Again, that strange lurch in my gut, as if I had missed a stair. ‘Why?’
‘So that she cannot be recognised. People may be looking for her.’
‘You said there was no one to mourn her.’ I heard the accusation in my voice.
‘Mourn her, no. But if she was a whore in this neighbourhood, her face will be known. The remains we send to Fontanelle must not be identifiable.’
‘It’s barbaric.’
He made an impatient noise with his tongue. ‘Perhaps. But it is also prudent. What we have done here tonight would be hard to explain to the city authorities. I think you see that.’
I bowed my head. ‘Then no one will ever be brought to justice for her murder.’
He laid down his knife and looked at me with an air of incomprehension. ‘You think they would otherwise? A street whore?’ He shook his head. ‘I admire your fervour for justice on behalf of the weak. It is, after all, part of our Christian duty,’ he added, as if he had only just remembered. ‘But it is not our concern here, Bruno. There will be no justice for her in this life. Pray God grant her mercy, and retribution to those who wronged her in the next.’
With this, he grasped a hank of her lush hair and sliced it through cleanly at the roots, as I turned my face away.
All through the long journey to the Fontanelle cavern, he did not say a word to me, except once, to ask if I carried a dagger. When I said yes, he gave a dry laugh. ‘Of course you do. This is Naples. Even novice nuns carry a blade beneath their habits.’ I wondered if he was afraid the girl’s killer might still be lurking nearby. I tried to shut out the thought that Gennaro knew more about the murderer than he was letting on.
We took turns pushing the cart with the makeshift coffin, the two of us wearing old servants’ cloaks with the hoods pulled up close around our faces, despite the warm night, so that we would not be recognised as friars. I could not tell if Gennaro was angry with me for questioning him, or for my squeamishness, or if he was just tired. Reducing the girl to hunks of bloodied meat had not been an easy task. The human body is tougher than it looks; limbs need to be wrenched from sockets, bones sawed through, joints separated with a hammer. Gennaro must have been exhausted, but he did it all alone, while I sat with my back against the wall and my head in my hands, trying to shut out the sounds. What he packed into that box, wrapped carefully in oilcloth to stop the blood dripping through the wood, was no longer human. I stole glances at the casket as he led us through the twisting back streets in the dark, his face dogged and clenched in the light of my lantern.
A couple of times we turned a corner to find a group of young men staggering home from the taverns, arms slung around one another’s shoulders, half-empty bottles dangling from their hands. Each time I braced myself, my hand twitching to my knife in case they should decide to have some sport with us, but they looked at the cart and steered a wide berth around it, their raucous songs faltering away to nothing as they eyed the box. No one wants to be reminded of death in the midst of their revels. I suppose they took us for those men who clear the beggars off the streets. At the Porto San Gennaro I saw the glint in the darkness of coins changing hands as the infirmarian exchanged a few words with the guards, who seemed unsurprised to see him. One of them nodded, before unlocking a small side gate and gesturing us through.
The road began to slope steeply upwards into the Capodimonte hillside. With the incline and the stony track the cart became harder to move, as if it were resisting its destination; we had to put our backs into the work and within minutes I was soaked with sweat beneath my cloak. I had no idea how far it was to Fontanelle – it was not a place I had ever thought to visit – and I did not like to risk Gennaro’s anger by asking him. I knew only that it was a great cavern up in the hills, left behind by the excavation of tufa for building. In the early years of the century, the Spanish authorities had begun clearing the city’s churchyards to make room for more bodies, and the old remains had been taken to the Fontanelle cave. Since then it had become a dumping ground for the city’s outcast dead: those who could not afford or had been denied burial in consecrated ground. Lepers. Sodomites. Suicides. The lazzaroni – the nameless poor who died in the streets. Plague victims were thrown in, whenever there was an outbreak. Fontanelle had become a great charnel-house of the unwanted; people said you could smell it from the north gate if the wind was in the wrong direction.
I caught the stench as the incline grew steeper and the track widened out into a plateau; rotting flesh and stale smoke, the kind of bitter ash that hung in the air and worked its way into your nose and mouth as you breathed. A man lurched forward out of the shadows to greet us; again, the chink and flash of money from somewhere inside Fra Gennaro’s cloak. A small brazier burned by the entrance to the cavern. In its orange glow, I saw that the man’s face was badly deformed, though his body looked strong; his brow bulged low over one side like an ape’s and he had been born with a cleft palate. Perhaps this was the only place he could find work. At least the dead would not throw stones at him in the street, or shout insults. He and Gennaro spoke in low voices; I had the sense that they too were familiar with one another. I watched as the man took the cart and wheeled it towards the mouth of the cave, a maw of deeper shadows that swallowed him until he disappeared from view.
I turned to see Gennaro studying me.
‘Are you all right?’ he said.
Beneath my robe, my legs were trembling as if with cold. I told myself it was the climb. I gestured towards the cave.
‘What if he tells someone?’
‘He won’t.’
‘How do you know? Surely you can’t see a body in that state and not ask questions?’
‘Part of his job is knowing not to ask questions.’ Gennaro squinted into the darkness and pulled his cloak tighter. ‘Besides, he won’t bite the hand that feeds him.’
I did not immediately grasp his meaning, until I thought of the coins chinking quietly into the man’s hand, their familiarity. Of course: this would not be the first time Gennaro had brought a dismembered body here for disposal under cover of darkness, no explanations required. I wondered how many other illegal anatomisations he had carried out in that little mortuary under the storehouse, with its convenient tunnel for ferrying bodies out unseen.
The man returned with the cart and the empty box.
‘I’ll let you know if I find anything suitable,’ he muttered, darting a wary glance at me. Gennaro gave him a curt nod and turned again towards the road.
A pale glimmer of dawn light showed along the eastern horizon as we walked back down the track, the city a dark stain below us.
‘Does he sell you bodies?’ I asked bluntly.
Gennaro looked sideways at me. ‘Remember your oath, Brother.’
We walked the rest of the way in silence. Under the cloak I could feel stiff patches on my robe where the girl’s blood had dried. I wondered how I would explain that to the servant who came to take my laundry.
‘I prescribe a hot bath for this fever that has kept you from tonight’s services, Bruno,’ Gennaro said, as if he had heard my thoughts. ‘I will instruct the servants to fill the tub in the infirmary. Clean yourself well. I will see to your clothes.’
‘Will you write about this?’ I asked him, as we approached the gate.