"If
not, he is intriguing against my brother." Sandra's eyes rested
calculatingly on my expression, and he let out a quiet whistle. "Do you
care so much? Well, fortunate Domenico! He does not know that yet. I can give
you back this riddle." He held it out in the palm of his hand, "and
yours will be the blame for what it breeds; or I can take it to my lord
archbishop, and he and I will see it safely unraveled. One way it will be my
brother's bane, the other della Quercia's. What shall I do?"
I
looked at the apparently harmless thing and hesitated, sickened. Then I said,
"Keep it," and turned my head away.
He
drew a quick breath of relief. "Thanks, fair lady. This will be a passport
to the council's forgiveness when I arrive so late. Otherwise they would jam me
on a spit and roast me."
He
was off and running, clutching the poisonous scrap of paper, before I could
answer. My brain felt giddy; my fingers trembled as I clutched the pile of
books and papers, and I went on towards Father Vincenzo's room, not daring to
contemplate the consequences of what I had done.
Father
Vincenzo was helping me to write my name, and I stared in awe as the pen held
in our two hands shaped the letters on the parchment.
"That
is 'Felicia.' " The priest smiled kindly. "What is your
surname?"
My
fingers slackened on the pen. "I have no right to one—I only know my
mother's, and my brother said I must not call myself by it after she
died."
"Your
brother is not here to chide you now. What was your mother's name?"
I
said, "Guardi," and he nodded, his hand tightening over mine.
"There.
It is written. Soon you will be able to write your name as well as any clerk
and set it down instead of making a mark."
"You
speak as though I were a child." I smiled at him. "But I am only
childish in not knowing my letters."
"That
is all that concerns me." There was an odd note in his voice. "To me
you are only my pupil—all the rest I had rather forget."
The
memory that sometimes made speech difficult between us came back to me then,
and I looked up almost with relief as the door opened. It was the quartet, in
full force and full cry.
It
had taken me days even to distinguish them one from another, but now I was
beginning to know them. Guido Vassari, the little gnomelike man who had fetched
me to the banquet on that first night; Baldassare Lucello, tall and thin;
Riccardo D'Esti, thickset and with a rictus smile seemingly painted on his
lips; and Andrea Regnovi, who looked like a woman in a man's clothes: all so encrusted
in artificiality that the natural men were lost within the glittering shells.
"Lady,
the council is ended."
"His
Grace sends for you."
"He
awaits you in the council chamber."
"And
we are to escort you to him now."
They
all spoke at once, filling the quiet room with their shrill voices, and I
glanced at Father Vincenzo. But he, after a long look at my face, was quietly
putting away the pens and ink, and I wondered if my sudden inexplicable joy at
the summons was visible in my expression.
Feeling
rather like a sparrow caught in a flock of rowdy starlings, I let myself be
drawn after the quartet down the great staircase to the door of the council
chamber. They halted then, their busy tongues stilled, and I could hear voices
within before Guido, his sharp face a careful blank, stepped forward and
knocked. The talk broke off, and someone gave a sharp summons. Guido inserted
himself nimbly around the door jamb.
"We
have brought the lady, Your Grace."
Hands
thrust me forward, and I found myself in the doorway, looking down the length
of a huge table made of shining jasper, straight into Domenico's eyes. He held
his hand out to me without speaking; and it was then, as I went to him like a
falcon flying to his fist, that I realized I loved him.
I
knew then, looking up at him, that I had been deceiving myself, calling this
feeling by any name but love. Lust for the beautiful animal who had seduced me,
fear of the vicious tyrant, compassion for the haunted man who cried like a
lost child in my arms—they were only part of what I felt for him. Fate had
lured me into the ultimate folly, and now I was trapped in total love.
The
black eyes glimmered down at me. "We have been turning over some trinkets,
Felicia, and cannot decide which we ought to purchase. Look and tell me what
you think is the fairest."
I
looked down at the tabletop. Strewn across it were a dozen or so trinkets,
fragments of bright color reflected in the shining surface like dragonflies on
the water. They were pictures, so gorgeously painted and cunningly framed that
I blinked at them, hardly knowing what they were at first. I felt the
councilors' eyes on me as I picked up one carved like an ivory flower and saw
inside it a painting of a plump, golden-haired girl with a child's pouting lips
belied by her full breasts. I knew then what the pictures were.
I
said, "I cannot choose without knowing what you seek, Your Grace. Is it
the lady's beauty or the artist's cleverness that I am to judge?"
"Oh,
the subject." It was the archbishop who answered me. "Pay no heed to
the painting!"
I
thanked him unemotionally and looked at the picture again. Someone coughed and
said that that was Lydia Renaldi, the daughter of the Duke of Parma, and I
forced myself to raise my eyes to Domenico's.
"Why
does she send you her picture, Your Grace?"
"Parma
himself sent it six months since." He was watching me as a cat watches a
mouse. "And my father deferred the question; but now I am in the market
for a wife."
Whether
he meant to or no, Piero had done me a favor by telling me this news this
morning, for now I could hear it unflinching. "Is that what you have been
debating?"
"For
four mortal days." His eyes never left my face, "I never had a
stomach for it before—that nightly drudge is a breeding ground for hate—but I
think with some policy, and a tolerable wench, I might be brought to endure the
marriage yoke. All my uncle's sermons"—he glanced fleetingly at the
archbishop—"have borne fruit—the dukedom needs an heir, he tells me, and
has urged it ever since Gratiana refused to curb her pleasures for the sake of
bearing a child. Do you favor any of these?"
I
stared at the pictures through a mist of tears, willing myself to handle them
carefully when I longed to smash them to fragments. "Are all these rivals
in your market?"
