Leporello on the Lam Read online

  Title Page

  LEPORELLO ON THE LAM

  By

  William Stafford

  Publisher Information

  Leporello on the Lam published in 2012

  by Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Copyright © William Stafford 2012

  The right of William Stafford to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Dedication

  For my folks

  I miss them

  Leporello on the Lam

  I went to the church. Yes, that is how I am going to begin my story. It’s as good a place as any. It wasn’t my intention, when I set off, to go to the church; my first thought had been to head to the inn at the crossroads – there I’d be more likely to find a prospective employer but my feet must’ve had other ideas because there I was! I found myself outside the church.

  It was quiet, it not being a Sunday and there wouldn’t be a mass for a good few hours yet. I sort of wandered around aimlessly in the little graveyard, gazing up at the tower, wondering what my next move might be. Why had I come here, of all places?

  Perhaps I was hoping to find some kind of expert opinion. A know-it-all who could tell me it all. What I had witnessed, what had happened to my master, needed explanation and I thought perhaps the church was the best place for that.

  I approached the heavy oaken door with the iron hasps and knocked – Who knocks on a church door?- There was, of course, no answer. There was nobody home. Not even Our Lord who, purportedly, keeps houses such as this all over Ispagna.

  I sat on the stone steps and waited – For what? For whom? Yet I couldn’t tear myself away. I needed an answer.

  Presently, (I don’t know how long after I sat down and I might have nodded off; come on, I’d been up all night and it was the hottest part of the day, I’m allowed a little siesta, no?) I became aware that a shadow had fallen across me, blocking the afternoon sun from my head. There was the portly figure of Father Lorenzo.

  ”What are you doing here?” His tone was unwelcoming, to say the least.

  Rubbing my eyes, I got to my feet, arching my back, which creaked audibly. (I’m falling apart. It’s no wonder, what I’ve been through). Father Lorenzo’s tiny eyes glared at me, like smouldering embers that had fallen onto the fleshy cushions of his face. I’d seen that look many times as a boy when he’d catch me giggling inappropriately during one of his interminable sermons. I knew he could become aflame with rage at any second. I stepped back involuntarily and collided with the door. This gave me quite a knock to the back of my head. Unfortunately as I stepped away from the offending oak, Father Lorenzo chose to take a step towards me in that intimidating manner he employs to keep his flock in order, and, well, the outcome was, I head butted the fat cleric right on the nose.

  He roared in pain and spat out a string of saints’ names, casting doubt upon their parentage. I tried to placate him, to calm him down so we could assess any damage he may have incurred from my poor noggin but, what with the heat of the sun, my general drowsiness, standing up too quickly and having had neither breakfast nor lunch, my poor noggin was in no fit state to assess anything. Neither could it keep me perpendicular. I flailed around and dropped to the step. Unfortunately my arms had somehow got entangled in his cassock and down he came on top of me like the sun falling from the sky.

  Everything went dark.

  ***

  ”You’ve always been a bloody idiot and a fool, Leporello,” Father Lorenzo grumbled. He was dabbing at his nose with a damp handkerchief. He’d doused it in the font as soon as he’d clambered off me and got the door open, leaving me like a trampled insect on the threshold. I’d followed him in - Ah, the delicious chill that strikes you when you enter a church from the heat of an afternoon! Some say it is Our Lord catching our attention, reminding us we are in His house. I think it has more to do with the thick walls of old stone and the fact that not much sunshine can penetrate the pretty panes of stained glass.

  I was leaning against the door frame of the vestry – I daren’t penetrate his inner sanctum – Ha! And there was the inappropriate giggling, just like when I was a boy. Something about Our Lord’s house makes me ticklish. It’s as though He wants me to get into trouble – which, I guess is true wherever I go and not just when I’m paying Him a visit.

  ”I thought you were a wrong ‘un when you were but a boy and you have done nothing in subsequent years to disabuse me of my initial assessment. I thought putting you forward for steady employment would settle your skittish ways and you’d become a decent man at last but it seems I was less than infallible on that score as well.”

  I felt like I should interject. Yes, it was true he had presented me up at the Big House when I was twelve and the Old Master had agreed to let me sleep on the kitchen floor and turn his spit for him but let’s not pretend it was a retreat in a monastery. Not by any stretch of my overactive imagination. Then, realising I was the same age as the only son and heir, the Old Master had dragged me off the kitchen floor and had me schooled alongside the boy who would grow to be my master. It was something to do with the son learning better with a classmate, I don’t know. The arrangement worked well to begin with. I learned my alphabets and arithmetic and something of the classics but, as manhood blossomed like an inevitable mushroom, I more often than not became a scapegoat for the young master’s transgressions and an alibi for when he was missing from his studies and in the closet, fucking the governess.

  ”Let’s be honest with ourselves,” Father Lorenzo continued, warming to his theme. How lucky I was to receive my own private sermon! “In recent years, neither you nor your profligate master have covered yourself in glory, have you? Running amok around the countryside! Parties, endless parties! Gaming! Womanising! Hardly an example to set to the lower orders.”

