His Last Duchess Page 10

  “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.

  “No.”

  Alfonso, with her hand still tightly clasped in
his own, led her to a small hall just beyond the great entrance doors.

  “I want to see if you can offer me another inspiring opinion on a work of art.”

  Lucrezia felt sick.

  “Here, Lucrezia, tell me what you think,” he said. He stopped in front of a small painting in a simple gold frame. It depicted a languid, bare-breasted woman, leaning on one hand. She had one leg stretched out before her, the other was bent up under her crumpled white dress, which seemed to Lucrezia to be little more than a draped sheet. Leaning over her was a man in Roman clothing, a coronet of leaves around his head. The painting seemed oddly unfinished: the brushstrokes were broad and free and there was little detail.

  A gauntlet had clearly been flung at her feet.

  “It reminds me of another painting,” she said slowly. “One I think I’ve seen here in the Castello. But this looks like a sketch—it’s not finished properly.” That last remark slipped out before she could stop it, and for a frozen moment she thought she had said the wrong thing—criticized a new acquisition and thus proved her ignorance. She looked up at Alfonso, her scalp prickling with anxiety, expecting the dark eyes to be flashing with anger.

  But he said, “I’m impressed. It is a study for the Feast of the Gods that Bellini did for my father nearly forty years ago. You’re right—you have seen it here, up in the Long Gallery. Do you like the study? I found it and bought it only last week.”

  “I like it better than the big painting.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s…” Lucrezia tried to speak sensibly through the winemuddled jumble of her thoughts. “It’s like a brief second of reality, somehow captured by a brush. The finished painting is more…more static. Artificial.”

  Alfonso did not speak again but took Lucrezia’s hand and led her out of the room. As they went back past the banquet, the buffeting concoction of voices, clattering silverware and joyous music gave their covert passage past the great doors an unexpected frisson of illicit naughtiness. A tingling sense of anticipation began to creep over Lucrezia, and by the time they reached Alfonso’s apartments, she was vividly nervous and excited.

  Folletto the wolfhound scrambled to his feet as Alfonso and Lucrezia entered the largest of the three chambers. He uttered a few deep barks of pleasure at the sight of his master, but tonight, it seemed, his master’s attention was elsewhere.

  “Get out!” Alfonso hissed. He raised a booted foot and shoved roughly at the dog’s side. Folletto yelped. Alfonso held open the door to the apartment and said again, “Go on, get out!” The dog’s tail drooped and, with a reproachful look, he loped from the room.

  Alfonso closed the door, turned to Lucrezia and walked her backwards to his bedchamber, unfastening laces as he went. He began to kiss her as they reached the bed. His mouth upon hers, he pulled open her now laceless bodice and, as she lay back, he pushed up her skirts, exposing her legs, bunching the cloth untidily around her waist. For some moments it was the experience Lucrezia had longed for and she revelled in sensing and seeing Alfonso’s hands on her body—dark against her pale skin.

  But then, poised on the brink of consummation, with, on this occasion, every expectation of success, her gaze met his. Earlier that evening, she had seen a naked hunger in his eyes—a hunger that had indeed fired her own longing for physical satisfaction—but his expression now was different. No longer hunger, but greed: a greedy, dissolute stare, devoid of warmth or affection. She had never seen such a look on his face before and it frightened her. There was no love in it. This was how a man might look at a whore. Her eyes wide with fear, she shrank away from him towards the pillows, crossing her arms over her breasts and pulling her knees up towards her chest.

  Alfonso’s expression changed. For a second, what appeared to be panic distorted his face, but then this was followed by a hard, shadowed anger. “Cazzo!” he hissed. Then, almost under his breath, in a voice somewhere between a mutter and a moan, he said, “Merda! Not again—not now!” And then louder, more guttural, “No, no, no—by the rancid piss of Beelzebub, you will not fuck it up again!”

  He clenched his right hand into a fist.

  Lucrezia gasped. For a cold empty second, already shocked by the venom of his oaths, she felt sure he was going to hit her; she shut her eyes tight and turned away from him, shoulders hunched, palms over her face.

  But the blow did not come.

  Lucrezia opened her eyes again and saw him get up off the bed. He bent and reached for his discarded doublet. Suddenly aware of her exposed legs and breasts, Lucrezia sat up, pulled the front edges of her bodice together with fingers that trembled, and then pushed her skirts back down over her knees.

  Alfonso said, “Go to your chambers, Lucrezia—I do not think we should see each other again tonight. I…I will return to the banquet.” He stared fixedly down at the laces of his doublet as he spoke.

