Death of a Duchess (19 page)

It was no loss to the pedlar, to whom the cook’s knife was merely fortuitous. His own was in his hand, longer and fully as sharp, and he leapt. Sigismondo’s chair met him halfway, jarring his arm so that the knife jumped from his hand. He wrested the chair aside and the men grappled. The Widow Costa and her companion clung together, holding breath in acute anxiety and terror, as the men trampled and then rolled about the room, the face of one muffled in the other’s sleeve as they struggled, Sigismondo to drive his knife home, the other to prevent him. The leather hat soared across the room like an ungainly fowl, the men grunted and the floor resounded. By a twist, Sigismondo emerged on top, forcing the knife down in a swoop that veered abruptly and embedded the blade in the floor. Both men, quite still, stared.

‘Barley. You scoundrel. You’ve grown a beard!’

‘Martin! You’ve lost your hair!’

The three women disbelieved what was happening as devoutly as they had disbelieved what went before. After a moment, each reacted: the companion remained rigid, pressed against a tapestry of Philemon and Baucis, and babbled a litany of prayer; the widow seized the chair Sigismondo had used against Barley, and stood ready to wield it; the nun had wrested the knife from the window jamb and waited her chance to plunge it into the man who could only be a Bandini.

The two opponents were busy helping each other off the floor, laughing, embracing, a bears’ reunion. Sigismondo retrieved his knife and sheathed it. They regarded one another with relish. Their lethal fight had plainly been a fillip to their taste for life, and had raised their spirits.

‘Who paid you to kill me, eh?’

‘Who’s a traitor to Duke Ludovico?’

Sigismondo put a hand to his shaven head and smoothed it down to the nape, humming thoughtfully. ‘Ah. That’s the way the wind blows now?’ He jabbed Barley in the chest, a chest that could take any jab not delivered by steel. ‘You’ll remember Federico Costa?’

‘I don’t forget a man I fought beside, God save his soul.’

‘Meet his widow.’

Sigismondo led forward Barley, now a bashful bear, to kiss the widow’s hand. She had lowered the chair, albeit watchfully, and looked at the men with growing anger, charged by her recent fear.

‘What’s the mystery here? You come to kill my guest under my roof, and you say you are my husband’s comrade? Is this the common usage among men of the sword?’

‘He is an Englishman.’ Sigismondo’s statement was an exoneration for all eccentricities, even with knives. Who could need more explanation? But Barley was aroused.

‘A
Scot
, man! I am a
Scot
. Take that word
English
off your tongue. You’re such a mongrel yourself, you understand nothing of these things; or so you pretend.’ A playful blow hit the chest as impervious as his own. It looked as if they had more wrestling to do before they could work off the pleasure of this meeting.

‘You are not a Bandini? Nor hired by one?’

Barley took in for the first time the young, frail-looking nun, with fierce eyes and a knife to match, with which she was suddenly threatening his ribs.

‘I’m no Bandini, Sister, nor have I taken money of one. I’ve come from Rocca, true, but on the Duke’s business.’

‘You lie! He told me
he
works for the Duke.’

‘No longer, no longer.’ Sigismondo deftly retrieved the knife from the nun’s hand. ‘Let us sit in peace and, with your permission, my lady,’ bowing to the Widow Costa with a warm smile, ‘drink some of your excellent wine.’ As he spoke, some dark thought flashed on him and he swung abruptly to Barley. ‘Are you alone?’

Both men thought of Benno. Barley also thought of Angel-face, who by now might have had a visitor in the kitchen looking, as Biondello had done, for welcome and food. Together they plunged from the room.

Nun and widow sank on chairs as if their knees had abdicated responsibility. The companion, in catatonic trance quite unbroken by anything yet said, remained pressed against the tapestry beginning another decade of Hail Marys, perhaps in the certainty that if she stopped, the sky, or at least the ceiling, would fall.

Benno, when he finished with the horses, whistled to Biondello, slung his bag on his shoulder, and strolled towards the kitchen, enjoying the spring sun. It glowed more warmly than of late, and he raised his face to it, anticipating, as Biondello had done, good food from the hands of the cook and with luck more than a kindly pat from the kitchenmaid. He did not notice that Biondello had prudently failed to come along.

