Death of a Duchess (27 page)

Leandro riveted his attention on those unresponsive ornamental facades, the Palace, the Cathedral, that hid his fate. He imagined Sigismondo failing, himself hunted down. He found he was grasping Cosima’s hand too hard, and as he apologised they looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. A rush of thoughts dazed him. Cosima
di Torre
... Sigismondo said the feud’s a fake... she’s lovely, she’s brave... married in the cell... but it’s a fake... danger... marriage... What’s to become of us? What is Sigismondo
doing
?

‘Oh!’ cried Cosima, ‘Look!’

The trumpets were being raised, the dignitaries emerged on the Cathedral balcony, the Duke — even from here startlingly pale — the Cardinal beside him, the Duke Ippolyto, and a crowd of clerics. A file of men in green and white came out on the Palace balcony. Two of them shifted the scattered benches and chairs, then joined the line. The crowd’s noise dropped in anticipation of an event and Sigismondo appeared masked in the Palace doorway, Paolo’s body in his arms. The crowd seemed to take one breath. He crossed the balcony onto the scaffold and laid the body down on the straw. He nodded to the drummers below who, all but caught out by the signal after so long, started raggedly but picked up into their steady rattling beat. Angelo appeared, carrying the axe across both hands, and came forward. The crowd swayed with internal dissensions but their noise was lost in the shuddering of the drums.

Sigismondo took the axe and struck before they knew he would do it. He stooped, and as he rose the drums stopped. His left hand held Paolo’s head by the hair and his voice rang out, measured and very loud, so that it came clearly to those on the loggia.

‘Behold the head of a traitor.’

Although the response of the crowd was undecided, overwhelmingly from the outskirts came the cry of ‘Duca!’ Sigismondo raised both arms; although the dead face of Paolo confronted them with a sluggish drip of blood, they slowly obeyed the signal and the shouts died into an expectant quiet.

‘A traitor to his Duke; falsely accusing his own brother; giving the Duke’s alms in his own name to corrupt your hearts; falsely brewing hatred among you; falsely buying powerful men by abducting their children; a traitor who at last drew sword on the Duke, his brother, and would have killed him. May all traitors have such an end!’

The crashing roar of the Duke’s name responded. Anyone who might be inclined to disbelieve now had the sense to keep his ideas to himself. Among those who did not shout was a man whose child, hoisted on his shoulders for a good view, had been sick on his head at sight of Paolo’s. The crowd turned towards the Duke on the Cathedral balcony, and threw up their caps and cheered. The Duke acknowledged this expression of their confidence, and bore it for all of four minutes. Then he withdrew.

The Duke sat in robes of sable and burgundy, silent at the centre of the Council table, pale and haggard against his high collar, the dark carving of the chair of state, and behind that the dark arras where a different kind of judgement was being enacted. Paris, lolling against a tree trunk, offered the golden apple to Venus, her voluptuous back modestly turned towards the Council chamber, while Minerva and Juno resentfully resumed their draperies. Sigismondo, facing the table in his own black clothes that seemed to melt into the shadows, may have mused that the subject of the tapestry, being the exercise of power in bribery and corruption, had some relevance to what was before this court today.

The Cardinal, his robes bright as blood where the light caught them, sat on the Duke’s right. On his left, Duke Ippolyto with a dark, troubled face gazed towards the high windows and twitched at the ribbons of his sleeve. He had come for an execution and his sister’s funeral. So far, although an execution had in sort taken place, he had a sense that his sister’s honour, and therefore his own, was to be in question.

‘Whom are we to hear first?’ The Duke’s voice its best was seldom less than harsh. It was near its worst now.

‘By your leave, the Lady Cecilia, her Grace’s Mistress of the Robes.’

The Duke nodded, and Sigismondo went to rap the door and usher in the Lady Cecilia who appear there. She came forward, her black brocade stiffly brushing the floor, her golden hair in a net of silver and pearls, to sit on the tapestry-covered stool facing them. In spite of her skill at
maquillage
, swollen eyes bore their witness to her distress and, perhaps, fear. Sigismondo stood beside her. The Duke stirred, sighed, and spoke as if constrained to, as though, like his brother-in-law, he was reluctant to know what must now be known.

‘Sigismondo, you have leave to question.’

Acknowledging this, Sigismondo turned to the lady.

