The Second Duchess (47 page)

D
ark.

Hot.

Pain everywhere, focused in my face and my left hand, beating with my heart.

I could not move my fingers anymore. It did not matter, because for the first time I could remember, I was free of the compelling need to count and arrange. If Juana la Loca had bequeathed it to me, in the prison of the wall she had taken it back to herself.

Sister Orsola’s corpse was heavy against my breast. She smelled unwashed. Or perhaps her flesh was beginning to mortify. It was so hot. There was no air. How long had I been here?

I no longer had the strength to move.

Thirst. Holy Virgin, such thirst.

The duke and I had parted in anger. He had never seen my white costume. He would never find Eleonora of Naples’ diamonds. He would never know love was, indeed, more than a chimera of poets and adulteresses.

I could not breathe. I could not think. I could not remember the words of the prayers.

I closed my eyes.

 

 

A BLOW FROM outside made the wall shudder. The sound in the silent, airless niche jolted me awake. It hurt my head. I did not believe it was real, and I turned my face away.

Another blow. And another.

 

 

LIGHT.

Dazzling.

I fainted.

 

 

HANDS UNDER MY arms, hard, insistent, pulling me up. What had happened to Sister Orsola? She was gone. What had happened to the brickwork? It was gone. The light hurt my eyes and the air hurt my skin. I felt arms wrap around me, cradling me like a child. I did not have the strength to hold on in return. I was so thirsty. I heard dogs barking and barking.

The duke’s voice. The duke’s arms.

“Barbara. I have you. You are safe now.”

I fainted again.

 

 

“IT WAS THOSE little hounds Elizabeth Tudor sent you,” the duke said. “We searched through the night and the next day, and then about suppertime Guarini’s sister suggested the dogs. I took them to the Saint Catherine courtyard, and once they found your scent, they followed it directly to the chapel. I did not understand at first—the chapel was empty and I thought they were mistaken. But they would not leave the spot in front of that plasterwork. The little one, the female, sat and keened as if she would never be consoled. The male lay down at the base of the wall and refused to be moved.”

I was in my own bed. I had been given water, a little at a time, and then wine, and then fine white bread sopped in meat broth. My bruised face had been tended—both by Messer Girolamo, with calves’ kidneys and leeches, and by Maria Granmammelli, with a much more agreeable lotion made of sweet almond oil and milk—and the fingers of my left hand had been straightened and splinted. Only one was actually broken. My heavy wedding ring had taken the brunt of the blow; the duke had ordered it cut from my swollen finger and sent off to be mended.

Had I dreamed the moment when he pulled me from the wall and enfolded me in his arms and said,
Barbara
? Perhaps I had. He seemed no different. At the same time, Katharina told me he had not left my side until both the physician and the herb-woman had assured him I would recover completely.

He had refused to leave me. He was telling me so coolly of Tristo and Isa refusing to leave the wall in the chapel, but he himself—

I could not think about it. All I could comprehend was that I was alive. I was clean. I had fresh air to breathe. I could have as much water and wine as I wanted. The room was cool and full of sunlight. I was not sure what day it was, but I did not care. Blessed, blessed sunlight.

I would never take light or air or water for granted again. “There was blood on the floor,” I said. “My nose and mouth bled when he struck me. He said he would clean it away, but I suppose even if it could not be seen, the hounds could smell it.”

“They did.”

“And I dropped a jewel from my dress, hoping he would not see it. He picked it up again, but still—it might have left a scent.”

“Indeed.”

Tristo and Isa were curled up on the bed next to me, sound asleep and stuffed with every possible delicacy. I stroked their russet-velvet heads with my bandaged hand. “My saviors,” I said to them. My throat tightened, and I had to swallow back tears. “Both of you. My little saviors.”

Then to the duke I said, “What day is it?”

“The Thursday after Ash Wednesday. It has been a week. The public tale is that you were taken ill in the midst of the Berlingaccio revels, and suffered a fall—that accounts for your injuries, as well as your absence from the rest of the Carnival and the Mass at the cathedral yesterday.”

I felt tears start again. I had been crying at the smallest things—it was not like me at all, and it made me angry at myself. “I am sorry,” I said. “It is over now, though, is it not? I only want it to be over, and done, and—” The tears spilled over. I was not sure if I was crying from remorse or unhappiness or exasperation that I could not stop crying. “I want to go back. I want to begin again. I want to be a fine and beloved duchess, like Elisabetta Gonzaga.”

