He made an aggressive gesture for me to be quiet. ‘The patient is not in there,’ he said, dropping his voice until I had to strain forward to catch his words. ‘If you are to work with me tonight, Bruno, there are two rules. You obey my every instruction, to the letter. And you ask no questions. Is that clear?’
I nodded. ‘But why can’t I come with you?’
‘Madonna santa!’ He threw up his hands and stooped to gather his pail. ‘Because, as far as anyone knows, you are tucked up in your bed dreaming of saints and angels. Now do as I ask.’
He disappeared into the dark, until all I could see was the small spark of his lantern bobbing across the garden in the direction of the convent buildings. Silence fell around me, punctuated only by familiar night sounds: the snort and stamp of a sleeping horse, the drawn-out cry of an owl, the relentless, one-note song of the cicadas. Further off, a whoop, followed by a gale of raucous laughter from the streets beyond the wall. I pressed myself into the shadows of the outbuildings and waited. Where was this mysterious patient, then, if not in the servants’ quarters? I glanced across to the door Fra Gennaro had locked behind him. In the storehouse? Why could he not be treated in the infirmary, like any other …
A sudden understanding flashed through me, flooding my veins with cold. This man must be an enemy of the state, someone it would not be politic for us to be seen helping. San Domenico had a reputation for fomenting resistance against the kingdom’s Spanish rulers; it was well known that the more rebellious among the Neapolitan barons met regularly in the convent’s great hall to discuss the form of that resistance, with the ready involvement of some eminent Dominicans. Perhaps this secret patient was a conspirator who had been wounded in the course of action against the Spanish. That would explain Fra Gennaro’s insistence that I ask no questions. Pleased by my own reasoning, I bunched my hands into fists beneath my robe and slid down against the wall of the storehouse to squat on my heels, bouncing with anticipation.
I recited psalms and sonnets to measure the time; another twenty minutes passed before Gennaro returned, with a bundle tied over his shoulder and carrying the full pail of water, steam rising from the cracks in its lid. I leapt up and hurried to take it from him; he nodded and paused to check all around before fitting the key to the padlock. As soon as we were inside, he secured the door again behind us.
He held up the lantern and turned slowly to reveal only an unremarkable room with stone walls and a paved floor. Wooden crates lined one wall; barrels were stacked against the back. A sound of scurrying overhead made me jump; I looked up and a fine dust filtered through between the planks that had been laid over the roof beams to partition the eaves into a loft space. A ladder led up to a closed hatch.
‘Only rats,’ Gennaro muttered. ‘Keep that light over here where I can see it.’
He gestured towards the furthest end of the room. At first I could not make out what he meant to show me, but as I drew closer with the lantern, I saw a wooden hatch set into the floor, the stones at the edges scraped clean where the crates concealing it had been moved away. The hatch was also held fast with a padlock. Gennaro selected another key from his belt, knelt and unfastened it. He paused with one hand on the iron ring and looked up at me, his eyes large and earnest in the flickering light.
‘Your oath, Bruno, that whatever you witness here will remain sealed in your heart as long as you breathe.’
I could have taken offence that my oath was not good enough the first time; instead I was too impatient to see what lay beneath the door. Goosebumps prickled along my arms. I swore again, on my life and all I held sacred, my right hand pressed over my heart. Fra Gennaro studied me for a long moment, then lifted the hatch and led the way down a flight of stone steps into an underground chamber.
The air was cooler here, with a taint of damp. Though I could see little at first, on peering harder I made out an arched ceiling and walls lined with stone. No sound came from the dense shadows further in, none of the jagged breathing you would expect from an injured man. A cold dread touched me: suppose the patient had died while Gennaro was fetching his instruments and I was waiting uselessly outside? But the infirmarian showed no sign of panic. He closed the hatch and slid a bolt across so that we could not be disturbed. Next he unwrapped an oil lamp from the pack he had brought and lit it carefully from the lantern. In the brighter glow I saw that the chamber was dominated by a sturdy table draped with a thick shroud, under which was laid the unmistakable outline of a human figure.
A strange fear took hold of me, somewhere under my ribs, constricting my breath. Gennaro removed his cloak and hung it on the back of the door, indicating that I should do the same. In its place he shrugged on a rough hessian smock, such as the servants wear, and over this a wide leather apron. Then he rolled up his sleeves, dipped his hands into the steaming water and rubbed them clean before opening the bag he had brought with him. In the lamplight I caught the flash of silver blades. The last item he extracted was a large hourglass, which he set upright on a box beside the table to allow the sand to settle. When he had assembled all the equipment to his satisfaction, he took one corner of the shroud in his hand and glanced at me.
‘Ready?’
I tried to swallow, but my throat had dried. I managed a nod, and he pulled back the sheet covering the body.
In the stillness I heard myself gasp aloud, though I had the presence of mind not to cry out. Stretched out on the table was the body of a young woman, about my own age, unmoving as a marble tomb. Her flesh was so unblemished that it seemed at first she might be merely sleeping; indeed, I dared to hope as much for the space of a heartbeat, until I looked more closely and saw in her face the unmistakable contortions of strangulation. It was clear, despite the bulging eyes, the protruding tongue and the discolouration of the face, that she must have been unusually beautiful, not very long ago. Her skin was pale and smooth, her dark hair flowed around her shoulders and her waist was small and neat, her hips narrow and her breasts full. Ripe bruises like shadow fingers formed a ring around her white throat.
‘By my reckoning,’ Gennaro said, turning over the hourglass, now brusque and businesslike, ‘we have about two and a half hours until Matins. There is no time to waste.’
So saying, he took a broad-bladed knife and slit the girl’s shift lengthways in one swift movement, from hem to neck, leaving the fabric to fall away either side. I tried to avert my eyes from the dark thatch of hair on her pubic mound, but it was difficult; I had not seen a woman’s body in three years. If Gennaro noticed my confusion and the colour rising to my cheeks, he was discreet enough not to mention it.
‘Who is she?’ I whispered, fixing my gaze on her feet. The soles were bare and dirty.
‘Beggar. Homeless. Come, hold that lantern closer.’ His reply came just a fraction too quick.
‘But – how does she come to be here?’ I blurted, forgetting my earlier promise.
‘She was found in the street by one of the night patrols and brought to me. They thought they might be in time to save her. Alas, they arrived too late.’
He could see that I did not believe this version of events. I was not convinced that he did either. No Spanish soldier in the city would trouble himself to help a vagrant girl. They were more likely to be the ones who had abused and killed her. At least he had the grace to look away as he said it.