articulate just how much he needed. He opened the door and stepped into the bedroom.

  The curtains were closed in an attempt to keep the temperature down. Albani lay stretched out in the gloom, his feet, nose and forehead tenting a shroud of linen so fine that Teo could make out his hands beneath it. They lay decorously folded at his waist, a rosary threaded between his fingers. Two tall, perfumed beeswax candles burned by the side of the bed, but their spikenard fragrance only drew Teo’s mind to the smell they would soon be attempting to mask. Where were they going to put him? How did one even begin to organise a funeral?

  It was this that burst the indecent bubble of Teo’s mirth. Not the corpse itself. Not the fact of his father’s death, but the fact that he was going to have to deal with it. And he had no idea where to start.

  His father’s jaw was tied shut with a strip of cloth. Two coins lay on the lids of his eyes, two profiles of the duke, turned towards the wall. Even in death Albani still belonged to the Medici.

  Teo bowed his head beside the bed. He knew the words to this song, at least. Requiem aeternum dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei: Requiescat in pace. Amen.

  Amen. Let it be so. A wish, really. A request. Let him have peace, rest, eternal light.

  Nobody could know if God answered these particular prayers. Nobody had ever come back to tell. Teo didn’t know either, but he knew there was no peace this side of the grave. There was only chaos, death, murder, money and ambition. And love. Oh yes, there was love, but even that had to come with complications.

  “Will you hear me, Lord?” Teo said. “Unclean thing that I am. Is this just another temptation you’ve thrown my way at the worst time of my life?”

  He was a monster. He knew that now. His father was lying dead before him and he should have been praying for the old man’s soul, but all he could think of was himself.

  There was a discreet tap on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Vicini stepped into the room, head bowed. “Forgive the intrusion, signor, but there are some things we need to discuss.”

  “The funeral. I know.” Teo got up from his chair. “Call the servants. And the priest. I would like a mass said in the chapel for my father’s soul.”

  “Of course, signor. I’ve taken the liberty of calling the undertaker.”

  “Thank you, Vicini.”

  “Not at all. Your father left instructions that he should be buried in Florence alongside his sons and their mother. He left a significant bequest to the church but hadn’t yet decided on an artist to design his tomb. He imagined that he had…more time.”

  “We all did,” said Teo, looking back at the still figure on the bed. It looked like an effigy. Unreal.

  Vicini nodded. “I know this is hardly the time,” he said. “But the del Campo woman…”

  “…what about her?”

  “She won’t confess,” said Vicini. “When we get back to Florence, perhaps you’d intervene? Seeing you bereaved might hammer home the reality of what she has done.” He looked Teo up and down and brushed a hand ove
r the tight side of Nicci’s blue doublet. “And we must find you some appropriate mourning.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Vicini. I appreciate everything you’re doing. I must confess I find myself at a loss.”

  “These are hard times, signor. For all of us.”

  Teo excused himself and left the room. Nicci was waiting outside, his eyes so bright with care and warmth that Teo wanted to grab him, pull him into an empty room and finish what they had started. He didn’t even care how detestable the sin was supposed to be any more, because right now it felt like life, like the only living thing he had to cling to when all around him was death.

  “Walk with me?” he said, slipping his arm into Nicci’s, and they went out through the loggia, into the elaborate gardens. The greyhounds – freshly orphaned – followed them, wagging questioningly at their heels, and Nicci stopped to pet them.

  “They know, don’t they?” he said. “They know he’s not coming back.”

  “Yes, poor things.” Teo stroked the head of the black and white dog. It blinked up at him with large liquid eyes, then stretched its graceful jaws wide in a long, shuddering yawn. He had no idea what to do with them now that their master was gone. Were they his dogs now? “They’re gentle, for hunting dogs.”

  “I think they got used to the good life,” said Nicci. “Too many treats. Too much chicken.” He straightened up and looked down at Teo, and it was as Teo could see the thoughts dancing inside his head. Sense memory of touch, taste, the heft of hungry flesh, the slow shift of thigh against thigh.

  Heart racing, Teo leaned in and up, and Nicci gave in to him – mouth to mouth, a soft flicker of the very tip of his tongue. Teo reached up to grab his hair and Nicci pulled away, shaking his head. “Not here,” he said, in a low voice.

  The rejection almost squashed Teo flat, but as they began to walk once more Nicci’s arm slid around his waist, and his heart took flight all over again. He was doomed. Damned. People were dying and the world was collapsing around his ears, but this abomination was the only thing that felt right.

  “We’re going to have to be careful, Teo,” said Nicci.

  “I know,” he said, although if Nicci had asked him to come to him tonight he would have.

  “It’s a sin.”

  “I know.”

  “And you made vows.”

  Teo thought of Nicci’s hand on him and went weak. “I think I broke them,” he said, and sat down on a low stone bench near one of the many fountains.

  “You didn’t. Not yet.”

  They sat side by side, fingers twined on the bench between their thighs as they gazed into the gushing fountain. The dogs whimpered and licked for a moment, before settling at Teo’s feet as though they knew he was the new master. Teo thought dazedly of his old herb garden, his potted cucumber plants and the smell of rosemary that had used to cling to his rough black robes. There was no such utility in this garden. It was all about beauty and expense, about showing the world you had money to spend. Was it his, now? This garden?

  “It’s beautiful here,” he said.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” Nicci leaned in, their shoulders touching. “I remember the first time I ever came here. It was only a few moments before the first time I ever heard your name, and before it changed my life forever.”

  Teo squeezed his fingers harder. “You always knew the right words to say. To charm me.”

  “It wasn’t difficult.” Nicci flashed him a shy, sidelong look. “I found you so enchanting.”

