His Last Duchess (16 page)

Glancing out of the window, Jacomo reckoned that some two hours remained until it would be dark enough to risk setting out on his venture. Agitated to the point that he was now physically incapable of sitting still, he left the room, the cloth bundle in his arms, and began to walk. Through room after room, down staircase after staircase he went, until he found himself at the foot of the Torre San Paolo. He had been told that of the four towers, this one had been unused for years, and as he stood there now, he smelt the deserted, musty odour of long neglect. A wooden staircase led up out of sight. Jacomo began to climb. He had no candle and the tower was almost windowless; after a couple of dozen steps, he found himself climbing in total darkness, one hand on the stone wall. So many steps. It seemed to him he might climb for ever.

Perhaps, though, that was what he deserved for even contemplating such a thing as bedding the wife of the Duke of Ferrara.

The steps led to a small lobby. As Jacomo stood in the little room, his heartbeat thick in his throat from the long climb, he could see, by the light that fell from a single window, that another half-dozen roughly made steps led upwards again to a heavy wooden door. He opened it.

The room at the top of the tower was large and airy; wooden-floored, with a great beamed ceiling through which a long ladder rose into an indistinct space high above his head. An unlatched door proved to lead out onto a balustraded balcony. Jacomo leaned over the balustrade: far below him was the black water of the moat. A few stars pricked the darkening sky, and at these Jacomo stared, unblinking, his eyes stinging, searching for the different constellations, trying to order his thoughts.

Some time later, he heard the tower clock chime and went back into the beamed room. From there he ran down the stairs, on and on in the darkness, hearing nothing but the thudding of his feet on the wooden treads. At the bottom, he leaned for a second against a wall, then made his way towards the door that he knew led to the lower regions of the Castello.

***

The sky had deepened to a rich inky blue, and Catelina leaned out of the bedchamber window. She looked intently in both directions, then straight out below her; turning back into the room, she shook her head. “Nothing, my lady.”

Lucrezia's heartbeat was now so frantic she was feeling quite sick. “He'll be here soon,” she whispered, more to herself than to Catelina. A round embroidery frame lay across her lap. She stared at it blankly, and picked at the skin of one fingertip with her needle. An untouched plate of fruit, cheese, bread and meat lay beside her; she stared at it for a moment, then turning once more to Catelina, said, “Say an
Ave
and then try again.”

They began to mouth the prayer together.

***

A few candles were burning in brackets on the walls as Jacomo passed. He prised one out and carried on round another corner, shuddering as he passed the door that he knew led to the dungeons, then, free hand cupped around the flame, he ran down another narrow staircase and along to a small, metal-studded wooden door.

It was locked and bolted.

He put his candle down, then held the bolt in both hands and tried to pull it backwards. It screeched its protestations out into the choking stillness and Jacomo's heart began to beat so fast he could feel it shaking his whole body. He stood still, breath held, listening for any sounds of investigative footsteps, but none came and, after a few terrifying moments, he tentatively tried the huge key. It turned unexpectedly smoothly, cushioned, Jacomo discovered in the flickering flamelight, by thick, black grease. He wiped his hand down his already paint-filthy breeches.

The moat water smelt stagnant.

Three little boats thunked softly against each other and against the wooden bulk of the jetty. Jacomo stepped into and across two of the three, taking his time to balance as they wobbled beneath his feet, the cloth bundle jammed under one arm. Sitting down in the third, outermost boat, he stowed the bundle by his feet, undid the rope that secured the boat to the jetty and pulled out one of the two oars, which he laid across his knees.

The huge, dark mass of the Castello reared above him as he hand-over-handed around the edge of the overhang. The brick was rough and scratchy beneath its slimy coating of weed, and the dank smell of the water was strong in his nostrils. Once out into the moat itself, Jacomo began sculling with the single oar over the back of the boat, keeping as close as he could to the wall. He hugged the deepest shadows and the single oar was almost silent.

