Death of a Duchess (6 page)

The Duchess, on the contrary, applauded and the Wild Man began to curvet among the plates with delicate skill, touching nothing, keeping time to the music. The dwarves, reassured as to his tameness, crept closer to watch. Bending low before the Duchess and putting his head wistfully to one side, the Wild Man drew from the bosom of his costume a heart of red satin which he held out to her. The Duchess, with an amused smile, took it, and as he sprang up in joy his furred foot — alas — struck the Duchess’s goblet, sending it flying. Wine flooded across the cloth and onto her silver brocade. There was a general gasp, the harpist stopped, the Duchess was on her feet.

All the guests of course rose, a bench overturned, and stewards ran forward with their wands to deal with the Wild Man. He had already sprung backwards from the table and now cowered and howled, his arms over his head. The Duchess could be heard commanding the stewards not to beat the poor savage, and she was laughing. She asked the guests to be seated, and a rustle all through the hall followed her order. She spoke to the Duke and to the Lady Cecilia, and withdrew. While she was going to change her dress, the bride was not to wait on her this evening.

The Wild Man ran from the hall, still desolately howling and followed by the dwarves, hurling after him their hats and whips and entering into the improvisation with gusto. Music picked up again, servers quickly mopped and put fresh linen cloth at the Duchess’s place, her goblet was wiped, restored and refilled. Some tumblers ran in. The Lord Paolo now, after a word with the Duke, helped his son from his chair among his cushions and, refusing help from the servants, took him up in his arms. The Lady Violante leant across to enquire after her cousin, and was reassured as the boy smiled at her. He was carried out, amid a perfunctory murmur of concern, and admiration of the careful father. One of Sigismondo’s neighbours became maudlin on the subject.

The tumblers were interrupted by a man-at-arms, thudding the butt of a halberd thrice to the floor. The music ceased, save for a flute that pootled on a few bars; the curtains parted to reveal an over-smiling, fashionably dressed man, who raised his arms and, after a flourishing bow to the Duke, turned in the centre of the room announcing: ‘Noble lords, lovely ladies! By command of her Grace, in the Great Court — fireworks! A display of unprecedented artistry. It may be seen from the great loggia also. A deer hunt...’

What other wonders were to appear went unheard, because the Duke rose, offering his hand to the Lady Cecilia. Her husband managed to get to his feet, but made an exit more remarkable for urgent speed than grace, ushered skilfully to a side door by pages. The Lady Violante followed her father, handed by a cavalier who bent obsequiously to listen as she spoke.

The Festaiuolo was still announcing further wonders, while the company made for the doors. Pages waited there with cloaks, for the loggia would be cold. Some kept their seats, and the servers still came with trays of small sweetmeats or dishes of sorbets, while the tumblers and the music resumed.

Sigismondo, perhaps aware of Benno’s urgent wishes, got up and accompanied one of his neighbours out, taking a hooded cloak at the door. Benno (the pigeon, still warm, in his bosom) was ignored by the pages, but outside, a servitor gave him a blanket wrap. He found a bench at the back of the loggia where a trio of gentlemen’s servants gave him three inches to stand on. Once he had placed where his master was, against a pillar towards the end, where he could see the company by the bonfire light, Benno gave his mind and soul to the entertainment.

He forgot everything for the next period of time. He gaped at the whirling lights, the moving figures, the fountains, the coloured explosions, the stars that burst in the night sky; his breath steamed on the air before his face but he noticed no cold. He came down to earth, literally, as somebody pushed past the bench and disturbed his precarious balance. He heard the question — ‘Signor Sigismondo?’ — and he wormed through the crowd after the servant. Sigismondo bent his head to hear the messenger, nodded and made for the nearest door. Benno slid after him. They made their way through a room full of knights in exotic pasteboard armour and some allegorical figures with towering headdresses, one an outsize skull, one in green with iron-grey teeth. Benno, bewildered, kept Sigismondo’s shoulders in view, followed him out and up a spiral staircase, along a blank stone corridor unlike the ornate public rooms, where the music and the pop of fireworks became distant and then louder as they emerged at a stairhead. Sigismondo crossed to a highly decorated doorway where a curiously pallid man-at-arms stood aside and opened one of the carved doors. Benno, prevented, sighed and waited where he was. Sigismondo entered. He saw, first of all, the Duke, who leant on the wall past the curtained foot of a bed. In a looking glass with a frame of carved gilt, his reflection in profile stared, the brooch on his cap winking. Sigismondo rounded the curtains.

