As
soon as I had righted myself and gotten a grip on the reins, I looked down to
thank my benefactor and to my astonishment saw a boy hardly older than myself;
slight, black-haired, with an obstinate chin and a look of admiration in his
brown eyes. I murmured, "Thank you, sir," and he blushed vividly as
he stepped back.
The
crack of a whiplash made me look up. Domenico was bending to catch my horse's
leading rein from the groom's slackened fingers; it was only when I saw the
man's hand go to his bloodied cheek that I realized that the lash had laid it
open. It was petty, pointless cruelty—and all for something that the groom
would have given at a word.
When
the mounted cavalcade moved off, however, I had no thought for anything but
keeping my seat on a jolting, sliding, swaying horse. Remembering conflicting
instructions for heel and thigh and hand, now to hold the reins, use the whip,
stay upright without clinging to the saddle... For me every moment was an agony,
and Domenico knew it. I could see the secret knowledge in the curve of his lips
as he watched me, mercilessly ordering the movements that would punish my sore
and aching body; once when the horse jolted me, I could not suppress a cry, and
I looked up to see him laughing as though the sound delighted him.
That
day was the first time I had been beyond the gates of Fidena since the day I
was born, but I did not think of that; I cared only for the next step of the
jouncing brute beneath me and whether it would decide to ignore my signals and
go its own way altogether. I even blessed the strip of hide which tethered me
so close to Domenico.
The
horse's hooves were cutting into the tawny earth, crushing the sun-dried grass
and leaving a swathe of destruction across the field that sloped towards the
river gorge. The sea was faint and distant in the heat haze; flies hung in a
cloud around the horses, and plumy tails lashed constantly to keep them at bay.
Then I shivered, for a shadow had fallen across our path.
The
frowning face of the tower that guarded the bridge over the river gorge soared
into the sky, casting its shadow close and dark. Sandro followed my gaze and
grinned.
"That
is our watchtower, lady. From that vantage ten men could hold the bridge
against an army; it is why the pope could never take Fidena back again, for his
forces cannot get near the city walls. If it were not there, Cabria would
doubtless still be ruled from the Vatican."
I
said, "Yet it frightens me—is there no other way across?"
"By
ship, there, where the river runs into the bay, but in battle the city's cannon
could sink any vessel before it got halfway. And westwards"—he
pointed—"close by the city, there is a collection of rotten planks that
some still use who do not mind risking their lives. But it would not support a
single armed rider."
I
smiled. "Do you think of nothing but battles?"
Sandro
chuckled. "Yes, lady, a good deal else. But I have been brought up to
fight for all I want, and the language of war comes naturally to me." The
moment passed lightly, but the sense of oppression remained with me until we
had passed back again into the sun.
Gradually,
almost insensibly, I was becoming used to the motion of the horse, and as the
party moved in a half-circle away from the gorge and its looming guardian, I
began to notice the undercurrents in their gossip. Outwardly it was no more
than shallow, frivolous gossip, yet here and there I caught dark allusions,
hints of a mystery I could not understand. But I took it for imagination that first
morning, and when the talk drifted to the latest amorous intrigues, I stopped
listening altogether. Then, when the city gates opened before us, I forgot
everything in the sudden familiarity of the sights and sounds of the crowded
streets, the dust-choked air, the stink of foul humanity. The courtiers were
grimacing, and Maddalena's exclamation of disgust was meant for me to hear—then
at my side the duke's head turned with a glint of living silver, and my gaze
dropped before the hard curiosity in his.
When
at last the horses clattered to a standstill in the palace courtyard, I was
swaying in the saddle. The sun's heat and the unfamiliar activity had drained
what strength I had left—it seemed years, not less than a day, since I had left
the dank silence of the prison.
A
groom gripped the gelding's bridle, and I slid from the saddle without waiting
for anyone's aid. Domenico's arm came around me from behind, so unexpectedly
that I jumped.