  Teo pressed his cheek against Nicci’s shoulder. “You’re infuriating,” he said, but there was no rebuke to it. Already he could hear his voice slipping into the low, sweet, dove-cooing tones of a lover. “One minute you remind me of my vows and the next you make love to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nicci, with a sigh. “I’ll stop. Of all the times for you to discover how I felt about you…”

  “I know. Oh, Nicci, I don’t even know where to begin with all this. How to put his affairs in order, how to arrange a funeral, what I’m even going to do with all of this…”

  “Shh…” Nicci’s arm slipped around his waist again. “Vicini will help you. And so will I. I won’t leave your side unless you wish it.”

  Why did he have to be so kind? Why couldn’t he just have been a monster of lust? It would have made life so much easier. Teo leaned his head against Nicci’s shoulder and stared into the splashing fountain, watching the misty colours gleaming in the spray.

  “Look at the rainbows,” said Nicci, as tender as if he were talking to a child. “How do you suppose that happens?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  *

  They were back in Florence, with Albani’s corpse in tow.

  As Teo had predicted, there was a lot to do. Masses sung, horses groomed for the funeral procession, tombs opened to admit new tenants. The room was covered in Teo’s scribblings, crossed out notes on a eulogy. A tailor had been chasing him around the place for a good twenty minutes now, trying to get him to stand still enough to take measurements.

  “You’ll wear a hole in the floor,” said Nicci. “Hold still, and let the man do his work.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Teo, and stretched out his arm for the tailor. “I don’t even know what to say. He was my father and now he’s dead. And I’m sorry for his death. What else can I say?”

  “List his achievements,” said Nicci. “His virtues. The things that gave him joy in life. His dogs, his gardens, and so on.”

  Teo, a measuring cord around his neck, sighed. “This is why I belong in a monastery,” he said. “Give me other people’s words to sing, because I don’t have any of my own. I’m not a politician, Nicci. I’m not even a good son.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’ll help you.”

  There was a discreet tap at the door and Vicini appeared. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But I was wondering if you might be able to come to the Stinche?”

  “What, now?” said Teo. He glanced at the tailor, who nodded that he was finished. Vicini receded back into the hallway like a ghost. “Yes, fine. I’ll be out in a moment.”

  “The Stinche?” said Nicci. He knew the place rather better than he’d like to. “As in the prison?”

  “She’s there,” Teo said. “The woman. The one who was sleeping with Giacamo. Vicini thinks she was the one who sent the…offal.”

  “Offal?”

  “In the package. What else would you call them?”

  Nicci blinked for a long moment. “Balls,” he said. “Those were balls. Where do you imagine she got them?”

  “I don’t know. A slaughterhouse, I assume.”

  Oh God. He really didn’t have a clue. “Teo, you might want to sit down for this.”

  “For what?”

  “Those weren’t…animal.”

  Teo didn’t sit, but he leaned more heavily against the edge of the table in front of him. He had turned very pale.

  “I’ve seen inside enough bodies to know that those didn’t come from a slaughterhouse,” said Nicci. “Or a butcher. Those looked…human.”

  “But whose…I don’t…”

  “No, I don’t know either, but I have this feeling that Vicini’s wrong about that woman.”

  “But you were there,” Teo said. “At Prato. When she said that the only balls in the family belonged to the Medici. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?”

  “I did,” said Nicci. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Where would she lay hands on a pair of human testicles, for God’s sake? Don’t get me wrong, Fiorina del Campo seems like a handful, but I still can’t picture her walking into some charnel house behind the gallows and asking the executioner for a pair of balls. Desecrating a corpse is…well…it’s a line that few people cross. Put it that way. You’ve met my mother. She’s hardly the most conventional of people, but even she threatened to disown me over my anatomy studies.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if those had been t
he balls of a young pig or something then maybe I could believe Fiorina del Campo sent them in a malicious gesture. But I don’t think they were animal and I don’t think she has that in her. I got the impression that she was interested in one thing, and that thing wasn’t bloody revenge. She just wanted to clear her husband’s name so that his property would no longer be forfeit. How would a stunt like that help her?”

  “Perhaps she was desperate,” said Teo. “I don’t know. Let’s go and ask her.”

  The Stinche prison was perhaps the ugliest building in Florence, maybe in all of Italy. It was a squat, featureless square surrounded by a shallow artificial moat, making it an island in the middle of the city. Above the single door was a Latin inscription – OPORTET MISERERI.

  “What does it mean?” asked Nicci. His Latin wasn’t what it should be.

  “‘To show mercy’, I think,” said Teo. “Or is charity? I’m not sure.”

  “Some mercy. And so much for charity.”

  The few windows were tiny, leaving the corridors dark enough to need torches in the middle of the day. The summer heat was so fierce that even the inner walls seemed to sweat, adding damp to the overwhelming smells of tallow, piss and all the other attendant scents of unhappy humanity. The jailer led the three of them – Nicci, Teo and Vicini – through the lightless maze of cage lined hallways, until they came to a cell.

  At first the room seemed to be empty, but then the jailer moved closer and she stirred. She was curled in a corner, her widow’s black helping her to blend in with the darkness. As she raised her head he saw the pale of her cheek, smudged with dirt. When she turned to look at them her eyes were angry.

  “What do you want?” she said, and raised her hand to pull her straggling hair back from her face. Several of her fingernails were missing, and Nicci knew Teo saw them too, because he let out a low gasp of horror and turned on Vicini.

  “What in the name of God did you have them do to this poor woman, Vicini?”

  “The necessary,” said Vicini. “You saw what she did.”

  “Yes, and on the off chance that she didn’t?”