Duchess of Milan (49 page)

Galeazz stared at the floor. “I’m very concerned about this. According to the information I have from the French camp, had the King remained in bed a week longer, the French army would now be marching on Milan. And the continued presence of Louis Duc d’Orleans and his army in Asti is in my opinion tantamount to a hostile act. Your Highness, forgive me for having to say this, but right now the only man in the French camp who trusts you is the King. But if the King goes to Pavia . . . Your Highness, I presume you know that the Duchess Mother is spreading the rumor that you are poisoning her son.”

“Of course. It is the same poison that Gian was administered when he was twelve and just starting to drink seriously, and again when he was eighteen, when his idyllic existence was interrupted by the arrival of his wife. He became deathly ill both times. Moderation in the consumption of wine is the only antidote Gian requires.”

“Your Highness, the simple fact of the Duke of Milan’s illness, combined with the Duchess Mother’s slander, will be sufficient pretext for Louis Duc d’Orleans to turn this entire enterprise against us. He will argue to the King that with the fall rains imminent, why should they go south when the richest spoil is already at their feet, along with a just cause to excuse their treachery? And of course when you are out of the way, Your Highness, the Duke of Milan will no doubt succumb to the lingering effects of the poison you gave him.”

Il Moro nodded soberly and pressed the tips of his fingers together.

“It is a most serious situation, Your Highness.” Suddenly Galeazz turned to Bernardino, who stood as stiffly as a page. “Messer Bernardino has an interesting thought, Your Highness. I have asked him to repeat it to you in the same spirit in which you have so often solicited my more . . . aggressive outlook on certain policies. I have assured him that you will not judge him or accuse him on what he presents as mere theory and nothing more.”

“Certainly. Go on, Messer Bernardino.” Il Moro continued to study his steepled fingers.

Bernardino licked his lips. “Your Highness . . . ah, Your Highness. If you are to be damned by rumors concerning the Duke of Milan’s health, perhaps your only defense against these rumors is to make them true.”

Il Moro did not even blink; his steeple of fingers did not waver at all. The heavy silence was broken only by the slight friction of one of Messer Bernardino’s leather soles against the marble floor.

Finally Il Moro spoke in a very soft, even voice. “What you suggest reflects a certain political astuteness, Messer Bernardino. But of course it is out of the question. Our Duke is my nephew. I am not capable of such infamy. I could not even consider it.” He looked up at Galeazz, his eyes both vulnerable and intense, as if he were making a confession to a lover. “I am simply not capable of such a thing.”

CHAPTER 41

Pavia, 14 October 1494

The physician, a middle-aged man perspiring under the burden of his heavy velvet cloak, watched in horror as the chamberlain brought a silver dish containing a single blushingly ripe pear to the bedside of the Duke of Milan. “Your Highness, I would not encourage him to consume fruit or vegetable as yet--”

“Sorcerer!” snapped Bona of Savoy, Duchess Mother of Milan. “How can he reverse the effects of the poison if he hasn’t the strength to expel it?”

Gian Galeazzo’s eyes were luminous with fever, and the blue veins at his temples appeared to have been painted on his vellum-pale skin. He weakly lifted his arm to receive the offering.

“Your Highness,” the physician was finally prompted to say, “we believe that this is a gastric affliction that can only be exacerbated--”

“The Duchess Mother is right, Messer Cussano. Let my husband eat.” The Duchess of Milan’s entrance lacked the usual brisk, crackling sense of command. Almost shyly, she approached Gian’s bed and smiled benevolently over him. She stood directly opposite the Duchess Mother.

Bona nodded earnestly at Isabella. “You see, Messer Cussano, we are all in agreement. My son’s wife and I have had our differences, to be certain, but on this we agree. His Highness should have more fruit. His Highness’s cousin the Most Christian King of France has come here to see him today. He will need his strength.”

The physician mopped his brow with a dirty linen handkerchief. He bowed and followed after the chamberlain, who had bustled off for more pears.

“The King and his company arrived a quarter hour ago,” Isabella said. “They are coming right up. I was informed that His Most Christian Majesty is most anxious to see Gian and inquire about his health.”

Bona beamed her black smile at her son. “Of course the Most Christian King is coming right up. Gian is His Majesty’s favorite cousin.” Suddenly the Duchess Mother’s smile vanished. She looked up at Isabella, her perfectly round face twitching with ambivalence. Finally she said rather mildly, “Of course you cannot stay.”

