Ariosto (45 page)

Lodovico followed him. “Would you like to have such a discussion? Tell me.” It was not the time to ask Damiano, he was sure, but there was no time that was right, so he seized the opportunity and salved his conscience with the assurance that if Damiano rejected the idea, it was because it had been put to him at the wrong time. He passed through the door a few steps behind Damiano and almost ran into his friend, who had halted in the vestibule.

“Yes, I think I would like to have such a discussion,” he said after a hesitation. “San Jacopo knows that I need a diversion.” He glanced speculatively at Lodovico. “All right, we’ll do it. Come to my study tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got to meet with the local Gonfaloniere and some others for comestio, and there is to be a discussion after the meal, but I have time after that. I was going to spend it riding, but this will be better. Come to my study an hour after comestio. If I’m not there at once, wait for me.”

“I will,” Lodovico promised, satisfied that he could fulfill both his obligation to Damiano—who, after all, was his patron—and his private vow to stay close to his friend.

“An hour after comestio tomorrow,” Damiano stated, pointing a finger at Lodovico in punctuation.

“In your study. Yes.”

“Good.” Without another word, Damiano turned away and went off down the long hall toward the state drawing rooms leaving Lodovico grinning with the first real hope he had known in days.

“You’re not working,” Alessandra said as she looked up from her sewing.

“I’m thinking.” Lodovico had propped his elbows on the table and his quill was bridging his hands as he stared out into the night. There were only two lanterns in the room, one by Alessandra’s chair and the other hung over Lodovico’s table so that he sat in a soft puddle of light.

“The ink on your quill is caked.” It was not an accusation. Alessandra set the shirt she was stitching aside. “You’ve been lost all evening. Is anything wrong? Are you well?”

“Of course I’m well,” Lodovico assured her, answering the easiest of her questions.

“Then what is it?” Her old buff-colored camora was golden in the feeble light, and the harsher signs of age in her face could not be seen. She looked very much the way Lodovico remembered her when they had met at the d’Este court. As he recalled, she had been wearing a damask the color of jonquils that made her light- brown hair seem to be lunar gold. She had read one of his plays, he remembered, and asked him intelligent questions. They had not been allowed to marry, but she had come to live with him before the summer was over.

“I’ve always liked you in yellow,” he said inconsequently. He was pleased that she was intuitive enough not to ask for an explanation.

“It was sad that Donna Margharita had to leave,” Alessandra remarked a little later. “I had wonderful talks with her. It’s so refreshing to meet a woman who isn’t boring. She was interested in more things than children and households and Saints’ Days. I hope it’s possible for her to return one day.”

“I hope so, too,” he said, and could not shake off the melancholy suspicion that it would never happen.

“She’ll do well in Roma, but it will take her time to learn. Roma is a special place.” Alessandra had started to work on her sewing again.

“You’ve only been there twice,” Lodovico reminded her gently.

“It was enough. Margharita Roper will hate it at first, but she may have the talent for…” She gestured aimlessly, her needle a shining point of light in her hands.

“Not intrigue?” Lodovico asked, hoping that he had not found the correct word. It was true that Margaret carried a letter for Damiano, but that surely did not mean that she would learn to fawn, flatter, lie, coquette and manipulate with the lamentable gusto of so many Roman women.

“No, not that,” Alessandra exclaimed, exasperated. “No, I mean that she might find a place in that other Roma, where learning and antiquity and virtues are treasured. There are a few of the old families who have such a life, and should Donna Margharita be fortunate, she will discover them before the rest of Roma engulfs her.”

“She has a strong will. She will not be overcome it,” Lodovico said rather weakly, for he hated the idea of Margaret in that holy, pernicious city.

“She should do better than simply learn to resist!” was Alessandra’s answer. Her needle jabbed into the linen and she gave a little yelp, then pulled her hand free and stuck a finger into her mouth.

“Are you hurt?” Lodovico asked.

“Not badly,” Alessandra replied indistinctly.

“Is the shirt for Virginio?” he inquired, not caring but eager to show his wife that he was concerned with her.

