The Second Duchess (15 page)

“Very well,” I said, without looking at him. “I trust such arrangements will be forthcoming without undue delay.”

“If you have suitable reason for going out, Madonna, they will.”

His hands came to rest quite lightly on my shoulders. Once again I had not heard him step up behind me. I jumped, and my heart seemed to stop.

“I am sure you chose Corpus Domini because you were told it is under our patronage,” he said, his voice very soft in my ear. He moved his hands slightly, so they lay curved around my neck. “Or perhaps someone told you my aunt is abbess there. Not for any other reason, eh, Madonna?”

I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. Suddenly I was so frightened of him, my belly melted and my legs went weak.

“I do not know what you mean, my lord. It was close by, and my Ferrarese ladies directed me.”

“Good.” He took his hands away. “I will leave you to complete your preparations. The opening chorale will begin in half an hour, and I expect you to walk in the procession with me.”

I said nothing. I could not have spoken if I had wanted to.

“Your costume pleases me. The dark blue color sets off the whiteness of your skin quite beautifully. I would like to see a bit more of your hair, at your forehead and temples—ask your woman to rearrange your headdress.”

I nodded, still not turning to look at him.

He went away. I clung to the edge of my dressing table, shaking with terror.

Courage, I exhorted myself. You cannot pursue this scheme of investigation if you become a quivering coward at the slightest check. You knew he would question you when you chose that particular monastery. You had your explanation prepared. He accepted it. Anything else exists only in your imagination.

After a moment, I felt stronger.

In half an hour I would be called upon to process into the Castello’s Salone dei Giochi and convince a hundred gentlemen and ladies I was a happy, sweetly satisfied new wife. I would have to convince him as well, because tonight he would likely require me in his apartments again, acting the submissive bride to her imperious bridegroom. At least I hoped it would be nothing more than an imperious bridegroom I would encounter there.

Did he think compliments would sweeten me? After thrashing me like a servant? After ordering me confined as a virtual prisoner? Angry—I wanted to be angry. I was angry. I was afraid. But it would be a lie to claim I felt nothing but anger and fear. Compliments, after all, were a new thing to me, and they were sweet—frighteningly sweet.

I clasped my shaking hands together. “Holy Virgin,” I whispered, in the moment of rare solitude before my ladies returned. “Blessed Saint Monica. Let me learn the truth so I can use it as a shield. Let me get with child, and quickly.”

Only then would I be truly safe.

 

 

SAFE. HA! LA Cavalla will never be safe now that she’s put herself in Sister Orsola’s power.
I don’t tell my confessor everything. I can hold my tongue when I’ve got a reason to.
Fine words, but I could tell la Cavalla, give Sister Orsola a taste of jewels or secrets—or a man—and she always wants more.

Her mother and father spent their lives making
ciupèta
bread for the court, and that’s probably why Sister Orsola is so lustful. Have you ever seen
ciupèta
? It doesn’t taste like much, but it’s got a special shape the Ferrarese love—at first it looks like four devil horns with two seashells in the middle, and then you realize it’s actually two
potas
in the middle and four
cazzi
sticking out proudly to the four winds. Can you imagine what it must have been like for a girl to spend her childhood making
potas
and
cazzi
out of bread dough? No wonder she turned out the way she did.

Somebody must have liked her father’s
ciupèta
well enough to put in a good word at Corpus Domini, because Orsola entered the monastery when she was twelve, with one dress, two aprons, and a few bags of flour for her dowry. For years she was not much more than a scullery maid, but finally she learned she had to stop crying, pretend to be holy, and toady to the abbess and the inner circle of professed nuns if she wanted any privileges at all. That’s how she got to take vows and be named assistant to old Sister Addolorata, the infirmarian. Now she’s the infirmarian herself.

T
he Salone dei Giochi was draped in black velvet spangled with thousands of stars made of gold and glittering crystals. Spaced at equal intervals around the room were intricate mechanical devices representing the houses of the zodiac—a charging ram with ivory horns, a pair of sinuous swimming fish with opalescent scales, a golden lion with a mane of real silk that tossed and swayed—each blazing with countless candles. At each sign a beautiful young girl in white classical drapery tended a fountain cascading with wine and a table of crystal dishes piled high with sweetmeats.

In one corner a silver-painted sphere was suspended, a blaze of torchères behind it reflecting on the polished surface and lighting the salon with an unearthly glow. The chains holding the moonsphere were blackened so as to give the appearance it rode magically against the velvet sky; inside, dressed all in silver cloth and with their hair and faces painted silver to represent men in the moon, the duke’s consort of viols played softly.

The duke and I processed in without a word to each other. After the chorale, we mounted a crescent-shaped dais representing the planet Venus, studded with beryls, chrysolites, and green jasper, wreathed with maidenhair ferns, valerian, and thyme. Turtledoves in silver cages cooed and fluttered. The scents of the herbs and the wines, the burning candles, and the perfumes of the courtiers were enough to make my eyes water.

