The Second Duchess (22 page)

The trouble was, he fell in love with me. I only wanted him to pleasure me sometimes and other times leave me alone, but he kept bleating about wanting me to run away with him. A word to Sandro was all that was necessary, a hint I had Alfonso’s
I Modi
hidden away, and Niccolò was gone from Ferrara. Sandro found him a place in France, in the queen’s own household. I hope he’s happy there. Well, maybe not too happy. I hope he still loves me.

If only I could live, and taste and smell and touch and speak, even for a day! I’d cram my mouth with cherries and let the juice run down my chin. I’d steal those beautiful puppies from la Cavalla and stroke their ears, which look so satin-soft. I’d throw Alfonso’s moldy old
I Modi
back in his face and shout the name of my murderer for everyone to hear, and laugh and laugh when the whole court recoiled in shock.

I’d find Niccolò in France’s royal stables and
fottere
him one last time right there in the straw, until we both screamed with pleasure. Then I think I could go into the dark and sleep peacefully, and let go of the things of the world, and be
immobila
no longer.

T
he duke did not summon me to his bed that night; it was just as well, for I woke the next morning with incontrovertible proof I was not with child. If I had been alone I would have wept with frustration and fear—was Nora right? Could she possibly be right?—but I did not have a single private moment. Katharina and Domenica were already awake and dressed and bustling about the chamber. Christine was sent for water and clean linen and the humiliating necessities of an unfruitful bride, and to my further mortification she returned with Maria Granmammelli close behind her. Poor Christine! She looked so apologetic, but I did not blame her for being waylaid. The old witch could count days on her fingers as well as anyone, and she had probably been lurking in the shadows waiting for her opportunity.

“Your potion failed,” I said at once, hoping to gain the advantage by striking the first blow. “I shall not—”

“’ Twas you who failed,
Austriaca
,” Maria Granmammelli retorted. “You were born under the sign of the bull, you were, and that makes you cold and dry, too cold and dry for one potion to help you make a babe.”

“How did you know—” I began, and then I remembered the Festival delle Stelle and my dress embroidered all over with my astrological sign.

“I know all kinds of things,” the old woman said, with a crowlike cackle of laughter. “And I’ve made you a new potion, with extra spices to heat you—cinnamon and cloves and ginger, red pepper seeds, and the juices of sweet plums and strawberries to make you soft and moist inside.”

It did not sound as bad as the last potion. She had spoken of ginger and cinnamon as ingredients in the love potions she made for Lucrezia de’ Medici.
That’s another tale
, she had said tauntingly.
Mayhap I’ll tell you another time
.

Well, I had drunk her potion, for all the good it did me, and it was time for the old witch to keep her part of the bargain.

“Leave me,” I said to my ladies. “I would speak privately with Maria Granmammelli.”

They looked at each other meaningfully—
already grasping at straws, poor lady, but then, she’s old for a first babe
—and went off to the outer rooms. I turned to the old woman and said, “Very well, Maria Granmammelli, I will take your new potion, but only if you tell me more of the love potions you gave Serenissima Lucrezia, and who it was she wished to ensnare with them.”

“What do you care what she did?” the old woman said. “She’s dead and gone, she is, and her misbegotten babe with her.”

“Her
what
?”

“Why else would the pawnbroker’s daughter send her
parruchiera
to ask for a potion of pennyroyal and vervain, trying to pretend she wanted it for herself? Little Serenissima Lucrezia was with child by one of her lovers, I daresay, and didn’t want it. Thought it would spoil her slender waist and pretty little
tetti
.”

I stared at her.

She laughed and pushed the flask into my hand. “Drink this,
Austriaca
, and pray to Saint Elizabeth. She was eighty and eight years old when she bore the blessed Baptist, so she should hear you with sympathy.”

“I am not that old,” I protested. I still could not quite take in what she had said. The words seemed to whisper over and over, all around us: .
. . with child by one of her lovers, with child by one of her lovers . . .

“You’re old enough. Drink a swallow every morning, and hie yourself to the duke’s bed every night, and next month at this time the news may be better.”

She turned to go.

“Wait!” I cried. “You cannot be serious! Just because her hairdressing-woman asked you for a potion—who knows what she wanted it for? Perhaps she was telling the truth. Or if the young duchess was with child, how did you know it was not the duke’s own?”

“And if it was? What of it?”

“What
of
it? It would have been the heir to Ferrara, that is what of it. Did you give the hairdressing-woman the potion or did you not?”

“I didn’t give her what she asked for, I’ll tell you that much. And as for Serenissima Lucrezia’s babe being the heir to Ferrara, well, I’m betraying no secret,
Austriaca
, when I say the duke wanted no half-Medici cuckoos in his nest.”

I stood there stunned.

The old witch laughed. “You’re a fool,
Austriaca
. ’Tis no concern of yours what became of the pawnbroker’s daughter or why, and if you have half the wits I think you have, you’ll leave off with your questions before you go the same way she did.”

My stomach lurched. “How dare you threaten me!” I whispered. “Get out. Get out of my apartments and do not come back. I do not care what the duke says about the matter.”

I cast the flask to the floor at her feet, and it shattered in a spray of crimson liquid. She looked at it, then looked up at me again.

“You’ll be sorry for that fit of spite, my girl.”