“Of course.” She had peered at her finger, licked once, then, apparently satisfied that there was no serious damage, she went back to stitching. “I found a fine cloak for him, and I thought I would finish this shirt to send at the same time. Damiano said that he was sending a messenger into France at the end of month, and he would give authorization for a package to Virginio.” Her smile deepened as she went on. If the report from Padre Gregorio is right, Virginio is doing very well for himself. When he called yesterday, I was so frightened that he would tell us that our son had gone the way of so many others and spent his days in mischief and his nights in debauch. Instead, he brings word that Virginio is acquiring a reputation for scholarship and at the same time is known as a good fellow. What more can I wish for him?”

Lodovico could not admit it to Alessandra, but had shared her fear, and when the Augustinian priest had come with news, he had fought the urge to send him away. Now, he was glad that he had been willing to listen to the traveling prelate. “It was good of him to stop,” Lodovico agreed.

“My husband,” Alessandra said with a sigh, “how is it that you can spend hours scribbling about the most fabulous adventures, but when you are discussing your own son, you become nearly mute?” She did not expect an answer and got none.

For a time Lodovico busied himself cleaning and sharpening his quill, though he was not aware of these simple, habitual actions. His mind drifted to the endless snows of the Russias, and to Sir Thomas More in those deadly wastes, still believing that he was obligated to Damiano de’ Medici for the safety of his wife and family. Damiano, Lodovico decided, had been right. The confrontation could not wait until the exiled Chancellor of England returned to Firenze with the private gleanings of his travels to report to Damiano. The ink had dried on his pen again as Lodovico gazed out into the night where a ruddy and insubstantial image of himself in the narrow panes of glass seemed to hover in the branches of the distant trees.

Damiano was late, and so Lodovico had passed the time deciphering Leonardo da Vinci’s backward hand in one of his notebooks which Damiano had had bound in red leather. Most of the drawings were concerned with a variety of vehicles that Leonardo apparently thought could be made to fly. He was just finishing the description of the function of wings in birds when he looked up, hearing a hasty, unsteady step in the hall. He marked his place with one finger and holding the book closed with the rest of his hand, he half-rose.

The footsteps stumbled, and Lodovico, unreasonably alarmed, put the books aside, and drawing the little dagger he had appropriated that morning from its sheath on his belt, he went toward the door, just as Damiano lurched through it.

Sobbing, his face sallow as old ivory, his left arm held against his side, Damiano was unaware of anyone else in the study. He fumbled for the latch and nearly fell as he tried to swing the door closed. “Dio. Dio. Dio. Only two. Only two,” he breathed as he leaned back against the door as if to hold himself up as much as to assure himself it was closed. His mouth was an agonized square, his face waxen and smooth.

The shock which had immobilized Lodovico at the sight of Damiano left him so suddenly that he had to catch himself on the table to keep from falling. “Damiano…”

For the first time, Damiano’s vision cleared and he saw his friend. He groaned at the sight of him. “No. Oh, no.” Then he staggered away from the door, leaving a long, wet, red stain on the green-and-gold paint.

Lodovico saw the blood but could not bring himself to accept what it meant.

“The table,” Damiano panted as he tugged at it futilely. “The door. Jesu, only two of them. If I’d had a sword…”

“Damiano, what happened?” Lodovico demanded as, belatedly, he reached out to aid him.

“The door!” Damiano insisted. “As you love Christ, block it!” He half-fell toward a chair. “They were waiting for me, all of them. Benci, that nephew of his, the lot of them. The Gonfaloniere, Manrico’s bastard, all of them.” He put one hand to his side with the same wide-palmed touch that an infant might use on an unexplored thing. It came away red and he nodded to himself, leaning back.

As he struggled with the heavy table, pushing at it without success, his right hand still clutching the dagger, Lodovico managed to ask, “What did they do?’ He knew well enough what they did, he told himself furiously: they had attacked his friend.

“Hurry. Hurry. They’ll be here soon.” His eyes were closed now and there was a sheen on his face, like the blighting touch of frost.

The writing table in Damiano’s study was designed be moved by two men, and the parquetry floor was uneven. Lodovico was able to push the imposing piece of furniture a quarter of the way across the room toward the door when he heard running footsteps far down the hall.

“I should have paid that Burgundian to kill him,” Damiano said weakly, more to himself than Lodovico. “He would have done it. I should have paid him. A Borgia or a Sforza or a della Rovere would have paid. I thought it was wrong. Despicable. Then this.” A spasm shook him. “The door, for God’s sake!”

