A Dancer in Darkness (23 page)

“What did they know?” demanded the Duchess. “What can happen to us now, that is any worse than what has happened?”

Cariola looked anxiously at her mistress. The Duchess fell silent. Then she turned and climbed the hill, holding up her skirts. The others followed her. From the top of it they could see the several retinues of the various nobles, wending their way silently through the harsh landscape, inland, back to an Amalfi that was hers no longer and would always be theirs, no matter whom they had to sacrifice to keep it. She swallowed hard. There was no music now, no outriders, and no flags. What she looked down on was the flight of locusts. She turned to face the other way.

To her left lay Ancona. A ship was entering its harbour. It sparkled and glittered like a mirage of safety. To her right, down the coast, hidden by hills, lay Loreto. She looked at Antonio, who held her arm, to steady her.

“Which?” she asked. But she knew which she would choose. Her eyes went back to Ancona.

He shook his head. “Someone must have started this. The Cardinal must have agents here. If we went there, we would be intercepted at once. We could not defend ourselves. Better to pretend to make for Loreto, and then slip away by night. The players are still here. They will help us.” He looked sternly at Cariola. But so long as she spoke to no one she was safe enough. Now there was no one for her to speak to. He shrugged.

“We
must
get there,” she said.

He pressed her arm more firmly. “We shall.”

An hour later, surrounded by the sparse company of
musicians
and drolls, who did not seem so merry either, they were headed away from safety, towards Loreto.

“But if the roads are watched, how shall we get back?” asked the Duchess.

“We will not use the roads.” Antonio stood in the stirrups and gazed at the hills. “There are bandits here, and gipsies. We will trust to them.” He called one of the players to him, murmured something and sent him off.

Both he and the Duchess watched the montebank post towards the hills. He was their messenger to hope.

Behind them, on the knoll, stood the abandoned
encampment
, its tents still unstruck, and flapping unattended in the wind. Later, the bandits would come down from the hills, to pillage what they could, Turkey carpets still on the earth floors, and serving vessels tumbled on the ground. The tents they would leave as too bulky. A wind might knock them over. Perhaps it might take the winter to destroy them, or the season’s sun would rot their fabric away. Meanwhile they stood along the crest, like a row of architectural ghosts, and the wind flapping through them made eerie and minatory noises.

Ancona fell behind. Out of sight of it, and the Duchess drew closer to Antonio.

Antonio was right. There were agents in those hills. What he did not know, and what the agents themselves did not know, was that there were two sets of them. Like a farmer, the
Cardinal
was driving cattle down a narrow funnel towards the yard, and he counted his brother with the cattle. But the Cardinal moved only behind the scenes. Of this Ferdinand knew nothing.

Night and day he had posted across Italy, with Marcantonio, two more bravos, and Bosola. Now he drew rein on a rocky outcropping above the Ancona plain.

Bosola looked at him warily. He had never spent so much time with Ferdinand before. He realized Ferdinand was like Marcantonio. Even when his head was clear, the man was physically insane. And of all the forms of insanity, the physical is the hardest to control and the most intemperate. Like any other kind of insanity, it has its own logic, and its only means of self-expression is violence. And an insane body cannot be reasoned with. Violence is amenable only to violence, and Bosola had no strength.

Certainly Ferdinand’s mad rush to Loreto had been peculiar. For one thing, he would not let Bosola leave him, which made Bosola uneasy, for though he might appear to be serving
Ferdinand
, he knew whom he was really serving, and he was
supposed
to go on to Ancona. He did not quite dare to do that. In his present mood Ferdinand might destroy anyone for any trifle. Nor was travelling with Marcantonio pleasant. The man had nasty little ways to enjoy himself when he was bored. Men like Marcantonio lived by choice in those torture chambers of the mind where Bosola lived only by necessity.

Or did he? He no longer knew.

Now they looked down on the deserted camp. They had already met the noble caravans returning to Amalfi. Ferdinand saw that was his brother’s work. He spurred on, until his horse’s blood dropped on the road. Figures came out of the tents, and looking up to the horsemen on the ridge, themselves mounted and fled. Ferdinand and his company came down on the deserted tents.

