Death of a Duchess (15 page)

Over the hills a lemon sunrise cast a pale light on the walls of the villa, and on an opening shutter. As Sigismondo, heavily cloaked and hooded, settled himself in the grey gelding’s saddle, a hand waved from the open window. He raised an acknowledging hand in salute.

The wrought-iron gates were still open as they rode out and Benno, turning to look back, saw that his master was smiling. He also appeared, under the deep hood of his cloak, to be wearing a wimple.

Benno asked no questions because he thought himself asleep, imagining things, but as they passed out of sight of the villa, descending the steep path between poplars, Sigismondo let his hood fall back.

Benno stared.

The strong jawline was disguised by the lines of the wimple, drawn over the cheeks to a point below the mouth, making a triangle with the low band to the eyebrows, a deliberately feminine triangle that showed only the dark eyes, the nose and the mouth. Benno noticed for the first time the thick sweep of eyelashes, and that one could see the sensual mouth as womanly. He had seen matrons on the Rocca streets with just as commanding. Sigismondo smiled, and his hood forward again over the black lawn veil, Biondello thrust his head out of Benno’s cloak to have look.

‘You serve a widow now, Benno: Donna Maria-Dolores, Spanish relict of a di Torre cousin. Ride beside me, and tell me all that you know about the childhood and relations of the Lady Cosima.’

Benno, at first of the opinion that he knew nothing of the subject, found that in pleasant converse with this weirdly female figure that he could tell a good deal. As time went by, the person beside him seemed to become more and more feminine, in bearing and behaviour. The voice modulated to a deep contralto, and, gradually, Benno began to see just such a woman as he had often met: big, somewhat masculine, but with a score of differences that Benno could not place but which made him all but lose sight of his master, and made him able to accept the transformation. He talked about family celebrations of the di Torre household, about gossip among the servants of the guests, and long arguments on winter evenings about such matters as the relationship of old Matteo di Torre to one of the Christmas guests, of Jacopo himself to the godparents of the little sons who had not lived; repetition, and Benno’s pride in the family he had served, had printed a good deal on his memory. By the time they drew off the road onto a sheltered spot under a contorted cliff, and ate and drank, the widow could say decisively: ‘Yes, I am Maria-Dolores de Cornuto, and I was married to that Venetian cousin. But you’ll offer no explanations to anyone. You’ll call me madam. And from now, until I tell you otherwise, in any company you’ll leave your mouth open and let nothing come out of it.’

‘So where are we off to, madam?’ They were not in any company, and the Widow Cornuto was in a relaxed mood. Benno remembered the laughter upstairs in the villa at dawn.

‘Do you know none of the roads round Rocca? Can you not tell our direction?’

‘I never was anywhere but Rocca and the villa. I’d like to see the world, like Kiev and Compostella and that.’

‘For now we’re going to the Benedictine house you spoke of. If nuns from that house came to see Ugo Bandini and, after he had seen them, he no longer led me to search for the Lady Cosima, it must be because he then knew where she is. And where better hide a young unmarried girl than in a convent?’

‘Who took her there, if it wasn’t the Bandini?’ The face so strangely feminised turned to him with raised brows that touched the linen browband. ‘When I find the answer to that, Benno, I may even tell you.’

They rode on in silence, Benno mentally digesting, had let Biondello stay on the ground for a run. The little dog kept close to the horses, uncertain of, but interested in, the roadside. He avoided a woodcutter who, muffled to the eyes in sacking and rags bound round his feet and legs up to the knees, met them, leading a donkey and not sparing the woman and her groom a second glance. Biondello learnt that most human beings kick or throw things, and he kept to the far side, safe behind his gods who did neither. They met an ox cart, creaking behind the two blond creatures who looked as if they walked in their sleep, their dewlaps aswing. Further back one of them had dunged the road, and a flock birds was pecking without much hope. Biondello saw them off.

‘Leandro Bandini, then.’ Benno, getting some answers, hoped to air a few more of his questions. ‘You really think he didn’t do it? Why’d he act like at the feast, then, giving his heart to the Duchess not the bride? Dancing about like that on the table?’

‘You thought he did it well?’

‘In and out the plates and cups, a tumbler couldn’t have beaten him at it. Until he knocked the wine over the Duchess. But then he must have meant to do that.’

