The Second Duchess (49 page)

“I would be delighted to explain it to Messer Bernardo,” I said.

“Surely there is some way—” the ambassador began.

“Be silent.” It was my Habsburg blood speaking, and it did not fail me. “Shall I tell it to you in the form of a tale by Boccaccio? No? Then I will say it to you plainly. Messer Tommaso and Matteo Fabbri are to be conveyed to a safe place, where even Duke Cosimo’s hand cannot reach. I suspect they will write their confessions before priests, and sign them, and swear to their veracity on holy relics. Their persons and their confessions may not be revealed in public, but they will remain in Duke Alfonso’s possession, a weapon known only to him and Duke Cosimo. Perhaps one day Duke Alfonso will choose to use his weapon in secret, with the emperor, with the pope, if the circumstances warrant.”

Messer Bernardo said nothing. He stood white and trembling. There was no answer he could give.

The duke picked up the two pawns and held them in his fist. Every monster I had ever seen in his eyes leaped out, and I half-expected Bernardo Canigiani to fall down dead on the marble floor, just as the chess piece that represented him lay on its side on the board.

“I will use them,” the duke said in the soft, vicious voice I had learned to fear, “if you ever threaten or attempt to suborn the duchess again. If she ever reports to me that you have so much as spoken a word to her in private again. You are not above the law, nor are you above your master’s own poisons if he should think you have become a liability to him. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” the ambassador said. His voice was so faint and hoarse, I could barely hear him.

“Now, you are dismissed. You may consider yourself free to leave for Florence. I will not expect you in Ferrara again until after Easter.”

Messer Bernardo made a short bow like a stick broken in half at its center—what a difference!—and left the Appartamento della Pazienza without a word.

I wondered if we would ever see him again.

The men-at-arms returned and took Messer Tommaso and Matteo Fabbri away—them, I knew I would not see again. I felt light and empty and a little sick. The duke began to put the chess pieces away.

“Whether you know it or not, Madonna,” he said, “you are far more a student of Machiavelli than you are of Castiglione.”

 

 

“A
nd what,” I said to the duke, “does Machiavelli say of justice?”

A few more days had passed, and we were in the third week of Lent. I had become tired of resting, and the sick, empty feeling had lessened. The bruises on my face had faded, with the help of more lotions and the most disgusting leeches one could possibly imagine. My hand was also better, although the first finger, the one that had been broken, would always be crooked. My compulsion to count and pleat and arrange things had not come back. The ghastly hours—days?—of imprisonment in the wall seemed to have burned it out of me forever.

I was ready—as ready as I could be—for the end game. Cosimo de’ Medici might escape direct retribution by reason of his position, and Bernardo Canigiani might shelter under his master’s hand in everything but his threats to me here in Ferrara, but Frà Pandolf had played his part as well, and at least he could feel the full weight of justice for his crimes.

“Messer Niccolò had little use for justice,” the duke said. “In fact, he writes that lovers of justice often come to sad ends.”

“I will come to a sad end, then. Frà Pandolf must pay for what he did.”

“He has.”

“Tell me.”

“Are you sure you wish to hear?”

“I am sure.”

“Very well. He suffered the question, as you know. When I was satisfied he had confessed everything, he was entombed alive under the floor of an oubliette beneath the Marchesana Tower. I myself observed the paving-stones set into place over him, down to the last one, and I ground my heel in the dust above him. Then I left him to experience the death he designed for you.”

A fortnight ago the duke’s dispassionate description of the Franciscan’s end would have horrified me. Today it did not. I crossed myself. “May God have mercy upon his soul.”

We walked on a little, our ladies and gentlemen and a little gaggle of whispering courtiers following at a discreet distance. March had come, and with it the first stirrings of spring—the air was softer and the all-embracing fog no longer seemed chilled with fine crystals of ice. I could smell the beginning of new green in the marshes and fields outside the city. As we passed through the gardens, the duke seemed to have a destination in mind, and I was willing to follow him.

“He was a magnificent artist, I will give him that,” the duke said after a moment. “Because of that, there is a further punishment I intend to impose.”

“Such a terrible death is not enough?”

“No. He dishonored me. He murdered a duchess of Ferrara and a sinless unborn child. He murdered a Clarissa, his sister in God. He murdered your waiting-woman and came close to murdering you. Not only will he die, but his art with him.”

“I do not understand.”

“I will destroy it. Every painting, every fresco, every sketch. I will expunge his name from the records of Ferrara. He will exist no longer, as a man, a Franciscan, or an artist. He did it all for the sake of glory, and glory is what I will deny him.”

“You would destroy art? You?”

He laughed. I was reminded how cruel he could be when he chose. “I would. Come into this courtyard with me, Madonna, and I will show you.”

I went in with him. A bonfire had been constructed in the center and was already crackling and snapping in the afternoon breeze; two chairs had been placed against the courtyard’s western wall and a cloth of state erected over them. Our entourage was barred from entering by halbardiers. The duke allowed Domenica and Christine to see I was comfortably seated, to fetch orange-water and wine, and then he ordered them away as well.

“This entire business is not something I wish to be generally known,” he said. “There will be tittle-tattle, of course—there always is when misfortune befalls the great.”