Ferdinand strode moodily through them, kicking aside here an ewer, there a rug the robbers had been in the act of rolling up.

“How did they know we were coming?” he stormed. “How?”

“Perhaps they did not.”

Marcantonio had found some wine in an ewer. He sat down with it. Ferdinand looked at him contemptuously.

“Where have they gone? Loreto?” he demanded. “Why Loreto?”

Bosola had said nothing about Ancona. That was on the Cardinal’s advice. He knew he must get there, but he did not know how to get away.

“We must not alarm my sister,” said Ferdinand. “My brother would let them off. In other words, he would keep them for his own purposes. We must take them by surprise, and him.” He grinned. He would let Marcantonio have Antonio. He had already promised him that. He was content to watch. Marcantonio knew so many things to do. He would have the Duchess watch also.

“So,” he grunted. He turned to Bosola. “Ride after them.
We will follow through the hills.” He grinned. “I know whose thing you are. We will keep a watch on you. We shall know what to do when you find them.”

Bosola hesitated and glanced towards Ancona. Ferdinand followed the glance, but said nothing. “Go,” he said.
Marcantonio
put down the ewer of wine and stood up, hands on his hips, and stared at Bosola.

“Well, go,” he echoed his master.

There was nothing else for Bosola to do. He mounted his horse, and turned it aside on the Loreto road. It was a little after noon. The sun stood to one side of the meridian, and both he and the horse poured with sweat. All afternoon he passed through the landscape, and saw nothing. The Cardinal would have some message waiting for him at Ancona, so he must get there, but he knew better than to make a break for it until darkness fell. For though the landscape looked empty, Ferdinand and Marcantonio were grimly following him along the ridge. They were itching for violence. They trembled with desire for it. Any false move from him, and they would string him up behind his horse and send it galloping through the stony dust. The only thing he could do was to dawdle. That would make Ferdinand furious, but Ferdinand wished to remain concealed. His brother might also have agents here. He would not descend the hills to make Bosola go faster.

So Bosola’s pursuit of the Duchess and Antonio became an agonized amble. At dusk he would make for the shore, on whose sands riding would be swift. But he dared do nothing until then. He was a prisoner in a landscape without walls.

Thus the curious triple pursuit went on all afternoon, each side dawdling so as not to reach its goal, and each side moving furtively in the bright, paranoic sun. Towards evening the shadows began to turn purple. They lengthened. The sparkle of the sea grew dull. The leaves of the olive trees rattled crisply in an off-shore breeze. Only an occasional church bell cracked the silence.

Fortunately there would be no twilight, for in those regions dusk did not descend. It plummeted over the unwary like a gladiator’s net.

It came.

Bosola instantly spurred his horse down the first
arroyo
leading towards the sea.

The Duchess and Antonio had not been able to dawdle slowly enough. They had already long since passed the point in the hills where the local gipsies were to meet them. Darkness caught them under the bastions of Loreto.

The Duchess looked up at that holy city with despair.

It reared out of its olive groves like a prison, framed in the hard, green spears of poisonous agave plants. Its olive groves were ghostly. The bastions were built of narrow-laid rose brick. The windows were blind. The dome and campanile brandished themselves like weapons. It was huge, unyielding, and unsafe. It was not a sanctuary, but a trap. The battlements of the cathedral apse seemed to be mounted with cannon. And it was utterly silent. There was no Virgin and no mercy there. That the Duchess felt instinctively.

Antonio touched the bridle of her palfrey. “Now,” he said. His voice was a tense whisper.

She looked back at the carts, which the players had taken care of. Now the players were melting into the landscape. The carts stood abandoned on the road.

These were her household goods.

“No,” said Antonio gently. “We can take nothing.” One of the players rode up to him. “Come. He knows the way.”

“But they will find them.”

“Better they find them, than us,” said Antonio. He tugged at the bridle. It was still trimmed with little tinkling bells. Taking his knife from his boot, he cut them off. They fell one by one to the road, tinkled, and lay still. That, more than
anything
else, impressed the Duchess with how shorn she was of any last vestige of power.

Shivering, she nudged her horse into the shadows of the road.

“Get down,” ordered Antonio.

