Death of a Duchess (22 page)

‘I knew you’d want to come,’ said Sigismondo, draining the last of the wine.

The small cavalcade left the Villa Costa a little later than dawn because of the preparations involved. A white spring mist lay in the valley below the villa and clothed them as they rode in ghostly silence. Benno cuddled a warm, drowsy and replete Biondello under his cloak and reflected with happy trust on what lay ahead. He knew from the talk last night that it was a future full of danger to all of them, himself no less, but his confidence in Sigismondo’s powers had not been dented in any way. Here was the Lady Cosima, whom he had found when she could not be found, and had rescued from an impossible situation, who now rode with them. Benno had seen in church a fresco of an angel, finger to lips, leading St Paul out of prison, and although Sigismondo would make a bulky and demonic angel, Benno foresaw a similar miracle for Leandro Bandini.

The Villa Costa was empty, save for servants and the sister-in-law, now paying for the enjoyment of so much wine the evening before. She would not have cared if the Last Trump had sounded, provided it put an end to her misery. She was past registering that the Widow Costa, visiting her briefly at dawn, was out of mourning for the first time since Federico’s death; nor would she have known the nun of last night, dressed in clothes long cast off by the widow’s daughter. Had she searched for Angelo’s beautiful face among the party ready to leave, she would have been flabbergasted to find it framed in yellow plaits twisted with lilac ribbons before the ears. A dress long preserved for sentimental reasons in the widow’s wardrobe, which had once fitted her younger, slenderer form, was, though not up to date, ravishing on Angelo, who had gathered folds of veiling modestly over his flat chest.

The widow, as dignified in mulberry velvet as she had been in black, rode in the character of her own sister, accompanied by daughter and maid, on a visit to her town house in Rocca. There, members of the family stayed now and then and, owing to the timely death of her steward two months ago, the staff had changed and no one was there who had ever seen the widow’s sister. Two servants attended her: a half-witted fellow carrying her little dog, and a burly great brute in a hood, whose bare chin looked sore; at her side where the road permitted it rode her chaplain, cowl over his shaven head, grave in his robes, reading his breviary with devout attention.

The Widow Costa’s new steward, put out by the arrival of guests without notice, was struck by the strong likeness of the sister to the widow herself. The letter she gave him, with her seal attached, was hardly needed to prove her identity and, with respectful obeisances, he made her welcome and despatched his family about the airing of mattresses, the hanging of bed curtains, lighting fires and dressing meat for dinner. The Lady Donati’s daughter kept her face veiled before the steward, as any high-born maiden should, but if her looks could be judged by her not fearing competition with those of her maid Angela, they must, he thought, be exquisite indeed.

The chaplain wielded formidable authority. It was evident to the steward that everyone in the party looked to him for earthly as well as spiritual guidance, though he spoke so little. The steward was quite unaware that while he was in the kitchen examining the provisions, deciding what could be served and what must be procured, this same chaplain was slipping about the house with a sinister turn of speed, exploring staircases and passageways, checking on the exits to alleys and streets bordering all sides. Three separate doors were found, the bolts tested for ease of drawing, the bars shifted in their sockets in case they jammed. Each door, from the judas at eye level, looked out on a different alley, one within all but touching distance of the house opposite, and dark as a rat run. A maid coming up from the cellar with a bundle of faggots tucked under her arm, for the fire in the great drawing room, was confused to come upon a priest peering out of the door at the street, but collected her wits enough to bob as he turned and blessed her.

One thing which did surprise the steward was that the witless servant was sent to exercise madam’s rather horrible little dog not in the street but in the gallery, where he feared one of his family would have to be sent to clear up after both of them. The steward could not know that the lovely Angela had offered to remedy the dog’s identifying characteristic herself by removing the other ear, but he had heard the indignant yell of the lack-wit as he snatched the dog to his unsavoury bosom.

Another surprise was madam’s summoning the vast brute of a groom to her bedchamber, when the fire had been lit there. Certainly her daughter and the maid were there; it was not improper. Luckily for the steward’s sanity he never saw this same brute seated in Madam’s chair in a strong light, trying not to blink while his sandy eyelashes were re-darkened, with oil and candlesoot, by Angela’s professional hand.

