Duchess of Milan (39 page)

“No such threat exists. And none will exist as long as Alfonso of Aragon’s son-in-law remains Duke of Milan.”

Beatrice had already decided that to offer Eesh’s letter as proof of her husband’s plight would merely force her to negotiate from a position of weakness--which she now knew to be fatal when dealing with the Signory. Instead she had decided to feign a position of strength, just as in a game of
scartino
she might pretend to hold the winning cards when she had nothing. Except that this was no longer a game.

“Alfonso will attack Milan when my husband makes himself Duke of Milan.”

The Doge was as still as a dead man. His eyes were no longer animated but merely seemed reflections of the cerulean sea and sky outside his window. Finally he said, “The Signory would regard the usurpation of the Duke of Milan by your husband as an outrage of the most serious consequence.”

“You are suggesting that you would enforce the secret resolution calling for Venetian intervention to prevent my husband from becoming Duke of Milan. But one wonders,” Beatrice went on, “how effective the Signory’s resolution would be if my husband were to be invested Duke of Milan by the German Emperor.”

“Our agents do not report any such commitment on the part of the German Emperor,” the Doge said blithely.

“I am sure your agents will soon become better informed.” Beatrice had no trouble convincing herself that her husband’s deal with the Germans was as good as done; even if it did not call for her husband’s investiture, the Signory would have to suspect some secret clause. “And when the Emperor agrees to invest my husband as Duke of Milan, the Signory will have two choices. Either you can withdraw the secret resolution and allow my husband to use the mere threat of French intervention to force Alfonso to acquiesce, or you can enforce the secret resolution, thereby allying Venice with Alfonso of Aragon and ensuring that the French and very likely the Germans will enter Italy in my husband’s defense.”

The Doge folded his hands inside his white cape and settled his chin as if he were preparing to nap. After a moment he smiled and said, “It has been my pleasure to visit with you, my daughter. But now you must excuse an old man whose health does not permit a more lengthy interview.”

Extract of a dispatch of Count Girolamo da Tuttavilla, head of the Milanese embassy to Venice, to Lodovico Sforza, “Il Moro,” Duke of Bari and regent for the Duke of Milan. Venice, 31 May 1493

. . . our last night here will see us at the banquet celebrating the league, to be conducted at the Doge’s Palace, in the great hall of the Maggior Consiglio. As the extravagance and duration of this event will be in inverse proportion to the Signory’s true commitment to her allies, I fear we must gird ourselves for an exhausting and interminable evening of festivities and food, certain to be exacerbated by the heat. . . .

The gondolas crowded the quay in front of the Doge’s Palace; pages waited at the landing to escort the ladies and gentlemen from their boats. Beatrice almost slipped as she stepped from her gondola. She ascended the steps to the piazza with the disembodied dread with which she imagined a condemned man would climb an executioner’s scaffold. The palace facade was a gaudy Gothic confection, lacy columns and trefoils of white Istrian stone contrasted with patterned brickwork of pink Verona marble. It reminded her of the ornate puppet-show stages in Naples, where marionette knights battled sinister Moors.

Inside the palace Beatrice climbed another flight of steps, then was ushered into the cathedral-size expanse of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, the meeting place for the twelve hundred noblemen of the Maggior Consiglio, the governing body that elected the Signory. The heat in the huge hall was suffocating, and the light from the big windows overlooking the water disconcertingly bright. She would not look directly out over the rows of tables, but she already had an oblique sense of the splendid multitude: row after row of sober-hued men alternating with row after row of their wives or mistresses, all gold and pearls and puffs of white silk and ripe white breasts. She was certain that each one of them already knew of her pathetic attempt to coerce the Doge into withdrawing the secret resolution.

Even more than she was humiliated, Beatrice was frightened.

She wouldn’t have behaved so recklessly if she hadn’t been so desperate to save her baby. Even to revenge herself on Eesh she would have waited. But she had been so certain that the way to deal with the Signory was to threaten, to demand more than she wanted. She had convinced herself that if she portrayed her husband as ready to crush Alfonso, the Signory would offer to mediate between them. She’d envisioned some treaty that would warn Alfonso to stay away forever and let Eesh scream all she wanted until everyone knew she was crazy. But she had been wrong again. Now the Signory would probably support Alfonso, might even encourage him to attack. In two days she had gone from imagining herself Italy’s savior to the certainty that she had destroyed Italy, her family, herself, and her baby.

