Death of a Duchess (18 page)

The girl lay still, eyes shut.

‘Cosima.’

The eyes opened and Cosima sat up; the eyes were brilliant even in the gloom.

‘She tried to wake me, but I pretended to be far gone. She took my pulse and I’m sure it was wrong. I hardly dared to breathe. I don’t think she was very satisfied. Do you think she would suspect?’

‘I don’t doubt it. As a doctor of medicine she knows what she is about. She sent me water hemlock in a dose of valerian. Waste no time talking. Benno’s waiting and he has horses ready.’

Cosima, standing up without having to grasp at her cousin for support, held out a fold of her shift in dismay. ‘I can’t go like this.’

Cousin Caterina turned aside and was busy with her own clothes. Cosima relaxed. Of course that would have been thought of. Then the door opened.

Mother Luca stood there. She saw Cosima standing, and she advanced. Then the door shut and Mother Luca seemed to disappear among Cousin Caterina’s flying wide sleeves and then to throw herself forward as though fainting, held up by the widow’s grip.

‘What happened?’ Cosima shrank from the woman whom the widow now laid down on her side, eyes closed, on the bed. ‘Is she ill?’

‘Quickly!’ Her cousin had whipped out from somewhere a strip of material very like a stocking and, amazingly, was gagging Mother Luca with it. Next, as Cosima still stared, off came the nun’s veil, wimple and cap, revealing a head as dark and cropped as her own and alarmingly vulnerable. The neck and chin showed that she was not a young woman, the planes of her face, that she had been a very beautiful one. She seemed unconscious; the face jolted as Cousin Caterina turned her over in the process of taking off more clothes.

‘Put these on.’

Cosima took the garments thrust at her and, half in a daze, began to put on stockings still warm, then to assemble the habit round her, drowning temporarily in the darkness as the tunic dropped over her head, tying strings at her waist, putting on the scapular, still shocked at Mother Luca’s immobility and vaguely conscious that parts of the habit she was assuming had been blessed and it was surely a sin to wear them. Mother Luca looked nothing like a nun by now, and the more secular she looked, the more it became credible that she was a Bandini.

‘Turn round.’

She turned, a puppet, and had the cap put on and the strings thrust into her hands to tie. Her cousin was now tearing her petticoat to make strips to bind Mother Luca — the Bandini woman — and fasten her to the bedstead. The covers were then pulled up to her nose, hiding even the gag.

Her cousin turned to her, took the strings of the cap she was fumbling with, gave them a professional twist and tucked them in; wound the linen of the wimple into place and pinned it, flung the veil over all and pinned that — holding the pins in her lips like any lady’s maid — and then led her to the door. Cosima glanced back for a second. Another Cosima lay there, just the closed eyes and the dark cropped head showing.

‘I had clothes for you; but those are better.’

Cosima was not strong yet. It was in a daze that she walked beside Cousin Caterina through some big room and out into the open air. Here, she was supported. Cousin Caterina leant over her. Anyone might think she, a nun, was holding up an ailing guest! They reached, at last, after crossing about a quarter mile of the great court, stables. There was Benno, ducking over her hand, hustled by Cousin Caterina. There was a dog who was for a moment Biondello. There were horses.

They were in the open, riding across heath and into trees. She was held in a steely arm against Cousin Caterina. It was not possible to hold things steady or clear in her mind, but she kept seeing Benno’s delighted face turned towards her. Summer at the villa, freedom, riding with dear scruffy Benno...

They were on a road. She saw countryside. Leaning against Cousin Caterina, she glanced down at the hand that held the reins. It was broad, muscular, with hair along the back, quite unmistakeably male.

Cosima sat upright, the horse sidled and her head swam. She looked at Cousin Caterina, who smiled. She looked at the face closely, in the noonday light strong and clear after the cells’ grey dimness.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded. Elderly women might be downy-faced or outright hairy, but never smooth as if shaven. Thick eyelashes and a sculptured mouth, yes; but so strong a nose? The dark eyes glanced towards Benno and an eyebrow rose.

‘It’s all right, my lady. It’s a friend. We’re taking you back to a safe place and then to Rocca. You’ll see your father soon.’