“Gian is my husband, Duchess Mother,” Isabella said equally temperately. “I certainly intend to regard His Most Christian Majesty with the utmost civility. I believe that when His Most Christian Majesty realizes that Il Moro is his real enemy, His Most Christian Majesty will be more favorably disposed to the house of Aragon.”

Bona contemplated this, sucking at her teeth. “Very well. But if my nephew the Most Christian King asks that you leave, I will insist that you do so.”

“Thank you, Duchess Mother.”

Gian had time to eat a pear before the chamberlain announced His Most Christian Majesty. Bona kissed her son’s damp, translucent forehead. “Your deliverance is at hand,” she whispered. “God has sent us an avenging angel.”

The royal entourage arrived to the arrogant jingling of spurs and the rattling of scabbards. Wearing riding hose and doublets, swords hung on their hips, the Frenchmen looked road weary and overheated, their stubbly faces ruddy with sunburn. The King, no better dressed than his comrades, by size and appearance easily mistaken for a court dwarf, would have been entirely overlooked if Il Moro had not entered at his side. Wearing a clean white-and-gold brocade tunic, his posture impeccable in contrast to the careless Gallic slouches of the King and his advisers, Il Moro made the Frenchmen look like country bumpkins.

Bona had never imagined that Il Moro would have the effrontery to attend this private conclave between the Duke of Milan and the King of France. Her lips contracted to a perfect circle. She forgot to curtsy, and Charles came forward on his own initiative, his sable hat in hand. “My dear Aunt. Aunt, it is I--your nephew Charles
le Roi.”

Bona stepped stiffly forward and awkwardly exchanged kisses with her nephew. She took his arm and urgently led him to the bedside.

“Oh, my poor dear cousin,” the King said on viewing Gian, his jaw slack with genuine distress. “You poor dear boy. You really are ailing so.”

Gian gave his cousin the pathetic, endearing smile of an eager-to-please sick child. Isabella, who had morosely lowered her chin and eyes at the entry of the French party, now began to sob quietly.

“My son’s assassin is in this room,” Bona said in vehement French. Her eyes contracted and aimed directly at Il Moro.

Everyone looked between the Duchess Mother and Il Moro. Some of Charles’s advisers began to whisper. Il Moro’s expression of implacable courtesy and reserve did not change.

“He thinks that his being here will silence me,” Bona went on, spitting rapid French at her nephew. “The entire world knows that he has poisoned my son. You will all soon enough know that he has obtained the papers of investiture from the German Emperor. When he has made himself Duke he will turn on you. He will betray you as he has betrayed his own blood. Be done with him. Do not leave Pavia until you are done with him. In your mother’s name, put him in chains and lock him in the darkness forever.”

Isabella sobbed audibly. Angry muttering came from the King’s entourage.

Guillaume Briconnet, the King’s principal adviser, his face redder than anyone’s, suddenly barked in French, “Everything she says about Il Moro is true. Your Majesty, if you do not seize him now, I fear that you will not leave here alive.”

Charles stood absolutely dumbfounded. All around him, hands went to the hilts of swords. The King had only to give the order--and if he didn’t, it was obvious that Briconnet would. Il Moro’s right hand twitched just once, but violently, like a speared fish.

“No,” Isabella blurted out tearfully. “No, that isn’t so.” She spoke in Italian, and the King’s interpreter translated with hushed, gasping urgency. “What the Duchess Mother says about Il Moro poisoning my husband is not true. No one man is poisoning him. Everyone is poisoning him. Gian has a nervous constitution, and this discord, this coming and going of great armies, has so unsettled him that his stomach refuses all food. ...” Isabella rubbed her sleeve across her runny nose. “The antidote to my husband’s poison is peace. If we but had peace . . . My husband must not be the first martyr of this war.”

Bona’s entire body trembled with rage at her daughter-in-law’s defection. Even Il Moro’s face showed something, a rapid inward calculation: Isabella had finally given him a problem in the mathematics of deceit that he could not quickly solve. As the translation was delivered, the puzzled Frenchmen shook their heads.

King Charles looked between Bona, Isabella, and Il Moro, his huge head bobbing. It seemed that in a moment his head might start spinning from confusion.