Angela left, her golden hair covered in a linen kerchief, herself shrouded in a dark wool cloak, a basket on her arm. She respectfully reported to him before she went, so
someone
of the party, he reflected, knew the proper conduct of a household. He could have made no sense of the fact that her errand was to the elderly dwarf at the Palace, named Durgan, and that the word employed to gain the confidence of that dwarf and fetch him to the servants’ entry to sponsor the beautiful creature in, was ‘Altosta’, home village of the late, lamented Poggio.

By the time that Angela returned, the steward was satisfied that he had the house in a fit state for his mistress’s guests, and that the dinner now being prepared for them by his exhausted wife and niece would be worthy of the Lady Donati’s praise. It had been hard to manage, for the city was in such a ferment — people in shops more ready to talk politics than to serve, and supplies short because the Palace was buying in for the Duke Ippolyto’s visit, expected at any minute for the execution of his sister’s murderer. Such vegetables as there were at this season, coming in out of the country every morning, went at high prices to the Palace, and even the pigs in the street were at risk of being abducted. Madam Donati was surprisingly affronted by his assumption that she was in Rocca to see the execution. After that, he did not see how to object when she asked for his keys in order to look out something that her sister had asked her to bring back, from the rooms kept locked since Federico Costa’s death.

‘Well, yes, madam. I have them on a separate small ring; here. I would point out that on Madam Costa’s express instructions I have not entered the rooms myself save to ensure that damp or rodents—’

‘It’s no matter at all. I shan’t look at the dust.’

He was more relieved than he could say, as he could not have induced his wife or daughter to enter the rooms to dust them. They were possessed of the idea that they were haunted, and it would not be tactful on his part to imply that Madam Donati’s brother-in-law was an unwelcome guest, in however translated a form.

For a party newly-arrived in the city, the visitors showed themselves highly restless. Their journey here did not seem to have taxed their energies. Shortly after the beautiful maidservant returned, she and Madam Donati’s daughter, heavily veiled, set out on an unexplained expedition, accompanied by the huge groom. He looked, in his close-fitting black hood, unnervingly like the man who would shortly appear behind Leandro Bandini on the scaffold being erected in the grand square.

Cosima’s first reaction to the part proposed for her had been a violent refusal.

‘Never, never, never! How could I, a di Torre, do such a thing? How could you ask it? Never. I will not.’

In the silence that had followed, she was aware of their eyes upon her, considering, while her cheeks flamed with her — surely righteous? — indignation. She had expected at least Benno to speak up in support, but the only sound from him was the scratching of his beard in uncouth concentration. What she did hear was Sigismondo’s deprecatory hum, so much deeper than the voice she had first heard him use.

‘I didn’t think you would do it,’ he said. ‘I told them you couldn’t bring yourself to it. We must think again.’

No one spoke for a bit and her breathing had quietened. Then Angelo, sitting up straight in his green wool dress as though he had studied feminine deportment all his life, remarked in that light, incisive voice, ‘We are all risking our lives here, and you are unwilling to risk your pride.
You
have been rescued, Leandro Bandini has not.’

Barley broke out, ‘Do you know what death he faces, lady? What they do to a traitor? First—’

‘No.’ Sigismondo raised a hand; she noticed that Barley at once fell silent. ‘You can’t know what this lady feels. A di Torre could not give a cup of water to a Bandini were he in hell-flames. This young man is innocent of what he is to die for. He has done the Lady Cosima no harm. He is to die a terrible death but, as a di Torre, she must rejoice in it.’

‘That’s not true.’ She knew she had flushed again, she was so angry she could have wept. ‘I’ll do what you want.
No one
shall say a di Torre is without Christian charity.’

She had not known what it would be like.

All her life, she had only rarely been permitted out of doors, for instance to Mass at the church nearest her father’s house, rather than hearing it in the family chapel. She was now out in the streets far from home. She was grateful that the young man in skirts who walked a step behind her, just as Barley loomed a step in front, was in charge. Since she left her father’s house less than a week ago, she had crammed more astonishing experiences into her life than she had dreamed possible. Now here she was walking among crowds of people in an ordinary street, in the crosstalk and hubbub of a city square, seeing beggars holding out stumps or revealing hideous sores, seeing ragged children fighting over a filthy piece of bread, hearing a hammering and shouts and looking up so see a curious platform being erected in front of an ornate balcony; behind her, Angelo said flatly, ‘That’s the scaffold.’

