Duchess of Milan (16 page)

“Shall I ask the chamberlain to have the dog removed, Your Highness?” Giovanna da Maino, one of the oldest ladies-in-waiting at court--and the only one resourceful enough to handle the Duchess Mother--looked solicitously at Isabella. Giovanna’s weary, craggy-featured face, masculinized and soured by age, concealed good intentions if not a gentle demeanor; a gentle woman would not have survived in this court for forty years.

“Hermes is the worst-behaved dog Gian has ever had, and that is no small achievement,” Isabella said, trying to keep the agitation out of her voice. She had been waiting in her mother-in-law’s antechamber for at least half an hour while Bona was closeted with Gian and Bernard Stuart d’Aubigny. Though the wait was a deliberate insult, she felt a far more powerful sense of injury, a fear more desperate than any concern for herself. They were talking about her baby, Francesco, in there. Not simply in the sense that everything that concerned the future of Milan involved her son, but directly. She could feel their words like ice splinters driven straight through her being.

Hermes made a skidding, inexplicably frantic circuit of the room and then sniffed at Isabella’s feet. The door to Bona’s bedchamber opened, and Giovanna rushed inside. She returned a moment later and curtsied. “Your Highness, Her Highness will see you now.”

The Duchess Mother was seated erect on her bed, wearing a black, high-necked dress of squarish proportions that made her face appear almost absurdly round, as if it had been drawn by one of the modern Florentine painters, an artist so obsessed with circles and spheres that he imposed his geometry on every living thing. But Bona’s features had some hitherto unnoticed vestiges of beauty. Her skin, though too heavily cerused, looked tauter, and the eyes were alert and focused. Isabella was almost ready to concede that a man could have loved the old crone once, but then Bona smiled (Why? Isabella asked herself. Is she gloating?), and her black teeth destroyed the illusion.

Gian reclined on the bed next to his mother, propped up on one elbow. He fingered a goblet half full of red wine. His rugged jaw was angrily set, but rather than suggesting masculine resolve, the pose was boyishly petulant.

Dressed in a broad-shouldered, pinch-waisted French coat, Messer Bernard Stuart d’Aubigny stood a step away from the bed. The French envoy bowed deeply, clumsily flourished with his hand, and said “Your Highness” in virtually unrecognizable Italian. Isabella glanced at the candlelit portrait on the opposite wall. From her position, the evil, coal-black eyes of Galeazzo Maria Sforza stared directly at her.

Bona glared at Isabella with hatred so intense that it seemed her dead husband’s malignant spirit was grinning out of her vacant round sockets. “I have asked Gian if he can swear before God, Messer Bernard Stuart, and myself that he has slept with you.”

Spilling wine over the satin bedspread as he sprang up, Gian looked down at his wife for a moment, nostrils flared, then strutted past her. Isabella’s eyes twitched slightly at the corners. Gian stopped, turned, and faced his wife again.

“You had better tell your mother and Messer Bernard Stuart the truth God already knows, Gian,” Isabella said coldly.

Gian’s pale forehead vividly crimsoned. “I am a man!” he shouted. “Of course I have screwed this bitch! Do you want to know the ways I have screwed her! I have screwed her like a dog! I have made her take all her clothes off and sit on my horse and screwed her on my horse’s back!”

Isabella turned to the Duchess Mother with a demure, almost beatific smile.

Bona’s hands trembled with rage. “He has let you foul him only because a
puttana
like you will not rest until she has had every stableboy--”

“I have never slept with the boys who carve the meat at my husband’s table.”

“Puttana! Forestiera
filth! That you would insult the Duchess Mother in front of His Most Christian Majesty’s ambassador! God cursed me the day he made your soul! You are cursed like the devils of Aragon who sowed your seed! You have fouled my boy, but your cursed spawn will never become Duke of Milan!”

Isabella took a step forward and towered over her diminutive mother-in-law. “You pathetic old
cacapensieri.
My Francesco is the only reason Il Moro is not already Duke of Milan. You have already given away what was Gian’s.”

“Swear to me, God, and Messer Bernard Stuart that you are the only one this whore has slept with,” Bona demanded of her son.

Gian hurled his goblet against the wall. “Stop this, Mother,” he whispered, his voice hissing from his corded throat.

“Don’t you realize that Gian would kill with his own hands any man who even touched me?” Isabella shook her head contemptuously at Bona.

