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The mind of a scholar is a dangerous place.
Pascal does not consider himself a true scholar. He is not a man of erudition; the discrepancy between his knowledge and his experience is too great. Given time and tutoring, perhaps he could gain enough understanding to claim wisdom, but now his learning comes not from books but from the study of a man.
Risk sharpens the mind. Pascal can’t ever remember studying more fervently than he does now.
Micheletto is hard to read. Pascal learns how to interpret the nuance of a flickering look, the meaning behind a slowing footfall, the intonation of voice. He takes this raw material and tries to make sense of it. Guesswork could be fatal, and not only for him. He expends as much effort in constructing an accurate context as he does in gathering information, and if it brings him too close to the edge, if it dangles him too near the risk of discovery, Pascal reminds himself that’s why he agreed to do this.
It’s not for material gain. He thought he loved danger, but that explanation is too simple. The truth is more complicated, and for all his accumulated learning, Pascal knows he is no closer to understanding his desire than he is to attaining it.
*
There’s scarcely anything to clutter the space they inhabit, and yet Pascal manages to make a mess. In Milan it wasn’t his habit to be untidy, but here it seems to matter. It’s a marking of territory, even if not of possession. He leaves his clothes where they fall and lets spilled ink dry in extravagant patterns. He sweeps the floor, but allows spiders to spin their webs between the roof beams.
And then there’s the bed. A battleground when Micheletto is in residence; a wasteland when he is not. Either way, Pascal finds no need to align the mattress with the floorboards or to straighten the blankets. It’s a surprise when he climbs the stairs and finds Micheletto doing both.
He dismisses the words of greeting that spring naturally to his lips and says instead, quite deliberately, “Are all assassins so domesticated?”
Micheletto has his back to the staircase. He stills. Just for a moment, for the fraction of a heartbeat, and Pascal feels fear slide through his veins, ice followed by fire.
Then Micheletto turns. “Why do you say I am an assassin?”
“What else could you be?” Pascal summons a careless smile. A laugh would be too casual and would raise too much suspicion, but a smile can mean everything and nothing. “Your behaviour is so secretive...”
“There may be other reasons for secrecy.” Micheletto’s gaze is unwavering. “I may have a wife.”
The idea is preposterous. Pascal gains the head of the stairs and saunters across the room. “Do you have a wife?” He lifts the wine jug from the desk and tilts it, agitating the contents. It’s more empty than full. Still smiling, he continues, “I think not. If you had a wife, you would not be so rough in our loving. Your anger would have other outlets.”
Micheletto rises to his feet. “I am not an angry man.”
“No. But neither are you gentle.” Pascal drinks from the jug. The wine is thin; the taste harsh and metallic.
“You talk in riddles, boy.” Micheletto comes nearer.
There’s no suspicion in his eyes. There never is. At first Pascal believed it was because Micheletto had no reason to suspect. Now he knows it’s because Micheletto rarely shows any expression at all. He can count the number of smiles he’s been given on the fingers of one hand. Even in the crisis of lust, as the body strives and contorts and shudders to completion, Micheletto’s face is serene. The triumph of the spirit over the flesh, although it is not a victory St Augustine would have recognised.
Pascal offers out the jug. “I am easy enough to understand. You, Micheletto—you are the riddle.”
“I am a simple man.”
“In some respects, perhaps. But in others...”
Micheletto takes the jug and drinks fast enough to spill wine into his beard. He wipes a hand across his mouth, then walks away. “I told you. Never ask what I do, where I go, for whom, or why. Stay if it pleases you; go if it does not. I do not keep you here.”
“This is why I suspect your profession.” Pascal knows he’s treading on dangerous ground, but it’s worth it. He feels confident enough in their shared affection that he can afford to venture onwards. “Any man who places restrictions on his beloved’s knowledge invites curiosity.”
The jug is set upon the desk. Micheletto seems to examine it. “Curiosity can be fatal.”
