Duchess of Milan (20 page)

Beatrice’s dread was not assuaged. Her stomach cramped, and the feverish heat filled her like a hot gas; she imagined herself swelling like Giovanna, then exploding. The truth seemed to burst out of her. “Eesh, I know I will die if I have a baby. My baby is going to kill me. I know it as well as I know that if I cut my skin I will bleed.”

Isabella reflexively crossed herself. “Toto, are you . . . ?”

“No. No, Eesh, I know I am not.” Beatrice’s cadence was frantic. “I don’t ever want to be. I don’t ever want to have his baby. Francesco is the only baby I ever want. I promise you,

Eesh.” Beatrice shuddered with rapid sobs. She had the strange idea that she had just betrayed her mother. And that her mother deserved to be betrayed.

“Oh, darling,” Isabella murmured, and folded Beatrice in her arms.

CHAPTER 16

Letter of Isabella d’Este da Gonzaga, Marquesa of Mantua, to Eleonora d’Este, Duchess of Ferrara. Pavia, 1 August 1492

Most illustrious and beloved lady Mother,

I arrived safely in Pavia yesterday, where I was met at the docks by Beatrice and the Duchess of Milan and thereupon conducted through the city to the gates of the
castello.
There I was received by Il Moro and all the ambassadors who are here, and was heralded by two dozen trumpeters. You would not believe Beatrice and the Duchess of Milan! Were Roland and Olivier more devoted to one another? They have pet names and secret glances, and one virtually finishes the other’s sentence. Together with the Duchess of Milan’s
puttino,
they make a fine little family. Il Moro accords Beatrice the utmost respect and cordiality. And, Mama, Beatrice’s
guardaroba
is nothing less than a spectacle! She has by my count sixty-three
camore,
and that is just here at the
castello
in Pavia--she says she has even more in Vigevano, not to mention Milan. I examined them, and I will swear on the Girdle of the Virgin that none has been made of cloth that could be had for less than twenty ducats an arm-span! And I do not have time to account for all the books she has ordered. Now I know why one must wait so long to locate fine goatskin parchment in Venice! As to marital relations between Il Moro and Beatrice, I am not as yet certain. There are no signs of a baby, but that may indicate nothing--look how hard Francesco and I have tried. (I got my out-of-ordinaries last Thursday. When it happens I must force myself not to yield to despondency. I am not giving up on my
puttino,
Mama.) The Duchess of Milan likewise has nothing to show for her recent endeavors.

The news here is all of the election of the new Pope, said to be entirely due to the devices of Il Moro’s brother Cardinal Ascanio, who it is said will be the new papal Vice-Chancellor. All of the ambassadors are here--Milan, Naples, Florence, and, as you know, Messer Giacomo, who begs that I send you his solicitations for your health. Of course the serious discussions will not begin until Father arrives. He is expected to join us this Thursday at Vigevano--we are all trembling with anticipation. I think everyone here, including Il Moro, realizes that an agreement must be reached if we are to keep the French on their side of the mountains.

We are hunting here tomorrow and will be in Vigevano on Wednesday. I am salivating at the prospect of seeing all the work Maestro Donato Bramante has done there.

As much joy as I feel in finally seeing my only sister again and in knowing that Father will soon be here, your absence is a shadow over my gayest moments.

Your adoring daughter and one who misses Your Highness,

Isabella d’Este da Gonzaga, by her own hand

Pavia, 2 August 1492

“I know they are getting closer.” The Marquesa cocked her head slightly; with a jewel-studded peacock feather mounted on her blue velvet cap, she looked for a moment like an inquisitive tropical bird. “I can hear them.” She pointed to the border of the dense poplar-and-pine wood, about an arrow-shot away across the sloping meadow. “The Duke of Milan’s greyhounds are in there. Right there.”

A dozen white canvas pavilions dotted the grassy rise, sheltering the hunting party from the daunting August sun; a gracefully arching pergola woven of fresh pine boughs provided shade for the Marquesa, the Duchesses of Milan and Bari, and a few of their ladies-in-waiting. The two duchesses squinted into the sunlight. Isabella shrugged her
catnora-bared,
lightly sun-rouged shoulders, a gesture repeated an instant later by Beatrice. “We can’t hear them yet,” Beatrice said.

“Didn’t I always have a better ear than you?” the Marquesa retorted.

