The Second Duchess (9 page)

A tall, slender woman, not young, sat next to a window with the sun streaming in upon her, limning—and yes, even I must confess that was the perfect term for the effect—the long but well-bred line of her cheek and jaw with light. Her hair was combed back from her high forehead with nothing but a narrow jeweled band to confine it, and it seemed to shimmer with lifelike color. Yes, her lower lip thrust out a bit, but in the painting it was sensual, soft, not a defect to be jeered at as the “Habsburg lip.” And her eyes! The color of cloves, clear and steady and full of secrets.

“It is you, Serenissima,” Frà Pandolf said, leaning over my shoulder as I looked at it, close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath against my cheek and smell the scents of paint and turpentine and animal male upon his habit. I drew away. A genius the fellow might be, but as the duke had remarked, he was unpleasantly familiar in his manner.

“It is very good,” I said coldly. “But it is for the duke to decide. You will wait upon him, Frà Pandolf, when it is finished.”

“Yes, Serenissima,” he said. “Who could help but admire it, when it shows your very soul, your inner beauty, so clearly?”

“You forget yourself,” I said, in an even more icy voice. God knows if it really had any effect on the fellow, but at least he stepped back from me and looked away.

“Domenica,” I said. “Sybille. Paolina. Attend me. Gather up the puppies, if you please, and let us go.”

 

 

He was nobody, a foundling, he said, but he always wanted to paint pictures. He laughed when I asked him why he became a friar. Visions? Callings? Prayers? Not Frà Pandolf. He took Franciscan orders because they gave him standing without requiring him to be confined to a monastery. Under the pretense of preaching—preaching!—he could travel anywhere, ask for charity from anyone, paint when it pleased him, and find ever richer and nobler patrons. He liked to
fottere
the women he painted, he said—it made his paintings better. When he was painting a great lady, he imagined himself in bed with her. I wonder what his imaginings were about la Cavalla.

I was shocked when I found out half the court had been whispering in Alfonso’s ear about my
avventurini
with other men. They were looking for favor, assuming he’d find out everything anyway and falling all over each other to be the first to tell him. I swear, there was a line of people from one end of the Castello to the other, waiting to tell Alfonso all my sins.

B
efore I could go in search of the painting, I had to escape my ladies.

That is one of the disadvantages of rank: a highly placed person is almost never alone. Emperors even have grooms of the closestool to attend them while they perform their most intimate bodily functions, as I was in a particular position to know, having had an emperor for both a father and a brother. Fortunately, my own rank was not quite that high.

Even so, it was a delicate matter to escape my attendants. First, I sent Domenica to the garden with the puppies, telling her they appeared to be in need of some time outdoors. Then I pretended to realize I had an appetite for my favorite angelica comfits, and sent Sybille to fetch them. Lastly, I feigned a sudden headache and sent Paolina running for lavender oil and an infusion of valerian.

And lo, there I stood, alone. It gave me an eerie feeling, as if I were being watched by hidden eyes. Gossip, of course, honeycombed Italian palaces—all palaces, for that matter—with hidden passageways peopled with secretaries and spies, eyes pressed to peepholes. But surely the duke would not have set his lackeys to watch me on an afternoon when I was occupied with something as innocuous as having my portrait painted at his own command?

It did not matter. One of them—or all of them—would report the conversation with Frà Pandolf, and the duke would be angry anyway. I would be subjected to another humiliating reproof and probably more threats as well, whether I went in search of the portrait or not. So why not satisfy my curiosity, once and for all?

It’s at the top of the stairs past the bronze statue of Neptune, in the old gallery the duke has partitioned for his library.
The statue of Neptune I remembered, as it was a piece by Claus of Innsbruck, a celebrated countryman of mine. I gathered up my jeweled scarlet skirts and hurried through to the next room, took a turn, passed through another room. Yes, there was Neptune with his half-tamed sea-horse. I ran up the stairs, and just a few steps farther on a portion of the wall was indeed covered by a hanging. It was in an alcove with two gilded chairs placed in front of it, all so cleverly arranged no one would ever guess a painting was concealed there.

No time, no time to stop and think about it, and probably just as well. I reached out and drew the curtain.

And there she was. The duke’s last duchess.

She was beautiful. She was a hundred, a thousand times more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. Frà Pandolf’s unmistakable style had caught her so vividly, it was as if she were standing there between one breath and the next, ready to step down from the wall.

