His Last Duchess (28 page)

***

She must have slept in the end, although she knew she had seen the beginnings of the dawn. It seemed only moments later that her eyes snapped open, as suddenly as though she had been shaken awake. It was bright outside and the sun was high. Hours must have passed. Any sense of repose vanished and the cold weight of dread pressed back upon her again. She could hardly bear to think about what might have happened while she had been sleeping.

She dragged off her night shift and put on the chemise she had worn the day before. Throwing back the lid of a painted chest so that it banged against the wall, she grabbed from it a blue bodice and skirt. Her fingers were shaking so badly that the skirt almost fell from her grasp twice as she tried to fasten it, but she rough-laced the bodice and pushed her arms into the already fastened sleeves, fighting to get it down over her head with hands that felt like empty gloves.

She heard movement in the next room. There was a knock on the door and one of her waiting-women came in. The girl's eyes widened as she saw her mistress's struggles. “My lady—?”

“I—I…er…” Lucrezia could think of nothing to say.

“May I help you, Signora?” the young woman said. She was small and dark, and Lucrezia did not think she had seen the girl before. Since Catelina's departure, her waiting-women had seemed inconsequential and uninteresting, and she rarely spoke to them more than basic civility demanded.

“Thank you,” she said now. “If you could please help me to fasten this.” She turned her back, presenting the badly laced bodice. With quick, capable fingers, the girl straightened and tightened it; as the bodice pulled snugly around her chest, Lucrezia could feel her heartbeat thudding against it, and wondered if the girl would actually be able to see her body shaking.

Trying to keep her voice calm, she said, “I have slept longer than I meant to. I shall go up to the roof garden, and enjoy the sunshine.” A trip that would take her past the Entrance Hall.

“Yes, my lady.”

Lucrezia could feel the girl's eyes upon her as she left the apartment. Irritated with herself—why had she felt the need to explain her movements?—she walked as slowly as she could along the corridor, but once round the corner, she broke into a scrambling run. Almost falling, her skirts bunched in her fists, she took the stairs two at a time, skidding as she turned a sharp corner into the long passage. Her shoulder banged against the wall and she stumbled. She forced herself to a walk again and went as quickly as she dared towards where she prayed Jacomo would be at work on the portrait.

The sunlight in the Entrance Hall was dazzling as Lucrezia left the gloom of the passage, and for a second she could see nothing. Then, up on the landing, she saw him. Some feet away from the reverend brother, he was crouching on one knee, brows creased in concentration, one paintbrush in his hand and another between his teeth. Lucrezia let out a strangled sob of relief and stepped back into the shadows. She dared not let Jacomo see her—if he smiled at her now, she was quite certain she would cry.

A few moments in the Roof Garden, she thought, would settle her disquiet to the point where she could return to the Entrance Hall without fear of betraying herself in front of Fra Pandolf.

She had to find a way to speak to Jacomo.

They had to leave the Castello today.

The sun was warm on the red brick as she walked out into the Roof Garden. Crossing the enclosed square, she put her hands on the wall and gazed down at the street below through one of the tiny windows. Tears swelled in the corners of her eyes, and through the glaze of salt water, the people she saw appeared to dip and dance surprisingly merrily as they went their way about their unknown business.

Lucrezia stood thus unmoving, her head on her arm, for several minutes, allowing her racing pulse to settle. Then, breathing in slowly, she turned, determining to return to the Entrance Hall and to Jacomo. She had not taken more than a step, however, when she heard feet on the stairs.

Alfonso strode into the sunshine, a hand held up to shade his eyes.

Lucrezia felt a sob puckering in her throat.

“Good!” Alfonso said. “You are here. Your waiting-woman said you would be. You confessed to a lack of skill in the saddle yesterday, Lucrezia. I shall take you riding this morning.”

He did not appear to be offering her any choice in the matter, and had apparently observed neither her tears nor her agitation. She looked back at him, but said nothing.

Alfonso took her hand and strode back towards the stairs. “You will need to change your clothes. We can go to your chambers now, and you can ready yourself for riding. Perhaps you should eat before you go, too—we might be some time.”

They returned to Lucrezia's apartment without passing the Entrance Hall.

***

Lucrezia somehow endured the day. By sunset she was exhausted. Alfonso had stayed at her side since the morning, still strangely energetic and vivid. He seemed, Lucrezia thought, quite consumed with a twitching, febrile vivacity, entirely unlike his usual dignified demeanour.

