His Last Duchess (20 page)

Even as he thought this, Jacomo's eyes snapped open. He held his breath as his mind made an almost muscular movement: an idea for a change in the fresco's design pushed its way into his consciousness. His breathing quickened and he jumped down from the trestle upon which he had been standing.

“Brother,” he said, his voice a little husky, “I've just had an idea.”

The friar looked up from his paintpot. “What is it, child? Come on, Jacomo, tell me. I've seen that smile on your face too many times before. This looks like a good one.”

And Jacomo explained. He scrambled back up onto the trestle and roughed out the new design with his hands, his fingers tracing onto the plaster all that he could see in his mind's eye as clearly as though it were already complete. “And it's the height of aristocratic artistic taste at the moment, is it not, Brother?” he said, turning back to the friar. “Hopefully we can fool him completely, and then he can enjoy confusing—no, more than that—
bewildering—
anyone who sees the painting!”

There was one element to the subterfuge, however, that Jacomo avoided sharing with the reverend brother.

Fra Pandolf frowned, lower lip jutting as he considered what he had heard. Then the frown cleared and a boyish smile took its place. “Oh, yes, Jacomo. It certainly
is
a good one—I wish I had thought of it myself! Of course…I am not sure that I'll be able to…” He tailed off, hesitating.

“I'll do it all.”

“Yes, yes,” said Pandolf, more enthusiastic by the moment. “Judging by the
sinopia
, I would say that we have three more
giornate
to complete before the new section. Would you agree?”

Jacomo nodded.

“How many days will the new section take, Jacomo?”

“Another four or five, perhaps.”

“A little more than a week, then, for the work to be completed.”

A little more than a week, Jacomo thought. He would count it in hours.

Tomaso appeared then, yawning, rubbing his eyes and hitching up his breeches. Jacomo's heart lurched. Yesterday, he thought, those breeches had clothed a very different body.

They set to work and rapidly progressed with the day's
giornata
, Jacomo tackling the more complex sections—the great bronze Talos, creaking to terrifying life, the fear in the faces of the Argonauts and Jason's wild flight from the scene. Fra Pandolf was busy with sky, sea and sand.

They had been intensely busy for some two hours when the sound of footsteps coming up the spiral staircase interrupted their almost silent progress.

Jacomo's heart skipped a beat and his face felt suddenly cold as the duke appeared, gazing intently at the painting.

He had Lucrezia by the hand.

She was ashen-faced, and bruise-coloured shadows stood out under her eyes. Looking up at Jacomo, her gaze was eloquent. The duke, without releasing his hold upon Lucrezia, turned from her, as, in conversation with the reverend brother, he stretched with his other arm to point out some feature of the fresco that had caught his attention.

Lucrezia, her eyes still fixed upon Jacomo's, turned her head as far from her husband's eye as she dared and mouthed silently, “I love you.”

Facing directly towards the duke, he did not dare answer, but he risked the smallest twitch of a smile. Lucrezia's mouth opened a fraction and its corners lifted infinitesimally.

“What think you, Fra Pandolf?” the duke asked.

Jacomo started.

“A charming idea, Signore, and one I shall be delighted to undertake forthwith. Jacomo?”

The plump friar's words were cheerful and confident, but his expression, Jacomo thought, was tainted with suppressed panic. He had no idea what they were discussing, but Pandolf prattled on, covering his incriminating ignorance.

“A portrait of the fair Signora! A lovely idea! As a fresco, Signore?” He threw Jacomo another frightened glance.

“I think so,” said the duke. “The Signora will then become a permanence within the Castello Estense, for many generations to admire.”

Jacomo saw him turn to Lucrezia, who met his gaze briefly, then looked at the floor.

“I suggest we place the portrait at the southern end of the landing that leads to the stairs from the Entrance Hall. The light from the double window falls there for much of each day. Perhaps you will come with me now, Fra Pandolf, and reassure me that this is a suitable location in terms of light, of visibility—of viability.”

“Yes, yes, Signore, straight away.”

“Lucrezia!”