“What?”

“You cannot ride properly side-saddle. It will be rough country. Get down.”

She slid from the horse, and beckoned Cariola to follow.
Antonio bent down, and with a quick slash of his knife, ripped up her skirt and petticoats. The Duchess flinched.

Cariola stared. Antonio threw her his knife. Obediently she followed suit. Then they mounted again, astride. The player came forward and whispered to Antonio. Then the party set off up a narrow ravine. There was no moon as yet. It would rise late. The way was difficult. When they reached the ridge it would be easier. The Duchess was dulled by fatigue. That was perhaps merciful. None of them spoke. There were only the four of them. The players had tactfully disappeared into the landscape, having their own hides to save.

The carts and wagons stood behind them, dark and
forsaken
in the road. There were things in them the Duchess would never see again.

As they climbed higher, Loreto spread out below them. Then they reached the ridge, and plunged into the wood that ran along its crest. The player seemed certain of the way, and they had to trust him. Their worst fear now was ambush or
banditti
unknown to Antonio.

The player was almost a dwarf. He sat on a horse too big for him, like an imp of darkness with saucer eyes, riding the
nightmare
through a dream. His teeth were chattering with cold. For the night became as cold as the darkness was sudden. The clammy breeze whipped into the Duchess’s split skirt, and oozed against her naked flesh. She was already sore from riding astride, but did not dare to slow down. As for Cariola, she was terrified and did not know what she did. She had no choice but to follow.

It was midnight when they came to the meeting place. The Duchess blessed Antonio’s obsession with gipsies now. They rode into an open clearing, but found nobody there. The moon was up, and the shadows of the trees were like the shadows of men waiting. The Duchess was bewildered. She was sure they had gone astray.

Antonio dismissed the player. In the silence the chink of coins was audible. As the player rode back towards his fellows at Loreto, Antonio stood in his stirrups and putting his fingers to his mouth, whistled like a bird of prey. The whistle echoed without an answer.

“What do we do now?” asked the Duchess.

“We wait. They will not come until they are sure the player is gone. Here we trust no one.”

They waited. The horses stirred fretfully. From time to time Antonio peered about him. Then the shadows cast by the trees began to move. After all, they might have been betrayed. Why should they not be?

Antonio grunted and jumped down from his horse,
disappearing
into the shadows. It was as though he had vanished and left only his empty saddle. The Duchess stared at it, fascinated. Behind her, Cariola began to sob. They could hear sounds in the wood. Even the horses seemed to shy at something.

Antonio came back with some nondescript men. These were the gipsies. They were not so colourful as the gipsies of Amalfi. They were the scuttle-butt and rag-pickers of the region. But looking into their eyes, the Duchess trusted them. Antonio took her bridle.

“Dismount,” he said. “And Cariola, too.”

Cariola did not want to dismount. The Duchess jumped down, scarcely able to stand from so much riding. Unwillingly Cariola followed. Together they walked softly across the clearing into the safety of the trees, the gipsies leading the horses behind them. They went on for some way, and came to another clearing. There were more men waiting here. One of them brought forward a lantern.

Antonio took from him a bundle, and led the Duchess and Cariola behind a shrub.

“These are men’s clothes,” he said. “Change into them quickly.”

The Duchess stared at him.

“They are looking for two women and a man, whoever they are. Go on.”

Cariola refused. Antonio stuffed the bundle into her arms. He was angry. “These men are
banditti
,”
he said. “There are no women here. As one of them, you may be able to get through to Ancona. There is no other way.” He turned and strode out of the rustling shrubs, leaving a lantern on the ground. Its light shone up in their faces. The Duchess and Cariola looked at each other.

Her skirt was mined anyway. With an impatient gesture, the Duchess began to tear off her clothes. Shocked, Cariola came to help her.

Ten minutes later, and she was changed. Her poor torn dress and bodice lay on the ground beneath her. She wore hose, a doublet, soft leather knee boots which could be turned up to her thighs, spurs, and a short cloak. The clothes for some
reason
made her feel safer. For a moment she wondered what it was to be a man. It was like dressing up. But, as she tucked her hair under a large cap, she grew solemn again, and turned to Cariola.