Not, Admittedly, Through the Front Door
(Starter for @mcstardently)
“Fammi capire bene,” Allow me to understand this correctly, Niccolò said for perhaps the sixth time, pressing two fingers against his temples as though he might physically keep his thoughts from escaping. A headache had plagued him since Francesca crossed his threshold, she regarded it as an unfortunate coincidence. “Sei stata maledetta da una…” You were cursed by a…
“Una strega,” A witch, Francesca supplied, with the patience of a teacher explaining the obvious to an exceptionally slow pupil. She packed fresh tobacco into her pipe, careful not to spill any upon the rug. “Abbiamo avuto una breve relazione. È finita… piuttosto male.” We entertained a brief affair. It concluded… rather badly.
“Hai fatto impiccare suo fratello.” “You got her brother executed.”
“È una ricostruzione inutilmente melodrammatica.” That is an unnecessarily dramatic interpretation.
“È l’unica possibile.” It is the only possible interpretation.
She struck the flint. The tobacco crackled softly before surrendering to flame, the first lungful burned agreeably. How lovely England was already.
“Stavamo conducendo una ricerca davvero straordinaria,” We were conducting rather extraordinary research together, she continued. “Lui era semplicemente l’elemento meno brillante della coppia.” He simply happened to be the less brilliant half of it.
A pillow struck her pipe, thrown with no more force than a sigh might carry, Francesca spluttered around a mouthful of smoke and lifted one middle finger in eloquent offence.
“È morto perché la Chiesa lo ha scambiato per me.” He died because the Church mistook him for me.
“L’hanno scambiato per te perché i tuoi esperimenti erano abbastanza blasfemi da mettere a disagio perfino Satana.” They mistook him because your experiments were blasphemous enough to make Satan uncomfortable.
“Secondo uomini convinti che lavarsi fosse un peccato.” According to men who believed bathing was sinful.
Niccolò looked heavenward, a saint long acquainted with impossible miracles.
“E poi,” And afterwards, Niccolò pressed on, insufferably composed, as though her entire ruin were some drawing-room amusement staged for his benefit. “la strega ti ha detto che soltanto il bacio del vero amore poteva salvarti.” the witch declared that only true love’s kiss could save you.
Francesca stared then she laughed, since the absurdity of it demanded some acknowledgement. She considered, briefly and with real affection, breaking his nose.
“Mi ha maledetta a morire, imbecille.” She cursed me to die, you imbecile.
Months before she fled Italy, Francesca had taken a lover whom the countryside named a witch. Whether the woman possessed any commerce with devils or spirits, Francesca never troubled herself to discover, she had loved too many remarkable people to be distracted by questions of sorcery.
If love, indeed, could be called the proper word. Curiosity had always proved stronger than attachment; she delighted in brilliant minds, in clever mouths, in hands that knew where to linger, she loved conversation that lasted until dawn and kisses that made reason briefly surrender, yet the instant affection demanded permanence, she departed before promises could be spoken aloud. Intimacy delighted her; dependence suffocated her. Every affair served as a pleasant interruption before she returned, wholly content, to the only devotion that had never disappointed her: her work.
Amala understood this better than most. Their parting might have resembled all the others had Francesca’s experiments remained concealed. Obsessed with dragging medicine beyond the timid reach of universities and priests alike, she pursued discoveries no respectable scholar dared acknowledge. Bodies disappeared, graves were disturbed, instruments and notes multiplied beneath candlelight.
Eventually someone noticed, and before Francesca could destroy the evidence, or offer herself in confession, suspicion settled upon Amala’s brother, Dante, instead. House Moretti possessed enough wealth to soften every accusation directed toward its daughter, the poor bastard possessed nothing.
The Church, ever practical in its cruelty, gave her a choice: stand trial and drag one of Italy’s great houses down with her, or disappear into a marriage convenient enough to let the scandal die quietly along with her maiden name. She accepted the marriage, simply because fugitives require time to flee.
She escaped, Dante never did.
When Francesca returned one final time before abandoning Italy forever, grief had hollowed the woman she once knew until scarcely anything recognisable remained. No tears, only a curse spoken with terrible calm: one year to learn what every human heart ought to know without instruction.
