Duchess of Milan (12 page)

An old woman suddenly appeared at Isabella’s side; Beatrice recognized the
vecchia
as Lucia, one of the women who cared for Isabella’s son, Francesco. Lucia’s wool cape was spattered with rain; apparently she had just come from the Castello. Beatrice could discern nothing of Lucia’s toothless gumming. After a moment Isabella hissed, “Are you certain?”

“We are leaving,” Isabella said, whipping around and grabbing Beatrice’s arm. Beatrice hesitated, and Isabella tugged her arm. “We must go now. Something has happened.” Beatrice momentarily debated the conflicting claims of God and the Duchess of Milan, and as the Duchess of Milan had actually spoken to her, heeded her summons.

The small piazza in front of the church, framed by an arcade, was glazed with a misting rain. The clusters of gamblers, many of them young men who wore short jackets over waist-high hose that precisely detailed the contours of their buttocks, hadn’t bothered to move their dice and tarot-card games into the covered porticoes; they simply spread blankets on the damp flagstones. A tooth-drawer had set up shop in one of the porticoes, attracting an eager crowd of onlookers, one of whom assisted by holding the patient’s head. The tooth-drawer brandished his menacing iron tongs, and his audience tittered appreciatively.

Isabella drew a length of cheap black wool from her
cioppa
and ripped it in half. She handed a piece to Beatrice and wrapped the other over her head; a scarf was common rainwear in Naples, but among Milanese women it was not considered respectable attire. “Everyone will know we are
forestiere,”
Isabella said. “You will never see a Milanese lady walking in the rain. They are afraid the faces they paint on every morning will wash away.”

A terrifying howl came from the portico. The tooth-drawer held up his trophy for the admiring crowd: a bloody molar, still fixed in the tongs.

Beatrice and Isabella stepped out into the drizzle. A young gambler eyed them, clutched his padded codpiece, and called out, “Ho, madonna, you want some of this!”

“Eh, cacastecchi!”
Isabella shouted back. “Your prick couldn’t plug a keyhole!” She turned to Beatrice and said with disgust inflected with a certain satisfaction: “He thinks that because we are two well-dressed women out alone we must be
meretrice.”

The street that led to the Castello was lined with three- and four-story
palazzi;
the first story was usually an open arcade sheltering one or more shops: a perfume shop glittering with colored glass phials; a confectioner’s shop displaying spun-sugar models of castles and dragons and knights on horseback; a potter’s shop filled with majolica and sgraffito and ceramic hand warmers. A goldsmith ruled his portico from an enormous cushioned chair, his goblets and reliquaries and chased plates spread out before him as if he were a Turkish sultan displaying his treasure. Chains strung between the columns of the arcades kept livestock and large dogs out of the shops; cats and small dogs were captured by the shopkeepers’ apprentices and periodically hurled back onto the street.

Dense gray clouds were massed on the eastern horizon, portending a heavier rain, and a strong wind carried a curious blend of scents: perfume, garbage, and human waste.
Bravi,
young thugs hired by the shopkeepers to police the street, lounged arrogantly against the columns, daggers stuck in the belts of their gaudy doublets. When similarly dressed young men loitered for a moment too long, the
bravi
urged them along with curses. They smirked and leered when Beatrice and Isabella passed; if the presumed
meretrice
hadn’t been so well dressed, they, too, would have been shooed away, or perhaps requested to offer their wares in trade for the privilege of peddling on this street.

Two four-wheel carriages with silk window shades were parked in front of an expensive fabric shop. A half-dozen Milanese ladies in fashionable
camore,
escorted by two guards, clustered around the counter while the owner and his apprentices exhibited lengths of
velluto allucciolato,
a silk velvet with tiny loops of silver and gold thread woven into the weft. The shelves were crammed with thick bolts of satin damask, Genoese samite and taffeta, Rheims linen, sendal silk from China, tabi silk from Damascus, a dozen different brocades, embroidered with patterns ranging from doves to lions.

A young woman posted by the chain, vulgarly but expensively overdressed in an orgy of multicolored striped velours, warily eyed the approach of the two hooded
meretrice. “Forestiere
sluts,” she muttered. “Why don’t you go back to Rome or Germany or wherever they wear towels over their heads. Stop spreading your
forestiera
diseases among our men.”