A dove clattered out from a hole in the brickwork, making him jump—so close to his head that he felt the draught from its wingflaps.

He sculled around the last corner and lifted the oar back into the boat as he reached the window Lucrezia had described to him, pulling himself to a halt by gripping the bricks with his fingertips.

***

“
Ora
pro
nobis
peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae
,” Lucrezia muttered. “Now try again, Lina.”

Catelina went to the window once more, and this time she gasped. Lucrezia stood up. The embroidery frame fell to the floor with a clatter.

Catelina said, “He's here, Signora—quick!”

Lucrezia scrambled past her and leaned out of the window. The shadow at the base of the wall was thick and clotted, and the reflection of the parapet of the tower above her shifted and wobbled in the almost black water, but she could just make out a darker shape that had not been there before.

“Jacomo?”

Lucrezia could hardly hear his hissed reply, but there was no doubt that it was him.

***

“I've found the things I wanted to give you. How can I get them to you?” Jacomo said softly.

“Stay there.”

Jacomo stared up towards the open casement. And then he jumped, as a woven straw basket, inexpertly tied to a long dirty rope, came whispering down the wall towards him, scratching as it caught against the roughness of the brick. If he had not felt almost strangled with anxiety, he thought he might have laughed. Pulling the basket into the boat, Jacomo placed the linen bundle into it and then twitched down on the rope, which smelled of horses. The basket rose back up to the window and Lucrezia pulled it in, then leaned out again. “Thank you,” she said.

“There's a note with the things. Read it first and tell me what you think.”

“I will. I'll do it now. Don't go away!”

Jacomo pictured her scrabbling to pull the paper out from where it had been tucked inside the knotted twine, imagined her thoughts as she read the words he had written. “
Put
on
the
things
you
will
find
in
the
bundle
.
I
hope
they
fit
you
.
Come
down
into
the
city
with
me—now
.
I'll be waiting by the clump of poplars near the gateway to the city
.
Bring
some
of
your
own
clothes
in
a
bag—J.”

The basket reappeared and was lowered once more. Jacomo took it again as it fell near his hands, and felt inside. For a moment, he thought it was empty, but then his fingers touched a velvety softness: a tightly furled rosebud. He picked it up, held it to his nose, breathed in its sweetness. The basket rose out of sight.

Jacomo waited. Long seconds snailed past and then the window above him banged open, and she leaned out so far and so fast that for a second he thought she might fall right out.

“Jacomo! Are you still there?” A barely audible whisper.

“Yes.”

“I'll be there. I promise. I'll be a few moments. Wait for me where you said.”

Jacomo tucked the little rose into a hole in his doublet, and then sculled back round to the jetty, negotiating his way under the louring black archway and into the low tunnel. He moored the boat, clambered out and made for the door, which he prayed would not have been refastened in his absence.

It was still open.

Jacomo closed his eyes and stood motionless. Letting out the breath he only now realised he had been holding in, he locked the door again and retraced his steps through the castle.

The smallest side drawbridge was still down. He crossed it, walked round two sides of the Castello and down to a group of six poplar trees. He sat down on a tussock of grass and wrapped his arms around his knees. With his back against one of the tree-trunks, he stared up into the star-spattered sky.

Jacomo had tied the twine too tightly, Lucrezia thought, as her trembling fingers fought to loosen the knots. Catelina stood at her shoulder, hands clasped, not speaking. Lucrezia could feel Catelina's breath on the side of her face.

The covering linen finally fell away to reveal…a paint-stained pair of brown breeches, grey hose and a linen shirt. There was a brownish-grey woollen doublet, and a scarlet cap.

Catelina's eyes were wide with curiosity.

“He means you to wear this, Signora?” she said.

“So the letter says.” Lucrezia fingered the clothes, which were worn and soft with use. Flecks of paint and plaster clung to each garment; they were certainly artist's clothes, Lucrezia thought, but they seemed far too small to belong to the tall, long-limbed Jacomo.

