Death of a Duchess (8 page)

Sigismondo nodded. ‘And what have you heard?’

‘Some think the Duke killed her because of a lover, and put Leandro Bandini there to be blamed. There had to be someone to blame although she’d been unfaithful because of the alliance with her brother. Her brother’s a duke too, I didn’t know. Duke Ippolyto. They say our Duke couldn’t risk just killing her, there had to be a scapegoat.’

Sigismondo hummed. ‘And?’

Benno took up willingly, interrupted only by an almost negligible belch. ‘Well then, one of the Duke’s guard said young Bandini forced her and then killed her so she wouldn’t tell, and knocked himself out in his hurry to escape.’ Benno produced a quill and began picking his teeth.

‘The simplistic view.’

Benno looked up with unquestioning confidence. He said, ‘After all, there was blood on the Duke’s hand. At dinner, you remember. The wine. So they say it was the Duke, that he caught her with the Wild Man making love, and he killed her and he’s got Leandro Bandini in prison waiting to be unmanned and drawn and quartered to please the Duke Ippolyto.’

He reached to the floor by his bundled-up feet, found a leather bottle, upended it so vigorously over his mouth that he tipped backwards and all but kicked the brazier. Sigismondo’s swift hand righted him.

‘Ta. There’s been another omen, too,’ he went on, getting to work on his teeth once more, which gave his narrative something of the effect of a cleft palate. ‘The statue of St Agnes groaned this morning at Mass. Half the congregation heard it. And the Duke’s new chapel in the cathedral, they’re digging the foundations still just beyond the Innocents’ chapel and they dug up a nun’s body and it was the holy sister Annunciata that died in the old Duke’s time. They say it’s bad she was disturbed.’

Sigismondo reached under the bedding, produced a pack and, feeling inside, drew out a small flask in a straw case. They each drank, and Benno mopped his deplorable beard and went on. ‘There’s another story. The Lord Paolo’s page said he didn’t believe it but he told us. He said it’s the sort of thing that people will say. The story goes that my — my old master the Lord Jacopo had lured Bandini to the Palace, for a wager like, that he could get away with going there in disguise. If Leandro Bandini could get in, then the Lord Jacopo or his men could be here disguised as entertainers too; then they killed the Duchess and left him there to be guilty. People said that would be a great revenge if it was true, a really good payment for abducting my Lady Cosima; except for the Duchess. Some said that spoiled the skill of it, murdering the Duchess. Others said a feud doesn’t have boundaries, anything is permissible.’

‘I hear that Bandini himself has taken refuge with the Cardinal Pontano.’ Sigismondo was not niggardly with gossip in return.

‘Bandini’s lent the Cardinal money. Some say he’s lent money to the Pope. So the Church will look after him. Do you want some of this cloak?’

‘If I do, I’ll take it.’

Benno nodded, believing this. ‘What did you get to hear besides?’ He looked up hopefully.

‘There’s a ring missing from the Duchess’s hand, one she always wore.’

Benno gazed at the glowing wood. ‘If anyone took it, they’re stone mad. It’d be known. Did you see her body?’

‘Yes.’

Benno waited, then realised he was getting no more. Sigismondo passed him the flask, as either consolation or a reward for asking nothing. He drank, sighed, and kicked his bundled legs.

‘You know, my life’s really got interesting.’

There had been footsteps, rapid or slow, up and down the stone stairway, but now someone stopped and said, ‘Master Sigismondo.’

The bed creaked as Sigismondo leant and raised the curtain.

‘You asked to be told when the prisoner came round. He’s conscious and moaning.’

Leandro’s memories of what had led to his lying on the disgusting straw in the Duke’s dungeon were blurred, but his immediate perceptions, as he swam up to consciousness, were too sharp. His head throbbed like a huckster’s drum. The straw had odd rustlings where, he thought, rats must be at work. He imagined them on the remains of a former prisoner. Something dripped in the near-dark. He could only see at all by courtesy of a narrow slit high above his head, and clouds obscured the moon. He was very, very cold. He did not think he had ever been so cold, and it was also evident that someone, perhaps himself, had recently been sick in the straw.