  Again I wanted to interrupt. Womanising? Me? The chance would have been a fine thing. I was always like the boy on the village green, never picked for the games, holding his friend’s coat.

  ”So what you’re doing here all of sudden and out of the blue, I can’t begin to imagine. What has he sent you here for, eh? What could the great Don Giovanni possibly require of me, a humble servant of Our Lord? Well, whatever it is, you can tell him from me and from Our Lord that he can go to Hell.”

  ”That’s just it,” I spluttered, managing to get a few syllables in sideways. “That’s exactly where he is.”

  ***

  I told him everything, as best as I could frame words to describe it. He asked if I’d like to tell my story through the protection of the confessional and perhaps I should have taken him up on that – without it, he was free to do what he wished with the information.

  ”Hmm,” he said, pouring himself his third goblet of communion wine. “It’s all a load of poppycock, you do realise?”

  ”What is? Our Lord’s passion? The resurrection? Our salvation?”

  ”Your story, you fool!” Drops of wine sprayed from his plump lips. “Stone statues coming to dinner! Invisible choirs of demons! The floor opening up, swallowing a man and then closing again with not a mark upon it! You should be publishing scary tales for children. You always did let your imagination run aw
ay with you. You’re a fool and will remain so!”

  ”So, you don’t believe me.” It wasn’t a question.

  ”Do you take me to be a fool as well? Of course I don’t believe you. No one in his right mind would. Take a tip from me, Leporello. Keep this kind of nonsense to yourself unless you wish to find yourself ostracised or worse: burned as a heretic. In this day and age it pays to keep mum about such things and stick to the scripture word for word. Now, come here that I might bless you.”

  I hesitated. He pointed imperiously at the floor by his feet and I knelt there. The cold of the flagstones found a new hole in my breeches I was hitherto unaware of. It was this that caused me to shiver not the sweaty slab of Father Lorenzo’s hand clamped on my forehead. He muttered something under his breath. It may have been a blessing but could just as easily have been a curse – although if he had been in the mood to curse me, I’m sure Father Lorenzo would have made more of a song and dance about it.

  I looked up at him. His eyes were closed – he was not without his notions of the theatrical – and I could see his nose was still red and swollen from the blow my brow had visited upon it. I had to suppress another giggle. I guess he took this to be me trembling at the power of Our Lord – or whatever it is that’s supposed to happen; I’ve never felt it, that’s all I’m saying. If you have, well, good for you, I say. Good for you.

  I was beginning to wonder how long this blessing-or-cursing was going to take when Father Lorenzo’s head lolled back on his shoulders. He oinked out a little snore and also, unfortunately for me on my knees at the time, let out a thunderous and malodorous (is there another kind? A fragrant?) fart that rippled the fabric of his cassock like wind in the sails of a galleon. I had to hold my nose to protect myself from the unholy stench and bite on my hand to stifle the laughter that was bubbling up within me like overheated fat in a pan.

  ”Oh! I’m sorry!” The voice behind me belonged to the spindly spinster, Donna Flavia. She was in the open doorway, come no doubt, to play the organ for the evening mass. I realised at once what the situation must have looked like from her point of view. Father Lorenzo, seated with his eyes closed and head back, me on my knees before him.

  Oh, dear!

  I threw back my head and laughed like a gargoyle in a downpour. The scandalised Donna Flavia strode from the doorway and set to bashing out loud chords from her instrument. Father Lorenzo dozed on.

  Perhaps I would soon be joining my master after all.

  ***

  It was all too clear to me that Father Lorenzo didn’t want to speak about what had happened at my master’s house. He might preach a good hellfire-and-damnation but when it comes to actual experience of it, he’s not interested. He told me if I stayed around for the evening mass he would provide supper and a bed for a night, then I would have to be on my way – which suited me. I wasn’t going to get the answer I needed from him.

  He told me that if I wanted to help out, I could take the collection, hastily adding that he meant I could pass the plate around the congregation and not that I could pocket the money.

  All through the service, I lingered at the back of the church. From my vantage point I was unable to see her face but I could tell that from her bench at the organ, Donna Flavia was sending Father Lorenzo the dirtiest of looks from under her bonnet, like Zeus chucking thunderbolts.

  I did my bit with the collection plate but not even the crisp whiteness of the alb I’d been given could remedy my grizzled appearance. I hadn’t shaved for days, let alone slept. There were dark saddlebags beneath my eyes, which were bloodshot and weary from having seen too much. The members of the congregation (what few of them there were – standards are slipping all around, it seems) recoiled from the plate before dropping in coins of the smaller denominations at arm’s length, as though they might fall foul of some pestilence.

  I guess I put the ‘leper’ in Leporello. Well, that doesn’t quite work but I was worn out, remember. Show me some charity.