Isabella’s fist shot up, making the “fig,” the vulgar sign for the sex act: thumb thrust between the first two fingers. “Any man who sleeps with you already has a disease.”

“Get off our street, or I’ll have our boys sweep you off with the rest of the trash.”

“I want to shop for some
velluto controtagliato,”
Isabella said to Beatrice.

The woman motioned for the apprentice not to remove the chain; Isabella gathered her skirts and stepped over it. Another young woman, dressed similarly and bearing a family resemblance to the first, emerged from behind the counter and blocked Isabella. “Get out of our shop,
puttana.”

“You don’t think my ducats are made of gold, eh?” Isabella gestured at the Milanese ladies. “Ask them. Their husbands and fathers are my best customers,” she said, sneeringly assuming the role. “Decent men like that don’t cheat their whores with gilded coppers, though perhaps the men you sleep with do.”

The first woman turned on Beatrice.  “You and your
puttana
friend are about to sleep with the jailer for free.” She snatched up a broom and held it threateningly across her breast.

“Cacapensieri,”
Beatrice snapped. “If you take one step toward me, that broomstick will be your next lover.”

One of the guards advanced on Isabella. She glared at him for a moment, then stepped back over the chain. “We don’t have time to settle with these little whores,” she said to Beatrice. “You and I have business to settle with Milan’s foremost slut.” Before Beatrice could puzzle over this reference, Isabella began to kick street filth onto the shop’s neatly swept marble floor. The guard stepped over the chain. Isabella grabbed Beatrice’s hand and they dashed up the street.

After a block the duchesses looked back and saw that the guard had not continued his pursuit. Isabella clutched Beatrice’s shoulders. Her breast heaved slightly and her gray-green eyes had that stormy opalescence. For the first time Beatrice could sense that those eyes were not merely looking at her but looking into her. “Your husband has obtained the consent of the King of France to invest my husband with the privileges of the Duchy of Genoa. Do you understand what that means?”

Exhilaration shivered down Beatrice’s spine. So far in her unexpected friendship with Isabella she had been content with her largely mute role as tennis competitor or riding companion; just being near her cousin seemed to provide some of the self-assurance she so admired in Isabella, and just to be treated civilly by her had somehow redeemed all those childhood cruelties. But now Isabella was intimating a new sort of friendship, that of women rather than girls, a future of whispered conspiracies and adult intrigues.

“It means that my husband intends to make an accommodation with the French,” Beatrice answered confidently.

“Do you know why he would do that?”

“He might wish to appease them. My mother says that France has always lusted after Italy. Or my husband might wish to hire the King of France in the fashion he has employed Messer Galeazz.”

Isabella’s elongated, catlike eyes widened slightly, startled by Beatrice’s acuity. “Then I think you also understand what use your husband might have for the French army. If he were to usurp my husband, my father would have
his
army at the gates of Milan within two weeks.”

Beatrice felt a needle of fear whenever she recalled her uncle Alfonso, his swollen, dusky face almost blue with rage; he would slap or kick a servant for the slightest mistake. But Alfonso was indeed a great
condottiere;
she could still see the celebration of his victory over the Turks at Taranto, the fireworks shot from the boats out in the bay and the dark men in chains brought into the banquet hall. . . .

“But if the King of France were to attack Naples,” Isabella went on, “my father could be prevented from protecting his grandson’s birthright.”

Not wanting her cousin to think even for an instant that she would collude in such a scheme, Beatrice blurted the first mollifying argument that came to her. “But your husband is the one who is being invested with the privileges of Genoa. Won’t that strengthen him, not my husband?”

“That is not the opportunity that this investiture presents.” Isabella sniffed dismissively. “What Fortune has given us is an opportunity to be rid of Cecilia Gallerani once and for all.”

Beatrice’s head jerked back. She no longer cared that Cecilia Gallerani had stolen the magic golden words she had once dreamed of hearing from a man. But Cecilia Gallerani had made her an object of ridicule, and for that Beatrice hated her so much that just the name was a white-hot blade in her stomach. She had simply never imagined that hatred of Cecilia Gallerani was something else she and Isabella shared.