It was, Jacomo thought, more of an order than a request, but she did not move.

“I should like to stay a while longer and look further at the progress of the Argonauts, Alfonso.” Her voice was cool and firm.

The duke stared at her for a moment, then turned on his heel and descended the spiral steps, closely followed by the flapping brown robes of the reverend brother.

Tomaso's gaze moved from Lucrezia to Jacomo. The tension that hung between them was almost palpable, and Tomaso's whole body radiated curiosity. Jacomo widened his eyes at him and jerked his head towards the stairs. “Just give us a few minutes, Tomaso, please…” he said.

Tomaso grinned, shrugged and shambled off towards the staircase.

Jacomo dared not hold her; his hands were covered with paint. Lucrezia was trembling visibly, but she smiled and reached forward. She touched one of his hands. Then, as she had before, looked at the coloured smear on her fingers and folded them into a fist; she touched the fist to her lips and then turned back to the painting.

Jacomo watched her.

Her voice was low and fast as she said, “He says he has to meet someone at noon, I don't know who, and then he wishes to go hawking. That will give us about four hours. Meet me—”

Jacomo interrupted. “I know just where to meet,” he said. “I found it the other day before I went to get the boat. Go to the bottom of the steps to the Torre San Paolo just after noon—as soon as he's left—and we'll climb to the roof.”

“I'll be there,” Lucrezia breathed, still apparently scrutinizing the fresco.

“Has he hurt you?”

“He did not strike me,” she said, without expression.

Jacomo saw her pallor and the deep violet smudges beneath her eyes, and a heavy feeling of foreboding swelled in his chest. He ached to put his arms around her, but before he could take even a step towards her, Tomaso's untidy head appeared at the end of the gallery.

“They're in the Long Corridor, on their way back, Jacomo.”

Lucrezia's eyes widened as she turned first to Tomaso and then to Jacomo. Her unspoken question was easy to answer.

“I trust him,” Jacomo said softly, as the ringing footsteps of the duke preceded their owner into the hall; Fra Pandolf's aged sandals softly scuffed the stone floor behind him. Both men climbed to the gallery.

“I should like you to begin work immediately upon finishing this piece, Pandolf. Can you estimate how long the portrait will take?”

Jacomo saw the friar's eyes snap to him.

“Well…” Pandolf said, “…young Tomaso can prepare the wall while we finish work on this painting, Signore, which will save a great deal of time. Then perhaps a day, maybe two, to complete initial sketches and studies. I…er…I should like Jacomo here to sketch too, as it will be…er…excellent practice for him—and then, given the size of the area to be covered, I think perhaps a week after that, Signore.”

The duke nodded and reached once more for Lucrezia's hand. She did not raise her arm, Jacomo saw, but allowed him to lift her hand from where it hung loosely at her side. She did not look up at him once. They left together.

Jacomo's teeth clenched; he pushed fisted hands down into his pockets. Scuffing the toe of his boot against one of the big earthenware paint jars, he imagined himself hurling it over the balustrade, heard it shattering on the floor below.

The reverend brother sank down onto the wooden trestle and put his hands over his face. His shoulders were shaking.

“What is it, Brother?”

The friar dropped his hands and burst out, “Oh, Jacomo, this portrait. What shall I do? You said
this
would be your last commission with me, absolutely the last—what am I going to do? How can I do a portrait alone? I can hardly see further than the end of my sleeve. And all in front of
him
! He'll be watching the sketching, seeing what I do. He'll know, Jacomo: there'll be no hiding it.” He buried his face in his hands again.

Jacomo crouched next to him and laid an arm over the plump shoulders. “Stop, Brother! Stop this! I'll—listen, I'll do this portrait.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. But I'll do it.”

There was a long silence, during which the friar appeared to be struggling with himself. After several moments, he said, “I'll tell the duke that
you
are going to do the portrait. I'll make sure that you finally have the recognition you've deserved for years. I have been proud, Jacomo—no, more than that, worse than that. I have been
conceited—
but now I am deeply ashamed of myself.
Santo
cielo
, I am a member of the order of Saint Francis, one of the most humble men in Christendom, and I am not worthy of this habit. I shall not paint again after this.”

