Duchess of Milan (11 page)

Il Moro has not had a response from the French. . . .

Pavia, 11 March 1491

The spires and cupola of the Certosa di Pavia rose above the trees, a tracery of pinkish brick cones and white marble columns against an incandescent blue sky. A poplar-lined road ran straight toward the huge Carthusian monastery, still under construction after a century of lavish spending. The road was the consistency of porridge, a reminder of a week of heavy rains.

Beatrice brushed at the skirt of her brocade
cioppa,
spotted with mud kicked up by her ladies’ horses as they trotted past. Rid of their largely superfluous Duchess, the ten young women regrouped into a sauntering, gossiping, snickering band. Beatrice had come to regard her Milanese ladies-in-waiting as the most insufferable burden of matrimony. Though her ladies were the wives and daughters of the haughtiest and most powerful Milanese noblemen, they were often little more than extravagantly priced prostitutes sent to court to advance the family fortunes, exchanging their bodies for favors and offices. Not only did they not wait on Beatrice (she had a staff of pages and maidservants for that purpose); they openly displayed their contempt for the little
forestiera
Duchess whose husband would not even sleep with her. Beatrice was happy to be shunned; she had never felt more lonely than she did when surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting. Indeed the entire ritual surrounding her new status as Duchess of Bari was the most dreary and absurd routine she could imagine. The sole function of all these activities devoted to her amusement, Beatrice realized, was simply to distract her from the baldly apparent fact that nobody at court really cared whether she was happy or not.

A chorus of throaty feminine laughter erupted behind her, followed by another shower of mud as the Duchess of Milan’s ladies charged up ahead, brocaded torsos inclined forward, skirts billowing over their horses’ rumps, plumed velvet caps tilted jauntily to one side. After spattering Beatrice, the Duchess of Milan’s ladies proceeded to pass Beatrice’s ladies and speckle them with mud. A contest ensued, the two groups of ladies beginning to trot as fast as the precarious footing and their awkward sidesaddle posture would permit.

Beatrice, her legs slung over her horse’s left shoulder, looked to her right. The Duchess of Milan had come alongside. Isabella glared at her with sea-green malice, as if she blamed Beatrice for her own ladies’ discourtesy. A spot of mud blemished her wind-rouged cheek.

The words Beatrice wanted to scream out loud boiled in her ears. I hate you too! I hate you too! I hate every one of you! Except for Bianca and Bianca Maria, I hate everyone in Milan! Without at first realizing what she was doing, she flourished her riding crop and whacked her horse’s rump. The beast lurched into a gallop, but Beatrice, steadied by her powerful hands and sturdy legs, expertly stayed in the saddle. She quickly closed on her ladies, despite their speed. As she drew even with the last lady in the group, she swung her right arm in a vicious arc, catching the woman squarely across the collarbone and toppling her over the rump of her horse. Arms and legs akimbo, the lady splatted into the mud like a silk-plumaged bird shot from the sky.

Quickly perfecting the technique, Beatrice dumped two more of her ladies into the mud before the alarm was sounded. The Duchess of Milan’s ladies looked back and began flailing with their riding crops to escape Beatrice’s menacing charge. Beatrice pounded with her crop, gaining. She was surprised when a rider caught her from behind: Isabella, squinting into the wind.

Beatrice made an even more furious charge and caught up with Isabella just as they reached the twin files of the Duchess of Milan’s ladies. The two duchesses instinctively divided the spoils, each thundering down a frantic row. Four more ladies joined their companions in the slop.

Leaving behind their squealing and squirming attendants, the duchesses continued to ride side by side down the road, speed increasing, crops slapping, their horses beginning to sweat. Beatrice’s horse stumbled, and she felt he soon would either slip and topple into the mud or balk and throw her. But only a hand from heaven could have made her slow at that moment. The wind rushed past her ears, and her limbs throbbed with effort. The anger had become something else inside her, buoyant, tingling. In another moment she actually would be flying.

Isabella was the first to slow. Regretfully Beatrice gave her horse’s reins a gentle pull, and the two beasts trotted alongside one another. Beatrice listened to her horse gasp and was suddenly aware how hard her own breath was coming, cold gulps of a glorious, liberating ether.

