His Last Duchess (5 page)

It had never happened before.

Never with any woman he had bedded in the past—not with the castle servants he had once “persuaded” to indulge him as a boy, not with the harlots he had paid for more adventurous activities as he grew up, not with the libidinous countess with whom he had tumbled for several years under the nose of her unintelligent husband, and certainly never with Francesca. Never.

The thought of his failure this evening frightened him. Accusations and misgivings whined in his head. What if it happened again? Now? Another time? Every time? Why had it happened earlier? What if—Alfonso swallowed uncomfortably and then spoke aloud to drown the doubts. “Take off your chemise, Lucrezia.”

He would not give it a chance to happen again.

Lucrezia said nothing, but knelt up on the mattress, crossed her arms in front of her and grasped the hem of her shift. In one fluid movement she pulled it over her head, and then sat back on her heels, her arms folded across her breasts, her eyes on his. His cock twitched.

Alfonso climbed onto the bed; he held her shoulders. She unfolded her legs and lay back. Compliant. He liked the word. Searched for another: obedient. He ran a hand up over her belly and onto her breast. She stiffened again as she had before. He felt as though he had a fever: his skin was burning but the flesh below it was chilled and shivering. He looked at Lucrezia's body. The perfect image. His to possess. His to enjoy. He slid one knee up and over her legs. The swollen heaviness in his groin tightened again. He moved her breast under his palm, then pushed his other hand downwards, between their two bodies.

Lucrezia sucked in a shuddering breath. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm so sorry if I…” Her voice cracked and died away.

At the sound of her voice, the softening began and, as it did so, a knot of anxiety tightened around his throat like a noose. Determined not to fail again, he closed his fingers more firmly on Lucrezia's breast. Too firmly: she made a small noise of distress and squirmed away from his grip.

It was like trying to stop water trickling away into sand. The tightness in his cock subsided. Retreated. Faded. Shrivelled. He closed his eyes, almost suffocated by a black drench of defeat and swore under his breath. He turned away and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her.

There was a long pause.

Lucrezia whispered, “Please—don't leave.”

“No,” he said, still facing away from her. “The servants would talk, should I not be here when they arrive in the morning.”

He felt her flinch, as though he had made to hit her.

Alfonso wanted to leave the room—as desperate for the silent safety of his own chamber as is a drowning man for air. With the humiliation of this second failure sneering at him from one side, and the thought of his servants' shocked reactions if he were to abscond taunting him from the other, he forced himself to remain in the room. He walked slowly to the window.

He stood motionless for what seemed like hours, sightlessly staring at nothing, his mind numb. Then, too tired to stand any longer, he returned to the bed and lay on his back next to Lucrezia. She made no move to touch him, and so they remained, side by side—like two stone effigies from the great cathedral—until the grey light of morning filled the room.

Waiting-woman to a duchess? Catelina stroked the corn-coloured woollen skirts of her newest dress and stifled a disbelieving grin. She picked up an ivory comb and began trying to work it through the Signora's hair. It felt strange to be standing so close to someone so grand, someone dressed in such beautiful clothes, actually being asked to touch her lovely hair. Catelina looked at her own hands. They were red, and the skin on her fingers was scratchy and rough, despite the oils she had been given to soften them. There was no avoiding the fact that they were still kitchen hands and they still looked bad—particularly the burned one. Even if it no longer hurt, there was a big crimson patch, right across her wrist and the back of her hand, where the skin was softly puckered, like a turkey-cock's wattle. It looked horrible, but Catelina knew it might well have been much worse if the Signora had not done what she did that day in the kitchen, with the eel-barrel.

Catelina breathed in. She smelled nice, the Signora—of roses, and some other, sharper flower Catelina could not name—not like most of the people she had lived among so far. Until a week ago she had shared her life with people who were far more likely to smell of mutton fat, sweat and stale woodsmoke than of flowers. Catelina thought she had probably washed more often in the week and a half she had been in Ferrara than she had done in five years at Cafaggiolo.

“Will it be long before you've finished? Is it dreadfully tangled?” The Signora's voice interrupted her musings.

Catelina started. “Oh—I'm sorry, my lady—have I hurt you?”

“No, no—not at all.” The Signora turned round. She was smiling. “I was just thinking it seemed to be taking rather a long time. Shall I have a try?” She took the comb from Catelina and began to work with it, her head on one side, a hank of hair clutched in her fist. “Ouch! We should have done this last night, Lina,” she said, grimacing.

Lina. No one had ever thought to shorten her name before. Catelina sat down on a carved chest.

The Signora continued her struggle with her hair, and then laughed, saying, “What on earth do you think Giulietta would say to see you sitting there and me fighting with my own hair?”

Catelina bit her lip.

“Oh, don't look like that! I didn't mean to make you feel guilty…”

That morning in the kitchens at Cafaggiolo…Catelina could still hardly believe it had happened: there she had been, sitting in her usual corner, peeling vegetables, one hand all prune-wrinkled and chilled from being too long in the water and the other still sore and stiff and wrapped in bandages, when the big door to the upper floors had slammed back on its hinges and the Signora had burst in, followed by that gangly cousin of hers.