Bona slumped and contracted, her dress shriveling like a wilting black orchid. “Gian cannot kill your father,” she offered without vehemence. “He was your first lover.”

“Don’t you see what you are doing, Duchess Mother?” Isabella smiled generously, her voice gentle, maternal. “In trying to separate Gian from his wife and son, you are playing into Il Moro’s hands. You think that you can offer the Frenchmen Naples in exchange for their help in destroying Il Moro. But if the Frenchmen come over the mountains, they will not be satisfied with Naples. They will want Milan as well.”

The black teeth suddenly appeared, and the black orchid revived. Bona’s high-pitched voice sang with triumph. “Messer Bernard Stuart has this evening informed me that His Most Christian Majesty, my dear nephew Charles, guarantees with all the might of France the honors with which he is investing Gian tomorrow.”

“He guarantees Genoa? After all, Gian is only being invested with Genoa. What about Milan? Milan is an imperial fief and can be guaranteed only by the German Emperor.”

“Let me put it into language you can understand,
uccelliaccia.
His Most Christian Majesty will never allow II Moro to become Duke of Milan. Never. Never. Never.”

Isabella looked searchingly at Bona and then at d’Aubigny. She was certain that the French envoy understood scarcely any Italian, so whatever agreement--if indeed there had been any--arrived at between Bona and d’Aubigny could hardly be verified. She nodded slightly at d’Aubigny and continued to look at him as she spoke to Bona. “Thank you, Duchess Mother. Tell Messer Bernard Stuart that we are grateful for His Most Christian Majesty’s assurances. And wish him a good night.” Isabella walked over to Gian and lightly brushed the lank platinum hair from his forehead. “My beautiful husband,” she whispered to him, and then looked once more at Bona sitting alone on her bed before she led Gian out of the room.

CHAPTER 12

Milan, 1 May 1491

The investiture of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, with the honors of the Duchy of Genoa took place out of doors, just in front of the central portal of the Duomo. Enameled wooden pillars and a canopy of deep vermilion damask, embroidered with doves, lions, Sforza vipers, and French fleurs-de-lis, created a temporary porch. II Moro and Gian, dressed in identical floor-length
vestiti
of gold-flecked white Lyons brocade trimmed with black sable at the collars and cuffs, knelt before the Archbishop of Milan and Bernard Stuart d’Aubigny, who for the purposes of this ceremony was to be regarded as the King of France. A French clerk in a hastily fitted silk mantle stood beside Messer Bernard Stuart and examined the Diploma of Investiture, a richly illuminated parchment document; until this morning no one had taken into account that d’Aubigny, like most French noblemen, could not read Latin and would require a translator.

The women of the ducal families knelt on the steps of the Duomo, the long tails of their
cioppe
cascading over the white stone. Representatives of the noble families of Milan sat in rows of benches placed in front of the steps. In the piazza beyond, caps reverently removed, stood scores of thousands of ordinary Milanese, perhaps as many as had come for Il Moro’s wedding procession. The crowd was so silent that out on the Via degli Armorai they could still hear the banners flapping from the unfinished roof of the Duomo, and the halting cadence of d’Aubigny’s voice as he repeated what the clerk prompted him to say, sentence by sentence.

“How much longer do you think he will go on?” Isabella whispered. “You would think he is individually describing every house and shop in Genoa.”

“Had I known that Messer Bernard Stuart could not read, I would have requested a mattress to sleep upon rather than a cushion to kneel on,” Beatrice whispered in reply. She glanced at Bianca Maria, who knelt next to her on the steps. Curiously, Bianca Maria was attentively rapt with the endless ceremony, her soft, dreamy eyes as unwavering as the fierce stare of Duchess Mother Bona, who knelt like a wooden statue to her daughter’s left.

Bona’s eyes darted balefully to the two duchesses. She made a muffled strangling sound, apparently intended as an admonition to stop the whispering. The French ambassador lifted the ivory scepter, crested with a gold fleur-de-lis, high enough that the hushed crowd in the piazza could see it, placed it in Gian’s hand, then draped a gem-encrusted sword and scabbard over Gian’s shoulder. The two dukes and d’Aubigny proceeded solemnly to the front of the porch.

D’Aubigny planted himself resolutely between Gian and Il Moro. He clasped their hands, then raised them overhead. The dignitaries seated just in front of the steps stood in unison. At this signal the silent crowd erupted with vast exhalations of “Duca! Duca! Duca!” D’Aubigny grinned with genial satisfaction, his crooked teeth visible behind his thick red beard.

