The Second Duchess (37 page)

“The tertiary!” I burst out. “But I have seen her! When I was here before, praying in the choir, she came in and prayed at Duchess Lucrezia’s tomb.”

“And she visited the duchess the night of her death, after I left the monastery?” the duke demanded. I could see this was new to him; for the first time there was a spark of interest in his eyes.

“Yes,” Sister Orsola said. “She was in the duchess’s cell for an hour, at least, because she was there when I left for vespers, and still there when I came back. Whatever they were doing in there, they were very quiet together. Every so often they’d laugh. Then she came out and wished me good night and went away, and I didn’t see her again, not for months. I hardly knew her when I saw her again, looking like an old woman and wearing a tertiary’s black dress.”

“I want that woman detained, the next time she comes to the monastery,” the duke said to Mother Eleonora. “She may be the key to this entire matter. Very well, Sister. So this Tommasina spent at least an hour with the duchess that night. Was the duchess alive when she left?”

“Oh, yes, alive and excited. Unnatural excited. She told me all her troubles were over, and she would soon be free.”

The duke and I looked at each other. The young duchess’s statements could be taken to mean she meant to end her life with a flask of poison already in her possession. They could also mean the woman Tommasina had brought her the abortifacient potion at last.

“Then what did you do?” I asked.

“I locked the door and went to bed,” Sister Orsola said with a touch of her old truculence. “The next morning Sister Addolorata called me to come look at her, and I saw she was dead, and that was that.”

“You saw nothing out of the ordinary?”

“Just you claiming she wasn’t dead when she was, tricking the priest into giving her the holy unction, and then your pet physician rushing in to pronounce her to be dead again.”

The duke lifted his eyebrows slightly; it was clear he was regretting his promise to Sister Orsola that she might speak as she wished. “You may speak the truth without fear, Sister, but you had best keep a civil tongue in your head when you do,” he said in a deceptively mild tone. “What you have said is essentially correct.
Mia zia?
Have you anything to add?”

Mother Eleonora blinked and put down her cup. “No,” she said. “But I still cannot understand how Sister Orsola was letting the
parruchiera
in and out. I know she did not ask me for the key that night, not until after vespers.”

“Yes, I did, Mother Abbess. You have just forgotten.”

“I am sure you did not.”

Obviously Sister Orsola could have slipped into Mother Eleonora’s chamber any night, taken the key, and probably danced a
Gratiosa
stark naked on the table without the abbess being aware of it in her wine-sodden sleep. The duke seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“That is enough for now,” he said. “
Mia zia
, remember I wish you to detain the tertiary the next time she comes to the monastery. Do not frighten her. Just hold her, and send for me at once.”

The abbess’s tawny eyes had become dulled with wine. What had it been like for her, I wondered, being shut up in the monastery like a tame kitchen-cat when she clearly had a lioness’s eyes and a lioness’s heart? I wondered if she’d ever actually had a vocation for the monastic life, or if she’d simply been sent to Corpus Domini at the order of her mother and father. “It shall be done,
mio caro
,” she said. “May God go with you. And with you as well, of course, Madonna Barbara.”

With that we made our farewells. I wondered if Mother Eleonora knew more about the mysterious Tommasina than she had given us to believe, and if she—or for that matter, Sister Orsola—could be trusted not to warn the tertiary away from the monastery. I knew Sister Orsola had been lying about some of the things she had told us, but which?

A fine mist of rain greeted us upon our short ride back to the Palazzo della Corte, and the duke’s mood seemed as chill as the weather.

“I remember the hairdresser more clearly now,” he said. “At least I remember her father. He is an alchemist, a favorite of Cosimo de’ Medici, and it was for his sake this Tommasina received her place in Duchess Lucrezia’s household.”

We clopped on for a moment in the rain.

“An alchemist,” I said thoughtfully. “Potions such as the one the duchess wanted are generally made by women, and in secret, for fear of the church’s wrath. But if he loved his daughter, and she begged him—he could have done it, and his daughter could have given it to the duchess.”

Another period of silence.

“I do not trust the infirmarian not to warn the tertiary away,” the duke said. “And I do not believe everything she says. As for my aunt, she is afraid. She lives a life of comfort and idle gossip, and I think she fears she will be forced to give it up if anything untoward is proved against one of her nuns. Or even against a tertiary attached to her community.”

“I agree, my lord, upon both points.”

“I will set guards to watch the monastery, then, and arrest the tertiary when she appears.”

“An excellent plan.”

The rain worsened, and we left off further attempts at conversation. It was only after we had arrived at the Palazzo that I remembered—my surprise at learning the identity of the tertiary had led me to forget my curiosity about just what, other than cake, Sister Orsola had shared with Lucrezia de’ Medici.

