Death of a Duchess (29 page)

At least Sigismondo would not tell the Duke that her father and Bandini were prepared to be traitors. She need not fear that; but if her father ever found out what she, his sequestered and modest daughter, had really done, he would think a convent, in earnest, the only place for her. At least if he ever married her to someone she would have a married woman’s freedom and might actually see Leandro again. It would be much better if she could only stop thinking about him.

The elderly waiting-woman her father had supplied in place of poor Sascha came squawking in. ‘There’s no time to sit dreaming! Quick, quick! Your best dress. Come along, m’lady. Let’s have that gown off you.’

‘Why—’

‘Your father’s orders! What sort of thing is “Why?”, eh?’

Confused, Cosima pulled laces undone.

Il Lupo, with a handsome present from the Duke and a skinful of wine with the help of Sigismondo-Martin and Barley, rode off a little carefully, scarred and saturnine, at the head of his men, towards a promising war in the south. His men had picked up a Roccan ballad about Paolo the Bastard, and h dwindled into the distance now in the warm spring evening air.

When the evening came and the feast was prepared, several problems had been resolved. The Festaiuolo Niccolo had found a way in which Evil, so unfortunately individualised in the late Lord Paolo, could be happily diversified into the Seven Deadly Sins, which also offered an opportunity for Envy’s iron teeth. Faith, Hope and Charity were to triumph over the Sins and an angel with a flaming sword would finally banish them from the soil of Rocca. The three Virtues had been recruited from local talent, and it was to be hoped that no courtier and in particular no churchman was an habitué of the house where they worked; they might be taken exception to as Virtues. The Festaiuolo’s own virtue had been under critical strain when the opulent ravishing madam had pulled him off his bench in a sporting effort to be cast as Charity.

Only very few were aware of the adultery of the late Duchess, and the Festaiuolo was luckily unconscious that the Duke might discover an extra significance in the caperings of Lechery.

A fine effect was to be the flaming sword wielded by the angel at the finish. He had decided to use the dancer who had made such a hash of the Wild Man, since it was a pity to waste such a face. Certainly there was a risk, if the angel drank too much this time as well, of his setting fire to the Vices with the burning tow on the sword. There had been moments, rehearsing Gluttony who had thought it repeatedly amusing to shift his false belly round to his backside, that Niccolo’s heart had yearned after this satisfying spectacle.

Problems had been solved by people more important than Niccolo. Duke Ippolyto and the Lady Violante, with identical reasons for wishing to appear at their best while yet obliged to maintain the convention of mourning — one, for an adulterous sister and the other for a detested stepmother — each decided to lighten the mourning. Duke Ippolyto changed to a burgundy so dense that it quite, at first glance, deceived the eye as nearly black and then seemed to burn in its depths. He was about to enter negotiations through Cardinal Pontano for a dispensation to marry his brother-in-law’s daughter, for since he first thumped down on the scaffold beneath her and they had struggled for mastery of his sword arm, he found the idea of a very different kind of struggle with her wholly enticing. The Lady Violante was selecting deepest purple to set off her white skin and blonde hair. Turning over the jewels spread out on the table by her lady, she made a face at the mourning jewels of jet and pearls, and picked up a diamond and pearl cross, magnificent on her breast. Her lady had seen it somewhere before but did not recall that this had been on the bosom of the Duchess Maria, the gentle lady who had brought up Violante as her own.

While these weighty questions were under consideration still, the Duke sent for the heads of the two factions and their children. He received them in his library, and alone. Cosima appeared as a parcel of white silk lawn, but when in respect to the Duke she took off her veil, all four men had a distinct impression of moonlight emerging from cloud. Cosima herself did not look up, and so her view of the proceedings was of an expanse of floor, two long gowns of velvet, brocade, Flanders weave and silk braid, the seated Duke with an embroidered shoe beneath a swathe of furred cloak, and Leandro’s legs. She did not take in the start of the interview.

Her father and Bandini were not so fortunate. They had to bear the concentrated and for a long moment silent attention of the Duke.

‘On your knees.’

