Duchess of Milan (30 page)

CHAPTER 24

Milan, 21 February 1493

“I beg your pardon, Your Highness,” said the Marchesino Stanga, Milan’s polished Minister of Public Works, as he bowed somewhat unsteadily to Beatrice. “I am afraid I must admit that the excellent Malavasia wine has emphasized the clumsiness of my footwork, when I had intended to impress you with my grace. I am so sorry.” “But, Marchesino, you have stepped on my foot with such grace,” Beatrice replied. She held out her hand so that she and the Marchesino, who was both a contemporary and an acquaintance of her mother’s, could rejoin the circle of paired dancers moving with varying degrees of proficiency around a hub of red-white-and-blue-liveried musicians. The Marchesino was far from the most unsteady of the revelers packed into the great hall of the Palazzo da Pusterla, one of Milan’s grandest private residences. While many of the pairs still dipped and turned with deft assurance, more than a few others stumbled comically; the Duke of Milan, attempting an extravagant
fioretta
pirouette, had just fallen on his rear. Far more complex than the fairly simple
bassa danza
routines, however, were the physical and psychological maneuvers--also practiced with varying degrees of proficiency--through which dancers of both sexes communicated their availability for a wide variety of sexual activities.

Beatrice had herself consumed enough wine to enjoy the relaxed decorum and forget for a moment that Eesh had virtually ignored her for the last two days. She had even begun to consider, albeit with ambivalence, the notion of claiming some of the social rewards for her successful labor. On the one hand she felt she had finally escaped her bondage to all these people here in Milan, having fulfilled the essential obligation she had to them--and to her husband. But as keenly attuned as she was to the bitter irony of her miraculous transformation from unwanted
forestiera
bride to beloved mother of the wealthiest--and perhaps most powerful--scion in Europe, she could not escape a strange sense of finally belonging. Perhaps she was only the hub of a screeching wheel of flatterers and sycophants, but the urgency with which these people were now drawn to her, however self-serving their attraction, gave her a feeling of security, of having arrived at some fixed place for the first time in her life.

The sonorous, lilting
bassa danza
music ended, and the circle of dancers stopped turning. The court poet Gaspare Visconti appeared on the balustraded mezzanine overlooking the great hall. His first pronouncement merely brought silence among the crowd. Then, with a hand flourish, he said: “In honor of the Duke of Bari’s son, an original
cantione alia piffarescha,
with the addition of
trombone,
by Maestro Franchino Gafori.” The dancers applauded. An interlude followed as the musicians, joined by the trombone players and several vocalists, took a few last glances at the sheet of music.

Beatrice stood on her toes in anticipation; she intended to memorize every note so that she could hum and sing the tune to little Ercole when she returned to the Castello. Notes of joy already filled her buzzing head, and she realized that so many of the formalities of court, which had previously seemed merely foolish and hollow, would now have meaning because they would be for her little boy. . . .

“Walk out with me.”

The voice entered Beatrice’s reverie like a shout in a dream. With dread she turned. Eesh was at her side, her eyes catlike with ire.

“The first dedication should have been to the Duke of Milan’s child. This is the last affront I will accept from Il Moro. I am leaving, and I want you to walk out with me. We must make it clear to him that his insidious assertion of his unlawful claims cannot continue.”

“Eesh ...” She thought for a desperate moment of Mama’s warning about such protests, thought of offering that caution to Eesh, but realized that wasn’t the reason she could not leave. “Eesh . . . ,” she pleaded. “Eesh, this is for my little boy, his first song. It ... it would be like walking out on my baby.”

“Did you ever think that your little boy might cost my little boy everything that is rightfully his? He might even cost us our lives.”

“Eesh, that isn’t fair--” Beatrice stopped herself abruptly, suddenly outraged that Eesh could not see that Ercole was
her
little boy, the love of her new life, and not some sinister agent of Il Moro’s ambition. The old competitive anger she had felt toward Eesh when she first came to Milan welled up again, so hot that it hurt. But that initial reflex was quickly replaced by something colder, more calculated, and to this she gave words. “You are wrong, Eesh. You are wrong to hate my little boy just because you cannot love your little girl.”

