The Second Duchess (14 page)

Clearly she did not believe in beating about the bush. Did I dare be similarly frank? Lucrezia de’ Medici had died in this very monastery, perhaps in this very room. Was there a way to buy Sister Orsola’s complicity? Did she have a taste for the same luxuries the abbess flaunted? Apprehension made my palms cold and clammy. My heart seemed to have expanded in my breast, and the wine quivered in my belly.

“Perhaps I am, and perhaps I am not.” Deliberately I played with a ring on my right middle finger, a fine dark ruby set in a gold band engraved with pomegranates. I had not worn it in Ferrara until this day, so even if one day it came to light, the duke would not recognize it.

“I wonder,” I went on, pulling the ring off and on and off my finger, “if it would be possible to speak frankly. To ask a question or two, without a sister detailing the conversation to her confessor, or to the abbess, or to anyone else.”

Sister Orsola stared at the ring and flexed her own ringless fingers. Her hands were chapped and hardened, although they bore some evidence of care—her fingernails were as neatly trimmed as my own, and had even been rubbed to some vestige of a luster. I wondered what Mother Eleonora thought of that bit of vanity.

“I don’t tell my confessor everything.” She raised her eyes to mine, and I saw greed and something like concupiscence in them. “Not by half I don’t, and I can hold my tongue when I’ve got a reason to.”

I slipped off the ring, as if by accident, and let it drop to the pallet. She snatched it up and thrust it under her apron. Holy Virgin, I prayed silently, blessed Saint Monica, let her truly be as venal as she seems. An odd prayer to pray about a nun in a convent. I asked her, “Did you tend my husband’s first wife?”

“So that’s your game.” She sat back, looking smug. “I thought so. Seems even fine ladies want to know about the other women their man’s had.”

“Did you know her?” I persisted. “What was she like?”

“She was a brazen one, that one. And she wasn’t sick, either. She was here because he put her here.”

“Put her here? What do you mean?”

“Oh, they pretended she was sick, but she wasn’t, no more than you are at this moment. She’d been playing fast and loose with some of the gentlemen of the court, and the duke had her shut up here to put a stop to it. She was never sick for so much as a day.”

My stomach turned over, and for a moment I feared I might be as sick as I had pretended to be. Was it really going to be this easy? “But she died of an imbalance of humors. The duke himself attests to it, and so does Mother Abbess. What of that?”

“She was healthy as you or me when I saw her last. It’s none of my affair what tales the duke or the abbess tells.”

“How did she come to die, then?”

“Don’t you go trying to blame anything on me.” The infirmarian’s coarse-skinned cheeks had gone red and her voice was truculent. “She was well that evening at compline and dead in her cell by lauds the next morning.”

It had been poison, then. What else would kill a perfectly healthy young girl in her sleep?

“What did she eat for her supper?” I asked. “Perhaps the meat was bad.”

“Meat! She didn’t get meat that night, good or bad. It was a fast day, and she had bread and water. That’s all any of us had.”

“Tainted water, then.”

“She had her water from the same jug I drank from,
Serenissima
, and her bread was sliced from the same loaf as mine. There was nothing tainted in the food I gave her that night, no, nor any other night.”

It occurred to me that Sister Orsola remembered the young duchess’s last meal surprisingly well, considering it had been three and a half years ago and more. Perhaps she had simply told the story too many times. Or perhaps she had been bribed or frightened into remembering one particular tale.

“She had nothing else to eat or drink? You are sure?”

Her eyes slid away from mine. “Sure as I am that you’re making believe you’re sick when you’re not. I’ve seen people die of poison, and it’s a hard death. The young duchess died in her sleep, quiet as a babe and without a mark on her.”

“Could she have been smothered? That might leave no obvious mark.”

“She would’ve had to smother herself,” she said, “as there was no one else in the room. Locked in, she was, and guarded.”

“So if she was not poisoned, not smothered, not sick, and there were no marks on her body, of what did she die?”

“Shame,” the infirmarian said, readily if implausibly. Again it was as if others had asked her the same question, and she had the answer at the tip of her tongue. “And well she should have, after coming face-to-face with the duke again.”

