The Second Duchess (16 page)

Watching me.

I straightened, too abruptly. The cardinal caught my hand to steady me.

“Is something wrong,
mia cognata
?”

“Oh, no.” I looked away from the Florentine ambassador’s gaze. “No, I am perfectly well, Your Eminence. I have simply not yet had sufficient practice in the—dances—of Ferrara.”

 

 

AFTER HALF-A-DOZEN DANCES I retired to our Cytherian haven to rest and watch for a while, and to drink some of the golden
frizzante
wine from my own sign of Taurus. Among the sweetmeats offered with the wine was a dish of delicately candied angelica root. It was a compliment to my personal taste and I could not refuse it, although for once I had little taste for sweets. I accepted it with a smile and a word of thanks, but when I returned to the dais, I set it aside.

The duke continued to dance, first with one, then with another of the ladies of his court. After the first figure, Crezia danced with no one but her Virgo gentleman; by imperial court standards it was most unsuitable for her to single him out so pointedly. Idly I looked about for Nora again but still did not see her. On the other hand, I did see Tasso, the graceful young poet, his dark eyes burning with sensuous emotion as he gazed at the singer Lucrezia Bendidio, so wherever Nora was, it was not with her
inamorato
. Sandro Bellinceno seemed to be a popular partner, despite his lack of grace; perhaps the refined court ladies were titillated by his rough battlefield manners. Katharina Zähringen, not on duty that evening and so free to dance and enjoy herself as she pleased, was apparently one who was not. I had to laugh ruefully to see her refuse him and send him on his way with a smart slap for his pains.

My dear Christine was at my side, humming along with the music. She and Paolina Tassoni were formally in attendance upon me, with a newly appointed Ferrarese lady named Nicoletta Rangoni who had joined my household to replace poor Maddalena Costabili. Paolina looked sad and tired and would not meet my eyes. My anger with her sneakings and spyings had faded; she was no more than a pawn in the hands of the duke and her father, just as I was a pawn in the hands of the duke and my brother. In fact, I thought, putting my wine-glass aside, there might be advantages in a rapprochement with her.

“Paolina,” I said softly.

Instantly she came closer and sank into a curtsy. Her popingaygreen dress was embroidered with capering bulls much like my own, intricately entwined. “Serenissima?”

“Let us be frank. You are in the duke’s service as well as my own, are you not?”

She colored. So faintly that I could hardly hear her over the music, she said, “Yes, Serenissima.”

“I shall not ask you why. I understand these things are not always of one’s own choice. I intended to ask the duke to remove you from my household—”

“Oh, no! Please, Serenissima, I beg you.” She clasped her hands, and to my horror a tear spilled down her cheek. “My father will be so angry if you send me away. Have mercy.”

“Hush. Stop crying and allow me to finish my sentence, if you please. I intended to ask the duke to remove you from my household, but upon further thought I realized he would only replace you with another to serve him in the same capacity. Perhaps you and I, on the other hand, can come to a private arrangement.”

“Oh, yes!” She looked up at me, her eyes suddenly alight. “I must always have something to tell the duke, but I need not tell him everything. Only let me stay, Serenissima, and I shall be more discreet. I swear it.”

“And the secrets you learn, which you love so much. You will tell me alone. You will tell me everything.”

“I will. I swear it.”

“Very well. Now, when did you last eat or sleep?”

“I have not been able to rest, Serenissima. I have not eaten since you sent me away.”

“Drink a little wine; it will put color in your cheeks. Where is your cup?”

She looked around distractedly. There were several silver-gilt cups on the table; from the array of lions, sea-goats, and waterbearers, she picked out her own bull with the Tassoni badger on a blue-and-gold shield. Obediently she took a swallow of the wine.

“Thank you, Serenissima,” she said.

“And eat a bit of the sweet—angelica warms and comforts a cold stomach. I shall—”

“Are you sulking?”

I started. The duke’s sister Crezia had come up unnoticed, flushed with wine and dancing. She was wearing silver satin embroidered with fanciful black and white centaurs wielding curved bows embroidered in diamonds and jet. Her beautiful dark eyes were scornful, and for a moment I saw myself as she might have seen me, the new bride sitting alone with her ladies while her husband danced with others.

“I am resting,” I said, “after a vigorous
Tesara
. That will be all, Paolina.”

The girl curtsied and stepped back. Crezia sat down and held out her cup to be refilled. “Such tales I hear of my new sister Barbara,” she said, with one of the expressive gestures the Ferrarese used so often. “Married barely a month and already at odds with your husband?”

This was becoming rather tedious.

“Hardly at odds,” I said. “All new-wed couples find things to disagree about.”

“How tactful you are. You need not mince words with me, you know.”

I said nothing.

“Alfonso is difficult enough as a brother—he is proud and inflexible and will not even discuss matters once he has made up his mind. I cannot imagine what he would be like as a husband, even for a sensible woman such as you.”

The music covered our words, and our ladies had tactfully withdrawn a bit. Crezia herself was being indiscreet enough; she could hardly run to the duke with a tale of our conversation. I said cautiously, “At least I am not a child of fifteen.”

