Leonardo's Swans (17 page)

She rides as fast as she can, but she can hear that the hunting party has picked up speed and is riding away from her as quickly as she tries to catch up with them. Arriving at the end of the path, she comes to the clearing and sees in the distance that Ludovico, Galeazz, and several of the men are giving chase to a pack of brown wolves while the women hang behind, chattering among themselves under little green tents, taking umbrage from the sun.

Beatrice picks up speed, heading for the chase. The horses and hounds have pushed the wolves to the edge of a river, surrounding them. The hounds bark madly, and the wolves—Beatrice counts seven—ululate with ferocity in response. The men cry out to their pages for their bows and spears.

Ludovico smiles as he sees Beatrice approach at breakneck speed. He raises his hand, signaling her to slow down, but she gallops ahead, almost knocking over a page who is quickly trying to thread a dark wooden bow with a green arrow.

“Bow!” she demands, and the boy, startled, freezes. Beatrice circles him, and before he is aware of what she is doing, leans to her right, grabbing the weapon as she circles Drago around the page.

In a split second, she identifies her target, the largest of the animals, looking at her with eyes like icy moons. She thinks for a moment that she sees the landscape reflected in its eyes. It growls at her, frightening her horse, which backs up skittishly. Galeazz shoots, and one of the wolves drops to the ground, making the survivors howl yet more fiercely. Beatrice thinks she might go mad from this wailing chorus. If only to silence at least one of them, to stop this ear-splitting lamentation, she clutches her legs tight around Drago’s superbly veined belly for balance, and releases the arrow into the wolf’s side. She knows that she has missed her precise mark, instead piercing the animal through the upper chest. Perhaps in anger, perhaps from the pain that must be shooting through his front legs, the wolf leaps in the air at her, burying his teeth into Drago’s chest. The horse rears back, hooves kicking into the air high above his head like an acrobat. Beatrice feels herself leave the saddle. Like a kite, she rises into the air as Drago bucks wildly, trying to release himself from the wolf’s grip. She sees blood from the wounds spreading over the coats of both animals. She sees that the afternoon sky is lapis blue, and that lavender buds have already begun to hang like jewels in the wisteria trees. The last thing she sees is the look of horror on Ludovico’s face, his eyes bulging and his hands frozen in the air like a statue of an ancient orator. She thinks, but cannot be sure, that he has just screamed “No.” Then she feels her body hit hard earth, and all is black.

FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF LEONARDO:

Of the movement of birds: When birds wish to fly from one spot to another they will fly faster by making spontaneous headlong movements, and then rising up with reflex movement against the resistance in the air, and again making a fresh descent, and so on and so forth.

Dissect the bat, study it carefully, and on the model of this animal and his wings, design the machine.

A tiny chirp breaks the silence. Beatrice thinks it must be morning, though she is not ready to open her eyes. She feels a cool rag on her forehead and a blanket over her body. She thinks that she might be in Naples, and her governess has come in during the night to cover her from unexpected cool evening breezes. Why the cool cloth? Has she suffered with fevers? She hopes that Nanny won’t scold her again for riding through a cold spring day without a cloak. Beatrice remembers riding along the windy coast of Naples Bay—yesterday, today, or many years ago?—calculating that a short illness is an easy price to pay for the ecstasy of dancing the day long with fresh ocean breezes. Now a large, strange, hot hand is on hers.

“Beatrice?” A man’s voice rises above the warbling bird. “Can you hear me, darling wife?”

She opens her eyes. Her husband is inches away from her face, staring at her as if she has awakened from the dead. Startled by his large features and his concerned look, she pulls away, but has nowhere to go. Head glued to the pillow, she waits for her memory to catch up with her, and it does: the sickening conversation with Isabel by the stagnant pond; the wolf’s bare teeth, screaming with pain, blood spurting everywhere; and Drago rearing up like some wild dancer and knocking her into the sky. Beatrice winces, remembering it all. They have taken her back to her room at the palace at Vigevano, where she wants to close her eyes again against feelings of anger and disgrace.

“Is there pain?” Ludovico asks. “The doctor says that no bones are broken, nor is the skull injured.”

Beatrice manages a slight smile and then directs her gaze away from his face. Why is he looking so concerned if he intends to replace her with a Frenchwoman, or poison her in the interim? Even without Isabel of Aragon’s insinuations, Ludovico’s worry about one whom he so neglects seems misplaced. She cannot figure it unless, as she has been hoping, he loves her more than she thinks.

The drapes and shutters are still open, and she can see the dusky sun nearing the end of its day’s journey. The sky is purple, leaving much of the room in shadow. Someone has lit a small lamp. Ludovico turns his face upward, thanking God in Latin—Our Lord’s favorite language—for not taking his little wife, but returning her to “those of us who love her the most.”

Galeazz shows himself, holding a small, gilded cage with a little red finch. He lowers the cage so that Beatrice can see its fluttering wings. “I told them that you would hear the song of the bird, and that it would bring you back to us.” He is smiling, his teeth gleaming at her, the brightest thing in the room.