Catelina said, “Well, come here, my lady. You'd better hurry. He's waiting.”

Lucrezia gasped. “Oh,
cielo
! Quick! I must—” She stopped as Catelina swung her round and busied herself with laces and fastenings, then, wriggling out of her stiff bodice, Lucrezia ducked down and picked up the two separate legs of the hose, turning them this way and that, smiling at the thought of herself clad in such grubby, unappealing articles. Catelina started to laugh, covering her mouth with her hand.

Lucrezia stepped out of her skirts, pulled off her shift, and then sat naked on the floor, pushing her legs into the hose. They fitted quite well, though when she stood up, she felt certain that, within seconds, they would be round her knees. Frowning, and fingering the top edges, she saw a dozen little lace holes.

“Look, Lina! We tie these to something to keep them up!”

“Here,” Catelina said. “There are holes here, in the doublet. I'll get some laces.”

Lucrezia pulled the shirt over her head and pushed her hands into the doublet sleeves.

“Arms up!” Catelina said briskly.

Lucrezia raised them and Catelina knelt in front of her, a bunch of laces between her teeth, one in her fingers.

“I feel like a parcel, Lina. This is worse than women's clothing!” Lucrezia said, as Catelina wordlessly pulled and knotted her into her new garments.

At last, hose, breeches and doublet all neatly fastened, Lucrezia stood back to examine herself in her glass. “Oh!” she said. “My hair. What shall I do with it?”

“Let me, my lady.” Catelina plaited it quickly, then between them they rolled the braid up against the back of her head, and pulled the scarlet cap over it, hiding all but a few stray wisps.

Lucrezia looked at her feet. “Jacomo hasn't given me any shoes.”

“The brown kid slippers will do well,” Catelina said, crossing to the chest at the foot of the bed.

Lucrezia hooked a finger into the heels of the proffered shoes and pulled them on. “What do you think?”

A wide smile and a hug were her only answers.

Catelina pulled a dress and a shift from the chest, and rolled them into a tight bundle, using Jacomo's twine to secure them. She pushed them into the straw basket.

“Well, come on, my lady,” she said. “We have to get you out of the castle now.”

Lucrezia thought her heart might burst right out of her as they crept through the Castello and out to the back drawbridge, which, thank God, was still down. Every sound she heard struck like a chill blade in her chest and the faces in the portraits along the many walls seemed to her to accuse at every step. She felt, though, strangely liberated and unlike herself in the unfamiliar clothing, stronger, braver, in these men's garments. They were an effective disguise, she thought.

Catelina had been carrying the basket. Now she pushed it into Lucrezia's arms and said, “Go on, Signora. He's waiting for you. Oh…God keep you safe.”

Lucrezia hugged her, then crossed the drawbridge and ran along the shadowed path that led around the dark castle walls—only one or two yellow-lit windows now punctuated the heavy black mass of it—until she could see the clump of poplars, which stood a few feet from the main gateway into the city.

She saw no one, heard nothing but the pinking of the toads as she crept the last few steps to the trees. Eyes stretched wide in the darkness, she looked for him, but saw only shadow, thickest between the straight poplar trunks.

And then an arm reached out, a hand caught her wrist, and he pulled her into the denser darkness. Her gasp of surprise was cut short. She dropped the basket. There was no bitter paint taste this time—Jacomo's mouth was warm and sweet. His hands were clean of paint now, and this time he did not hold them away from her, but pulled her in close to him, one arm around her back, gripping her shoulder, the other hand reaching down around her buttocks. She clung to him, pressed up against him, ran her hands over every inch of him she could reach, finally uttering the soft little noises of longing she could no longer suppress. Her mouth on his, it was as though the feel and taste and smell of him were seeping into her, expanding within her.

Eventually, Jacomo cupped her face in his hands and drew back. “Will you come down into the city with me, then?” he said, stroking her cheek.

Lucrezia nodded.