Again she climbed, this time to the enormous dais at the far end of the hall. The red chalk underdrawing of a mural-in-progress covered the entire freshly plastered wall behind the dais like some Titan’s sketch; it depicted Christ’s celestial throne flanked by choirs of angels. Two long tables, already occupied by several hundred members of the Signory and their wives, had been set up on the dais, on either side of a raised theatrical stage. Beatrice was seated along with her mother, the gout-ridden Bishop of Como--the senior member of the Milanese delegation--and Count Tuttavilla, the senior diplomat. She focused on the silver, gold, and crystal tableware and tried not to look at anyone. She assumed (and dreaded) that the Doge would take the empty seat to her left. But to her surprise her dinner companion turned out to be the man who had shown her to her chair, a tall, imperious, steel-gray-haired man about her father’s age.

“Your Highness, I am
nobilomo
Ser Constantino Privolo,” her companion said after he had taken his seat.

Beatrice had to clutch her chair to keep from toppling off. Following her audience with the Signory she had conjured again and again that arrogant nasal voice, feeling it grate against her bones; she hadn’t recognized the man’s face tonight because she hadn’t been able to see him clearly during her audience.

“His Serenity regrets that he cannot join us this evening,” Ser Privolo went on. “His Serenity offers you his sincere apologies and hopes you will understand that his poor health has denied him this pleasure.”

Beatrice felt the hot hollowness of utter defeat and humiliation. Of course it made sense. The Doge would not deal with her again, even as a formality. He had instead sent his executioner.

Dance music, played with woodwinds and lutes, stirred the stifling air; couples began to trickle onto the stage for brief turns of slow-paced
bassa danza.
Beatrice watched the deliberate circle of dancers for a while, her head spinning as if she were whirling a
moresca.
She fought the giddiness, but then her stomach fluttered with nausea and she knew she had to leave before she became sick at the table. She was so disoriented that it seemed someone else stood and issued her apologies.

She wasn’t even certain who escorted her upstairs and down a hall to a small bedchamber overlooking the water. A wonderful sea breeze drifted through the windows. She lay on the bed, and her mother put a wet towel on her forehead.

“This is a very poorly presented
festa,”
Eleonora said irritably. “They have too many people in the hall, and they have scheduled too many entertainments and have thus had to begin too early in the evening, while it is excessively hot. And when it becomes dark and they light the torches, it will still be as hot. The Venetians have no better manners than the Germans.”

“Mama, go back in. I just need to be quiet and alone.” Beatrice dreaded most of all what Mama would say when she found out. Mama had been right. She wasn’t ready for this responsibility.

Beatrice pretended to be asleep, and after a while Mama left. Then the cool breeze began to calm her, and she did feel drowsy. She slept.

When she awoke the room was dark. She could hear the music from the banquet hall. She saw images of Ercole and ached to hold him. She thought of what this Ser Privolo was doing to her baby, and suddenly she was determined to go back and confront him. Or at least show him that she was not frightened of him and his lying Signory.

The hall was lit with hundreds of wax torches and was as hot as Mama had predicted. A procession of costumed actors portraying allegorical figures--Sforza serpents, Venetian lions, Justice enthroned on a gilded chariot--snaked among the tables. Beatrice slipped into her seat, drawing only a minimal flurry of attention.

Mama frowned at her as if she shouldn’t have come back. Ser Privolo bowed and glanced at her diffidently.

On and on the actors came, moving around the hall before enacting their parts upon the stage, their entrances and exits sometimes marked by brilliant bursts of gunpowder. Giants with golden cornucopias, chimeras ridden by naked Moors beating tambourines and cymbals, Diana and Meleager enacting the death of the latter. Every now and then enormous golden balls, carried on sedan chairs as if they were Turkish sultans, exploded in puffs of smoke and spewed out still more actors, done up as serpents and lions.