Holy Virgin. I sounded like a puling child. I almost said,
I want you to love me
, but at least I managed to spare myself that humiliation.

“I will remind you, Madonna,” the duke said in a bracing voice, “you are an imperial archduchess by birth, and as my wife you bear a nine-hundred-years-old name. The Gonzaga are upstarts in comparison. If you continue overexalting them, perhaps I should remove
Il Libro del Cortigiano
from your library and replace it with something more suitable to your station.”

“No, no,” I said. Suddenly I was laughing, and I do not think he meant to make me laugh. If I were to be a fine and beloved duchess with a nine-hundred-years-old name, I had to stop laughing and crying from moment to moment.

The duke put his own hand over my right hand where it lay on the coverlet. “You are overwrought,” he said more gently. “And understandably so. The odd thing, Madonna, is that as agitated as you have been since I pulled you out of the wall, your hands have been still as a nun’s. That is new—I had come to depend upon your hands as a sign of when you were disturbed.”

I felt the color flooding up into my face. “I knew you had noticed it. I tried to prevent myself from doing it. I was afraid it was a sign I was going mad.”

His hand remained on mine. “Mad? Why?”

“Because—because of her. My grandmother Johanna of Castile. Juana la Loca. I am sure you have heard her story.”

He smiled. “Yes, I have heard her story. I myself am a distant cousin of hers, I believe, through that same Eleonora of Naples whose diamonds you wore for the Berlingaccio. I assure you, Madonna, you are the least likely person I know to go mad, now or ever.”

“I am not so sure. I felt her with me, when I was in the wall.”

“You were badly injured. You had no water and very little air, and the dead body of Sister Orsola pressed up against you. I would be more surprised if you had not seen and heard strange things.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “In any case, I think you shall have to find another way to determine whether or not I am disturbed. It is a great relief to me.”

“It is a great relief to me that you are safe, whatever the state of your hands.”

I waited, hoping he would say more. He did not, and after a moment I asked, “What have you done with Frà Pandolf?”

“He was arrested shortly after I took you out of the wall. He did not know we had found you and had made no attempt to flee.”

“Nor did he know you had seen the secret painting of Serenissima Lucrezia. He thought he would continue in your patronage, and my disappearance would be such a mystery, it would distract you from any further inquiries into your first duchess’s death.”

“The more fool he. Luigi will manage the business of having him degraded from his orders. In the meantime he is in the dungeons, and when I am satisfied he has told all he knows, he will be executed there.”

“He deserves no better. Have you questioned him about the deaths of Paolina Tassoni and Tommasina Vasari? About my slashed girth?”

“He confessed to suborning a kitchen servant, the night of the Festival delle Stelle—he had been painting her, it seems, and he gave her a few coppers to take the prepared angelica to the sign of Taurus.”

“How did he even know I had begun to ask questions about—But of course, Sister Orsola would have told him. It was that very afternoon I first questioned her.”

“So he said. He cut your girth as well. Your groom withdrew for a moment, as you remember, and that was all it took.”

Poor Conradt. At least he had reached Prague safely and found a place with Ferdinand.

“And Tommasina Vasari?”

“That he denied, no matter how strongly the question was applied. About that, at least, I believe he was telling the truth.”

“So you have discovered the identity of the false Augustinian?”

“There was no false Augustinian.”

“I do not understand.”

“Rest now,” the duke said. “Tomorrow it will all be made clear to you.”

“Tell me now.”

“You must rest. I will tell you this—the alchemist Vasari is in Ferrara, of his own free will. And the gaoler has a tale to tell as well.”

 

 

How Pandolfo screamed when they broke his fingers and tore his shoulders apart with the
strappado
. Alfonso didn’t tell la Cavalla he watched, and directed the torturers, and asked the questions himself. In the end, even Messer Giovanni Pigna was sick and had to leave, but Alfonso remained, cold as ice. I’m not sure if Pandolfo was suffering more for cuckolding Alfonso with me, or for trying to murder la Cavalla. Alfonso certainly didn’t care that Sandro Bellinceno had had me. So I suppose that answers that question.

“
C
hess is generally considered a game of war,” the duke said.

“But it is a game of politics as well. Do you play, Madonna?” Several more days had passed. I was much recovered from my ordeal and had returned to court life, repeating the tale the duke had fabricated about a spell of sickness and a fall on the night of the Berlingaccio. Naturally everyone assumed I was with child. I could only pray that tidbit of gossip would soon be made into fact.