His Last Duchess (9 page)

She said nothing, but stared at his hand on her wrist. Her breathing deepened and for a moment he watched the upper swell of her breasts rise and fall, pushing at the constraining neckline of her bodice. And then, knowing well how little she would enjoy the encounter, he gripped her arm more firmly and said, “But, Agnese, you must meet the duchess—Lucrezia!”

Lucrezia turned.

“Come here!” he said. “There is someone I should like you to meet.”

Lucrezia laid a small hand on the arm of the courtier. She smiled at him as she excused herself. Alfonso saw the boy smile in return and—entirely unexpectedly—a flash of raw, screaming, black jealousy suddenly obliterated the banqueting hall, the guests and the whore of a countess who still stood unwittingly beside him. For an instant he saw and heard nothing. Then he felt Lucrezia at his side and looked down at her. The corners of her mouth crooked again as she met his gaze, desire drove rage before it, and in its wake, the noise and colour of the banqueting hall surged back into vivid life.

“Lucrezia,” Alfonso said, more calmly than he felt, “this is Agnese, the Contessa de Rovigo. Agnese, my duchess.”

“It is a great pleasure to meet you,” Lucrezia said sweetly. Agnese de Rovigo did not smile. Her face twisted into a parody of polite interest, though Alfonso could sense a tremor in the arm he still held, and knew at once that he was not the only person in the room experiencing the torments of frustrated lust. Her discomfiture pleased him, however. Agnese's self-centred hedonism had long since become so boring that Alfonso found himself now thoroughly enjoying seeing it thwarted by his diminutive duchess, despite his own frustration with Lucrezia.

The desire to provoke Agnese gripped him, like the urge to prod a sleeping dog. “I have known Agnese for many years, Lucrezia,” he said. “I really feel that you two should make an effort to spend some time becoming acquainted. You would find her an excellent source of information about the duchy and its traditions, and…” Alfonso paused “…she probably has a fair amount to tell you about me, too.”

Agnese's face stiffened with shock at the impropriety and Lucrezia's mouth opened. Alfonso watched them for a moment, amused by the spectacle, until Ricardo de Rovigo—the “ignorant cuckold”—turned back from his conversation and exclaimed delightedly to see Lucrezia at such close quarters. “Why, Signora,” he said, bowing extravagantly, “what a privilege!”

Agnese rolled her eyes and snatched her wrist from Alfonso's grasp.

“I trust,” Rovigo said, “that you are finding ways of making yourself comfortably at home in this great sarcophagus of a castle?” He beamed at her.

“The Castello is indeed very big,” Lucrezia agreed, “but each day I find myself a little more familiar with it.”

“Well said, my lady, well said! A diplomatic answer! But what you actually mean is, you agree with me that it is a vast, old-fashioned, comfortless fortress. A couple of generations of the Estes have attempted—unsuccessfully, I might add—to convince the Ferrarese that it has been transformed into a palace, but in the end a comfortless fortress it remains. And you are far too well bred to admit it.”

“I should not dream of speaking so ill of my new home, Signore,” Lucrezia said. She smiled as she spoke and Alfonso found himself watching her mouth. He wanted to speak to Rovigo, and turned to his friend, but felt his head move for at least a second before he was able to drag his gaze from Lucrezia's slightly parted lips.

He said, attempting an amicable tone, “You take considerable liberties, sir, from your necessarily humble position as guest in my oversized and underheated sarcophagus.”

“Indeed I do, Este, indeed I do—safe in the knowledge that a host as magnanimous as yourself will take such pleasantries in the spirit in which they were uttered. Merely in jest, sir, merely in jest.”

“Of course.”

Agnese took Ricardo's arm and, with naked antagonism, stared haughtily at Alfonso and Lucrezia, before steering her unfortunate husband away across the hall.

“Did I say something to offend the
contessa
?” Lucrezia asked.

“I shouldn't worry. I don't think it was what you said, rather what you are.”

Lucrezia was clearly distressed. Her eyes were round and anxious. Alfonso looked at her for several long seconds, with what he hoped was a clear declaration of his intentions.