Pascal smiles again, this time with genuine amusement. “You were supposed to notice that I called myself your beloved.”
“I noticed.”
“And yet you did not comment.”
Micheletto faces him, leaning one hip against the desk. “Is this what your learning taught you?”
Flourishing, Pascal bows. “Rhetoric.”
“Flirtation.” Impassive as ever, Micheletto studies him. “Distraction with words. I like it not. Plain speech is better. Now tell me why you believe I am an assassin.”
Pascal holds his gaze. “Are you?”
“Yes.” There’s no hesitation. No emotion in those pale eyes. Micheletto waits, arms folded, for a response.
Being told something second-hand is one thing. Having it confirmed from the source is another. Pascal exhales. He can be truthful about this, at least. “When you take me in your arms, you touch me as if I’m precious to you.”
Micheletto tilts his head. “Maybe you are. What of it?”
“New lovers touch one another so. But it has been some weeks now, and you still caress me the same way.” Pascal lets his smile turn uncertain. “I flattered myself that I meant so much to you, but two days ago I witnessed a surgeon plying his trade. I noticed how he traced the flesh of his patients before he cut into them. It was as if he was following a map. And in that moment I realised—that’s how you touch me. As if you don’t know whether to kill me or love me.”
The intensity in Micheletto’s gaze flays to the bone. “Which would you prefer?”
Pascal laughs, startled. “I die in your arms each night we spend together, so why does it matter?”
That provokes a snort. “Your words are too clever for me, boy.”
“My words, perhaps. But not me.” Pascal abandons the conversation and hurries over to Micheletto, tucking himself against his lover’s shoulder. They embrace, the gesture uncomplicated for now.
Pascal lifts his head. “I forgot. We need bread.”
“And honey.” Micheletto’s smile touches his eyes. “Don’t forget the honey.”
*
When Micheletto is absent, Pascal whiles away the time within the safety of the immediate neighbourhood. For all the holiness that accrues to this city, Rome is wild. The risk he’s taking with Micheletto makes him nervous in every other area of his life. His courage he saves for love, or at least for its facsimile. What’s left he takes for walks along cobbled streets and paved roads and dirt tracks, pacing out the confines of his knowledge.
He’s aware of greater glories lying beyond. The ruins of the ancient city are half-glimpsed, more familiar from the memory of his studies than they are from tangible reality. The city awaits him without thought of reward. Pascal waits, too. He doesn’t want to leave the district in case Rufio should call, or if Micheletto should come back. Rome is eternal; Pascal has much less time to waste.
When Micheletto returns, they don’t always go to bed straight away. Often Micheletto wants to sit with his back to the wall, studying the dust motes in a shaft of sunlight or the glimmering silk of cobwebs moving in the draught. He’s unreachable then, untouchable, and Pascal feels a stab of jealousy for the one who commands Micheletto’s loyalty.
Pascal never lets this emotion slip. Instead he smiles and says, “Show me Rome.”
The response to this request is different every time. One evening Micheletto takes him to the lowest taverns behind the Esquiline. Pascal drinks too much, but still not enough. He remembers to hold his tongue, only loosening it to grunt and cry out in mingled pleasure-pain when Micheletto fucks him against the city walls near the Porta Maggiore.
On other occasions they visit the markets. Pascal learns who makes the best bread, the finest candied fruits, the most exquisite kidskin gloves. He tastes spices traded from every port of the Mediterranean and inhales the scents of Constantinople. The slip and glide of Greek olive oil eases the way one night; another time, they use a Levantine unguent that tightens his passage and inflames them both.
Through secret doors and along hidden corridors, Pascal explores the city. Micheletto shows him a cardinal sleeping upon the heaped white flesh of his mistresses; a notary forging papal documents in exchange for gold coins; a nursemaid swapping a stillborn babe for a healthy squalling brat while the mother lies unconscious from the pain of her delivery.
There are secrets everywhere in this city. It comforts Pascal that his secret, his sin, is but a small part of a greater tapestry.