‘But he’s a
man
!’

An astonishingly deep voice replied, ‘But if you’re asked, my lady, you must swear you were always properly chaperoned,’ and he gave her a wide, benign smile.

The kitchenmaid was supposedly slicing cabbage, the cook in theory preparing pork to go in the soup, but neither of them had been able to resist the pedlar’s tray; the cook had been drawn towards it but still carried her knife as a token that she was at work. With that, she pointed to a length of cherry ribbon that would do well to lace her bodice on Sunday; the kitchenmaid’s eyes lingered more on the face of the assistant carrying the tray. Not only did he look like one of the angels straight from a painted church wall, but his hair was the strangest colour she had ever seen, gold with a warmer tinge to it. She touched and examined the buckles the pedlar pointed out to her, but when she held them to the light it was only to steal glances past them at the young man. The pedlar himself, enormous with red beard and black leather hat, bulked huge even in the space of the kitchen, and with his patter in a foreign accent engaged the attentions of the cook. It seemed that dinner for the Widow Costa and her companion would be late today.

Visitors were not uncommon at the villa; the widow had a quite wide acquaintance and kinsfolk, who came to stay, but that was usually in the summer. The pedlar, who had his own budget of news about what was going on in Rocca after the Duchess’s death, made idle enquiries about such guests, and the kitchenmaid wondered if he hoped to sell her mistress the length of black silk he said he had in one of his packs. Suppose Angel-face were to display it, who could resist? They were an odd pair, the tall broad man, like a wrestler, and the slight young man who needed only wings to fly away over their heads. She tried to catch his eye and smile at him, but he kept his eyes warily on the tray.

‘Can it really be your mistress has seen no one since Christmas? No chance to show your skills?’

The cook bridled, a considerable displacement of flesh. She had allowed the cherry ribbon to be held against her bosom, but now threatened the pedlar’s hand playfully with the knife, and took the ribbon from him to try it there for herself; he, nothing daunted, held a mirror from the tray for her to see the result.

‘It doesn’t take a feast to show skill. My lady can appreciate my work whether she has company or no. And there has been company. Why, last Wednesday there was the soldier that fought alongside my lady’s husband, God rest his soul, in France, a great big man like yourself with a shaven head like a priest.’

‘More shaven than that,’ said the kitchenmaid, delighted to see the young angel raise his eyes. They were grey as glass, but he looked at the cook and then at the pedlar, not at her.

‘A soldier with a shaven head? Maybe he’d turned priest to atone for his sins. What retinue did such a man travel with? Some old cut-throats that had been in the wars with him?’

The cook put out a fat hand to adjust the mirror he held. She would have replied but the maid broke in with a giggle, still trying to attract the eyes that would not look her way.

‘Cut-throat? More like a natural. Never shut his mouth though he put away half our stores in it. Could only talk about food. Couldn’t answer a sensible question — he’d just gape. Kept a bag that stank and he wouldn’t let me see what he had in it. Something dead, you could tell that much. And he had a little white dog fuller of fleas than an egg is of meat and that had one ear bit off.’

She ended her breathless description suddenly. As though conjured by her words, into the kitchen from the yard there trotted that very minute a small dog with one ear, its tail wagging expectantly.

The tail wagged more slowly, then drooped. Looking from one face to another, the dog sensed something awry. The kitchenmaid and the cook, with human perception more dull than his, took longer to see that the situation was all at once out of their control. The men, after a moment staring at the dog, acted at speed. A glance went between them, then the angel-faced lad ducked out of the leather neckstrap of his tray and, displacing a half-sliced cabbage and slivers of pork onto the floor, slid it onto the table. The kitchenmaid, following this with puzzled gaze, fell first the unexpected bliss of the young man’s arm tightly round her waist from behind and then the very different thrill of his knife-point under her ear. Over her shoulder the glass-grey eyes challenged the cook, who was, by the heave of her bosom, getting air into her lungs.

‘Scream, and I’ll kill her.’ He sounded interested in the possibility.

The pedlar had vanished, with the same turn of speed even more dismaying in a man of his size. He had had the cook’s knife out of her nerveless hand and was gone by the door into the house. The dog, with that strong instinct that had preserved it from becoming soup in its native village, left just as fast by the yard door it had come in by. Unfortunately for its present owner, it had from earliest puppyhood found barking indiscreet in moments of acute danger.