Isabella jerked back as if she had been struck, her eyes stunned and watery. Her cheeks and forehead flushed. “He will use your little boy to turn you against me,” she said, her tone no longer angry or resolved, only weary and sad.

The music began, the woodwinds and horns so gay and vibrant that they seemed ridiculous. Beatrice’s anger had vanished. She had only the sickening sensation of plunging after her words, trying to capture them and take them back. She wanted to embrace Eesh, to say how sorry she was. But Isabella whipped her shoulders about and stalked through the crowd so quickly that hardly anyone noticed her departure.

The baby’s cries were audible from the
guardaroba
adjoining the nursery. A page scurried to open the door to the nursery as the Duchess of Milan swept past. When the door was opened, the cries escaped with stinging intensity.

The wet nurse was rapidly rocking the heavy, gilded cradle. She stopped and curtsied rapidly to Isabella, then attempted to speak loudly over the din. “Your Highness--”

The butt of Isabella’s hand caught the stocky wet nurse high on the jaw and sent her sprawling, arms and legs akimbo. The woman looked up, her irises pinpoints of terror, then quickly got to her feet and frantically curtsied several times. “Get out!” Isabella screamed at her. “The devil take you--get out!”

The wet nurse curtsied twice more and fled, closing the door behind her.

Isabella stood over the cradle for a moment, her eyes closed. She had a strangely pensive beauty in the aftermath of her rage. She bent as if to kiss the shrieking infant.

“Bitch!” Isabella screamed directly into her daughter’s face. The infant writhed, struggling against her swaddling, her wine-red little features distorted inhumanly, and wailed even louder. “Bitch! Bitch!” Isabella was almost as livid as her daughter. “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!”

After a moment Isabella’s own tears came, and she stood sobbing over the little girl, her shoulders heaving in a silent mime of her daughter’s unabated fury.

Beatrice pulled Bianca’s fur-trimmed mantle up around her ears, then took her gloved hand and cradled it in her lap. The torches mounted on the roof of the carriage cast a dim glow through the silk window drapes. The sounds of snorting horses, clip-clopping hooves, and revelers’ laughter signaled a general exodus from the Palazzo da Pusterla. Beatrice settled into the thick cushions, assuming that the crush of carriages in the Piazza del Duomo would briefly delay their departure for the Castello.

“Toto,” Bianca asked her, “have you ever known anyone who died?”

Beatrice found the abrupt question entirely logical; Bianca’s mind worked much like her own. And she welcomed the distraction from her anger, both at herself and at Eesh. Eesh
had
been wrong and unfeeling in the timing of her protest. But Beatrice knew that she herself had been just as unfeeling to accuse Eesh of not loving her daughter. ... It occurred to her that no one she loved had ever died. She remembered the Requiem Mass for Polissena’s second husband, how she had forced herself to glance at his face from twenty paces away, that brief glimpse of a pale, waxy mask in the brilliant light of hundreds of memorial candles. He had been less real than a marble bust. She could not even imagine Father or Bel or Bianca like that. People you loved didn’t die. “Were you thinking about your mother?” she asked Bianca. “You know that just because I have my own baby now doesn’t mean that you are no longer my most special
arnica.”

Bianca squeezed Beatrice’s hand tightly. The door on Bianca’s side of the carriage clicked and opened.
“Carissima,”
a man murmured, then whispered something to Bianca. Beatrice knew the voice, the sibilance, and she had to force herself not to clutch Bianca’s hand in panic.

“I’m going home in my father’s carriage. He says there is a surprise in it for me.” Bianca giggled and kissed Beatrice. “I love you, Toto,” she said, then reached out and in a swish of brocade and fur disappeared into the night.

Beatrice silently recited her fears to the hammering of her heart. No wonder Eesh was so upset; he intends to do it tonight. . . .

The carriage swayed as Il Moro climbed in, his features dark and sinister in the dim light. His smell came to her, a faintly perfumed masculinity. He settled himself, leaned back, and rapped on the door. The carriage lurched off.

“I was touched by Maestro Gafori’s composition,” Il Moro said. “It was entirely a surprise to me.”

Beatrice hated the calm assurance of his diction, so opposed to the frantic rhythm inside her. She sat silently, her mother’s tales of internecine treachery screeching at her like angry raptors. Now she even wished she had accepted the invitation to go home in Mama’s carriage.