She had spent her life mistaking affection for diversion. People entered gladly enough; she welcomed them warmly; and when they desired more than borrowed evenings and passing tenderness, she left without looking behind.
She could open a man’s chest with immaculate precision; she had never learned how to remain beside someone after exposing her own.
The curse struck precisely where she possessed no armor—love as not the fever that consumed reason, but the quieter labour of placing another soul before one’s own without expecting pleasure, knowledge, or escape in return.
Fail before the year ended, and death would finish what loneliness had begun. Whether the words carried ancient magic or were merely the last cruelty of a broken-hearted woman, Francesca never discovered. Her reason insisted upon the latter, her sleepless nights believed the former. She told Niccolò everything before the salt of the Channel had even dried upon her boots.
Silence settled between them, comfortable as it had been since they were six. At last Niccolò leaned forward, resting his cheek upon one hand. “Ma tu vuoi bene alle persone,” But you do care about people.
Francesca mirrored him unconsciously. She always did, same birds they were.
“Vuoi bene a me,” You care for me, he pondered. Nicco was a man who did not believe in curses but loved her enough to entertain one. Francesca smoked so she would not weep. “A Vincenzo. Hai pianto mia madre più sinceramente di metà dei suoi parenti.” For Vincenzo. You mourned my mother more honestly than half her own relatives.
“È diverso.” It’s different.
“Perché siete la mia famiglia.” Because you’re my family.
She thought briefly of House Moretti. If every one of them vanished before sunrise, she doubted Heaven would receive so much as a single tear from her. Yet she still remembered Donna Anna’s funeral with painful clarity; the rain upon the cemetery stones, Niccolò standing rigid beside the grave, and herself weeping so violently she scarcely recognised the sound as her own.
“Credi davvero che diventare medico possa soddisfare… qualunque cosa sia questo patto?” Do you truly believe becoming a physician can satisfy… whatever bargain this is?
“Deve funzionare.” It has to work.
“I medici si dedicano agli estranei.” They devote themselves to strangers.
“E si fanno pagare profumatamente.” And they charge handsomely for it.
He laughed despite himself. “Sei impossibile.” You are impossible.
“Me l’hanno già detto.” I’ve been told as much.
Francesca smiled as he sighed. “Mi sto impegnando molto per prendere sul serio la tua imminente morte soprannaturale.” I am trying very hard to take your impending supernatural demise seriously.
“E apprezzo lo sforzo.” And I appreciate the effort.
He shook his head, she blew smoke his way merely because she could. “E come pensi di imparare questa miracolosa capacità di amare disinteressatamente?” And how exactly do you intend to learn this miraculous capacity for selfless love?
Francesca’s smile returned with dangerous brightness. “Tu mi aiuterai.” You shall assist.
“Lo davo per scontato.” I assumed as much.
“E anche un altro amico.” And another friend.
Niccolò blinked. “Francesca, tu hai due amici. Io sono uno dei due.” Francesca, you have two friends. I am one of them.
She rose in triumph, emptied her pipe into the hearth, and snatched his coat from the peg by the door. Time for an adventure!
“Ne ho tre.” I have three.
And Laurence, wherever he was tonight, had no notion of what was coming for him.
When Francesca turned twenty, she seduced a priest, acquired two tattoos, and forged the documents that would admit her into the all-male medical university in Rome.
Not, admittedly, in that particular order.
It was also the year she met two people who would come to haunt the better chapters of her life: Laurence, and his wife, Elise.
She was the fourth of five children, and the only daughter, raised less by her mother than by the procession of nuns who trailed her through the house like grey shadows, murmuring their prayers, correcting her posture, her voice, the very way she breathed. Her mother had dreamed once of a veil and a vow of silence for her only girl, though that dream had curdled the day Francesca was found in the confession booth with her mouth between another girl’s thighs. There had been little hope, after that, of a bright future among the clergy.
