His Last Duchess (21 page)

The little peregrine snapped her dark wings open and flapped them irritably; underneath, the feathers were the same soft, freckled cream as the plumage on her breast. Alfonso felt the yellow talons grip the thumb of his gauntlet as he fastened the thin red straps of the jesses to the metal ring at the end of the leash; he wound the leash around the fourth and fifth fingers of his gloved hand. The falcon ducked and dipped her head in an effort to avoid the hood he now held out—her wings flapped open again and she bated. But, fastened as she was to his hand, she could do little to avoid it, and in an instant she was blindfolded and calmed, and sat suddenly quiet in her enforced darkness, the terrible pale beak curving out from under the scarlet kid of the hood. Alfonso drew the strings close around her head, pulling one with his right hand and holding the other taut with his teeth. His face came within inches of the dagger-sharp beak, but the peregrine sat still now, in blind dignity, and took no notice.

Alfonso stretched his left arm towards the falcon's tall wooden block. Tilting his fist, he encouraged her to stand down, off his hand and onto the block so that, hawking glove held by its tassel between his teeth, he could use both hands to fasten the little hunting bells onto her legs. He had always found these tiny straps too delicate to tie successfully one-handed.

“Are you nearly ready with that peregrine, Este?”

Francesco Panizato sounded amused, Alfonso thought. He knew that his friend took little care over these preparations, preferring to leave them to his—or Alfonso's own—falconer. For himself, though, Alfonso found that much of the pleasure he took in hawking came from the time he spent with his birds, preparing them for work. This one, Strega—the witch—had always been his favourite. Wild-caught, she had been an instinctive bird since she was in the down, and now she could wait-on higher than any other falcon he had come across; she regularly brought back more game than he felt he had the right to expect from any bird. He was looking forward to seeing her fly that afternoon.

“You know perfectly well that you cannot hurry a bird, Francesco,” Alfonso said, leaving the falconry at last. “It will not serve you well if it resents your haste.”

He held his free arm up and across his eyes as the June sun dazzled after the gloom of the almost windowless stone shed. Strega sensed the light, even through the hood, and turned her head away from the glare.

Panizato was mounted; his pale, hooded goshawk bobbed her head angrily and shifted her grip on his glove. “Like women, eh, Este?” He laughed. “If you ask me, you spend more time attending to that bird's needs than you do your wife's.”

Suppressing a shudder, Alfonso thought of the previous night and made no reply.

“Am I to understand by your scowl, sir, that I scored a valid touch there with the very tip of my rapier?” Panizato persisted. “Perhaps you should employ some of your falconer's techniques with your duchess, Alfonso, teach her not to bate—”

“You go too far, Panizato.”

Alfonso saw the laughter die in his friend's eyes; Panizato had the grace to look abashed.
Teach
her
not
to
bate
. Alfonso heard the words again in his head and was gripped by an arresting image. It was not of Lucrezia that he thought, though, but of Francesca: wild, vicious and very like his Strega.

Francesca had been angry with him today, he knew, and their noontide assignation had been wordless, humourless and physical. But as he looked with pride now at his peregrine, who, though daily given a sky in which to roam, would always return to him, he knew that he held his whore, too, in bonds stronger than jesses, leash and lure. It seemed to Alfonso at that moment that Francesca might, perhaps, be all that stood between him and madness. He forced a smile.

“Perhaps you are right, Francesco,” he said. “Perhaps the falconer's skills might be gainfully employed in the bedchamber, though I think it—
perhaps—
beyond the remit of our friendship for you to suggest it to me quite so disrespectfully.”

“I stand chided, Alfonso.” Panizato held up his free hand in apology.

Alfonso took Farfalla's reins from the horseman and handed him the peregrine as he mounted. The horseman lifted the falcon back onto his hand, and Alfonso and Panizato left the yard, their two dogs trotting at their heels, heading for the hunting ground that lay outside the main walls of the old city, where it had stood since Alfonso's great-grandfather Ercole had planned it, ordered its construction and enjoyed it until his dying day. Alfonso had frequently had occasion to bless the old man's energy and enthusiasm and often wished he had known him.