The grey, going ahead on the path as it narrowed, picked its way carefully among the stones on the slope, and Sigismondo’s voice came back to Benno, ‘Quite the professional, as you say. Have you ever tried dancing on a table like that? There were two Wild Man costumes; Leandro could wear only one.’

Benno hurried forward to ride alongside as the road opened out again, and leant to scoop Biondello off the bank. He tucked the dog under his cloak against his body to warm the paws icy on his palm. ‘You think it was a tumbler killed the Duchess?’

The bewildering face was turned towards him again in amusement. ‘M’m-h’m-h’m. You could be right. It’s a thought, Benno. Some tumbler could have had a grudge against the Duchess, and sent the spare suit to Leandro with a false message, knowing he’d need a disguise, as a Bandini, to get into the Palace. It would be interesting to know where the tumbler is now. He could tell us something.’

‘Or he could’ve been paid to kill her. What about Poggio, though?
He
had a grudge; she’d got him kicked out of his job
and
the Palace. Why couldn’t he have killed her?’

They both crossed themselves as they passed a wayside shrine. The statue of the Madonna, her blue robe chipped at the edges, looked serenely down at a spray of ivy someone had put in a pottery jar at her feet.

‘It’s not impossible that Poggio did.’

‘But you let him go!’

‘I know where to find him,’ said Sigismondo, ‘and he’ll think he’s safe now. He’ll stay with that troupe unless he quarrels with them.’

Benno brooded for a while, his cloak twitching as Biondello got in a good scratch under one ear. ‘Did Poggio see anyone there, then, if he didn’t do it himself?’

‘He saw nothing to begin with, and then his mother persuaded him that to keep quiet would hang him quicker than the truth would. And my sword may have helped.’

‘Then he did see—’

Biondello, with a particularly ecstatic flurry of his hind leg, ejected himself from the cloak and landed in a surprised condition on the path. Sigismondo swerved the grey aside, and by the time Benno had dismounted and collected the dog, his master was ahead again.

‘Did he see someone?’ Benno was afraid that the indulgent mood might be over and the answers dried up, but the answer he did get earned him a mouthful of cold air. ‘The Lady Violante? What was she doing there?’

‘Come to take something she thought belonged to her, at a time when she was sure the apartment would be empty. A jewel promised her by the former Duchess. So she tells me. Equally, she might have gone there to kill the Duchess, or to take the opportunity of finding her asleep; the lady saw somebody going away, cloaked, whom she took to be the Duchess, so she says; it could have been anyone, male or female. Perhaps she came into the room, took the jewel, and then saw the Duchess and believed her theft had seen and killed her. She’s an impetuous young creature.’

‘If it was her,’ Benno pursued the idea with awe, ‘and you said so, you’d be for it, wouldn’t you? — Well, in fact, your Grace, it was the Lady Violante who did it — Ah, thank you so much; guards! Take this man out and hang him.’

Another wagon groaned and creaked its way towards them, the four oxen plodding, scattering stones and crushing the ice off puddles, not altering their pace for the whip that flickered and cracked around them, or the shouts of the man trudging alongside. His exertions had made him warm and he offered them a cheerful greeting, demurely acknowledged by the widow. It was a little time before Benno spoke again.

‘Why’d his Grace send you away? Does he think it was the Lady Violante?’

‘I doubt if he’s thought of that. What’s on his mind is what I put there: I told him there were no signs of forcing on her Grace, no bruised wrists, no bruises anywhere. She had lain with a man and she had been willing. Poggio heard no cries of protest and he was in a closet off her chamber, only a matter of yards away. The Duke does not want to hear about her lovers. As his brother said, there are secrets in every family.’

Benno rode in silence for a little, accommodating himself to Biondello’s efforts at settling in comfort. Then he ventured, ‘If the Duke’d found her with a lover—’

‘Young Leandro wouldn’t be waiting to die now.’

‘No one would’ve blamed the Duke for it, would they?’

‘Even Duke Ippolyto might have had to accept his sister’s death.’

‘Know what I heard in the Palace afterwards? They were saying — only, like, behind their hands — that the Duke killed her in one of his rages, same as he killed the Duchess Maria.’

