I
thanked him and took a hasty leave, but part of my brain said: and I? Will I be
here three days hence?
"You
are lacked, my lady." Niccolosa's voice greeted me as I entered the
tapestried chamber. "His Grace has ordered the court dressmaker to attend
on you, and mercers and all manner of others to supply your wants. He is coming
himself to see you choose your gowns."
An
extraordinary feeling of suffocation swept me. I said, "I have enough
already."
"You
are to be furnished with more—His Grace has ordered it." To Niccolosa
there was no more to say.
"Has
he asked for me?" In spite of myself, my voice sounded anxious.
"Not
yet, but he sent word you were to be ready by three o'clock. You are come just
in time." Even as she spoke, I heard footsteps in the corridor outside,
and the sound of voices. "His Grace! Quickly, my lady..."
Niccolosa
twitched my disordered skirts into place as the door opened, and I turned,
bracing myself instinctively. Servants entered with rolls of cloth, and others
with mysterious bags and bundles, then a tall man with a flared demicape about
his shoulders, and finally the duke, with the inevitable herd of courtiers at
his heels.
I
realized with a sinking heart that the duke's generosity and my thanks were to
serve as their after-noon's entertainment; the smile on Piero's lips told me
that he at least was relishing the prospect of my humiliation. But Domenico had
stopped on the threshold and was speaking over his shoulder, lazily.
"Leave
us.... We do not require a conclave for this business. We can judge these goods
the better in private."
There
was the sound of a stifled protest, then a flurry as the courtiers bowed and
withdrew, and I stood listening to their busy footsteps fading away outside. I
told myself that my trembling was due to fear of how my absence had been
discovered.
"Your
Grace, I am no judge of what I should wear, and I do not need..."
"We
will judge for you. Never fear. You have only to show yourself to us in these
stuffs." His gesture encompassed the bolts of treasure strewn about the
room. "And we will be your arbiter. Taccone, show your merchandise to this
lady."
The
dressmaker bowed and with glistening eyes moved around the room, unrolling
bales that spilled in torrents; black velvet, silver bullion, shimmering silk;
stiff brocades embroidered with silver thread and encrusted with pearls; jetty
silk rimmed with diamonds and cloth of pure silver. He threw back muslin covers
to reveal gowns ready-made, bodices clasped with silver, collars of lace,
petticoats of whispering taffeta. For a moment I blinked and was dazzled,
struck dumb, and then Domenico said, "Sirrah, do your work—and do it well;
you were best."
While
the dressmaker and his servants scurried around me, Domenico lounged at his
ease, watching and now and then giving a sharp direction; but for the rest of
the time he talked to me, idle gossip of things that did not matter. I found
myself telling him of my life in the city as though it were long past, a story
that had happened to someone else, and I could even mention my stepfather's
name lightly.
"Did
you never try to find out the man who sired you?" he questioned
negligently.
I
shook my head, causing the dressmaker to give a cluck of reproach.
"How
could I? He cannot even have known he fathered me, and it must have been twenty
years ago or more."
His
eyes narrowed. "Do you not know how old you are?"
"Not
exactly. I think I must be twenty or so, but no one counted very carefully
after my mother died."
Domenico
nodded thoughtfully, and I thought he said, "That will do"; then he
stood up. It had grown dark outside the slitted window, and his eyes were
gleaming strangely. "Enough, Taccone— those I approved I shall take."
The
dressmaker bowed low. "Yes, Your Grace—the Genoese silk, the Spanish
velvet, the two brocades." He was numbering them on his fingers. "The
cloth of silver, and..."
"Spare
us your arithmetic, sirrah. Make them up as I directed and leave those other
gowns here."
"As
Your Grace wills—and the one the lady is wearing now?"
"You
should ask her. Felicia, do you like it?"
"No,
Your Grace," I answered awkwardly. "It is—far too fine—for me."
"The
truth." It was like the faint purr of a leopard, and the laughter in it
stung me. Gloved fingers gripped my shoulders and swung me around so that I
faced the long glass behind me. I could see his fair reflection towering over
me, my own pale face and apprehensive eyes, my body stiff in the elaborate
gown. "What do you dislike?"
I
stared at the spreading farthingale, the double sleeves, the tightly fitting
bodice, and the gauze-draped neckline with its high, wired collar framing my
face. His fingers tightened a little, impatiently. "Well? It is Taccone's
latest fashion."
"In
the city only the whores wear gowns like this." I had not meant to blurt
it out so, brief and unvarnished, but now I had to go on. "I had rather
wear what I have worn till now than dress so lewdly."
"Nevertheless,
you must do our pleasure in this." His arms came around me, pulling me
back against him, and I met his eyes in the glass. "Our mistress is not to
be bound by yeomen's rules of niceness."
I
made a small, desperate sound as his hand slid possessively over my breast;
then he gripped the veiling gauze and tore.
"I
am duke of this province, too," he said thickly, "and I do not sue to
see my own domains."
I
tensed under his caressing fingers, but it was no use. What little modesty the
gown had had was gone, and my breasts were almost bare to Domenico's touch. At
last, when I was trembling and pliant against him, he smiled very slightly and
drew away. "That will do, Taccone. Make them all in this fashion."
The
dressmaker bowed delightedly, only the faintest of leers on his thin face. The
servants stood rigid and wooden; I thought bitterly that they must be used to
such scenes. I stood immobile while Domenico chose gloves for me, scarves,
ribbons, brooches, and chains, decking me like a doll. When he had done, he
looked down at me with a mocking smile in his eyes.
"Will
you not thank me?"
I
said stonily, "Your Grace has done what pleases you."
"Ungrateful,
Felicia." His fingertip flicked the side of my neck, and I winced, as
though it had burned me. "I thought it would please you. All women are
greedy for fine clothes."