There were tears in his eyes. Jacomo pulled a paint rag from his pocket and handed it to him.

As Pandolf blew his nose and wiped his face, streaking it with paint, Jacomo imagined the duke's reaction to being told that it would be his commissioned artist's apprentice who would paint his wife rather than the master; imagined the suspicion, the scrutiny, the watchful eye upon them during every day the picture took to complete.

“I don't want you to tell him,” he said.

Pandolf put down the damp rag. “What?”

“We'll do it as we usually do. You can leave here with your reputation intact and then announce your retirement.”

“Jacomo, I—”

“It's best this way.”

Pandolf nodded. Then, as though a thought had just struck him, he said, “But what about the sketches, Jacomo? The duke will see my work, and—”

“He won't have to. Sit up close to her, work slowly and tell him you are focusing on detail. He will soon tire of watching.”

“Will you do the face and the hands and—”

“I will do it all, Brother. I could do it from memory.” That slipped out before Jacomo could stop it. He saw the reverend brother's eyes widen and held his breath. But it seemed that Pandolf's smothering anxiety and guilt were all-consuming and he showed no more than a moment's flicker of interest in his apprentice's inappropriate familiarity with the duchess.

They returned to work. Jacomo's desire for Lucrezia was now tangled painfully with a sharp fear for her safety. But the knowledge that their release from this purgatory could only come with the completion of the fresco—and now, it seemed, a portrait—focused his energy on what he had to do, and he found himself painting with a speed and dexterity he would not have thought possible.

Some time later, he glanced out of the window and saw that the sun was almost at its height. It was nearly noon.

“I'll be back soon, Brother. There's something I must do,” Jacomo said, washing his brush and wiping it on his shirt. He rinsed his hands, then soaked a cloth and washed the worst of the paint from his face. Pandolf, still swaddled in his anxiety over the coming portrait sittings, did not appear to grasp what Jacomo was saying. Muttering vaguely to himself, he turned back to the wall, and raised his brush.

Dust danced across the thick stripe of yellow sunlight that cut the little room in two. Catelina put down her basket and looked around her: it was clean enough, and quite homely, but sparsely furnished and without, she saw, even a speck of decoration. A small, scrubbed wooden table stood in the middle of the room, along with three mismatched chairs. Over the backs of two of the chairs were an assortment of bridles, leather straps and a roughly folded brown blanket, matted with hair. A row of hooks on the far wall held several heavy coats, a grubby doublet, a long stick like a shepherd's crook and a woollen hat. A pile of boots lay on the floor beneath them. All four walls were bare, but on a rough shelf along one side stood—in no decorative order—three plates, two bowls and four pewter goblets. The fireplace was empty, though ash and the unburned ends of branches spoke of a recent blaze.

“There's another two rooms upstairs,” Giorgio said. “Would you like to see?”

Catelina nodded.

She went up the narrow staircase before him, and peered into each of the two rooms which lay up under the eaves. In each was a bed: around each bed were heavy woollen curtains that had been roughly nailed to the ceiling beams. A low stool stood under the window in the larger of the two rooms, and a huge wooden chest took up much of the floor space in the smaller. The walls, again, were bare.

Catelina crossed to the window of the larger room. Behind the other dwellings that clustered near to this one, she could see outbuildings in varying states of dilapidation, stacks of wood, rows of barrels, a patchwork of vegetables and flowers. A hairy black pig rootled in the earth in the cramped little square of land next door.

“It's not much,” Giorgio said, sounding apologetic, as they went back down the stairs. “What do you think?”

Catelina's eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Lina.” Giorgio put big arms around her. He held her head against his chest and pulled her close.

Catelina pressed her face against his horse-smelling jerkin and felt the tears hot on her cheeks.

“It's sooner than I had expected,” Giorgio began, “but I had already decided to ask you anyway.”

“Had you?”

Giorgio's face cracked in a broad smile. “Yes. I had. So—what do you say? Will you?”

