Death of a Duchess (12 page)

Poggio slapped his chest, warily.

‘So. They had money. They don’t need to rob. And they are not outdoor men; they’re city dwellers.’ He leant down towards Poggio and said, ‘We owe you thanks. What brought you here so fast and so opportunely?’

‘I’m not staying up there,’ Poggio said. ‘I came the short way, down the quarry, and I’ll guide you the rest of the road. In this light you could lose yourselves.’

‘As you will,’ Sigismondo said. ‘I told you that you were free.’

‘Take me up.’ He reached an arm, and Sigismondo bent and seemed to scoop him from the ground.

They rode off down the hillside. Benno called, ‘What about the...’ and pointed to the bodies, already blanketed in snow. No one replied.

Poggio’s voice came on the wind disjointedly: ‘If
you
could find me... that ring...’ Once he emerged like an unexpected birth from Sigismondo’s cloak and pointed the way.

They came through trees, the snow whispering, and down a steep open slope. Benno, rubbing his legs and putting his hands alternately into his jerkin to be warmed by the dog, rode almost on his master’s crupper to be sure of him in the fading light.

Past the moving mass ahead he saw, further down the hill, lights clustered about a fire. Dogs’ clamour came on the wind as the firelight disappeared behind a fold of snow. Sigismondo pulled up well before reaching the encampment and a trio of men came forward with a firebrand and quarterstaffs and a pike, to investigate. Before long Benno found himself sitting with a basin of indeterminate soup, painfully thawing, while someone rubbed down the horses and Sigismondo talked in a foreign language to the company.

They made much of Poggio. From their talk to him, Benno learnt that they counted the meeting lucky. They were camped here waiting for their acrobat and singer who was missing, probably with some woman in the city. They had not fancied the atmosphere in the city at all, and did not care to stay... A dwarf who could sing, act, dance and, given the right size of instrument, play a lute, interested them very much. At this point Sigismondo remarked that Poggio was on his way to an engagement at a nobleman’s house; he was a popular and sought-after entertainer. If they wanted him to stay, he was worthy of an important place. There was further talk, and drinking, and Benno and the little dog scratched themselves and shared more soup; finally, hands were struck: Poggio was to stay and travel with them, and if his act — a bravura item of which he displayed — proved all that it seemed, he would be invited to join them as a senior member.

Poggio, who had had a full day, was discovered to be asleep, and was helped to one of the carts.

At first light Sigismondo set off for the city. The snow had ceased during the night but they rode over ground of luminous pallor. The city gates had not opened yet; the Duke’s ring shown at the barred lattice got them admitted with impressed speed through the postern.

As they approached the Palace by the long, open ramp, Sigismondo remarked, ‘Those men who set upon us, Benno: someone is going to know very soon that they failed. Be on your guard.’

‘Am I as important as that?’ Benno asked.

Sigismondo hummed. ‘They’re not to know I don’t tell you anything.’

‘What about the bodies? Up on the mountain?’

‘Poggio tells me they’ll all be gone as soon as daylight. Someone from the village will find them, all three. There won’t be a scrap wasted.’

Since the Duke was in Council, Sigismondo could not report to him, and chose to seek audience with another member of the family.

The Lady Violante evidently took the Court mourning to affect merely the lower orders. When Sigismondo was announced, she was the centre of a group of giggling ladies. All wore black, but the Duke’s daughter’s gown was sewn so thick with pearls that the effect was more of moonshine than of sombre night. She scattered her ladies with a brutal thrust of her hands, so that one of them actually stumbled.

‘Go. Go! I will speak with this man alone.’

As they swept their curtsies and went out, they exchanged glances and looked him over, covertly smiling. The door closed on the feast of gossip she had provided.

‘It is kind of you to see me, my lady.’

Sigismondo’s voice at its lowest register was honey or velvet. She responded as a flower to the sun.

