‘Well, there we are then. He was over sixty. Perhaps the poor man had an apoplexy and stumbled.’
They walk on in silence for a while. Then Bianca says, ‘It wasn’t chance, was it?’
‘No, of course it wasn’t.’
‘Or suicide.’
‘Doubtful.’
‘So he was pushed?’
‘Very likely. First Matteo dead, now Bondoni. Who amongst Bruno’s little guild will be next?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Bianca says. ‘If the assassin intends Bruno harm, why didn’t he take the opportunity when they passed each other on the bridge by the Porta Portello? And he’s had weeks in which to make an attack against you and me. I can see no common explanation anywhere.’
‘Nor I,’ Nicholas admits. ‘But one thing in certain: we must counsel Bruno to withdraw from the procession.’
‘Bruno – withdraw? He’ll never agree. He might be small in stature, but he has a great heart.’
‘Well, we cannot keep him in ignorance.’
Bianca laughs. ‘Bruno would risk a whole army of assassins to march at the head of his Arte dei Astronomi. You know how much it means to him.’
Nicholas shrugs in resignation. ‘There is someone else we should warn, too.’
Bianca stops. The edge in her voice cuts through the mist like a sword through gossamer. ‘We promised each other, remember?’
‘I know, but–’
‘Nicholas! No more of this!’
‘Is that what you want of me: to leave her to her fate? Will your conscience lie easy if she is next?’
An anger blazes in her amber eyes that Nicholas has never seen before. He could almost believe it murderous.
‘Enough!’ she cries, so loudly that heads turn. A passer-by frowns: a public altercation on a holy feast day – do some people have no respect? Relenting, Bianca takes Nicholas by the arm, her hand stroking his wrist in conciliation. She drops her voice. ‘That woman has done little but lecture us on fate since the day we met her. You have done all that could be asked of any compassionate man. I will not countenance you doing more. We have promised each other to forget her. Do you now break your oath?’
He shakes his head like a scolded schoolboy and sighs. ‘Of course not. You are right. I have warned her. She chose not to listen. What more can I do?’
Bianca releases his arm. As they set off again through the strange, ominous vapour that muffles their footsteps and robs those who pass of a distinct outline, she says softly, ‘We agreed: as if she had never existed.’
‘He went to the Podestà’s office, hours ago, Signora Bianca,’ Luca says as he brushes the creases out of the new livery that his master has provided for the procession: a tabard of lockram dyed midnight-blue, with a long-tailed star picked out in yellow thread arcing across the breast from shoulder to hip.
‘Did he go alone?’ she asks tentatively.
‘Alonso is with him.’
‘Did he say when he would return?’ she asks, casting a worried glance at Nicholas.
‘He will not return, Signora. He told me that once he’d done at the Palazzo del Podestà, he would send Alonso to summon the Arte dei Astronomi to assemble beneath his banner in the Palazzo dei Signori. If you need him, that’s where you will find him.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. The Master will guard that banner with his life, lest the guild of shit-shovellers tries to move it to the back of the procession.’
‘Why would they do that, Luca?’
‘To usurp our rightful place in the parade, Madonna. That’s the sort of low-down trick the guild of night-soil removers always tries to play on holy days.’
Rather than risk sending Luca into a panic, Nicholas waits until he and Bianca are alone in their chamber before he says, ‘I’ll go to the Palazzo dei Signori and warn Bruno to take care.’
‘Surely you don’t think this man will make an attempt on Bruno’s life in broad daylight, do you?’
‘But it isn’t broad daylight, is it?’ Nicholas points out. ‘And it will start getting dark before long.’
‘All the more reason for you not to go stumbling about a city you don’t know, Nicholas. Send one of the Corio cousins instead.’
‘They sit outside in the street all day playing dice. I can’t imagine they’ll suddenly discover alacrity.’
‘It may be a holy day, Nicholas, but this is still Padua. The cut-purses will be busy.’
Nicholas’s eyes narrow. ‘I know what this is about: you want me not to go alone because you fear I’ll sneak away to see Hella Maas.’
For a moment Bianca just glares at him. Then she purges herself with a stream of Italian vocabulary that Nicholas may not yet have learned, but whose coarse, contemptuous meaning is clear.
He waits for her range to dissipate. Then, calmly, he asks, ‘What was it you said to her – when we saw her this morning preaching by that statue in the square?’
‘It is not important.’
‘Oh, but I think it is. What is it about Hella that still troubles you – even while you tell me we must forget her?’
Tears begin to well in Bianca’s eyes. Her face twists in pain, becomes almost ugly. With a desperation in her voice that alarms him she says, ‘I’m trying to protect you, Nicholas – just as I protected you from yourself when I found you half-drowned by the river four years ago. Just as I have protected you from all the ills that have come upon us since, in your work for Robert Cecil. It is what we Caporettis do: protect those we love, whatever the cost to body or soul.’
‘I don’t know any Caporettis,’ he says. ‘I know only Bianca Merton. And I fear that some vile melancholy is stealing her from me.’
She shakes her head wildly, as though trying to block out a scream that her ears cannot bear to hear. ‘No! It is not so,’ she sobs.
Nicholas takes her in his arms, feeling the heave of her despair against his chest. He says, ‘I know what it was that Hella said to you on the Via Francigena.’
He feels her body go still. She looks up at him, her eyes brimming.
‘She told you?’
‘Yes. And see for yourself: I am still here. The words she spoke had no more potency to harm me than did the images on that painting in Den Bosch. I can hear the words – I can see the images – and I am not destroyed. We are not destroyed. They cannot harm us, not unless we let them. There is no curse that Hella Maas can lay upon us that would be worse for me than the curse of a life without you, whatever she has foretold.’
There are two Biancas who lay their head against Nicholas’s chest. The first, Simon Merton’s daughter, allows the fear to drain out of her. She understands now, finally and completely, that his Eleanor and the child she carried are locked away securely in his past – a past that cannot now harm either of them. But the second, the daughter of Maria Caporetti, feels no such happy resolution. Because a Caporetti knows that regardless of what the new learning teaches, there are old fears – old curses – that can only be expunged by the old, reliable methods.
The call to Vespers rings out from the bell towers of Padua, strangely muted in a mist that has, if anything, grown thicker with the onset of dusk. Torches are set, bonfires lit. Through the chamber window the evening air has a fiery hue to it, as if the city is being sacked. Shadows dance against the stucco walls of the house opposite as people pass below.