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“That, yes,” Enzo admitted. “But there’s also a bath here.”
Fiore stared at him. “In this house, you mean.”
Enzo nodded.
Fiore knew he’d explored a mere fraction of the palazzo in the course of his convalescence. Even so, he’d never dreamed so far as this. On reflection, however, he recalled Enzo’s reluctance to enter a public bathhouse on account of his peculiarity. He’d assumed this meant Enzo had resigned himself to stand-up washes and hip-baths. But of course a duke must have more amenities.
“Shall I show you?” Enzo asked, drawing Fiore out of his bewildered musings.
“Please,” Fiore said—perhaps a bit too eagerly, but a month and a half without a proper bath had worn him down in ways he hadn’t realized until the prospect dangled before him once more.
Enzo proved no less eager. He beamed all the way out of the bedchamber and down the myriad corridors to a door hitherto unseen by Fiore’s eyes. Fiore, swathed in Enzo’s wrapping-gown, felt a touch queer walking about without the support of bandages against his abdomen. The support of Enzo’s arm twined with his own, however, certainly helped matters.
The door—broader than the full span of Fiore’s own arms, thicker than the breadth of his palm, carved up in bas-relief serpentine scales, like all the other doors in Ca’ Scaevola—opened into a paradise.
Ample sunshine beamed down through the vaulted ceiling of frosted glass panes and shone over the soft hues of the marble walls and floor. Pink and gold stone accented the soft white that made up the bulk of the chamber, far brighter than the rest of Ca’ Scaevola. The marble floor, Fiore noted even through his shoes, held heat just like the caldarium of the public baths. A plunge pool, miniature compared to the public baths Fiore was used to but enormous when contrasted against any other private residence, sunk into the floor in the room’s center. An artificial waterfall kept it filled and perpetually flowing. A smaller pool—one which could fit perhaps two people, or three, Fiore thought, if they proved particularly determined—tucked away into a corner, guarded by a white marble statue of Bellenos in mortal guise emerging from a carved cloud of seafoam. Bronze dolphins poised to spew water into the smaller bath; Fiore had seen porpoises leaping in the lagoon and knew full well they looked nothing like the scaled and beaked creatures here, but heraldic tradition prevailed, he supposed. A bronze tray laid across a marble bench held folded towels, olive oil, soap, and strigil.
As Fiore took in the sights, Enzo explained how, somewhere within the palazzo, a glass prism magnified the sun’s power and concentrated it on a particular point to boil the water drawn in from the lagoon at high tide, which, becoming steam, then condensed on its journey through the pipes and came down from the spouts as pure, distilled freshwater.
Fiore hadn’t even remotely asked but appreciated the explanation regardless; all the moreso for Enzo’s evident joy in divulging it.
“Furthermore,” Enzo concluded, “swimming is the ideal invalid exercise. The body may regain its strength gradually without the burden of supporting its own weight.”
Fiore didn’t know enough anatomy or medicine to confirm or deny that off-hand. He was, however, more than willing to experiment.
Enzo led him to the smaller bath. Steam arose as the bronze dolphins gushed forth. Beneath Bellenos’s eternal gaze, Fiore shrugged the wrapping-gown off into Enzo’s hands and slipped into the water.
In all aspects of Fiore’s care, Enzo had proved meticulous and attentive. From the moment Fiore had first complained of pain, Enzo had massaged and gently manipulated the joints that had twisted out of place in the twelve-odd hours Fiore had spent tied up. Thus far it’d helped a great deal.
The hot bath improved matters further still. Slipping beneath the waters released tension in muscles whose pain Fiore had taken for granted. His eyes fell shut and a satisfied groan escaped him as he leaned back against the marble rim.
“Good?” Enzo asked.
Words had escaped Fiore, but he mustered up some affirmative noises as he nodded.
Fiore knew not how long he lay simply soaking in the restorative waters. A slight splash prompted him to open his eyes, whereupon he found Enzo stripped to the waist and in the midst of filling a bronze ewer from the bath.
Enzo set the full ewer down and held up a bar of soap embedded with rose petals. Catching Fiore’s gaze, he enquired, “If I may…?”
A lackadaisical grin spread across Fiore’s lips. He held out his arm for Enzo to lather.
Enzo hadn’t shied away from touching Fiore after his rescue—much to Fiore’s relief—but his touch had remained… chirurgical, for lack of a better word. It became affectionate only when Fiore insinuated himself into Enzo’s grasp. And even then, while comforting, it remained chaste.
Now, however, with the warm water and the rose-scented soap and Enzo’s hands lovingly burnishing filth and pain alike away from his flesh, Fiore thought he might persuade Enzo into something more.
“The plunge pool?” Fiore suggested when Enzo had scrubbed and sluiced the whole of him.
Enzo brightened. “If you’re feeling up to it.”
Fiore would arise to any occasion if it meant he could have Enzo alongside him. And indeed, Enzo wrapped him up in linen towels—lest he catch cold whilst crossing the room, Fiore assumed—and led him arm-in-arm to the plunge pool.
The pool proved cool and refreshing after the hot bath. Fiore sat down on the steps leading into deeper waters and let the gentle waves lap at his waist. He glanced back at Enzo with the words to entice him to join poised on his tongue.
At the very moment Enzo finished stripping off his drawers and dove in.
Fiore grinned even as he flung up an arm to ward off the splash. There was little enough of that—Enzo dove beautifully. Neptune himself couldn’t ask for better.
While Fiore’s body had been on display for Enzo and chirurgeons alike over and over again for the past month-and-a-half, he hadn’t had a chance to drink in the sight of Enzo’s nude form for a good long while. To have Enzo bare before him now, lithe and lean and as graceful beneath the water as above it, his dark locks pouring down from his crown like ink as he arose to meet Fiore again.