Isabella circled around and faced Beatrice. She had lost her cap in the chase, and her reddish-brown hair was a tangle of coppery, sun-spun gossamer. She nodded at Beatrice, who was as astonished as if a terra-cotta statue of the Virgin had suddenly winked at her.

“I have enjoyed riding with you, Your Highness,” Isabella said.

Extract of a letter of Leonardo da Vinci, engineer at the Court of Milan, to international traveler and raconteur Benedetto Dei. Milan, 28 March 1491

. . . Knowing your proclivity and desire to remain informed of the events at our court, and to learn of whatever affiliations might bring their weight to bear upon said events, let me provide you with my observations of the Duchesses of Milan and Bari. Consider if you will, my dear Benedetto, the days and years which learned men such as Fra Pacioli and Maestro Vincenzo might have devoted to the study of true science and the marvelous schemes of nature, were not their good offices instead diverted to the education of the progeny of the ruling families of our Italian states. An intellect that might have divined the causes and devices of nature is to the contrary condemned to instruct a child scarcely unswaddled in the elocutions of Cicero or the lyrics of Virgil. In many cases these children will never acquire enough knowledge of the tongue of ancient Rome to even converse with the bones of this long-dead race, which lies moldering beneath our soil yet eternally lures men of science from the proper course of study, which is that of nature. And such children as have the intelligence to become learned in these ancient orations, what are they? These dreadful prodigies are induced at court gatherings to recite their mnemonics in an infelicitous child’s soprano, to the marvel of all, and yet their discourse requires no more the faculty of divine reason than does the pealing bell of a mechanical clock as it announces the hours. O idolators of ancient texts! Think not that I deplore this profligacy and wastage because I am a man without letters, but instead know that I am one who labors ceaselessly in the true light.

Then consider, my dear Benedetto, how the Duchesses of Bari and Milan have employed the education in which so many learned men have squandered their resources. Not a day passes that these two young women are not mounted on the backs of swift steeds, invariably accompanied by a retinue one might more properly find in the train of an Oriental despot. Think that they avail themselves of our boundless parks and woodlands to study the infinite creations of nature? No, these duchesses race about in perpetual and unceasing competition, darting hither and thither like riders in a
palio.
And when their unfortunate beasts are wearied by these pursuits, said duchesses take up the dubious recreation of tennis, and having used up a barrel of balls, summon men versed in the most exquisite musical harmonies to accompany their dancing. And all the while scarce word of Latin nor language of living men is heard among said duchesses. If theirs is a friendship, or alternatively a rivalry in some equally peculiar manifestation, I cannot discern. . . .

CHAPTER 8

Milan, April 1491

“His Highness,” the chamberlain announced in a reverent whisper, as though he had intruded in a holy place. He bowed fluidly and exited, his footsteps scarcely audible. The secretary seated next to Cecilia Gallerani’s bed gathered up his pens and inkwell and left the room.

Il Moro walked directly to the large arched window facing the ducal park. The forest of pines, elms, and oaks was already dark, the twilight sky a deep satiny blue. The peaks of the Alps were a faintly rosy serrated band across the horizon. Il Moro stood for a long moment, his hands behind his back, clutching a folded parchment. A coinlike gold seal, attached to a purple cord, dangled from the document.

At length Il Moro turned and faced the bed. Brass columns supported a canopy of heavy gold cloth; the white satin bedspread was decorated with a white applique detailing some medieval romance. Cecilia was a similar study in white on white, wrapped in an ivory silk chemise, her pale face and hands almost phosphorescent in the fading light. Her laugh was airy, musical. “I think you have received your answer from the King of France,
amante.
Do you want to share it with me?”

Il Moro sat on the bed and handed Cecilia the parchment. Her gold-tinted gray eyes quickly roamed the text, then paused and retreated into some contemplative depth. “So they have agreed to the investiture. Fortune has given you a sign,
amante.”

“We have our beginning. Now we must wait,” Il Moro said, lacing his fingers with Cecilia’s.

Cecilia turned and kissed Il Moro. She had thin lips and a small subtle mouth, and for her kissing was not a preferred means of expression. But this kiss conveyed a curious urgency. And then she was gone, swinging her swollen belly to propel the rest of her still-slender body, rising with a quick, almost vehement effort. “I get up as often as I can,” she said, preempting her lover’s protest. “When Messer Ambrogio carries his first child, I will do everything he prescribes.”