“Yes, yes, you did,” Beatrice said, wrapping her arms around her sister and kissing her neck and ear. “I will concede to your superiority in everything simply because I am so delighted you are here. But if your ear is truly so keen, I wish you would tell us what my husband and the ambassadors are discussing.”

The Marquesa stared intently into the adjacent pavilion for a moment, as if she really could decipher the quiet buzzing of the group. In their short brocade hunting doublets and brilliantly colored hose, the four men--Il Moro, Giacomo Trotti, and the ambassadors from Naples and Florence--resembled
condottieri
discussing a campaign. Il Moro’s dark eyes flashed among his audience, his hands moving in confident, didactic thrusts.

“I will tell you exactly what they are discussing,” the Marquesa ventured. “With the King of France rapt at the foot of both the Duc d’Orleans and the Prince of Salerno, no one in Italy is safe anymore. I think it is a blessing that the French are making their intentions so obvious. If we show the
oltramontani
that we are united against them, they will stay home. Thank God that the new Pope is not a French sympathizer.”

“
You
may thank God for the elevation of Cardinal Borgia, my dearest sister,” Beatrice said, “but the new Pope is more likely to thank Cardinal Ascanio.” The duchesses snorted sarcastically. It was widely rumored that the newly elected Alexander VI--formerly Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia--had secured his votes with lavish payments to Il Moro’s brother.

“My little sister has become quite the student of statecraft. Or at least of the latest gossip from Rome.
Per mia fe!
Look!” The Marquesa pointed to the treeline.

A white-bellied doe loped from the thick underbrush at the edge of the woods, followed by a fawn. A moment later four or five greyhounds burst from the brush in pursuit. “Doe!” Isabella shouted frantically. “Call back the dogs!” As if by her command, two game wardens dashed from the woods on foot. Cracking their whips and shouting commands, they collared the greyhounds into a yapping circle. The doe and her fawn sprinted over a small hill to the east.

“There is the stag!” the Marquesa called out with high-pitched excitement. A large, powerful buck bounded along near the tree-line to the west, trailing a half-dozen tiring greyhounds and a rider on a thundering white stallion.

The ladies in the surrounding pavilions trilled a spontaneous chorus of recognition: “Galeazz! Galeazz!” Even the ambassadors turned from their discussion. Galeazz quickly overtook the dogs, drew even with the stag near the crest of the hill, aimed his lance--his riding was so fluid that his head and torso remained as still as an equestrian statue--and impaled the beast directly behind the shoulder. Rivulets of blood streamed over the stag’s belly, and then it stumbled and fell. The ladies shrieked enthusiastically.

“You would think that Galeazz had just speared your ladies,” the Marquesa told the duchesses, her lips puckered with wry eroticism. “Perhaps they are remembering when he did.”

A game warden bellowed from the edge of the woods. “Boar!”

Beatrice clenched her fists and turned rapidly to either side, as if run by clockworks gone out of control. “We must get our horses. We must join the pursuit. We must! Eesh! Bel! We must go in there after the boar!” Beatrice called to the grooms to bring the horses. Then she suddenly wound down and looked to Isabella as if she had made some sort of gaffe. Isabella simply replied with a barely discernible shake of her head.

The red-white-and-blue-uniformed grooms brought up the ladies’ horses and began cinching the saddles. Il Moro glanced at the activity, abruptly interrupted his discussion, and strode to the pine-bough pergola. He looked among the three women, finally addressing the Marquesa. “I have long ago given up cautioning the Duchesses of Milan and Bari. There is simply no prevailing on them to observe their own welfare, much less the protocol required by their sex and station. They are so determined to do mayhem to themselves that most of the gentlemen of my court will not ride with them.” Il Moro recited his complaint with a good-natured smile, but there was a peevish edge to his voice. “I realize that I have no influence whatever with the duchesses, but I pray that you will at least stay here and spare me your husband’s wrath should anything happen to you.”

“You may lift me to my horse, Your Highness,” the Marquesa said; she followed her request with a saucy laugh.

“Then these gentlemen and I will go with you.” Il Moro gestured to indicate the ambassadors and officers of state in the adjacent pavilions. But as soon as the duchesses and the Marquesa had been settled in their saddles, they galloped off, skirts billowing. The Marquesa lost her feathered cap and called out for someone to pick it up. The gentlemen hurriedly summoned their pages and grooms.