"You
are tired. Go to your room and rest a little."
"I
do not know the way." In spite of myself my voice sounded forlorn, and he
laughed.
"Faith,
but I never thought of that! Ippolito shall guide you."
With
relief I felt my hand taken in a firm clasp, and I was drawn out of the heat of
the sun. The patterns of light and shadow before my eyes had no meaning—I was
walking like a blind woman— yet for some reason I turned back at the top of the
steps for a last glimpse of the duke.
The
rest of the day passed in a bewildering pageant. Niccolosa stood guard over me
while I slept, and in an hour or two I was caught up in the pace of palace
life. One pastime merged into another—eating, drinking, music, sports—without
cessation, until I wondered how the courtiers could bear this unreal existence
day after day.
In
the afternoon a message had come from Archbishop Francesco, as impatient as
Sandro and scarcely more subtle, saying that he would answer his great-nephew's
summons in good time—he would attend upon His Grace this very evening and be
beholden for his lodging for a night or two. Then when the council met he would
be rested from his journey; so old a man as he could not care for his health
too much.
Domenico
laughed when he heard, but there was an edge to his voice. "That old
scarlet fox! He must forever remind us that the pope's clemency hangs on his
moldering life—he could travel here on foot within two hours, and yet he needs
six days to nurse his bones!"
"He
is old, Your Grace," Ippolito interjected.
"Old
and cunning." Domenico's jeweled pomander swung meditatively between his fingers.
"He wishes to learn our mind before we publish it. But his policy grows
stale, Ippolito; we shall keep him dangling until we are in readiness."
He
looked at the pomander, hanging still, and smiled. "We must honor my
great-uncle when he comes. Felicia, be sure to wear your jewels at
supper."
So
now I stood in the antechamber, waiting for the signal to pass into the
banqueting hall, with the necklace ablaze around my neck. The archbishop had
arrived scarcely an hour before, and now was deep in talk with Domenico in the
center of the room. Ippolito stood beside me, eyeing me watchfully; he had not
left my side, and I guessed he had been set to guard me while the duke was at a
distance.
I
glanced at Domenico; his face was a mask of polite indulgence as he listened to
the archbishop, the torches reflecting from the clothes he wore so that all the
light in the room seemed to shine from his silver-clad body. The old man made a
lurid figure beside him, scarlet cassock and cape like splashes of blood. Against
the bright silk his hollow-cheeked face was as pale and unyielding as bone;
white hair was cropped close to his long skull, and the thin, veined hands were
bare but for his ring of office. Watching him, I thought that it would take
riches and the might of a dukedom to win God's forgiveness from such a priest
as that.
"Have
no fear, lady," Ippolito said reassuringly. "The duke will not leave
you neglected for long."
I
started and blushed unaccountably. "I was not thinking of that."
"Whatever
it was did not make you happy."
"I
was thinking of—of the duchess." I said the first thing that came into my
head. "Why was she banished?"
He
looked astounded. "The duchess!"
"Yes,
the old duke's wife. I heard she had been sent away but not the reason. Does it
mean she has entered a retreat?"
Ippolito
made a wry face. "No; rather, she has been routed. The duke—my lord
Domenico, I mean—banished her from Cabria the same day he had you brought here.
He had given orders already for..." He checked, then continued quickly.
"He was gone from the feast for close on three hours that night, and when
he came back to the palace, the old duke was dead and the duchess ruled the
roost. She asked to see him privately that night—we never learned what she said
to him, but next day she was banished and gone."
"That
was cruel," I said quietly.
Ippolito's
kind face twisted into a sour look. "Do not waste your pity, lady. The
duchess was as sorry for her husband's death as I should be if I were elected
pope tomorrow. They whisper that the young duke took care not to be by the
night his father died, but it is as likely that the duchess waited for him to
be absent before she poured the wine."
"You
think..."
"No."
