The Palace (15 page)

"What else did you see in the mirror?" His voice was so totally compelling
that she answered him.

"This room. What else should I see?"

"And me?" he asked, and waited.

"You?" Some of the color left her face, and she said quietly, "No. I didn't
see you."

He spoke softly, his small, gentle hands touching her shift, her arms, her
shoulders. "Bella mia, I am not like you. All that is mine to give you, I give
you."

"But you do not love me."

"After my fashion."

She shook her head, and some of the terror that had glazed her hazel eyes
faded. "No. You don't burn for me. You don't scorn each hour you are away from
me. You've never kept a vigil at my door."

In spite of himself, he laughed. "That was not part of our bargain. You had
desires, needs that I could satisfy without danger. Estasia, do me the honor of
telling me the truth: I have done what I said I would do, have I not?"

She sniffed. "Yes."

"Thank you." He said this without sarcasm. "Listen to me, bellissima." He was
silent until she looked into his face. "If you want me to love you, I will. If
you want me to spend the evening talking, I will."

"Really? And what of your needs?"

"I'm not so voracious that I must be slaked at all times." At last he smiled.
"I don't require victims."

The cunning was back in her face. "And what if I refused you? Not just
tonight, but from now on? What would you do then?"

He was becoming bored with her teasing. "I'd make other arrangements."

"You'd hunger a long time." She was smugly satisfied, and a triumphant glint
lit her eyes.

"Do you really think so?" he asked politely, raising his brows. "Well, if I
am as distressingly inadequate as you say, it is cruel of me to take your time.
I'll remove myself, and leave you to your more conventional lovers."

She snatched at the black robe he wore. "I didn't give you permission to
leave."

It was very still in Estasia's room. The few candles that remained lighted
sputtered loudly and the icy wind fingered the windows like spirits in need of
warmth. Francesco Ragoczy did not move, hardly breathed. He fixed his gaze on
Estasia until she released his clothing.

"I didn't mean it that way," she said, sulking again.

"No?" He turned away from her and moved restlessly about the room, touching
nothing, seeing very little. "Bella mia, I dislike being played with. You told
me you must see me tonight, and now that I am here, you only want to castigate
me. Caprice has no fascination for me, bella mia. If you wish to tempt and
cajole, do so with another love." He stopped pacing and regarded her evenly from
the other side of the bed. "If you tell me to leave once more, I will do so. And
I will not return."

Estasia gave a brittle laugh. "How could you think I wanted you to go? It's
only that I want full proof of your love. And you have refused to give it. Well,
I must be satisfied, I suppose. You have declared that you will take your
pleasure as you like, and I know I am foolish enough to accept that." She rose
from her vanity table. "But I'm not done with you, Francesco."

As he watched her pull off her shift, Ragoczy knew that he should break with
her. "One day, Estasia, you will run out of new sensations. What will you do
then?"

Standing naked in the cold, candle-dim room, she stared at him,
uncomprehending. "Sensation?"

"Isn't that what you desire?" He had come nearer to her. "You always ask me
to do something new, to touch you in a new way, to excite you through a variety
of means."

"Oh." She giggled. "That's because you're willing to. And since you don't
do—"

He cut her off before she could renew her complaint. "I'm willing to caress
you now, wherever you like, in whatever manner you like."

"Any way?" she asked archly, and moved nearer. "Would you bind me to my bed
and beat me with lashes of silk? Would you take me by the hair and hold down my
body with yours, a knife to my breast, while you bruised me with your kisses?"
She was breathless when she finished speaking, and she leaned forward in a kind
of delirium.

Ragoczy was seriously alarmed now. He took her hands firmly in his and forced
them to her sides. "No, bellina, I would not."

"But why not, since I wish it?"

"Because I don't want you to be my victim, I want you to be my companion in
pleasure." He released her hands. "If you can't accept that, then there's no
more to be said."

She sighed, resigned. "Oh, very well, if you won't, you won't. But you will
take me to bed, won't you?"

