correctly that you cast no slur on my unsullied regard for La Singla, the great actress of our day.’
Mollified, but still given to the odd mutter, he seized my arm before I could elaborate farewells of his wife, and led me across the courtyard – glancing neither right nor left, not even to take in Albert, who set up a forlorn chattering at the sight of his master.
When the gate closed behind us, and we stood in the street, I asked him which way he was going.
‘Which way are you going, de Chirolo?’ He always had a suspicious nature.
I pointed hopefully north towards St. Braggart’s, thinking that he would have to turn south to get to the Arena, where the jousts were held in time of festival.
‘I go the other way,’ he said, ‘and so must deprive myself of your company. What a loss, dear, dear! Remember now – nothing happening until Albrizzi, unless I have you sent for. Don’t hang about. And don’t imagine I like an idle season any more than you do, but in the summer the grand families go away to the country. Besides, there’s a confounded Ottoman army marching about somewhere near Malacia, and that’s always bad for theatre. Anything’s bad for the theatre.’
‘I look forward to our next meeting,’ I said.
We bowed to each other.
He stood where he was, feet planted firm on the ground, arms folded, watching me walk to the corner and turn it. As I turned, I glanced back to see him still observing me. He waved a mocking farewell, dismissing me with every bone in his skeletal wrist. Once round the corner, I hid behind the pillars of the first doorway I came to, and there I waited, peeping out to see what happened. As I expected, Kemperer appeared round the corner himself. Looking foxy, he scanned the street. When he had made sure it was clear, he muttered to himself and disappeared again.
Giving him time to get well away, I retraced my steps, to present myself once more at his gate. I rang the bell, and was soon admitted into the sunny presence of La Singla.
Since I left her a few minutes before, she had thrown a robe of blue silk over her flowing night garments, but could not be said to be any more dressed than before. Her hair still lay on her shoulders, golden. Ribbons fluttered about her person as she moved.
She sat at the table, daintily holding a coffee cup to her lips.
‘Remember, I must show you my impeccable respect,’ I told her.
‘And much else besides, I expect,’ she murmured, glancing down at the white cloth on the table, thus giving me the advantage of her long lashes.
Bounding forward, I knelt beside her chair and kissed her hand. She bade me rise. I crushed her to me, until I felt the cushioning of her generous breasts doing its worst against a mixture of ham, and cheese and bread.
‘Dammit, my tunic!’ I cried, and snatched the mess from its hiding-place.
She burst into the prettiest and best-rehearsed laughter you ever heard.
‘You must remove your shirt, dear Perry. Come into my boudoir.’
As we trotted into her fragrant room, I said, laughing in high humour, ‘You see how famished a poor actor can be that he sneaks food from the table of the woman he admires most in the world! You discover ham in my tunic – what may not be concealed in my breeches …?’
‘Whatever is there, it shall not take me by surprise.’ Matching action to words, she put her hands behind her back and started to tug at the laces which held her dress.
In another moment, the two of us were one, rolling in delight, naked upon her unmade couch. Her kisses were hot and thirsty, her body gloriously solid, while she had, as the orientals say, a little moon-shaped fishpool, into which I launched my barque until the waters grew altogether too delighfully stormy for sense. After which, rapturously shipwrecked, we lay about in the bed and I gazed upon her soft and verdant shores.
‘… “the torrid prehistoric jungles swarming …”’ I misquoted.
She kissed me juicily until my barque ran up its sail again. As I reached for her, she wagged her finger at me in slow admonition.
‘The secret of any happiness is never to have sufficient. Neither the rich nor the evolutionaries recognise that profound truth. We have enjoyed enough for both of us, provided the future promises more. My husband can’t be trusted to stay away for any length of time. He is insanely suspicious, poor dear, and takes me for a perfect harlot.’
‘So you are perfect,’ I declared, reaching for the scrumptious mounds of her breasts, but she was away and slipping into her shift.
‘Perfect, maybe, but not a harlot. In truth, Perian – though you’d never comprehend this, for you are a creature of your lusts – I am far more affectionate than promiscuous.’
‘You’re lovely as you are.’
When we were dressed, she gave me a glass of melon juice and a delicious cut of cold quitain. As I was eating, I asked her, ‘Do you know someone called Bengtsohn? – an old man with blue eyes, a foreigner, who says he has enemies everywhere. He comes from Tolkhorm, and has written a play.’
She was getting restless. ‘Pozzi has used him to paint scenery. He was a good worker but I think he’s a Progressive.’
‘He offered me work with his zahnoscope. What’s a zahnoscope?’
‘How you do talk! Pray eat up and permit me to let you out of the side door, or Pozzi will come back and fall into such a frenzy of jealousy that we shall have no peace for weeks on end.’
‘I wanted to talk to you …’
‘I know what you wanted.’ I picked up my drumstick and made off obediently. There was no fault in this fine girl, and I was anxious to please her. Her main interests were bed and the play which, I supposed, was the reason she was always so sweet-tempered. It seemed no more than just that Kemperer should pay tax in kind on such a precious possession.
In the streets, my elation began to wear almost as thin as my clothes. I had nothing, and was at a loss. My father was no support; I could not sponge off my sister. I could go to a tavern but, without a single denario to my name, could hardly expect my friends to welcome me with open purse. Most of them were in similar straits, except Caylus.
For want of better amusement I followed various citizens, studying their walks and expressions, until I reached St Marco’s Square. The usual morning market-stalls were set up, with the usual crowds of country men and women in attendance, their horses and mules tethered along the shaded side of Mount Street.
About the edges of the great square, clustering particularly under the colonnade of the Old Custom House, were booths for less serious-minded personages and children, where one might view two-headed calves, dioramas of ancient time, animated human skeletons, oriental jugglers, live ancestral animals, snake-charmers from Baghdad, fortune-tellers, marionettes, gaudy magic-lantern shows, and performing shaggy-tusks no bigger than dogs.
How I had hung about those enchanted booths with my sister Katarina as a child. The magic-lantern shows, with their panoramas of shipwreck, noble life and majestic scenery, had been our especial delight. Here they still were, unchanged.
What was unusual about this day was that it was the first Thursday of the month, the day set since time immemorial for the Malacian Supreme Council to meet. Not that the affairs of those greypates concerned me, but older people took an interest. I heard them murmuring about the Council as I walked among them.
Bishop Gondale IX blessed the Council in public, but the deliberations of the Council were held in secret. The results of those deliberations were never announced; one could only deduce what had happened by observing who disappeared into the capacious dungeons of Fetter Place, there to be strangled by capable hands, or who was beheaded in the public gaze between the great bronze statues of Desport’s slobbergobs in St Marco, by the cathedral, or who reappeared as piecemeal chunks about various quarters of the city, or who was found with his mouth nibbled away by