Duchess of Milan (57 page)

The Marquesa took her sister’s hand and headed for a heroic nude statue of a Roman emperor. As she walked she looked off to the north end of the lake, where a long table covered with white brocade and laden with fruits and pastries had been set up on the lawn; several dozen ladies and gentlemen roamed in the vicinity, conversing, picking at the food, and listening to the music.

“Beatrice, can you believe that half these people could even get out of bed this morning?” The
festa
the previous evening, a masked ball at a private home, had gone on until the early hours of the morning. “It is those carnival masks. Once people are suitably disguised they will do anything. Do you have any idea who that woman was who paraded her bare breasts for the better part of the evening? I can assure you that if I ever see those breasts again I will recognize them immediately. And I swear to you that if you’d had the temerity to look under one of the tablecloths you would’ve imagined you were in a brothel.
Signor mio caro,
I saw an entire table shaking and squirming like some kind of great beast. And then this set of bare buttocks suddenly popped up from under the tablecloth, and one of the masked gentlemen walked up to them, unlaced his codpiece, and went to work without even bothering to see if they belonged to a man or a woman. I presume he intended to assume the latter and make the necessary adjustment if it turned out to be the former.”

“It got worse after we left, I am reliably told. Some of the theatrical dancers stayed and continued to perform, quite without costumes, of course.”

“Of course,” the Marquesa added, cocking at a jaunty angle the flat, almost saucer-shaped velvet riding cap that crowned her impressive blond mane. She plucked at a puff of white silk showing through the slitted black satin sleeves of her
camora.
Finally she looked up and asked, “Well, aren’t you going to provide the details? What you have told me so far is like saying, ‘The painting depicts a mythological subject.’ You know I am not satisfied unless I have every available detail. I am dedicated to the finest distinctions and nuances.”

“Bel, you don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

“Bel, they brought horses inside--”

“Nostro Signore!”
The Marquesa crossed herself. “You’re right. I don’t want to know.” The Marchesa squinted off toward the table at the north end of the lake. “There is your husband. Very shapely legs. He looks splendid in riding costume.”

“He’s with the King of Spain’s representative.”

The Marquesa pointed to a pair of far-from-dashing gentlemen who stood a dozen or so paces upslope from Il Moro and the Spanish ambassador. The two men, one solidly built and fortyish, the other portly and bald, looked equally ill at ease in their poorly fitted riding hose and doublets. “And there are your husband’s faithful shadows, the Venetian ambassadors. I’ve never seen anyone from Venice who made a good appearance in riding costume. Your husband would certainly make those two more comfortable by sending them back to Venice with an agreement to form a new league.”

“My husband believes that the crisis has yet to sufficiently engage the Signory’s attention. He says that Venice merely offers to assault the French with pledges, while the King of Spain has already sent dozens of ships to Sicily to harass the invaders. My husband is right, Bel. Isn’t it rather unlikely that the French will leave Italy simply because the Signory of Venice chooses to anathematize them?”

“Of course.
My
husband is trying to persuade the Signory to finance an army of fifty thousand men to throw the French out. But the Signory tell him that they see no need to undertake that kind of expense as long as the armies of Naples still have the prospect of success.”

“One hopes the Signory’s optimism will be justified,” Beatrice said. “I don’t know. I have seen the French army.”

“Our cousin Isabella is encouraged by her brother’s prospects,” the Marquesa said. “She has had letters from him. You know, when she first heard about her father’s abdication I thought that would be the end of her. But she has been doing much better in the last few weeks. She’s very fond of Ferrantino, and I think perhaps a little relieved that she no longer has to defend her father.” The Marquesa paused. “You should look in on her.”

“No, Bel.” Beatrice turned almost vehemently to face her sister. “It’s too hard. I have tried. We’ve both tried. Too much has happened. I can never love her again, and I don’t want to hate her anymore. It’s just better if we are dead to one another. To everyone else we can still be alive. But for her I died the day Ercole was born. For me she died the night in Venice when I read her letter. We have even grieved for each other. I think that’s what happened the night she came back to Milan. It took me a while to understand why we had nothing to say after sharing that. Now I do. The dead don’t speak.”

