Duchess of Milan (60 page)

Il Moro looked at his brother and saw his own face in some hideous distorting mirror. Galeazzo Maria was at once more angelic-looking and more diabolic. His huge hawklike nose was almost a deformity, a cruel, menacing beak, yet his small, deeply colored mouth had an effeminate sweetness. His big, sensitive, terrifying eyes combined both the delicacy and the fury of the rest of his face.

The cold air reeked of decay. Light from their torches raced through the long, damp hall. They passed rows of black oak doors. Il Moro had never been down here before. He knew that occasionally a local nobleman or even one of his brother’s officers of state had come here and not reappeared. Perhaps one every six months. Never so many that the accompanying charges of treason seemed invented, the work of a persecuted mind. With youthful cynicism Il Moro attributed the disappearances to the usual business of court. Courts were dangerous places. The less substantial rumors, of what took place down here, he did not believe at all.

Galeazzo Maria paused before a door with a brass Sforza viper nailed to it. As he unlocked it he glanced sideways at Il Moro, his lips twisted into a smirk. He pushed the door open. Il Moro stepped back involuntarily when he realized that there were people in the cell. He wanted to run. Then his brother turned and looked at him, and he had to go in.

A large, lumpishly powerful man and a small, slender woman hung side by side from the wall, their bound hands raised straight over their heads and tied to iron rings; on second look Il Moro realized that the ropes had been adjusted so that the prisoners could just stand on tiptoe. They had black hoods over their heads. The man wore soiled wool breeches and the women a torn but expensive linen chemise. A third prisoner, naked, sat bound to a chair placed against the opposite wall. He also wore a hood, but his slack skin and sagging breasts evidenced that he was not as young as the other two. Beside his chair was a massive wooden coffin, the lid removed and leaning against it.

“Good,” Galeazzo Maria said. “Everything is here.” Il Moro had never heard this tone in his brother’s voice. Even as a child Galeazzo Maria had not spoken like a child; his diction had always been deliberate and polished, his childhood Latin orations famous for their precocious gravity. Now he sounded like a gleeful little boy. Il Moro felt a prickly nausea and a slight loss of control over his legs. He still tried to convince himself that this was some nasty prank.

Galeazzo Maria whipped the hood off the woman first, and Il Moro could see from her eyes that it was no prank. Even with a wooden gag shoved in her mouth she appeared young, probably no older than fourteen or fifteen, with very refined, aquiline Lombard features. Local nobility. He looked away from her pleading, racing, desperate eyes. The hood came off the man next to her, and his scarred, thuggish face marked him as the kind of man who belonged in a dungeon. Moving with languid grace, Galeazzo Maria removed the third hood. Il Moro knew the blanched face beneath the wispy crown of gray hair. Tommaseo Visconti, a distant relation to the Viscontis who had once ruled Milan. Il Moro glanced back at the girl. Now he knew her too. She was Visconti’s daughter; he didn’t know her given name.

“Signor Tommaseo and his lovely daughter,” Galeazzo Maria said. He had a long hunting knife in his hand, and he pointed it at the big man. “A convicted murderer and rapist. He calls himself Il Lupo.” Galeazzo Maria sneered as if the name offended his taste. He went over to Il Lupo and with the point of his knife cut the hide cord that held the wooden gag in place. Il Lupo worked his brutish jaws and spit the gag out. Galeazzo Maria reached up and cut the bindings that held his hands. Il Lupo slumped over and rubbed his wrists and then raised up, glaring at Galeazzo Maria. Il Moro was suddenly frightened for his brother and himself. In a lazy, effeminate gesture, Galeazzo Maria twirled the knife before Il Lupo’s nose. The tiny, piggish eyes of the criminal locked onto Galeazzo Maria’s. Il Lupo saw something that frightened even him, and he backed away.

“You’re a rapist,” Galeazzo Maria told Il Lupo in his boyish voice. “So rape her.”

The father bucked against his heavy chair, and the girl’s eyes searched the room frantically. Il Moro told himself that his brother was only teaching the father a lesson. It wouldn’t happen. When the girl’s wild eyes found his, he shook his head at her in an attempt to communicate this conviction.

Il Lupo walked over, studied the girl for a moment, then ripped her chemise down the front. With several savage pulls he ripped it entirely off. He clutched at his breeches and tore them and stepped out of them and immediately pressed himself against the girl’s stretched-out form.

