Death of a Duchess (26 page)

Perhaps an hour later, when the street had become quiet and the crowd louder, the lock clicked and Sigismondo entered. He was in the black boots, hose and jerkin in which Leandro had first seen him, though he also wore a loose black robe and carried another. He wore no shirt, which made him appear both more muscular and also more ruffianly.

‘If you wear this, and keep hooded, you may watch from the roof loggia,’ he said, and held out the robe. ‘The house is empty of servants; they’ve all gone to see you die.’

Through the house Leandro went, treading the rough brownish marble of the upper stairs, finding his way by guess. He heard a door clang shut below. He came out at last under the tiles on an open gallery, to find Cosima sitting beside a comfortable, handsome woman who greeted him warmly as her guest. Behind them, eating something from an earthenware jar, was a scruffy little man whose appearance suggested attendance on horses rather than ladies. A cheerful one-eared dog, grubby and curly, came bustling to investigate him.

‘Sit here,’ said Cosima di Torre. ‘There’s a perfect view of the scaffold.’

They could see the upper part of the square, the face of the new Palace and the Cathedral, the side of the old Castle. The baroque facades facing them had each a balcony across the
piano nobile
. On the Palace balcony, benches and velvet chairs had been placed, and some of the Duke’s guard stood there. The Cathedral balcony was filling with clerics. Minor members of the Court had emerged into the sunlight from the apartment behind the Palace balcony, like those too early for a party. Two came out on the apron that was the scaffold, looked at the garrotting post and made exaggerated gestures of horror. Leandro wrapped his borrowed cloak more tightly round him and wished he owned a less active imagination, one which would not so persistently confront him with images of himself in the stages of being slowly strangled.

‘I’ve never seen an execution,’ Cosima remarked, ‘and now I’m not going to.’ He thought she need not have sounded so regretful.

The Lady Donati was busy netting. ‘I don’t go any more. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’ She offered them marzipan.

More of the Court appeared. The Lady Violante, sumptuously enfolded in black velvet dagged with gold, stood talking. The crowd suddenly booed and she turned and, from her posture, was doing the same: up from below had come the executioner, masked and brawny, and his assistant, slight and with golden hair on his neck under the leather cap. He unrolled a black bundle and laid out an array of instruments.

‘I’m glad Hubert’s arrangement with the Duke’s headsman came off all right,’ remarked the Lady Donati.

‘That’s Sigismondo?’ Cosima all but squealed, amazed.

The Duke Ludovico and his brother-in-law Duke Ippolyto appeared in the long windows. White and green banners flared out beneath the trumpets and a fanfare sounded. There was scattered cheering in the crowd, but also an underburden of discontent, a subterranean tremor. The Lord Paolo joined them and this time there came enthusiastic cheers. The Ducal party sat, the Duke signalled, and the assistant went to call the accused. People craned to be the first to see, so that the whole crowd seemed to lean forward.

A man in the Duke’s livery appeared from below. He approached the balcony, knelt, and spoke to the Duke who leant to hear him. A note of speculation swept through the crowd.

‘Bit late,’ Benno said. ‘Looks like they’ve only just found you’ve gone missing.’

‘They’ll have found Piero,’ Cosima said. ‘It must have been a perfectly revolting surprise.’

Sigismondo stood gravely waiting, arms folded. He did not move in the slightest. Crouched over the instruments, Angelo waited, the breeze stirring the golden fronds on his neck.

The Lord Paolo leant to speak to his brother, and then advanced. He raised his arms and the crowd slowly obeyed him. He looked round the great piazza, at the crowded windows, the side streets where armed men seemed to be pressing in through the crowds there like dark tributaries to a lake. Finally his voice rang out.

‘People of Rocca! The wretched boy accused of this terrible murder is not here...”

An outbreak of indignation was hushed among the crowd as Paolo again raised his arms.

‘But I tell you that the true murderer is here, is present in this place. The vile deed robbed you and all of us of a kind and loved benefactress. I cannot tell you with what unwillingness I speak or how I grieve, but I saw her die and can no longer hold my tongue. There, there is her murderer —
her husband
!’

His outflung hand pointed.