Her childhood was a lonely thing. The family estate was magnificent, as only old fortunes know how to be. Endless galleries swallowed footsteps whole, chandeliers glittered above polished marble, velvet drapes smothered the sunlight until every room seemed caught forever in the hour before dusk. There were libraries she was forbidden to empty, gardens she was forbidden to wander alone, drawing rooms that had forgotten laughter long before she was born.
Francesca was no fool. She understood precisely what privilege had purchased for her. Wealth cushioned every hardship; power opened every locked door, save the ones that mattered most. Yet no amount of luxury could warm a house where affection was rationed. Whenever memory dragged her back through those corridors, it carried with it the peculiar melancholy of abandoned cathedrals: beautiful enough to inspire awe, empty enough to echo.
As a child, her brothers were her only companions. Andrea, Giuseppe and Pietro filled the halls with reckless joy, racing one another until servants cried out in protest, wrestling in the gardens, climbing trees with torn sleeves and bloodied knees. Francesca chased after them until she, too, was caught.
A lady does not run. A lady does not wrestle. A lady does not shout. A lady does not make a fool of herself.
How marvelous, then, to be a fool.
A jester may mock a king to his very face and walk from the hall unscathed, protected not by strength but by the absurdity granted him. Francesca wanted that. Wanted to be so unaccountable, so unbound by what she was supposed to be, that nothing could touch her.
She begged to study medicine. Once—only once—she fell to her knees before her mother, pleading with all the desperation youth mistakes for persuasion. She spoke of anatomy, of surgery, of knowledge hidden behind doors that opened only for men. She begged until her mother’s hand found her shoulder and pushed her back, told her to go to her room and not speak of it again.
It was the last day Francesca ever looked at her with admiration.
Money could purchase silence. Time could produce convincing forgeries. A tailor’s shears, tightly bound linen, and clothes cut for narrower shoulders accomplished the rest. Her hair disappeared beneath a cap, her voice settled into measured reserve, and the world saw what it expected to see: not a woman, but an unusually delicate young man. She walked through the university gates a stranger to herself, and the men around her took her for nothing stranger than a soft-faced boy, pretty enough to be teased for it, never suspected for it.
Then she met Laurence. Quite naked, in fact.
There are few disguises capable of surviving a shared bath. Laurence discovered her secret with remarkable speed after that. It was, Francesca would later insist, a thoroughly inconvenient way to make a lifelong friend.
Her foot caught on a loose brick, and for one precarious heartbeat she teetered above the alley. The wind seized Nicco’s oversized coat, unfurling it behind her like the wings of some ungodly creature risen from the chimneys. The thought sent a grin creeping across her face.
Perhaps some sleepless soul would glance upward and mistake her for a monstrous bat, or better yet, a burglar!
She balanced her hip upon the windowsill, rapping once with a knuckle before trying the latch, more from habit than hope. It gave at once, sliding open without protest, and Francesca felt something like betrayal at how easily the night let her in. What virtue was there in a door that did not fight you?
“Laurence?” The name came out a scream dressed as a whisper, and she climbed through into the dark room as though she owned it. If the anatomy texts scattered like fallen leaves and the shadow she’d glimpsed from the garden wall were any proof, this was his lair and no other. “Laulau?”
Satisfied, Francesca claimed his desk chair as though she owned the house wincing as its feet shrieked against the floorboards, a sound fit to wake the dead, or at least the whole of fashionable London. Brilliant, Fran. Do announce yourself to the entire street while you’re at it.
Undeterred, she tugged open a drawer and began nosing through his papers with shameless curiosity, holding each page to the candlelight as though she had every right to inspect a gentleman’s secrets.
She was halfway through deciphering an indecipherable diagram of muscles and Latin when a familiar figure darkened the doorway.
“Laurence!” The papers scattered as she launched herself across the room. She collided with him with enough enthusiasm to send them both staggering backward, laughter bubbling from her lips as she wrapped her arms around him. “I’ve missed you terribly! How is Elise? And dear Vivi? It’s been an age!”
She finally leaned back just enough to inspect his face, narrowing her eyes with exaggerated suspicion.
“…And why do you look as though you’ve just seen a ghost?”
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stormborns