“Nor are you an illiterate fool. Nor do you fling yourself indiscriminately at every male about the court, from the page boys to the dotards. One can hardly blame Alfonso—”

She broke off and drank some of her wine. I waited, but she said nothing more. I thought of the Virgo gentleman, and wondered if the beautiful young duchess had cast her eye upon him. Crezia seemed to combine hot blood and cool calculation in equal measures, and she had clearly disliked her young sister-in-law intensely. Jealousy? Like her aunt the abbess, she could well have been a compliant tool in her brother’s hands.

“How awkward it must have been,” I said at last. “Yes, I have heard strange tales about the duke’s last duchess.”

“And you will hear more, I am sure.” She took another swallow of her wine. “Perhaps the married state is not such a desirable thing, after all, whatever one’s age.”

So that was it. She was still smarting from my remark at the Neptune banquet.

“Perhaps not,” I agreed.

“Ferrara is my home. My father never pressed me to marry—it pleased him to make me first lady of the court after my mother ... after she withdrew to the Palazzo di San Francesco.”

How coolly she spoke of her father’s imprisoning her mother for heresy.

“Now, I have my own
palazzi
, my own income, my own household. Alfonso knows better than to try to force a marriage upon me—I am a match for him and quite happy as I am.”

“Anyone would be happy in Ferrara.” I could not help but wonder if she would indeed be a match for the duke if he chose to arrange a marriage for her, but the last thing I wanted now was more conflict. I wanted to keep her talking and somehow direct her conversation back to Lucrezia de’ Medici, so I signaled to Nicoletta to bring more wine. “I suppose I must simply wait and hope the duke will begin to understand I am a very different woman.” The unsaid words—
than she was
—hung between us.

“I think he already understands quite well. Why did he beat you, Barbara? Do tell me. There are a dozen different tales being whispered.”

Obviously she was in no mood to be led, and I was in no mood to tell her the lurid details of the duke’s anger. “Crezia,” I said. One Christian name deserved another. “I beg you. Do not give credence to gossip. The duke would be very angry if he knew people were whispering of his affairs.”

“Then he should not have beaten you. If he ever does try to marry me off, I shall defy him, even if he beats me a hundred times.”

I thought again of Mother Eleonora, this time of her diatribe against marriage. Apparently independence ran in the blood of the Este women.

“You certainly enjoy every luxury and pleasure here in Ferrara,” I conceded. “There is nothing a husband could give you that you do not have already.”

It was my way of giving her the victory. She understood exactly what I had done, and she laughed. Perhaps her satisfaction would make her less wary and more likely to speak of Lucrezia de’ Medici another day. We each took a sip of our wine, the truce called and the provisional treaty of friendship signed.

“Now, please,” I said. “Say nothing more of beatings. Assure everyone the tale has been vastly overblown.”

“That is easy enough,” she said. “It is much out of character for Alfonso, anyway. If he were to take a switch to anyone, it should have been to that little
sgualdrina
from Florence, and yet he never laid a finger on her.”

I was surprised, and of course I could not help being curious. If it was out of character for the duke to employ physical chastisement, what had driven him to such an extremity? I took another sip of wine and said in my most careless tone, “It is very strange.”

“You must understand, he did not treat the Medici girl as a wife at all, but as an unwanted encumbrance. I do not think he cared if she disobeyed him. You, on the other hand—he has made no secret of an imperial wife’s being a great prize to him. If you flouted his will in some way, when he had put you on such a pedestal for all the court to see—it touched his honor, I think. Who will ever understand men?”

I did not like to think of myself as nothing more than an object the duke prized, however greatly. “Yes, indeed,” I said. “Who will ever understand—?”

And it was just at that moment Paolina Tassoni collapsed and began to convulse, amid spilled wine and screams and the shattered remains of a dish of candied angelica.

 

 

Luigi. It’s not very respectful to call a prince of the church by his Christian name, is it? Let me tell you the truth about His Lordship-Eminence-high-and-mightiness Luigi Cardinal d’Este. He was the closest of them all to my own age, just six years older—Alfonso was eleven years older and might as well have been a hundred and eleven. I knew Luigi for what he was the moment I saw him, and he knew me, too, the
mascalzone
. We were alike, craving pleasure and luxury, laughter and excitement, and most of all freedom to do as we pleased. If I’d been married to Luigi, I think we both would have been happier. But poor Luigi was the second son, and so of course he was made a bishop when he was fifteen. What a waste.

I remember the marvelous
torneo
that was held to celebrate his election as cardinal—Il Castello di Gorgoferusa it was called, and afterward it became famous all over Europe. When the music and mock battles were done, we danced together, Luigi and I, and it was wonderful. When I watched la Cavalla dancing with him tonight, I imagined myself in her place, wearing cloth-of-gold with motifs of Gemini brocaded in silver, and diamonds and moonstones in my hair.

He dallied with me, just as he dallied with poor la Cavalla, but that’s as far as it ever went, more’s the pity. I had a wonderful dream about him after the
torneo
—in it we danced out into the gardens under the stars. I lured him with my eyes and my lips and my body until we were under the cherry tree, my favorite place. It was foaming with white-and-pink blossoms and heavy with ripe red cherries all at the same time—I know that can’t really be, but this was a dream and the cherry tree was enchanted. I pulled him down into sweet spring grass—the white petals floated around us like perfumed snow, and the sweet cherries were crushed into blood-red juice under the weight of our bodies. And we enjoyed each other, brother and sister, cardinal and duchess, so sweet and so forbidden.