Duchess of Milan (43 page)

“I have eaten.” Beatrice sounded like a
vecchia
on her deathbed.

“Let me open the curtains. There is still an hour of light left.” Beatrice shook her head drowsily. “Very well,
carissima,
but you must talk to me. You must permit someone other than our son to console you. Little Ercole loves you, but he cannot understand your grief.”

Beatrice turned on her side, away from the small candle on the table beside her bed. She said nothing for a long while. Finally she looked up at her husband, the candle reflected in the corners of her eyes.

“I told her I didn’t love her. That was the last thing I ever told her. Our last night in Venice. I wouldn’t talk to her for the rest of our trip.”

Il Moro lay down beside her and held her tightly. “Oh,
fandulla,
I didn’t know that. Oh,
carissima.
Now I understand.”

“You can’t. No one can.”

Il Moro sat up on the edge of the bed, his back to her, his head and shoulders slumped. He pressed his palms to his forehead. “Perhaps I can.” His voice was so strange that Beatrice turned toward him. “I have never told you how my mother died. I have never admitted it to anyone. My mother. Do you know that I wrote her once a week from the time I was five years old until ... In Latin. Whether I was home with her or away. Every night until I was twelve years old she came into my rooms and selected the clothes I would wear the next day. When I fancied myself as too much of a young man for that, she simply talked to me every evening. Politics. Literature. Even women. She was the truest friend I ever had. She never said anything about my father’s mistresses, and there were many, because she did not want us to think any less of him. He died in another woman’s arms, and still she admonished herself at his bier for not having been a more obedient wife. We had to force her to bury his body. Bianca Maria Visconti da Sforza.” Il Moro shook his head in wonder, saying the name as if he had invoked the Holy Virgin.

“My mother was the first to see the monster my brother had become. She tried to reason with him, to save him. He began with little things: withholding her household allowance, forcing her to smaller rooms, selling off her jewels and books. Then he accused her of infidelity to my father, of worse crimes. None of it true, of course, but lies that hurt her more terribly than any truth. He knew everyone’s weakness. That was why he excelled at torture. Finally he exiled her to a small house in Cremona. Away from everyone who loved her, with only one servant, a stranger. A week later she died. None of us were there. My brother would not permit it. The physicians could find no cause for her death. At the time, I told myself she died of grief. And yet she was a woman of such strength and faith, it did not seem possible.” Il Moro’s right arm trembled violently. He did not speak until it had stopped shaking a moment later. “Later, I ... discovered what killed her. How ... he ...” Il Moro’s cheek twitched so wildly that it drew his mouth up into a grimace.

When he managed to speak again his voice quivered. “I never said a word to my brother about what he had done to my mother. The day I buried her I greeted him with a clasp and a kiss. He murdered her as certainly as if he had put poison in her cup. And I said nothing. I choked on my grief and my honor and said nothing. Until he finally exiled me, I could not permit myself to love a woman because I feared ...” His arm shook again. “I feared . . . what he might do to her.” He let out a hideous, grunting laugh. “The only woman I made love to in that time was my brother’s mistress. For some sick purpose of his own he forced us . . . He watched us. Only after he was dead could I admit to myself that I had permitted him to defile and destroy the one woman I loved. My mother. Only when the fear of him was gone could I know the shame.”

He sat motionless for a long while and then turned back to Beatrice. “Whatever guilt you feel, however you think you may have tormented your mother’s soul and however painful this wound to your own soul, you cannot know the remorse that still haunts me after twenty-five years.”

Beatrice flew out of the bed and ripped the satin drapes from the big arched window. Daylight exploded into the room. She stood there in black, suddenly illuminated, clutching the drapes. “You don’t see anything!” Her scream was deafening. “No one sees anything!” Il Moro recovered and started toward her. “I still hate her! I hate her more than I ever hated her!” Now Il Moro had her in his arms, but she struggled wildly. “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her!”

She froze in a final paroxysm of fury, her mouth wide and nothing coming out. Then a retching, moaning sob came up from her chest, and she jerked convulsively. She shuddered again and began to sob hysterically. Il Moro hugged her and rocked her.

One thought spun through Beatrice’s grief like a shrieking soul caught up in Hell’s whirlwind of the damned: She had no right to leave me. Mama had no right to leave me again.