He was smiling again. "I do not think. I dare not. The old duke is dead
and the duchess packed off to her Spanish kin in Naples; that is all any man
here knows but he." He glanced at Domenico and then away. "And we
know enough when we know so much."
"But
Duke Carlo was old. I thought when I heard he was dead that he had died
naturally."
"It
is safer to think so. Believe it." Ippolito helped himself from a jug of
wine and lifted his cup in salute. "Now we must bury our thoughts of the
duke who is dead and serve the duke who is living."
I
nodded. I was not even shocked; it would be a lucky man indeed who lived out
his natural span here. All around us, even now, plots and subterfuges were in
train—a whisper here, a few ambiguous words in passing, or only a look.
Sandra's face came back to me, the swiftly masked expression when his
generalship was mocked, and Piero's, watching Domenico when he thought he was
unobserved. Duke Carlo could not have inspired more hate or love in any who
surrounded him, and he had been murdered.
"The
duchess" — I spoke again to stop my thoughts—"does no one care that she
is gone?"
"Her
faction went with her," Ippolito returned blandly, "and she is not
much missed, I can assure you. Duke Carlo only married her to fill his bed and
found it would not contain her; no young and handsome man was safe with her.
Even Lord Domenico — pardon me, lady, my tongue trips on all these dukes — even
he could not be certain that the name of Mother would hold her off him. We are better
for her absence. No one mourns her—except perhaps Lord Sandro, who misses her
as a man misses a raging tooth and sleeps the sounder without it."
I
was slow to take in the implication, because I could not believe it.
"She
was the mistress that the—the duke banished?"
Ippolito
looked guilty. "I forgot whom I spoke to," he said quickly. "I
should not have said it—but perhaps you should know, if you are to keep afloat
in this foul sea. It is known they bedded together at the duchess's
importunity, but it was not incest, except in the strictest ruling of the
Church. They are no kin to each other save in name. Lord Sandro is the old
duke's son by a woman none of us has ever seen. He was born close on old
Carlo's first marriage, and Madam Gratiana was his third wife."
"The
third! What became of the first two?"
"The
first—Lord Domenico's mother—died in childbed, and the Duchess Isabella died in
an accident. She was childless, so there is none to dispute the dukedom, thank
God!"
I
hardly heard his thanksgiving. "They are an ill-starred family," I
said wonderingly.
Ippolito
shrugged. "Well, what would you? The state is held in the shadow of the
pope's anger since the della Raffaelle wrenched the land from him. He will
excommunicate us all once the breath is out of the archbishop's body."
"The
duke said that, too, and I have heard it since I was a child, but I do not
understand what you mean."
"Lady."
His kind face was full of wry laughter. "I have talked too long of
dangerous matters. For that you must delve into the palace library and read the
Cabrian histories; it is a tale of years and far too weighty to be told before
supper."
"But
I cannot read." I looked beseechingly at him. "Will you not tell
me?"
"I
dare not, for my health's sake! Do not wheedle me, lady; if the duke should see
you gaze at me in such a way, I should be good for nothing but bait for
fishermen." His eyes twinkled at me over the rim of his cup, and I looked
back at him with a sudden feeling of affection.
As
he sipped his wine his gaze traveled past me, and I saw him stiffen in
astonishment and lower his cup. Then, with a word of apology, he brushed past me
and went to the duke's side. He was back almost at once, the perplexity as
clear on his face as it had been that morning in the duke's chamber.
"He
wants you." All his courteous phrases had deserted him in the stress of
the moment. "You are to be presented to my lord archbishop."
I
wondered whether one of us was mad or deaf, or whether the duke's brain had
turned. To present his whore—his base-born whore—was worse than folly. It was
madness. Struck dumb with apprehension, I followed Ippolito through the crowd
and sank in a deep curtsy before the della Raffaelles. There was a sudden
silence, then the archbishop said coldly, "I heard a rumor, Domenico, of
your new mistress."