The Second Duchess (3 page)

“Yes, my lord.”

With great formality he handed me back into my litter for the procession to the cathedral. The duke’s sisters took their places again; the cardinal’s servants led forward a white mule saddled in scarlet and gold and shod in silver, and placed a gilded stool for the cardinal to mount. The duke needed no such assistance to mount a white Andalusian stallion, trapped in blue and white and embroidered with the eagles and fleurs-de-lis of the Este, and the stylized flame that was his own personal device. He took control of the animal with one hand on the reins; with the other he acknowledged the cheers of his people. We moved forward; behind us a swarm of lackeys in ducal livery began throwing gold and silver coins to all parts of the crowd.

At the cathedral door we were married again, this time without proxies. Afterward we passed under a magnificent bas-relief of the Universal Judgment and into the nave for the nuptial Mass.
Jacta alea est
, Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon—the die is cast. I also had cast my die, and for good fortune or ill, I was now the second Duchess of Ferrara.

As I stepped into my litter for the procession back to the Castello, Sybille murmured into my ear that the Ferrarese
parruchiera
, with her mad whispers of love-apples and poisons, had escaped from the duke’s guards and disappeared into the alleyways of the old city.

 

 

My name is Lucrezia de’ Medici. I suppose I should say Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, but I’m not the duchess anymore. I’m dead. Mostly. Actually, not all the way dead, but in between—I’m an
immobila
, a still one, a watcher. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want to die.

Then in one awful moment I burst free of my flesh. I didn’t really, of course, but that’s the only way I can describe it. The pain and fear stopped. Life stopped. I felt nothing. I was still there, in the monastery cell; I could see and hear and understand, but I couldn’t make any of the living see or hear or understand me. I had become
immobila
.

A
fter supper, fireworks, and a magnificent entertainment recounting the life and death of Saint Barbara—a singular choice for a wedding night, considering her gruesome fate, but of course meant as a compliment to me personally—my ladies and I withdrew to the duke’s apartments for my wedding-night undressing. By torchlight we passed through a series of small rooms, each opening upon the next, all richly furnished and decorated. Then we entered a covered passageway the Ferrarese ladies called the Via Coperta—in its side rooms I caught glimpses of magnificent art, paintings, and sculptures, the figures appearing to move and breathe in the flickering of the torches. This passageway led to the Palazzo della Corte, another of the great Este palaces, where the duke had furbished up new suites of apartments for each of us; it would allow us to travel back and forth between the Castello and the Palazzo without actually going outdoors. Eventually we reached a door decorated with intricate trompe l’oeil inlay work. Two of the Ferrarese ladies pushed it open, and we went inside.

“I am sure you do not remember our names, Serenissima,” said a pretty, dark-eyed woman of about my own age. “I am—”

“Domenica Guarini,” I supplied. I remembered her because she was one of the few ladies of the Ferrarese court who had not tried to bleach and dye her dark hair. “You are—let me see, a cousin of the poet Guarini, is that not right?”

She laughed, and I found myself liking her. “I am flattered, Serenissima,” she said. “It runs in our Guarini blood, poetry does—perhaps you would permit me to write a madrigal in your honor one day. Please, step through to the bedchamber. There is a fire there, and it will be warmer.”

I did as she suggested. The ladies clustered around me, exclaiming in a polyglot of German, French, and Italian upon the richness of my dress and jewels. My head ached and my hands felt cold. My wedding dress, stiffened with jewels and gold laces, had made me something other than myself:
la duchessa
, like a player in a play. Now I had to let them take it off, piece by piece, so I would be only myself again.

Sybille immediately set herself to untwisting the pearls from my hair—she loved any task that allowed her to touch me or be close to me. My lighthearted, sweet-voiced lutenist, Christine von Hessen, rubbed my icy hands between her own, humming a tune we had sung together as children about a forest wedding between a thrush and a blackbird. My wardrobe mistress and closest friend, Katharina Zähringen, began to fuss over the laces of my sleeves.

Most of my Austrian household would be sent home once a month or two had passed, but these three I was prepared to fight for. We-three, they called themselves, the three special ones who remained as other ladies came and went in my household. Even within we-three, however, I was closest to Katharina. She was stubborn, fiercely self-willed, pretty enough, but more forceful than feminine in her ways. Neither husband nor church called to her; instead, she reveled in beautiful fabrics, jewels, and dress patterns, and she devoted her life to them with single-minded passion.

“There are pearls missing,” she said. “You have caught the thread against something sharp.” Then, under her breath, she added, “Do not trust the Ferrarese, Bärbel. They are all spies.”

I nodded slightly, turning to look at the sleeve as a means of disguising the gesture. “I see,” I said. “It is unfortunate. Do you have sufficient pearls to mend it?”

