Duchess of Milan (15 page)

D’Aubigny let the reins fall and allowed his horse to pick its own path through the ruts and muck. Madame de Beaujeu would probably give birth before he returned to Paris, he reflected. He did not expect any collapse of Madame’s authority during her confinement; Madame’s husband, Pierre de Beaujeu, was certainly capable of controlling the various factions attempting to beguile the King in her absence. But the risks were still great. Madame was too old--thirty--to be having her first child; the birth, even if successful, could leave her health shattered. And even in the best of circumstances, motherhood would likely dull the razor edge of Madame’s temperament. Over time, the war parties would gain their ascendance over a king all too eager to embark on a military adventure; they already had advanced their cause significantly in the last few months. But perhaps what was inevitable was not undesirable. D’Aubigny looked out over the flat, sparkling green checkerboard of irrigated fields. There was more to be won here than even the adventurers in Paris could imagine, the wealth and resources to build a French nation that would dominate the world for centuries.

As the highest-ranking courtier to hold both the King’s friendship and Madame’s confidence, d’Aubigny knew that his counsel might set in motion the millstones of destiny. But what would that counsel be? A dying France could be reborn on these verdant plains. And Italy could also be France’s crypt.

“Ah, Messer Bernard Stuart, do look ahead.” Il Moro pointed. “You can just see the spire of Maestro Bramante’s tower.”

The Alps, sharp-toothed and dusty purple, stretched across the entire horizon like the wall of some mythic city. Finally d’Aubigny distinguished the immense brass cross, diminished by distance to a tiny sun-gilded crucifix seemingly burned into the Alpine massif. Without thinking of it, d’Aubigny moved his hand quickly across his breast, sketching over his own flesh that blazing symbol of death, resurrection, and final judgment.

CHAPTER 11

Milan, 30 April 1491

“Maria, don’t hit it to Beatrice!” The ball popped up toward the cavernous vaults of the Sala della Palla and was lost for a moment in the shadows three stories above. Beatrice’s billowing skirts concealed her furiously driving legs as she raced past Il Moro’s daughter, Bianca. Her bare feet pounded to an abrupt halt, and she reached with her racket, just missing the window to her left. The ball pinged off the gut strings and streaked toward the Duke of Milan’s sister Bianca Maria, who dove for the floor, escaping a painful encounter with the sphere of tightly compressed wool sheathed in hard leather. “Bianca Maria,” Isabella fumed, “I told you not to hit it to Beatrice.”

Bianca Maria remained flat on the floor and spread her arms and legs. “I didn’t hit it to her. She wasn’t there when I hit it.” She rapped the floor with her racket. “Let’s not play anymore. It doesn’t matter who Beatrice’s partner is--she will always win. She can run as fast as a man.”

“Bianca Maria,” Isabella said, exasperated, “a half hour ago you were complaining that there was no one to play tennis with at your mother’s villa in Abbiategrasso.”

“There
wasn’t
anyone to play with in Abbiategrasso,” Bianca Maria asserted; apparently she assumed that her sister-in-law was commenting on her veracity rather than her attention span.

“What did you do in Abbiategrasso, Maria?” Bianca asked sweetly.

“Niente,”
Bianca Maria said, still on her back, her lips curled into an erotic sneer as she overenunciated the word.
“Niente, niente, niente.
There is never anything to do in Abbiategrasso.” She sat up. “I want a hawk. If I had a hawk I could hunt herons with him. I would get him a gold hood with a peacock crest.” Bianca Maria frowned, scrunched her skirts up between her legs, and looked out over her long, gorgeous limbs. “There’s nothing to do here,” she said definitively.

“If your mother finds you with your legs like that, you will have something to do.” Isabella gave up on the tennis game and sat on the floor beside her sister-in-law.

Bianca Maria made silent fishlike motions with her mouth, miming her mother. “Ca-ca. Pu-pu.” She peered out into the ether in search of further inspiration. “I really want a husband,” she concluded as casually as if she had decided to order a breakfast pastry. She considered that option for a while, then smiled with radiant enthusiasm. “I want a monkey! Everyone has a monkey now. I would buy him a hat . . . and a flute . . . and a drum, and a mirror so that he could look at himself!”