“Give me your dress—we can leave it here. It'll be quite safe, and we'll pick it up on the way back so you can change.”

She nodded again, unable to speak, light-headed with kissing, and handed him the basket, which he tucked into a deep patch of shadow below the poplars.

***

Lucrezia had no idea where Jacomo was leading her—despite her year and a half's residence in Ferrara, she realised now how little she knew of the city beyond the castle walls. She reached for Jacomo's hand; he caught her fingers, but quickly let go.

“Put them in your pockets. We can't hold hands in the street,” he said, smiling at her, “not with you dressed like that. Two lads, hand in hand? They'd arrest us soon as look at us!”

Lucrezia wanted his hand in hers so badly it made her feel dizzy. She twisted around, searching for the pockets in the unfamiliar breeches, found them and pushed her hands deep into the dusty linen, where she balled them into trembling fists.

A maze of narrow, twisting streets led away from the looming bulk of the Castello; vividly painted houses and shops jostled each other like an excitable crowd of brightly dressed peasants. Stripes and patterns crawled over walls and around doorways; painted fruit and flowers twined above windows. Lucrezia saw by the light of a flaring torch over the doorway of a cheerful second-hand clothes shop that here, at least, the Este colours of red, white and green loudly proclaimed their allegiance. And everywhere there were people: busy, working people.

“Do they not sleep?” she said.

“Not this close to the river, not for hours yet,” Jacomo said.

The river. The Po. She smelt it long before they arrived at the wharf, a drifting concoction of sodden wood, fish and spices. They crossed a wide piazza, where merchants' and artisans' stalls crowded under the arcades. Some, Lucrezia saw, were darkened now and closed for the night, but others still plied their trade. Chickens clucked crossly in cramped coops, a rainbow of silks and damasks gleamed in the flickering torchlight, while nearby an armourer's furnace glowed a vivid red-gold and sparks showered as hammer was brought to blade with a ringing clang.

There were shouts, cries, laughter all around. Lucrezia started as a woman shrieked—a woman in wild, mismatched clothes—but the shriek was one of mirth. Her painted face was cracked in broken-toothed lasciviousness, as she grinned up into the laughing face of an elegant man who, Lucrezia thought, should probably have known better. The woman was lost from view then, as a noisy crowd of rowdy young men swaggered past in front of her. Lucrezia's eyes widened as a knife-blade caught the torchlight and flashed for an instant in one waving hand.

“Come on, this way,” Jacomo said, pointing down another street.

In sight of the river now, they stopped outside a shop, whose wide window was lined with blue and white jars, labelled, Lucrezia saw, with whispering names that made her think of adventurous ships in faraway seas: anise and cardamom, cinnamon and saffron. Jacomo stood in front of her and held both her hands in his. He looked at her for a long moment and then said, “We're here. Are you quite sure you want to do this?”

Lucrezia nodded. She felt as though she were melting. She and Jacomo looked at each other, not speaking, cocooned in a conjoined separateness around which the jostle and madness of the riverside nightlife milled and thronged, entirely unaware of the two anonymous strangers on the brink of an enormity.

Jacomo put his hand into a leather bag and brought out an iron key. He opened the narrow door to the darkened shop, and the two of them stepped inside. He closed and locked the door behind them and the noise outside faded.

It was too dark for Lucrezia to see much, and before she had had time to gain more than a brief impression of jar-lined shelves, hanging bunches of herbs and polished floorboards, Jacomo had taken her hand again and was walking her towards a cramped staircase, which rose awkwardly out of the shop: more a ladder, Lucrezia thought, than a flight of steps. He stood back to let her climb first.

“It's a great deal easier in breeches than skirts,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Jacomo.

“It's a pleasure to watch, too.”

Lucrezia felt once more that hot, slithering thread, sliding down from her throat to hook deep in her belly.

