Duchess of Milan (8 page)

Eleonora glanced over Beatrice’s head to the looming tower of the Castello. She reflexively plumped up the fur collar of Beatrice’s
cioppa.
“Make certain you keep your fires burning during the day throughout April, even if the climate warms considerably. That will take the damp out of the walls. You do not want to become ill in the first months of your marriage, or you will not have the strength for your first baby. That is always the most taxing birth.” She pressed Beatrice to her. “I will come back when you have your first baby. I promise you I will be here for that.”

Beatrice stared numbly into her mother’s shoulder. Her mind was so slow today; it was as if the snow on the wind had already fallen and blanketed her thoughts, encasing her in cottony silence. The thoughts that struggled through the drifts were strange ones, faces emerging suddenly from a blizzard. “Mama,” she whispered, “when they cut the May branches this year, cut one for me.” The annual ceremony on the first of May came back to her with painful vividness: almost the entire court galloping through the fragrant countryside, the men in armor, the wind in her ears, the sticky sap of the cut greens on her gloves. . . . She was certain they did not cut the May branches in Milan.

As Eleonora squeezed her tightly, Beatrice felt that she was closer to her mother than she had ever been before. Perhaps that was why she asked the forbidden question that lay beneath all her questions like an endlessly drawn-out
Kyrie Eleison
in a Mass. “Mama, why did you leave me in Naples?”

“Why would you ask that after all these years? And why now?” Eleonora released Beatrice and held her away from her. She looked at her daughter with wary eyes. “It is not so unusual for a child to grow up at another court. And your father had many enemies at the time. I knew you would be safe with your grandfather.”

“But why did Isabella and Alfonso come back with you, and not me?”

“This is silly and inappropriate. You are the Duchess of Bari now, one of the most important women in Italy. Whatever your father and I did on your behalf as a child was to make you capable of the duties you now have as a woman,” Eleonora said as she plumped up Beatrice’s collar again. “You will understand when you have your own children. We always loved you as our daughter whether you were with us or not. And we always will. Now kiss me. Messer Niccolo is waiting.”

“I love you, Mama,” Beatrice said, kissing her mother’s fleshy, almost lifelessly cold cheeks. But her mother simply turned and walked to her horse; she mounted with the ease of a woman half her age or girth.

Like an ebbing tide the retinue fell away, trumpets blowing, gloved hands waving and wind-flushed faces bravely smiling, banners snapping in the snow-scented wind. Soon the piazza was empty and only Polissena and several Castello guards remained alongside Beatrice. She was not aware of them, or of the first glassy grains of sleet. She watched until the Via degli Armorai had consumed even the banners of her mother’s escort. Finally she turned and stared up at the gray walls of her new home. The three malevolent towers that faced the Via degli Armorai were the color of bruises against the grim sky. But Beatrice’s trudging mind retreated from whatever future it apprehended within those stone walls. Instead her benumbed consciousness made a lonely pilgrimage back to childhood. And there, like the poet Dante staring up at the monstrous visage of Satan in the frozen center of Hell, she confronted the terrible central doubt of her existence: Had Mama left her in Naples because Mama had never loved her?

“Buongiorno, signore.”
Il Moro gestured at the empty chairs, upholstered in mulberry velour embroidered with gold Sforza vipers, then settled back in his own chair, similarly upholstered but with a massive curving back and thick scrolled and gilded legs and arms. Behind him, his three secretaries sat at their tall, slant-topped writing lecterns, their three quill pens already bobbing across sheets of parchment like birds engaged in some frantic mating ritual. A large Persian rug had been spread over the patterned marble floor; the walls had recently been painted with a pattern of red, white, and blue lozenges punctuated with rows of vivid blue Sforza vipers. Two enormous arched windows overlooked the ducal park, but the view was obscured by the shower of wet snowflakes.

The smaller of the two men who took their chairs opposite Il Moro was Count Carlo Belgioioso, the Milanese ambassador to France. Belgioioso was a sturdy-looking man in his early thirties, his youth and stout build well suited to the grueling routine of transalpine travel to which his job subjected him. The second man was the
condottiere
Galeazzo di Sanseverino, Captain General of the Armies of Milan. Messer Galeazz, as he was known, looked like Apollo as the ancients had carved him, all symmetry and grace, yet larger than life, his immaculately tailored embroidered tunic draped over preposterously expansive shoulders and chest. His features were Grecian as well, but sweeter, more boyish, the face the Florentine sculptor Donatello had given his lithe, adolescent David. He lounged with an athlete’s insouciance, for a moment extending a muscular leg sheathed in azure woolen hose and massaging his hamstring.