Benno was therefore more pleased than disturbed to be joined in the stables’ straw-smelling warmth by an affectionate Biondello, whom he had to urge away from his feet several times as he rubbed down the horses. He whistled as he worked, unaware that, to sharp ears in the kitchen, he was signalling both his preoccupation and his whereabouts.

A maid in one of the rooms at the front of the villa, passing a soft broom over the marble floor, dreamt of a handsome stranger. She would have been surprised to know that one was waiting for her in the kitchen.

Happening to glance idly from a window as she moved forwards, she recognised the man walking across the flagged terrace before the house, throwing the hood off his shaven head. There was also a nun, most likely a visitor for the mistress’s companion, arriving simultaneously, for she did not seem a likely companion for Master Hubert.

The maid lost no time, propped the broom against the wall, shook out her apron and, as she ran out into the hall, pulled a curl or two from under her cap. Certainly she did not see, as she opened the great oak door, another man, the one who stood behind the tapestry of Venus and Adonis in the shadows at the back of the entrance hall, or she would not have smiled and bobbed her curtsy with a free heart as she did.

This time, she was determined not to lose the privilege of announcing the main guest, and as he had been expected back from day to day and there was no point in surprise, he allowed her to precede him up the green marble stairs. He did not mention the nun although he had handed her in at the door. The maid did not suppose that the Widow Costa would mind much about this extra guest, but she would be a boon to her sister-in-law who delighted in nuns. Her own slippers, and the man’s boots, and the nun’s soft shoes, padded on the worn green marble whose treads were white-flecked so that it seemed like walking on water.

The pedlar was unamused by this miracle. He would have preferred the maid to join the little party hosted by his assistant in the kitchen. He waited, close by the kitchen door, and they passed out of sight. A door opened. There were distant exclamations. He waited, knife ready, as the maid ran lightly down the stairs smiling to herself, looking forward to returning to the company on the
piano nobile
with the wine the widow had commanded. She put aside the tapestry, whose edge was blackened and buckled by a thousand such handlings; she did not see anyone behind its folds. She skipped into the silent tableau in the kitchen.

Her try at an apposite sound-effect was stillborn; the pedlar’s knife was at her throat. She stood, eyes wide, in grotesque imitation of the kitchenmaid facing her, a mirror image of terror. The cook clasped both fat hands over her mouth as if to cram back screams that would vomit forth. Her face was the exact colour of the turnips on the table, cream with a greenish tinge.

Angel-face, presented with another charge, repeated his assertion that a scream would precipitate the death of the kitchenmaid. To reinforce the notion, he permitted a drop of blood to flower, as if by magic, on her neck, and observed the silent jump all three performed for him.

The pedlar, having left the maid in hands so far from safe, once again vanished.

Upstairs, the Widow Costa had very cordially embraced both her guests, and Sigismondo had kissed the hand of the companion, who preened herself like a little elderly bird and hoped, though not aloud, that there would be exciting stories at dinner as before; and that such stories would not be muted by the presence of a religious. She was ignorant that she was about to become part of an exciting story herself.

Sigismondo did not immediately explain the nun, and the Widow Costa, seating the girl safely by her sister-in-law, drew him to a low-backed chair facing the window, so that she might watch his expression, while she sat herself with her back to it, being of that age where a woman prefers to be seen by candlelight than by winter sun. She leant to take the broad hands in hers and, patting them, began — not to question him about his journey or the nun, for she had been his friend long enough to wait for what he chose to tell her — but to amuse him with trivialities about life during his short absence. She was telling, with well-acted indignation, how her companion had discovered that two of her pilgrim badges, those of St Godelieve of Ghent and of her guest’s name-saint, Hubert of Brussels, were missing, when the door opened. She did not look up, expecting the maid with the wine.

If the companion and the nun had not looked, and uttered a simultaneous shriek, the knife might have found its mark in Sigismondo’s back. As it was, Sigismondo had dropped to a turning crouch and the knife stood juddering with the force of the throw in the wooden jamb of the window.