The Duchess, in her shift, lay upon the bed; two fat wax candles showed her spread body, the hand drooping over the edge, the open mouth dark as the grave.

The prevalent smell was of blood. As the small winter airs shifted in the room the smells shifted: blood, candlewax and smoke, scent and sweat, blood. Her shift was crumpled at the waist round the dark stem of a knife hilt, her thighs gleamed pale.

The Duke, his voice hardly more than a whisper, said, ‘I found her so.’

Sigismondo stepped forward. His hand flowed, from crossing himself, to touch the Duchess at the neck below the ear. He laid the back of his hand against her cheek, hummed, and brooded over the body without disturbing the knife. Next, he pushed open a jib door that stood ajar near the bed head, and glanced into the small closet there, where a light burned. A crackle of the fireworks the Duchess had paid for came through the closet window. The bedroom was close-shuttered and the smell of death was strong, alien to human sense.

Sigismondo stood with his head on one side as though he listened, and then moved with a pounce that brought the Duke out of his daze. From under the waterfall of brocade curtains at the foot of the bed, Sigismondo dragged out an inert figure. The head lolled back, showing a red graze on the brow. Dark hair lay on Sigismondo’s sleeve. Here, too, the mouth was open, but he breathed.

‘Leandro Bandini?’ The Duke was puzzled. He pointed at the tow-like hair that seemed to clothe the body like an animal’s hide. ‘The Wild Man?’

‘So it would appear, your Grace.’

Sigismondo bent and sniffed at the young man’s breath; he stayed, nostrils flared and mouth parted, like a cat that tastes a scent. He sniffed again. The Duke put a hand to the dressing table as though to prevent himself falling.

‘Drunk! He comes here drunk, forces my lady and kills her to save his skin.’

Sigismondo was examining the young man’s hands and did not point out that, if this had been Leandro Bandini’s intention, it had gone essentially wrong.

‘Not drunk, my lord. It’s a drug I can smell. There’s no blood on his hands or the Wild Man’s skin.’ He stood up. ‘Your Grace, this is a Bandini. We have not had reason to trust the words of di Torre or Bandini; nor should we trust what appear to be their deeds.’

The Duke looked at Sigismondo. He said, ‘Let him be committed to the dungeons, no one is to have access to him unless by my order.’

Sigismondo bent to take hold of the young man, but the Duke continued, ‘Wait.’

He drew from his finger a heavy intaglio ring, a sardonyx with the arms of Rocca, and held it out to Sigismondo.

‘Question whom you choose.’

The first person Sigismondo chose was the Festaiuolo hired by the Duchess to stage-manage the masques at dinner. He had received the Duke’s message cancelling the rest of the entertainment, and Sigismondo found him in the anteroom to the Great Hall; a small man in a highly mobile state of apprehension and annoyance, trying to deal with the performers cheated of their display. They stood about, grumbling, reluctant to remove the clothes they had lost the chance of showing, while Niccolo Sanseverino tried to collect headdresses and useful accessories such as Envy’s iron teeth and Fortune’s wig with its forelock, bald at the back. A wicker basket held Orpheus’s gilded harp, a horn of plenty also gilded and spilling out its contents of green silk leaves, wax apples and peaches and grapes; piles of ribbons, Cupid’s gilt bow and quiver. He was not at all inclined to spare time for Sigismondo, until he saw the Duke’s ring.

‘But of course. Anything I can do, sir. The Duke can command me at any time. But you must know the Duchess commands me this evening.’ His small black eyes glanced from Sigismondo’s face to the ring again, while with one hand he waved away an insistent bacchante. ‘Is she very displeased with what occurred?’

Sigismondo’s hum could have signified anything. He said, ‘Where can we talk unheard?’ and Niccolo, taking a belt of ivy leaves out of the hands of a boy in leopard pelt who had scarcely undone it, towed his property basket and led the way into an alcove, as tiny as the room off the Duchess’s bedroom, also with a single candle burning. He offered Sigismondo a stool and took one himself. Between them, a carpet-covered table was crowded with little pots of coloured lard and dishes of white skin paint. A slate on the wall, written in almost illegible script, bore a list ticked, half erased and written over.

