The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (49 page)

“Why so?” she asked, forcing her heavy-lidded eyes into an openness that would convey innocence. “I believe it is a matter for rejoicing that they get on so well. A brother and sister. Just as it should be.”

“A brother and sister on the verge of tumbling into bed together,” I advised her. “Perhaps you mistake where you are. This is the household of Daniele dei Rossi, not Rodrigo Borgia.”

“You shame yourself to say such things, Grazia.” Her thick eyelids made a clumsy attempt at a flutter. What do men see in these coarse-grained vulgar women? One look at the swing of those plump asses tells the whole story. In some sense all men are bulls and all women cows.

“Jehiel has become a true brother to my Ricca,” she advised me proudly. “Your honorable father and I take that as a blessing.”

“For Jehiel to be a brother to Ricca certainly is a blessing,” I replied. “To be a lover is incest.” There, I had said the word. To my surprise she took it most mildly.

“They are cousins, not brother and sister,” she informed me.

“First cousins,” I added. “And Ricca is three years older than Jehiel. He is a child. A boy.”

“He is close to fifteen years old. Old enough to marry.”

“Marry!”

“You forget that time passes, Grazia,” she went on. “Boys grow into men. If anything were to happen to your honored father, Jehiel would be the head of this family.”

So that was the strategy. To wait until my father was dead, then to marry Jehiel off to Ricca so that she and her mother might enjoy the lion’s share of Papa’s estate.

I left that garden saddened and dismayed. Of course, I would attempt to talk some sense into Jehiel. But what proof were my arguments against Ricca’s bulging breasts and hot lips? As I mounted the stairs to Papa’s room I heard a scuffling sound from under the stairwell. Then a moan of pleasure. It was my brother and his whorish cousin, for sure. I turned back, intending to upbraid them for their wantonness, then stopped myself. Anything I did now to deprive Jehiel of his pleasure would only exacerbate his appetite for it.

Wearily, I trudged up the stairs to look in on my father. He lay still. But as I watched, he turned slightly and the wrench of that turn forced a moan of pain from between his lips. Down the stairs the son moaned with pleasure. Upstairs the father moaned in pain. And I stood suspended between the two, powerless to hinder or to help. Come soon, Judah, I thought. For I cannot bear this alone much longer.

Judah rode into Mantova within a week, a ghostly apparition, his black cloak grayed with dust, his face pale with fatigue and pain. For my sake, he had forsworn his mule in favor of a horse, a way of sitting that always anguishes his backbone.

As I sat beside his bath pouring warm water over his head, I observed that his hair had turned quite white. And the heavy lines in his forehead had deepened into furrows. With a great toss of his giant frame, he called for a towel and within minutes was combed, dried, and dressed in clean linen, ready to visit my father.

It was a most peculiar examination even for a physician with unorthodox methods. Judah did not so much as touch my father except to kiss him on the cheek. Nor did he inquire after Papa’s condition but merely passed the time in idle chat, talking of the French king’s pursuit of pleasure in Napoli, and of the new papal alliance that was forming against the foolish Frenchman, instigated by, of all the unlikely supporters, the King’s sponsor and best friend, Lodovico Sforza of Milano. “Apparently the Duke’s eyesight has been restored,” Judah commented wryly, “and he can now recognize the face of Italy.” Which brought a smile to Papa’s wan countenance.

That smile — so rare with Papa those days — captured far more of my attention than Judah’s clever talk of affairs. And I was only half listening when he went on to predict that from this league would arise a wave of violence that was sure to wash over all of Italy. What was Italy to me compared with Papa’s illness?

“Now, wife . . .” Judah turned to me when we had taken our leave of my father. “Will you do me the honor to walk out with me into the town? I have need of your company for I am bound on a delicate diplomatic errand at the Reggio.”

What of Papa? I wanted to know.

“We will speak of that in good time, I promise you,” he answered. “But for now, do me a good turn and get out that beautiful silk
gamorra
that you wheedled out of me for your birth gift. And all your jewels. I do not wish the doctor’s wife to take second place to Lady Chiara.”

“Lady Chiara? Who is she?”