They jogged in silence for some moments, and Alfonso found his mind filled again with Lucrezia. When they had first met in Mugello, he reflected, he had seen his future duchess as a perfect image in a flawless mirror. Since their marriage, though, each forcible reminder of her failure to live up to the exquisite reflection he so longed to possess had damaged the mirror's surface: cracked it, chipped and distorted it until ultimately he found himself wholly unable even to glimpse the reflection he had seen at the start.

He had been so sure of success last night. So determined. But now that he was certain Lucrezia knew about His Holiness's intentions, now that he knew she stood before him as a potential agent of the destruction of all he held so dear, she was not only more unreachable than ever, but dangerous. It was not so much that he could no longer see her in the glass, it was more that the cracks and distortions were now twisting the image until it resembled nothing so much as a laughing, tormenting little fiend.

To his shame, though, he knew that he still wanted her as much as ever. As a man bent upon self-slaughter might gaze at the jewelled dagger with which he means to stop his own heart, and, in a last moment of unexpected stillness, find its craftsmanship irresistibly beautiful, Alfonso knew he still longed to possess Lucrezia. He had to have her. He had thought last night that if he reinvented the image—tried to force himself to see his duchess as nothing more than a whore—he might somehow break down the inexplicable barriers that still stood so resolutely between them. But—humiliatingly—his plan had been entirely unsuccessful.

It had been exhausting, undignified, ugly—and a complete failure. The hunting party reached open ground, and Alfonso and Panizato both broke into a fast canter. After a while they stopped, tethered the horses in the shade of some trees, and walked away from the cover onto higher ground. Both dogs—Folletto and Panizato's hound, Lontra—raced away from them across the heath.

There was a strong breeze. Alfonso was pleased: he knew Strega liked to feel the wind beneath her—it seemed to give her courage, entice her higher into the air. At times, he thought, his little falcon seemed to be waiting-on in the very clouds themselves.

Over in the tops of the nearby trees were the ragged twig-ends of a number of rook nests. If he was lucky today, he might get Strega to pull a couple of rooks. There would be no game on the heath at this time of year, so he had brought a lure in his hawking bag and would at least be able to let Strega stretch her wings and lose some weight—no bird has much of an appetite for hunting without an edge of hunger.

He and Panizato took the hoods off their birds. Both the peregrine and the goshawk blinked in the light and looked around them, sizing up the terrain they now saw. Panizato's bird, Foschia, was, Alfonso thought, a moody, difficult creature, and he doubted that his friend would succeed with her that day. A creature like Foschia needed endless time and the patient repetition of instructions if she were ever to become more reliable. Francesco's excitable, energetic nature was too exuberant for hawking, Alfonso thought.

He released the jesses from the leash and Strega immediately pushed down with her feet and soared from his arm, spiralling up and up, until she was no more than a motionless speck in the vivid blue. Foschia, too, took off, but flew in sweeping arcs some few feet from the tussocky grass. Panizato appeared unconcerned at her lack of height, however—he turned to Alfonso and spoke. “Has your cousin returned from France yet?”

“No, not until August.”

“Does he know of the—er—situation, with regard to the titles?”

“Not yet. It is not the sort of information I feel I should trust to a letter.”

“No. I can see that. Rather delicate. And no—er—progress?”

Alfonso knew he was referring to Lucrezia's potential fecundity and could not trust himself to do more than shake his head.
The
lack
of
issue
is
not
yet
a
catastrophe
. But how long would it be before it was? The future stretched ahead: a desolate, endless road filled with a thousand unseen potholes.

There was a long and awkward silence. Then Francesco spoke again, rather obviously making an effort to change the subject. “I need to know when the land committee will be meeting again, Alfonso.”

“Not before the end of the month. Why?”

“I have several testimonials to prepare, and I find I shall have to be away from Ferrara for a week or so,” he said, “so I shall have to make sure everything is completed before I go.”

“Away?” Alfonso was surprised.

“My mother has been ailing, and…I received a letter from her this morning, asking me to come and see her. I believe from what she tells me that she is on her way back to health, but she rarely asks for me, and I think I should go.”

“Yes, of course you should.”

“I plan to take her something to ease her sleep. She is far too proud to ask, but she admits in her letter that she is wakeful at night, and I think she is troubled by disturbing dreams when she does manage to sleep.”

A problem, Alfonso thought, with which he was all too familiar. “Is there anything you wish me to do, Francesco?” he said.