In a desperate lurching motion, Isabella threw herself to the floor at the King’s feet. She grasped Charles’s spindly ankles and kissed his enormous scalloped slippers. “I beg you to spare my father!” she wailed hysterically. “O good and brave King, please spare my father! For the love of all that is just and good, treat kindly with my father, whose intention it has never been to anger you!”

“She is mad!” Bona crowed, grinning with black glee, convinced that the outburst would discredit everything else Isabella had said. Il Moro watched the spectacle impassively. He was no longer confused.

The interpreter sputtered Isabella’s words into Charles’s ear. The King looked down; Isabella’s henna-tinted hair draped his feet like the plumage of some beautiful slain bird. He vainly reached to lift her up. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Dear, dear.” He gestured for the interpreter to kneel beside Isabella.

“You must tell this beautiful and brave woman that my honor will not allow me to abandon my quest,” Charles said. “Not to mention the great amount of money my treasury and others have advanced us for our Crusade. But assure her that I consider herself and her little boy commended to my care, and that when her father yields to me, I shall tell him what a faithful daughter he has sired. She has my word as a Christian cavalier that her father shall be treated fairly in defeat.”

Isabella again kissed the King’s goose-foot slippers, her shoulders heaving, the sobbing motion punctuated by strange whimpers. None of the Frenchmen could have guessed that she was laughing.

Extract of a letter of His Most Christian Majesty Charles VIII, King of France, Jerusalem, and the Two Sicilies, to his brother-in-law Pierre de Beaujeu, Duc du Bourbon. Pavia, 15 October 1494

. . . We dine here in the most remarkable fashion . . . my table was set with cups of crystal and cutlery of gold, and a napkin folded to resemble a pheasant, and when I had opened this, a live bird flew forth. . . . Each course was brought by boys in uniform, who removed the table linen so that a clean one might be found beneath. So myriad were these foods that I cannot describe them fully . . . and indeed many of them glittered with sauces of gold and silver. . . . Between each course they have an entertainment, wherein scenes are enacted from tales of yore, or some to comedic purpose, and always with the accompaniment of music. The costumes are the most extraordinary I have ever seen, for they are in all manner of forms, that of devils and saints and ancient gods. Women also participate in these entertainments, wearing these costumes as well, and where they wish to create the impression that they are as naked as Eve, they do so in hose of the sheerest weight, and tinted like flesh, so that indeed one is most convinced. . . . And so the banquet proceeds far into the night, with one not knowing which to await more eagerly, the next serving or the entertainment that will follow. . . .

... As splendidly as Il Moro amuses me, all about me caution that I cannot trust him and that I must be done with him before I can continue my Crusade. ... I am confused and wish that you and my dear sister were here to assist my council. . . but [I] reside in my faith that God will show me my way. . . .

Il Moro’s fingers traced across Beatrice’s swelling abdomen. They were both naked, lying atop the silk covers. Well past midnight, the air was still warm, heavy, clinging.

“I feel as if the Frenchmen have been here for a month,” Beatrice said in a brittle voice. “Even their speech is offensive. Mooing and growling and trilling like a barnyard. It is remarkable to me that so many lovely tales have been written in that hideous language.”

“Be grateful that Messer Niccolo reduced the number of
intermedi
in tonight’s theatrical. He had originally scheduled seven. In the name of God, we would still be down in the courtyard entertaining them. As it was, I thought the King would never permit the dancers portraying the Three Graces to leave the stage. That one
intermedo
lasted almost as long as the entire third act.”

“I believe the dancers had your interest as well. They might as well have been naked.” Beatrice looked down at her swollen middle. “Certainly a more graceful sight than this.”

Il Moro’s hand flowed over the contour of his wife’s belly. “You have no idea how beautiful this curve is.”

She pensively studied his caress. “I’m sad that your hands never touched Ercole while he was in my womb.”

“I thought we had crossed that dark sea.”

She took his hand. “We have. It is something else. It is this season, the summer that will not end, the Frenchmen who will not leave. . . . It’s as if this bad air seems to whisper terrible things. ... I don’t know. I don’t want to hear them. Dear God, Lodovico. I know you’re trying to make light of it, but you were in real danger yesterday. We all were. God knows where we might be right now if--;”