The Second Duchess (46 page)

“Frà Pandolf.” I was amazed my voice sounded anything like I remembered it. “This is madness. You are a holy brother, and already you have mortal sins upon your conscience—you yourself confessed it. If you finish that wall and leave me here, I will surely die. Sister Orsola will die also. Even if you escape the duke, you will be held accountable before God for our deaths.”

“It was God who made me a great artist,” he said. He placed another brick. “He won’t blame me for the deaths of a few chattering women. And anyway, I’m not killing you. You’re both still alive.”

“You are mad.”

He shrugged and pressed the brick down. I could hear the trowel scraping against the brick on the outside of the wall as he trimmed away the excess mortar. I pushed one foot against the bricks at the bottom of the wall but found them immovable. Either the mortar was already hardening, or the weight of the bricks themselves was holding the wall in place. Probably both.

“I can give you a fortune in gold and jewels. I can give you this diamond tiara—you can break it up, sell the stones one by one.”

“Keep your diamonds, Serenissima. I have no need for riches, and they will make a pretty sparkle when your body has turned to dust.”

“They will see the blood.” I struggled to keep desperation out of my voice. “When they come searching for me, they will know something terrible happened here.”

He laughed. “I’ve already thought of that. A little water, a little fresh sand—there will be no trace left.”

I have to make some mark, I thought. Leave something outside the wall so when the searchers come they will know we are here. Something small, so he will not notice—yet something that will be seen and identified as mine.

There were the hundreds of medallions sewn on my skirts, the Berlingaccio sun-faces and roses. With my right hand I scrabbled at them, trying to tear one free, damning the skills of Messer Salvestro’s needlewomen. I dug my nails into the fragile silver tissue itself, and finally I felt it tear and one of the medallions come away.

“Frà Pandolf!” I called. He had bent down to pick up another brick. “You are a priest. Confess me—do not leave me here to die in my sins.”

I braced myself against the wall behind me and managed to straighten a bit. My whole body was shaking in terror of that ghastly mallet, but with my eyes squeezed shut I grasped the top of the wall again. The pain in my left hand was like fire. Sister Orsola groaned as I moved.

“Confess me,” I said again.

His face appeared in the remaining empty space. “Don’t be stupid. I’m a friar, not a priest. Don’t ask me to absolve you of your sins.”

“Then there is no priest here at all.” As I spoke, I edged the little rosette of crystals over the top of the wall. To cover the sound of its fall, I wailed as if in the greatest anguish of soul. “Saint Augustine himself has said it—if a priest be wanting, even a layman may hear confessions.”

“The more fool you, Serenissima, to think I care about your sins.” He troweled down more mortar, and I pulled my hands away just in time. Streaks of blood remained on the brick. Would anyone see? Would anyone guess? “Try confessing to Sister Orsola there—she’s a nun, and for all her sins probably holier than I am.”

I sank back into the niche. Sister Orsola stirred. Holy Virgin, I prayed, Saint Barbara, Saint Monica, Saint George great patron of Ferrara, please do not let him find it. I promise a hundred novenas, a thousand. Please, please, please.

The Franciscan continued to build his wall. I found myself counting the bricks as he placed them. My hands were shaking with the terrible compulsion to do something, to straighten my skirt, pleat the fabric—but the left hand was too painful to move and the right one was now pinned by Sister Orsola’s weight.

He placed the last brick but one. There was only a crack of light left at the top, and already the niche felt hot and airless. Sister Orsola was crying quietly, although I did not think she knew where she was or what had happened to us.

“What’s this?” Frà Pandolf’s voice said. It sounded faint and far away. “A bit of crystal frippery? Was it here before? I don’t think so.”

His hand thrust through the little patch of light. His fingers moved. There was a soft chinking sound as the rosette of crystals fell back inside the niche.

“The duke will find you,” I said. My voice shook with fury and terror.

“I will see the duke every day. He will stand in this very room and tell me my frescoes are magnificent. How I’ll laugh to know your bones are moldering behind the wall, while he loads me with more commissions.”

“That he will not. He will—”

I stopped myself. If I told the Franciscan the duke had seen the painting, he would flee. At least I could do that much. I could keep it a secret and send Frà Pandolf unwitting to his own destruction.

There was a slap of mortar and a scrape of brick, and the last light was gone.

Sister Orsola sobbed and wrapped her arms around me.

I stared into black darkness. There were more sounds, much muffled. Most likely he was plastering over the fresh brickwork. He would throw dust against the plaster to make it look dry, and probably place scaffolding over that. We had all become accustomed to seeing the chapel in disarray, with bricks and wet frescoes and half-made niches. Would anyone realize one of the niches had disappeared? Would he make another niche, perhaps, so the number would match the number of bronzes ordered from Innsbruck?