***

After eleven courses, almost every guest at the great Christmas banquet at the Castello Estense was wondering if they had room enough for even another mouthful—but according to the servants, yet one more course still remained. Even Giovanni, Lucrezia noticed, had slowed the pace of his eating.

It had certainly been a spectacular occasion. Not only had the food been extravagant beyond anything Lucrezia had yet seen, but the music that had accompanied each course had been exquisite: blaring trumpets with the venison, flutes with the fish and a singer with a lute when oysters and fruit had been served. Pasta dishes and salads had been brought in by dozens of men in bright Ferrarese peasant costume, with flowers in their hair, and the candied fruit, sweets and cakes had been accompanied by a team of jugglers. Lucrezia had watched, speechless, as they had astounded the company by juggling not just balls, but fruit, knives, spoons and—most breathtaking of all—glassware. Not one thing had broken, and when they had finished juggling, they had tumbled round all three long tables and out of the hall to resounding cheers and applause.

Lucrezia finished the wine in her glass. A servant appeared at her side and refilled it immediately, and she turned back to continue the conversation she had been having with the man on her left. Slight, curly-haired, with a thin-bridged, beaky nose, Francesco Panizato was one of Alfonso's few close friends.

“I think so,” she said, in answer to his previous question. “My father is considering asking him to come and work as court sculptor at Cafaggiolo.”

“He's very young, isn't he?” said Panizato.

“He
looks
young, yes—I don't know exactly how old he is. He was very friendly—I liked him.”

“You've
met
him?”

“Yes. Last Easter. He—”

Panizato cut across her. Leaning forward, he raised his voice a little and said, “Alfonso, did you know your wife has
met
Giambologna?”

Alfonso broke off the discussion he had been having with an elderly woman, whose name Lucrezia had forgotten. He looked at Panizato, and then at her. “Have you?”

“Yes, last Easter,” Lucrezia said again.

“You never told me.”

“I didn't know you'd be interested.”

“I have been wanting to acquire one of his sculptures for some time. Or perhaps to commission a new one. What do you think of his work?”

Lucrezia held her breath. Held breath was safe. If she let it go, the wrong words might slip out before she could stop them. Alfonso was watching her intently, Panizato was smiling, Giovanni had paused with his fork halfway to his mouth and several other guests had stopped their conversations, and seemed suddenly riveted upon what the new duchess might have to say.

Alfonso did not repeat his question, but his raised eyebrow and the enquiring tilt of his head made it plain that he expected an answer.

Lucrezia made herself breathe out. For weeks now she had been aware of how frequently—and easily—she incurred her husband's unpredictable displeasure. After the awful, shameful failure of the wedding night, they had lurched from one humiliating attempt to the next. The attempts had becoming increasingly rare—in fact, Alfonso had not come to her bedchamber at all for at least three weeks. She had been wondering if he would ever try again, but today, for some reason, something had changed. Since he had sat in the tilt-gallery, watching her tie that ribbon onto Zudio's lance-tip, the hunger had been back in Alfonso's eyes: a hunger for her that had not been there since the wedding. Since before the first failure.

That hunger was glittering visibly now as he awaited his answer. What should she say? Would her thoughts on Giambologna's work please him—fan the flames—or would she extinguish his appetite entirely with her unwitting ignorance?

“Papa says—”

“No, don't tell me what your father says. The least intelligent of his servants could report upon their master's pronouncements. I want to know
your
thoughts.”

Lucrezia's face became so hot that her eyes stung. She drank another few mouthfuls of wine, feeling increasingly light-headed. She imagined it must feel like this to be on trial, falsely accused of some unspecified crime; so much might hang on something as simple as her choice of phrase. She could almost sense the held breath of the watching guests, as they waited for her to speak, as though they held taut-pulled longbows, aimed at her, ready to loose.

“Well…” she said, and her voice sounded in the stillness like a stranger's. She gripped the first two fingers of her left hand in her right fist and twisted them. “I like the way he seems to be trying to create a feeling of—of weightlessness. Airiness. Out of something as solid and heavy as marble.” She paused. “Papa has two of his pieces and…and that was what I thought when I saw them.”