Beatrice looked down and fussed at her skirts. “Has she asked . . . about me?”

“She asked when you will become Duchess of Milan.”

“What did you tell her?”

“What you told me. That you have received assurances from the Emperor and that it will be done as soon as the Emperor’s ambassadors arrive. Probably before the end of May.”

“She will hate me for that. But by all that is just, my husband should be Duke of Milan.”

“She seems resigned to it. Perhaps that will even things between the two of you and you can forgive one another.” The Marquesa shaded her eyes and looked across the lake. The water shimmered silvery under the oblique winter sun. “That was Mama’s greatest virtue, I think. She could forgive anything. Even Father’s nephew Niccolo, who for God’s sake tried to kill her.”

There was someone Mama couldn’t forgive, Beatrice thought. I heard it in her voice that night in Venice.

The Marquesa put her arm around Beatrice’s waist. “I want to tell you something, baby. You must realize that I will deny this if tortured by the Inquisition, and if questioned on the matter at the throne of Jesus I will say I never said it. But on the day you become Duchess of Milan, I am going to be so proud of you. Of course I am also going to be furiously, insanely, hysterically jealous--and I don’t care who knows that. But against every aspect of my nature, I’m going to be so proud. My only sister the Duchess of Milan. I will kill myself!”

The sisters embraced. Beatrice closed her eyes; the memories of girlhood swirled around her like a swarm of iridescent butterflies. When she finally blinked into the sunlight, she saw a man racing across the lawn from the direction of the Castello, wearing the red-white-and-blue uniform of her husband’s household. He was within fifty paces when she identified him as one of the official messengers who ordinarily ran important papers from her husband’s office to the various departments spread throughout the Castello.

The messenger in turn recognized Beatrice. He abruptly arrested his headlong flight and skidded to his knee in the grass in front of her. “Your Highness, I beg your pardon,” he said, gasping, his youthful face bright red. “Where is His Highness?”

Beatrice pointed to her husband, still standing beside the Spanish ambassador, still watched by his faithful Venetian shadows. The messenger sprinted off before she could ask him anything.

“Well, I’m not going to stand here waiting,” the Marquesa said. “It has to be something important!” She gathered up her skirts and dashed off in pursuit. Beatrice pulled up her own hems and charged along behind.

Beatrice was still over a hundred paces away when the messenger reached her husband. The messenger fell to his knee, then quickly rose and cupped his hand to her husband’s ear. For a few seconds Il Moro remained motionless, the embroidered golden M’s on his white tunic vivid in the sun. Then, in a quick gesture, he placed his hand on the edge of the table beside him, as if surreptitiously steadying himself. He said something to the Spanish ambassador, who nodded several times rapidly. Then he turned and began to walk up the slight slope toward the two Venetian ambassadors.

The Marquesa reached Il Moro before he got to the Venetians. She stayed a step behind, and he did not seem to notice her. Beatrice caught them just as the ambassadors dipped to their knees. Her husband’s dark eyes remained fixed on the Venetian envoys. He addressed the balding senior diplomat.

“Magnificent Ambassador,” Il Moro said, his tone so vibrant and purposeful that Beatrice was certain he was announcing some triumph. “Naples has fallen. The people have thrown open the gates and invited the French into the city. King Ferrantino has fled to Sicily.”

Beatrice could see the waxy face of the Venetian ambassador, his greenish-blue eyes dull with shock, the deep creases framing his nose twitching with alarm. Then everything began to spin. How would it matter if she and Eesh forgave each other, when Fortune would never forgive them? Her husband was saying something else, and she tried to hear through the whooshing rush of blood in her ears.

“This is not an occasion for despair, gentlemen,” Il Moro said, reaching up to brush at his bangs, the ruby cameo on his ring flashing. “This is the time for all Italy to unite.”

Milan, 11 March 1495

Beatrice rode with her sister to the Darsena docks, just outside the Porta Ticinese, the city’s southern gate. These were the same docks at which she had disembarked to begin her life in Milan, a series of wooden quays arranged around a shallow, muddy lagoon at the head of the perfectly straight Naviglio Sforzesca, the main canal to Pavia. The Marquesa was traveling in a small galley accompanied by two barges. Her suite had only slightly disrupted the usual commercial bustle on the quays, a continuous clamor of shouting porters, rumbling wagons, and the variegated protests of the livestock coming in from the country.

