The Second Duchess (26 page)

“Shall I bring you dinner, Serenissima?” Domenica said gently, when all was as it should be again. “You can eat, and drink some wine, and then we shall play at
tarocchino
, perhaps. Or have some music.”

“Very well.” I bent down and picked up the puppies. “Where is Katharina? Where are Sybille and Christine? If we are to have music, I want Christine to play.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally Domenica said, “They are at the Palazzo dei Diamanti, Serenissima, not too far from here, with the rest of your Austrian ladies and gentlemen, preparing to leave for Vienna at the duke’s pleasure. All but—”

She stopped. I waited, and then I said, “All but?”

“All but Katharina. She—did not go quietly with the gentleman-usher who attempted to—escort her. It was nothing but a slap, a scratch or two as I understand it, but she used some very hard words against him, and he has accused her of—of witchcraft and immorality.”

“Witchcraft? Immorality? Katharina? That is ridiculous.”

“I agree, Serenissima. The gentleman’s pride was touched, and it is his way of striking back. But she is confined separately, in the Castello, because of his accusation.”

“Some say,” Vittoria put in, her eyes shining with excitement, “the duke means to sentence her to
la scopa
.”

“Holy Virgin. What is that?”

“A punishment for women of low character and morals. The prisoner is stripped naked and forced to run through the city streets while onlookers throw garbage and filth. It is very exciting, and even the greatest of the nobles laugh from a safe vantage while their servants throw slops and night-soil.”

I would not cry. I would not cry. Oh, Katrine, Katrine, my childhood playmate, my dearest most fastidious friend, have I brought you to Ferrara for this?

“I see,” I said at last. “When is this sentence to be carried out?”

“No one knows,” Domenica said. She was pale, and the look she directed at Vittoria Beltrame would have curdled new milk. “It is only a rumor, and no one knows what the duke will do.”

“But Katharina is confined separately? She has been accused? These are known things?”

“Yes.”

Check and mate, then, to the duke, before the game had even fairly begun. Clearly he had sent the hateful Vittoria Beltrame because he knew she would tell me of Katrine’s plight in all its ghastly detail. Would he carry out such an injustice simply to compel my submission? I did not know, but I could not take the chance my beloved prickly Katrine would be abused so outrageously when it was in my power to prevent it.

I said, “Very well. I will speak to the duke again in the morning. I want no dinner, no card-playing, no music. You may go, all of you.”

Even Domenica did not press me, although she looked hurt and sad. They went out.

Just in time.

I put my face down against the puppies’ warm fur to muffle the sound—because my ladies would be listening, always listening—and stopped struggling to hold back my tears.

 

 

I’m afraid of going to hell. I have Niccolò’s death on my conscience, and that’s a mortal sin. I didn’t love him, but I liked him and he loved me and I never meant for him to die. Holy God, blessed Baptist, San Luca my patron, please keep me
immobila
. Please don’t let me dissolve away into only a soul and be sucked down to eternal torments and damnation.

I
n the morning I arose with my head aching, my eyes swollen, and my purpose fixed.

For Katharina’s freedom I would tell the duke everything—my resolution to ignore the gossip when the marriage was arranged, my fury when he thrashed me, my humiliation when I heard Nora’s laughter. I would tell him of Messer Bernardo’s sinister suggestions and how they had flowered into my own secret determination to find the truth and use it as a weapon to protect myself. I would tell him what I had learned at the Monastero del Corpus Domini and what Elisabetta Bellinceno had revealed to me.

I would ask him only one more question, face-to-face, without reservations and without pretty words:
Did you murder your first wife?
When that was asked and answered truthfully, whatever that truth might be, I would swear to him I would meddle no more in the matter, and I would mean it.

For Katharina’s freedom.

And because I myself could lie no more.

Was it determination or terror that made my stomach roil and my knees shake as I stood for Domenica and Nicoletta to wash me and dress me and do up my hair with sapphires? Would I lose my courage? Would I end the day locked away in the Palazzo di San Francesco like Renée of France? Even more terrifying, would Katharina suffer the agony and humiliation of
la scopa
even if I did submit?

I could not eat. My headache had gone, but my back was aching fiercely. While I was waiting for the duke to come to my apartments as he had promised, I paced from the antechamber through the presence chamber to the bedchamber, forward and back and back again. I tried not to think of the guards on the other side of the door. I prayed to the Holy Virgin and to my patron, Saint Barbara, for every ounce of courage and humility I could muster.
Help me, Holy Mother. Help me, Saint Barbara, my patroness, protector of prisoners. I cannot live my life in fear and uncertainty and confinement. . . .

Finally I could bear the delay no longer. I ordered Nicoletta Rangoni to stop brushing and playing with the puppies she adored so much, and I sent her off to the duke with a message, asking him to come and speak with me at once. To my surprise I had a message in return within a quarter of an hour, assuring me he would wait upon me immediately after dinner. Had he been waiting for me to break? Perhaps. I did not care. All I could think of now was escaping the rooms that seemed to be enclosing me more and more tightly, until I could hardly breathe.