 

 

After I was dead, Alfonso gathered up the pieces and put them in that coffer, with my untouched white cloths and my
giocattoli
and the rock-crystal flask, whole and perfect. I wonder if la Cavalla will be clever enough to put those bits of information together and deduce I didn’t have the flask yet when Alfonso and I quarreled. It’s proof, right before her long imperial nose, that Tommasina brought me the flask.

F
or the rest of that day and the next I was occupied with preparations for the last week of Carnival. In Ferrara Carnival actually began on Saint Stephen’s Day, the day after Christmas, but the greatest of the pageants and revels were reserved for Shrovetide, the final week before Lent. I dealt with silkmakers and jewelers, dressmakers and perfumers, all clamoring to serve the duke’s new duchess. I was expected to dazzle all eyes with my costumes, particularly the white-and-silver fantasy I would wear for the nighttime revels on Shrove Thursday, the Berlingaccio.

The third day with no news from Corpus Domini dawned again cold and gray with sleet mixed with the Ferrarese fogs. I had two fires burning in my presence chamber. A silk merchant had just unrolled a magnificent bolt of silver tissue, so fine it was half-transparent, when Domenica scratched at the door and came in.

“Messer Giovanni Pigna is without, Serenissima,” she said. “He says the duke requires you at once in his
studiolo
.”

Had they arrested the tertiary at last?

“You must excuse me, Messer Salvestro,” I said. “Apply to Donna Katharina, if you please, to arrange another audience, and do not show that silver tissue to any other lady in the court. Domenica, Christine, attend me, please.”

Outside my door people clustered—talking, singing, making assignations, hoping for audiences and favors. Outside the duke’s apartments it was the same. I saw the duke’s sister Nora sitting in a window-bay with the poet Tasso leaning close to her, his dark curls falling over his forehead. Everything about his pose made it clear he was attending her for duty’s sake, nothing more; on the other hand, Nora looked well and happy for the first time since I had arrived in Ferrara, and when I caught her eye she had the grace to look guilty. A few steps farther on, Messer Bernardo Canigiani was deep in conversation with the Venetian ambassador. He bowed with mocking precision as I passed by. I ignored him.

When I arrived at the duke’s apartments, two of his gentlemen opened the doors for me with clockwork precision. I nodded to Domenica and Christine to remain in the anteroom, and I went into the
studiolo
with Messer Giovanni close behind me. The first thing I saw was a pair of—well, I did not know what to call them. They were not the well-trained, smartly turned-out men-at-arms I was accustomed to; they were hulking fellows in frieze and leather with a miasma of the dungeons about them. The taller one had a coil of coarse rope looped around his shoulder. In the shifting light of the candle-branches, the two figures might have risen straight from Messer Dante’s inferno.

“Ah, there you are, Madonna,” the duke said. His courtesy was unfailingly exquisite in the presence of others, but at the same time—what? Threatening? There was always that faint mocking indentation at one corner of his mouth, as if to say
I play the part of the considerate husband because it amuses me to do so, for the moment at least
. “Be seated, if you please.” Then to his secretary, “Messer Giovanni, you will take down our questions and the prisoner’s answers.”

The tertiary stood in the center of the room, her hands clasped before her, looking straight ahead at nothing. She was just as I remembered her, a small, thin woman in a black gown and veil. Her head-covering had been pushed back and her dark hair was disarranged, but other than that, she did not appear to have been mistreated. She was younger than I had expected her to be. Now that I could see her face clearly—what was it that was so fleetingly familiar about her?

I nodded to her briefly and sat. The secretary spread out a piece of paper on the duke’s gleaming rosewood-and-ebony writing-table, dipped his pen in a bottle of ink, and began to write. The scratching sound of the quill against the paper seemed unnaturally loud. Having satisfied himself we were both under his command, the duke turned his attention to his prisoner.

“You, woman. You were Serenissima Lucrezia’s
parruchiera
, is that not so? What is your name?”

“Tommasina Vasari,” the tertiary said. Her voice and expression were sullen. “And I was more than her
parruchiera
. I was her
amica
, her special friend.”

“What made you her special friend?”

“I wrote her letters. I brought letters to her and read them for her. Private letters.”

Letters from her lovers, I thought.

“Very well.” The duke’s voice had that dangerous gentle quality. He had deduced the same thing: this woman had secretly helped his young wife betray him. “You were first arrested on the day the duchess was taken to Corpus Domini. In the courtyard outside the kitchen gardens, is that not so? Hiding among the fruit trees covered in mud like a scullery-slut who had been digging onions.”