The first few choruses of “Moro!” came from isolated pockets of several dozen men, probably armorers who had prearranged this demonstration. At first their shouts were vague and distant amid the thunderous acclaim for the Duke of Milan. But the armorers hammered again and again, gaining new voices with each oath, and the shouts of “Duca” dwindled in concert. There was a moment of equilibrium as the two forces reached equal volume. Then the balance tilted with unearthly suddenness, and the cries of “Moro! Moro! Moro!” from a hundred thousand throats rolled over the Piazza del Duomo like a massive cannonade. D’Aubigny continued to hold the two dukes’ hands high, but his jagged teeth were no longer visible.

“Now that all has turned out as we have both wished, brother, let us return to our native land!” a practiced thespian voice boomed through the vaults of the Sala della Palla.

Menaechmus of Epidamnus placed his arm around his long-lost twin, Menaechmus of Syracuse, and intoned, in an actor’s swaggering baritone, “Brother, I’ll do whatever you wish! I’ll hold an auction and sell everything I have. In the meantime, let’s go inside, brother!” Menaechmus of Epidamnus gestured at his “house,” a small wooden building erected on the left side of the stage. Painted with faux stonework, the house had no wall facing the audience seated out in the Sala della Palla, giving an unobstructed view of the interior. Behind the house an elaborate perspective view had been painted on the stage flats, representing an ancient Adriatic seaport as imagined by Leonardo da Vinci. Illsionistic arcades receded toward a ceremonial arch, beyond which glimmered the azure waters of the harbor at Epidamnus and a glimpse of galleys floating at anchor. The set was so startlingly realistic that one could imagine the actors strolling beneath the arch and boarding one of the distant ships.

The Menaechmi twins ducked beneath the wooden lintel and entered the house; they were followed by Menaechmus of Syracuse’s slave, Messenio, who darted after them with a buffoonish, arm-jerking agitation that drew weary titters of amusement from the audience.

“Do you know what I would like, sirs!” Messenio said in his usual importunate whine. “Allow me to be the auctioneer!”

“I give it to you.” Menaechmus of Epidamnus bowed with a flourish.

Messenio rubbed his hands together greedily, then left the twins to their joyous reunion and ran back into the make-believe street. He stopped, dramatically considered an afterthought, and turned to face the audience. “Auction of the effects of Menaechmus, one week from today!” he began in a peddler’s singsong. “We are selling slaves, household goods, land, buildings, everything! For sale! Whatever you want to give us we’ll take, your price as long as it’s your cash, if you want credit we’ll give you our price! For sale! We’re even offering one scarcely used wife, if there’s anyone willing to bid.” Messenio cupped his hand to his mouth and leaned toward the audience. “I can’t believe that item would net a copper,” he offered in sneering,
sotto voce
confidence, to the generous laughter of most of the men and many of the older women present. “Now, spectators”--he flourished his arm grandly--”goodbye, but first leave us with your loud applause!”

The red-and-blue damask curtain dropped in front of Messenio, tambourines rattled, shawms and lutes lilted, and red-and-blue-vested ducal singers added a choral finale. When the music ended, the several thousand spectators, seated on amphitheaterlike tiers of benches, stood and applauded, though less from enthusiasm for the rambling farce than from a desire to get their blood circulating again.

Beatrice, seated with the ducal party just in front of the stage, rose with a much more fervent desire: to escape Il Moro. Her stomach ached from the effort of control. She had been at his side throughout the endless state banquet, and then the interminable, misogynistic comedy (there had been one exquisitely embarrassing scene in which Menaechmus of Syracuse’s father-in-law had ridiculed his own daughter for complaining about her husband’s mistress).

Throughout the evening II Moro had been courteous to his wife, though not with the mocking effusion he had displayed in the early days of their marriage; he had simply put on a proper, flawless show for the French envoys. But beneath her husband’s smooth manner Beatrice sensed something new, something stirring behind the icy composure of his hate, something so terrifying that every casual contact with him, the merest touch of their elbows, jolted her. What did he want? What did he want with her?

“. . . Your Highness?” Beatrice looked up to see Galeazzo di Sanseverino peering down at her like a troubled Apollo. Galeazz’s head, wreathed in blond curls, was so far above her that it was uncomfortable to look up at him. She retrieved his question. He had asked her if she liked the theatrical.