Ragoczy knew that he should leave, that his involvement with Estasia had gone
too far. He stared at her delicious nude body, and saw a hunger in her much
greater than his own. "Estasia…"

She flung herself onto the bed and reached up for him. "I am so anxious for
you. Look how I sweat, though the room is cold. See to what desperation you
bring me. Francesco. Francesco."

He stood near the bed, but came no nearer. "You have told me I no longer
satisfy you. Why do you want me, if that is the case?"

"Don't be tiresome, Francesco," she snapped even as she turned languorously
to show him a more promising view of her beautiful breasts and splendidly
rounded hips.

Instead of sinking onto the bed beside her, Ragoczy crossed the room to her
vanity table. He picked up her mirror and looked into it. "In certain lights,
there is a faint outline," he said in a remote way.

But Estasia was out of patience. "I think," she said with a malicious smile,
"that I must certainly go to confession tomorrow. I will tell the priest what
has passed between you and me. I will tell him, Francesco, how you take your
pleasure, and how shamelessly you have used me. I will say how you have beat me,
you have violated me against my will, using a crucifix when you had exhausted
your own flesh. Should I," she mused soulfully, "go to the good Francescani at
Santa Croce? Perhaps I might go to the Vallombrosani at Santa Trinita. They do
not in general hear confession from women, but they might make an exception for
a confession such as mine. Or," she added after a moment, "God's Hounds! Surely
the Domenicani with their especial concern for heresy and blasphemy would be
very interested in what I could tell them. But I would have to choose between
San Marco and Santa Maria Novella." Her look was no longer languid. She pushed
herself up on one elbow. "Think about my confession before you leave,
Francesco."

Through her recitation Ragoczy had stood very still. At last he put down the
mirror. "I see," he said evenly. "As long as I come when you call me, and do
whatever you ask, your confessions will be ordinary. What happens when you grow
tired of me, Estasia? Will you confess then, and let the Church take me off your
hands?"

She did not hear the fury in his calm words. "No, I wouldn't do that," she
said when she had considered the idea. "It would bring me too much notoriety,
and I don't like to have my life too much circumscribed. I had my fill of that
as a daughter and a wife. No prisoner was ever more closely guarded than I was,
I promise you. I don't want to live that way again." She lay back, her legs
somewhat apart, her arms open and inviting. "Do come to bed, Francesco, schiave
d'amore."

The word "slave" stung him like a lash and he very nearly hurled her mirror
across the room. But if he had learned one thing in his long, long life, it was
how to wait. He did not touch the mirror, and after a moment he crossed the room
again. "You leave me very little choice. Very little."

Her eyes grew wide in anticipation. "Then you
will
beat me."

"I said I would not." He sat on the bed, his eyes unreadable. "Where do you
want me to start? Shall I touch you? Shall I kiss you?"

"Oh, Francesco, don't. You know what I like." She slid nearer to him,

"But you have told me that I no longer satisfy you, so you must instruct me.
Otherwise I'll have to bear the results of your displeasure at the hands of
Mother Church. So tell me, Estasia, what must I do."

"Santa Lucia protect me," she declared. "Touch me, touch me the way you
always have. Put your hands here"—she flinched as his cold fingers closed on the
curve of her breasts—"and then do as you always have."

Anger made him rougher than he had ever been with her, and he felt disgust
with himself for catering to her demands.

"That's
much
better," she purred as he forced her body to greater
arousal. She moaned with delight as he grazed over her flesh with harsh kisses.
It pleased her that he took no satisfaction from her, and she made a sound
somewhere between a chuckle and a gasp. Suddenly she thrust herself against him.
"Do more.
Do more
. I want more."

Grimly he urged on her overwhelming passion, and was not surprised to realize
she was resisting her fulfillment. He felt her muscles tighten, and he wondered
if she could maintain this new tension for long. As if in answer to this, she
cried out as her legs cramped.

"Estasia, shall I stop?"

"No… No… No…" Her face was set in a rictus smile, and then, almost in
disappointment, she trembled in violent release. She seized his arms, holding on
desperately until she gave a last shudder, and her rapture was ended.

