Secrecy by Rupert Thomson Page A

outside and indicated a number of stones set into the masonry some distance above the door. ‘That’s our sign. Over the years, it has become our name as well.’ He waited until I saw how the eight stones formed the rough shape of a question mark, then excused himself and withdrew into a dim back room, where he bent over a wooden box, sorting seeds with darting fingers.
    As we rode eastwards, I turned to Faustina and asked who the man was.
    ‘My uncle,’ she said. ‘Giuseppe.’
    ‘I thought you must be related. You have the same quickness about you.’
    She looked at me as if she thought I might be finding fault.
    ‘It’s a good quality,’ I said. ‘It makes you seem more alive than other people.’
    ‘You’ve got an odd way of talking.’
    ‘You mean my accent?’
    ‘No, the things you say.’ She hesitated. ‘Though your accent isn’t one I’ve heard before.’
    I smiled. ‘That present you sent me …’
    ‘The oil or the fruit?’
    ‘The oil.’
    ‘Have you used it yet?’
    I looked at her. ‘Not yet.’
    ‘It will keep your hands really supple – not just the skin, the joints as well –’
    ‘My hands?’
    When I told Faustina what Beanpole had said, she covered her mouth.
    Then, out of embarrassment, perhaps, she suggested I race her to a line of cypresses about a mile ahead. Without waiting for a response, she touched her heels to her horse’s flanks. I galloped after her, but she was already disappearing into the distance. By the time I caught up, she had dismounted, and her horse was drinking from a nearby stream.
    ‘You ride beautifully,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t stand a chance.’
    ‘I cheated – and anyway, I’ve got the faster animal.’
    I had sensed this tendency in her before, when we first met on the street. She would invent half-truths that were detrimental to her. She ducked praise as others ducked blows.
    I asked her how she’d learned.
    ‘A man called Sabatino Vespi taught me,’ she said. ‘My father worked with horses, though, so maybe it’s in the blood.’
    She told me that when her father rode he seemed to float above the saddle, only connected to the horse by the most intangible of threads. His hands on the reins, his feet in the stirrups – but lightly, ever so lightly. They were like completely separate beings who just happened to be travelling in the same direction, at the same speed. It was a perfect understanding, harmony made visible.
    She shook her head. ‘I’ll never be able to ride like that.’

     
    Towards midday we stopped at an inn on the edge of a village. A white ox lay in the muddy yard. An old woman was standing nearby, arms folded, legs apart. When she saw us, she turned and went inside. We followed her. The floor was dirty, and the air smelled of cold grease. I ordered wine. She didn’t have any wine, she said with a sour face. All she had was
acquerello
, a drink made from water and the dregs of crushed grapes. She seemed to resent our presence, even though she must have depended on people like us to earn a living.
    We took a table by the door.
    ‘I think you know what I’m going to ask,’ I said.
    Faustina looked at me and waited.
    ‘You work in an apothecary, but you were in the palace on the night of the banquet …’
    ‘That’s your question?’
    I nodded.
    ‘There’s a reason,’ she said, ‘but I can’t tell you – at least, not yet.’ She sipped her
acquerello
. ‘It was nothing to do with you.’
    The old woman brought us a thin rice broth, a plate of white beans and some cold cabbage. I asked for bread. She didn’t have any. As we ate, Faustina spoke about her childhood, which she had spent in Torremagna, a hill-top village south-east of Siena. She had lived with her father’s sister, Ginevra Ferralis, in a house whose back wall formed part of the old fortifications. She had grown up thinking of Ginevra as her mother. Ginevra had sharp elbows and long, slightly bandy legs, and there was a violet smear on her