“Yes, actually. Recommend me a decent apothecary. That scoundrel Corelei, in the Via Fondobanchetto, is as like to sell me a fatal hemlock brew as to aid me in easing my mother's restless nights. He seems a veritable villain.”

“Alessandro Giglio serves the Castello and has always seemed to me both capable and honest. I will speak to him for you.” Alfonso gave his friend the answer he sought, and Panizato saw nothing unusual, but Alfonso's mind was suddenly reeling and he felt close to falling. The words he had spoken echoed in his head as though his ears were blocked, and colour began to drain from what he saw before him.

Francesco had unwittingly handed him the key to the silent door at the end of the shadowed corridor in his mind's maze. The door through which he knew he should never allow himself to go. Now, though, with the key in his hand, he would find it all but impossible to resist.

He knew all too well what lay within that room. In contemplating it, he felt winded and the seconds that followed hung frozen, as he imagined the unthinkable.

It would bring an end to it all.

But, afraid of letting his discomfiture show, he pulled himself back to Panizato and the heath. The two dogs were loping back towards him. Folletto had a rabbit in his jaws; there was blood around his mouth.

Alfonso pulled the lure from the bag. Looping the long tether across his hand, over and over, he swung the rook-winged bundle.

Strega dived.

He watched her streak down, slicing through the air in search of the lure—which he then swung wide to tempt her off her straight course. His little witch held fast to her aim and caught the lure in her talons in an instant. She hit the ground some few yards from where he and Panizato stood, and he threw her a dead pigeon by way of reward.

Lucrezia sat in the dark a dozen steps up from the bottom of the Torre San Paolo, wrinkling her nose at the musty smell. Her heart beat fast in her throat. She waited what seemed an age and then heard footsteps approaching. She stood up. Jacomo was running by the time he reached the first step and knocked right into her as she hurried down to meet him. He caught her in his arms to stop her falling and then, with a soft noise of longing, he kissed her mouth.

Lucrezia pulled back. “No! Not here—quick, let's go to the roof, like you said.”

It was a long, long way up. Lucrezia's heart was thudding against her ribs by the time they reached the dim little room at the top of the tower.

“Where now?” she said, her chest heaving.

“Up there,” Jacomo said, pointing to another flight of some half-dozen wooden steps. Lucrezia climbed them and turned the big iron handle of the door at the top. It would not move. Jacomo edged past and shoved the door with the full force of his shoulder. It gave, and he stumbled forward as it swung open. He scrambled back onto his feet and stood back to let Lucrezia through first, followed her, then pushed the door to behind him.

Pulling her into his arms, he began to kiss her again. It seemed to Lucrezia as though they sought to unify their bodies into one single being—as though by kissing they gave to each other their life's breath. They moved, in their tight, awkward, wordless embrace, across the room—Lucrezia was walking backwards—until she felt the chill of the wall behind her.

Jacomo put his hands under her arms and lifted her, and it took only seconds to pull her heavy skirts out of the way so that she could wrap her legs around his waist. With one arm encircling her, and pressing her against the wall to hold her up, he snatched at his own clothes with his free hand.

It was rough and frantic, and the unplastered wall caught against Lucrezia's back and head, but she hardly noticed the discomfort. No more than a few moments later, she gripped Jacomo's shirt and turned her face into his hair to muffle a cry she could not prevent, as what felt like a great fist clenched itself inside her. Jacomo let out a long, slow, shivering breath and stood still, holding her more tightly, supporting her weight between his body and the wall.

They stayed like this for several long moments. That first time, Lucrezia thought, their loving had been carefree and joyful; they had relished taking their time to explore and discover each other in every way they could. Today was different. They had between them created a need for each other that was now consuming them, overwhelming them, blotting out everything around them. Quenching that raging thirst would take more than a few moments' desperate embrace in the face of danger—but it was now no longer a matter of choice. Desire had become necessity.

She stood down on the floor once more and put her arms around Jacomo, breathing hard and resting her face against his shoulder. He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. A few moments later they sat down on the rough-hewn wooden boards of the tower room, pressed close to each other, Jacomo's arm lying warm and heavy around Lucrezia's shoulders.

Neither spoke for several minutes.

Then Jacomo said, “So he wants a portrait now, does he?”

“I think he sees it as a way to control me. But I don't care any more. In fact, I am beginning to think it's a perfect idea. Listen!”