At last trumpets announced the beginning of the banquet. The courses were brought by torchlight, the big silver platters proceeding around the hall as relentlessly as the costumed actors, round after round of bejeweled, befeathered, or gilded whole birds, pigs, stags, lambs, goats, and so many different sea creatures that it seemed the entire ocean had been plundered. The dessert courses featured a staggering variety of cakes along with an entire population of
confetti
figures, all of them intricately colored with dyes and gold syrup. These spun-sugar confections reproduced many of the allegorical figures that had appeared on stage, but there were also detailed depictions of real people--the Pope and his cardinals, the Doge, Il Moro, the Duke and Duchess of Milan, even Beatrice herself.

Like the main courses, the
confetti
were paraded by torchlight, on small silver trays. Beatrice was rapt now, dreamily watching the flickering light dance over the faces of real people and their tiny spun-sugar surrogates, as lifelike as elves. She imagined a table where she was being passed about like a
confetti
figure, destined to end up on some Titan’s plate. Perhaps the Titan would look just like her, and she would devour herself.

Torches flared behind her, and she could feel the heat. Two
confetti
appeared on her plate. She was so amazed at the accuracy with which the features had been reproduced that for a moment she did not consider their symbolism. She had been served the figures of the Duke and Duchess of Milan. Gian and Eesh.

So the final allegory had been presented. She and her husband were being warned in the most humiliating fashion to accept Gian as Duke of Milan; the secret resolution would never be withdrawn. She was suddenly so furious that she trembled. She wanted to knock the
confetti
to the floor.

Ser Privolo hovered next to her ear, and she had a scarcely resistible urge to knock him to the floor as well. “Do you still want them?” he whispered.

She was stunned with simple confusion. What did he mean?

He turned to her with the tight essence of a smile and leaned so close that she could feel his breath on her ear. “The Signory has considered your husband’s ultimatum, and we find that in present circumstances we must reject it. But of course circumstances are subject to change, and we have considered that as well. Understand that we cannot publish our decision. We did not even record it in the minutes of our meeting. But we give you in the name of the
Serenissima Repubblica
these conditions under which we will withdraw the secret resolution. Should Alfonso of Aragon succeed his father as King of Naples, or should King Ferrante permit Alfonso to send troops against Milan, we will not only accept but encourage the investiture of your husband as Duke of Milan.”

“Could you believe the Bishop of Como, endlessly droning on like a
cacarella
about the heat and the pain in his legs and asking when the
festa
would end, and all the while shoveling his food like an army erecting battlements and washing it down with enough wine to float every ship in Venice? When we finally did get up, I saw him stuff his purse with gilded nuts and grab a fistful of candied fruit with each hand.” Beatrice’s high voice and shimmering laugh echoed like music across the water. The rest of her retinue, trailing behind her in a dozen gondolas, was by contrast wearily mute after the ordeal of the endless banquet.

When they arrived at the Este
palazzo,
the passengers were assisted from their gondolas directly onto the steps of the first-floor loggia. Beatrice waved aside the pages offering her assistance; she bounced up the steps, feeling so light that she wondered why she hadn’t just skimmed across the water instead of taking the gondola home. A chorus of little angels seemed to sing in her head:
Vittoria! Vittoria!
The victory belongs to Beatrice, who has bested the mighty Signory and the terrible Alfonso and the traitor Eesh! She has saved Italy! She has saved her baby.

“Beatrice.”

Beatrice turned to her mother, who had come ahead in another boat and stood in the loggia like a sentry, her hands on her hips. “Beatrice, I want you to have some food before you go to bed. You hardly ate at the banquet, and you took too much wine for an empty stomach. A table has been set in my balcony.”

A spiral staircase led to the small third-story loggia adjacent to Eleonora’s bedchamber. Beatrice dashed up the winding stairs like a child playing; Eleonora trudged heavily behind. The table was set simply, with silver bowls containing soup and Murano glass goblets half full of heavily watered wine. The narrow, high windows were unshuttered, and Beatrice could look down the canal to her right. Lanterns still burned in many of the loggias and balconies of the nearby buildings, outlining the patterns of delicate stone colonnades crowned with almost-Moorish carved trefoils.