  Without a word, Lucrezia crossed the room and opened the door. Folletto lay across the threshold, blocking her way out. As she made to step over him, he growled and stood up. His head was almost level with her shoulder.

  “Oh, God, please move!” she muttered.

  Alfonso swore again. “Folletto!” he snapped. The great dog pushed past Lucrezia, into the apartment. Turning back into the room, Lucrezia saw that her husband was facing away from her, staring silently out of the window. The dog seated itself at his feet and he laid a hand on its head.

  For a long moment, nobody moved. Then, with hot tears on her cheeks, Lucrezia walked unseeingly along the two corridors and up the spiral staircase to her own apartment, barefoot, with her arms folded over her chest to hold her bodice closed.

  ***

  Catelina stood up as the door to the Signora’s apartment opened. At the sight of her mistress she dropped the shift she had been mending. The Signora’s hair was dishevelled, her bodice was unlaced, her feet were bare—and her face was slick and swollen with tears.

  “Oh, my lady—oh, dear God—whatever is the matter?”

  The Signora shook her head, either unwilling or unable to speak. Catelina crossed the room and put her arms around her mistress. The Signora stood stiffly within the embrace; she felt small and thin, and that chicken-bone breakableness now quite tore at Catelina’s heart. And then the stiffness dissolved and the Signora was weeping: great shuddering sobs that shook her whole body. It was, Catelina thought, a sound of utter despair. The thin arms crept around Catelina and the small fingers gripped the stuff of her dress. They stood clasped together for several moments, and Catelina stroked the Signora’s hair, muttering soothing nonsense until the weeping subsided.

  Part Three

  Ferrara, April 1561

  Fifteen months later

  9

  A fresco is a truly monumental form of art, Alfonso thought, as he lay on his back with his fingers interlaced behind his head. How long was it since he had seen those first sketches? Well over a year. Admittedly, Pandolf had been obliged to finish another commission and had not been able to turn his full attention to the Castello’s fresco design until some ten months ago, but still, it had not been until that very morning that the letter had arrived, announcing his readiness to begin work on site. The sketching, drawing and cartooning had taken him the best part of a year. The enormity of the task pleased Alfonso very much; he ran a hand over and around Francesca’s bottom, and admitted to himself that he was almost childishly excited at the prospect of the painters’ imminent arrival.

  “Get off!” Francesca murmured sleepily.

  Smiling, he closed his fingers more tightly on one buttock. Francesca, eyes still closed, moved away from him and shifted position to lie on her back. The exquisite body was still damp with the sweat of their coupling and her hair had tumbled around her face and shoulders. He lifted a lock of it and wound it around his finger. He was thankful she had not attempted to bleach it, as so many women seemed to be doing now; it was still raven-black and lustrous. The lock of hair slipped from his finger and lay curled over her breast and around
one brown nipple. Like a dark comma, Alfonso thought, punctuating the intoxicating statement of the perfect body.

  Francesca sighed and ran a hand over her breast, pushing away the hair; her nipple slid into and out of the space between her first two fingers.

  Alfonso watched her for a moment, but, rather than arouse him again, the languid voluptuousness of his whore made him think, unwillingly, of the contrast between her and the diminutive creature whose understated, boyish allure continued to obsess him. Francesca had always been pliant, enthusiastic, uninhibited: a willing vessel into which he knew he could pour himself whenever he needed to sate his restless energy. But even after so many long months, access to Lucrezia’s more intimate charms was still denied him.

  Although a persistent longing for his wife now tugged almost continually at his consciousness, his attempts at consummation had become increasingly rare; the scorching humiliation he felt at each failure had become so intensely painful that he knew he was now avoiding the issue as often as he could. But he had to continue trying. He had to produce an heir. Without an heir, the future of the duchy was dangerously unstable.

  A wave of anger thrust up into his throat like bile: a black, bleak anger that Alfonso knew was directed as much towards himself as Lucrezia. Here they were, locked into a lifelong contract that was impossible to rescind on pain of damnation. Was this some game of God’s? Was the Almighty punishing him for some unwitting misdeed? The injustice seemed catastrophic: his wife—the potential mother of the heir to the duchy—reduced him to the status of a eunuch each time he attempted to bed her. What did it signify that he could fuck Francesca like a lust-crazed satyr as often as he chose and that he had fathered upon his whore a pair of beautiful bastard children? Nothing whatsoever—for as far as the fate of the duchy was concerned, the only fact that mattered was that his wife…castrated him. Hobbled him. Rendered him impotent. The words sneered their way into his mind and Alfonso clenched his jaw, balling both hands into fists in an attempt to stem a rising tide of what felt perilously near panic.