CHAPTER 36

Milan, 30 November 1493

Bona of Savoy, Duchess Mother of Milan, slapped away the hands of her daughter’s matron of honor. Her gnarled fingers pecking like little birds, Bona herself adjusted the pearl-and-diamond-studded aigrette that crowned the bride’s cascade of golden hair. “Just so. Just so,” Duchess Bona said in a chirpy singsong. She smiled, her rotted teeth seemingly drawn in black chalk against the stark white layer of ceruse that caked her oval face. “Everything must be just so for Her Most Serene Highness the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire.”

Bianca Maria Sforza, who within hours would indeed exchange her aigrette for the crown of the Holy Roman Empress, stood motionless, her sublime dark eyes wide and dreamy. Her tall, elegant figure graced a gown of imperial crimson satin, liberally sprinkled with precious gems and embroidered all over with imperial eagles in thick gold thread. Her enormous winglike sleeves reached to the ground, and her train was three times as long as she was tall. She resembled a gorgeous, mythical bird about to be sacrificed on the high altar of transalpine diplomacy.

“No one has ever seen anything like it,” Bona chirped on to no one in particular, though she was surrounded by a dozen ladies-in-waiting. “There is no state that has not sent an ambassador, including that of Russia, and there isn’t a house in the city that hasn’t been decorated especially for this occasion. The Marchesino Stanga informs me that Her Most Serene Highness’s trousseau is valued at two hundred thousand ducats and will be the glory of all Europe. We are displaying it here in the Castello before she leaves, and of course it will be unpacked again when she arrives in Innsbruck. The Germans will know then the quality of the lady whom Lord God has given them as their Empress.”

“And don’t forget, Duchess Mother, that Bianca Maria’s husband will soon be the most favorably endowed man in Europe.” Isabella pushed aside the ladies-in-waiting crowded around the future Empress. “He will have our Bianca Maria’s beauty and virginity, his father’s crown, the King of France’s friendship, and Il Moro’s purse. He will have been constructed from nothing through the generosity of Fortune and my father’s enemies.”

Bona turned on her daughter-in-law like a white-faced owl defending her nest. “Who cares about your
impicatti
in Naples. They are nothing. You are nothing.
Niente.”
The black scar of her smile showed again.
“Niente, niente, niente,”
she sang, the words a gleeful ditty.

“Even you will have the wits to care when I tell you what I have heard.” Isabella glanced at Bianca Maria, whose fixed eyes had begun to roam slightly but who seemed otherwise as yet undisturbed by the discord. “Come with me into the
guardaroba.”

Duchess Bona accompanied Isabella into the adjacent
guardaroba
with a series of cawing “hah”s, as if she would soon expose her daughter-in-law’s madness for all the world to see.

The two women faced each other in the narrow space left between the rolled Persian carpets and the stacks of fine linens, a fraction of the treasure trove that Bianca Maria would bring to her new home. Three gilt-framed mirrors, also part of the trousseau, leaned against a pile of tooled and gilded leather saddles and gold saddle cloths. The mirrors reflected multiple images of Bona and Isabella, the former in her widow’s black silk, the latter in a
camora
of ducal crimson. Isabella’s profile showed clearly the swell of her pregnancy, though she was remarkably slim for a woman in her seventh month.

“It is inconceivable to me that you haven’t heard, or that if you have heard you are so unconcerned,” Isabella said.

Bona blinked several times.

“Every ambassador present is convinced that Il Moro intends to use this opportunity to force the Emperor to invest him as Duke of Milan. The rumor is so thick on the streets that you could walk from here to the Duomo and never touch the pavement. Surely you do not think that Il Moro is paying the Emperor four hundred thousand ducats simply to see your daughter well married.”

Bona smiled at one of her reflected images.
“Sciocce, sciocce, sciocce.
All of you, fools. Even Il Moro has finally made a fool of himself. He has made my daughter an Empress. Can he think that Bianca Maria’s husband will permit him to steal Gian’s throne? Never, never, never. Only an
uccelliaccia
like you would believe it possible.”

“It will be possible because the Frenchmen and Il Moro want it. Because they both want war in Italy.”

