‘Back there, you accused the friar of killing her,’ I said. ‘Was that a figure of speech too?’
She drew her hand slowly away from her face and took a deep breath. It escaped jaggedly, like a sob. ‘My sister is missing. She went to him last night and she has not returned. I know she has come to harm.’
‘Perhaps she has run away.’ As I spoke, I felt as if there was a ball of sawdust lodged in my throat. My voice sounded strange to me.
The girl shook her head. ‘She would never have done that. In any case, I followed her last night too. I was afraid for her.’
The ball in my throat threatened to choke me. I feared she could hear the thudding of my heart in the silence.
‘To the Cerriglio?’
‘No. She went to San Domenico and waited for him by the gate. I saw her go in and she never came out.’
A warm breath of air lifted my hair from my forehead and cooled the sweat on my face. Beneath my feet the ground felt queasy, uncertain, as if I were standing on a floating jetty instead of a city street.
‘You must have missed her,’ I said, but the words barely made a sound.
‘I waited until first light. I could not have our father wake and find us both gone. I would swear she did not leave. Unless there is another entrance. But then, why did she not come home?’
I felt my palms grow slick with sweat at her mention of another entrance. I should have let her go then, but I had to be sure of how much she knew. ‘Why do you think he meant her harm, if they were … involved?’
‘Because she—’ Her face darkened and she turned away. ‘Her situation had changed. She was going to ask him for something he could not give.’
‘Money?’
The slap came out of nowhere; she moved so fast I barely had time to register that she had raised her hand. Rubbing my burning cheek, I reflected that at least she had not used the hand that held the knife. I stretched my jaw to assess the damage, but she was already stalking away around the corner.
‘Wait!’ I ran after her, into another, narrower alley. She turned, eyes blazing out of the darkness.
‘My sister was no whore, whatever he says.’ She paused, and I saw that she was fighting back tears. ‘She believed herself in love with him.’ She swiped at her eyes with her knuckles. ‘What is any of this to you? Why are you following me?’
‘If your sister was inside the walls of San Domenico last night, someone must know something.’ I was surprised at how level my voice sounded, how carefully I controlled my expression. Only a few months since my vows, and already I had acquired the Dominican talent for dissembling. Though it was a skill that was to serve me well in later years, in that moment I despised myself to the core. ‘What is your name?’
‘Maria.’ Most of the women in this city are called Maria, but she hesitated just long enough for me to understand that she was lying too. ‘Yours?’
‘Bruno.’
‘Well then, Bruno. You know where I can be found. But I will not hold my breath – I know your kind always stick together. Whatever has happened to my sister, he will not face justice for it. Not in this city. A family like mine, against a man of his name?’
I wondered what she meant by that, and recalled the quiet, deliberate cruelty of Donato’s last insult to her. ‘Why did he call you – that?’ I asked.
Her expression closed up immediately. ‘I expect it was the worst abuse he could think of.’
We looked at one another in silence for a moment, her eyes daring me to question further.
‘What about the locket?’
Her mouth dropped open, the fury in her eyes displaced by fear.
‘What do you know of that?’
‘Nothing. Only that I heard you accuse Fra Donato of taking it.’
Her hand strayed to her throat; an involuntary gesture, I supposed, as she thought of her sister wearing the locket. I could think only of the bruises around the dead girl’s neck.
‘If he has taken it …’ She faltered. I sensed that she was weighing up how much to say. ‘It has little value for its own sake. But it belonged to our mother. I must have it back.’ The note of desperation in her voice told me she was withholding something. She feared that locket falling into the wrong hands – but why?
I stood foolishly staring at her, wishing I could offer some consolation, cursing the weight of what I knew – the truth she would spend the rest of her life raking over and not knowing. Or so I had to hope.
‘You know where to find me if you hear anything,’ she said again, with a shrug. I was about to reply when, silent as a cat, she turned and disappeared into the blackness between the buildings.
I crashed through the door of the infirmary, careless of the hour, careless of the noise I made. Fra Gennaro was bent over the bed of old Fra Francesco by the light of a candle, applying a poultice to his sunken chest to ease the fluid on his lungs. Gennaro started at the sound of the door, but as soon as he realised it was me, his expression told me he had been expecting this.
I glanced along the length of the infirmary, my ribs heaving with the effort of running through the back streets. Four beds in the row were occupied by elderly friars who wheezed and grunted in concert; they might have been asleep, but they might also have been quite capable of hearing and understanding. It was all I could do not to blurt out my accusations; Gennaro saw the urgency in my face and gestured me towards the dispensary, whispering words of reassurance to Fra Francesco as he stood to follow me.
‘She was not a whore, was she?’
He closed the door behind us and set his candle down on the dispensary bench, signalling for me to lower my voice.
‘I told you only what was told to me,’ he said. His tone was clipped and cold, tight with suppressed anger.
‘And you chose not to question it.’
He was across to me in one stride, his hand clamping my arm, face inches from mine.
‘As I recall, Fra Giordano, you also swore an oath to ask no questions. Who have you been talking to?’
‘I didn’t have to talk to anyone.’ I dropped my voice to an urgent whisper. ‘Tonight her mirror image walked into the Cerriglio and accused one of our brothers of murdering her twin.’
He stared at me, his grip slackening.
‘She was never found in the street by soldiers. She died inside these walls, didn’t she? That’s why you would not speculate on who killed her. Because you already knew.’
He breathed out hard through his nose, his eyes fixed on me for a long pause, as if I were a favourite son who had disappointed him. Eventually he let go of me and rubbed his hands quickly over his face like an animal washing.
‘Where would we be, you and I, if we were not here?’ he said, looking up.
I blinked at him, unsure whether it was a rhetorical question. He raised his brow and I realised he wanted an answer. ‘If you had not come to San Domenico, Fra Giordano, what would you have done with your life?’
‘I would have tried to obtain a place at the royal university,’ I mumbled.
‘Would you? The son of a mercenary soldier? With whose money?’
I looked at my feet.
‘My father was well born, but he died desperately in debt to a Genoan banker,’ he continued. ‘If I had not come to San Domenico, I would most likely have had to beg for a position as a tutor to idle rich boys. And you, Bruno – I doubt you would now be the most promising young theologian in Naples, whatever you claim.’