The Second Duchess (33 page)

T
he ache in my back had become more pronounced by the time I reached my apartments, and I was not such a fool I did not know what it portended—another unfruitful month for the Austrian duchess, another disappointment for the duke. The hard fall in the forest might well be to blame, although that seemed as if it had happened in another life entirely. There would have been no slashed girth and no fall if I had not—

But no. Done was done. I could not go back and start my life in Ferrara over from the beginning, however much I might want to. But I could start it over from the garden at Belfiore.

We went into the Jupiter chamber and set the dogs free from their leashes. The door to my receiving-room was closed, which was unusual. I could hear whispering, and behind me Nicoletta and Vittoria giggled. More and more mysterious. I drew breath to ask them sharply what was afoot, but before I could speak the door opened.

Domenica came in first. Behind her were my cherished Austrian ladies, Christine von Hesse and Sybille von Wittelsbach, and a few steps farther behind, as if she had waited to make a grand entrance, came Katharina Zähringen.

“Katrine!” I cried. “Christine! Sybille! Oh, my dears, I am so very glad to see you all! Katrine, are you well? Have you been entirely exonerated from those ridiculous charges? Are all of you to remain in Ferrara after all?”

They came forward and embraced me, laughing and crying all at once. “Sybille and I were not really confined,” Christine said in her sweet, musical voice. “Just—invited—to remain at the Palazzo dei Diamanti. But after dinner today, pfft! Suddenly, we are invited no longer. Naturally we came straight to you.”

“And you, Katrine?” I held her at arm’s length from me and looked into her eyes. “You have not been harmed? How could you have been mad enough to slap and scratch the duke’s gentleman, and call him such names he perjured himself in revenge?”

She laughed. I could have shaken her. I did shake her, just a little. “You do not know what I had to do to save you. The duke threatened to sentence you to
la scopa
.”

All the Ferrarese ladies sucked in their breaths, shocked. Katharina only looked puzzled. “I do not know what that is,” she said. “I was frightened, I grant you that, but I thought the worst they could do was send me back to Innsbruck.”

“That was not the worst. No, Domenica, do not explain. It is better we all forget.”

Katharina folded her lips together; it was her stubborn expression, and I knew she would pry the truth out of one of the Ferrarese ladies. “I did not know,” she said. “Oh, Bärbel, I did not realize—I am sorry if I caused you unpleasantness. Whatever you did, I will be grateful to you forever.”

I embraced her again. “It was nothing, now I see you are safe and free. What about the rest of my household?”

“Some have already gone,” Sybille said. She hugged me in her turn, clearly anxious to have me all to herself for a few moments at least. “Some are still at the Palazzo dei Diamanti. Most did not intend to stay in Ferrara in the first place. But what of this ‘nothing’ you speak of? We heard strange tales, frightening tales, that you had been imprisoned as well.”

“Only tales,” I said, not quite truthfully. “Nothing more. And I have missed you terribly. Come, tell me everything, and help me dress. There is something I want to do before supper.”

They helped me out of my dress, chattering away in German, and for once I did not reprove them. When they had stripped me to my shift, I made the discovery I had been half-expecting, yet which struck me to the heart: sometime in the afternoon my courses had begun.

“Oh, Serenissima
—
Barbara,” Domenica said. I saw we-three exchange looks with one another, but no one said anything. “I am so sorry. I know you were hoping—You cannot go down to supper now. I will send a message to the duke.”

“No, no,” I said. I was close to tears. “Do not send any messages. I will go to supper, and I will tell him myself.”

She clicked her tongue sympathetically. “Very well. But you must stay here quietly and rest until suppertime, and have a posset to calm you.”

With that she went off for wine and spices. Meanwhile, Vittoria Beltrame fetched warm water and cloths and a fresh shift for me, clearly reveling in the portentousness of it all. When I saw the cloths, so like the ones the duke and I had discovered in Lucrezia de’ Medici’s coffer, I began crying in earnest. I felt like a fool, but I could not stop myself.

“Shhhh, shhhh,” Katharina crooned, as she sponged me and helped me dress in a clean shift and a loose gown suitable for a private afternoon in my own chamber. “You have been married only two months—you have plenty of time. Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

“Maria Granmammelli,” I gulped. “The old witch. The duke’s nursemaid. I must see her.”

“Do not be a fool. Her potions are worthless.”

“I do not want a potion, but I must see her. I will only ask for one of her ghastly potions to sweeten her anger toward me, after the last time.”

“You will do no such thing. Look, here are Tristo and Isa, come to warm the bed for you. Play with them and think of other things. Sybille will read to you. Christine will play her lute and we will sing. Next month, it will be different, and you will be rejoicing.”

No one but Katrine would have dared speak to me so. How wonderful it was to have her back and safe. “It is not what you think,” I said. “I must see the old woman. Christine, please run and fetch her. I will sleep a little, perhaps, after I have spoken to her.”

Christine ran off. Domenica returned and began mixing my posset. Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed, and at last Christine came back with Maria Granmammelli complaining bitterly in her wake.