Isabella put her arm around her sister-in-law’s shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. “Tomorrow, after the investiture, we are all going to dine with the French ambassadors,” she said patiently. “And there is going to be a theatrical after supper.”

“Ca-ca. Pu-pu.”

Beatrice forbade herself even to consider how she would survive an entire evening in the company of her husband. Owing to the hectic activity surrounding the arrival of the French ambassadors, she had seen Il Moro only four times since Cecilia’s departure. The first time, his grief-dulled eyes had flinched from her. But subsequently he had stared directly at her, revealing no feeling at all, as if his own utterly blank features were a mirror that proved to her and anyone else who cared to look that his wife had ceased to exist.

“You girls!” The voice shrilled through the Sala della Palla. Bianca Maria immediately made a fish face. Duchess Mother Bona rattled across the floor, clapping her hands like a peasant woman shooing a hare out of her garden. “You girls! Are these the courtly manners you would have our visitors impute to our ladies!” She looked down at Isabella and Bianca Maria with goggle-eyed disgust. “In my day a young woman did not allow her rear end to touch anything but a mattress or a velvet cushion. Yet why do I wonder why my daughter tries to eat her meals on the floor and all of you spend more hours in the saddle than a state courier, when I see the example the Duchess of Milan sets for you? God should have given you girls to Gypsy families, and then you could have rested your backsides on the dirt all night and ridden bareback on a mule all day.” Bona clapped her hands again. “Bianca Maria and Bianca are late for their Latin tutor.”

Bianca Maria rose dutifully. Bianca looked pleadingly to Beatrice. Beatrice pressed her lips to Bianca’s ear and whispered, “You know you must study your Latin,
carissima.
When you are done I will teach you a naughty song about an old woman and the young man who had to slice her tough old loins.” Bianca’s brilliant red cheeks suddenly inflated with suppressed laughter. Shortly after the assassination of Duke Galeazzo Maria, his widow had found solace with one of the young men who carved meat at the ducal table; Bona had quickly banished any of her husband’s trusted advisers who dared object to the liaison. Eventually the meat carver had fled, taking with him most of Bona’s jewels and leaving in his wake a leadership vacuum, eagerly filled by Il Moro.

With a flip of her fingers, Duchess Bona whisked the two girls on their way. Bianca happily kissed Beatrice on both cheeks and took Bianca Maria’s hand. Bona remained for a moment, staring with undisguised malice at Isabella, who defiantly remained seated on the floor. She diverted her glare to Beatrice, as though to add: We know the real reason why these girls have become moral degenerates. Then Bona whirled about; as soon as her back was turned, Isabella shot her the fig.

“Can you imagine her?” Isabella said when the furious echoes of the Duchess Mother’s footsteps had finally vanished. “I think we should write His Holiness and inform him that the Frenchmen have resurrected the Duchess Mother. Lucia says that the old
puttana
was in the kitchen for two hours this morning, telling the cooks just what a Frenchman will and won’t eat and how he likes it prepared. She can’t herself read two words of Latin and two weeks ago couldn’t have cared if her daughter even spoke Italian, but now she is chasing down pupils for Maestro Vincenzo. The Duchess Mother does not have the sense to remember that she did not invite the Frenchmen to Milan. They are here to do Il Moro’s bidding.”

Beatrice worried her lower lip with her teeth. She hated the whole issue of the French and her husband’s ambitions. All the arguments and speculation had become for her a maddeningly complex, black-walled labyrinth constantly diverting her from the shining objective at its center: her cousin’s love. But she was afraid that if she ignored the matter, Isabella would imagine that she condoned her husband’s schemes. “Do you really think he will ask the Frenchmen to attack Naples?” she asked morosely.

“He would be a fool if he did. The Frenchmen are just as interested in Milan as they are in Naples. The Duc d’Orleans claims that Milan is his because his great-grandmother was a Visconti.” The Visconti had been the ruling dynasty of Milan prior to the Sforza. “And the Duc d’Orleans has such an influence on the King that Madame de Beaujeu has had to keep him locked up for the last four years. But the Orleanist faction in Paris is still powerful. That is another thing that both your husband and the Duchess Mother seem to forget.” Isabella suddenly gathered up the tennis ball and with a mighty address sent it smashing against the far wall of the Sala della Palla. She turned, and Beatrice instinctively recoiled from the anger on her face; for a moment Beatrice could see Isabella’s father. “Fools. All of them,” Isabella said. “If the Frenchmen come over the mountains, there will be nothing left for anyone.” She fanned the air with her racket.
“Niente.”