*
Drawing on his knowledge of the ancients, Pascal guides them through the nearby districts. Micheletto is attentive as he listens to the recitation of facts, fiction, and myth. When he asks questions that reveal his ignorance about the history of the city, Pascal can’t help but ask, “Don’t you care about the past?”
Micheletto looks at him. “No.”
“The future, then.” Something close to a plea edges Pascal’s voice. “Do you care about that?”
“No.”
They’re standing amidst the ruins of Nero’s Golden House, an overgrown wilderness of gardens and demolished masonry, the stones robbed out to build other, lesser dwellings. Pascal can’t imagine any cardinal’s palace possessing the grandeur of the Domus Aurea with its ceiling that revolved along with the heavens. The future is supposed to surpass history, and yet the more he learns, the more convinced he is that mankind stumbles not towards greatness, but failure.
Perhaps it is better to be like Micheletto and care for neither.
It is a depressing thought. Pascal shakes it from him and resumes his tales of Nero. “Tacitus writes of terrible monstrosities that occurred right here in this very garden. After the fire of Rome, Nero killed hundreds of Christians. He set them ablaze and used them as human torches. He dressed them in animal skins and set wild beasts to maul them to death in the Circus.”
Micheletto nods. “He sounds like the King of Naples with his lampreys.”
Pascal hesitates. He can’t tell if Micheletto is joking or not, and then he realises Micheletto never jests.
Choosing his words with care, Pascal continues, “Nero was a tyrant.” He tries to avoid the implication that any King of Naples was a tyrant, no matter how much they’ve modelled their cruelties on those committed by the ancient Romans. “He was Emperor, yet that wasn’t enough. He wanted every pleasure for himself. Every beautiful woman, every pretty boy. He ignored every civilised law and took what he wanted, and the people allowed him to do so because they were afraid of him.”
“They were afraid of his power,” Micheletto corrects. He pauses beside a shattered wall and studies the graffiti inscribed there. “Of his position.”
Pascal draws him away to another part of the garden. “It is the same thing.”
“It is not.”
The grass grows tall here, the tips yellowed by the sun and bent by the wind. Pascal takes Micheletto’s hand. Daring more, he says, “The man you follow...”
Micheletto slips free of his grasp. “He is a man, not a position.”
“You would follow him if he had no power?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Micheletto says, “he is not a tyrant.”
The answer is not what Pascal expected. It tells him little enough. He conceals his frustration behind laughter and waves a hand around the ruined palace. “Then your master will not build a monument such as this to boast of his achievements?”
Micheletto shrugs. “If it pleases him. I do not care. I am no architect.”
“But you are.” Pascal turns and reaches out, brushing his fingers over the laces of Micheletto’s doublet. “An architect of men’s destinies.”
Micheletto catches at his hand to stay the caress. “He is the architect. I am no more than the stonemason who works at his direction.”
Pascal gives him a sharp look. “And you are content with this?”
“Why should I not be? I have no need for fame.” Micheletto rubs his thumb over the pulse-point in Pascal’s wrist. “This dead Emperor—what good did it do him? So his people knew his deeds and feared him and let him have his way. That is not how a wise man rules.”
It takes a concerted effort for Pascal to free his hand from Micheletto’s gentling grip. “Nero fled from Rome when his armies rebelled on every front. He killed himself on the road when he could find no one else to do it.”
Micheletto snorts. “As I said. Not a wise man.”
*
They walk back through the city in twilight, their perceptions of Rome fused in this moment.
Close by the Colosseum, Micheletto prises open a door that leads into the tiny vaulted undercroft of a church and shows him one of the Incorruptibles, the body of a saint so holy the flesh has wizened but not rotted.
Pascal stares at the saint and smells not the odour of sanctity but the scent of aged wood and dust.
“Fame does no one any favours,” Micheletto says, resting a hand on his shoulder. “In the end, we are our own monuments. We all fall to ruin.”