A roar came from the crowd, an animal howl. The Duke was on his feet and had advanced. Duke Ippolyto, sword drawn, ran forward, overtook him and turned, sword arm back for a thrust. A swirl of black velvet had followed him and Violante’s hands fastened on his sword arm. He swung round, lost his balance and thudded to the boards, Violante falling on him kicking and shouting, her grasp relentless as he tried to free himself and rise. The Duke had wheeled and gone into the Palace, with Paolo after him. Sigismondo and Angelo leapt the struggling royal scuffle that had hampered Paolo, and pursued, Sigismondo’s guise cleaving a way before him as if he used the axe he now suddenly carried, his grip near its head.

The Duke, entering the gallery behind the balcony, found not the sea-green and white of his guards, but his brother’s slate-blue and sulphur livery, on men who closed on him as if on a criminal: but he was armed, and not only with his sword. One man fell back on meeting his imperious eyes. He ran their leader through and fled on up the room, a confused pursuit at his heels. Without pausing, he sliced the cord holding the door curtain, which closed on the foremost man behind him. Others thrust by, until the man in the curtain convulsively pulled it all down. Paolo and two of his guards had got through; two agile black-clad men leapt over this second confusion and gained on the chase.

A vertiginous flight of rose marble led down on the right. One of Paolo’s men lost his footing and brilliantly overtook the Duke, but not in any position to apprehend him. The Duke also shed his cloak on the stairs, a vast hazard of fur and purple which slithered after him. Sigismondo leapt it and landed soft on the reviving guard spread-eagled at the foot. Angelo followed him. Behind them streamed a trail of courtiers, a mêlée of guards in the two colours who at least knew whom to fight, and at the stairfoot all these were joined by a covey of dwarves who brought down a dozen of them before anyone knew. The rest fell over these.

The Duke had gone ahead into the Cathedral.

His running feet startled the priests round the Duchess’s bier, his drawn sword startled them more. Tebaldo struggled to his feet at the prie-dieu in a side chapel. The priests scattered, shouting interdictions. The Duke paused by the catafalque, lowering his blade as if he believed that here no one would attack him. He breathed hard. As Paolo approached he called in stupefaction, ‘Why did you say that? Brother—’

For answer, Paolo attacked.

Having said what he had said, there was no option for him but that. He could hear the massive shout in the square. The shout was for the Duke and not for him. He had heard it when he stood on the scaffold and Ippolyto’s blow was foiled. The mercenaries surging from the side streets had not roared
Paolo
as they were paid to do. It rang in his ears now: ‘Duca, Du-ca! Lu-do-vi-co!’

They fought. As they circled and swung and parried, priests, one with a processional cross, hovered around them, moving as they moved, trying to summon courage to run in and part them. A pair of black shadows stalked beyond. The Duchess lay in her black velvet, remote and pale. A tall, gilt candleholder, touched by a working elbow, rocked, swayed and crashed. Angelo had been poised with his knife; he jinked and altered aim, altered it again as they circled. Wax spread on the floor, cooling at once. The Duke’s boot stamped, slipped, and he was down, his sword sliding away across the marble. A priest ran in, but Paolo stood over his brother, sword raised.

‘Father!’

Tebaldo, incredulous, came limping across the floor. Paolo sprang up. In that instant his sword hand was nailed to the Duchess’s coffin by a thrown knife.

The Duke rolled clear. Paolo wrenched out the knife, dripping blood, and turned on his brother who, seizing Paolo’s sword from the floor, ran him through the neck as Sigismondo’s axe clove his spine.

Paolo toppled across the coffin, gripped the far edge and fell. His blood ran over the pearl-sewn dress, the velvet pall. As a priest tried to right the tilting coffin the body rose up. Paolo and the dead Duchess fell to the floor. Pearls bowled among the watchers’ feet, some leaving little red trails, some like tears.

They arrived then, priests from the Cathedral balcony, embouching from the tower stairs. The Cardinal Pontano, as he came, gave directions, pointing. Two priests hurried ahead, passing the catafalque and the ghastly tableau with amazed stares and swift crossing, but not halting until they reached the altar. There, one removed the Host and hurried away with it. The other lowered and extinguished the lamp that burned there. The Cathedral must be reconsecrated.

The Duke stood, his gaze on Paolo’s sprawled figure. Sigismondo did not move. Still masked, he leant on the long handle of his bloodstained axe, a headsman who had dared to desecrate this place in the sight of all. The Cardinal came forward; priests flooded round the group but kept their distance as at a plague.