“Sister-in-law to Madonna Isabella. Sister to the Marchese Francesco. Married to the French king’s nephew on the Bourbon side. His name is Gilbert de Montpensier.”

“But what business do you have with —” Before I could finish, he placed his fingers gently over my mouth to cut off my question. “If you accept my proposal to walk out with me I will tell you
all
on the way to the Reggio.”

He did not need my company on his errand. In all likelihood he could have managed the interview better alone. But he knew the news in store for me, had known it, he told me much later, after one look into Papa’s eyes. And he had concocted his need for my company to prop up my spirits before he laid the burden on me.

As we stepped out of the Casa dei Rossi into the sunlit day he took a deep lungful of air, held it, expelled it, and then demanded that I do the same. “Let us enjoy to the full this glorious day that God has given us. He would fault us if we were to tarnish His golden light with dark thoughts of what tomorrow might bring,” he instructed me.

If Rabbi Abramo had heard such pagan sentiments attributed to his God, he would have damned the speaker as a heretic there and then. But Judah’s God was a humanist’s God for whom all things move from goodness to goodness and Who commands us to rejoice in the present. Taking my cue from Judah, I set about to exercise my lungs in the fine air and to satisfy my curiosity as to his business with Chiara Gonzaga, wife to Gilbert, Duke of Montpensier, nephew of the King of France. It was not like Judah to take up intimacy with either foreigners or Christians. With a certain notable exception, I reminded myself. Could it be that this Montpensier had become the successor to Pico della Mirandola?

His next remark disabused me of my suspicions. “We have found common cause, the Frenchman and I,” he explained as we walked. “Both of us are far from home, both lonely, both exiled by the whim of the King. And both our wives have taken refuge in Mantova. Besides, he is quite civilized for a Frenchman. Eats with a fork just as we do. And worries about his little son and what will become of the boy should he be left fatherless with only an Italian mother and his negligent uncle, the King, to protect him. Part of my charge is to bring the little fellow a gift from his papa’s own hands.”

Part of his charge? “And the rest?” I asked.

But by then we had reached the Reggio and I had to rest content with a muttered “Later” for my answer.

The Duchess of Montpensier did not look Italian. Her years in France had transformed her in a way difficult to pin down, yet quite unmistakable. What had she gained there? A languidness of gesture, a rarefied elegance, a contemptuously arrogant expression that Italian women — including princesses — do not cultivate. What had she lost? Vitality. Her eyes had a faraway look. Even as she listened she appeared not to hear what was said to her. Either she was stupid or the lassitude of the French courtly style had weakened her strong Gonzaga blood.

“Maestro Leone, how kind of you to come,” she trilled in her French-accented Italian.

“My pleasure, ma’am.” Judah bowed low. I have always been surprised at how well he can play the courtier when he must. “I bring regards from your illustrious husband and gifts from his own hand.” Reaching under his cloak, he drew out a small cloth bag and a rather larger wooden cask. “The jewel is for you, madonna. The
cassone
is for your honorable son Charles.”

She clapped her hands together, as delighted as a girl.

“Do let me see the jewel.”

Silence as she opened the bag and spilled out of it a coral bead framed in diamonds. “How beautiful!” she exclaimed, and held it up to her bosom at the place where it might properly hang from a chain. “Is it not beautiful, is it not a masterwork?”

“The Neapolitans are renowned for their cameo carvings,” Judah agreed. “Come and look, Grazia.” He beckoned me.

“Oh yes, do,” the Duchess added agreeably, although until that moment she had made no sign to acknowledge my presence.

“May I present my wife, ma’am.”

I made the obligatory low curtsy.

“Have you ever seen anything more exquisite?” she asked me. Then, without waiting for a reply, she bubbled on: “My sister-in-law, Madonna Isabella, will envy me this treasure. She does love jewels. Now then . . .” The lady looked up briefly from her perusal of her treasure. “Will there be anything else?”

“About the gift for your son Charles, ma’am . . .” Judah handed her the
cassone
. “They are toy soldiers and the Duke most particularly asked me to have his son receive them in my presence. There are two sets in this box — one molded in metal and one carved in wood by a most skilled Neapolitan master. His father wishes him to choose.”