‘It’s the Wild Man, isn’t it? He finished it for us.’ Niccolo, sagging with sudden weariness, poured wine into a horn cup and offered it to Sigismondo, who bowed his head, lifted the cup to him, drank, and handed it back after wiping the rim.

‘What can you tell me about the Wild Man?’

‘Drunk. He must have been drunk. There’s no accounting for what he did in any other way. I should never have taken him on. All my instincts warned me.’ He shook his head and poured more wine. ‘A vagabond.’ He drank it back, his greasy black curls brushing the costumes hanging in a bunch behind him.

‘This mistake. Tell me about it.’

A hulking form filled the entrance, its arms embracing a huge bundle of white silk. ‘Where you want this?’

‘There.’ Niccolo pointed behind Sigismondo, who rose, took the bundle and put it into a lined basket against the wall. He sat, reaching to pull the curtain across the alcove.

‘This mistake,’ he repeated. ‘Tell me.’

‘You saw!’ Niccolo flung his arms wide. A costume painted with ears and open mouths fell off the bundle behind him. He pushed it aside. ‘He made a complete wreck of the reference to St Cecilia. He’d been rehearsed. He couldn’t pretend he’d confused them. He’d been shown where they’d sit. The Lady Cecilia was the other side of the Duke, yes, but how could he mistake the Duchess for her? And—’

‘A vagabond might not have seen the Duchess before.’

Niccolo snorted. ‘The Lady Cecilia is a blonde. He was told, the
blonde
. How could anyone mistake? But he gives the heart to the dark lady and ignores the bride.’ He sank his head in his hands but forbore to tear his hair — already thin in front as if the victim of past disasters.

‘Where did you hire him?’

‘He came off the streets from a travelling troupe. All manner came. He showed that he could dance. When I arrive in a city,’ he preened himself a little and arranged some of the greasepaint pots in an orderly line, ‘it becomes known. People present themselves. And it was true, that for this conception of mine I looked for a mime artist and dancer out of the ordinary.’ He made his fingers prance on the table among the pots. ‘You saw him upon the table? When he rehearsed, I scattered dishes everywhere, different places every time, and he never touched one. He must have been drunk.’

‘Did you see him before he went into the hall?’

‘I put the costume on him myself. No detail is beneath my notice when my art is concerned.’

‘Did you think then that he was drunk?’

‘He was the same as ever he was. Cool. Quiet. He talked to no one.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Very pale. He had the face of an angel except when he opened his mouth, when he revealed crooked teeth and a gutter accent. Otherwise, one could have used him for Gabriel in a mime of the Annunciation. In a gold wig, of course. His red hair would have made any audience take him for Judas Iscariot.’

Sigismondo nodded and hummed. ‘Where is he now?’

‘Vanished.’

‘Vanished?’

‘I suppose he feared a beating.
Which
he deserved, but the Duchess ordered he should be spared. The kindest lady!’

‘Had he received his pay?’

‘I was to get their pay after the feast. Money for costumes and carpentry I had been given. All my performers knew they could not be paid yet.’

Sigismondo silently shook his head at the proffered cup and studied his hands folded before him on the table. The Duke’s ring gleamed in the candlelight.

‘Did you see him go into the hall?’

‘Certainly. I watch everyone in, to make sure every detail is correct. Even so,’ and he frowned at the memory, refilling the cup, ‘with Poggio missing, there were mistakes.’

‘Poggio?’

‘The dwarf. He should have run to push the Wild Man down to kneel before the Duke. I’d told one of the rest to do it in his place, but—’ he shrugged and flung out his hands — ‘they were excited.’

Sigismondo gave a descending hum of appreciation of this certain fact. There was no doubt of the vivacity displayed by the dwarves.

‘Poggio was the Duke’s dwarf. I’d rehearsed with him.’ Niccolo’s tone was that of the aggrieved professional. ‘He was very apt. Then—’ once more the spread arms — ‘the Duke is angry. Some joke Poggio told, that he should not, against the dignity of her Grace, they say; and Poggio is dismissed. Banned the city! And I have no time to rehearse another properly. Yet they expect a performance without faults.’

‘The Wild Man. Did he wear his mask when you saw him into the hall?’

‘Naturally.’

‘When did you last see his face?’

Niccolo, surprised, put down the cup and half-closed his eyes, considering. He opened them to look round the alcove.