Duchess of Milan (61 page)

“You killed my boy,” Galeazzo Maria repeated, starting to laugh. “Not with your hands but with your eyes. Remember how you pleaded with your eyes? You’re very clever, Lodovico, so you must remember. They killed him for you Didn’t I tell you that you are more like me than you can ever admit?” Il Moro tried to scream with such force that he felt as if a knife had been plunged into his throat. His temple exploded with pain, and black snow filled the air. And still he could not move, could not make a single sound.

CHAPTER 51

Milan, 15 June 1495

“That’s you,” Beatrice told Ercole as he sat in her lap. She pointed to the detailed, hand-painted illustration in his Book of Hours. The artist had portrayed Ercole as an older boy, about five or six years old, with long, curly blond hair. He was standing between two voluptuous, virtually identical blond women dressed in classical Roman togas, gesturing to the woman on his left. “This woman is Virtue,” Beatrice said, “and the other is Vice. You are choosing to follow Virtue.”

“Virtu,”
Ercole said happily, pointing to the woman his little image had selected.

“Good, Ercole. I hope you will always be able to tell the difference,” she told him wistfully. “When you get older, sometimes it is almost impossible to tell one from the other.”

Beatrice wondered for the thousandth time what was happening. Several messengers had arrived the previous evening from Novara, each of them independently reporting that Louis Duc d’Orleans had taken the city. Rumors had swept through Milan during the night. But if Novara had fallen, why hadn’t couriers arrived from Vigevano, carrying official news of the catastrophe and orders to defend the Castello? As virtually the entire upper tier of the government was with her husband in Vigevano, leaving only lower-level functionaries in Milan, Beatrice had decided that the worst thing she could do would be to set off a false alarm in the leaderless city. So she had resisted requests to post additional guards or seal the Castello gates--defensive measures that might well have inspired panic. The absence of further word from Novara or Vigevano during the long night seemed to confirm the prudence of her wait-and-see approach. However, at first light she had sent a courier to Vigevano to find out what, if anything, they had heard there.

At midmorning Beatrice was visiting with her dressmakers in their sunlit little factory overlooking the Piazza d’Armi when her chamberlain found her and made a surprising announcement: Her husband had returned from Vigevano. Now she knew that something had indeed happened, but she was relieved to know that the head of state was where he belonged in a crisis.

She hurried to her husband’s rooms in the Rochetta. The Castello’s inner sanctuary was as quiet as it had been during her husband’s absence, the massive stone walls a cool refuge from the summer heat. Her heart skipped when she saw the guards at the carved wooden doors to her husband’s antechamber, five men in steel helmets and breastplates, armed with Swiss-style halberds. At her approach one of the guards cracked the door and whispered inside. After a moment he swung the door open and bowed to Beatrice.

The Marchesino Stanga waited behind the door. The windows in her husband’s rooms were shuttered, but even in the dull light Beatrice was shocked at how tired the Marchesino looked. His eyes were dark circles. “Your Highness ...” His voice cracked.

Beatrice immediately surmised that the French had killed her husband. His closest advisers had brought his body back. Of course they had to keep it secret, because pandemonium would break loose in the city, leaving Milan defenseless against Orleans. This was all very clear to her, and she was amazed at how calm she was. “Where is he, Marchesino?”

The Marchesino led her into the darkened bedroom. When she saw the vague shape on the bed, her lungs constricted and she vainly tried to argue with her own conjecture. She felt just as she had when she’d read the letter about Mama. Empty, unable to think, able to think too much. She looked at the dimly silhouetted tassels of his bed canopy, and she thought to herself that they had already draped his bed in mourning cloth.

Taking another step forward, Beatrice couldn’t avoid looking at him. Light glanced from his eyes. She was furious that they hadn’t closed his eyes.

His eyes moved.

She virtually leapt back with alarm, her heart screaming. “He’s alive,” she snapped at the Marchesino, as if he had tricked her. She rushed to her husband’s side. His head remained motionless, but his eyes turned to her. He weakly raised his left hand and she took it. She remembered standing beside Gian’s bed and taking his hand. But she did not feel death in her husband’s grip.