The Marquesa pressed little Ercole’s cheek to hers and kissed him a half-dozen times before handing him to Beatrice’s nurse. Tears made two long straight tracks down her rosy face. She clutched Beatrice and said, “They already have the mooring ropes off. Everything is ready. I’m just going to go. I’m just going to go right now. I’m going to go and sit in my cabin and not look back. I can’t do this any longer, baby. I just have to go. I love you so much.”

“God, I love you, Bel,” Beatrice said, squeezing her sister as tightly as a wrestler, tears spilling onto her own cheeks. “I can’t believe I’m going to wake up tomorrow and you aren’t going to be here. I knew this day would come, but now that it has happened, it’s like a . . .” She stopped because she didn’t want to say the word “death,” but that was the way she felt. She ached with this loss, far beyond any parting they’d ever had before.

The Marquesa pried herself partially out of her sister’s desperate embrace. “I’m almost certain Francesco and I will be back when your husband is invested as Duke of Milan. We really want to be here for that. I’ll be back before you know I am gone.”

No, you won’t, Beatrice told herself with dead certainty. Because the investiture will never happen. Nothing has happened as it should. Louis Duc d’Orleans will be the next Duke of Milan.

The Marquesa understood the renewed fervor of her sister’s embrace and said, “It’s going to be all right, baby. All the ambassadors are meeting in Venice right now. There’s going to be a new league, and the Frenchmen will be gone so fast they won’t have time to put on their ridiculous goose-feet shoes. Someday you will tell your grandsons stories about how the horrid little King of France kissed you on both cheeks.”

As if mocking the little French King, the Marquesa gave her sister a lavish complement of kisses. Then she pulled away and held Beatrice’s hands. “It really will be all right. You don’t know how it warms my heart to see how wonderfully everything has turned out for you here, baby. A rich, handsome husband who adores you and two precious little sons. You know, Mama always thought that I was the lucky one. But you’re the lucky one. Now remember to write me a full description of the clavichord Maestro Lorenzo is making for you as soon as it is delivered.” She kissed Beatrice one last time and then ran down the quay to her galley. Like a dancer she extended her arms for her pages, and they helped her onto the deck. She waved once and then, true to her word, disappeared into the small cabin.

The crewmen pushed off from the quay, oars dipped into the brackish water, and the galley led the two barges into the canal. Beatrice was startled by the speed with which the little flotilla moved away. The boats seemed to get smaller so quickly, the canal to narrow and lengthen. The day was bright and sunny, but she sensed a darkening, not just thin clouds veiling the sun but a thick, threatening pall. Everything continued to be distorted, her vision narrowing and lengthening, as though she were looking into a painting with flawed, exaggerated perspective. She wished she could faint, so that she could wake up and this would be over. But this wasn’t like a faint. The darkness settling around her was a huge, palpable shadow, a descending cloud of cold soot.

Suddenly the cold pierced deep inside her, like the icy ripping of her soul she had felt the night Mama died. She knew what it was even before she said it to herself: You are never going to see your sister again.

She could hardly breathe, but still she knew she had to get to her horse. She ran and shouted to her startled page, and he helped her into the saddle. She pounded her horse’s flank with her crop and was off so fast her guards didn’t have a chance to respond. The crush of dockside traffic gave her something to focus on, and she frantically maneuvered among the ox-drawn wagons.

The exertion of riding somehow enabled her to breathe again. Her vision lightened. She began to feel relieved and foolish. The boats were not so far away as she had thought; a moment previously she’d vowed she would ride to Pavia if necessary. Now she saw an arched wooden bridge a few hundred paces farther down the canal and realized that would be close enough.

When she reached the base of the narrow bridge her sense of dread had vanished. This was a game now. She expertly guided her horse up the planked slope and paused at the crest. Her sister’s galley had glided under the bridge just moments before and was still close enough that if she’d had a rock she could have hit a crewman on the deck. “Bel! Bel!” She waved, and the crewmen looked and pointed. “Bel!” she shouted again. One of the crewmen went to the cabin.