“Tell them you will have the woman later.” Bernard Stuart d’Aubigny motioned his junior envoy, Jean Roux de Visque, to come away from the partially open door. In halting, crude Italian, de Visque said as much to someone beyond the door. Feminine laughter followed.

De Visque shut the door. “Italian women,” he said appreciatively, shaking his shaggy head. “An Italian whore is as refined as a French duchess. And even their duchesses dress like whores. What is the name of that dress? Gamoora? You could go to a German butcher’s shop and not find as much meat on display.”

“You must remember that for His Majesty,” d’Aubigny said, laughing. Then the amusement passed from his face as quickly as if he had stepped into shadow. “I have decided what I must tell Paris.”

De Visque, too, instantly composed himself. He stepped closer. Trilling Italian could be heard on the other side of the outer door. D’Aubigny drew de Visque into the privy set in a corner of the room and shut the door behind them. The two men sat on the lacquered privy bench, on either side of the anatomically shaped lid. The walls were painted with red-white-and-blue Sforza crests.

D’Aubigny studied one of the Sforza vipers. “France is dying,” he said flatly. “If a dying man is offered a medicine that may save him or may hasten his death, he is hardly at greater risk by taking it.”

“Our thinking is in concert,” de Visque said in a near whisper.

“It may mean opposing Madame.”

De Visque stroked his short black beard and nodded.

“First, we must convince Paris to settle with the Germans. We can go nowhere with the Germans waiting for our army to depart, so that they can march into Paris.”

“What if Il Moro intends to purchase the services of the German army?”

“All the more reason we must settle with the Germans. Next, we should advocate the release of Louis Duc d’Orleans from the tower at Bourges. Not only will Orleans inflame passions in Paris; he will give any Italian expedition a second objective: Milan. That is essential, because we cannot leave Milan at our back if we assault Naples.”

“What about Duchess Mother Bona? She is His Majesty’s aunt, and the Duke of Milan is His Majesty’s cousin. Do you think His Majesty will sanction an attack on his family?”

“You forget that Orleans is also His Majesty’s cousin. His Majesty’s favorite cousin. And I do not believe that His Majesty’s Italian cousin will be the Duke of Milan once we cross the mountains. Indeed, we can count on Duchess Mother Bona to offer the pretext for our march on Milan. She will summon us to rescue her son from the uncle who is plotting to usurp him. Once we have succeeded, the Duchess Mother and her son will be expendable.”

“And if the Venetians come to the assistance of Milan? Il Moro’s wife is the sister-in-law of Venice’s Captain General. We can hardly expect to defeat both Milan and Venice.”

“I don’t believe that Venice will ever trust Il Moro.” D’Aubigny pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Still ... I will ask for permission to speak with Il Moro’s wife. Perhaps she will inadvertently reveal something. Yes, that is the fundamental weakness in our construction. We do not know what Venice will do.”

“It occurs to me that II Moro also has a fundamental weakness. We assume that his first objective is to become Duke of Milan. He can hardly expect to rule Europe if he cannot legally rule his own state. But as yet he has no heir. The people of Milan have not forgotten the three years of bloody chaos they suffered when the last Visconti duke died without legitimate issue. Now that the present duke has an heir, the people of Milan are unlikely to encourage a usurper who can’t promise them the stability offered by a legitimate succession.”

“I am certain Il Moro intends for his wife to present him an heir.”

“A man can give his wife this”--de Visque made an obscene punching motion with his fist--”all he wants. But only God can give a man a son.”

“Then we should ask God to withhold Il Moro’s son until we have designed the carriages to get our cannons over the mountains. Because if Il Moro can produce an heir before we have the means to stop him, he will bury France.”

De Visque rubbed his beard and stared numbly at the Sforza vipers on the wall; finally he seemed to banish the vision with a shake of his head. “Well,” he said, “given the possibility that we may not return, I suppose I should avail myself of the opportunity to sleep with an Italian woman.”

D’Aubigny smiled grimly and stood up. “And I must seduce Duchess Mother Bona.”

“Get away, Hermes.” The greyhound continued to sniff at Isabella’s skirts, and she batted him on the snout.