“I believe he is in his room with his tutor, ma’am.” The maid spoke up. “If you recall, he was suffering from toothache . . .”

“Oh yes. Toothache. Well, see if he is well enough to join us, Mathilde.” Then, turning to Judah: “I beg you, Maestro Leone, do not report this toothache to the Duke. My honorable husband takes every sniffle of that child as seriously as a death rattle. Believe me, the boy is perfectly sound.”

“I do believe you, ma’am. And of course I will refrain from referring to this toothache if you wish it.”

“Oh, you are everything they say of you, Maestro Leone — kind, discreet, and skillful. We must all be grateful for the service you rendered to our cousin the King. We are told that you cured him of the pox when all other efforts availed nothing.”

Judah lowered his head modestly. “I was honored to be of service, madonna.”

Now the little boy Charles was brought in, a handsome enough child with a thin intelligent face and a brooding air.

“This is Maestro Leone Ebreo and his lady, Charles.” His mother presented us. “He has brought you something from your father.”

“Papa? You have seen my papa?” The child’s eyes lit up.

“I see your honored parent every day, sire,” Judah replied. “And he has commissioned me to present you with the contents of this box. May I?”

Judah reached for the little cask which the boy’s mother had not even troubled herself to look into. “
Voilà!
” He pushed a concealed button on the underside of the box and the top sprang open, a trick which brought a most delicious sparkle into the boy’s eyes and a bored yawn to his mother. No doubt about it, the woman had spent too long in France.

“May I take them out?” the boy asked eagerly, looking from Judah to his mother and back as if uncertain where the authority lay.

“Your honorable father has some choice in mind for you. The gentleman will explain it.” The Duchess waved her hand vaguely. “Now I fear you must excuse me. Stay with him, Mathilde, and take him back to his tutor when this matter is settled.” And out she floated, back to whatever far-off country she inhabited in her mind.

Before long, Judah and little Charles Bourbon had all the soldiers out of the box and were engaged in a life-and-death struggle — metal against wood — on the floor. Poor little boy, I thought to myself. Locked up here with this vapid mother and cut off from the father he obviously adores.

The afternoon at the Reggio ended oddly and in retrospect very interestingly. Little Charles begged Judah to stay on and on — how that boy longed for his father. But we did have to go. And at the end of the visit Judah told the boy he must make his choice between the wooden and the lead soldiers. Until then, he had behaved quite normally for a five-year-old boy. But faced with the necessity to make a choice, he became a different child.

“But I love them both, maestro. I cannot choose. I cannot,” he cried out with real anguish.

“Perhaps if you consider what you like about each set . . .” Judah suggested sympathetically.

“No, I cannot. I must have both.” The boy was working himself into a most unhealthy state.

“But the Duke most particularly wished you to have a choice.”

“No.” The child was crying now and holding his head. “If I cannot have both I shall have none.”

“Is it that you love them both so much?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then why?”

The child leaned forward toward me and in a voice that was almost a whisper confided, “I like the wooden ones, madonna. But I am afraid that my honorable father would have me choose the metal ones. Because they are so strong, you see. And I do not want to make the wrong choice and displease him.”

I was left wondering, What happens to a child so fearful of losing his parent’s approval that he cannot summon the will to choose one toy over another? The answer is he grows up to be Constable Bourbon, who as a grown man with a choice to make could not decide whether to obey his King, to defy him, or to betray him.

I was astonished when, as we made our way out of the Reggio, Judah, who abhors tittle-tattle, turned to me and asked, “Did you notice anything peculiar about that interview, Grazia?”

“Aside from the fact that the woman seems to suffer from some kind of sleepwalking disease, you mean?”

He smiled. “Perhaps that accounts for it.”

“Accounts for what?”

“She never asked a word about her husband,” he replied.

“Exactly!”

“You noticed it too.”

I nodded. “Even if she hated him, she would want to know . . .”

“And I was not certain as to how I would answer the woman.”

“He is ill, this Montpensier?”

“Yes, he is,” Judah answered. “I am treating him. With mercury. Very dangerous. It may not work.”

“He has the love disease,” I guessed.

“He and two thousand other Frenchmen.”

“And how does one get this disease, Judah?”