He stood in the kitchen doorway, living up to the kitchenmaid’s unkind description of him, though to call his appearance half-witted at this juncture would have been generous. The urgent, frozen scene did not change though eyes moved towards him. Even the soft invitation from the angelic one to despatch the kitchenmaid from this world by an untoward move was the same. He had issued it effectively twice before and it should have been adequate for even the most clouded mind. Benno, however, had his priorities. He spared a sad thought for the kitchenmaid but he scrambled into a headlong rush along the gravel, to run round the house to the front. He understood danger, and his master was the man for that. He hoped that the great oak door had not been bolted. He even hoped that the lovely young viper with the knife would take time over cutting the kitchenmaid’s throat, but he doubted it. Something about the creature connoted speed. The house was much larger than he had thought. He fled along the front terrace, hearing the quick spirting of gravel behind him. Arriving with a thud against the oak door and struggling with the handle, he found it not bolted and shoved it open and flung himself inside yelling. At this moment Angel-face caught up with him and a vast red-headed man came running full tilt down the green staircase ahead of him followed closely by Sigismondo. Luckily for Benno, he then tripped.

Angel-face hurdled him without faltering, the knife leaving his hand to skim past Sigismondo’s ear, strike the wall and clatter down the stairs underfoot. The big red-headed man bellowed like a baited bull while from the kitchen regions long-pent-up screams bore witness that not everybody’s throat had been cut.

Another knife seemed to grow in Angel-face’s hand. A fierce grappling hold from Barley prevented him from attacking Sigismondo yet again. He was finally placated with an oath from Barley that the apparent pursuer, their intended victim, was a friend.

Sigismondo stood, thumbs in belt, enjoying the noise and confusion with a broad smile. A dwindling hysteria in the kitchen prevented any humming from being heard. Benno raised only his head from where he lay prone on the marble, to judge when rising would be safe, and justified once again in his absolute belief in his master’s mastery. Upstairs, a door had opened and the Widow Costa and the Lady Cosima peered down the stairs.

Persuaded at last to put up his knife, the beautiful viper, introduced by Barley not surprisingly as Angelo, bowed to the ladies, acknowledged one man he had tried to murder with a salute, and helped the other to his feet. Sigismondo had picked up the knife thrown at him and held it out hilt foremost, still smiling.

‘It’s my day to stand for target. I must try it at a circus one day and get paid for it. It’s thirsty work.’

‘Spoilt this blade on the wall,’ Angelo remarked.

‘He’s too fast. I missed him too,’ Barley assured him. ‘You’re lucky, Martin: you name it, he’s knifed it.’

Benno had not the nerve to enquire about the kitchenmaid, though he had eyed the knife his master so genially restored. Now quieter voices in the entrance hall reassured the kitchen. The tapestry veiling the door shook and the cook’s face peered cautiously out. The sight of Angelo nearly drove her back, but she perceived that he was in converse with the lady of the house as well as the appalling pedlar, and curiosity and the absence of any corpse drew her further into the hall. On this day of knives she, too, had armed herself afresh. With her came a strong reek of burnt feathers, explained by the sight through the open door of the kitchenmaid lying on the stone floor, not yet responding to the housemaid’s efforts. Angelo had also his priorities, and the disposal of Benno rated above that of the kitchenmaid. It was flattering, Benno was glad to be alive to feel it.

The widow, a woman of serene temperament besides good sense, led the way upstairs again. Benno was sent to the kitchen with the cook, to convey the good news that no one had been, or was about to be, murdered, and with strict orders to carry up the wine which, but a short time ago, the maid had failed to bring.

The cook had the more difficult task of getting dinner for five extra guests while her chief assistant was being ministered to by a hysterical maidservant in a muddle of cabbage slices and raw pork. However, as her advance into the hall with a knife showed, the cook was a woman of courage and resource. Vinegar proved better than burnt feathers in resuscitation and the process was completed by a brisk clapping on the cheeks with hands capable of shifting huge pans on the stove. The cook had her assistant back, though excited and reluctant to wash the cabbage and pork, and liable to talk ceaselessly about the fair devil who had nearly killed her.