She moved out from under Jacomo's arm and sat on her heels, her dress rumpled and rucked around her. Holding both his hands in hers, she said, “Paint him a portrait of me, Jacomo. Make it beautiful—make it a portrait of a woman made beautiful by love. Give him a beautiful, lifeless work of art—that's all he's ever wanted me to be—an image of beauty confined and controlled by him. And then, once you've given him what he has wanted all this time, you can take from him the person he has never understood and never really wanted at all. And
I
will know what
he
will never understand: that I was in fact made beautiful in my portrait by love of
you—
not him.”

All the bitterness and anger that had seethed in her since Alfonso had dismissed Catelina and subjected her to such indignities rose like bile. Jacomo's gaze flicked from one of her eyes to the other. He frowned. “What happened last night? Were you telling me the truth? Did he hurt you?”

“I told you—he did not strike me,” Lucrezia repeated dully.

“Lucrezia…”

She shook her head. She did not want to speak of Alfonso—not after the fierce joy of what she and Jacomo had just shared.

But he persisted. “Something happened last night, didn't it? What did he do?”

Lucrezia turned away from him, unwilling to describe the terrible night she had spent. She hung her head, inexplicably ashamed. “I don't know how to tell you,” she whispered. “It was horrible. I did try to stop him, Jacomo. I didn't want him to touch me.” She wiped her eyes. “He didn't actually manage to…but…but he…”

She could not finish her sentence.

Jacomo looked stricken for a second, then pulled Lucrezia towards him. She felt his hand cup the back of her head, holding it against his shoulder; with the other arm he drew her in close to his chest. A rush of love for him, beyond anything she had yet felt, swept through her and she clung to him, as she remembered clinging to her mother as a tiny child. The tears she had held back began to fall, and she found herself sobbing. Her voice distorted with crying, she told him everything: the loss of Catelina, her fear at Alfonso's wild anger, her terror and shame at what had happened after his return to the Castello the previous night.

Jacomo's arms were warm around her. He held her without speaking until she had cried herself to silence.

***

Jacomo thought quickly. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this impossible situation, he knew for certain now that he would have to take Lucrezia with him when he left the Castello. His troubled conscience cleared. Married or not, he could not leave her here with that man—it was now unthinkable. The waiting-woman had already left the Castello and the fresco was only days from completion. But how long could they dare risk staying? How could he even contemplate another painting? What else, he thought, his stomach flipping uncomfortably, might that bastard do before they were safely away?

“Lucrezia,” he said, “after last night—we should go as soon as the fresco is finished. Forget the portrait.”

“No!”

He was surprised at how definite she sounded. “But—”

Lucrezia sniffed. “All those things we talked about before. There's the reverend brother—Alfonso will be sure to blame him if we run away before the portrait is done. You said yourself that he might. And—”

“I know what I said, but—”

She interrupted him: “And I don't think Alfonso will come near me again for a while.”

Jacomo was unconvinced.

“He usually stays away from me for days after an embarrassing ordeal like last night's.” Tears glistened again in Lucrezia's eyes. “I'm almost certain he won't try anything for at least a week.”

Jacomo made a disbelieving noise in his nose. He reached for Lucrezia's cheek and stroked it with his thumb. “I meant to tell you,” he said. “I had an idea for a change to the fresco—I'd almost forgotten.”

And he began to tell her about his plan. She sat staring at him as he spoke, nodding from time to time, the ghost of a smile flickering across her tear-blotched face. “It's so clever. It's a wonderful idea, Jacomo,” she said, as he finished. “I love it. Will you need any more drawings?”

“No. The image I want is fixed in my head.”

“And the portrait?” she said. “You have to do the portrait. I want it to be here after we leave. I want him to have to see it every day so that he won't be able to forget.”

As she spoke, Jacomo suddenly knew, with an exhilarating rush of inspiration, just how his portrait would be. “I'll paint you as Persephone,” he said, smiling.

“What do you mean?”

“You'll see—you'll have to wait.” He stood up, and held out a hand to help Lucrezia to her feet. She unfolded her legs and stood awkwardly, stiff from having sat so long in the same position. “Come on,
cara
,” he said. “We should go.”

Lucrezia said, “I shall have to see you often or I think I shall die.”

