In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant Page B

of a particular man. They smile and pout, tilting their heads as conversations start, covering coral lips with white, manicured hands when a certain compliment or comment causes a spurt of laughter in them and those around them. But while their mouths may be closed, their eyes are talking loudly.
    At my lady’s instruction, I move off the bridge into the square to observe them better. It’s a mark of the excitement that the only people who notice me are a few elder statesmen and their warty wives, who cannot decide whether to stare at me or to shiver with distaste. Though I am not the only dwarf in the city (I’ve seen one in a troupe of acrobats who perform in the piazza sometimes), I am unusual enough to be a spectacle, which is another reason why it is better we are not seen together, or at least not until we are in business again, when my ugly exoticism can become part of her attraction.
    I concentrate on the women in the crowd I know from other visits: the dark-haired beauty with the flashy yellow skirts and snapping fan, and the pale, willowy one with the skin of a marble Madonna and what looks like a net of stars in her frizzy hair. For these I have already discovered names and gossip. The rest I am still studying. If I were not so squat and ugly, I might try to play the acolyte to a few of them now, along with the rest of the suitors. But their game is too tall and quick for me, with glances and smiles darting to and fro as the women divide their time between the converted and the still tempted.
    And so the attracted meet the attractive, and in this way is the trade begun.
    I am about to turn back to my lady when something catches my eye. Maybe it is the way he holds his arm, for the story was that the attack left him maimed in the right hand. He is behind two other men now, and my view is blocked by their girth. He appears for an instant close to the woman in yellow, then disappears again. He is bearded, and I catch his face only in half profile, so I still cannot be sure. The last I heard of him he had fled Rome for the safety of Mantua and a patron whose wit was as crude as his own. Venice would be too stern for him, surely. But there is a certainty that comes more from the gut than from the brain. And I feel it now. He has his back to me, and I watch him and another man making their way toward the woman with the stars in her hair. Of course. He would like her. She would remind him of someone, and in the book there would no doubt be some entry about her wit and cleverness.
    I turn back to the bridge, but while my lady has the eyes of a falcon, her view would be obstructed by the plinth of the statue.
    I take a last look, but he is nowhere to be seen now.
    It cannot be him. Fate would not do this to us.

CHAPTER SIX
    â€œNo flattery now, right, Bucino? This is not the time.”
    We are sitting together near a thick seawall. The water of the lagoon in front of us is as flat as the surface of a table. With the crowd dispersed, we have made our way across the arched bridge by the Scuola of San Marco, then north along the waterway that cuts upward from the Grand Canal to the shore until we are at the very top of the north island. The sky has cleared, and while it is too cold to loiter, the air is clear and bright, so that we can see past the island of San Michele as far as Murano, where a hundred glass foundries belch thin columns of smoke into the pale air.
    â€œSo. Let’s start with the one in yellow, the one who couldn’t keep her head still, even in church. She is either famous or desperate to become so.”
    â€œHer name’s Teresa Salvanagola. And you’re right, it’s fame that’s making her brazen. She has a house near the Scuola of San Rocco—”
    â€œâ€”and a list of clients as big as her tits, I have no doubt. Who are her keepers?”
    â€œThere’s a silk merchant and one of the Council of Forty, although she also entertains outside. Most recently