The Duke’s guards held crossed pikes at the foot of the Palace stairs against the press of people there. Outside there was a trampling on the steps of the Cathedral beyond the great doors, and the clamour of the crowd, cries and screams, and the steady undertone of ‘Duca! Duca!’

The Duke’s sword shifted at a spasm of his arm, and blood slid from it.

‘My son, what have you done?’

The Duke did not answer or stir until the Cardinal put a hand on his shoulder and repeated the question. Then he turned his head as if in a dream.

‘He tried to kill me. Paolo! Who loved me.’

‘No, your Grace.’ The headsman, sonorous in that echoing space, answered. ‘He conspired to overthrow you and rule Rocca in your stead. He did not love you.’

Cardinal Pontano’s face was normally dour and now grim. ‘It is not to be believed. Have you proof of it?’

Sigismondo stripped the mask from his face and said, ‘I can prove it.’

‘Let the relics of St Agnes be brought,’ said the Cardinal. ‘Any speech now must be upon oath.’

A shout from the door drew their eyes as the Duke Ippolyto and the Lady Violante were allowed past the guard. He still held a drawn sword, the lady still gripped his arm; she wore a small grimace like a feral cat. They halted at the sight — the Duke and the bodies tumbled before him. The Duchess lay, eyes still closed but mouth ajar as if in protest. Her husband’s brother lay across her body in the gathering pool of his blood, his cloth of gold sleeves and her velvet skirts innocently drinking it in.

‘Mother of God!’

The Cardinal now held out in both hands a flat box that gleamed with a crust of rubies and diamonds.

‘Your Grace: the blessed relics of St Agnes will be your witness. If you are clear of this blood, call on God on the bones of His holy saint.’

The Duke stooped to lay his sword on the stones, then he pulled off his glove and laid his hand on the golden box.

‘I swear, before God and His saint, and as I hope for redemption, that I am not guilty of my wife’s blood. Of my brother’s death I am guilty. Why he would have killed me I do not yet understand.’

Sigismondo moved again and his deep voice sounded. ‘With your Grace’s leave and that of his Eminence: Rocca must be assured that its rightful Duke lives and the traitor is dead.’

‘Traitor...’

There was a whimper. Tebaldo was helping himself along by the bier, his face agonised, his stare fixed on his father’s body. He took a step away from the bier and fell on his knees, putting a hand to the floor as he reached the other to his father’s hand limp in its blood. His choked voice was the sound of mourning.

Violante left Duke Ippolyto and ran to Tebaldo. ‘No, no. Come with me. Father, I’ll vouch for him. Let him come with me.’

At this appeal to his power, the Duke seemed to wake. The habit of authority returned. ‘He is released into your custody. His guilt or innocence will be examined. Sigismondo, take—’ he pointed to his brother’s body — ‘take him out there and let the people see. We shall appear ourselves here on the Cathedral balcony. Once this uproar is calmed we can begin an immediate inquest into this terrible matter.’

Ippolyto helped Violante to lead her cousin aside. A page in slate-blue and yellow crept forward, trembling, to lend his arm to the boy. The two Dukes and the Cardinal swept away towards the turret stair and Sigismondo took up Paolo’s body — Tebaldo turning his head for a last desperate gaze. The priests were left to their task of restoring the Duchess to the catafalque and preparing to carry it to the Palace chapel as fast as possible from this unhallowed ground; and at last an old priest came out in a sacking apron, with bucket and cloth, to clean the terrible stain away.

‘Dear God, what is happening?’ Cosima cried.

The crowd was shouting. They had answered Paolo’s speech with the shout; it had started from the edges and the side alleys:
Duca! Duca! Lu-do-vi-co!

‘Why do they shout for the Duke?’ the Lady Donati asked. ‘Do they want to kill him?’

‘Who was Sigismondo chasing?’ Leandro asked. ‘Whose side is he on? I thought he was the Duke’s man.’

The crowd, at first bewildered, had taken up the shout with vigour. They had surged up the steps to the closed door of the Cathedral.

‘Benno, lean out at the corner there and look down our alley. Was that Barley I saw on the roan?’

‘Barley,’ Benno affirmed. Biondello, who had reacted badly to looking at the drop to the street, had rammed his face into the recesses of Benno’s shirt.