"I
am not all women," I rejoined, and he nodded slowly.
"I
am beginning to learn that. But the time has not been wasted," he added
deliberately, "for now you look nearly as fair as when you are
naked."
The
blood stormed to my face and ebbed again as he stooped to press his lips to my
throat. He was amusing himself with his latest toy, I thought: and when it
ceased to amuse him...
"Come,"
he said softly, "the day wears. We will go in to supper, and then tonight
I shall teach you how to render thanks graciously."
He
had taught me much in four nights. I had learned to await his coming with
excitement as well as dread; I had learned the treachery of my own flesh and
was shocked by the frailty of my virtue. He had taught me that pain could be a
part of pleasure and that pleasure could be a kind of pain. Now I had new
fears; not of him but of myself and of the drugging rule my body could exert
over my mind. At night the strangeness of the court and the vigilance kept over
my own fears were melted in the growing familiarity of his body against mine,
the warm scent of him and soft moans and whispers that were a whole new
language. I tried to shut my ears to it, to hood my senses, but inevitably my
new knowledge betrayed me so that I was lost to hungers I had not known I
possessed.
And
when I lay quiet, listening to the voices of contrition and self-loathing
inside my head, his nightmares always came to tear him; so I held him, cradling
his head to my breast like a baby's, deaf and blind to anything but his
torment.
That
night he talked in his sleep again, the excitement that had burned in him
blazing through his dreams. I wondered that the court did not come, but most
likely they dared not.
"I
did not mean — I will not — oh God, the blood! — Get back from me and let me
rest!"
His
outflung hand caught my hair, and at the touch he screamed, a long high shriek
of pure terror, flinging himself back in a violent recoil that dragged me with
him. He was breathing hard and fast, and his opened eyes looked sightless.
"Felicia, I dreamed..."
I
looked down at him, my throat choking with compassion. "I know."
"She
cannot stop me. None of them can stop me. Tomorrow..."
The
next day, I knew, was the one fixed for the council. "What will you do
tomorrow?"
For
a moment he was silent, the silver flare of panic slowly fading from his eyes.
Then he muttered, "No matter," and pulled my head down to his.
I
woke the next morning to find the duke already stirring. He stooped over me to
kiss me good morning, drawing the covers up as he did so and tucking them under
my chin.
"I
must attend the council today, Felicia. Stay abed for a little, and I will have
Piero send your women to you."
He
was dressed, I saw, in the severest Spanish fashion, making him look older,
more awe-inspiring, and even more princely. A great ruff brushed his firm jaw;
his supple prowl had become a conscious elegance, as though he had put on
majesty as a whore puts on paint, as a mask and as a weapon. I tried to sit up,
blinking the sleep from my eyes.
"What
am I to do?" It sounded stupid, childish.
"What
you will." The black eyes turned from me to the door as Ippolito entered.
"Yes, I am ready."
"The
council attends your pleasure, Your Grace."
Domenico
nodded and moved towards the door; then as he reached it, he looked back, a
sardonic quirk to his lips. "I will send you to Father Vincenzo," he
said maliciously. "He will fill your time when I am absent."
He
did. He filled my time far longer than Domenico could have anticipated; that
state council lasted for four stormy days.
Rumors
ran through the court like wildfire, but no one there could even say for sure
what the councilors were debating— Ippolito, as the duke's secretary, knew, but
the lesser fry were excluded from the chamber. The quartet of sycophants who
normally clustered about Domenico every moment of his public life hung about
the gallery outside, ready to be at his elbow when he emerged and to marvel at
or condole over they knew not what.
Father
Vincenzo made no reference to what was happening around us. The duke had told
him, he said, that he might teach me to read and write, and for those four days
he taught me as rigorously as if we had enjoyed the same monkish seclusion in
which he had learned his letters. It was bewildering to leave his lessons, in
which I became a child again, and nothing was more important than the curl of a
G or the difference that a single letter could make to the sound of a word, and
go to the brawling suppers after the talk had broken off, where keeping my
footing amid the chafing tempers and spiteful formality of the della Raffaelles
was ten times as hard as tracing my signature.
The
first evening Domenico stormed out of the chamber and into the banqueting hall
white with fury, the quartet at his heels like a gaggle of distressed geese.
There was no mistaking the compressed lips and dilated nostrils; someone or
something had thwarted him. More dreadful than anything was his silence—he did
not speak, and the whole court took their seats in a hush of trepidation. On my
right the archbishop sat stiffly, obstinacy and an indefinable complacency
radiating from him; I knew that he had taken a stand in the council from which
nothing could move him. and Domenico's violence was washing over him as a tide
beats over a breakwater. The other councilors— staid older men, here a soldier
and there a cleric, chosen to give the name of legality to the reigning
family's absolute rule—took their cue from them and devoted their wholehearted
attention to their food.
The
meal dragged on in an ominous hush until I thought I could bear it no longer.
No one had the courage to break the silence. Then, suddenly, Sandro began to
talk. It was only a lewd rigmarole he had heard in the city streets, but he
embroidered it in the telling, and the sound of his voice severed the unnatural
quiet like a lifeline. The duke did not respond, but neither did he turn on his
brother, and little by little the rest began to whisper together until the
noise filled the great void of the hall.
I
blessed its very raucousness as a return to normality. It was hard to recognize
the Domenico of yesterday in the white and thwarted autocrat beside me, and I
had to drag my thoughts from him to frame an answer when I realized that
Sandra's last remark had been addressed to me.
"My
lady Maddalena may have been slack in your service, lady." His blue eyes
twinkled at me. "If so, you must blame me for it. You shall have her back
tomorrow, I promise, but I have been employing her constantly till now."