Galeazz and the men he commanded were hired soldiers, as was customary in Italy. But Il Moro had secured a more enduring (if hardly less mercenary) allegiance by marrying Galeazz to his bastard daughter Bianca. Bianca had been only nine at the time of the marriage, but in a world where girls were routinely betrothed in childhood and scarcely pubescent brides became the seals on treaties, their fates cast for a lifetime for the sake of an alliance that might last a few months, the hasty liaison was regarded as good politics rather than a betrayal of innocence. And mercifully, Bianca’s marriage was for the time being only political; no one expected her to consummate the marriage or even live with her husband until she was at least fifteen.

Il Moro lifted his arm to emphasize the sealed parchment packet he held in his hand; a large ruby cameo flashed from his third finger. He looked directly at Count Belgioioso. His irises were like bits of obsidian. “I have a letter for the King of France.” Il Moro spoke in a low, careful voice, sonorous with self-assurance. “I am asking His Most Christian Majesty to invest the Duke of Milan with the privileges of the Duchy of Genoa.”

Belgioioso had to exercise all of his diplomatic skills to avoid betraying his surprise. Galeazz’s chair creaked as he sat straight up. Many of the Italian city-states technically were considered fiefdoms of either the King of France or the German Emperor, and although these anachronistic feudal relationships had little to do with real power in modern Italy, ritually reinvoking them could seal an alliance between an Italian state and the French or Germans. The great port of Genoa was the largest French fief among the cities under Milanese rule, so II Moro was making a highly visible gesture of friendship.

“Your Highness .-..,” Belgioioso began, understanding that he was expected to offer his opinion.

“Speak candidly,
signor.”

“Your Highness, I do not understand this initiative at all. You have virtually succeeded in uniting all Italy, and now you risk fracturing those alliances by pursuing a friendship with a state whose posture has become increasingly threatening. You know as well as I the advancements they have made in foundry techniques. Their bronze is of such quality that they are already capable of casting cannons light enough to be brought over the Alps, yet powerful enough to reduce masonry walls six
braccia
thick.” Belgioioso paused and lowered his eyebrows for emphasis. “There are currently no fortifications in Italy with walls greater than six
braccia
in thickness. We should be sending Paris a signal of Italian unity, not an independent gesture of conciliation.”

Il Moro’s features betrayed nothing beyond their inherent complexity. He was thirty-nine years old, but his thick, glossy black bangs made him appear younger. Visiting ambassadors often credited his skill as a negotiator to the baffling imperturbability of his face, an impassivity that was all the more confusing because his features conveyed so many possibilities, from the ruthless line of his Roman nose to the gentleness of his subtle, almost feminine mouth. It was a dangerously ambiguous face, because in it even the most wary observer could find something to believe.

After a contemplative interval, Il Moro spoke. “Yes. I am of course aware of the progress their foundries are making. But they are at least three years away from designing carriages capable of safely transporting these cannons on steeply inclined mountain roads. Three years,” he reiterated, his tone abstract and distant. His eyes sought Count Belgioioso again. “What do you think of Madame de Beaujeu’s situation?” Madame de Beaujeu was the French King’s older sister; for the previous eight years she had ruled France as her brother’s regent.

“She is still very much in control. But her child is expected in May.” Belgioioso speculatively spread his broad, thick hands. “She is slender. The birth may be difficult. If Madame were to be incapacitated, I think the more bellicose factions in Paris would seize the opportunity. All the more reason for caution on our part.”

“You are a diplomat, Count Belgioioso, and a very good one, so I needn’t instruct you in your craft. But you must remember that the first duty of the astute statesman is to persuade his adversaries that he intends to do one thing, and then do another.” Il Moro extended the sealed packet to his ambassador. “Forgive me for sending you off in this weather. But trust me that we are due for a change. By the time you get to Asti, I believe we will have a thaw.”

Belgioioso stood up, accepted the packet, bowed, and exited. Galeazz rose with the ambassador, but Il Moro asked him to stay. Galeazz took his chair again and leaned forward, his fingertips pressed together.

