"Yes,"
the beautiful voice said gently, "my sister Isabella. She wrote that
document the night she died, and your creature della Quercia sent it to me—for
a keepsake. I have treasured it for eleven years."
"I
will not read it." Domenico's voice was a threadlike whisper. "I will
not."
"But
you must." Amerighi sounded like a schoolmaster reasoning with a willful
child. "It much concerns you and your father. Begin .there." The thin
ringless hand flicked a leaf where the corner was turned down, and I thought
suddenly, he knows it all by heart. Domenico turned the page, and as he looked,
a strange little sound of pure animal revulsion tore from his throat; then he
stood immobile, a look of terror growing in his face as he read.
I
wrenched my gaze away and turned to Amerighi, who was watching with a smile on
his lips and pure, malign triumph flaming green in his eyes.
"My
lord..."
He
answered without moving. "Do not interrupt me, lady. I have waited eleven
years for this moment."
"But
I do not understand." In desperation I moved towards him, interposing
myself between him and Domenico. The green eyes flickered, wavered, and then
rested on my face. "What has this writing to do with your wager?"
Amerighi
smiled. "It is quite simple. I want my dear cousin—my nephew, to speak
more exactly—to know why I will do him no favors. He drove my dearest sister to
kill herself." His voice twisted. "And damned her soul, so that now I
shall not see her in heaven. Should I let him think I have forgiven him that?"
I
faltered, "Your sister... Isabella?"
"Yes."
The duke's thin mouth twisted for an instant. "The sweetest sister who
ever drew breath and the dearest lady to me. I thought my heart would break
when she was married to the Duke of Cabria, but I did not know then that I was
bidding her good-bye for ever. She swore when we parted that she would never
love another man as she loved me, but I feared for her faith if her swinish
husband proved kind—I never thought to fear the lust of her stepson."
Domenico
did not move. Only his hand clenched on the manuscript, tighter and tighter.
"But
you are mistaken," I protested. "The duchess Isabella was murdered by
a Lutheran fanatic...
."
"...
in her chapel, was not that the story? I know it was the tale that devil's
priest invented to hide the truth, but I did not think even Cabrians would
believe it—why should the Lutherans kill my sister, who was sweet and
God-fearing, when they should strike at that lecherous Antichrist, her
husband?"
"I
do not know, but it is true—a man was hanged for the murder."
Amerighi
said levelly, "What is a man's life to a della Raffaelle? Any of them
would hang twenty men to prove one lie: The Lutheran did not murder my sister;
he was hanged as a scapegoat for the Raffaelle pride."
I
fought the conviction that he spoke the truth, but I knew that pride. Even now
it kept Domenico unmoving, his face set in lines of rigid endurance, bearing a
waking nightmare without a change of expression. I turned back to Amerighi
almost desperately. "How do you know?"
"Because
Isabella was planning to kill herself when she wrote that... confession, she
called it. She dared not tell her father confessor what had happened: She was
ashamed. When she had written the whole story in that document, she went back
into the chapel and stabbed herself. Well, Cousin." He looked around as
Domenico raised his head. "Are you proud of you conquest now?"
Domenico's
eyes were like stones. He said in a sweet, spine-chilling whisper, "It was
late, and I thought everyone was abed until I heard her voice; I had taken a
torch to go back to my own chamber, and I heard her as I passed the chapel
door. I went in, and she was kneeling in front of her precious Holy Virgin with
her back to the door, and she did not see me at first. I thought I would stay
and hear her prayers, to learn if such a dry stick of a woman could want
anything—she was always a poor, bloodless creature, with nothing but her beads
and her pride for company. And I heard her praying for deliverance" — his
voice festered suddenly — "from the sin of loving me — she had preached to
me of purity and chastity until my head was ringing with texts; she had even
banished some waiting wench of hers I had gotten with child, and all the time
she only wanted me to take her... my father's wife! She could not endure it,
she said. She would rather die than live without me if the Holy Mother would
not purge her of her sin. All I thought was that she was not so pure after all;
it seemed too good a jest to let go. So I spoke to her and told her she could
have what she desired, and she looked at me as though..."
"As
though?" Amerighi prompted insistently.
"As
though she had seen a ghost."
One
white hand reached blindly towards me, and I caught it between both mine. The
fingers curled over, tightening, leaving livid marks where they gripped, but I
hardly noticed the pain; I only knew that at last I would learn why Domenico's
sleep was broken by Isabella's unhappy ghost.
Amerighi
moistened his lips. "And then?"
"I
took her, there on the floor of the chapel, and silenced her sermons. She was
like every other woman, clinging and whining for more, like a bitch in
heat."
I
felt suddenly cold, and my fingers were lifeless in his.
He
said, still in that icy breath of a voice, "I left her there, just as she
was—there was no love in it, I told her so; she must be content with that
once—and I thought no more of it. But when I went back the next day to see how
she fared, she was still lying there."
"As
though she had not moved all night," I said softly. Domenico's face wore
the look of nausea it had had in the throes of his worst nightmares, and his
eyes were like black wells of nothingness.
"I
thought she was sleeping until I saw the floor..." His voice choked in his
throat. "All red..."
Amerighi
drew a long breath. "She would not have spared herself. But she could have
spared me."
Domenico
looked up sharply. "No. It was the work of a creature who hated women. I
had the slave's hands cut off for it before my face."
Amerighi
responded, watching him. "It might be that my sister hated her own
womanhood... then."
Domenico
did not answer. His expression did not alter by the flicker of an eyelash, but
the hand in mine was suddenly so still that I expected all its living warmth to
ebb away.
"Lady,"
Amerighi said reprovingly, "you must not cling so to my good cousin. You
anticipate the ending of our game."