Beautiful. And young, with charmingly childlike freckles like a dusting of cinnamon over her nose and forehead. Her eyes were golden, alive with adolescent willfulness, high spirits, and the careless selfishness of childhood; her hair was gleaming russet, braided and bound up with jewels. Her cheeks were luminous with a flush of pleasure that died out delicately along the line of her throat. In the curve of her lips I read secrets and sensuality. She held a spray of cherry blossoms, white as snow, with the palest of pink at their hearts.

I tried to imagine her sick and mad. I tried to imagine her dead. After what Maria Granmammelli had told me, I could not keep myself from wondering—was she poisoned? Poisoned twice, perhaps, first to make her appear mad, and then, when she was safely hidden away, a medicinal posset or sleeping draught to kill her? How horrible, to sink trustingly into sleep and be sucked down into death, unready and unshriven.

I was so caught up in my thoughts, I did not hear so much as the sound of a step behind me. I had no idea he was there until he reached out and drew the curtain closed.

My heart stopped. My hands went cold. I jerked around guiltily before I could stop myself.

“What is this, Madonna?” the duke said. There was anger such as I had never heard before in his voice. “Your woman tells me you have a headache, yet I do not find you where she left you, waiting for her potion.”

Paolina, I thought. It was Paolina I sent for the headache potion. She, then, is the duke’s spy. That is one way she learns the secrets she loves so much. But she did not know I was coming to look at the painting. How did he know where to find me?

“You are watched,” he said, as if he had heard my thought. His voice had an icy intensity. “You are the Duchess of Ferrara, Madonna, and
per Dio
you do not take a step that someone does not know it.”

Holy Virgin. I had been right, then, about the spies and the secret passageways.

“I must beg your forgiveness, my lord.” My voice shook; I put my hands behind my back and began to count the rubies in the chain around my waist, like the beads of a rosary.
One, two, three ...
“One of my ladies spoke of this painting as a masterwork, and Frà Pandolf himself told me where to find it. My woman’s curiosity got the better of me.”

He was not disarmed. “Curiosity does not become you,” he said. “Woman or no. You will oblige me, Madonna, by resisting it in future.”

I inclined my head in acknowledgment. He was unaccompanied by his usual train of gentlemen and secretaries, which was uncharacteristic and must have been deliberate; we were alone in the gallery but for whatever secret watchers he might have set. If he were to do me harm, they would hardly rush to my aid.

“I will do so,” I said. “Again, I ask your pardon.”

He stepped closer, and although I had intended to take my leave with what few shreds of dignity remained to me, I was left with no way to escape unless I pushed against him. That, I must confess, I was afraid to do. He was so close, I felt the heat of his flesh and smelled the scents of sandalwood and amber that always clung about his clothes.

“That is not enough,” he said. “I am sure you have been told, Madonna, and more than once, what is said to have become of my last duchess whose likeness so aroused your curiosity.”

“I should like to go,” I said, a shaming quaver in my voice.

“No. You will listen to me. It displeases me that you lend your countenance to such gossip. And as for Frà Pandolf, he is a remarkable painter but in anything but his art he is utterly beneath your notice. I thought better of you, Madonna, than that you would plot petty schemes with him.”

I was becoming more and more afraid. Never before had I met a man who was not conciliated by submissiveness and contrition. Would boldness serve me better?

“It was not a petty scheme,” I countered. Of course, it had been—my own rather petty scheme to look at the painting of the first duchess while I had the opportunity. But the very fact that I was lying gave me spurious strength. “And I did not plot. I would remind you, my lord, that I am—”

He grasped my arm with hard fingers.

“You are my wife,” he said. “And I will teach you, Madonna, that it is not my wife’s place to defy me.”

 

 

HE DRAGGED ME to my apartments like a prisoner, all in my scarlet wedding finery and long loose hair. No one interfered. One of his secretaries and two gentlemen-of-honor fell in behind us without so much as a word. Those we passed, whether courtiers or servants, turned their faces away and feigned not to notice us. Humiliation made my blood burn like fire under my skin, and fear made me sick and dizzy. I could only think—is this what happened before? Did he kill her in plain sight of his whole court, and did they all look away and pretend to see nothing?

When we entered the Jupiter chamber, Sybille was there with two serving-maids. She stepped forward, surprised, and began to say something about angelica comfits; the duke told her shortly to make off with herself, the maids, and anyone else who might disturb us. I had only a moment to glimpse her outraged expression—she is a Wittelsbach, after all, and proud as Niobe—before he propelled me into the inner chamber. I breathed a prayer of thanks that Sybille, at least, would know what was happening.

Inside the bedchamber the duke let go of my arm and pushed me toward the bed. I caught hold of one of the carved bedposts and turned to face him. My tangled hair fell across my face and caught in the jeweled clasps of my mantle.