I leaned forward. “The duke was here? That very day?”

“He came an hour after nones, and you should have heard the screaming and shrieking she did! He was here the next morning, too, after I gave the alarm, because Sister Addolorata called Mother Eleonora and Mother Eleonora sent for him, quick as a stoat. He claimed she was still alive, and he called for his fine university physician and a priest and made a great commotion about giving her the unction. But I know what I saw, and what I saw when I looked over Sister Addolorata’s shoulder was a dead woman.”

“The duke acted as if she were still alive, when she was dead? Why?”

“I’ve said enough. You’re his wife—ask him, if you dare.”

I could coax no more out of her, nor could I be certain everything she had told me was the truth. At last I gave up and said, “Remember your promise, Sister Orsola. If you tell anyone what I have asked you, the story will come back to me, I promise, and I will swear you stole that ring from me while I was sleeping.”

A fine threat; I did not know if I would have the heartlessness to carry it out. Fortunately the threat alone seemed to be enough.

“Didn’t I tell you I can hold my tongue when it suits me? Your secret is safe, Serenissima.”

“Good. Now, I find that I feel much better. Please tell the abbess I am recovered enough to go about my prayers as I had planned.”

 

 

FOR MY PRAYERS I was allowed to enter one of the stalls of the choir, a concession to my rank most visitors to the church would not enjoy. Not far from where I knelt were the tombs of the Este: the first Alfonso and the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, Ercole II the present duke’s father, and a number of others. With them lay Lucrezia de’ Medici, entombed not quite four years previously.

My petitions to the Blessed Virgin that I might conceive a son by the duke as quickly as possible were perfectly sincere. The two sisters assigned to pray with me were silent, stolid black-veiled professed nuns without a word to say for themselves between them, so I was not distracted. When the bell for vespers had rung and I was putting my rosary away, I saw a small thin woman come into the church. She was not dressed in the habit of the Clarissas but in lay clothing, all in black, and veiled. Something about her struck me as familiar—the way she moved? The shape of her hands? A trick of the fading light, perhaps. As I watched, she prostrated herself at Lucrezia de’ Medici’s tomb and began to pray.

“Who is that?” I asked the elder of the two sisters who had been praying with me.

“She is a
terziaria
, Serenissima. A tertiary, you understand, a lay person, but one who lives close by the monastery and runs errands when such things are needed.”

“She seems to be praying for Serenissima Lucrezia, who died here some time ago.”

The sister looked at the black-clad figure and shrugged. “I hadn’t entered the community when the Serenissima was here,” she said. “But I see the
terziaria
often. Usually at vespers, as now. She does not talk much, that one, and unless we are dispensed from our rule as I am now, we keep the silence, too.”

I said nothing more; somehow I would have to investigate the mysterious tertiary further, although at the moment I was not sure how I would do so. As I left the chapel, something else caught my attention: the Stations of the Cross were marked by small paintings that seemed familiar as well. At first I did not understand why—I had never been in the Monastero del Corpus Domini before. Then I realized they were executed in the realistic, evocative color-and-light-and-shadow style of Frà Pandolf. It was absolutely unique; there was no mistaking it.

He is a Franciscan friar
, the duke had said,
loosely attached to a monastery under my patronage
. The Clarissas were the second order of Saint Francis; they often took spiritual direction from Franciscan friars, as St. Clare had done from St. Francis himself. Offhand, I thought as I made my way out of the chapel and into the sunlit courtyard, I could not imagine anyone less suited to direct a nun’s spiritual life than the sensual, obsequious painter-friar with his bristling reddish-brown beard and vulpine eyes. But the presence of his paintings in the chapel told me Frà Pandolf, beholden as he was to the duke’s patronage, was
persona grata
at the Monastero del Corpus Domini.

 

 

FOR THE NIGHT’S entertainment, entitled La Festival delle Stelle, I was to wear a foreparte, sleeves, gown, and mantle of midnight blue satin, embroidered all over with jeweled representations of Taurus, my personal astrological sign. A matching headdress, silver and pearls, was fashioned in the shape of the crescent moon. Each of the guests was to follow the same conceit, and there had been much whispering and secrecy among the ladies. As my women dressed me, I wondered what stars had attended the duke’s birth.