She walked to the gilt-framed painting hung on the wall opposite the window. “Look how much I have changed.” The portrait was ten years old; Cecilia had sat for Leonardo da Vinci only months after he arrived in Milan, having introduced himself with a ten-item memo boasting of his skills as a military engineer; only as the final item had Leonardo added, “I can do in painting whatever can be done, as well as any other master, whoever he may be.” Cecilia considered Leonardo a very good painter; Il Moro was not so sure. He thought the portrait made Cecilia seem gaunt, hunchbacked, and querulous. Leonardo had placed an ermine in her arms, and she stroked the animal’s gray velvet fur with her extraordinarily long, lithe fingers; Il Moro was weary of the jests that the ermine resembled him. Cecilia felt that the artist had captured her strength, foresight, and doubt. She knew she would have the painting when she no longer had Il Moro.

Peering at her image as if studying a sister from whom she had been separated for ten years, Cecilia said in appraisal, “I was sixteen years old when this was painted. I was not so lovely a girl as that the quality of being a girl made me lovely. And that I loved you. Every girl has that
grazia;
it is born within us. Nature gives it unequivocally and takes it back inexorably.” She turned and smiled, a warm, sad smile that the brittle, coiled girl in the portrait could not have presented.

“I would like to stay with you tonight,” Il Moro said, as though assuming she needed some validation of her charms.

“That is so dear of you,
amante.
But I would keep you up all night. I can’t seem to get comfortable anymore.” She placed her hands lightly on her belly.

“You’re not having doubts about the baby?”

“Oh, no,
amante.
I cannot describe to you the joy this has brought me. Never think that.”

“I had assumed my news would also bring you joy. Instead it seems to have been the source of your melancholy.”

Cecilia smiled again, and her eyes glittered. She came back to the bed and took Il Moro’s face in her hands, her elegant fingers framing his powerful jaw. “Your news brought me a very great joy. God, Lodovico, we are at the threshold of realizing the dream I have always held deepest in my soul. But perhaps dreams are like babies in the womb. To actually bring them into the world we must give them away. That is why at every birth there is a parting. Perhaps I was thinking of that.”

“Glo-ri-a in ex-cel-sis De-o.”

“Et in ter-ra pax ho-mi-ni-bus bo-nae vo-lun-ta-tis.”

The alternating choruses of the ducal household choir drifted through the ancient basilica of Sant’Ambrogio. The singers’ chiming polyphony was accompanied by a third chorus, a relentless buzz of conversation punctuated by occasional shouts of greeting, mischievous squeals, and the shrieks of a dozen or so pet monkeys, some freed from their leashes and clambering among the stalls like tiny costumed demons. The celebrants of this morning Mass included the Duchesses of Milan and Bari, their ladies-in-waiting and attendants, and various male courtiers, as well as the scores of prostitutes, gamblers, and sundry opportunists who had come to mingle with Milan’s ranking dignitaries. Of the crowd of several hundred, probably less than two dozen actually knelt and listened to the service. The rest had organized into whispering cliques or dallying pairs; some courtiers simply wandered about, gazing at the aisle chapels or munching on a breakfast pastry while waiting to be importuned. The crypt beneath the altar was a favorite spot for assignations, as a customer could obtain a furtive sample of the merchandise before rendering full payment. But occasionally an entire transaction might be concluded right atop the white marble sarcophagus of Saint Ambrose, the great Milanese bishop who had founded the basilica over one thousand years previously.

“Look.” Isabella nudged Beatrice. “Caterina and Giulia are negotiating with a
meretrice.
I cannot imagine what they have in mind. Perhaps to complete their
menage
they intend to slip into the crypt and revive Saint Ambrose.”

Beatrice smiled, feeling only a momentary anxiety at her cousin’s irreverence. Isabella had clearly inherited the beliefs of her father, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, who had never made even a pretense of attending Mass and had twice besieged the Pope in Rome. Raised in the laxity of Naples, Beatrice on her return to Ferrara had been disconcerted by her mother’s quiet yet ardent piety and her father’s almost fanatical mysticism. She had eventually arrived at a compromise, acknowledging God as a supernal version of a secular lord; one owed Him a cursory obedience in His own house, but otherwise did not need to give Him much thought.