The woods swallowed up the three women. The underbrush, thick with ferns, vines, and lilies of the valley, slowed their horses to a walk. “Look,” Beatrice whispered. Just ahead, two rows of huge oaks, branches joined high above, bowered a clearing. Slender shafts of sunlight streamed down from the dense canopy. The women reined their mounts and were momentarily silenced by the beauty of the enclosure. The brush nearby rustled.

“I think we should wait for the rest of the party,” the Marquesa said.

“You two wait,” Beatrice whispered. “I’m going inside.” She nudged her horse with her riding crop and emerged into the grass-carpeted clearing. Silvery fragments of light mottled her brocade
camora.
“It’s beautiful,” she called out. “You must come in.”

Isabella prodded her horse’s flank and moved through the screen of trees. The Marquesa lagged behind, her chin lifted as she listened for something. Brush rattled.

“Beatrice!” Isabella screamed, so loud she wondered if she had ripped her throat. A massive, bristling, mud-brown creature erupted from the trees just to her right, as huge as a bull, its devil-red eyes focused on Beatrice.

Beatrice’s horse reared frantically. She grimaced and pulled savagely on the reins and somehow stayed on her precarious perch, her legs flying straight out as if she were a marionette seated on its wooden rump. The boar came right under her legs, and its tusks ripped the hem of her voluminous skirt.

Other than the single detached observation that Beatrice was going to be killed, Isabella’s mind was entirely empty, the scene before her playing in the slow, silent cadence of a dream: Beatrice’s silk-sheathed arm rising again and again as she pounded her crop against the rump of her hysterical horse; the horse, wide-eyed, finally turning, its body now a shield for Beatrice’s legs; the boar, far more agile, pivoting on its devilish hooves, ducking its head.

The boar charged beneath the horse’s ribs, to the accompaniment of a sickening crack. And then it rose up instead of charging through, its massive shoulders lifting Beatrice and her horse entirely off the ground, like some grotesque, brute Hercules carrying them on its back. Beatrice is going to be killed, Isabella’s mind reiterated.

“No!” Isabella screamed. She flailed with her crop, trying to force her frantic horse toward the boar in an effort to divert the attack. She screamed again, her throat raw, but her horse merely jittered and spun a futile circle. When she came around again, she saw Beatrice and her horse teeter on the fulcrum of the boar’s back. She realized that Beatrice was going to be killed not by the boar but by her own horse when it toppled and crushed her. She could only watch with utter horror as Beatrice began to slip almost gracefully from the saddle, about to fall beneath her horse’s great sagging belly. But there was no fear in Beatrice’s hard, dark eyes. Only excitement.

Somehow Beatrice’s collapsing marionette limbs jerked erect, as if the strings that controlled them had been drawn taut by some miraculous hand. She pulled herself back into the saddle and sat up straight, her posture so astonishingly correct that her horse might merely have stepped over a small brook. Her teeth flashed as she muscled the reins. The horse stumbled back to earth, and the boar squirmed free of its burden, pivoted, and began another attack.

Something like a single swift bird streaked through the bower, followed by a loud
thwack-thwack
and the almost supernatural appearance of two arrows in the vast, heaving side of the boar. A lancetip sparkled in the sunlight, followed by a giant figure on an equally giant white horse. The boar emitted a plaintive, squealing exhalation as Galeazz’s lance pierced its chest. It quizzically shook its head, took several steps, and slumped to its knees. The boar’s red eyes blinked, and blood spurted from its mouth.

Another horse and rider charged into the clearing: Gian, mounted on his own white stallion, Neptune. Five or six of Gian’s greyhounds darted about among the horses’ legs, yapping crazily. Gian’s two-legged favorites came right behind, the hooded hunting falcons on their wrists screaming and flapping their wings. Galeazz already had assisted Beatrice from her horse. Grooms on foot sprinted to help Isabella and the Marquesa from their saddles; the two women rushed to Beatrice and smothered her in their arms. More horses and shouting riders crowded into the clearing, their many-colored silk caparisons and riding doublets a riotous complement to the clamor. Il Moro dismounted and soundly clasped his wife’s shoulders, as if assuring himself that his valuable merchandise was still undamaged. Beatrice laughed, her teeth exposed almost like fangs. For a moment it seemed that the ear-splitting din of the dogs and horses was the sound of her laughter.