I could not stop thinking of her. No, not Renée of France. Lucrezia de’ Medici now. How long, exactly, had she been imprisoned in the Monastero del Corpus Domini? Had her prison been a single room, or two, or three? Had there been a window? What had she done all day to amuse herself? Somehow I could not imagine her reading, or sewing quietly, or praying. And then somehow Lucrezia de’ Medici changed as well and became Juana la Loca, my grandmother, locked up in her tower at Tordesillas for fifty years. My nurse said she would not eat or sleep or change her clothes. She said she talked to people who were not there.

When the duke arrived, it was all I could do to keep from flinging myself at him and begging him to allow me a breath, just a breath, of some air outside my own apartments. Fortunately I was able to control myself. I took the time to breathe deeply and say a
De profundis
; it was important to address him with dignity. Dignity was the one thing that seemed to touch him.

“So, Madonna,” he said. His bearing was sanguine; in his expression I could see nothing of the monsters gliding and curling under his polished surface. Clearly Nicoletta had described my distress to him, and he was unsurprised by my surrender. “Have you reconsidered your silence?”

I did not answer his question directly. Instead I said, “There is a condition.”

“And that is?”

“You know what it is, my lord. The freedom of my lady and friend, Katharina Zähringen.”

He inclined his head slightly—not quite a nod. He did not smile; I will give him that. He said, “Tell me everything, Madonna, as you should have done from the beginning, and your woman will come to no harm.”

“She must be completely exonerated. And I would like her to remain with me here in Ferrara, she and Sybille von Wittelsbach and Christine von Hessen as well. You may send the others away, but I beg you to allow me to keep those three.”

“Do not think to bargain with me. If I am satisfied by your confession, perhaps I will choose to grant your wishes. Whatever my choice is, you will accede to it.”

Breathe, I thought. Breathe. “Very well,” I said. “Please, my lord, I have had no fresh air for three days. May we walk in the gardens as we speak?”

“Of course.” He gestured to Nicoletta and Domenica. “You, accompany us, but at a distance, if you please.”

They sank into obedient curtsies. He led me from the room as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, and the halbardiers stood aside as if they had never stepped forward and prevented me from passing.

The die was cast.
Jacta alea est
. I remembered thinking that on the day I was married, and I could not help laughing at myself now. How fatuous and smug I had been, thinking I could arrange my own life so easily, do what I wished even in the face of the duke’s displeasure. Well, at least I was out of my prison. I had the means to protect Katharina within my power. Now all I had to fear was the duke’s reaction to my confession.

He was dressed simply, in a black damask surcoat with hanging sleeves, black breeches and hose, a white linen shirt, and a black velvet cap with an onyx brooch and a small curling scarlet feather. The golden clasps of his coat were worked in the shape of flames, his personal device. We walked in silence, with my ladies, his secretary Messer Giovanni Pigna, and two of his gentlemen-ushers following us. Shortly we came out into what was called the Giardino delle Stagioni, the Garden of the Seasons.

A pergola of vines divided this garden into four sections, and hedges of thick yew surrounded it. Each quarter was devoted to a season of the year, with flower-beds mimicking the patterns of the exquisite mosaic pavement. The duke led me to Primavera, the spring quarter; when the duke and the court were in residence at Belfiore, it was filled and refilled from the forcing-houses each morning, so it would always delight the court with spring blossoms. Please, please, I thought, let this be a spring, a rebirth, for me and my life here in Ferrara.

My ladies, Messer Giovanni, and the gentlemen-ushers occupied themselves in Autunno, on the other side of the garden. The duke seated me upon a carved marble bench and took his own seat on another bench situated at a right angle to it.

“Now, Madonna,” he said. “Let us get to the bottom of this attempted assassination, once and for all.”

How to begin? I took a breath, mentally crossed myself, and plunged forward. “I will tell you everything, my lord, I swear it, but first I would ask you a question.”

He looked at the flowers. He seemed to be focusing on a line of pale violet pasqueflowers with hearts of sunny gold. “Ask, then,” he said.

Silence. Agonizing silence. I could not make my tongue work.

“Ask.” It was no longer an invitation, but a command.

“Did you—” I began. My voice failed me. I took a breath, closed my eyes, and finally said all in a rush, “Did you murder your first duchess? Or did you order it done?”

Silence again. I held my breath.

“No,” he said, quite calmly.

Belatedly I realized he had probably been expecting exactly that question from me, and so had his answer prepared. I felt as if I were going to faint.

“I did not murder her, nor did I order it done, nor do I believe she was murdered at all. Does that satisfy you?”

My first impulse was to believe him. Alfonso d’Este, scion of six hundred years of feudal lords, grandson and great-grandson and cousin of kings, was too arrogant in his blood and bone to lie. So for the space of a few heartbeats I believed him. Then I did not. Then I did again. Then my thoughts became paralyzed between the two, and I did not know if he had killed her or not.

I did not know what to say, either, and so I said nothing.
Nor do I believe she was murdered at all
. Was he reiterating his public tale that the young duchess had died suddenly of a wasting imbalance of humors? Or was there something else he had not made public? The vaulting pride of the Este—it would not be out of character for the duke to have a defense and yet to refuse to stoop to defend himself in the face of gossip from one end of Europe to the other.