“Where are we?” It was Sister Orsola, her voice thick through the ruin of her nose and face. “Strike a light. Fetch water, I am thirsty.”

“There is no light,” I said. “There is no water.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is—” What use were fine families and titles, here in the dark? “My name is Barbara.”

My whole body shook. I needed to move my hands but I could not. I could not see to count the bricks. I felt a scream welling up in my throat.

“Are you another of his women?” Sister Orsola said. “I’ve always known he had other women, from the day he was the duchess’s lover. Did you know he was the duchess’s lover? The first one, I mean. The other duchess, the new one, her name is Barbara, too.”

I could not start screaming. I would go mad.

Did it matter now?

“I know,” I said to Sister Orsola. “He was the first duchess’s lover.”

“Please, light a light. It’s dark.”

“There are no lights.”

“Are we in hell?”

I choked back tears. “No,” I said. “This is not hell. Not yet.”

“It should be. I’m going to hell.”

I found I could just move the fingertips of my right hand, the one pinned under Sister Orsola’s body. I could touch the tip of each finger to the tip of my thumb. I could count.
One, two, three, four ...
It calmed me a little.

Aloud I said, “Why are you going to hell?”

“I broke my vows. I had a man. I lied to Mother Abbess and took the keys and gave them to him. That’s how he came in and killed the young duchess—he had them copied, he had his own key. He came to bed with me that night and I told him the
parruchiera
had brought her a potion. He got angry. He said if she got out of the monastery, she’d only be whining again for him to give up his place and run away with her.”

She said it so simply, as if it were nothing important. Yet Lucrezia de’ Medici was dead.

I said, “Did he give her poison?”

“No. He put a pillow over her face. It was quick, he told me. She was asleep.”

That was what Tommasina Vasari saw, then—a figure in a Franciscan habit. Of course she would assume it was Sister Orsola. Who else but a nun would be there in the Monastero? She knew Sister Orsola had a lover, but not that he was a Franciscan or that he had his own clandestine keys.

I was beginning to feel light-headed. It was difficult to breathe. “She had a flask,” I said. “A potion. The woman Tommasina gave her a potion. If it was not poison, what was it?”

“It was to rid her of the babe. For the love of Saint Clare, give me a drink.”

So Maria Granmammelli had been wrong. She might know the tastes and smells of a thousand potions, and the duke might trust her knowledge beyond that of Girolamo Brasavola, but in this one case she had been wrong.

“I have no water,” I said.

She put her head down on my breast. “I’m going to hell,” she said again. “Call a priest.”

“There is no priest.”

She began to cry, choking and hiccupping. It sounded as if she were about to choke on her own blood. “A priest,” she said again. “I beg you.”

“You have told me your sins,” I said. “Tell me you repent. That is all that matters.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for it all.”

I managed to lift my broken left hand and trace a cross on her forehead with the thumb. I could not move the fingers at all. Was it a sacrilege? I could not help but think God would forgive me for giving her some last shred of peace. I said, “May God forgive you your sins by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

She let out her breath with a sigh.

I wanted to ask her more questions about the flask, the potion, but she was slipping away, and who was I to disturb her last moments on Earth with selfish questions? I held her, as best I could. I prayed for her and hoped she could hear me. I counted on my fingers and felt Juana la Loca’s hot breath on my own cheek.

After a little while, she died.

I was alone in the dark. The air was becoming hotter and more stifling. For a while, I confess, I gave in to despair and wept. I counted my four fingers over and over and talked to my long-dead mad grandmother. Then somehow—did she help me?—I found my resolve again. My hands stopped shaking. Despair was a deadly sin, and there was no one here, priest or lay, to absolve me. I was a Habsburg by blood and an Este by marriage—titles that demanded an outward show, at least, of courage.

Even if there was no one but a dead woman to see.

So I said the Miserere, and with more steadiness I began to count a rosary instead of meaningless numbers on the fingers of my right hand. And beyond that, there was nothing left for me to do but wait a little while, and stare into the dark, and die in my turn.

 

 

Isn’t it strange that he will have killed both of us, la Cavalla and me? I wonder if she’ll become
immobila
. She should probably go straight to purgatory, unless she remains here with her spirit imprisoned in the chapel just like her flesh. At least she knows the truth now, that the potion in the flask was not poison. Tommasina would never have given me poison.

While everyone was searching, Alfonso went to question la Cavalla’s ladies again. He found them in her apartments, crying. Half of them were crying out of love for la Cavalla and the other half were crying for fear for their own skins. He had each one come forward and repeat what she knew, and precious little it was. Meanwhile those
beneamato
puppies were barking and running about, and the servants were rushing back and forth with cups of wine, and all through the Castello the men-at-arms were standing in the different rooms and looking around at emptiness and trembling with their own fears for their places.