Catelina felt entirely certain. “Yes, Giorgio,” she said, “I will.”

Giorgio lowered his face to hers and kissed her with enthusiasm, then straightened. “I have to go up to the Castello now,” he said, “I'm expected back any moment. I'll be here by sunset. Will you manage on your own?”

“Well,” Catelina said, “if we are…to be married, Giorgio, I shall have to get used to managing, shan't I?” She felt the colour rise in her cheeks.

“Do you have any money?”

Catelina shook her head.

“Here.” Giorgio pushed one of his big hands down into a pocket and pulled out a few coins. “Could you find us something to eat? I've nothing in the house at all.”

Catelina nodded. Giorgio kissed her again, then opened the front door. A bulky silhouette in the doorway, blocking the light, he paused for a moment, then came back in and kissed her once more.

She pulled away from him, laughing. “Go on! I'll see you this evening.”

***

Catelina spent an hour or so arranging Giorgio's rooms to her satisfaction. She ordered the table and the chairs; she laid the plates and bowls out on the shelf in a more deliberate pattern; she straightened the hanging coats, and separated the boots into pairs, standing them neatly against the wall under the hooks. Finding a broom in a lightless corner behind the curve of the stairs, she swept the floor.

She climbed to the upper rooms, taking the broom with her. At the head of the bed in the larger room, two cords were nailed to the wall, one on each side; Catelina pulled back the bed-hangings and secured them with the cords, flapped out and straightened the blankets, then plumped up the rather uncomfortable-looking pillows.

The covers on the—obviously unused—bed in the smaller room were folded in a pile at the foot. Catelina refolded them and laid them back where they had been.

She opened the wooden trunk. In it she found several linen shirts, a couple of pairs of breeches, a woollen doublet and a tangle of limp and lifeless hose. She smiled, lifted out one of the shirts, held it to her face, then replaced it tenderly back in the trunk.

She swept the floor of each room, then went back downstairs and sat at the table. It was very quiet.

She sighed.

Yesterday already seemed unreal and distant. Her life at the Castello had ended so abruptly, snuffed out like a smoking candle.

Everything had happened so quickly.

The expression on the duke's face as he had burst into the Signora's chamber—Catelina shuddered. She had quite genuinely thought he might be about to kill them both. He had seemed—she struggled to find the words to describe it—as though he were
possessed
, haunted by something. Those great dark eyes of his had been stretched wide and he had been trembling so that Catelina had been able to see it from the other side of the room.

***

She
stands
shivering
in
the
antechamber, listening to him shout at her poor mistress, then he bangs out of the room, stops in front of her and tells her to leave the Castello this very night. If she values her continued existence, he says. She does not think she will ever forget the look on his face as he says those words. Then he kicks the dog out of the way and whirls off in a flurry of flapping coat and clinking metal. The poor thing just stands with its tail between its legs, ears drooping like wilted cabbage leaves
.

When
she
peers
back
into
the
bedchamber, the Signora is standing there, chalk-white, staring at nothing. A tear is trickling down her cheek; she does not brush it away, but leaves it to fall. It catches at the corner of her mouth and clings there. “I'm so sorry, Lina,” she says. “Where will you go?”

Catelina
bites
her
lip. “I don't know, my lady. Back to Mugello, perhaps, to my mother.”

Her
mistress
holds
out
her
arms
and
they
hug
each
other
close. Catelina is crying too, by this time, but she thinks she hears the Signora say, “You'll be safely away, Lina. We'll be able to go, after all.” Her voice is muffled with tears though, so Catelina wonders if she is mistaken
.

It
does
not
take
her
long
to
pack
her
things: her two spare dresses, a couple of shifts, a pair of shoes, a few trinkets she has collected over the months she has been at the Castello. It all fits comfortably in the basket the Signora took into the town with Jacomo
.

They
stand
back
from
the
packing. Catelina feels suddenly awkward. She says, “I'll go to Giorgio, my lady. He'll ride with me to Mugello, if he is allowed the time away.”