"They
are some of the dearer goods," he agreed ironically. "Tell her their
names, good Uncle, and their fortunes and conditions. It may be that her
judgment will exceed yours, and whom she chooses shall be my wife."
I
bent my head attentively over the portraits, one by one, while in my ears the
archbishop's voice spoke of dowers, settlements, alliances, and heirs. I felt
as though my whole body were filled with pain and if I moved or spoke it would
spill and foul the room with its stench. One portrait was circled by a ring of
gems, another set in a golden locket—women and girls, pretty and plain, each a
desirable match for a duke in birth and fortune.
"The
lady Francina di Corso," the archbishop said as I picked up another
portrait, "twice widowed, and a kinswoman of the Doge of Venice. She is
the heiress to a third of the Farnese fortune."
"It
would be a great match, then," I said colorlessly. The painter had been at
pains to soften his sitter's sharp face to his ideal of beauty, but for all his
care and her rich clothes and jewels, the tight mouth and pale, hard eyes
showed clearly. I placed the lady Francina di Corso at forty, at least.
"True,"
Domenico cut me short impatiently, "if we can compass it. Let it be, we
shall decide another day."
In
a daze of relief I heard him dismissing the councilors and their trooping out
after the savage swish of the archbishop's train. I could think only that this
was a reprieve, that for perhaps a day or two longer the duke would not choose
his bride.
The
doors closed, and I realized that Domenico was studying me curiously. "Do
you care no more than that?" he asked idly. "I thought this news
might grieve you."
"Why
should it? I have never professed to love you."
"Not
with your tongue." He turned away abruptly. "Come, we will leave this
talk of wives for a space—your... companionship suffices me until I come to
marry—you need not fear a rival till then."
"And
from that day your wife will suffice you?" I asked with a hint of bitter
wonderment.
He
nodded meditatively. "I think perhaps she will."
After
a moment he spoke again, and the gravity was gone from his voice. "Look, I
have other toys you may like better; they are not so old, but one of them may
please you. Look and choose."
I
realized with a sort of hunger that he was offering me the gift of a jewel that
had been his. If he had offered me an asp in a bracelet I would have taken it
from him. I turned to the ebony box he pushed towards me, trying to quiet my
fast-beating heart.
My
first thought was that he had more jewels than any woman; there were clasps and
shoe buckles, earrings and chains, all tossed together in a haphazard muddle,
and so rich that I drew back instinctively.
"These
are more of your family's jewels. I may not take them."
"No,
they are my own," he contradicted lazily. "Scruples are for
fools—take whatever you wish for. All these are nothing; I have a greater gift
in mind to give you."
I
assumed he was teasing me and did not answer, only turning over the trinkets
one by one. Many of them were dingy, heavier made than he usually wore, and
must have lain in the box for years unworn; there were a boy's ornaments on
which the engraving had worn smooth, showing that he had worn them often: and
on these my fingers lingered involuntarily. Then, caught in the lining in one
corner of the box, I noticed the ring.
It
was silver, wrought in the shape of two clasped hands holding a pearl; the
metal had a blackish sheen, and the pearl's luster was dimmed. He must have
cared for it once, I thought, to have kept it so long, and because he had let
it grow grimed and dirty he would not mind if I asked for it now. He was
turning over some papers as I made my choice, his head averted; and quickly,
before he could gainsay me, I thrust the ring on my finger and held out my
hand.
"I
should like this, Your Grace."
He
looked up with the beginning of a slight smile, then froze like an animal in a
trap. When he spoke at last, his voice had no expression at all. "That is
peddler's trumpery. I meant you to choose a worthier stone."
"I
like this. I am not one to brave comparison with emeralds and sapphires."
"But
pearls mean tears," he said in a queer voice. "Are you not
superstitious? Some men call them bad luck."
"Some
men are frightened when a cat crosses their path or when a skew-eyed old woman
frowns at them. I am less credulous." I looked up and saw his face.
"You do not want to part with this. I will put it back and choose
another."
"No,
take it. The thing has little enough value—I had not seen it for so many years,
that is all. I did not know I had kept it. I was given it years ago, by my
father's second wife. She died not long after."
"The
Duchess Isabella?" I could not understand the queer, dead look of him, the
almost dreamy note in his voice. "She was killed, they told me."
"Who
told you?" he demanded sharply.
"Ippolito—he
said she died in an accident."
"It...
was given out so." He spoke slowly, after a long hesitation. "In
fact, no one knows for sure how she died. Just before, there was an attempt on
my great-uncle's life by some Lutheran zealot who sought to wrench Cabria to
his heretical faith by killing the head of our Holy Catholic Church.
He
failed in that but escaped the palace guard, and it was thought that he came
again that night and had better success."
The
thought made me shiver. "But he cannot have been unseen—unheard—how could
she die, and no one know of it?"
"She
had gone to pray in her chapel." His fair head was bent and his voice
muffled; he was picking savagely at the carving of the table with the tip of
his dagger. "It was a thing she did often—she would pray for hours, and no
one heeded her absence. Perhaps she was praying for deliverance from my
father," he added viciously.
I
looked again at the tarnished ring. "Poor lady," I whispered.
"That
pearl can well stand for the tears he had of her." The knife dug into the
table almost vindictively. "She wept more than any woman I ever knew. The
saying held true for her; she had ill luck enough with it."
"But
she died when she gave it away." I spoke almost without thinking and added
quickly, "What became of the Lutheran?"
"He
was caught and executed for her death." His reply was abstracted as he
stared at the notched blade of his dagger. "The Lutheran could bring no
evidence that he had not come upon her while she was alone, stabbed her, and
then fled. It might have been he as soon as another. He swore he had been
drinking at a tavern, but a soldier saw him by the palace gates; he was hanged
for it, anyway."