“Madonna Beatrice, please say something to us.” The voice is officious and not at all pleasant to the ear. Messer Ambrogio, Ludovico’s astrologer, steps out of Ludovico’s shadow and looms over her bed. Beatrice does not like him. He is too thin. Not fit and sculpted like her father, but the kind of thin that results from a dislike of food or from a body full of worms that eat away anything he ingests. Either way, she has never understood why Ludovico has chosen this person upon whom to rely for the timing of so many crucial decisions.

“Step aside, sir, so that I can see the setting sun.” There. That was exactly what she wanted to say to this man and she said it. Perhaps a fall from a horse, a knock on the head, is exactly what she has needed to shake up all the words that roll around in her brain and make them come out of her mouth. She almost giggles at her impertinence, but she sees that Ludovico and Galeazz are both snickering behind the astrologer’s back.

“Look who is here,” Ludovico says. He puts his arm around her neck and helps her to sit up. Mathilda springs forth with a devilish grin, then dives with her hands to the ground, turning over into a handstand. She wears no underwear. She kicks her legs into the air, spreading them apart, demonstrating her hairy crotch, before jumping back to her feet in triumph.

Beatrice gives her favorite dwarf a little round of applause.

“You’re just fine, aren’t you, Duchess?” Mathilda’s anxious face, with her too-big nose and ears, is side by side with Ludovico’s, both staring at her with the intensity of governesses searching a child’s hair for lice.

“Yes, Mathilda, I am just fine. You may go now, and tell the steward that I have ordered him to give you a special bottle of red wine from the cellar. The finest vintage of what we have just brought up from Osteria.”

To show her appreciation, Mathilda cartwheels her way out of the room, giving her bare behind to the royals, cackling all the way down the hall.

Galeazz has put the birdcage down on a dressing table and kneels by the bedside, taking her hand. “You are the bravest woman in all the world. You were magnificent today. We are having the wolf stuffed for you. He’ll make a nice trophy.”

“And Drago?”

“Superficial wounds,” Ludovico says. “No wild creature will take that animal down. He is resting in the stables with a fragrant ointment upon his chest, made especially for him by the stable master.”

“I will mix Your Excellency a potion for sleep,” declares Messer Ambrogio.

“No, now that I am awake, I intend to remain this way as long as I can,” Beatrice says.

“But Your Excellency needs rest—”

Beatrice interrupts him. “Gentlemen, I would like to be alone with my husband, if you please.”

Galeazz kisses her hand again and again, pressing it to his face. Without another word, he backs out of the door smiling. But the astrologer waits behind. Did he not hear her? Is her voice faint and inarticulate? Beatrice waits another polite second and then asks, “Sir, are you my husband?”

“Your Excellency is either not well or is joking.”

“Then I really must ask you to leave.”

He looks stunned by her command, turning to Ludovico who confirms with a nod that the astrologer and medicine man is no longer needed in the room. With emphatic clicking heels and no further discussion, he leaves them alone.

“You gave us quite the scare,” Ludovico says, taking the cloth from her brow and kissing her forehead. “Thank God you are not harmed.”

He says this not as if it is the beginning of a conversation but as if he is winding up his business with her so that he can leave the room. Beatrice feels fury rise up within her. Does he have Cecilia hidden somewhere at Vigevano?

“My lord,” she says, “I wish to tell you about my terrible dream.”

“What dream is that, child?”

Child. Soon he will no longer think upon her in this way.

“I dreamed—oh, it was frightening and ridiculous,” she begins, trying to achieve just the right rhythm and tone for what she is about to say. “I dreamed that you were in secret conspiracy with the French King Charles against my grandfather Ferrante. You know that this arrangement would cause me terrible pain, because I grew up in his court. I know that he is not a well-liked man, but I sat on his lap and pulled on his beard all during my childhood, and he loves me very much. In my dream, you were going to war with Naples. This angered my cousin Isabel of Aragon, so she appealed to me to throw my lot in with her, and with the House of Aragon, and against you, my own husband!”

Beatrice gives Ludovico a little smile, as if to say, isn’t that silly? She waits for him to speak. He looks at her gravely.

“And how does this go in your dream?”

“Not well, my lord, at least not for you. Because I did join with Isabel and the kingdom of Naples—which isn’t so far-fetched because my mother is of the House of Aragon—so of course, Ferrara supported me, as it would support one of its princesses. And since Ferrara supported Naples, then Mantua was not far behind. And the worse part was that Mantua gave Venice a good reason to attack Milan, because Francesco is captain general of their army, and they would naturally support him. The Venetians would love to do you in, my lord, and that is not just a fiction of my dream!”

Ludovico seems keenly interested in what his child-bride is saying. She wonders if she has ever before so thoroughly captured his attention. He sits on the bed and speaks to her, slowly and deliberately. “Tell me, Beatrice, exactly how does this fantasy play out? You flee to Naples with Isabel of Aragon?”

“Oh no, my lord. We send for their army. My uncle Alfonso rides at its head, because, as you know, he deeply hates you. No, we do not leave Milan, but the army comes here and rescues us! Oh, it’s very exciting. The Neapolitan army rides up from the south, and the Venetians, backed by Ferrara and Mantua, attack from the east, with Francesco commanding them. You wouldn’t believe it, but he sits on his horse at the walls of the Castello screaming at you for trying to take his wife.”

“Now why would Francesco engage in such nonsense, even in a dream?” A little smile cuts across Ludovico’s face, yet his eyes are very serious.