“My nephew King Charles has already sworn to me that he will never permit Il Moro to become Duke of Milan.” Bona turned to one of the mirrors and fluffed the dyed brown curls that framed her thick, pouchy neck. “You don’t understand at all, do you,
uccelliacca.
I am the most important woman in Europe. No one in all the world, the Sultan of Turkey included, would dare risk giving me offense. My nephew is the King of France, my son is the Duke of Milan, and my daughter is the Empress of Germany--”

“Your son will no longer be Duke of Milan if you permit Il Moro to trade your daughter for your son’s title. And your nephew will permit Il Moro to make himself King of Heaven if only Il Moro will finance a French campaign against Naples. And having conquered Naples, then your dear nephew will turn back and snatch up Milan
and
Germany and leave you as nothing more than an old crone in an empty bed.”

Bona whipped around. “The only threat to my son is the
puttana
who sleeps in his bed and in that of any other man she pleases. If you are thinking of making some kind of protest today, I warn you that I will personally summon the might of France and Germany to destroy your grandfather and father. And when Naples is finished, I will have you sent to a convent, where the stinking priests and their lice can satisfy your filthy lust.”

Isabella brought her face so close to her mother-in-law’s that she could smell the decay of her teeth. “When my father enters Milan, I will take you up to the tower of the Castello, make you squat on the spire, and let you spin up there like a weathercock.”

Bona smiled stupidly, then burst into tears as abruptly and inexplicably as an infant.

Isabella’s face sagged with amazement. She stood motionless, watching the tears roll off her mother-in-law’s mask of white lead paint. After a moment she raised her hand and slowly reached for Bona’s shoulder. But when she had almost touched her, she dropped her hand and in a rustle of silk left the
guardaroba.

A collective tolling of bells throughout the city announced the hour often o’clock in the morning. The triumphal car that would carry the bride to the Duomo waited at the foot of the drawbridge connecting the Ducal Court with the Piazza d’Armi, the large outer court of the Castello di Porta Giovia.

Beatrice followed her ladies-in-waiting down the stairs to the right of the gate. She marveled at the car, an enormous, silk-draped, enameled and gilded portable throne drawn by four snow-white horses, then searched for her husband among the escort. He was standing next to Gian, smiling and gesturing, obviously sharing a joke with his nephew. She felt a delightful queasiness at how handsome her husband looked, but she didn’t pause to catch his eye. She was waiting for the Duchess of Milan.

She had not even set eyes on her cousin for nine months. In some ways it might well have been a lifetime since Eesh rode off that day at Vigevano, yet at times it seemed only yesterday that they held each other in the labyrinth, four hearts beating as one. Four hearts. If Eesh’s baby had been a boy and hers a girl, perhaps that perfectly symmetrical love would still exist. But love was not an architect’s grid. Love was her baby. Her son. And her husband. She still couldn’t dare tell him, but it was true.

But even if her love for Eesh was dead, she had to admit to herself that she could not live with the idea of Eesh as her enemy. Perhaps--no, likely--Eesh’s letter to her father had been an impulsive act, later regretted, to be hidden away just as Beatrice had kept secret the Signory’s capitulation on her husband’s investiture. The other letter, Eesh’s condolences on Mama’s death, that was the real Eesh. Perhaps Eesh was far more flawed than Beatrice could have imagined when she had loved her, but Eesh was still fundamentally good. Probably Eesh had even accepted her little girl and loved her as much as she did her son, perhaps even more. . . .

A glimpse of beige-and-silver taffeta skirts appeared at the top of the steps descending from the second floor of the ducal apartments; the covered landing still concealed the women’s faces. Beatrice’s heartbeat began a sudden, surprising acceleration. As the women came down the steps, the brilliant painted faces began to drop into view, lips like blood against white ceruse. Then the hem of a ducal crimson skirt, a swollen belly, and finally Eesh. The Eesh she had once loved, stunningly beautiful in her pregnancy, the chin still slightly tucked, the vaguely Oriental, muted green eyes. As if nothing had ever happened. But Isabella looked straight ahead and quickly disappeared behind the triumphal car.

A commotion at the exit to the opposite wing of the ducal apartments announced the tedious disgorgement of the bride’s escort, two hundred courtiers in long silver and gold brocade tunics. Finally Bianca Maria emerged. Three noblemen in ceremonial armor walked behind her, two of them holding up her enormous sleeves, the third carrying her train. Her back slightly arched into an elegant curve, her head completely motionless, Bianca Maria glided along like a statue on wheels, her posture remaining impeccable even as she climbed the narrow steps to her portable throne.