She supposed they must be near the Palace, then. She already felt tired. She had walked farther than ever in her life. Angelo, stepping forward, offered her an arm. Cosima thought vividly of her maid Sascha, whose arm she had leant on in walks through the country park. She was here to avenge Sascha, too, against those who had killed her. For the moment it slipped her consciousness that she was leaning on the arm of a young man, and when she thought of it, she faltered. Angelo misunderstood.

‘You don’t have to speak when we reach the door. I’ve got the money; the guard will let us in. Leave everything to me.’

At the door, while Angelo in his new light tone talked and demurely repelled flirtation, Cosima repeated to herself what she was to say.

Angelo now led the way and followed the guard. Barley, stopped at the door, lounged there so unconcernedly that Cosima took heart. Smooth cool stone under her feet was a blessing after the rough streets. The guard kept looking back, and slowing sometimes as if he hoped the lovely creature at his heels would collide with him. Cosima, who had seen the lovely creature with a knife in its hand, was aware of a glow of excitement, of adventure, as though she were being swept towards something dangerous that she wanted to meet.

They were being taken deeper and deeper by dark passages down into — not the heart, rather the guts — of the castle. She noticed that they met no one. The guard was bringing them by unfrequented ways, giving them full value for the small leather bag that Angelo had pressed into his hand. Of course, though, he was probably as anxious to avoid notice as they were.

They met one person now. They had descended a final flight of worn stone, lit by a torch in a bracket on one of the sweating stone walls, and here was a man who could only be a jailer. He stood there at the foot of the steps, large, suspicious, blocking their way, the lantern he carried sending an additional upward and infernal glow onto his gross features, while the torchlight was reflected oddly in his eyes, red like a rat’s.

‘What’s this?’ His voice grated; she had the fancy that this was because he seldom used it and it had rusted up. ‘Who are these? No one to come down here without my leave.’

‘Visitors for the Bandini. That’s all I know.’ The door guard, with a last look at Angelo, who returned it, took himself and his own torch away, having come to the end of what their coins had bought. The jailer stood where he was, eyeing them with increasing disbelief.

‘Bandini? No one sees Bandini till he dies.’ A grin split his face like a wound. ‘Then you’ll see more of him than anyone’s seen before — more than he’ll enjoy.’ The grin seamed itself shut again. ‘What you want with him?’ He raised the lantern to shine on Angelo’s face. ‘Pretty bird to fly into my cage.’ The wound once more gaped, showing teeth black as gangrene at its edges.

‘My lady must see her affianced before he dies.’ Angelo approached the jailer — Cosima instinctively holding her own breath in sympathy — and whispered in his ear, at the same time transferring another small leather bag into his free hand, which closed readily upon it. Angela’s golden, ribbon-trimmed plaits mingled for a second with greasy grey curls and, as the rat eyes swivelled to look Cosima over, she was glad of her veils.

‘Ah. That’s the case, is it? Piero’s a friend to true love, he is.’ He weighed the bag and pushed it into the front of the stained leather tunic. ‘Just a few minutes then, because Piero loves a lover.’ His chuckle sent a miasma of garlic and rotting teeth through Cosima’s veils and she felt her stomach heave.
Of all things, I mustn’t vomit now
. She was too innocent to know that her involuntary spasm and swallowing were convincing evidence to Piero of the condition Angelo had hinted.

‘My lady.’ Angelo’s hand, thin and hard, was under her arm, supporting her, leading her in the wake of the jailer who had turned and was stumping down the passage. ‘All is well; but a moment and you will see your beloved.’

My beloved! My mortal enemy! What would my father say? This beat in her head as she heard the key turn in the lock of a huge low door. The jailer held up the lantern to peer through the judas first, and now as the door groaned open he cried with dreadful joviality, ‘A little bird to see you. Master Bandini! A little lovebird!’