The Second Duchess (41 page)

“Do you think now,” he said, in a thickened voice unlike anything I had ever heard before, “I would have been wrong to kill her? ”

I swallowed. “No,” I whispered. “But I am glad you did not.”

Methodically he began to cut the little painting to pieces. The winged pommel of the dagger glistened in the candlelight; the room itself had darkened as the sun had gone down, and the flashes of light from the damascened gold seemed to make the device of Henri II leap and play in the air. The scene caught me and held me; I counted the flashes. The cuts. Ten. Twelve. Fifteen
.
Finally I became aware of what I was doing, and to break the spell I forced myself to say, “My lord. The dagger. You will dull its point. Tell me about it—did it belong to your cousin the French king?”

He stopped. After a moment he brushed the pieces of canvas and broken paint to one side. There were crisscrossed slash marks on the wood of his beautiful table, but I suspected they would not matter; he would have the table itself broken up and burned and a new one put in its place.

He held the dagger out to me, and I took it. The hilt was surmounted by a pommel in the shape of two round gold medallions, each set at an angle to the grip itself so they spread apart like wings. These medallions were engraved with the capital
H
and double crescents that were the device of Henri II; the same device was etched into the damascening of the grip and the upper portion of the blade itself. The blade came to a needlelike point and had a single sharpened edge.

“I shall have to have it resharpened,” the duke said. His voice had returned to its usual cool, rather distant clarity. “Yes, it belonged to Henri. It is called a
poignard d’oreilles
, an eared dagger, because of the round medallions on the pommel—some say they look like ears.”

“It reminds you of your time in France.”

“It reminds me of the way he died. He was injured in a joust, when a lance splintered—we were celebrating his daughter’s marriage, and it was all an accident, a meaningless accident, but the splinters pierced his eye. The physicians were helpless, and he died in agony after ten days.”

“I am so sorry, my lord.”

“At any moment, such an accident can happen. At any moment, a lance can splinter. I loved him, yes, more than my own father, but that is not why I keep the dagger close. It is my
memento mori
—my reminder that for all my blood and wealth and possessions, I too must die.”

That gave me a chill. Silently I handed the dagger back to him, and he returned it to his jeweled sheath.

“I have never told anyone of that,” he said. “You, Madonna, are the first.”

I bowed my head. The weight of what he had told me felt as if it would crush me. At the same time my heart lifted with pleasure that he would trust me with such a thing.

“Now, since I have told you that,” he said, “I will tell you the other thing the dagger means to me. I am related by blood to kings, and I have ambition that reaches beyond Ferrara. I make no secret of it.” Once again he swept his hand over the knife-scarred writing-table and scattered the last fragments of the painting of Lucrezia de’ Medici to the floor. “She was a pawnbroker’s daughter, fit for nothing but the stews. You, Madonna, are fit to wear a crown.”

For a moment I felt as if he had struck me. Then with one great pulse my heart leaped in my breast and regained its rhythm.

He caught me under the arms. Our open mouths came together, hard and hot, without words. Crowns? Ambitions? Pride? I forgot them, and I think he did, too, for a few moments at least. We clawed at each other, silk, velvet, jewels, linen, then skin, hot living skin, oh, Holy Virgin, the taste and scent of it, the textures, smooth and rough. I sank my teeth into his shoulder with a groan of delight. The ruined wood of the duke’s writing-table pressed against my back. I looked up at him, meeting his eyes, and in that one moment at last we were equals, two of one kind.

I sank my fingernails into his arms and said, “Alfonso.”

He kissed me. It consumed everything I was thinking like a sheet of flame. I would say he took me, but the truth is we took each other. It was unlike anything we had done before. I was beyond caring, beyond shame, beyond delicacy. I felt all my muscles straining and stiffening, as if my flesh were beyond my own control, as if I were trying to fly.

The woman in the book’s engraving, her face wild with ecstasy, her eyes rolled back, her arms thrown wide. Did I look like that?

Yes. I think I did.

I flew. I screamed.

Never once did he speak my name.

 

 

“ARREST THE PAINTER.”

It was the duke’s voice. I came to myself with a jolt, and in horror clutched for my clothing. I felt inexplicably enervated and drowsy. The duke, fully dressed and self-composed, stood at the doorway speaking to someone in the outer room. I could not make out the other voice.

“I am aware he is a Franciscan. Do you question my order?”

I struggled with my dress. The laces of the sleeves were torn.

“Good. You are dismissed.”

He closed the door. I managed to get to my feet.

“I will need my women,” I said. My voice sounded hoarse and my throat burned. Had I screamed so much? “I cannot dress myself alone so that I am fit to be seen.”

“In a moment.”

We looked at each other. I looked away first.

“You are having Frà Pandolf arrested,” I said stupidly.

“Yes.”

“She loved him. One can see it, in the painting.”