“Why are you surprised?” Isabella asked sharply. “That arrogant, conniving bitch has disgraced my household far longer than she has yours.” She gripped Beatrice’s shoulders tightly, as if to emphasize their vehement alliance. “Fortune is the most capricious bitch of all. When she comes around, you must wrestle her to the ground, for she is not likely to pass your way again.” Isabella’s eyes narrowed fiercely. “Are you willing to wrestle with Fortune to be rid of Cecilia Gallerani?”

Beatrice nodded unhesitating assent. She would not risk an instant of Fortune’s wrath to snatch her husband’s love away from Cecilia Gallerani. But to win her cousin’s love, she had decided, she would pursue Fortune to the last circle of Hell.

“Come in, Messer Giacomo.”

Giacomo Trotti, the Ferrarese ambassador to Milan, was a slender, balding man with meek, tired eyes and a nasty beak. Despite the invitation, he hesitated for a moment, seemingly daunted by the lamplit glitter of Il Moro’s treasure vault. Bushel baskets full of gold ducats, stacked like olives at an oil press, took up much of the floor space; in one corner loose silver ducats had been piled halfway to the coffered ceiling. The walls were lined with credenzas displaying a staggering array of jeweled and gilded altarpieces, crucifixes, goblets, salvers, and vases; rows of wooden presses held hundreds of plates of embossed gold, chased silver, and intricately detailed majolica pottery.

Il Moro stood before one of the credenzas, peering at the miniature templelike architecture of a reliquary; the little doors, framed by solid-gold pilasters and arches, were ivory plaques decorated with scenes from the life of Christ. He turned to Trotti. His smile was wry, almost miserable, and immediately put Trotti at ease. Trotti knew that if Il Moro intended to take a serious negotiating position, his face would have been an implacable mask.

“Do you have any notion as to what this is about, Messer Giacomo?”

“I was informed by the Duchess of Ban that she wished me to be present, Your Highness.” Actually Trotti had acceded to Beatrice’s request with profound reservations. On the one hand, he considered the situation regarding Cecilia Gallerani a humiliation for Ferrara and welcomed the opportunity to register a protest. But Beatrice had refused to give Trotti any idea of what sort of protest she intended to make. He had warned her that a petulant outburst would only worsen matters, but given Beatrice’s obstinacy and mercurial temperament, he could only expect the worst.

“Well, you must convey to the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara how earnestly I am endeavoring to ensure that their daughter is happy here. If you would like, I will have my chief secretary, Messer Bartolommeo, furnish you with a list of
the feste,
theatricals, and hunts we have staged for her amusement. And when I cannot look after Beatrice, I delegate Messer Galeazz to see that she is not neglected. If you wish, I can also ask Galeazz to dictate for your examination the considerable itinerary of outings upon which he has escorted her.” Il Moro casually handed Trotti an enormous oblong ruby. “I have asked you and Beatrice to meet with me here because I intend to give her this, along with something of her own choosing. An agent who would not reveal his client has offered me two hundred thousand ducats for it,” Il Moro said as Trotti examined the thumb-size stone. The sum was three times the annual revenues of Ferrara. “I thought that was rather low.”

Trotti silently complimented Il Moro on the skill with which he had already stated his position: I have amply compensated the house of Este for our alliance and will continue to do so, as long as I am left to govern my household as I wish.

“Ah, here is my lovely wife.”

Beatrice walked so stiffly in her tight, glistening brocade
camora
that she might have been a mechanical doll. Her hands were clasped in front of her to prevent them from shaking. Her head moved in abrupt, nervous gestures. Il Moro kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“Tante bellezza,”
Il Moro said. He turned to Trotti. “You may also tell the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara that their daughter becomes more beautiful each day she is with us. And of course she is already the most accomplished horsewoman in Milan. I am immensely proud and delighted with all of the marvelous things I am constantly told about her.”

Silence followed. II Moro smiled at Beatrice, so convincingly that she wanted to believe what he had said. But she knew too well the timbre of his lies. Trotti cleared his throat, prompting her to submit her agenda. Her stomach gave a terrorizing heave. She saw herself summoned home in disgrace, excoriated by her parents, then hustled along a darkened road to a convent. Once she had disappeared inside the silent, gloomy cloisters, she would never be seen again. . . .