The secretaries’ pens scratched, and the silent snow rushed past the windows. “Count Belgioioso is a very prudent man,” Il Moro said, apparently prompting Galeazz to offer a rebuttal.

“Just as Madame de Beaujeu is a very prudent woman.” Galeazz spoke with a florid, self-important diction; his pronunciation of the French name was flawless. “But I think we could benefit if certain factions were to gain ascendance in Paris. That the French intend to cross the Alps does not mean that their objective is to conquer us.” Galeazz did not need to elaborate. The French army’s alternative conquest had been clearly implied: Naples. The French had ruled Naples until a half century previously, when they had been ousted by the Spanish prince and military adventurer Alfonso of Aragon. The loss had not merely punished French pride; the annual revenues of Naples and its tributaries exceeded those of the entire Kingdom of France. The reconquest of Naples was a standing item on the agenda of any French monarch, but now a group of Italian noblemen, exiled by the current King of Naples, Ferrante of Aragon, had settled in Paris and begun a well-organized and well-funded campaign to stir up the hotheads at the French court. The leader of these Italian agitators was the exiled Prince of Salerno, Antonello di Sanseverino, who happened to be Galeazz’s uncle.

“Boldness. That is what I admire most about you, Galeazz.” Il Moro suddenly allowed himself a tight but genial smile. “When passion inspires you, you do not hesitate. Italy needs more men like you. But permit a more cautious head to consider what you have suggested. First of all, I am now tied more closely than ever to the house of Aragon.” Alfonso of Aragon’s blood still coursed through the ruling families of much of Italy: his son Ferrante was the King of Naples; his grandchildren included Eleonora d’Este, the Duchess of Ferrara, and Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Calabria and heir to throne of Naples; his great-granddaughters included the Marquesa of Mantua, the Duchess of Milan, and Il Moro’s new bride. “Secondly, you must remember that our illustrious Duchess Mother is the French King’s aunt. And apparently King Charles is quite fond of Duchess Bona.” Il Moro paused. “However, for the sake of argument, let us assume that I did wish to betray my family, and King Charles his. What would I profit by establishing the French in Naples?”

The question was deliberately disingenuous. While Il Moro enjoyed a respectful if wary cordiality with the aging King Ferrante, Galeazz knew that Il Moro despised Ferrante’s heir, Alfonso, the Duke of Calabria. Galeazz decided not to belabor this point but to advance to a more adventuresome theme; clearly he had been given an invitation. “Your Highness, you know that our illustrious Duke of Milan has no more faithful servant, yourself excepted, than the Captain General of his armies. But I am not blind or deaf. One need only accompany you through the streets to observe that the people of Milan regard you as their duke.” Galeazz’s features were so boyishly earnest that he looked ridiculous, David’s humble head on Zeus’s Olympian body. “I am worried that this popular acclamation may reach such a fever that our people will insist that you assume the title of Duke of Milan, and if we do not accede, Milan will be threatened with civil insurrection. I would not want to be put in the position of attacking the people of Milan simply to deny them this expression of devotion to the regent who governs them so capably.” Galeazz shrugged, rolling his shoulders with a panther’s menacing grace. “But of course if we acceded to this kind of public demand, the Kingdom of Naples would declare war on us. And Venice, in spite of our closer ties, would most likely join Naples against us. In that event only the French could provide the means of our deliverance.”

All of this had been politely coded: Galeazz was suggesting that Il Moro seize the title of Duke of Milan without any urging from the streets.

Il Moro’s eyes were impenetrable, unblinking. “I am instituting a new salt tax, so I should think the only acclamation I am likely to receive from our people in the coming months will be their demand that I resign as our illustrious Duke’s regent.”

Galeazz settled back in his chair. Il Moro abruptly rose and walked to one of the windows. The snow was falling so swiftly and thickly that it gave the Castello an eerie sense of silent motion, as if the sky were speeding past. “Galeazz, Fortune is a woman. To truly enjoy a woman’s pleasure, a man must never force her. He must seduce her so that she offers herself, indeed even forces him. The more formidable the woman, the more painstaking and elaborate that seduction must be. And Fortune is the most formidable of all women. What does Dante tell us? ‘No mortal knowledge can stay her spinning wheel. One nation triumphs, the other is vanquished, both in obedience to her decree.’ “