Leonardo's Swans (29 page)

O Earth! What delays you in opening and hurling these attackers headlong into your huge abysses and caverns? Would that the savage and the ruthless were no longer displayed in the sight of heaven.

Isabella has been trying to get out of Milan for weeks, but her efforts have been daily sabotaged by the astrologer Messer Ambrogio, who can’t seem to find an auspicious day for the marchesa to return to Mantua. Every day she grows more desperate to leave and is increasingly angry at being held hostage by the stars. She has neglected her own family long enough for the Sforzas, and recent developments have confirmed the need for her to hurry home.

Three weeks ago, she received a letter from one of her ladies-in-waiting, a devoted friend whom Isabella has known from childhood. The letter was written in a light tone, but the message the woman chose to convey has shaken Isabella.

The marquis is out of sorts with you being away for so long. He’s so desperate that he actually said he wanted to go to bed with me, but I saw the request for what it was—the plea of a lonely husband for the return of his beloved. Do hurry home. All of Mantua misses you and wishes to see you.

Isabella has paid no attention in the years of her marriage as to whether Francesco has been faithful. He has performed with vigor his duties as a husband. He acts as if he is mad for her, in bed and out. He is charming and flirtatious with all women, but she is willing to pay the price of jealousy to have a desirable husband. But the letter felt all too much like a warning.

Besides, she has done her business here in Milan and is anxious to leave. She attended the birth of Beatrice’s second son, a beautiful dark infant who looked like a copy of Il Moro. She held the child at the baptismal altar in the Duomo as he was christened, wiping his little royal eyes with a muslin-and-lace handkerchief when the nearsighted priest dribbled the holy water down his forehead. She waited upon Beatrice for as long as Beatrice had agreed to remain confined. She helped to host the many parties and ceremonies around the birth of the boy, whom Beatrice did not want to short-change just because he was the second son.

To celebrate the birth, the entire city and its environs had been decorated beyond the splendor put forth for Beatrice’s wedding. Every building and balcony was decorated in the Sforza colors of scarlet and blue; every column ribboned and wrapped with ivy and boughs; every statue polished and painted. Streets were repaved, sidewalks repaired. Even in the weak winter sun, the entire city glimmered. The greenery brought in from the countryside gave the impression that it was already spring and not the dead of winter.

Theatrical performances were given nightly, with parties afterward—feasting, drinking, and dancing until three or four o’clock in the morning. Beatrice had recovered quickly from the labor, and twenty days after her son was born, was in attendance of a splendid performance of the fable of Hippolytus and Theseus given at the home of Niccolò da Correggio. At the after-party, she danced every dance, including the last one. The next day, she was on her horse, racing through the park with Isabella, ignoring the cold weather, jumping fences, and threatening to arrange a hunt, though it had not been one month since she had given birth.

Isabella was enjoying herself through all these activities, but she wondered if the mad schedule of entertainment was meant to block out the trouble that was brewing just outside Milan’s walls. It seemed to her that there was a new desperation to Beatrice’s activities. Her sister had never been one to sit still; now it appeared to Isabella that Beatrice was unable to relax at all. Nights were spent in festivities; days were spent holding Ludovico’s hand as he received responses to his secret plan to form an Italian League. Everyone contacted had agreed to participate. As Ludovico pointed out as he received word from solicitous ambassadors, what choice did they have, what with France closing in from every direction?

Then an omen appeared in the midst of the
feste
, or so Isabella regarded it. The widow Isabel of Aragon, bitter, veiled, draped in reams of coarse black cloth, left the castle at Pavia and moved back into the Castello in Milan with her three sorrowful-looking children. Like a specter, she silently wandered the halls, occasionally letting a lengthy sigh escape from her downturned mouth.

“They could not stand her another moment in Pavia so they’ve shipped her up here for us to cope with!” Ludovico complained one evening at a party. Beatrice had been tired that evening and had retired to her bedroom after supper. Isabella guessed that the presence of Isabel of Aragon, haunting the halls of the Castello where she had once presided as duchess—as if she, and not her husband, had died—was embarrassing to Beatrice, and was wearing her out. Suddenly, with Isabel’s appearance, Beatrice’s wild activities ceased.

“That witch has covered her apartments in black as if she expects the devil for dinner. She has the audacity to play the bereaved widow. Is that a joke? I had to promise her husband every bottle of wine and every choirboy in the duchy of Milan just to get him to fuck her!”

Isabella noticed that Ludovico directed his mock frustration at one of Beatrice’s ladies-in-waiting. She also noticed that he was pleased when the lady laughed a little too loudly at what he had said, then covered her gorgeous mouth with her hand. She was perhaps in her early twenties, with dark hair that, in the candle glow, had the same hue as a rich red wine. Her eyes were green or blue, Isabella could not tell, and her skin creamy white beneath the rouged cheeks. She wore a robe of crimson satin with great gold cords at the sleeves and a very low bosom that revealed ample white mounds. Isabella knew the face, but could not place it; Beatrice had hundreds of ladies who served her on a rotating basis. Isabella did not like the way that Ludovico was eyeing this one as if she were pork on a platter and he, days from his last meal.

“We all well remember the poor boy’s proclivities,” Ludovico said. “Alas. I did my best to provide her with heirs, and I was successful.”

“Despite your complaints, my lord, you have certainly done your duty by poor Duchess Isabel,” Isabella interjected. “My sister is so grateful that you relieved her of welcoming the duchess back into Milan while she has been recovering from the birth. But then, you are relentless in looking for ways to make my sister happy, are you not?”