“Angelo, where is she? Where's that girl who burned her arm a few days ago? Catelina, I think her name is.” She had been all out of breath from running. Catelina remembered how her name had cut right through the noise of the kitchen. She had looked up at once and seen Signor Angelo jerk his head towards her corner. The Signora had pushed her way across the room, through all the bustle and noise, and had stopped in front of her. Then she had just come out with it—asked her to come with her to Ferrara. Catelina hadn't understood. It hadn't made sense at all.

But, sense or not, here she was, with little or no idea of how to be a waiting-woman, working for a girl who (though Catelina felt guilty even thinking it) seemed to have not much more idea of how to be a duchess. A week they had been here, now, and to Catelina's way of thinking, the Signora seemed as ill at ease and out of place in this great castle as she did herself.

There had been all the bubbling excitement of the wedding—well, that had been quite an event, and Catelina had been proud to play even a small part in it—but then, the day after the celebrations, she had seen her mistress deflated and miserable, moping about her chamber like a sad little ghost, refusing her food and so pale she was almost transparent. Homesick, probably, Catelina told herself. She had cheered up a little in the week since that day, it was true, but there was a—she searched for the right word—a
breakableness
about her now that had not been there back in Cafaggiolo.

“Lina,” the Signora said, “I have finished the tangles. Could you try to braid it for me?”

“Of course, my lady,” Catelina said politely, hoping very much that she was telling the truth.

“You don't feel guilty, do you?” the Signora asked, as Catelina separated the copper hair into sections.

“What do you mean, my lady?”

“About what I said just now. About what Giulietta would think of us.”

Catelina did not reply. She continued working.

“Because you simply mustn't. It's my fault, isn't it? I asked you to come here with me—”

“But why did you, Signora?” The impertinent question slid out before she could stop it. Catelina dropped the hair and put her hands over her mouth as though to stop any more ill-advised words following in its wake.

“Oh, Lina.” The Signora laid a small hand on Catelina's arm. “It's precisely because you could say something like that that I wanted you here.”

Catelina's fingers were still pressed to her mouth.

“I haven't told you, have I, about the people my mother suggested I might bring with me before I thought of you? After it was decided that Giulietta was too old to come to Ferrara, Mamma suggested seven or eight replacements. Oh, Lina! They were all horrible!”

“Like what?”

“Oh…” The Signora frowned, remembering. “One who was very grand—I felt like a naughty little girl. Then there was one who was terribly shy, wouldn't speak—she made me feel I had to talk all the time. Even after a few moments, I had bored myself most dreadfully. The one my mother liked best was plump and dumpy and so fussingly motherly—oh, Lina, each one was so wrong. And then I remembered you, the expression on your face when you caught the pomegranate I threw to you, and I knew you would be just what I needed.”

Catelina smiled shyly at her mistress. “I hope I shall live up to your expectations, Signora,” she said.

The Signora took her hand and squeezed it. Catelina felt the rough skin of her fingers catch on her mistress's soft palm.

“Come on, Lina, finish these braids, and we can go down to the little room we found yesterday. Alfonso will be back soon—we can watch for him.”

A few moments later, mistress and maid left the bedchamber and walked together through endless rooms and down a couple of flights of stairs. After one or two wrong turns, they arrived at a small room which overlooked the central courtyard. The walls were lined in silk; there was a mirror in a fancy gold frame on the wall opposite the window, and what must have been dozens of pictures lined the other two walls. It seemed quite unbelievable to Catelina that anyone would spend so much time and money decorating a little room like this that was obviously hardly ever used.

She waited awkwardly just inside the door, and watched as her mistress crossed to the open window and climbed up onto the broad recess in front of it. She leaned out to peer down into the noisy bustle of the courtyard.

“Do you want me to stay, Signora?” Catelina asked.

“Oh, yes, Lina, please stay. Come here—there's so much happening.”

Catelina looked at her face and saw, as if in a mirror, all the anxiety and excited curiosity that was churning in her own head. Perhaps there wasn't so much difference between someone like the Signora and a girl like her after all.

She stood next to her mistress and together they gazed down into the courtyard. All was motion and haste. At least a dozen horses were being made ready; busy men scurried around collecting equipment and then, into the midst of this, a plain carriage drew up and a shabby, brown-clad figure climbed out. Short, stout, grey hair with a circle of sunburned skin on the top of his head. A Franciscan, probably. He was followed by a dark young man carrying several long rolls of heavy paper.

“Maybe he is making a map of the duchy.” The Signora pointed at the young man. “Alfonso said he wanted a proper one drawn up.”

Several people spilled out of the front doors to meet the new arrivals, who were quickly shown inside. The brown drab of the friar's robes stood out, Catelina thought, against the bright colours of the castle servants.

“Alfonso will be home soon, I expect. I'm not sure where he has been, but I imagine he has had important things to do. What do you think, Lina?”