  Some of them I think I recognised from that churl Masetto’s wedding party. They couldn’t meet my gaze. Perhaps they thought I’d ask them to cough up for all the wine they guzzled at my master’s expense. Perhaps they felt a little ashamed for taking advantage of his hospitality and then turning against him. I’d like to think that was the case. Perhaps they’d heard what happened and believed I would lead the stone man to their door and they too would be dragged off to Hell for their wicked, wicked ways. That would explain their attendance at a mid-week mass.

  The nobility were conspicuous by their absence. Their reserved pews at the front, all upholstered and perfumed, were devoid of noble arse, and the lower orders had to squirm and shift about on the uncomfortable and splintering wooden forms behind. It is the way of the world. I suppose we less-privileged many should be grateful to be allowed in the same church, to mumble our worship of the same god, and not be bundled into some shed somewhere to sing the praises of a lesser deity.

  When it was all over and everyone had shuffled out, their consciences temporarily clear again, I went “backstage” and wriggled out of the surplice – I no longer needed to wear it. It was surplice to requirements – oh, come on! That wasn’t bad, considering...

  For a moment my vision was obscured as I pulled the garment over my head. I felt a hand on my arm. I wondered if I was to be frisked for the collection plate – which was probably worth more than all the coins I’d gathered on it - but with the alb clear of my head, I saw the hand belonged to Donna Flavia. Her lips were still set in the grim expression of before but her eyes looked at me with something like kindness. Or she might have been fighting back a sneeze, I don’t know; I have always been rubbish at reading women.

  ”Father Lorenzo has told me something of your plight,” she spoke in clipped tones. You get that with that lot, don’t you? as if opening their mouths to speak is too much trouble or too bloody vulgar. On reflection she could have been trying not to breathe in my body odour – Did I mention I haven’t slept for days? And as for bathing, forget about it. “You are to accompany me. I have employment for you but we shall discuss that in the morning. Tonight you will sleep, wash and perhaps there is some bread and cheese for your supper.”

  Sleeping and washing I could probably stave off a while longer but the mere mention of bread and cheese caused my empty stomach to perform cartwheels within me.

  ”Then it is settled,” Donna Flavia nodded and swept from the vestry, fanning herself and at last allowing herself to breathe. I looked around for Father Lorenzo but that fat lot of good had pissed off, probably thanking Our Lord for ridding him of a villain.

  I put the collection plate out of sight in the closet. I didn’t want any Tomaso, Ricardo or, um, Harry to come in and help himself. Perhaps Father Lorenzo would be back to lock up. Perhaps he was somewhere in the building, waiting until I had left. Whatever. I was moving on to a new opportunity. Perhaps my new position would distract me from my questions and that way I would find peace of mind.

  I was puzzled to find Donna Flavia waiting outside the church – I mean, that’s where I expected to find her, sure enough, but she was just standing there. Where was her carriage? Her coachman? Her horses?

  ”It’s not far,” she said, sounding more than a little shy. She was gazing at some invisible little thing on her cloak.

  ”To your carriage?”

  ”To my house!”

  ”Oh.”

  And then I remembered: Donna Flavia was nobility in name alone. Some ill fortune had befallen her and she had lost just about everything. I didn’t know any details (I do now, but I don’t want to spoil things for you, you’ll just have to be patient and patience, as you must know, is a virtue. See how I’m making you a better person already!)

  ”Please walk ahead of me.” She was unable to look me in the face. The boldness she had displayed within Our Lord’s house was gone now we wer
e outdoors and in plain view, for it was not quite sunset on that summer evening. All anyone would think was that she didn’t want to be seen with me – and they would be correct.

  ”I don’t know the way.”

  ”You will address me as Donna Flavia or as Milady!”

  ”Very well, Milady. But I still don’t know the way. Perhaps I should walk behind.”

  ”A woman in my position leading a – a- servant?” The suggestion brought back a little of the fire to her features. She fanned herself again but this only fuelled the flames of her agitation. “No, no, you must walk ahead. I will direct you. It is not far. All will be well.”

  I thought of a couple of the choicer swearwords but I gave her a deferential nod.

  ”Yes, Milady. This way?”

  I set off along the lane but she called me back. I say “called” but it was more of a hissing, as though someone was letting the air out of a snake. I turned around to see her jerking her bonnet in the other direction. I dipped my head in apology and set off in that other direction. I could hear the rustling fabric of her frock as she followed me.

  ”Not so fast, damn your legs!” she somehow managed to expel the words through gritted teeth and pursed lips. “And don’t turn around!”

  Obligingly, I slowed my pace and her complaining ceased.

  Presently, the lane branched into three. I stopped.

  ”Left, right or up the middle?” I asked, without turning around. Answer came there none. I asked again, raising my voice a little. I guessed what might be wrong so I added “Milady” to my query. When she still didn’t respond I dared (how dare I!?) to look over my shoulder.

  She wasn’t there.

  ”Milady!” I hurried back along the way we had come. I found her in a ditch on her back with her legs in the air, petticoats and undergarments catching the last light of the setting sun. She looked like a beached and upturned sailing vessel. I clambered down into the ditch.