“Are you angry with me because your cousin walked out this evening?”

“I know what you are doing.”

Il Moro shifted his weight before responding. “And what is that?”

“You intend to make yourself Duke of Milan.” Beatrice suddenly felt an enormous relief, and she wondered why she had never before thought to leap into the pit and shout her challenge right in Satan’s filthy, evil face.

“You are my wife . . . ,” Il Moro said abstractly, as if trying out the first words of a speech that he knew needed to be rewritten. She could feel his black eyes on her, pits of unfathomable darkness against the flickering gloom. The clip-clop of the horses’ hooves seemed thunderous. When he started to speak again, his tone was more familiar. “Has your cousin told you she intends for her husband to claim his majority and remove me as his regent?”

This is absurd, Beatrice thought. She could not imagine Eesh even thinking of doing that. Perhaps II Moro’s ambitions needed reining in, but as the mule pulling the wagon of state, he was essential; to remove him would be as foolish as pulling down the city walls or dismantling the Castello. And Gian had little enough interest in his titular status as Duke of Milan, much less in assuming Il Moro’s burden. She attempted a haughty, ridiculing laugh, which came out cracking with fear.

“Clearly you have given thought to my ambitions,” Il Moro said. “Just as evidently, you have given no thought whatsoever to your cousin’s motives.”

“I understand that my cousin the Duchess of Milan wishes to protect the birthright of her husband and her son.”

“You are really far too clever to understand so little.” He paused as if silently lamenting her shortsightedness. “I would submit to you that I care more for my nephew Gian than does anyone else in Italy, including his wife and mother. I have at least protected the Duke of Milan from his enemies, amused him, and made him rich, and I can hardly be blamed if I have not made him useful. Your cousin makes too much of claiming for Gian what Gian himself has already discarded. Perhaps she actually wants for herself the power she accuses me of coveting.”

“My cousin is aware of what functions her husband does and does not wish to perform. For herself, she wishes to ensure that when her son is of age, he will be able to inherit the title that is rightfully his.”

Il Moro turned so forcefully that Beatrice believed he was about to pounce on her. “Your cousin’s son does not even have Sforza blood in his veins.”

He will try to turn you against me, she heard Eesh say. Then she heard herself laughing out loud, a harsh sound like tinny cymbals. Suddenly she was very much afraid of him; he was clearly a madman, his allegation so preposterously self-serving that a child could see through it. She forced the laugh for a few more seconds. Then, with as much contempt as she could muster, she asked, “If you know this remarkable fact, then why not use it to get what you want? Stand up in the Duomo in front of all the nobles and ambassadors, and accuse the Duchess of this treason with which you have just slandered her.” Beatrice thought to herself: They would think
I
am mad if I accused him of this slander.

“I have not used what I know to be true, because my ambition is to secure peace and prosperity throughout Italy, not, as you assume, to become Duke of Milan. Your uncle Alfonso has already threatened once before to bring his army to the gates of Milan to defend his daughter’s honor. I’m sure you know of that.”

An annoyingly lucid note suddenly punctuated her husband’s mad melody. She remembered Mama, Bel, everybody, even Father, talking about it. Gian had not been able to consummate his marriage to Eesh for almost a year; Alfonso had demanded the return of his daughter’s dowry, and there had indeed been talk of war between Milan and Naples. When Eesh’s pregnancy had conveniently defused the crisis, there had been gossip about that too.

Il Moro settled back slightly, velvet and fur rustling. “I am certain that you are clever enough to see why your cousin might have been compelled to find a father for her . . . ambition.”

“Get out!” Beatrice’s voice was piercing, as if played at the highest register of a flute. “If you do not get out, I will get out and walk and leave you to explain why the Duchess of Bari has leapt from her carriage in the middle of the night. I would believe Judas in the mouth of Satan before I believe a single word you say! Get out!”

Il Moro rapped on the door, and the carriage groaned to a halt. He waited until the coachman opened the door, then stepped to the ground. But after a pause he stuck his head back into the compartment. The coachman standing directly behind him held a torch, and for a moment Beatrice imagined that her husband was wearing a crown of flames.