Benno smelt still of stables, with a whiff of the bag he had dropped when he ran and, of course, of himself, as he brought the wine upstairs; where Angelo, with a grace as natural to him as knife-throwing, took the tray, poured the wine and offered the glasses round to the company. Benno regretfully, at a nod from his master, took himself back to the kitchen, where he saw that Biondello was not only present but was covered in white feathers and a vibrant smell. He had rifled Benno’s bag in the yard.

Upstairs, the party so strangely convened was beginning to liven. There was relief in the air, the relief that comes after battle with the realisation that Death has passed you by. The companion had been coaxed out of her prayerful trance and sat, making little gasps from time to time, taking comfort in holding the hand of the girl she believed to be a nun, and gazing at the face of the angel who had fallen from Heaven to sit opposite. There was stirring, somewhere in her mind, the idea that she might soon, perhaps later in the spring, go on pilgrimage again. Certainly on such a journey she would, this time, not sit dumb in her corner when each pilgrim contributed a story. She now had her own tale to tell!

The widow, although she felt more and more entitled to an explanation of all that had exploded round her in the last half hour, managed to keep quiet and to drink a good deal of her own wine. It might be that she would not get the truth until it was told in privacy that night. The thought of this put her into an excellent mood and she was glad to note that Benno had brought several bottles. At a request from her, Angelo rose and filled glasses yet again, his hair shining in the gathering dusk, dreamily followed by the gaze of the companion. The widow smiled, and set herself to attend with greater concentration to the story Barley was telling, with embroidery by Hubert — had he really been known as
Martin
? — which involved some astonishing ambush which they, and her husband, had survived. Men were the same the world over, and you had to be grateful that some of them came home.

The cook contrived her dinner, not a little hampered by her assistant’s repeated and irrepressible descriptions of her ordeal and demonstration of the tiny mark on her neck to Benno and some of the farmworkers who had come in with firewood. These were vociferously confident of their powers to deal with any intruders had they been there, and they inclined to shrug off the women’s vivid descriptions of the size of the pedlar and the demonic attributes of his henchman as feminine exaggeration. Benno’s confirmation was dismissed indulgently. What nobody could understand was why the mistress and her formidable guest were drinking wine with this murderous pair.

The servant who doubled as groom, and by virtue of this did meet foreign, city folk occasionally, was sure it was politics; the cook thought it might be a curious joke such as the gentlefolk often liked; the maid believed they would all have their throats cut in the end, and was continually having to be fetched back from the hall where she had crept out to listen, as if she expected to hear horrid groans from upstairs and see a river of blood flowing down the marble stairs towards her.

Benno said little, but took all that came his way. Whatever happened, his master would prove victorious; had he not retrieved the Lady Cosima? Biondello, with quite equal trust, laid his head between Benno’s knees and accepted willlingly his half of all Benno received.

Not groans but laughter came from upstairs, and what flowed freely was the widow’s good wine. Sigismondo and Barley, capping each other’s stories, strayed into fantasy and bawdry as time went on. The widow laughed; the companion laughed, though not because she understood the humour but out of general euphoria. Cosima di Torre, an unmarried girl in a rich household, had had less opportunity than anyone for meeting people, so that even more of the talk was as strange to her as was the whole situation. She kept up her pretence because, like Benno, she had grown to trust Sigismondo and he had not told her to declare her disguise. She therefore drank little, kept her eyes down, and did not laugh.

Angelo also said nothing. His contribution was to fill the glasses and look beautiful, tasks he performed to perfection. It crossed Cosima’s mind, she did not know why, that the pale gold of his hair might not be its natural colour.

Candles were lit. Barley put another log on the fire, the substantial branch in his hand appearing as a twig. The long oaken table was set with silver dishes which the maid fully expected would leave in the pedlar’s pack when the food was eaten. This food was as good as the wine, more of which was brought up by one of the men from the kitchen, inquisitive to see the strangers. He, on his return, admitted that the maids and cook were innocent of exaggeration as regards the red-haired giant, but that the blond boy looked no better than a girl. Even a kitchenmaid could have twisted a knife out of
his
hand.