She beckoned him to stand before her, running her gaze over his breadth of shoulder and the bizarre shaven head as though she had suddenly found the object of interest she had needed. Her eyes had more than one thing in common with the Duke’s: they were a brilliant blue, and they had a dangerous look — in her case that of a child bent on mischief but as yet undecided what form it shall take. Like the Duke, she was tall and slender. Her hair, blonde like his, was worn in a braid twisted with pearls and black ribbons that hung down her back, while casually careful ringlets framed her face. In spite of the necessary formality of dress and hair, there was about her a wildness, a suggestion that she might do anything, at any time, without even knowing she was about to, and that she enjoyed this. In her arms she held an ermine, with a fine gold chain dangling from a jewelled collar. As Sigismondo stood before her, the ermine turned its sleek head and looked at him with the same air of unpredictable and happy ferocity.

‘Why have you asked to see me in private?’ She stroked the animal, held it up to her chin and looked at Sigismondo under her brows as though she expected him to admit an amorous motive.

‘I believed your ladyship might be able to help me in the matter of her Grace’s death.’

Did the ermine struggle or had her hands tightened? She raised her eyebrows.

‘How?’

‘Your ladyship saw her Grace shortly after she was murdered.’

The ermine clawed its way out of the lady’s arms and flowed rapidly across the floor, reached the end of its chain and turned back to hide under a velvet stool. Blue eyes stared at Sigismondo, blank eyes. Hands, empty of ermine, slowly fell to her sides. She said nothing.

‘You were alone with her Grace, at least, before the murder was discovered. Did your ladyship see anything that might help to prove who killed her? Someone you saw leave the room before you entered it?’

Life returned to the sleepwalker. She swung round and went to the fire as if suddenly cold. She spread her hands, rings shining with the jewels of mourning, pearls and diamonds. Over her shoulder she said, ‘I wasn’t there.’

The faintest hum escaped Sigismondo. She faced him again, opened a gold comfit-box that hung at her girdle, popped a sweetmeat into her mouth and continued to stare at him composedly.

‘The first time I saw her Grace after her death, she was lying in the chapel. Who says I saw her earlier?’ A fierce energy in her voice and bearing now gave the impression that, could she lay hands on that person, they might at once be short of a tongue.

Sigismondo shook his head, regretful. ‘I am not permitted to say, your ladyship.’

‘
Who
does not permit? My father is the only one whose permission is valid here.’

‘As long as your father remains Duke of Rocca.’

A scorching blue glare was turned upon him. ‘How can there be doubt that he will remain Duke of Rocca?’ Her hand was on the knife that also hung at her girdle. ‘You dare say to me—’

‘I am the Duke’s man. You may be sure of that. But he has enemies and I did not think you were one.’

This brought her right up to him, hissing like a cat, her face distorted and the knife bare in her hand. ‘You dare, you dare to say I am his enemy!’ Her knife, in a remarkably workmanlike grip, went for his midriff. He took her wrist and spoke with sudden force.

‘My lady, your father may cease to be Duke if his enemies succeed in blackening his name as they begin to do. They are saying he killed his wife. They say so today in Rocca, and it will be in the Duke Ippolyto’s cities tomorrow. Ippolyto will give his help to your father’s enemies to drive him out. And kill him.’

‘
Leandro Bandini
is to be executed for the murder.’

‘It is likely that he is innocent. Would you allow an innocent young man to die?’

‘How can he be innocent? He was found beside her body.’

He let go her wrist, and she slowly sheathed the knife, not taking her eyes from him. He said, ‘His Grace is not satisfied.’

A dog, invisible until now in a pile of cushions, grunted in its sleep and stretched all four paws out, quivering. She turned at the sound and walked back to the fire, still rubbing her wrist where he had held it; the fur border of her skirt made a soft noise on the polished wood, not unlike that of the fire.

The deep voice followed her relentlessly.

‘Leandro Bandini says that you summoned him to the feast.’

She whirled. ‘That
I
- summon Leandro Bandini!’ The thick rope of her hair flew out and fell across her shoulder. A fine flush of social outrage warmed her face, and her tone was that of a saint accused of summoning lesser devils.

‘This is his story: a messenger came from you to bring him secretly to the Palace; that you sent a man, when he arrived here, with a cup of wine and a disguise to enable him to reach you unknown.’

A flare of the blue lightning. ‘If he says that he deserves to die. It is a lie all through. And is
this
, this silly tale, why you think him innocent?’