When at last she opened her eyes, she said wickedly, "Next time, I will have
you bind me and then you will abuse me…"

"Estasia," he said, moving back from her, already regretting all the pleasure
they had shared over the last several months.

"You will hurt me in your lust, and then, unless you have been lying to me,
you will enter my body like a man. If you are not a eunuch, perhaps I will not
confess." She smiled nastily at him.

"Listen to me, bella mia." There was something in his voice she had never
heard before, a coldness that was more than ruthlessness, more than hate. "I
have lived more places than you know of in this world. I would dislike having to
leave Fiorenza, but rather than be coerced by you, I would."

Her laughter was uncertain. "But you would lose your palazzo, and all your
beautiful things."

If anything, this reminder made him more implacable. "I have lost much more
than this before. I won't allow your extortion of me. Believe that."

At that moment, seeing his dark eyes on her, she did believe him. "Why,
Francesco," she said, with a miserable attempt at archness, "did you think I
meant
what I said about confession? I think you are not used to our
Fiorenzan ways. I shouldn't have thought that a man like you, with all the
experience you say you have had, would be taken in by my amusements." She had
pulled her blankets up around her throat and she stared out at him with a
mixture of fascination and apprehension.

"Of course. I should have realized that this was only sport." His irony was
bitter.

"You're being hateful because I scare you," she said quietly. "You don't like
to be bested, do you?"

"No better than you do, bellissima." He took a step nearer the bed and she
pulled away from him. "I think perhaps that this had better be farewell, Estasia.
I'm afraid I am too foreign to enjoy your sport."

"Farewell?" It was as if the word were wholly unknown to her. "You'd
leave me
? Just because I said I'd confess?" She gathered her covers more
tightly around her, and then, quite suddenly, she began to sob. "Oh, how I hate
you for this. You can't enter me as a man should, you frighten me, and then you
leave."

He stilled his sudden rush of sympathy for Estasia. "Yes. Then you're well
rid of me, aren't you?" He went across the room without turning, and opened her
window.

"I don't want you.
I never wanted you
!" She was shouting now between
ragged sobs. "Get out!
Get out! GET OUT
!" But these last hysterical
screams were addressed to an empty window. Ragoczy was gone into the
snow-brightened night.

Text of a letter from Simone Filipepi to his brother, Alessandro, called
Botticelli.

To his Sandro, brother in flesh and in the Sight of God, Simone sends his
prayers and greetings, at this joyous time:

In three days it will be the Nativity, Sandro, and my most ardent wish for
you at this time is that your heart will be moved at last, and you will see that
Savonarola is right. You have been blinded too long by the riches of fame of the
perfidious Laurenzo. You have allowed his favor and affection to woo you from
the true splendors of this world. I have been on my knees all today, in
supplication before Almighty God, in the hope that you will at last repudiate
the Medicis and come into the company of those who follow the teachings of
heaven.

My retreat will end in seven days, and at that time I will return to Fiorenza.
I hope that Donna Estasia has recovered from her indisposition so that I will
not find too great upset in your home. It is most unfortunate that she should be
unwell at the time of my retreat, but the offices of the soul must supersede
those of home and family. You would do well to admonish Donna Estasia to be more
diligent in her piety, for then she would not be visited with such
unpleasantness. Tell her to turn her thoughts away from the flesh, to the joys
of the saints in heaven.

A messenger to this monastery has told me that you are still working on
murals in Palazzo de' Medici of pagan debauchery. Sandro, dear brother, think of
the heavy burden of sin you take on to flatter the vanity of Laurenzo. To excuse
him by reason of his education and poetry is to fall into grave error. Laurenzo
is damned, and Savonarola has said that he will be in his grave before the next
grapes are pressed. Do not let him seduce you with his corruptions, for he will
take you down with him to sup in hell.

It is my sincerest wish that this finds you well, and filled with true
penitence. I wish you the solemn joy of the Feast of the Nativity and I commend
my familial respects to you even as I commend my soul to God and the angels.

Simone Filipepi

 

Il Monastero della Pieta, Brothers of San Domenico, December 22, 1491