Il Moro waited a moment for his brother to stop it. He watched with rising panic while the huge thug enfolded the writhing girl, and finally he had to step forward. It was just a step; he didn’t know exactly how he would stop this.

His brother seized his arm with a shockingly powerful grip. He looked in his brother’s eyes and with absolute certainty knew that if he took another step his brother’s knife would be in his throat. He could taste the steel, the blood. The room seemed to whirl once. Il Lupo pumped his hips and grunted, and the father’s chair bucked again.

Galeazzo Maria stepped slowly toward Il Lupo. He held the knife in both hands and he lifted it with a triumphal, ecstatic fury and brought it down into Il Lupo’s back with a tremendous thud. Blood spurted when he ripped the blade out. Il Lupo whirled around, his eyes red, his penis still half erect. He took one stumbling step, theatrically threw both arms out, and fell on his face, his body hitting the stone floor with a wet slapping sound.

Thank God, Il Moro thought. It’s over. Thank God. Now let them go. He wanted to cover the girl, but he was still afraid to move. Her eyes were closed now.

Galeazzo Maria flipped the corpse over and stared at it, his chest heaving. Then he reached down and pulled up Il Lupo’s penis and testicles and savagely sliced them off. He held the bloody organs like an offering in front of the girl and waited. When she opened her eyes he ripped her gag out and pulled it down around her neck. He grasped her jaw and with some unbelievable strength in his elegant little hand held her mouth open while he threatened to sodomize her with the amputated penis. Il Moro stood trembling, his stomach cramping and his head pounding.

Apparently satisfied just listening to the girl’s horrified screams, Galeazzo Maria threw his head back with manic glee and let go of her jaw. He turned his back on her and tossed the limp genitals onto Il Lupo’s chest.

Il Moro’s legs felt so weak that he couldn’t see how he still stood. God, it has to be over, he told himself. His brother was laughing hysterically, a high-pitched boyish laugh.

Galeazzo Maria cut the father out of the chair and jerked him to his feet. At knifepoint he forced him to lie in the coffin. He turned to Il Moro. “I need you to help me lift the lid, Lodovico.”

For some reason this seemed relatively benign, a lesser form of cruelty. It was ending. Surely this was only a mock burial, Signor Tommaseo’s final humiliation. Almost gratefully, Il Moro helped his brother lift the heavy lid. They began to slide it into place.

“Wait,” Galeazzo Maria said. He reached into the coffin and cut the cord that held the gag. The man made some awful noises, but he couldn’t spit the wooden gag out. “He’ll get it out soon enough,” Galeazzo Maria said. “Then we’ll be able to hear him scream.”

Galeazzo Maria handed Il Moro a large shipwright’s mallet and a dozen heavy steel pegs. “The nail holes are already drilled. Nail him in.”

The truth came to Il Moro in an icy epiphany. Signor Tommaseo isn’t going to get out, he told himself. And I can’t kill a defenseless, most likely innocent man. I can die, but I can’t kill a man like this. Then he realized that his brother had just given him a weapon. He dropped the nails on the floor. The metallic little clinking sound was eerie, like bells echoing from some ancient time. He grasped the handle of the mallet with both hands and looked up at Galeazzo Maria. His brother was smiling at him.

Il Moro raised the heavy mallet.

Galeazzo Maria erupted into madcap boy’s laughter. He sprang from side to side like a clumsy marionette, mocking his brother’s grim resolution. After what seemed like several minutes of this bizarre performance, Il Moro all the time watching him as if he were a bobbing adder, Galeazzo Maria wiped away genuine tears of mirth.

“You see, you see, Lodovico, this performance wasn’t for Signor Tommaseo. It was for you.” Galeazzo Maria spread his arms as if waiting for an embrace. “You see how much I love you, Lodovico, that I would have them suffer for you. But you, Lodovico, you don’t love me as you should. You’re much too clever. Perhaps that’s why you were always the Duke’s favorite. And Mother’s pet.” Galeazzo Maria dropped his arms and his manic grin faded. “Whereas Mother never really understood me.” Something moved over his face, an ineffable expression that crawled at the base of Il Moro’s neck. “She never understood me until the day I brought her down here.”