The hours had passed in a blur of anxiety and tiredness. Lack of sleep had made Lucrezia's eyes gritty and she had no appetite for the meals Alfonso had had prepared for the two of them. She still did not understand. Never in the two years of their marriage had he been solicitous like this—never had he seemed to take such an interest in her everyday well-being. His anger of two days previously seemed to have evaporated entirely. Lucrezia supposed that an onlooker might have said that her husband was behaving impeccably, but she still felt profoundly uneasy.

The day drew to a close; daylight began to drop and all over the Castello candles and torches were lit as the sun set.

“I have a brief visit to make, Lucrezia,” Alfonso said, not long after the great red ball had sunk below the city's roofscape. “I shall return a little later.”

Lucrezia was unable to speak for the wild thudding of her heart in her throat as Alfonso picked up a candle and left the room. Black fears for Jacomo's safety screeched in her head, though she dared not set out to warn him, not knowing how long Alfonso would be away, terrified that were she wrong in her surmise, she might unwittingly draw his attention to her lover and cause Jacomo's destruction by the very act of trying to keep him safe.

She paced her rooms, walking between bedchamber and studio for the best part of an hour, breathing in jerky, agitated gasps and twining her fingers around each other as though she meant to twist them right off. Despite her terror, though, fatigue at last overwhelmed her, and she decided to undress. Preferring not to call for one of her ladies, she unfastened and removed her jewellery, then managed to unlace her bodice. She eased it off, unhooked her skirt and stepped out of its heavy folds. Then she pulled off her chemise, dragged her night shift over her head, and with trembling fingers, undid the plaits in her hair and shook it loose.

Feeling sick, she sat on the end of her bed, but stood up again almost immediately, hearing footsteps and the clicking of claws.

The door opened with a soft scrape as it caught against the floor and Alfonso appeared.

He was carrying a bottle of wine and two silver cups.

The sounds of the street outside pushed their way into the downstairs room as Catelina shifted the baby into the crook of her elbow, opened the front door and stood back. Giorgio hitched Chiara's body more comfortably into his arms. Wrapped in a blanket, she was peaceful and pale, and her head lay on his broad shoulder as though she slept.

“Can you really carry her all that way, Giorgio?”

“She weighs almost nothing, poor little thing.”

“Jacomo and Giovanni will meet you at the back drawbridge, they said.”

Francesca stood up. “I'll walk with you, Giorgio,” she said. The twins were sitting on stools by the fire, staring at Giorgio and his burden with round-eyed fascination. Between them lay a nanny goat, its legs neatly curled under it, eyes closed against the heat of the embers. “Bella, Beata, listen,” Francesca said. “You stay here with Catelina and the baby. I may not be able to come back here until the morning.”

The children nodded.

“Thank you,” Francesca said to Catelina. “I'll be back as soon as I can.”

Catelina brushed the top of the baby's head with her lips and nodded.

***

Despite Giorgio's apprehensions, no one paid any attention to the little group as they made their way up towards the Castello. He felt the chill weight of the dead girl in his arms, and shivered at the thought of what lay ahead.

“
Santo
cielo—
I cannot believe I am doing this,” he said, more to himself than to Francesca.

Francesca took his arm, and Giorgio looked down at her. “She's heavier than I expected,” he said, resettling Chiara's body higher up his chest.

“Can you manage?”

“We're nearly there.” They rounded the front of the cathedral and saw the square bulk of the Castello, black against the darkening sky. Francesca pointed.

“There they are.”

Two figures moved out of a blot of shadow and began to walk towards them.

When Alfonso entered her bedchamber, Lucrezia was clad in her night shift, her hair loose about her shoulders. She was wide-eyed and wary as he approached, but perhaps, he thought, their last nocturnal tryst rendered that particular response somewhat predictable.

He was surprised to find himself quite calm as he contemplated her nervous anxiety, as from the moment he had taken the decision to end the agony of this benighted marriage, he had felt more vividly alive and energetic than at any other time since Lucrezia's arrival at the Castello. Restless and fretful throughout both days, he had been astonished to find himself taking what seemed, after all that had gone before, a perverse enjoyment in his wife's company. She was, conversely, subdued and taciturn, though for some reason this quietude only served to excite his new volatility. Alfonso found, however, that now that the moment had come—now that he actually, physically held in his hands the means to a complete and irrevocable conclusion—his inner tumult was assuaged. He faced his duchess with an unprecedented sense of serenity.

He put the bottle and the cups on the table next to the bed, then leaned against the carved bedpost, watching Lucrezia all the while. She made no comment, but held his gaze.