‘And what’s the version you’ve heard of
that
story?’

‘He set his dogs on her and they tore her throat out.’ Benno said it with a gossip’s relish. ‘Everyone’s heard that. A-course, at the time it was given out it was an accident and the dogs had gone mad, they’d jumped on a monkey she was holding. The Duke killed them himself. I was that sorry when I heard. I was just a boy in the stables. Poor dogs, how could they know?’ Benno fondled the dozing Biondello. ‘I should have been sorry for the Duchess, everyone said she was good and kind. D’you think the Duke killed this Duchess too?’

The widow gave a little forward shrug of the shoulders. ‘Whoever did it arranged for Leandro Bandini to take the blame. It may indeed have been the Lady Violante who sent him the message. The Duke himself is set on healing this feud that damages his state. Is it likely he would provoke it further? There have been riots in the town since the death, Bandini against di Torre, street fights from which one man is near death. Is this the Duke’s peace?’

They had reached the top of a hill and paused, the valley spread out before them, touched now by sunlight, the walls and buildings of a distant town, white and red against the far-off hills, blue like the bloom on a plum. It was warm now, and the widow let her hood fall back, arranging her veil with one hand.

Benno had been visited by an uncomfortable thought, and gazed at the view without seeing it.

‘Could have been my old master, you know. Lord Jacopo could’ve sent the disguise and that to Bandini’s son, hired the dancer to get the Duchess to withdraw to change her dress, and dumped Leandro — believe me, he could have done it. You don’t make a fortune like he has if you’re afraid of dirty tricks. And he did pretend my lady had been snatched.’

‘How would he get the Duchess to dismiss her ladies? Do you propose him as her secret lover?’

Benno snorted. Side by side, they surveyed the landscape. The grey whinnied and rubbed its nose on its foreleg. A bird, from its size a raven, flew heavily into the distance towards the town; another group of black birds, dots in a field, moved busily foraging. Benno undid his cloak at the neck, whereas half an hour ago he had been envying the widow’s enveloping skirts.

‘It’s a lover, isn’t it? Her lover did it. Has to be, if she was expecting someone. Might be Leandro after all, eh?’

The strong profile under the veil was thoughtful. ‘He may be lying, just as Poggio may; but if a man lies with a woman, there are traces that cannot be concealed. I helped him strip off that Wild Man suit in prison soon after, and there was nothing; and I smelt herbs on his breath that made me believe he had been drugged.’

‘Why didn’t the Duke kill him when he found him?’

‘He didn’t find him. Leandro was meant to be found, as I see it, at the Duchess’s side, and found by the Duke perhaps, who would be likely to kill him, or by the guards. But, half-conscious, he tried to move, and fell between the bed and the curtains; by the time I found him, he was not conscious and the Duke would not kill him.’

‘I know he’s a Bandini but I’m really sorry for him. I’d be sad to watch him executed. But if it isn’t him, how can you find who the lover was? Not likely to come running to the Duke, is he, saying “Sorry.” And the Duke doesn’t want you to go asking either. That’s what’s called a dead end, I’d say.’

Sigismondo gathered the reins and touched the grey’s flanks. ‘That’s to be seen, my Benno. And now take your vow of silence. You’ve talked enough to last you for the next four days.’

The widow, her groom and his dog rode on towards Castelnuova.

The travellers did not at first glance impress the portress at the Benedictine house in Castelnuova; but the tale of woe that came at her through the grille prompted a speedy unbolting of the postern, and necessitated a helping hand for the bulky woman bundled in cloak and veils, who could hardly step over the high threshold. Her lack-wit groom, trying to help, only precipitated her forward. The woman was ill, exhausted, a pilgrim who had been set on robbers, deserted by her attendants, left with this poor fool who understood nothing but horses. The man’s mouth hung open, his eyes clearly conveyed nothing to his mind. He was sent round to the stables, accompanied by a lay sister in case he lost his way, and to vouch for him. The widow herself, now revealed as truly imposing once she had cast back her hood, was in need of care. Her plethoric build was not suited to the trials she had endured. She sank into the portress’s chair as soon as she saw it, and lay back, with eyes turned upward, lips parted, near to fainting, a hand pressed to her heart. It was a case for the infirmary rather than the guest house.