She climbed into the upper room. It was clearly some sort of a storeroom for the apothecary: barrels and baskets and boxes stood ranked and piled, and dozens more bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling beams. Three enormous sacks stood along one wall, sagging plumply like a trio of fat old men, and several shelves were lined with glass bottles and jars, indistinct in the half-light from the open casement.

“Alessandro lent me the room,” Jacomo said. Lucrezia was suddenly anxious, but Jacomo smiled and took her face in his hands. “I didn't tell him who I was bringing here.”

Lucrezia tilted her face upwards within his hands and Jacomo kissed her.

“He told me last week that he sometimes stays here overnight when he's been working late,” he murmured, “but he has a house elsewhere, where he lives when he isn't working, he says.”

Jacomo led her between the barrels and boxes to a low truckle bed that stood against the furthest wall. A linen sheet covered the straw mattress; several pillows were piled at one end and a jumble of blankets lay untidily across the other.

He turned to face her.

“Are you quite sure you want to do this?” he repeated.

“Oh, Jacomo!” Lucrezia said. “I think I shall die if I don't.” He smiled at her, his mouth in parenthesis again, and the melting feeling in her belly intensified.

“Well, let's get those old things off you, then,” he said quietly. He held her gaze as he unfastened the brownish-grey jerkin. Lucrezia reached forward, between his arms, and her fingers began exploring the knot in the lacing of his shabby deerskin doublet, working by feel; she was reluctant to take her eyes from his face.

Jacomo's clothes were easier to unfasten than her own, she discovered. She removed his doublet and shirt with ease, but as she and Jacomo soon discovered, Catelina had, in her agitation, tied all the unfamiliar laces very tightly; it took Jacomo several moments of delicate knot-picking to release a visibly quivering Lucrezia from her borrowed garments. But at last she was free of them, and before long, she and Jacomo were facing each other in the torchlight, skin to skin.

Lucrezia moved to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear—and realised she was still wearing the scarlet cap. She raised her hands to her head, but Jacomo laughed and held her wrists.

“No—leave it on,” he said. “It's beautiful.
Piccolo
ragazzo
.”

Still clasping her wrists, he held his hands out, sideways and down, holding Lucrezia's arms away from her body; he crouched before her so that his mouth was on a level with her breasts. For a moment, she closed her eyes, and her breath came in shallow, shivering gasps as he kissed her there.

Then he stood up, both her hands now held inside his own. “Ready?” he said.

Lucrezia looked at his long, lean, brown body, and then at his face, her limbs taut and trembling with longing. Eyes fixed on Jacomo's, wearing nothing but a boy's woollen hat, she nodded, and scrambled backwards towards the pile of pillows on the untidy bed. He followed, pausing only to shift a pile of baskets that were blocking the window; a shaft of light fell fitfully across the bed.

“I want to be able to see you,” he said. “All of you. I've been imagining you for weeks—and drawing what I imagined—but now I want to see as much of the reality as I can.”

“Did you ever imagine me in a hat like this one?”

Jacomo laughed. “It has tended to be what I imagined you
without
rather than
with
.” He kissed her again.

For a time they did not speak, had no need for words as they began to search and learn each other's bodies—as they explored and discovered every cleft and crease with eager fingers and hungry mouths. Lucrezia found herself brim-full of an unprecedented energy; Alfonso's attentions had always paralysed her, she realised—left her each time as little more than a passive puppet—but now the touch of Jacomo's hands was freeing her, creating in her a vibrancy she had not known she possessed.

After a time, Jacomo laid the length of his body along hers; he gently kissed her mouth, leaning his weight upon his elbows. Then, nudging her legs outwards with his own, he slid on top of her. Lucrezia wrapped her legs around him, lacing her fingers through his hair and pushing her breasts up against his chest. She held her breath, feeling a sudden fierce rush of unexpected gratitude for all the months of humiliation she had had to endure, because, she realised, it meant that now, even after two long, difficult years of marriage, it would be Jacomo who would be the one to take her maidenhood from her. A gift, she thought, that would be most willingly given.