“I thought we might make another attempt at conceiving the heir to the duchy, Lucrezia,” he said.

Her face twitched, but she still said nothing.

“I had thought about trying again last night.” This was a lie: Alfonso was well aware that he had had absolutely no intention of laying even a finger on Lucrezia until tonight. “But I could see that you were tired, and I had no wish to distress you. It occurred to me,” he added, “that having had—I hope—a restful night's sleep, you might be able to approach the prospect with a little more enthusiasm than you did before. Perhaps a fine wine might render the attempt more palatable to you this time.”

Alfonso poured wine into each of the two cups; a prickle of anticipation shivered across his scalp as he saw the spoonful of golden liquid already in the bottom of one of the two. Having filled it, he handed that cup to Lucrezia, who took it from him, frowning.

“I do not normally take wine at this hour, Alfonso,” she said.

Blood pulsed loud in his ears. If she refused…He did not care to coerce, he thought—it was offensive to his sense of dignity. She had to choose to drink.

“Perhaps the novelty will prove entertaining,” he said.

Lucrezia did not look convinced, but nonetheless raised the cup to her lips and sipped. Alfonso waited, drinking from his own goblet, and Lucrezia took another mouthful.

There was, he realised, one more element needed to complete the scene. As Lucrezia raised her cup again, he reached for the rosewood box on the bedside table and brought out the string of garnets. She made no comment but gave a soft sigh, and Alfonso saw her shoulders droop, as though in resignation. He handed her the Red Rope. She lifted the stones and wound them around her throat herself, sliding the string each time under the bulk of her hair. Alfonso watched her breasts move beneath the loose shift as her hands worked behind her head; her nipples showed dark against the thin fabric.

He pictured the key that Panizato had unknowingly given him out on the heath—pictured it so clearly that he could almost feel its cold iron in his hand. It turned in the lock and the door to the final shadowed room clicked open. On the far wall in the final room was the mirror. The cracks, distortions and taints on the glass, which had distorted the reflection for so long, were beginning to clear and the perfect image, for which Alfonso knew he still hungered, was re-emerging.

He sat on the bed near Lucrezia and put his own cup on the table. He leaned towards her, hoping this time, rather than dreading, that her desire to repulse him would encourage her to drink. And, indeed, she drew back from him and said, “In a moment, Alfonso. I should like a little more wine first. It was a sensible idea of yours to bring it.”

Her voice sounded stilted and unnatural, though perhaps, Alfonso surmised, this was already due to the effects of Signor Carolei's concoction. Lucrezia drank deeply from her cup and replaced it, almost empty now, upon the table.

Alfonso found then that he could not look at her. He got up and walked from the bedside to the window. The moon was a few days from the full and seemed to him somehow misshapen and imperfect, flattened along its lower edge. A few hours before, he had seen it hanging near the horizon: huge, flat and a pale pinkish gold. Now risen, shrunk and silvered, it lit the city streets with a brightness not far from that of day, and, as he looked down, he saw that it was reflected too in the oily blackness of the moat. He stared at the wobbling silver disc in the water for several moments until he was startled by a soft “Oh!” and a whimper of distress from behind him. He could not turn around, but his fingers gripped the window-sill and he closed his eyes, wishing he could as easily stopper his ears.

When at last he found the courage to turn into the room and look at the duchess, she was sprawled untidily across the bed. Her shift had rucked high, exposing her legs and the jut of her hipbone. Her face was pale, the freckles dark below the tangled mass of her hair, and her mouth had opened. A hint of a frown had creased between her brows as though in annoyance, though Alfonso surmised that the cause must in fact have been pain.

He could see no breath. No movement. No life.

It was done. He had silenced her.

He sat back down near her. Pushing his hand beneath the rucked linen of her shift, his fingers touched one small breast: already chill, veined a delicate blue like malleable marble. She was no more than a soft statue. Her cold curves slid comfortably under the warmth of his cupped palm as he ran his hand over her skin, and he wondered at its exquisite unresponsiveness.

Looking down at her now, he saw at last the image for which he had longed for so many months. She was beautiful, he thought. In this breathless silence she was truly beautiful. The perfect reflection had finally been restored and the glass was again quite flawless. He knew that at last he would be able to claim her completely, gain untainted admittance to this creature whose very vitality and spontaneity had in life so diminished and crushed him. It would happen only once, he knew. But that would be enough. Complete possession.