Jacomo wrapped his arms right around her again.

“I'll come to the gallery when I can,” Lucrezia said. “If I can arrange to see you, I'll try and find a way of telling you when and where.”

He smoothed her hair behind her ears. “Come at first light tomorrow—you'll be able to see the sketch before it disappears.”

“I'll try, I promise,” she said.

He led her to the top of the stairs. They went down the many steps, pausing before they reached the bottom.

“Stay there a moment,” Jacomo said quietly. He crept down the last few steps and peered out into the corridor. It was deserted. “Come on,” he said.

She followed quickly and, with one last kiss, she hurried away towards the Roof Garden, while Jacomo ran back to the North Hall.

***

The following morning, Jacomo reached the gallery a little after dawn. Fra Pandolf was still sleeping and Tomaso had been no more than an angular, hunched lump under his blankets when Jacomo had left the room. He had to get this drawing done, and cover it with the day's
intonaco
before the reverend brother came down to begin work. These sections would be the last of the great fresco, and, Jacomo thought, his silent gesture of defiance had to be made and hidden before it was too late.

He struggled up the spiral staircase with a heavy folding screen in his arms.

The
sinopia
had been cured and ready for some time and the many tiny marks made by the pounce charcoal were easily visible. But that morning Jacomo took a cloth, dipped it into a bucket of clean water and began to scrub them off the smooth surface. He wanted the plaster unmarked this morning.

While he waited for the water to dry, he mixed the day's
intonaco
in a big bucket and readied his pallet and trowel. He put the folding screen up behind him. It would give him, he thought, a little more privacy, but there was no time to waste and he wanted to be able to cover his subversive statement as soon as he could. It was not to be seen—only he and Lucrezia would ever know it was there, unless future inhabitants of the Castello ever decided to redo the fresco and take back the top layers of plaster, and then it would be uncovered and their secret defiance laid bare. Literally. Imagining the expressions on the faces of those unknown future castle decorators, Jacomo smiled to himself.

The image was clear in his mind as he mixed up a small pot of grey paint. He took a largish
riga
brush, wet it, sucked the bristles to a fine point and began to paint.

The identity of the two figures whose intimate and passionate embrace he now depicted on the wall was clear: the years he had spent before his apprenticeship, capturing likenesses in streets and taverns had served him well, he thought. Had the Signore approached him unawares at that moment, he would have been presented with such unequivocal evidence of his wife's infidelity that both Jacomo's and Lucrezia's lives would quite certainly have been instantly forfeit.

He finished his sketch and looked with longing at the image he had produced.

There was a sound of footsteps.

He froze.

If this were not Lucrezia, he had no chance of hiding the painting in time.

“Jacomo?”

He closed his eyes and let out the strangled breath he had gasped in. “Here—in here, quick!”

She appeared around the end of the screen and stopped. “Oh. Oh, Jacomo! It is—it is…oh, I'm so glad I was able to see it in time…”

“So am I.” He kissed her. Then, his mouth still on hers, he reached across and touched the paint with the tip of his finger. It was almost dry already: the
intonaco
could be laid on. He drew back from her.

“Can I help you? It will be quicker with two.”

“No—if you get dirty, we're finished. Stand back.”

He saw frustrated disappointment on her face, but she stood away from him as he scooped the plaster from the bucket onto the big square pallet.

“Wait,” Lucrezia murmured, as he raised his trowel to slice on the first arc of plaster. He waited, and she reached forward and gently laid her small hand flat on the painting, as if, Jacomo thought, in solemn benison.

Then she stood back and he began to layer on the
intonaco
. Within minutes, the painting had gone and a gleaming layer of pristine plaster glistened in the early sunlight.

This beautiful, triumphant, insolent depiction of covert infidelity was now—like the reality—hidden from all but the two of them.

Jacomo saw, too, with a frisson of pleasure, that the shadow of the folding screen was falling exactly where he wanted the new addition to the fresco to be placed—and that the effect was precisely as he had hoped it would be.

“I had better go before anyone sees me up here,” Lucrezia said then. Kissing him once more, she slipped behind the screen and left the gallery. Jacomo's whole body ached for her, but well aware that he needed to finish at least half of the new addition to the fresco that day, he told himself sternly that he had better stop daydreaming and concentrate on the task ahead of him.