“’ Tis a hard thing when a poor old woman can’t rest her eyes from sext to nones without fine ladies rushing in, badgering her to come running at a moment’s notice. Not even a chance for a swallow of wine to open her eyes. Well,
Austriaca
? What is it? As if I don’t already know.”

I gestured to Christine to fetch wine. “I have learned I am not yet with child,” I said stiffly and apparently superfluously. “I would like another of your potions, something to make me . . . more receptive . . . in the month to come.”

“After you threw the last one on the floor for the dogs to lick?”

“I am sorry for that.” I had rehearsed the words, but still they were bitter on my tongue. “No one in Ferrara, not even the duke’s own physician, can make potions as powerful as yours.”

“Huh,” she said grudgingly. “Fine words. Very well, for the duke’s sake. It’ll be a different potion this time, though. More heat. You need more heat and more moisture.”

It suddenly occurred to me the duke was not the only one who took it for granted he would father children—Maria Granmammelli believed it, too. So much for Nora’s malevolent whispers. A fall there might have been—the scars on the duke’s body testified to that—but surely his healing had been complete.

“Thank you,” I said. I hoped I concealed my satisfaction that she had succumbed to my flattery. “I have another request I would make of you as well.”

“What, d’you think I’m made of herbs? What now?”

“No, not another potion. I would like you to look at this.”

I handed her the flask.

She took it readily enough and held it to the light, turning it and examining the jewels. I watched her closely, but there was not the slightest indication she had ever seen it before.

“What’s this,
Austriaca
? Some bit of fantasy you brought from Austria? It had something in it, and it’d be prettier if you’d cleaned it properly.”

“No,” I said. “It is not mine. Do you think you could determine the substance it once held, from the sediment remaining?”

She stiffened instantly and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “What are you up to,
Austriaca
? I’ll have naught to do with any poisonings.”

“I have no desire to poison anyone, and I do not believe the substance was a poison. However, I would like to know what it was. It has been dried in the flask for almost four years, so I will understand if you cannot identify it.”

That raised her hackles. “I know the tastes and smells of a thousand potions. I’ll mix the dregs with a little water or aqua vitae and have your answer in no time.”

“Excellent. And though you have not asked me, I will tell you the duke is one with me in this matter. You are free to show the flask to him, and tell him I gave it to you, and also what I have asked you to do.”

She tossed the sinister bauble in her hand, then examined it more closely. “Mayhap I will,” she said. “I may have to break the flask.”

Good riddance, I thought. “You are free to do so. And the jewels are yours to keep.”

Her eyes gleamed. “I’ll see what I can do, then.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Maria Granmammelli. And I look forward to receiving your new potion.”

“Sweet-tongued as a serpent, you are, when you want something.”

With that she went off, humming and muttering of ginger and cloves.

 

 

SUPPER THAT EVENING was served at the high table in the Castello’s great salon. This was actually more private than it sounds. The cardinal had returned from Rome, where he had been part of the conclave that had elected the new pope, but he was supping at another Este palace called the Palazzo Schifanoia with some of his friends and most likely his pretty mistress. Crezia was keeping to her apartments, probably with her sensual-lipped Count Ercole Contrari. Nora was in the country, and if she had her way, I was sure young Tasso was reciting poetry at her feet. Thus the duke and I were alone at the high table. The talk of half-a-hundred courtiers laid a soft blanketing hum over the room, and the consort of viols wove silver threads of music through the perfumes and candlesmoke and drifting scents of rich food.

“My Austrian ladies have returned to me,” I said. “Katharina Zähringen is unharmed. My lord, I am grateful for your generosity in this matter.”

He held out his hands for a servitor to rinse them with rose water. “A small thing,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I am grateful. I hope you will allow them to remain with me.”

He took a white napkin and dried his hands. “They may remain in Ferrara for the moment.”

The servitor turned to me, and I held out my hands in turn. Although the duke had brushed aside my thanks, I knew what he had done was meant as a deliberate act of consideration, and I also knew he was pleased by my gratitude. As I dried my hands I said again, “I thank you.”

“And speaking of those who are to remain in Ferrara,” he said, “there is something I would like to do before the first course is served. The court has been whispering, since the hunt at Belfiore, that Sandro Bellinceno is out of favor and that I mean to send him away. I was angry with him, yes, and I spoke with him privately about the matter of his disrespect to you; as far as I am concerned that was the end of it. I would like to silence the rumors tonight, with a public mark of our continuing friendship toward him.”

The last time I had seen Sandro Bellinceno, he had been spurring his black Friesian horse deliberately to crowd my Tänzerin, his face twisted with anger, his voice harsh with a masculine certainty of superiority over anything feminine. I had told the duke I was willing to consider the matter forgotten, and for my ladies’ sake I was; even so, I could not honestly say I would ever feel anything remotely resembling friendship for Messer Sandro.

Warily I said, “I am at your command, my lord.”

He lifted one hand, and his majordomo Count Niccolò Tassoni stepped up behind him; they had a few words, and then Count Niccolò withdrew. Silence suddenly descended upon the salon. The musicians ceased to play. Every head turned toward the door.