Suddenly there was a hubbub in the Jupiter chamber, accompanied by the unmistakable beagle howls of Tristo and Isa. After a moment, Sybille came into my dressing-room, her cheeks flushed and her expression unusually discomposed.

“The duke is here, Serenissima,” she said, “and requires to speak with you.”

It was not at all usual for great noblemen to descend upon their wives—or anyone else, for that matter—unannounced. Brief as our married life had been, I knew the duke was both a thorough purist when it came to protocol, and an active participant in the preparations for his elaborate entertainments. Why was he here, only half an hour before the first performance was to begin, wishing to speak to me?

There was little I could do but receive him. I had expected to see him again only when there were courtiers around us, so I would be able to take refuge in formality. How could I face him for the first time alone, not two rooms away from the bedchamber where he had switched me like an errant child? Even more disturbing, how could I face him with Sister Orsola’s words whispering at my ear:
I know what I saw, and what I saw when I looked over Sister Addolorata’s shoulder was a dead woman. . . .

“Invite him to step in, Sybille,” I said, keeping my voice cool and steady. “Domenica, Paolina, Katharina, you may go.”

They all left.

He came in.

He was wearing a long surcoat of heavy black brocade, jeweled and furred and embroidered all over in gold with the sign of Scorpio. His shirt, hose, and shoes were blood-red. In his hat he wore a brooch in the form of a scorpion, worked in gold and diamonds and with a magnificent ruby set in its sting. At his belt, as always, hung the damascened dagger in its jeweled sheath.

“Madonna,” he said.

I curtsied formally. “My lord.”

There was a silence. Finally he said, in a different, colder voice, “Look at me.”

I kept my eyes down as long as I dared, for the satisfaction of rebelling against him in one small way. At last I looked up.

We stared at each other for a moment. My knees shook.

“What is this I hear,” he said at last, “of your going to Corpus Domini today? Of your being sick there? This disturbs me deeply, Madonna. Is there not a chapel here in the Castello where you can make your devotions?”

I could see nothing different in his dark eyes. His glittering surface was undisturbed, the coiling dark creatures of his temper and his arrogance deep-hidden. Was disciplining his wife with a stick from the fireplace such an unimportant thing to him, then? I knew I myself was flushing, probably unattractively, under his gaze.

At least he said nothing of my questions about Lucrezia de’ Medici. So Sister Orsola had kept her word and held her tongue. So Mother Eleonora had the wit to keep her webs of tale-telling to herself.

“I experienced only a moment of dizziness, my lord,” I said. My voice quavered, and to my shame I realized I was trying to placate him because I feared him. That was probably exactly what he wanted me to feel. I hated the fear, hated my own weakness.

“The chapel here at the Castello is beautiful,” I went on as steadily as I could, “but the statues and decorations are very much in the classical mode. They distract me—I fear I am accustomed to plainer chapels and more saintlike saints. I chose a monastery church so I could ask the good sisters to add their prayers to mine, that I might bear you a son within the year.”

There, I thought. Thrash me for that.

“I see.” He looked thoughtful, and I hoped I had not offended him further by my distaste for the ducal chapel, which was quite genuine. Apparently I had not, for after a moment he said in a more temperate voice, “It pleases me you would make such a petition. It is my prayer as well.”

I said nothing.

“In future, however, I wish you to inform me if you desire to travel into the city or the countryside. I will make arrangements more fitting for your state than a single litter and a handful of attendants. I will also arrange for a physician to accompany you.”

I turned away. I would have been unable to hide the rush of my fury otherwise. What did he think I was planning to do, slip out of the Castello to tryst with some lover? For something to do, I stepped over to the table where my cosmetics and perfumes were strewn about. Carefully I rearranged them so they were neatly patterned and aligned with the edges of the table itself. Finally I picked up a heavy rock-crystal perfume-bottle. How I would have loved to have thrown it at him, all in his black and scarlet and his emblems of Scorpio.