“Lina…”

“No, my lady—I'll just go. Don't come down with me. It will make it worse.” She pauses then, her words catching in her throat, and then blurts out, “Be safe, my lady. Don't let him hurt you.”

And
after
one
more
fierce
hug, she grabs the basket and runs from the room, down through the castle and up to the stable block, where she finds Giorgio sitting on a mounting block, cleaning a harness with a horsehair scrubbing-pad
.

“Lina! What is it? Why are you crying?” he says
.

There
is
no
point
in
pretending. She tells him
.

“Dismissed?” He stands up, scrubbing-pad dripping in one hand. “But I don't understand. You…but why? What could you have done to—”

She
tries
to
explain
.

“What will you do, Lina? Where will you go?”

She
shrugs
.

“Don't go anywhere,” he says then, dropping the scrubbing-pad and the piece of harness and hugging her. “Stay here, with me. I have rooms in town.”

***

Now Catelina sat in Giorgio's cramped downstairs room and thought how shocked she had been at the impropriety of his suggestion. “But, Giorgio, how can I?” she had said. “We're not married!”

“That can be arranged,” he had said, very seriously.

Catelina picked up the basket containing her few belongings and carried it upstairs. She hesitated, unsure in which of the two rooms she should leave her things. Deciding upon the smaller, unused room as less presumptuous, she took out her dresses, shifts, shoes and trinkets, and put them all neatly on the bed.

She took the basket back downstairs, picked up the coins Giorgio had given her, and, swinging her cloak over her shoulders, she set out for the centre of the city in search of food.

She bought a rabbit at the little butcher's in the Via delle Volte, some vegetables, salad leaves, a large bunch of grapes and a head of garlic from a stall in the Corso, and a flagon of ale from a small shop in the next street. That last purchase took her to within sight of the Castello; she stared at its heavy red-brick bulk, wondering what was happening within those walls, not knowing quite what she should be thinking.

Her basket was bulging and heavy as she made her way back to the little house in the Via Vecchie, pleased with her purchases. It had taken her some moments to reach the street—she had made two wrong turns before she recognized the brightly painted armourer's shop at the end of the road—and by the time she turned the corner and could see Giorgio's front door, she was tired and longing to sit down.

She had gone some two or three steps down the street when she heard a sound like an animal in distress. A low, guttural moaning. She looked about her but could see nothing. It came again, a little louder. Catelina moved towards where the sound had come from, and her scalp contracted in shock. A girl, filthy and dishevelled, eyes tightly closed, was slumped in an untidy heap in a dark alcove between two houses.

Catelina put down her basket, stepped forward and crouched in front of her. “Can you hear me?” she said softly.

There was no response. She reached forward with trembling fingers and stroked the girl's hair back from her face. “Signorina, can you hear me?” she said again, and this time the girl opened her eyes. She moved position, and Catelina saw that her belly was hugely distended: the strings holding her filthy bodice together were loosened to their utmost.

“Here, let me help you to stand,” Catelina said.

The girl lifted her arm and Catelina took her hand. As she steadied herself to take the girl's weight, she heard her suck in a ragged breath. The girl gripped Catelina's fingers so tightly she feared they might break, and then the guttural moaning came again. For maybe a minute, the girl sat hunched over her belly, clinging to Catelina's hand, and then her hold relaxed. “I'm sorry,” she said, hoarsely, panting as though she had been running.

“Come on, try to stand. I'll not let you fall.”

She pulled the girl to her feet. Her dress was filthy, her face streaked with dirt and tears; the great belly protruded incongruously. Catelina wiped the girl's face with the edge of her sleeve, and tried to sweep some of the dirt from her clothes. Turning her around, intending to brush down her shoulders, she saw that the back of the creased and crumpled skirt was sodden, encrusted with the dust in which she had been sitting.

“Is this—oh, God, has it started?” Catelina said, appalled.

“I…I think so.”

“Well,” she said, “you had better come with me, hadn't you? You need to lie down.”

She picked up the basket, took the girl's arm and together, step by faltering step, they walked the last few yards to Giorgio's house.