“Lodovico,” she whispered. His eyes were fixed on her, his mouth open. A horrible wheezing came from his throat. The dark, pouchy skin beneath his right eye twitched wildly.

“Dear God,” she said, turning to the Marchesino. “Is he wounded? Who is treating his wounds? He can’t breathe. Where is Messer Ambrogio? He can’t breathe--”

“Your Highness, he can breathe,” the Marchesino said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “He has been like this since yesterday evening, when I brought him the reports about the surrender of Novara. He is trying to speak. But he cannot make the sounds. He cannot move his right hand, either.”

Beatrice pulled the covers aside to disprove this preposterous claim. But her husband’s right hand and arm were as limp as a sleeping child’s.

“Messer Ambrogio has been in attendance on your husband all night. He suggests that His Highness has suffered an attack of apoplexy, and that as His Highness is otherwise in good health, and as his attack does not appear severe, he will recover all his faculties. Perhaps within a few weeks.”

Dear God. She knew that her husband had once been so sick that he had almost died and that Messer Ambrogio had made his reputation by nursing him back to health. But that was before she had known him. Thereafter, except for an occasional fever, he had never been ill. This was so unexpected.

“Your Highness, he is in no danger. Messer Ambrogio suggests that you visit him regularly but do not encourage him to exert himself by attempting to speak. Your Highness, could you come with me into the antechamber?”

Beatrice squeezed her husband’s hand and told him to rest and not to worry, that she was coming back shortly. But by the time she reached the antechamber she understood the real nature of the crisis.

“So it is true about the surrender of Novara,” she told the Marchesino in a low voice.

He nodded. “Your Highness, Louis Duc d’Orleans has twenty thousand men a day’s fast march from the gates of Milan. Some of his cavalry have already ridden through villages only an hour from here. The main force could be here by nightfall.”

“And my husband will not be able to appear before his people to exhort them to defend the city.” Beatrice remembered the story of her father lying near death, with the Venetian army camped in the ducal park just outside Ferrara, a tale she had heard more often than the
Pater Noster.
It had always sounded so unreal.

Beatrice noticed that the Marchesino was staring at her, waiting for her to dictate some course of action. Suddenly it occurred to her that none of her husband’s advisers had been picked for their leadership ability. They had been selected because they were capable and informed in their limited areas of expertise. Now she was the regent, as her husband had specified in the event of his incapacitation. She was expected to lead.

“Who knows that my husband is ... ill?”

“Your Highness, we arrived here in just two carriages. That was to avoid drawing attention to our party. When we carried your husband into his rooms, we kept a shroud over him to conceal his identity. We have been here for a half hour. Just minutes ago I received a note from Count Landriano indicating that he and the rest of the Council of Nobles have confirmed by their own means that Novara belongs to Orleans. The Council wishes to dispel the rumors that the Duke of Milan is dead or a prisoner of the French. Count Landriano insists that His Highness personally address the Council of Nobles in the Sala della Palla this afternoon. He maintains that this is the only way to prevent widespread panic in the city. If the people cannot be assured of your husband’s leadership in this crisis, he warns, we will see Milan become a mob clamoring for immediate capitulation to the French at even the appearance of their army before the city gates. Of course what he means is that unless your husband is able to rally the city against the French, the Council of Nobles will greet Louis Duc d’Orleans with garlands and welcoming speeches.”

Beatrice shook her head angrily. This was so much in the fickle Milanese character, always scampering eagerly behind Fortune’s favorite, even more eagerly recasting their allegiances at the merest rumor of Fortune’s scorn. Did they imagine that the French would loot and rape with less vehemence if the city surrendered without a fight?

“So we must assume that by nightfall the entire city will be demanding to see my husband.”

