Chapter 10 #2
Giovanni inclined his head. Silas was right, of course. Any story a stranger might tell him about his past could easily be a lie, yet he felt drawn to hear what they might say, nonetheless. Silas watched him carefully.
“We have not spoken about your... providence in a long time,” he said. “Not since I found you.”
Giovanni remembered the moment as clear as day.
Giovanni had been seventeen, pick-pocketing and bare-knuckle boxing for his bread in Paris.
Silas had bet on one his fights, won a large sum off Giovanni’s victory, and taken Giovanni to an alehouse for some supper.
Giovanni still recalled the conversation as if it were yesterday.
“You fight well,” Silas had said, leaning back in his chair as he watched Giovanni wolf his way through bread and cheese. Giovanni had shrugged, eyeing the older man carefully. He was not a gentleman, that much had been clear, but he’d had the bearing of someone dangerous and powerful.
“I do all right,” Giovanni said in slurred English.
“Where is your madre? Your padre?” Silas had asked.
“Madre died giving birth to me,” Giovanni said, stuffing cheese in his mouth. “I have no padre. I am un bastardo. No family.”
He spoke the words easily. He was used to saying them. Most of his friends on the street had a similar background.
“You’ve been on your own? Your whole life?” Silas had asked in astonishment. Giovanni bristled a little at that.
“What about you?” He’d challenged, jutting his chin out at the older man. “Where is your madre? Your padre?”
Silas had considered him with a tilt of the head, a narrowing of his dark, intense eyes. Giovanni had felt afraid of him then, but had been determined not to back down. He had held his gaze defiantly.
“My father is dead,” Silas said finally. “So is my mother. I have a sister, Beatrice. I look after her. If you want, I’ll look after you too.”
“Me?” Giovanni had stared at him. He had been living on the streets for ten years. No one had ever shown him this kind of generosity. Not without wanting something in return. “Why? What do you want?”
“I want you to work for me,” Silas had said easily. “I have a business your skills could be useful in. As for why...” he’d smiled at Giovanni for the first time, and Giovanni had felt his heart warm. “I see a little of myself in you. I think you shall come out well, Giovanni.”
“Thank you,” Giovanni had flushed. He didn’t know what this feeling was, as if he was filling with warmth from the inside. He realized he wanted to impress Silas, to make him proud.
“What do I call you?”
“Lucifer,” Silas grinned. “We shall raise hell together.”
“Gio?”
Silas snapped Giovanni out of his memory by handing him back the note, a curious expression on his face.
“What will you do now?” He asked.
“I will go,” Giovanni said. “If there is knowledge to be had about my past, then I must have it.”
Silas nodded. Giovanni wasn’t sure that Silas quite understood the need to examine one’s past closely, but he did at least respect him enough to let him make his own decisions.
Giovanni felt gratitude towards Silas at that moment, followed rapidly by a wave of guilt when he remembered what he had been doing in Silas’s study that very morning with Beatrice.
“Will you go alone? You could take one of my men with you,” Silas suggested. “Or I could accompany you—keep a distance.”
“No. I must go alone,” Giovanni said quietly.
Silas had already sacrificed much of his time and effort for Giovanni.
Giovanni felt the weight of Silas’s generosity bearing down on him like a load he could never lift.
Yet, despite all of this, he had thrown that loyalty aside for one kiss with Beatrice.
He turned away from Silas, ashamed of his own duplicity.
If he was going to lie to Silas about Beatrice, the very least he could do was keep him out of danger.
“I shall handle this myself.”
Giovanni walked slowly through Hyde Park, his eyes watching every passing individual, checking for threats and dangers behind each tall hat and parasol.
It was a few seconds away from noon, and Giovanni was approaching the fountain in the middle of the square.
In the summer sun, the water flowed beautifully and reflected dancing light around the square.
It was a lovely day, but Giovanni didn’t feel encouraged by it. He didn’t know what kind of person he was meeting. This gorgeous day might yet reveal darkness.
“Signor Amante?”
Giovanni turned. Standing by one of the benches facing the fountain was an older gentleman.
He was perhaps fifty years of age and dressed well in a green jacket with a matching hat, and a green and gold waistcoat, a pocket watch chain dangling.
He had a folded newspaper in his hand and a nervous look on his face.