She stopped and suddenly clapped her hands, bringing a page in past the door curtain to be dismissed with a peremptory wave. ‘No, don’t you see? If it isn’t Leandro Bandini, if he’s innocent, then it’s probably true what my stupid women are saying, that Jacopo di Torre sent the message fetching young Bandini here.
They
think him innocent because he’s a pretty young man. They say di Torre’s daughter is stolen by Ugo Bandini, so di Torre makes sure the son dies for it. It’s really very clever.’

‘You think di Torre would have the Duchess killed to further his revenge?’

‘A good revenge would stop at nothing. You know that.’ She strode across the room, hands clasped against her skirt. ‘Perhaps he only meant to have young Bandini discovered in her Grace’s room — perhaps by my father. Someone else might have killed her.’

‘Did you see Leandro there?’

‘He must have been hidden. I saw no one.’

There was a silence. She turned to face him, her hands flat on the pearly folds of her skirt. Then she clasped them before her. She closed her mouth very precisely.

The silence lengthened. The hands gripped each other. She tightened her lips to a rosebud.

The shadow of a little mocking sound came from Sigismondo. She stamped. Then she flung up her arms and came towards him, with the ease of a young woman who knows her position is invulnerable in any case. ‘I went for my jewel. The cross my — the Duchess Maria promised me. It was always to be mine. I was not here when she died; I wore the mourning for a mother, when I heard. And this Duchess did not want the cross herself and would not give it to me. I knew where it was and I went to get it.’

‘Why now, my lady? Why never before?’

‘She never dismissed all her maids and guards before, or when she did, there was always Cecilia. So I watched, until I saw, as I thought, the Duchess going away down the stair.’

‘Why did you think it was she?’

‘A cloak with a hood. I thought it was a cloak that she wears. Everyone had put on cloaks to see the fireworks.’

‘There was no one else?’

‘I listened. If I had heard anyone I would have waited longer.’ She caressed a ringlet, twisting it in her fingers and looking down her nose at him. ‘If Leandro Bandini did not kill her, was it the one I saw go away?’

‘Possibly, my lady.’

She looked thoughtful, drawing the ringlet out straight and examining it as if for quality. ‘She had made sure no one would see this visitor.’

‘Did your ladyship know of any admirers of her Grace who might have this privilege?’

‘You put that very well,’ she said critically. ‘Did I know who her lovers were?’ She let the ringlet spring back, laughing, and looking him in the eyes. ‘No. There were lovers. Cecilia knew. Some of her women will have known, I suppose, but nothing would make them tell, not even you.’

Sigismondo certainly knew that anyone can be made to speak, but he asked only, ‘Did his Grace know?’

‘He never spoke of it. If he suspected, he never accused her. Not even in their quarrels.’ She smiled wickedly at the memory. ‘They were at each other’s throats a few days ago when she found that my father had given one of his villas to Caterina Albruzzo. So stupid, being jealous. The Duchess Maria never was. She wasn’t jealous of my mother, or at least she was never fool enough to show it. When my mother died, she had me brought to the Palace and treated me as her own daughter. My father loved her for it.’

A scratch at the door. It opened, the curtain was drawn back and a page bowed to her. ‘My lady: his Grace’s Council is over and he wishes to see you.’

The Lady Violante extended a hand to Sigismondo. ‘Come with me.’

As the page withdrew, Sigismondo took her hand on his and bowed over it. She stood still. ‘Do you intend to tell my father that I was... there?’

‘If he does not ask me, I have no reason to tell him.’

The fingers of her other hand pressed his lips. She leant a little towards him. ‘Silence, then.’

Her hand resting on his, she allowed him to escort her to the Duke’s presence.

Way was cleared for them by the Duke’s page and the lady’s, walking side by side. The Palace seemed filled now with grave elderly men talking excitedly or arguing in voices that stopped abruptly when they saw who was near; backs bent all along the way. The debate continued when they had passed. The general effect, now that mourning was universal, was of a scattering of crows cawing among themselves. Corvine glances examined the man who surely ought to be following behind the lady, not pacing at her side.

The doors to the Council chamber were opened for the approaching pair, and closed behind them, shutting them in with silence. The Duke sat absorbed in thought, his great carved chair askew from the head of the long table, his arm along its Turkey carpet of deep blues and reds. His secretary shuffled scrolls and papers together, and fussed at attaching his inkhorn to his girdle. A wine cup stood untouched before the Duke.