When the Marchesino simply swallowed and nodded, Beatrice pursed her lips and stared at the floor. What she needed was a miracle. The miraculous recovery of her husband. Or perhaps Galeazz would be able to get sufficient forces to Novara to contain Orleans before Milan erupted with panic. But there had been no word of Galeazz’s whereabouts; she was not certain that he even knew of the crisis. Her mind began to wander desperately in search of a solution. She recalled the smirking scrutiny of Louis Duc d’Orleans in Asti and wondered if he intended to make her one of the spoils of his conquest. She heard Polissena’s ancient voice, rattling on about the war with Venice. But now she was interested. In that crisis rumors had swept Ferrara that her father was dead, and the frightened city had been on the verge of surrender to the Venetian mercenaries camped in the park. What had Mama done? She had brought the leading nobles to her husband’s bedside to prove that he was still alive. And then she had stood on the garden wall and addressed the entire populace. She had challenged them to defend their city as she intended to, alone if necessary. . . .

“Very well, Marchesino,” Beatrice said, looking directly at him. “We will prepare to defend the Castello against the French, and in my husband’s name we will send word to every precinct of the city, calling on the people to assemble their weapons and stores in anticipation of an assault and siege. I want you, in my husband’s name, to summon the Council of Nobles to the Castello, the appointed time to be nine o’clock this evening. At the very least my husband can persuade the Council that he is not dead and that his recovery can be expected. It will fall to me to persuade the people of Milan that in the meanwhile, I am capable of leading them against the French.”

Isabella learned about the crisis just minutes after Beatrice left her husband’s bedchamber. She was in her son’s room, part of her suite in the Ducal Court opposite the Rochetta, helping four-and-a-half-year-old Francesco with his Latin lessons; Francesco had been taking daily tutoring in Latin since shortly before his fourth birthday. Isabella’s
vecchia,
Lucia, who seemed to pull secrets out of the Castello walls, came into the room and announced, “Il Moro is deathly ill. And it is true that Orleans is in Novara.”

An hour later, Lucia came back and told Isabella about the call to arms and the meeting of the Council of Nobles scheduled for nine o’clock in the evening. Isabella understood immediately that the Council of Nobles hoped to negotiate with the French, and that they probably would end up panicking and unconditionally surrender the city when the French army arrived. Beatrice, she realized, was making a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable.

Only a few minutes later, Isabella’s older daughter, Bona, came running for her mother, one of her porcelain dolls in her arms. The child and the doll were dressed exactly alike, in little mock-Moorish dresses covered with tinsel-like
stringhe
and elaborate taffeta ruffles. “Stanzie fell,” Bona said with a pout, holding up her doll for additional comforting. “Mama, when are the bad men coming here?”

With that Isabella made her decision. For the first time in almost eight months she could think with her old clarity and boldness. She was going to Germany. She could pack her valuables and take the children and a small household and be on the road while it was still light. They wouldn’t get far before dark, but if they went north toward Lake Como, they would at least be able to spend the night safely in a village well outside the city walls; the French would be too busy with Milan to bother with the surrounding countryside. Once they got to Germany, Bianca Maria would give them refuge at her court. And perhaps the Emperor would eventually liberate Milan from the French and install Francesco as the new Duke. . . .

But she really didn’t care about that. Wasn’t it enough just to get out of Milan, where she had known nothing but sorrow and misfortune? She had always been the
forestiera
here. Now she was perfectly happy to leave Milan’s fate to the Milanese. And to Beatrice. It occurred to her with no great satisfaction--or sadness--that Beatrice had been Duchess of Milan for less than three weeks. She called Lucia and gave her instructions on what to start packing.

She enjoyed the activity of preparing for her journey, feeling as if she had been napping for eight months and had suddenly awakened fresh and invigorated. If the Emperor should liberate all of Italy, she might even be able to get more than just Milan for Francesco. . . . She rummaged purposefully through her
guardaroba,
decisively and without lingering sentiment deciding what she would take and what she would leave. All of her wedding gifts would be left behind. She found several piles of white satin that had been used to drape her nuptial chamber and wished she had time to burn these things. Perhaps the French would.

By late afternoon she had almost finished with the packing. She was surprised that she wasn’t at all fatigued. She was watching her pages carry a storage chest out of her bedchamber when Lucia came in again, her toothless gums working with agitation.