Giovanni recognized him from some society events and from Silas’s club. He was one of the older gentlemen who often sat playing chess. He had never paid him much attention, but he did at least remember his name: Lord Thaddeus Tabiner, the Duke of Grafton.
“Your Grace,” Giovanni bowed.
“Please, Amante, call me Grafton,” he said, smiling gently.
“Are you meeting someone, Your Grace?” Giovanni asked, unable to be completely comfortable calling a duke by such a familiar term.
“Well, in fact…” Grafton suddenly looked very sheepish, and his eyes darted down to the letter Giovanni had folded in his top pocket. “I am here to meet you.”
“You are the author of this?” Giovanni pulled the note out and stared at Grafton.
What would such a man know about him and his past?
Perhaps all of this was merely a ruse for him to get closer to Silas?
Lucifer of London was an intimidating man to get in contact with.
Many gentlemen, even princes, preferred to approach Giovanni’s complicated employer through indirect channels especially if there was a question of money involved.
“I am,” Grafton nodded thoughtfully, and then gestured to the bench. “Will you sit with me?”
“I’m at your service,” Giovanni said, awkwardly taking a seat on the bench beside him.
“I am grateful that you came,” Grafton said quietly. “I was unsure if you would.”
“Well, you could have perhaps communicated more directly,” Giovanni spoke carefully. “You could always have come to speak with me personally, if you were uncomfortable approaching Lucifer yourself?—”
“This is not about Lucifer of London,” Grafton said quickly. “I needed to speak with you, but…” Grafton folded the newspaper in his hands. “I had some concerns about approaching you personally.”
“Why, Your Grace?” Giovanni asked politely. What could such a gentleman have need of someone like him for? “I am more than accessible, I hope.”
“You are, of course,” Grafton nodded eagerly. “I often see you at the club, but the information I have to share with you is… sensitive.”
“Sensitive?”
Giovanni’s stomach cramped. There was still every chance that this might turn into a dangerous situation.
That Grafton might know something he could use to blackmail Giovanni.
Instantly, his mind flew to Beatrice. Could someone have seen the two of them together in the carriage?
But then why would Grafton mention Giovanni’s past?
“Sensitive in what way, Your Grace?” He asked, trying to be polite.
“Sensitive in relation to your past,” Grafton said quietly. “Your family.”
Giovanni’s heart shook at these words. He instantly recalled his childhood spent downstairs in a fine house, being the smallest and youngest person, lower than a servant, with no parents to fight for him and no family to speak of.
He was eager for information but also fearful of it.
He had been alone for so long. Even Beatrice and Silas had not been able to make up for his lack of family.
“What could you possibly know of my family, Grafton?” Giovanni asked, perhaps a little too sharply for a man in his position speaking to a duke. Grafton didn’t seem to notice, his eyes fixed on the tumbling water in the fountain.
“What do you know of your mother, Giovanni?” Grafton asked quietly.
Giovanni’s stomach lurched. He didn’t like to think of his mother. The housekeeper who had governed the house he lived in had often spoken about her, how unfortunate she was, and how it was all Giovanni’s fault that she had perished in childbirth.
“I might ask you the same question,” Giovanni asked cautiously. “What do you know?”
“Your mother…” he spoke slowly. “She was a maid in my father’s house in Italy.”
Giovanni’s heart stopped for a moment. He tried to understand Grafton’s words, but as he did, as he struggled, he knew it must be true.
He had only been seven years old when the grand house he had lived in had closed down, the old master returning to England.
He had never known the name of the lord who lived there, had simply been taken by the housekeeper to a workhouse in Rome, from which he had quickly found an escape to the streets.
Yet as he noticed the seal on the top of Grafton’s signet ring, the familiar interlacing of badgers and ravens, he recognized it from the distant memories he had.
He had lived seven years in the Duke of Grafton’s Italian home.
“She was,” Giovanni said slowly. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“It is my understanding that she died,” Grafton said bleakly. “In childbirth.”
So far, so correct, but Giovanni still did not feel like he could trust this man. Instead, he felt more suspicious that he had such an interest in such information.
“How do you know all this, Your Grace?” Giovanni asked.
“I am… familiar with the man by whom she became pregnant,” Grafton said. “He was a friend of mine.”