The Second Duchess (6 page)

“Domenica,” I said to Domenica Guarini, the poet’s sister, “please take Tristram and Iseult to my apartments, and see they have proper food and water. They will be sick if they continue to eat bits of cake.”

Beaming, the Ferrarese woman rose and took the basket of puppies from the gentleman, much to his obvious relief. As everyone turned their attention to the exchange, the duke leaned close to me and said, “Do not forget what I said to you last night, Madonna.”

It took me by surprise. I felt my color rise. Last night?

I swallowed and said, “Last night?”

“In your earlier conversation with my sisters, you spoke of the youth of . . . the first duchess . . . when I asked you particularly to avoid the subject.”

There had been, of course, no moment for private speech between us at the time, what with the presentations and then the gift-giving. I thought he had forgotten. I myself had certainly forgotten.

The glamour of the moment dimmed. The great salon became—ordinary.

“It was not I who turned the conversation in that direction, my lord,” I said.

“That may be so, but you provoked Nora, whether it was your intent or not.” His voice was even and cool. “Take more care of your tongue in future.”

I felt hot blood surge up into my face. How dare you, I thought, how dare you, how dare you? But he dared because he was now my husband, and his word was law to me.

Stiffly I said, “As you wish, my lord.”

“Loose words are a fault in a woman. Maddalena Costabili has learned that, to her sorrow.”

The duke will cut out your tongue if he finds out what you have said here tonight
.

Maddalena had not been among the Ferrarese ladies who attended me that morning. I felt a moment of sinking fear. Surely he had not done such a thing, or ordered it done. However violent his aversion to any mention of his first wife—
and why is that?
a small voice whispered in my thoughts—surely he would not be so gratuitously cruel to a helpless young woman. I looked down at the tablecloth and drew two lines with my fingernail, exactly parallel.

“You do not ask what happened to her? After she spoke to you as she did?”

“Very well. What happened to her?” I drew another line.

“She has been thrashed like a serving-wench and sent to a convent to meditate on her sins.”

“I see.” A relief, that was, compared to what I had been imagining.

“Do not think you yourself are above chastisement.”

“I do not think so.”

With calm triumph he laid his fingers over my hand, obliterating the lines I had drawn. His skin was browned by the huntingfield and tennis-court, in contrast to my own skin, which was pale against the glistening ocean-green of the tablecloth. I felt a chill, which I did my best to conceal. Apparently, I succeeded; the duke did not look at me again, but nodded politely to Lord Hunsdon.

“Continue, my lord,” he said.

The gift-giving went on. I smiled and murmured courteous words of gratitude, but all the while I was unnervingly aware of the weight of the duke’s hand over mine. I imagined those long fingers grasping a birch-cane. I imagined the cord of a garrote wrapped once, twice around that elegantly jeweled fist—the same fist that had wrapped itself in my hair, the same hands that had possessed themselves of my flesh in the fire-flickered night.

Outwardly I would obey him. I had no choice in that.

But as to my true thoughts—I would teach myself the way of wives everywhere, from princesses to peasants, and keep my true thoughts to myself.

 

 

I just can’t think about some things too much. I’ve learned, being
immobila,
that it doesn’t do me any good to be angry. I can’t touch the living. I can’t make them hear me, no matter how much I scream. At first I tried. Then I learned. I can only watch. I can’t even weep.

Oh, yes, I hated them, and they hated me. And they’re alive and I’m
immobila
.

B
y the end of the day I was exhausted; I wanted nothing more than to strip off my tight, heavy costume and sink deep into a feather mattress. I wanted to think, to find a way to fit it all together: the whispers of a
parruchiera
and the magnificence of my entry into the city, the perfumed darkness of the duke’s bed and the dazzling brilliance of the gift-giving, the duke’s smile as he described pasta named for his grandmother’s golden hair and his smile—just the same yet not the same at all—as he detailed Maddalena Costabili’s punishments. I wanted to take the puppies, Tristram and Iseult, into the bed with me for comfort and do nothing but think about it all.

That, of course, was out of the question; the duke had commanded me to attend him in his private apartments for the night. I was not feeling sanguine toward him after his threat—and threat it was, however much he might cloak it in courtesy—at the gift-giving. Still, it would be worse if he ignored me, for then the gossip would begin.
He does not like her.... She is too old, too ugly.... His first duchess was younger and more beautiful....

My new presence chamber was quite astonishing to me—emperor’s daughter or no, I had been accustomed to much more austere surroundings in Innsbruck. Here in Ferrara, it seemed, I would live among rich furnishings, paintings, and sculptures; this room’s marble floor was spread with patterned carpets from the Orient, and its high, high ceiling was frescoed with figures of Jupiter and Juno. In one corner, on a heap of blue and scarlet cushions, Tristram and Iseult were fast asleep, curled close together.

I smiled and put one finger to my lips. Tiptoeing like children, my ladies and I passed through the presence chamber, a well-appointed study with an oratory in a niche to one side, a breakfast-room and a wardrobe-room, until at last we reached the privy chamber, and just behind it, the bedchamber. There I saw, to my astonishment, a tiny wizened woman who looked none too clean, standing by the bed with a bottle and cup in her hands and a mad gleam in her eye.

Domenica Guarini burst into a torrent of Italian, too fast for me to follow. The old woman gave back as good as she got, in what I assumed was a much less refined vernacular. This did not seem helpful, and so I took matters in hand.

“Stop at once, both of you.”

My Habsburg blood may have given me a long horselike face and a prominent lower lip, but in compensation it had also given me the ability to command a room if the need should arise. Both women broke off midsentence and looked at me, Domenica guiltily, the old woman with an openly calculating expression.

“What is this about?” I demanded. “You. Old woman. What are you doing here?”

“Aren’t you the high and mighty one,” the wretched creature retorted. “I go where I want in the duke’s palaces, and never’ll come the day when the likes of you will stop me.”

“It is the duke’s old nursemaid and foster-mother,” Domenica said. “Maria Granmammelli, she is called. It is true, Serenissima, she was the duke’s wet-nurse. He gives her license to go where she wishes, and he will hear no word against her.”

I did know enough Italian to grasp that the old woman’s sobriquet meant “Big Breasts.” Perhaps once she had lived up to the name, but it would have been years ago. If she was expecting me to blush and stammer at the reference, she was in for a disappointment.

“Well, Maria Granmammelli,” I said, “what do you want in my private bedchamber?”

A spark of respect flickered in her piercing black eyes. “It don’t look private to me,” she said. “With all these fine ladies flocking about. Make it private in truth,
Austriaca
, just me and you, and I’ll tell you a thing or two you might like to hear.”

I hesitated for a moment. Once already this day—and only my first full day as a wife!—I had incurred my husband’s displeasure for an unseemly conversation. Did I wish to risk it again? On the other hand, if he valued the old woman and gave her license to come and go as she pleased, he could hardly blame me for making an effort to be pleasant to her.

“Very well,” I said. “Ladies, you may withdraw. I will call you when I need you.”

They whispered, but they complied. The old crone and I were left to ourselves.

“Red clover, red clover,” she crooned. “Motherwort and lady’s mantle.” She held out the bottle and the cup. “And other things,
erbe segretissima
. You’re here to breed, you are, though you’re not good enough for him, not good enough by half, despite your brother calling himself an emperor and all. You can prove your worth, though, with a babe in ten moons. Drink.”