‘Had her Grace arranged to meet someone during your wedding feast?’

‘Her Grace would not do such a thing.’

He turned to the tribunal and said, ‘It would be best if the Lady Cecilia were to answer on oath.’

The relics of St Agnes were no doubt locked again in their chapel. The Cardinal lifted the chain of his pectoral cross over his head and leant to lay the crucifix on the table’s far side. ‘Come, daughter. We are here for the truth.’

She rose, but faltered. Sigismondo’s hand under her arm took her the few paces to the table, where she laid her hand on the crucifix and repeated the oath as the Cardinal dictated it. The Duke’s eyes watched her, his thoughts were not to be fathomed. The oath would force a truth from her that he could not want to hear.

She took her place once more. The aqueous shimmer of the pearls on her bodice showed that she breathed fast and shallowly.

‘Had her Grace,’ came the inexorable question, ‘arranged to meet someone during your wedding feast?’

The lady’s answer was almost too faint to hear, but it was ‘Yes.’

‘Was this an assignation of love?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was it whom she had arranged to meet?’

‘I — she’s dead, my lords. Does it need...?’

The Duke at his harshest said ‘Answer!’ and she obeyed almost below her breath.

‘The Lord Paolo.’

The Duke withdrew his attention from her and looked at the pattern of the carpet on the table. He seemed to withdraw more than that. He had known from Sigismondo that there had been a lover and he was now facing the deeper betrayal.

Ippolyto suddenly asked, ‘Was this the only time? Had they met so before?’

‘She... I... your Grace knows I was her friend, her best friend since we were girls at your father’s court—’

‘Had she lovers
then
?’

‘No! No, his Grace knows she was pure virgin on her marriage. I meant, I meant that I loved her.’

‘So did I. For the pity of God will you answer the question?’

‘She had met him so before.’

‘Were there others?’

The Lady Cecilia closed her mouth and shook her head. It might be denial of other lovers, or denial of any answer. Sigismondo’s question was soft and almost negligent. ‘By your Grace’s leave — was Leandro Bandini one?’

‘Never! That? Hardly out of boyhood!’

After a second’s silence she put her hand over her mouth. It was clear that she saw what she had admitted.

‘Enough.’ The Duke’s hand was clenched on the table. He had been staring at the cloth as though he tried to find a meaning in the pattern, but now he shot a look of bleak distaste at her. ‘Woman: take care that I never see you again.’

Sigismondo took her to the door. She walked as if in her sleep, and when they reached the door he had to guide her through it. As he shut the door the Duke said, ‘What more must we hear?’

‘Cousin.’ The Duke Ippolyto spoke. ‘Truth may not be sweet, but it must be found.’

‘Shall we know it, when it’s found? I thought, all my life, that my brother was truth’s own self.’ The Duke subsided into silence, moving his fingers in the pile of the cloth.

Sigismondo moved, his heel sharp on the marble, and said, ‘The Lady Cecilia spoke of the arranging of an assignation, your Grace. The Wild Man was to spoil the dress by kicking the wine over, so that her Grace should have reason to retire.’

The Duke’s head came up. ‘Leandro Bandini was in my brother’s pay! So, all along, he knew he was to be rescued and the blame thrown on me. Where is he skulking? I will banish every Bandini in Rocca.’

‘Your Grace, I have the Wild Man here.’ He opened the door.

The Duke sat forward. The Cardinal even put a hand to his cross as, outlined by the light from the anteroom, stood a shaggy figure dark as the Devil himself. It came forward to stand before the tribunal and, at a word from Sigismondo, took off its head as neatly as any executioner. Long golden hair shone m the sunlight of early evening, around a face Piero della Francesca would have delighted to paint. The devil was an angel disguised. Without knowing it, the three men looking at him were already disposed to believe this heavenly messenger.

‘This was the Wild Man, your Grace, who danced at the Lady Cecilia’s wedding feast. Hired by Niccolo the Festaiuolo, he was paid also by one of Lord Paolo’s men to kick over the wine cup.’

‘So he worked for my brother, did he?’ The Duke’s tone was ominous and Sigismondo interposed.

‘He did not know that, your Grace. He was told it was for a jest and, when he protested that the Duchess would be angry at the ruin of her dress, he was told she was party to the jest.’

‘Where did the skin for Bandini come from? It could not be the same.’