It
was then that I realized how much a sham was his unnatural self-control. Under
the assumed calm his thin body was quivering with excitement; his greedy gaze
clung like a leech to Domenico's face as it searched for the smallest sign of
pain and to the tiny involuntary flexing of Domenico's fingers as my hand fell
away from his. I was reminded of a man prodding at a pain-drugged leopard. On
Amerighi's set face was a look of craving which spoke strangely of the love he
had borne his dead sister. As he watched my hands fall slowly to my sides, he
gave a tiny chuckle, like a gleeful schoolboy.
"Come
now, to our business."
The
chessboard was inlaid in a tabletop, squares of gold and silver set in shining
marble. The table stood at the far end of the gallery, a chair on either side,
and from a drawer beneath it Amerighi produced the men and set them out, black
against white, gold against silver, in gleaming precious ranks.
Amerighi
looked across to where I stood. "Will you not watch us?"
"I
do not know the game." My throat was dry. "A pity, but no matter.
Perhaps I shall be able to teach you, later."
A
blush burned my face as I moved towards the table, the glinting gown molding every
line of my body, and sat down hastily in a nearby chair. The black and white
figures of the two dukes were very close as they conferred briefly together;
then Domenico moved, with a studied indifference marred by the harsh lines
hardening his sensual mouth, to sit behind the white pieces. Amerighi took the
black. Domenico's hand hesitated over the board for a moment and then moved a
piece: The game was on.
To
me it all seemed like a fantasy. I could not believe that a mere game would
decide the fate of a dukedom, that the whole of my future life depended on the
manipulation of those beautiful little toys. I watched intently, trying to
judge the play, but it was hopeless; my scanty knowledge of the rules made it
impossible for me to understand the subtleties of the game being played before
me. It was only when the pieces at last began to be lost that I could begin to
see the elaborate patterns of check and countercheck.
The
discarded pieces were ranged beside the board. Breathlessly I counted them, but
the score seemed even. At first the two men played in silence, watching only
the board between them, but as more chessmen were captured, the moves slowed,
fraught with tension, and they watched each other as they hesitated, each
gauging the other's reaction to an intended move.
I
could read nothing in Domenico's still face. He lounged in his chair apparently
at his ease, supple as a great white cat. The fingers caressing the silver as
he debated were as smooth as alabaster, his fair profile impassive, his heavy
eyelids drooping; the long dark lashes veiled the expression in his eyes.
Against the high back of his bronze chair, his silver-fair hair looked
unearthly. In the dust and mire of the long journey, I had forgotten, I
thought, how beautiful he was.
Almost
lazily he shifted a piece, but as he set it down, he must have sensed my
scrutiny, because he looked up at me for an instant and I saw him pause.
"You
must keep your mind on the game, Cousin," Amerighi cautioned gravely.
"I myself dare not look at her too long, for fear I should lose a pawn or
a bishop in contemplation of the prize."
"I
can guard my own well enough."
"Can
you so? Look, you have not regarded your king's pawn; my rook is
waiting—so."
There
was anger and an odd kind of fright in the very expressionlessness of
Domenico's face as the gold piece swooped on the silver.
Amerighi
continued, gently indulgent, "You see, you should never neglect the
slightest pawn, or its loss may mar your game—for myself, I cherish my pawns as
long as I may unless their loss is inevitable." He added as Domenico's
hand hesitated over the board, "Piero della Quercia was one of mine,
though he fancied himself more at first."
Domenico's
hand checked the merest fraction, then moved smoothly on. "Yes, he
confessed before I had him killed." The chessman landed with a hard little
bang. "I am not quite blind, Cousin."
The
dark brows lifted. "So you killed him? I thought he must have been
discovered when his dispatches ceased so abruptly. I judged the man to have
more brain than to be discovered so soon."
"He
was clumsy." For a moment the soft mouth twisted in distaste, then relaxed
again, unrevealing. Domenico's mind must have been in a tumult, but not a
flicker of it showed in his face as he spoke Piero's epitaph.
Amerighi
shifted his gaze back to the board. Moving a man with a careless movement, he
remarked, "Yet I have always wondered why he entertained my plans—a
creature of yours who had been yours so long. Was it that he was jealous of
this paragon?" The jerk of his head turned the words to an insult.
Domenico
answered indifferently, "I do not know what he thought."
"But
the lady does. Look how she blushes. He wrote of you in his last letters, lady,
but I dismissed what he said as the effusion of his fancy; he had ever a way of
wrapping what he had to say in dainty terms and salting his spying with a grain
or two of poesy. As I remembered, I cared little for his report save that you
might figure as a means for me to injure my cousin. But now that I see you, I
do not wonder he spent so much ink in describing the duke's new mistress."
Domenico
said detachedly, "Have you cared for eleven years only to injure me?"
He took a white knight zigzagging down the board.
"What
else should I care for?" There was genuine astonishment in the question.
"For your father, I had only to wait for him to mold away, for I knew him
white with pox. And all he did to Isabella was slight compared to your...
sport. He only tormented her—it was you who killed her."
A
tall king moved into the white knight's path.
Domenico
frowned and shook his head as though to clear it, and I realized that on him,
as on me, the fatigue of the long day was taking its toll. Amerighi watched the
countermove intently and smiled a smile that Domenico did not see. I thought:
He is winning.
Until
that moment I had been thinking only of what defeat would mean to Domenico. The
loss of his hopes, far more than the loss of his dukedom, would maim his
arrogant spirit; it would be like seeing Lucifer transformed to Satan before my
eyes. But now I thought for the first time of what the end of it might be for
me, in the unvarnished terms of crude fact. In my heart of hearts I had not
really believed that I should have to keep Domenico's bargain; I was convinced
that somehow he would always have his way. But now...