Catelina did not know what to say. She had a good idea of what sort of “things” the Signore might have been doing that morning but thought it inappropriate to share her ideas with his wife. The Castello was full of interesting sources of information, for people who were prepared to listen.

***

Francesca Felizzi was on her hands and knees, her head and shoulders beneath the bed and her bare backside facing towards where Alfonso sat on the big elmwood chair under the window. It was, no doubt, a deliberate move, he thought, enjoying the sight, for she was certainly taking her time in finding her lost belonging.

After a moment, however, she stood up, pushed her hair back from her face and sat on the edge of the bed. Stretching one leg out and flexing her toes, she bent her knee up and put on her newly recovered stocking. “So, are you going to tell me or not? What's she like?” she said.

Alfonso watched her for a moment before he replied. “The new Signora?” he said. “Lucrezia is beautiful, of impeccable stock and is quite charming.”

His words sounded cool and confident, but Alfonso could hear the deliberate omissions screaming their accusations into the silence that followed his pronouncement. A hot wave of shame washed over him as he contemplated the pitiful fiasco that constituted his experience of the marriage bed so far. It would have been a relief, he thought, to pour out to Francesca his bewilderment at his humiliation. His uninhibited whore, after all, knew his capabilities better than anyone, and this morning, thank God, he had proved them again to her with a vigour that had at last silenced the mocking voices that had infiltrated his dreams since his unexpected incapacity of a few nights previously. But he knew he would not do it. Could not.

He said, hoping he sounded unconcerned, “Yes—it seems that I have married a beautiful child. Her lineage and nobility are faultless and her family have clearly understood the importance of the alliance we have forged with this union. Particularly since Cateau-Cambrésis—”

“Oh, for God's sake, don't start talking politics!”

As usual when Francesca spoke with so little regard for propriety, Alfonso felt a shudder of shock at being spoken to in a manner none other of his acquaintance would dare to adopt. “You are impolite,” he said coolly.

“I know,” she said, tying her garter, “and you are far too fond of the sound of your own voice. But you make up for it in other ways, Alfonso, as do I, which is, after all, why we put up with each other.” She crossed the room and bent to kiss his mouth.

“Perhaps, though,” she said, her smile fading, “you will tire of me now, with such competition in your legitimate bed.”

She spoke flippantly, but there was an edge to her voice. Alfonso stood up, slid his hands down her back and held her by the buttocks. Her head tilted back and her arms went up and around his neck.

“She's beautiful, Francesca,” he said, “but she's a child. She has little sophistication, and I doubt very much she will be able to compete with so…experienced a rival. You are very necessary to me.”

And you have no idea quite how true that is just now, he thought.

Francesca said nothing, but seemed reassured. Pulling away from Alfonso, she took a blue damask cloak from the back of another chair and swung it around her shoulders, then kissed him again. The kiss was brief, but arousing: had he not been sorely pressed for time, Alfonso thought, it might well have resulted in his detaining her at the cottage some while longer. Her lips lingered against his for a moment, and then she was gone.

He looked around the room as he finished dressing. The largest room in the little
villetta
, it was simply furnished: a wide, canopied bed dominated, but several other charming pieces of furniture gave it an old-fashioned appeal. Alfonso ran his fingers over the carving on a small wooden chest at the foot of the bed. This in particular gave him great pleasure, worked as it was by none other than Filippo di Quercia.

Alfonso recalled the women with whom he had coupled in this room—over a period of more than ten years, he realised. Some he remembered more clearly than others. Lisabeta, sweet-faced paragon of all the virtues of the bedchamber; the appalling Agnese and now Francesca, his—He stopped himself. He had been about to say “courtesan” but in fact the only word that would serve adequately to describe the redoubtable Signorina Felizzi was “whore.” A seemingly limitless lack of inhibition. A sharp mind, though, to accompany the exquisite body, and a refreshing—though at times disarming—honesty, which Alfonso always found reassuring in a world where sycophancy and flattery were almost universal.

He shrugged on his coat, gathered up the rest of his things and left the
villetta
. Collecting his mare from where she had been stabled, he quickly readied her for riding. Folletto yawned, stretched long legs and got lazily to his feet from where he had been curled in the hay, as Alfonso swung up into the saddle. He turned the mare towards the Castello and the wolfhound loped beside the horse, keeping pace with ease.

The hours he spent with Francesca, Alfonso reflected, were perhaps the most honest he passed anywhere. Her enthusiastic response to his preferences was pleasing: few women seemed genuinely to derive the enjoyment she did from an appetite as demanding as his own. He knew, though, that he had just been considerably less than truthful with her about his new duchess. Hot shame broke over him again, and he saw in his mind an image of Lucrezia back in Mugello in August. He had been enchanted by her naïve charm at the start of that visit, and had begun, he knew, to believe that he was acquiring a truly admirable consort. Despite the worrying evidence of that potentially troublesome streak of inappropriate independence, he had thought his new wife to be someone who might not only bestow prestige upon the House of Este by virtue of the nobility of her own family, but who would—Alfonso searched for the right word—become another
conduit
for his not inconsiderable energies. Energies he had never before questioned.