‘There were several in the Festaiuolo’s store. He told me he cannot always protect them from theft, and the Lord Paolo’s men were very helpful over the entertainments.’ Sigismondo was assisting Angelo out of the skin and now he stood, clothed in blue, in that chamber hung with dark tapestry and draped in black, more than ever a creature of the sky. The Cardinal addressed him.

‘Tell us what happened that night.’

Angelo told, succinctly, the light a halo in his hair, how he had danced, spilt the drink, been chased out, had changed his clothes, been paid, and had seen his paymaster burn the bundle of the skin and then follow him out of the Palace grounds. ‘I tried to throw him off, but he followed. I ran, but he gained on me. I don’t know this town. He brought me down; and so I fought and killed him.’

There was no flicker on Sigismondo’s face to say this was not the tale he had heard, that Angelo, knowing he was followed, had lain in wait and knifed his pursuer without valediction. Such embroideries as this made the incident more forgivable to earthly justice.

‘How are we to know that the man was Paolo’s?’

‘I can’t tell, sir,’ said the angel, humbly. ‘He wore no badge or livery; as we fought, though, this chain came off his neck. It may be it’s known to someone.’

He pulled from his pocket, and put down on the table, a thin double-twist silver-gilt chain, broken, with a curious
memento mori
pendant of a small ivory skull with deep-set ruby eyes.

The Duke said in a voice without feeling, ‘One of my brother’s most constant attendants wears one such. Giannini, Giacomino, something of that sound. They are all in custody. It can be seen if he is missing.

‘So, you have found the dancer.’

Sigismondo said, ‘Do my lords wish to question him more?’ and as they made no answer the Duke waved dismissal. Angelo withdrew his celestial presence. The little skull lay on the cloth beside the Cardinal’s crucifix.

‘We have, my lords, one man, this Giannini, who cannot speak because he is dead. Another, whose story is necessary at this juncture, is also dead. It may be, however, that his Grace has the power to resurrect him.’

‘Have a care, my son,’ said the Cardinal smoothly.

‘Were he alive, my lords, this witness would be a dead man.’ The Duke frowned, but his quick glance at Sigismondo showed a face serious and considerate. The play on words certainly was not an effort to joke on a subject so grave. ‘He would be hanged for theft, and his witness is such that he would tremble for his life, did he live, at the telling of it.’

‘This doubly dead man can be revived?’ the Duke Ippolyto enquired.

‘I see that, if he lived, he would require a pardon for theft and an assurance of indemnity for what he might speak.’ The Duke, however stunned by grief he might be, was as quick of apprehension as ever. He regarded Sigismondo with an unfathomable blue stare. ‘A pardon for theft is not a heavy matter, but if he speaks the truth and trembles to tell it, against whom does he speak? Ourself? My innocence has been in question. The truth can only clear it. Why does this dead man tremble?’

‘Your Grace, he speaks against the dead.’

After a moment the Duke Ippolyto said, ‘All of us here now know that my sister was an adulteress. This witness could scarcely defame her.’

‘By digging out the mud, we shall come to clear water,’ said the Cardinal.

‘Let us hear your dead man, Sigismondo. Truth should be worth a pardon. If I do not promise him his life, what then?’

‘If your Grace will not promise it, he may not have it.’ Sigismondo bowed, and spread deprecating hands. ‘He cannot live.’

‘In the wars in Germany you saved my life,’ said the Duke, ‘and you have served me well now; or I tell you, you should not bargain with me. He shall have his life. Let him come.’

Sigismondo bowed once more, not a courtier’s bow, but a back bent in response to a concession not willingly granted. He went to the door and disappeared beyond it.

The Cardinal remarked, ‘The reconsecration of the Cathedral requires some days. I would suggest that the obsequies of the late Duchess take place in the Palace chapel.’

‘If that satisfies her Grace’s brother.’

‘God works ah for the best,’ Ippolyto sighed. ‘Diminished pomp is more to my mind, as things stand.’

The door and curtains opened. Sigismondo was standing aside to admit a hesitant and desperately anxious dwarf.

After the devil, the dead man.

Under the scrubby beard Poggio had industriously started to grow as a disguise, he was sweating heavily, and all the lines of his face, round eyes and a mouth Nature had designed to turn happily upward, looked stretched by fear. His hands knotted themselves together before him.