The uncompromising words brought all four of them instantly down; the stiff older joints were as fast as the limber young. Cosima felt cold. With the optimism of her years she had believed in Sigismondo and supposed all was well. But he was not here, and the Duke’s face was chill.

‘We sent for you to know that we have heard all that you planned against our person and our state; all that a timely intervention thwarted you in doing.’

His eyes — how frightening blue eyes were — turned on her father.

‘You, by disobeying us and seeking to deceive us, put your daughter into the hands of our enemies; and to save her from the consequences of your misdeed you were prepared to open the gates of your city to those who would kill your Duke — you, a member of our Council whose particular duty and whose first thought should be to uphold the state. You would have put Rocca under Castelnuova’s domination.’

Jacopo seemed about to speak, but the Duke had turned his face from him.

‘You, Bandini, were ready to betray us, to give half your fortune to those whom you knew sought the ruin of Rocca. You, Leandro, disobeyed our ban. In your vanity, you imagined our daughter would make an assignation with you.’ Leandro, his head bent, became crimson.
Indeed
, thought Cosima. ‘You flouted our ban in coming to the Palace. Your folly forced your father’s hand.

‘You, Cosima—’ She was startled. What had she done wrong, who thought herself wronged? ‘You lent yourself to your father’s deceit, aiding him in setting aside our command. You obeyed him and not the father of your city.

‘All of you are guilty; disloyal, treacherous. You may blame one who manipulated you; I tell you the weakness in our state which he used was caused by your feud. No traitor could flourish without the chances which your disaffection, your disregard of your true duty, gave to him.’

There was silence. No one lifted eyes or head.

‘You two fathers: where do you expect your children’s duty to lie? To their friends, their pastimes, their quarrels? Or to you?’

Di Torre and Bandini muttered, blurted an assent: to us.

‘So do I expect your duty.’

Bandini this time was about to protest his future devotion when the Duke’s harsh voice silenced him.

‘One traitor, dear to me, now hangs in chains from the city wall.’ Cosima remembered the maids’ dreadful account of the tar-covered body in its chains. ‘You are less dear to me. What do you look for?’

Dear God! Cosima was trembling. She saw, through tears, her father throw himself flat down, arms towards the Duke.

‘I implore your mercy.’

Bandini went down on his face. Cosima thought, frantic.
Should I, too? My dress...
She was putting her hands to the floor all the same, seeing Leandro do so, when the Duke said, ‘Up, up,’ and her father and Bandini pushed themselves to their knees again. The Duke’s hand gestured them to their feet.

‘You will carry out my former decree. You will betroth your children to each other now, here in our presence.’

Cosima’s eyes met Leandro’s. She saw his dazed smile and felt herself smiling, tentatively; then remembering modesty she blushed and looked down. It was becoming quite a habit, marrying Leandro.

The Duke had been talking about fines, about her dowry. Now he said, ‘Your grandchildren shall share your blood,’ and Cosima blushed again.

The Duke’s handclap summoned a page. All had been arranged, for the Duke had only to nod to him. They waited in silence. She did not dare to look up in case Leandro was still watching her. The doors opened to admit the Cardinal himself, and after him a priest carrying his stole, which he kissed and put on.

In the prison Leandro’s hand had been clammy. Now it was warm. The Cardinal’s stole lay over their clasped fingers; rough gold threads, embroidered like the borders of a missal with vines and flowers. She must have said what she was supposed to say. A betrothal was not usually as formal as this, but the Duke was clearly leaving no chance for the families to rescind it. Now the unthinkable, di Torre himself embracing Ugo Bandini, exchanging the kiss of peace. Watching, Cosima became aware of another watcher, in the shadows by the door, clasping an elbow and rubbing his lips with a forefinger. He was slightly smiling.