Ludovico forced a smile. Perhaps he was unhappy to be reminded that he had a wife. Isabella wanted him to know that she was watching. She had once been the object of his sneaky attentions; did he think that he could get away with his flirtations under her nose? She looked to the lady in crimson to see her reaction to Beatrice’s name. The woman smiled politely and turned her face away, as if suddenly bewitched by a tall candlestick on the table behind her.

It was true, however, what Isabella had said. Ludovico had met the bereaved duchess at the gates of Milan; he had held her hand, consoling her as they rode through the streets. He was seen crying with her in the Duomo as they visited Gian Galeazzo’s tomb and he escorted her to her old quarters in the Castello, where, exhausted with a day’s worth of tears, they fell upon each other’s shoulders and cried a little more. All this was given in a verbal report to Isabella by Barone the Jester, a Mantuan in Ludovico’s service who could not decipher whether the new Duke of Milan was chivalrous or hypocritical, or both. “Or perhaps he is trying to overcome his dark deed with a round of sympathy for the widow,” Barone whispered. Only a jester could get away with such an utterance.

Isabella made it a point to visit poor Duchess Isabel in the Castello. Her rooms were hung with black curtains and the windows were draped. Her children—once meant to inherit the kingdom, but now mere orphans dependent upon Ludovico—appeared in and out of the gloom, showing their faces in the light of the few candles their mother lit, complaining that they could not see, and that the mourning clothes they were forced to wear itched their skin. They longed to play out of doors but were not allowed. Isabella stayed in the dark room as long as she could bear the proximity to the overwhelming misery. As she was leaving, the dethroned duchess hissed in her ear, “
You do know who has brought this misery upon us.
”

Isabella did not answer. Aragon continued: “When my little boy rides through the streets, the people shout
Ducha! Ducha!
They are sick of your brother-in-law levying taxes to pay for his grandeur. You will see, Marchesa. Mark the words of a disgraced woman.”

To which Isabella curtsied respectfully and fled down the hall.

Soon thereafter, they received news that Naples had fallen to the French. The elderly King Ferrante had recently died—thank God, agreed Isabella and Beatrice—so he did not live to see the downfall of his kingdom. His son Alfonso—father of Isabel of Aragon—who had pretended for so many years to be as fierce as his father, panicked, abdicated, and fled to Sicily, leaving his young son, Prince Ferrante, to face the French. Fearing the violence, the people of Naples opened the city gates to King Charles and his army.

Isabella began to plan her escape from Milan. The tragic sight of poor Aragon and her children, and the fate of Naples, reminded Isabella of the price of all the parties and feasts. Aragon had looked at Isabella with frantic eyes and asked, “What would your poor mother, a princess of the House of Aragon and the kingdom of Naples, think of the betrayal of her family?” Isabella had asked herself that very question many times and had never arrived at a comfortable answer.

With apologies to Ludovico and Beatrice, she made it known that she was to leave immediately and sent her envoys and stewards to prepare for their departure. But Ludovico would not let her leave. He had consulted with his astrologer, as he did on all matters, who said it was not safe for the marchesa to depart. Every night the astrologer gazed at the stars, and each time it was reported to Isabella that she had to wait for an auspicious time before the duke would allow her to go. She could not imagine what Ludovico was up to. Surely there was no reason to keep her in Milan. She had her own family and her own duties to attend to. She was tired of the feasts and nervous about the future—of Italy, of her marriage. If Ludovico was correct, Italy would soon be at war with France, and her husband would be at the head of the army. She imagined that if Francesco was trying to seduce the ladies of the castle, fear of what was to come was at least partially responsible. Didn’t men always try to drown their fear in lust? Her absence all these months could not be helping. Finally, after ten days of inauspicious cosmic alignment, she was informed that Messer Ambrogio figured the day of March the fifth for her departure.

Though the weather was still cold, the ice on the river had melted, and Isabella decided to take a bucentaur back to Mantua. Ludovico insisted upon escorting her to the dock at Pavia, where he had other business to attend to. Though she would have preferred to travel alone, she allowed it—for who could say no to Ludovico these days?

They traveled to Pavia in a caravan of sorts, with Ludovico and Isabella on horseback and a train of enclosed carriages accompanying them, full of items that Ludovico said were to be used to further decorate the castle at Pavia. When Isabella tried to get a peek at his treasures, he stopped her. “You will only try to negotiate me out of the finest pieces,” he said. Once they arrived at the castle, the items were stashed away, and Ludovico left Isabella after an early supper. The next morning, as she waited for him in the grand reception room, she saw from the window a woman walking alone in the courtyard—the giggling lady-in-waiting in crimson robes she had seen before. Now, without rouge on her face, in a simple cornflower-blue morning gown with a pale shawl over her shoulders, and her hair falling in lush ringlets, Isabella recognized her face. It was that of the Madonna sitting among the strange rocks in the Magistro’s altarpiece in the chapel at San Francesco Grande. Beatrice had said that the model was one of the ladies in her service. Lucrezia Crivelli. Isabella did not have to ask herself what the woman was doing in Pavia. It was all too obvious; she was one of the “treasures” that Ludovico had transported to decorate his castle in the old city.

Isabella’s stomach fell. Her heart ached for her sister. Beatrice would commit every drop of her blood to her husband’s ambitions, based on her faith that she was forever to be Ludovico’s young darling. But here was one who was ever the more darling. Lucrezia was sleek and curvaceous all at once. Her skin glistened in the pale morning light. She looked well rested, not kept awake as Beatrice had been for many a night, with worries over the health of two children, or listening to her husband’s grand plans for his political ascent, or comforting him as his friends became enemies.

Or soothing him over his possible culpability in the death of Gian Galeazzo.