Panizato grinned. The watching guests looked from him to Alfonso to Lucrezia, waiting, Lucrezia presumed, for the duke's reaction to her opinion. The bowstrings tautened still further. Alfonso held her gaze, the corners of his mouth lifting a fraction. “Weightless marble?” he said.

Several of the guests laughed, loosed their arrows. Lucrezia flinched.

“Very clever, madam, very clever.
Contradictio
in
terminis
, no less.”

More laughter.

Lucrezia, not understanding Alfonso's words, but hearing his mocking tone and realising that she had now become the butt of the guests' sycophantic mirth, felt tears in the corners of her eyes. Determined not to let Alfonso see her distress, though, she caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth and for nearly a full minute they held each other's gaze. Lucrezia imagined two fighters, fists raised, circling warily as a blood-lustful audience pressed in around them, waiting for the first punch to be thrown. The hunger in Alfonso's eyes was now unmistakable.

“I see that I shall indeed have to acquire one of his works for the Castello,” he said, his eyes on her mouth. “A commission, I think. Something substantial.” He smirked at her. “Weightless, of course, but substantial.”

There was another ripple of appreciative laughter—another handful of arrows found their target—and then the guests seemed to understand that the spectacle was at an end, for the bee-swarm hum of the banquet's many conversations began to buzz again.

Alfonso leaned back in his chair and spoke to Panizato behind Lucrezia's back. “Make my excuses, Francesco, will you?” Then, squeezing her fingers, he said to Lucrezia, “Come with me. I have something I want you to see.”

They pushed back their chairs and Alfonso led the way past dozens of curious diners. Lucrezia saw openly lascivious expressions on several faces as the guests saw their clasped hands and, presumably, drew their own conclusions. She was surprised not to be feeling acutely embarrassed but, increasingly fuzzy and disconnected with the wine she had drunk, she found she did not much care. She battled to maintain a reasonably dignified expression until they had left the hall, her face quite stiff with the effort.

***

Giovanni watched Lucrezia and the duke leave the banqueting hall, their fingers linked. His cousin's cheeks were flushed, as though she had had too much to drink. A dull anger pulsed behind his eyes and, looking down at the table, he picked up a piece of bread and crushed it inside his fist. That bastard—how dare he make fun of Crezzi like that in front of their guests? It was a cheap trick. Unforgivable. Giovanni was certain the duke would not have dared to behave like that in front of Uncle Cosimo.

At first, he had been pleased that his uncle and aunt had not travelled to Ferrara with him, fond as he was of them: over the past couple of weeks at the Castello, he had much enjoyed the independence and the lack of supervision that their absence had allowed him. But now, watching
Il
Duca
leading his cousin out of the hall, with a smug smile on his face and a bulge in his breeches—like a man in a brothel who knows he has picked the prize
puttana—
Giovanni wished fiercely that Uncle Cosimo could have been here tonight to witness how shamefully his adored son-in-law had just treated his beloved daughter.

Giovanni had only a few days left in Ferrara; perhaps, he thought, he should just leave in the morning, race home to Cafaggiolo and pour out to his aunt and uncle his suspicions, his observations and his re-established fears that, despite her protestations to the contrary, Lucrezia was fundamentally unhappy.

But then he remembered why his aunt and uncle were not here.

He pictured again the morning of Uncle Cosimo's collapse. The day his uncle had returned from a ride and dismounted, then clutched at his chest and sunk to his knees, sucking at the air with a sound like a pair of punctured bellows. Oh, he had recovered soon enough, but Aunt Eleanora had made it abundantly clear to the entire household (not in his uncle's hearing, of course) on numerous occasions since, that her husband should not be unnecessarily alarmed or agitated, that he should not have to travel any further than he must, and that everyone should make a strenuous effort to keep him calm at all times.

What Giovanni wanted to say would probably kill him.

He would have to keep his fears to himself.

But he would return to Cafaggiolo the following day.

He pushed his chair back from the table and left the banquet by the door at the opposite end of the room.

***

“Where are we going? Your apartment?” Lucrezia asked.