A greed for her now grew within him and he found himself stiffening as he contemplated the accomplishment of an act whose very nature he had scarcely been able to admit, even to himself. He had until this moment locked it away and relished his awareness of its clandestine presence at the fringes of his consciousness; had frequently enjoyed toying with an idea that at once entranced and appalled him.

He imagined his warm flesh contained within her chill stillness and his skin crawled.

He could wait no longer. A terrifying sense of trespass into dangerous territory constricted his breath, but as he unfastened the lacing of his doublet, he knew that it was all still perfect. No fear of the exquisite image being shattered as it had been so many times before.

He wanted to take off her shift. He slid each heavy arm from its sleeve, then pushed his hand around and under her back, intending to lift her and free the linen from beneath her body. He had to bend close to her, but found he could not look at her face as he did so.

A sense of the imminence of the approaching moment of consummation ballooned in his head.

He threw the chemise to the floor as he laid the duchess back on the pillows. Her head drooped slackly to one side and her hair fell away from her face. In this flawless stasis she was entrancing, and at last he looked at her features.

And then he saw it.

A single tear, which must have gathered some moments before in the corner of her eye, spilled over as he watched. It ran slowly down the side of her cheek and slid towards the tangled hair.

Alfonso froze.

In the event, the perfect image did not shatter.

It dissolved.

It dissolved and the dream was destroyed.

Bile rose in Alfonso's throat and he pressed a hand across his mouth. From the start he had known his dream to be profane—
wicked—
but its glamour and terrible beauty had sustained him…he had
needed
it…he had wrapped himself in its hell-spun folds for months, preening himself in it, ignoring its implications and relishing the comfort it offered him. But staring now at the little figure on the bed, he began to shrivel; the great swollen bubble of his monstrous self-absorption was punctured, and as it deflated, leaking its horrible contents around him, he felt himself dwindling, shrinking, wizening.

He could no longer bear to see her. A blanket. He wanted to cover her. Without touching her. He dropped the blanket over her; she seemed to be sleeping. He should feel reassured, he thought, but at once a whining need to see her wake began insistently inside his head. He wanted to shake her—but no. To do that, he would have to lay hands on her.

Lines from Catullus that he had known since childhood came into his mind, so horribly apt; his mouth formed the words without his seeming to choose them.
Odi
et
amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requires. Nescio, sed fieri sentio ad excurcior
. I hate and I love: why I do so you may well ask. I do not know, but I feel it happen and am in agony.

Unable to stop himself, Alfonso looked again at Lucrezia's face. That tear still clung to her cheek, its track glistening in a line towards her hair. He straightened, reached forward and, with a finger, wiped away its last trace. He touched the finger to his lips and tasted salt. Nausea wrapped itself around his head, muffling and smothering, and for a moment he thought he would fall. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the bedpost until the worst of it had passed. He had to get out. The inside of his head was inflating and he began to fear it would crack his skull as it expanded.

He picked up the candlestick—but as soon replaced it next to the bed. He did not want to leave Lucrezia in the dark.

Everything was silent. He backed towards the door, reached behind him, groped for the handle and pulled the door open. The lower edge caught with a scrape against the floor. He took another step backwards and his foot bumped against Folletto's side. With a grunt, the dog started, scrabbled to his feet and nosed Alfonso's hand—cold, wet, insistent. Alfonso stood still: the tremor that had begun at the sight of that tear was now shaking his entire body. He pulled his hand away from the probing muzzle.

Folletto lifted his head and howled. Sitting back on his haunches, nose to the ceiling, he let out a long and unearthly noise.

Alfonso froze.

His heart raced and his breath caught cold in his throat.

“
Stai
zitto!
” he hissed. “Stop it! Someone will hear you.” He wrapped his hands around Folletto's muzzle, but the wolfhound pulled away from his grasp.

The noise continued.

Howling for the dead.

Alfonso grabbed the animal's head, tried to smother the noise in his doublet, but the cries went on, echoing along the stones of the corridor.

“
Stai
zitto!
Someone will hear.”

Hardly aware of what he did, Alfonso put his arm around the dog's head; he pushed down hard with one hand upon its back. Then, Folletto's muzzle in the crook of his other elbow, he jerked upwards and back. There was a cracking sound.

The noise stopped.

For a second, Folletto hung from Alfonso's hands, which were wet with the dog's saliva. Alfonso retched and released his grip. The great black body slumped to the floor and was still.

The door to Lucrezia's chamber was still open, and in the candlelight Alfonso saw her lying unmoving beneath her crimson blanket. He backed away, wiping his palm against the leg of his breeches.