Il Moro listened to the rising, reason-assaulting drone that followed his brother’s last words. He told himself that this was only his brother’s perverse invention, intended to drive him mad, maddening in its mere suggestion. Even Galeazzo Maria wasn’t capable of such an obscenity. And yet Il Moro knew that his mother’s sudden death in Cremona--just a week after Galeazzo Maria had exiled her--had never been satisfactorily explained, that it was not in her character to perish simply from the agony of isolation. Even the death of her husband had not broken her.

“Trust me, Lodovico. She was here.” Galeazzo Maria cocked his head wryly. “Rest assured I never harmed her. I merely invited her to watch me at work.”

The most terrible revelation of all stood before him. It was true. His mother had such strength, such implacable faith, that Galeazzo Maria could have flayed her on the wheel and she would not have cried out. But to be forced to watch her own son brutalize innocents like these . . . That was the instrument that had ripped out her soul, the torture that had so quickly extinguished her will to live.

“You see, this is such an education for you,” Galeazzo Maria said, smiling at the horrified recognition on his brother’s face. “Before we are finished, you will be very much more clever than you were when you walked into this room. To that end, I must now insist. You either nail Signor Tommaseo into his coffin or get in it yourself. And in that case I will include the girl to keep you company. I made certain that there was room for all three of you.”

Galeazzo Maria lunged forward, the knife flashing, catching Il Moro entirely by surprise. Il Moro’s cheek itched, and he touched his fingers to it and felt the hot wetness. His feet were ice cold, frozen to the floor.

“Do you know what I taught Mother in this room, Lodovico?” Galeazzo Maria stared for a moment at his knife. “That she no longer wanted to live. However, I believe that you will learn quite the opposite: That above all else, you want to live.” Galeazzo Maria lunged again and the point of the knife stung Il Moro’s lip and he tasted blood.

“Nail him in,” Galeazzo Maria said in an awful whisper.

Il Moro forced his benumbed hands to grip the heavy mallet. Dizzy with shock, nauseated by the ferric scent of his own blood, he willed one last challenge, for the peace of his mother’s soul. He stepped forward.

“Yes. Come closer.” Galeazzo Maria’s expression was composed, strangely sincere. “Look into my eyes. If you think you have the courage to kill me, then you can look into my eyes before you do it. You will recognize yourself, Lodovico. You are more like me than you can ever allow yourself to admit.”

Il Moro looked into his brother’s eyes, the last time he would ever be able to do it. What he saw was nothing like the savage cruelty and menace that had so thoroughly shocked him just minutes earlier. The dilated pupils were utterly without focus or animation. They were simply little round windows into oblivion, an unfathomable black pit completely and terrifyingly void of light and reason. And he knew in that instant he would be afraid of what he saw there for the rest of his life.

Letting the mallet fall to his side, Il Moro knelt and scooped the nails off the floor. He convinced himself that he could go ahead and do this and then come down later and rescue the man. Or certainly it was still a prank, no more real than the absurd lies Galeazzo Maria had just told him about forcing their mother to come down here. Sick, ugly, perverted, but still a prank. He began to pound the nails through the lid of the coffin, telling himself these things. But he knew that something had irrevocably fractured deep inside him. With each blow of the mallet he could feel his soul shattering, a soul that would never be whole again. He could spend the rest of his life atoning for these blows, building his citadels to light and reason, and yet he would never come close enough to the sun to escape the terrible darkness behind his brother’s eyes.

Signor Tommaseo did start to scream, when he heard Galeazzo Maria begin to rape his daughter. But then something strange happened to the horrible vision. Il Moro became conscious that time had circled back on itself, that he was reliving this memory with the full power to alter it, that at last he had an opportunity to atone, to do now what he could not do then.

Finishing with the girl, Galeazzo Maria turned away. But this time Il Moro could see that the girl was Beatrice. Beatrice who had made him whole again, who had purified him and would lead him to the light. Il Moro clutched the mallet with all his force, and this time he vowed to bash his brother’s skull to pulp.

He couldn’t move. His arm simply couldn’t move. It wasn’t that his courage had failed again. Something was wrong with his arm.

Galeazzo Maria’s face was now as white and gaunt as the face of Gian’s corpse. His tunic was covered with blood and ripped by his assassins’ knives. “You killed my boy,” he said in an unreal, spectral voice.

Il Moro tried to deny the accusation, to explain himself, but he couldn’t talk. Somehow his waking memory had become a nightmare in which he couldn’t talk and couldn’t move.