Eight lavish courses of food and wine ensued. At the first course, the guests were presented with silver-gilt wine-cups, each engraved with its recipient’s star-sign and device; the duke and I shared a single cup, solid gold, filigreed with bulls and scorpions and the arms of Ferrara and Austria impaled, picked out in jewels. After the subtleties were presented, there were songs and dances by the duke’s players, representing the signs of the zodiac and the planets. When at last the general dancing began, the duke led me to the center of the salon for a pavane.

He was an excellent dancer, with his passion for music and his athletic physique. After the first figure, other couples joined us: Crezia with the duke’s uncle, the Marquis of Montecchio—the one whose boys were the heirs apparent—and the duke’s French friend Sandro Bellinceno with his tall young wife. I looked particularly for the duke’s younger sister Nora but did not see her anywhere.

Was it a dream or was I truly dancing in this fantastical setting with the man who had taken a switch to me for disobedience two nights before? I could not help but wonder what Messer Baldassare might have written about the duke’s anger and my terror, and about our dancing as if none of it had ever happened. Such things had apparently never occurred in the perfect world of
Il Libro del Cortegiano
.

After the pavane and the galliard that followed it, the duke and I parted. He turned to dance with Elisabetta Bellinceno; Crezia exchanged the Marquis of Montecchio for a handsome, sensual-looking gentleman wearing the sign of the Virgin—the same one, I was certain, with whom she had exchanged such a smoldering look at the Neptune banquet. I found myself, to my surprise, matched with Luigi d’Este, cardinal-deacon, archbishop, and bishop.

He laughed at my shocked expression. “Of course,
mia cognata
, I dance,” he said. “Do not the Psalms enjoin us to praise God’s name in the dance? And does not Ecclesiasticus tell us there is a time to dance as well as a time to mourn?”

He placed his hands around my waist and lifted me easily as the violists played the first bars of music; considering he was no more than my own height, his strength took me by surprise. He swung me around and put me lightly on my feet again so we were both facing the same direction, then took two steps away from me, did a double-step in
tempo di piva
, and three more single steps.

I recognized the dance as
Amoroso
. My first thought—although of course I kept it to myself—was that
Amoroso
was probably not quite what the psalmist and the prophet had in mind. I hastened to follow his lead, performing exactly the same steps, my heavy indigo velvet skirts swishing and the bull symbols catching the moon-sphere’s silver light.

“Well done,” the cardinal said when we stood side by side again. “You and my brother have long faces tonight. Does marriage not agree with you after all?”

He moved away in a new figure of the dance, light-footed as a cat. He was richly dressed in secular clothing; his doublet and coat were of deep purplish-red brocade scented with ambergris, the bows and arrows of Sagittarius embroidered in gold upon his sleeves. He was more attractive than his older brother; it was not so much that his features were more regular or his person more manly, but that there was life and amusement and sensuality in his expression, while the duke’s face showed nothing of his thoughts.

I performed the figure and stood next to him again. “Marriage agrees with us both very well,” I said. A lie, of course, but what did he expect me to say? To strike back at him I added, “What a shame it is, My Lord Cardinal, that the delights of the nuptial state are forbidden to you.”

He laughed and clutched his heart, as if I had run him through with a rapier. “A ready wit and a sharp tongue,” he said. “There are delights enough for me outside the nuptial state, I assure you. Tell me—have you any news as yet, with which to gratify the court?”

He stepped to the left, perfectly in time with the music, and then half-turned to face me. With one hand over his breast he performed a
reverenza
, exquisitely elegant, a placement of the feet, a bend of the knees, a straightening, rather as if one were making a deep and languid genuflection. I did my own
reverenza
in return, wishing it were possible to smack a prince of the church. The duke and I had been married less than a month, and surely it was premature to begin asking for news of an heir.

I said, “You must apply to the duke, My Lord Cardinal, for the answer to your question.”

“The answer is no, then.” He smiled. “Well, I will hold hope in my heart. I must be off to Rome tomorrow—the old pope has died and a conclave has been called. Perhaps when I return, your news will be better.”

“You do not seem overcome with sorrow that the Holy Father is dead.”

He smiled. “Remember, a time to mourn, a time to dance. Tonight is for dancing.”

In the next figure the lady led the way; I measured out the two steps, the
piva
double, and the subsequent three steps, feeling the weight of my skirts rippling with my movement, leaving him behind me. It annoyed me that he was so cavalier. I looked at him over my shoulder and said, “You dally like a courtier, Your Eminence. Did you do the same with your brother’s first duchess?”

That took him aback, as I had intended it would. He recovered himself so nimbly, however, that he did not miss even a step of the dance.

“But of course. This is Ferrara,
mia cognata
, and everyone dallies with everyone.”

“And no one takes any of it with any seriousness?”

“Seriousness? What is that?”

He laughed. I laughed. Once again we performed our paired
reverenzi
, signaling the end of the dance. As I sank down, I saw Messer Bernardo Canigiani, standing by the sign of Gemini, watching me.