Lodovico looked frantically about and saw at last the candelabrum in the corner. It was taller than a man, of ornate iron. He fairly ran across the room and grabbed the candelabrum, tilted it and began dragging it back across the study. He could feel his arms tremble with the unaccustomed demand of this effort and his unacknowledged fear. The sound of iron against wood was hideous and ordinarily would have put Lodovico’s teeth on edge but now he barely noticed it.

“The study!” shouted a voice far down the hall, and the sound of running feet grew louder.

Part of the pedestal of the candelabrum caught against the carved foot of the table and Lodovico tugged and grunted, working it free, refusing to listen for the approach of the men pursuing Damiano.

“Perdonami, perdonami Iddio,” Damiano muttered as he tried to sit straight in the chair. He caught sight of Lodovico just as the foot of the candelabrum came free and Lodovico gave an involuntary cry of relief. “And you, my friend. Forgive me. I didn’t think that this would…”

Lodovico had no time to answer and little inclination to speak. He was too busy with the candelabrum, and was convinced now that if only he could drag it a few more paces, he could block the door with it. The little dagger felt hot in his hand and he had skinned his knuckles on the elaborate iron, but he would not drop the weapon. He steadfastly refused to think of what might happen once the door was blocked and more ambitious, bloody men gathered outside it.

He had almost reached the door when it started to open. Shouting some unknown word of blessing or curse, Lodovico thrust the candelabrum ahead of him, using it like a multi-tipped pike. Candles broke, scattering white flakes of wax over the floor, and the iron dug into the painted wood just where it was smeared with blood. Lodovico pressed down on the metal, determined to wedge it tightly against the door.

“The footprints! Look! Blood!” one of the voices announced distinctly, excitedly, as if the speaker were half drunk.

“Lodovico…” Damiano was saying with careful, painful effort. “While there’s still time. I forgot you’d be here. I didn’t intend. I never intended you to have to…”

Now there was a pounding on the door, done first with fists and then with sword hilts. Lodovico shot one worried glance at the latch, then looked back at Damiano, who had lifted his sanguined hand listlessly. “The window. You can get out. They don’t know…”

“It’s two storeys to the paved courtyard,” Lodovico reminded him unemotionally.

“Climb down. I beg…” Damiano whispered.

Lodovico wanted to weep, to shout at the enraged men on the other side of the door to be silent, for they would have their wishes soon enough. He could see death lying over Damiano’s face, as if the body had been invaded by a stranger. But he could not say it, not to the men bludgeoning the door, not to Damiano, pale in the high-backed chair. Instead he tried to chuckle. “Climb down? At my age? If we wait, someone will come.”

“Someone is here.” Damiano coughed once and shook his head. “Cosimo will come.

When this is over. Cosimo will come.” There was a scraping and splintering, and fingers pushed eagerly through the first little cracks in the wood, searching for whatever had blocked the way.

“We need more room!” one of the men shouted, and the hacking was renewed by fewer, stronger arms.

Lodovico went to the foot of the
candelabrum once
more and pushed against it, not sure that it was enough to stop the men if they actually chopped the door into pieces. He said as he worked, “There are men who will not allow this, Damiano. There are men who will be outraged, all over Europe. They will hasten to you as soon as they learn what is happening here.” He could not hear Damiano’s answer, if there was one. He put all his strength into blocking the door though his hands were blistering with the effort and the edge of the dagger nicked the fleshy part of his palm.

A section of wood gave way and a padded and slashed silken sleeve of periwinkle blue pushed through the jagged space. There was a short sword in an embroidered glove, and it slashed blindly, wildly about. Lodovico had to resist the urge to grab for the blade, confine it, and slap the hand that held it. He felt himself about to laugh and knew that he must not.

“Only two. Not enough. Tried for Benci. No good; Benci wouldn’t have been enough,” Damiano remarked casually, dreamily. “I’d have to get my cousin as well. But only
two
…” The faint voice choked. “I didn’t want to have to do it that way. I wanted to prove…to prove…? my grandfather’s ideals…were right. It should be possible to…govern with reason and sense…It should…It is…But Benci…Why Benci?”