That was a wrong thing to say. The duke’s expression darkened. “Love is a chimera of poets and adulteresses,” he said. “She lusted for him, nothing more.”

“Whatever she felt, then.” I could not bring myself to speak Lucrezia de’ Medici’s name, and it was probably just as well. “If she—lusted for him, and if Sister Orsola smothered her as Tommasina Vasari says, then perhaps it was in a passion of jealousy. Perhaps that is what Sister Orsola meant when she said she shared more than a few cakes with a duchess—she shared a lover with her as well.”

He looked at me sharply. “You believe Sister Orsola was also the painter’s mistress?”

“Mona Tommasina did say there was a story she had a lover, a man connected with the court.”

He came over to me and helped me with my torn laces. “You may be right. Even so, I am not so sure I believe the infirmarian committed the murder. The
parruchiera
lied about many things, and we may not yet have forced the full truth from her.”

I could not bear the thought that he would torture her again. Not after—not after. I do not quite know where the solution came from, but it sprang from my thoughts full-fledged, like Minerva complete and armed from the brow of Jove.

I said, “The Berlingaccio Carnival revels are later this week, my lord, are they not? The night revels for which Ferrara is known?”

He looked surprised. “Yes, of course, on Shrove Thursday. Why?”

“And in those revels, anyone can ask a favor of you or me, and we are bound to grant it?”

“Yes. Although by tradition, the favors are trifles. What has this to do with the subject at hand, Madonna?”

“I would beg a favor of you. It is a few days beforetime, I know, and my favor is more than a trifle, but grant it to me now, I beg you, and I will not ask another.”

He frowned. “There is a customary form for asking such a favor.”

“I do not know it. Please, my lord.” I looked up at his face, and for the first time since we had been married, I stared straight into the eyes of his monsters without flinching.

I would prove it.

“Very well,” he said at last. “The prescribed request is this: ‘I beg a favor of the duke, on the night of the Berlingaccio.’ ”

I repeated steadily, “I beg a favor of the duke, on the night of the Berlingaccio.”

“Whatever you desire will be granted, in the name of Saint George and the House of Este.”

Clearly, this was the prescribed reply. I said, “I ask that Tommasina Vasari be tortured no more.”

His eyes narrowed. “Then we may never know the truth.”

“She has lied under torture already.”

He turned away. The fevered moments between us, the truthtelling, might never have happened. “As you wish,” he said. “I have sworn, and the favor you ask is yours. Call your women to help you dress and compose yourself. Tomorrow I will question the
parruchiera
again, more gently.”

 

 

I shouldn’t have kept that painting, but when I went to throw it in the fire I couldn’t. It was
. . .
It’s hard to explain. It was what I looked like, really looked like, so much more than ordinary portraits. I loved my flesh, loved washing myself and combing my hair and caressing myself. I loved being caressed. I loved seeing my flesh brought to life in paint. And that’s one thing Pandolfo did, better than any other man: he made paint live.

When he wasn’t painting, it was harder for us to find ways to be together. I pretended to be sick more often, and Tommasina lied to my other ladies while I slipped out through a window in disguise. It aroused me that Pandolfo was willing to do such a forbidden thing, betray a duke,
fottere
a duchess. I had loved doing forbidden things from my childhood, and it was exciting beyond anything else to find a man who was even more daring than I was.

“
I
will accompany you to question her,” I said.

The next day had come. Neither of us had eaten much of the lavish Carnival dinner set before us. We lingered at the high table, shelling almonds; the duke, I think, was waiting for me to leave first. I, on the other hand, was determined to be there when Tommasina Vasari was questioned again.

“You will not,” he said, breaking open another almond-shell. “The
prigioni
are no place for a woman.”

“The prisoner is a woman.”

“It is not the same thing.”

“Nevertheless, I wish to accompany you.”

The duke picked the almond out of the fragments of shell and ate it. “You continue to surprise me,” he said. “I am reminded of something I said to you on the day your wedding portrait was presented. Do you remember it?”

I remembered it very well.
I believe you have considerable depths, Madonna, that you have not shared with me.

“How could I forget it, my lord? You said I had considerable depths.”

“Indeed. I think I am beginning to glimpse some of them.”

“Do you dislike them?”

“I am not certain.” He paused for a moment, then took my left hand and fingered the heavy ring on my middle finger, gold with table-cut sapphires and diamonds, the blue and white of the Este.

“Considerable depths, and a designing mind,” he said. “Very well, come to the dungeons if you must, but do not reproach me if you see things that disturb you.”

 

 

TOMMASINA VASARI’S BODY hung against the wall of her windowless cell. Her tertiary’s black veil had been twisted into a cord. One end made a noose around her neck, cutting into her flesh; the other was knotted to an iron stanchion bolted into the wall to hold a torch. Her feet hung no more than three inches from the bare stone floor, and the wooden necessary bucket was overturned beside them.