He wondered if it would be worthwhile, or even possible, to drag himself away from the smell, though nearer to the rats. Some other sound made itself heard, voices muttering. At first he thought the rats were becoming vocal, but then the grate of heavy bolts being drawn back produced a clarity in his mind. The grating groan was like the voice of imprisonment itself. A dark-lantern shone at him across the straw, and as it was not easy to raise an arm, he merely shut his eyes. The door closed with a hollow finality; but he thought that someone was in the cell with him.

Leandro thought it was possible, even likely, that the Duke had sent someone to strangle him. Justice, even in this modern age, bent to expediency and caprice. He was accused of the murder of the Duchess. He remembered seeing her body, he remembered the Duke’s remote, unreal face with eyes wide and blue as a winter sky, a nightmare face. Had he dreamt her body, a knife? He knew that criminals of any sense perished decently, in prison, before anyone could suspect they might be innocent. His father, his father’s friends, had made such things clear in their talk ever since he could remember.

The Duke was said to be merciful. Strangulation here and now would be merciful, compared to being tortured in the usual way.

Nevertheless he was unable to look forward to it.

The lantern was placed on the floor not far from him, and opened so that the light fell on the man who sat there on one heel, looking at him.

Leandro knew he was definitely going to die very soon. The Duke, whose mercy was greater than he had suspected until now, had sent a priest to confess him. The strong features were thrown into relief boldly by the golden light, the features of some antique Roman emperor, sensual and commanding. The shaven head, however, that rose from the cowl, convinced Leandro that his death was near. His thoughts again drifted into confusion; he felt regret that he was still young and had always thought of his life as before him; he felt fear that he might forget some of his sins, in this dreadful hour. He hoped that God might be even more merciful than the Duke, yet there was no way to God except through His Church, His priests. The big priest was murmuring again, loud enough to be heard above the resumed rustling of the rats, long indifferent to any invasion of their privacy. He did not speak loud enough to be heard by anyone outside the door; confession was a sacrament not for the ears of others. Leandro tried to raise himself, to wipe a horrid incrustation from his chin, to make himself respectable for his last quarter-hour of bodily peace on this earth. A strong arm helped him up, and Leandro for the first time made sense of the murmur, for it was not Latin but the vernacular.

‘I say, I am come from the Duke. He has given me powers to question you.’

Leandro sprawled back in the straw again, his limbs failing. The man was not a priest after all. He was a torturer.

The strong arm supported him and held him up again. He felt like a puppet moved by a master hand. He understood of a sudden the phrase heard in church:
his bowels turned to water
. Desperately, he hoped not to disgrace himself, but he imagined his body’s sinews cracking under that dispassionate gaze.

The prospect of strangulation was suddenly quite desirable.

‘What happened before the Duke came? Tell me from the start. How did you come to be in the Palace?’

The voice might be low, speaking in his ear, but it had authority. Leandro, still suffering from the drum in his head, wondered weakly where the instruments of torture were, where the assistants? He had heard of the rack — one had to be fastened to it. Then, someone wrote down the confession, a clerk. All this was so unorthodox that he did not answer.

The question was repeated, while a hand felt carefully over his scalp. It found an area that made him flinch.

‘You’ve been struck more than once. A light blow on the brow, that shows. Perhaps you hit something as you fell. And now, sir,’ and the man reached for the lantern and, turning its light on Leandro, looked his face over, moving it by the chin as one might an animal’s, ‘you were going to tell me how you came to be in the Palace although it’s forbidden to you.’

Of course this was the preliminary enquiry. The interrogation would come later. He would have to confirm all he now said, under torture; or say what he was told to say, his limbs broken to confirm each painful lie. The deep patient voice in his ear reiterated the question: how did he come to be in the Duke’s Palace?

Slowly, he began to tell. It was not, he supposed, what they wished to hear, but he began, still among waves of nausea that heaved in his stomach almost in time with the throb in his head. With the prospect of torture, he was aware of an immense fondness for his body, of pity for it to be treated so.

The man had come closer, so close that Leandro feared the foulness of his breath would reach him. Indeed, it must have done so, for the man, after a sniff that must have confirmed this, drew back a little and squatted on one heel, listening. There was a quality about this listening that made Leandro anxious to be exact, to convince him of the truth, whatever was to happen later.

‘I never meant to disobey the Duke — would that I never had — but for the message.’

‘The message?’

Leandro recalled the man who had brought the message, and his insistence on secrecy, the cowl hood pulled forward over a face he could hardly see. Once he had heard who sent the message, of course, secrecy was understood.

