The word hung between them like the smoke that follows a shot. The girl stared at him as if she had been struck. A sharp intake of breath whistled through the crowd, followed by a startled cry; in a heartbeat, the girl was up on the table, silver flashing in her hand. Fra Agostino pushed Donato out of her reach, a lamp rolled to the floor and smashed, someone screamed, and then the doorkeeper they called L’Orso Maggiore (for obvious reasons) shouldered his way into the mêlée and wrenched the girl’s right arm behind her back, sending her knife clattering to the ground. She carried on yelling and spitting curses as he dragged her off the table and towards the threshold, as easily as a bear would pick up a rabbit.
‘Where is her locket?’ she roared, at the door. She repeated the same question, louder, as L’Orso hurled her out into the street. You could still hear her cries, even when the door slammed after her. Gradually, the hubbub of conversation resumed until it drowned her out.
‘Donato really should learn to take more care where he puts it,’ remarked Paolo, shaking his head as he reached for the wine. ‘He’ll ruin his father with paternity suits one of these days.’
‘Paternity suits?’ I turned to look at him.
‘Some neighbourhood girl accused him a couple of years ago, threatened to make a fuss. His father had to pay the family off. Sounds like he’s at it again.’ He gestured towards the door, then glanced at me. His brow creased and he laid a hand on my arm. ‘Madonna porca – are you sure you’re all right, Bruno? You’re white as a corpse.’
‘I need some air,’ I said, pushing the table away.
Donato was bleeding from a surface cut on his forearm where the girl had made contact before she was hauled off. His hangers-on fussed around him while the rest of the tavern stared as they exchanged animated whispers. Signora Rosaria, who owned the Cerriglio, was berating L’Orso for not stopping the assault sooner; the crowd pressed in for a better view of the drama. No one had noticed the girl’s knife lying on the tiles under a neighbouring table. I ducked down and slipped it into my sleeve on the way to the door.
There was no sign of her in the street. I walked a little way along between the tall houses, towards the corner of the next alley, thinking I had lost her, when I caught the sound of muffled sobs. She was crouched in a doorway, her right arm cradled against her chest. After the initial shock of seeing her in the tavern, my frantic thoughts of vengeful spirits had given way to a more logical explanation, but I was still afraid to speak to her.
Alerted by my footsteps, her head snapped up and she sprang back, her hands held out as if to ward me off. The street was sunk in darkness, except for the dim glow from a high window opposite and the streaks of moonlight between clouds. The girl’s face was hidden in shadow.
‘I think this is yours.’ I offered the knife to her, hilt first. Her eyes flicked to it and back to me; for a long time she didn’t move, but I stayed still and eventually she began to approach, wary as a wild dog, until she was close enough to snatch it. She levelled it at me; I raised my empty hands to show that I was now unarmed.
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘What is it to you?’ She bared her teeth. ‘I know you are one of them. I have seen you here before.’
‘Them?’
‘Dominicans.’ She spat on the ground at my feet. ‘God’s dogs.’
‘You know Latin?’ I said, surprised. It was an old nickname for the Order, a pun on Domini canes, the Hounds of the Lord, but I had not expected to hear it from a woman, especially one who was clearly not high-born.
‘Yes. You think a woman cannot read? Hypocrites.’ I thought she was going to spit at me again but she restrained herself. ‘Look at yourselves. You take vows of poverty and chastity, and yet there you are, night after night, dicing and whoring like soldiers. And they made you the city’s Inquisitors, the ones who decide whether others are practising their religion to the letter, and if they should die for it.’ She let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘God would spit you out of His mouth.’ She was lit up by her fury, illuminated from within, every inch of her taut and quivering. She wanted only the slightest provocation to stick that knife in me, I was sure of it.
‘That man you attacked,’ I said, keeping my voice steady. ‘What has he done?’
Her lip curled; she reminded me again of a dog that knows it is cornered and is readying itself to fight. ‘I suppose he is your friend? Did he ask you to make me repeat it, so he could accuse me of slander?’
‘He is no friend of mine. I only wanted to help you.’
‘Why?’ The word shot back, quicker than a blow. She took a step closer, holding the knife out as if I had threatened her.
I shrugged. ‘Because we are not all hypocrites.’
Her eyes narrowed; she did not believe me. She was right not to, I reminded myself: I was the biggest hypocrite of all.
‘My sister,’ she said, in a subdued voice, just as I had assumed she was about to walk away.
‘Your twin?’ The words were spoken before I could stop them; she stared at me, her mouth open.
‘Why do you say that? Do you know her?’
‘No … I …’ I blushed in confusion. ‘I don’t know why I thought that.’
‘Yes, my twin,’ she said, lowering the knife, as if the fight had gone out of her. ‘That friar –’ she nodded past me in the direction of the tavern – ‘he saw me in the street one day and followed me to our shop.’
‘What shop?’
‘My father keeps a shop on Strada dell’Anticaglia, off Seggio di Nilo. He is a master goldsmith. That man started coming into the shop to court me. I refused him. I would not be the mistress of a monk, for all his money. I have no respect for your kind.’
‘So you have said.’
A muscle tightened in her jaw. ‘He would not take no for an answer. Then one day he came into the shop when my father and I were out and found my sister instead.’
‘He took her for you?’
‘I don’t think he cared either way. But Anna was always flattered by the attention of men.’
Anna. I thought of a flayed leg thrown into a makeshift coffin like an animal carcass, stripped to the crimson muscle and white bone. She had had a name. Her name had been Anna.
In this girl’s face I saw again the lineaments of her dead twin. A whore, Fra Gennaro had said. Was that his lie, or Donato’s? My skin felt cold, despite the warm wind.
‘And she went with him?’
‘She started sneaking out after dark to meet him. She never told me where she was going, but I followed her one night. She made me swear to secrecy. She knew it would break our father’s heart.’
‘He would have been angry?’
‘He would have killed her.’ As soon as she had spoken the words, her hand flew to her mouth. I felt something lurch in the hollow under my ribs, some pulse of hope. The girl’s father found out, he killed her in a fit of rage, perhaps by accident; so Fra Gennaro’s story could be true. Even as the idea formed, I knew it was absurd.
‘I meant only …’ she faltered, through her fingers. ‘He has never lifted a hand to either of us in our lives. But the shame would have destroyed him.’