“Ja, Hoheit
.
”

“Italian, if you please.”

“Si, Serenissima
.
”

The duke, of course, would have informants in my household. Who else? The cardinal? Lucrezia and Leonora, the duke’s sisters, who had foisted a madwoman upon me and then embraced me sweetly—too sweetly?—at the wedding supper? The Florentine ambassador, perhaps, puppet of Cosimo de’ Medici, the duke’s erstwhile father-in-law and bitter rival for the title and precedence of grand duke? I did not know the court of Ferrara well enough to know who would set spies on me, and who would wish me well or ill.

My sleeves were unlaced and folded away. The jeweled scarlet overskirt was next, then the foreparte with its diamonds and pearls, and the silken underskirts. Katharina unfastened my bodices and untied the silken cords of my partlet. One of the Ferrarese ladies unlaced my stiffened corset. Sybille finished untwisting the plaiting around my forehead and temples and turned away to place the strings of fabulous Ferrarese pearls in their boxes. At that moment, much to Sybille’s indignation, one of the Ferrarese ladies pushed forward and began to comb out my hair, spiraling it around an amber rod and smoothing it with a silken cloth to make perfect polished ringlets.

“What beautiful hair you have, Serenissima,” the girl said. Her own was bleached to a pinkish-blond color, lusterless as dried grass. She paused, then curled and polished another tress. Then in a different, harder voice she said, “
Her
hair was longer, more golden, the color of sunlight—and what skin she had! What breasts, rosy and firm, like two white peaches bursting with sweet juice.”

There was a moment of ghastly silence.

“How dare you!” Katharina cried in German. At the same time, Domenica Guarini burst into a torrent of furious Italian, too quick and colloquial for me to understand completely. The girl stood between them clutching the amber rod, defiant and white as whey. I, on the other hand, felt myself blushing and blushing and blushing until I thought it would never stop, the blaze of the blood under my skin consuming my entire body.

“Enough,” I said at last. “You, girl, what is your name?”

“Maddalena Costabili.” She did not meet my eyes.

“You forget yourself, Maddalena Costabili—you are dismissed. Katharina, Sybille, my shoes and stockings, please. We do not have time for such foolishness.”

“I will never forget the last time I saw her,” the girl Maddalena persisted, her voice faint and shaking. “The very day she came sick so suddenly, or so he said when he locked her away at the Monastero del Corpus Domini. She was not sick at all. She was mad, mad with—”

The sharp crack of Domenica’s hand across her cheek cut her short. “Stop it at once!” Domenica hissed. “Not one more word. The duke will cut out your tongue if he discovers what you have said here tonight.”

Maddalena burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Holy Virgin. Was my household full of madwomen?

“Be silent, all of you.” My voice was perhaps sharper than I intended. “My shoes and stockings, if you please.”

Katharina and Sybille knelt to remove my shoes, untie my jeweled garters, and roll down my stockings; for all its magnificent marble parquetry, the floor was like ice under my bare feet. Christine and Domenica pulled the shift from my shoulders so it slithered down over my body without disarranging my hair. I had a moment, a single moment, of dizziness. What had I done? Why was I standing here, in a bedchamber in a strange palace, naked, with the Duke of Ferrara with his gentlemen about to come in the door? I was not
Hoheit
anymore, not
Prinzessin
, not
Erzherzogin
; I would be Duchessa or Serenissima now, until the day I died.

I took a breath and touched my hair, rearranging the polished tendrils to lie over my breasts in perfect parallel strands. Yes, I would be Duchessa. I would preside over the court and rule my household and bear my husband sons and daughters. My mother had done the same, and her mother before her. The duke’s first duchess was none of my concern.

My skin pebbly with gooseflesh, I stepped to the bed and took my place, propped up against embroidered pillows, with the bedcovers artfully arranged to preserve—barely—my maiden modesty. I felt prickly rosemary sprigs between the fine linen sheets, as well as cool damp flower petals and grains of wheat for fertility. The women extinguished the candles, and when only the light of the fireplace remained, Domenica went to the door and opened it.

The duke and his gentlemen came into the chamber. He looked at me for a moment, and to my bewilderment I saw not pleasure or anticipation but choler in his eyes, black and filled with monsters. The other women saw it, too, because there was a ripple of movement among them as they stepped back.

I could not step back. And I knew if I showed fear now, I would be afraid for the rest of my life.

“Has something disturbed you, my lord?” I asked.

“I would ask you the same question, Madonna.”

But of course, either the hapless Maddalena had run straight into him, or some spy had already repeated her words to him.
The duke will cut out your tongue if he discovers what you have said here tonight
. I prayed he had not paused on his way to our marriage bed to perform that bit of impromptu chirurgery.