* * *

At the feast that night, Leandro was thoughtful, and hardly conscious that everyone at the tables was regarding him in the light of a fascinating ex-corpse, who instead of sitting there looking handsome in brocade might have been wearing tar and chains instead, like Lord Paolo — whom people had recently discovered that they had never really trusted. They thought the pretty little di Torre girl looked radiant, though of course on her first appearance in public, now she was betrothed and could show her face, she was properly shy and did not venture a word. She had been in a convent, it was said, captured by the Duke Francisco’s men, but all delays had been in vain: the enemies were to marry, after all. People professed themselves not deceived by the apparent friendliness of old di Torre and Bandini. Feuds were not buried like that without a few bodies being buried beforehand. No one could remember which classical myth told of two warring families compelled to marry, all the males with all the females, who were pledged to murder their husbands to prevent consummation, but someone had the pleasing idea that Cosima di Torre looked radiant because she was planning to take a knife to her marriage bed and show Leandro Bandini how the Duchess ought to have dealt with him.

Leandro was, in fact, wondering if the marriage ceremony, which the Duke had announced he would honour with his presence, would now take place in the Cathedral. He had been among the silent crowd in the great square today, to watch Cardinal Pontano conduct the long and complicated final stages of reconsecrating the Cathedral; they could watch him blessing the outer walls with salt and water. The great doors had remained closed since the Duke’s brother was cut down in the chancel. The Cardinal had knocked thrice on these doors with his staff while the choir recited ‘Lift up your gates, ye Princes, and be lift up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come in.’ The voice inside the doors could not clearly be heard asking, ‘Who is this King of Glory?’ but the Cardinal’s reply came with firm triumph: ‘The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory.’ Leandro had reflected then that on the temporal plane, too, the Lord who commanded the hosts was the one with the final say in things. He had listened to the Cardinal’s thrice repeated ‘
Aperite!
’ which at last was obeyed, and the doors slowly groaned open on the darkness beyond. The tall scarlet figure had stooped to trace a cross with his staff on the threshold, and to bid all phantoms flee the sign; two black birds, startled by the sudden chanting of the choir, burst into flight from some perch on the Cathedral front and the crowd with gleeful horror called them phantoms; Leandro had the idea that they might indeed be the shades of the guilty Duchess and her wicked lover, vanishing with a clapping of wings over the roofs. He heard again the echoing cry of the Cardinal as he stepped into the empty Cathedral: ‘Peace be on this House!’

Leandro looked at his father and saw him raise his cup to his future daughter-in-law. Peace be on all houses.

Sigismondo was at the end of the table, perfectly placed to survey everyone and to be seen. He was wearing, besides the Bandini chain, a splendid collar of faceted links from which hung a pendant jewel. It was obvious that he had been greatly instrumental for the present happy safety of the state and everyone would have liked to know how.

Benno spoke from behind Sigismondo, but with his mouth full, so that he had to repeat it, leaning over his master’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been wondering about that nun you tied up. What d’you suppose will have happened to her?’

‘That will depend on her Mother Superior.’

Benno took a flagon officiously from the hands of the approaching server and filled Sigismondo’s cup to the brim. Sigismondo drank deep, Benno holding on to the flagon until he could pour again.

‘I fancy it will all come out how little she left the world behind when she entered the cloister. She was too used to power to give it up.’

The server got hold of the flagon and bore it away.

‘My lady says you told her the nun was a Bandini, but I never heard of no Bandini taking the veil in Castelnuova.’

‘I didn’t tell her it was a Bandini. She was suggesting we should confide in her; I asked what she would say if I told her the nun was a Bandini. To ask her for help would have been indiscreet, as she’s Lord Paolo’s mother.’

Benno’s face lit with pure pleasure. ‘Was she then? The old Duke’s bed-warmer.’ He was struck in the back by a platter carried past, and bumped into Sigismondo’s chair. He clung on to it to support him in his surprise. ‘Now I come to think of it, of course she turned nun when he died. So she was working to make her
son
Duke.’

‘Mothers are like that. Remember Poggio’s mother — she’d do anything for her son. Dangerous things, mothers.’

Benno squatted beside Sigismondo, the better to carry on the conversation amid the din of the feast, and was given a drumstick pulled from the fowl on his master’s plate. He asked, obscured, ‘How’d you know she was Lord Paolo’s mother?’

‘You might have known for yourself if you’d got a good look at her in the stables. Her son and grandson have the same eyes.’

‘Sort of sad look, you mean? Wonder what’ll happen to the young one, then. I mean, life didn’t hand him a good deal from the start.’