‘From the Lady Violante. She sent to say she wished to see me during the feast. I was to come to the Cathedral door of the Palace at — I’ll remember the hour...’

‘No matter the hour, sir. Continue.’

Leandro held his forehead. ‘I can’t remember. But a disguise would be given me. This one. I didn’t care for it, but then, the lady...’

A low humming told him that the niceties of the situation were understood, were being weighed. Confidences about the Duke’s young widowed daughter, apple of his choleric eye, were almost as dangerous to receive as to make.

‘Did you expect such a message?’

The question really asked what terms he was on with the lady. It was a question he would expect to be asked in an ambiance of red-hot pincers, not merely an enquiring tilt of the head.

‘The lady has scarcely spoken to me. I didn’t think she cared what I did. Of course I’ve paid her attentions. One does. I wrote poems — it’s the proper thing to do. It means nothing. I never went beyond — I expected nothing. But when the message came it was amazing. I felt... I don’t know. I never thought she had taken me seriously. But even if it was only a caprice of hers, it was my courtly duty to go; and I hoped that she really meant...’ Leandro’s stomach heaved. He thought he might be about to vomit again. The strain of thinking was more than he could manage. ‘She has the choice of the nobility. I’m only a rich banker’s son.’ The rich banker’s son, dressed in his canvas and tow suit, stained with vomit, shivered in the filthy straw contemplating his short future.

‘Would you know again the man who gave you the disguise? Was it the man who also brought the first message?’

Leandro held his head once more, because it seemed to prevent the drum inside from bursting through his temples. ‘I did not really see either of them. The messenger had a hood, the other was in the shadows. I think they were much of a height. And there’s such — confusion. But he wore a very small skull on a neck chain.’

‘The wine,’ prompted the deep voice. ‘The man who gave the disguise, did he give you the wine?’

‘Wine?’ Even the thought made his stomach shift queasily.

‘You took wine.’ The voice was quietly sure, and he found himself remembering.

‘Why, yes. He gave me a cup before I put on the mask. It was mulled wine, to warm me — from the Lady Violante, he said. She had thought I would be cold.’

There was a rustle in the straw more purposeful than the rats’ scurryings. ‘Here is a clean shirt and hose. They may not fit but they’ll be preferable to that garment.’

Leandro was not capable of much surprise at this juncture. He could feel only puzzlement. He tried, however, to co-operate in ridding himself of the unpleasant costume. As he found his way into the woollen shirt, that smelt pleasantly of lavender, his interrogator gravely examined the costume, humming in a disparaging manner, and then turned the lantern to enable Leandro to see to tie his points. That done, he picked up the lantern and once again came closer, took Leandro firmly by the chin and turned his face towards the light. As Leandro flinched from it, he was told, ‘Look at me,’ and he tried to obey. The shutter was instantly put across the light and the deep voice in a darkness full of fiery parabolas said, ‘What exactly do you remember since the mulled wine?’

‘Walking. Then... the next thing is someone holding me up and making me look at the Duchess.’ He stopped. The picture seen so clearly was the Duchess’s body but from a different angle. He was beside her on the bed, alone, aware of horror. He had tried to escape; had fallen; he could remember falling into darkness.

He turned away from the man as his stomach heaved, and he desperately tried to vomit nothing. Only bitter liquid came.

He clung on to the arm that had held him up during this. His lips were trembling, but he turned urgently and demanded:

‘Did I do it?
Did
I kill the Duchess?’

In the night, or what remained of it, while Sigismondo and Benno slept in their tiny room, the Duke lay awake in his great bed in his own room alone, and Agnolo di Villani enjoyed his rights, someone was busy outside the Palace. In the grudging light of a winter dawn, those whose business took them out so early into the great square began to collect round the huge doors that kept the main entrance to the Castello. The paving-stones held no trace of the beggars’ banquet, the dogs having cleaned what the beggars could not scrape up. The crowd stared at the doors, and moved on as more came. Some signed themselves, few risked a word. They stared at blood, dried now, that had run in streams down the oak as though some giant hand had flung it there in accusation. No one needed to interpret. The news about the Duchess’s death was common throughout the city already. The people of Rocca, although they had cause for both their love and fear of their Duke, were human enough to be ready to think the worst.