Only Alfonso d’Este could say such a thing without the slightest hint of irony.

“So you will not make it publicly known that Serenissima Lucrezia was murdered?”

“I have said many times she died of an imbalance of humors, and I cannot tell a different tale now. The difference is that now Cosimo de’ Medici will tell the same tale.”

“So we hope.”

“So we hope. You will attest to the tale as well if anyone dares speak to you of the matter, just as you have attested to the public explanation of your own injuries.”

“Yes, my lord,” I said gravely.

“As for the rest—Sister Orsola’s body was returned to Corpus Domini and interred there. She was of no consequence, and no one will ask what became of her, or care.”

I crossed myself. “She was of consequence to God.”

“God shall deal with her. Now, I wish you to see the Franciscan’s work destroyed. You began this business, Madonna, with your questions. Here, at last, will be the end of it.”

Four men-at-arms of the rougher sort entered the courtyard from a low inner gate, pushing handcarts. Two were jammed with books and paints, palettes and brushes and rags, rolls of canvas and half-painted sketches. The other two contained finished paintings, some still in their ornate frames and some showing raw edges where they had been cut free.

“The paint shall cause the fire to burn merrily,” the duke said. He gestured to the men. “Proceed.”

They began to cast it all into the fire. I saw the cardinal’s face, smiling indulgently through the flames—then blackening and curling. Crezia followed, and Nora, and Anna the Duchess of Guise in France, the duke’s widowed older sister whom I had never met. Pots of paint and turpentine exploded like fireworks. Sketchbooks fell to ash.

I drank orange-water and the duke drank wine, and we watched the flames. I thought of the duke’s device.
Ardet Aeternum
. Aflame for eternity. I felt inexplicably close to him. Perhaps it was nothing but the knowledge we had hunted down the truth together. Perhaps it was more than that.

Dusk fell, and the fire burned on.

“The frescoes in the chapel have been scraped away,” he said. “Painting over them would not be sufficient destruction. I have engaged another artist to paint the walls and ceiling. There will be no niches and no statuary.”

“There are small paintings, Stations of the Cross, at the Monastero del Corpus Domini.”

“They have been removed and burned already.”

My own portrait was next to the last. Looking at it, I was reminded of the afternoon I sat for it, the way the light had spilled over the floor in squares. Frà Pandolf had leaned over my shoulder, close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath against my cheek and smell the scents of paint and turpentine on his habit. He had said,
It is you, Serenissima
—

My red silk wedding dress. Hair smoothly combed back, shimmering apricot-gold. Eyes the color of cloves, clear and steady and full of secrets.

I turned away. I felt the heat of the fire blaze up, and I knew the portrait was gone.

“This is the last, Serenissimo.”

It was, of course, the long-hidden portrait of Lucrezia de’ Medici. There were others, by other artists. They would remain. This one would not.

The duke and I both looked at it for a moment. I thought—how beautiful she was, how young, how like those cherry blossoms she loved to be painted with—beautiful and transitory. She had known only two springs in Ferrara. I wondered how often she had gone to the cherry tree and broken off a branch, to revel in the glory and fragrance of the flowers. To eat the ripe sweet fruit. To ride on her white mule, round and round in the dizzying fragrance. She loved it so much she chose it as a hiding place for her most secret treasures.

“Alfonso,” I said. I remembered how strange the word had sounded in the dusty tower room where Lucrezia de’ Medici’s wedding chests had been stored. “Why did you hide this painting? There are others of Lucrezia de’ Medici in the main gallery. Why did you hide this particular one?

He looked at the painting for a long time. The bonfire whipped and crackled, hungry for the wood and paint and canvas. “I do not think I myself could have told you,” he said at last, “until I saw the other, the one in her hidden box. That one revealed her as she truly was, and now I can see that this one does as well—she was a creature entirely of the flesh. She did not belong among the Este.”

“Why did you not destroy it, then?”

He smiled a little. “Because it is a beautiful piece of art,” he said. “Surely you see that. I would look at it sometimes—when I could put the identity of the woman out of my mind, it gave me ... great pleasure to look at it. However many pieces of art I may commission, however many paintings I may own, until the day I die I will never own one more exquisitely beautiful.”

“Paolina Tassoni once hinted to me that you displayed it upon occasion. Not just to Ferdinand—to other people, strangers. Used it as a means of disparaging the young duchess’s character, and exculpating yourself in the rumors about her death.”

“And do you believe such whispers, after all that has happened?” His voice was perfectly even and calm.

I had expected an angry reply. I had expected to feel guarded and anxious. How much we had both changed. “No,” I said. “I do not believe it. You would never stoop to such familiarity with strangers.”

He nodded to the man-at-arms. The portrait went into the flames. It seemed to flare up more brightly than the others.

And that was the end of it. Frà Pandolf was gone, and now his art as well was gone as if it had never been. The men-at-arms took the empty handcarts away, and the duke and I were left alone in the courtyard with the dying fire.

“The tales will never completely be silenced,” the duke said. “And Cosimo de’ Medici and I will continue to strive for the Precedenza. But Bernardo Canigiani will whisper to you no more. And you, Madonna, have found the truth you sought.”

“Yes,” I said. “Although the cost was high. I would not have done it, if I had known.”