“Get out!” I cried. “Katharina! Domenica! Bring the dogs!” It was ludicrous to expect Tristo and Isa to snap at the wretched crone’s heels, or for that matter expect the old witch to care. The puppies bounded in anyway, tails wagging, eyes bright with mischief; they ignored their supposed quarry and went straight to lick the sweet fruit juices of the spilled potion. I snatched them up, frightened about what else the damnable liquid might have contained. They struggled and whined. My ladies clustered about me, tut-tutting over the puppies and the broken flask.

When I looked up again, Maria Granmammelli was gone.

 

 

I HAD A good deal to think about as my ladies bathed and dressed me. Had Lucrezia de’ Medici really been with child? Had Maria Granmammelli given her an abortifacient potion or not? And most terrifying of all, did the old witch’s hints mean the duke had poisoned his young wife when she got with child, because he felt her blood was not noble enough to mingle with his? Was that the heart of the whole business—Lucrezia’s family, and not Lucrezia’s infidelities at all?

I could not stop my thoughts, even as Katharina and Domenica laced me into my gown. The duke had not yet succeeded to the title when he married her—the marriage had been forced upon him by an arrangement between his father and Duke Cosimo. There were odd tales I had heard, since I had been in Ferrara—the duke’s leaving his young wife in Florence and galloping off to France three days after the wedding; the duke’s returning to Ferrara in great pomp and triumph after the death of his father and his own accession to the title, yet allowing his young wife to join him only months later, and then reluctantly. Had it all been because he did not wish to acknowledge her, the pawnbroker’s wayward daughter?

One thing was clear. Maria Granmammelli would do anything for her cherished nursling. And how easy it would have been for the duke’s old nursemaid to gain entrance to the Monastero del Corpus Domini, to give Lucrezia poison in the guise of the potion she had asked for. Sister Orsola had sworn Lucrezia had nothing to eat or drink that the nuns themselves did not have, but was she telling the truth? She had certainly taken my own bribe readily enough.

I had no time to work out all the possibilities, because Elisabetta Bellinceno arrived just as Katharina was clasping a string of citrines over my braided hair. I went out into the presence chamber and greeted her as calmly as I could.

“Good morning, Donna Elisabetta. You are well, I hope?”

She curtsied formally, her back so stiff and straight you could have turned it sidewise and laid out a game of
tarocchino
upon it. “Very well, Serenissima, I thank you.”

I gestured to Domenica. “Bring two glasses of the orange cordial, Domenica, if you please,” I said. “Katharina, Tristo and Isa require a walk in the garden. Christine, play for us.”

My motives were twofold in all this: to get rid of my ladies, and to soften Donna Elisabetta’s stiffness. The cordial would take some time to prepare, as it was a combination of good white wine, sweet syrup, cinnamon, cloves and anise, mixed with preserved oranges from the Castello’s own orange trees. Domenica would be occupied for a while with its preparation; Katharina would be strolling in the garden where she would not hear our conversation. I could not send them all away, not after what had happened the last time; but Christine could be depended upon to get lost in her lute and her songs.

I seated myself in one of the gilded chairs and gestured to Sandro Bellinceno’s wife. “Please, Donna Elisabetta, draw the other chair close and sit comfortably.”

This was another mark of special favor, as she would not ordinarily be considered of high enough rank to sit in my presence. She hesitated for a moment, then did as I asked, her back not touching the back of the chair. “Thank you, Serenissima.”

“Now, I swear I mean you and your husband no harm.”

“I told him you said as much last night, Serenissima, but he was not convinced.”

“Men!” I said with a shrug and a smile. “Obstinate as mules, all of them.” I leaned forward and spoke more softly. “Do you understand I wish you to speak with complete openness? I will deny this conversation took place if any other person should ever ask me, but if you tell me what I wish to know, in complete confidence as one woman to another, it will be to your advantage, I promise you.”

She looked at me warily. “I understand, Serenissima.”

“Very well, then. I wish to know more about your husband’s dealings with Serenissima Lucrezia, because I have heard disturbing whispers since I came to Ferrara, whispers about the duke and his first wife.”

“The duke, Serenissima?” she repeated cautiously.

I clicked my tongue impatiently. “Let us not fence with each other. The rumors are that Serenissima Lucrezia was poisoned, and that the duke had a hand in the matter.”

Elisabetta Bellinceno turned white, and for a moment I thought she would faint. She clutched the lions’ heads carved on the arms of her chair and whispered, “
Santa Maria
. Someone will hear you.”

I could not help remembering my own horror at Nora’s reckless attacks on her brother, in this very room. Since then I had examined the walls and doors with great care, taking we-three into my confidence to help me, and we had concluded that my bedchamber and private presence chamber, at least, were safe.

“No one will hear,” I said. “Tell me.”

“I swear to you, I do not know the truth about how Serenissima Lucrezia died. I know only what my husband told me—if she had not died, he would never have come back to Ferrara.”

“Why not?”

“He loved her, Sandro did. He thought he had seduced her, but I knew her, Serenissima, I knew her down to her heart and soul, and I was there in her household when it happened. She beguiled him with her beauty and took her pleasure from him and then discarded him. He loved her and he was bitter she treated him so, and all the more bitter when she threatened to betray him to the duke if he did not do what she asked.”

She stopped for breath, tears glimmering in her eyes. I waited, saying nothing.

“She had another lover,” she said at last. “A handsome boy in the stables. He was importuning her, and she wished to be free of him. She asked Sandro to see to it for her.”

“What is so bitter about a beating for an upstart groom?”