Duchess of Milan (67 page)

Beatrice leafed through the pages until she found what she wanted. “My sister says this
frottola
is all the fashion in Mantua,” she told Bianca. “Here, you hold the music, and I will try to play it.” She put her hands on the narrow keyboard attached to what resembled a lyre set on its side--a sensuously scrolling, open wooden frame, strung with precise rows of the finest German gut. She struck several clear, wonderfully resonant notes, a sound so rich that it might have been made by an organ.

Beatrice practiced the lively melody several times. Then she began to sing in her high, lyrical voice:

“Good day, Good evening,
I believed it was still early.
But the day passes, the hours flee,
And how quickly night has come.”

Beatrice paused to say, “Now we sing the refrain”:

“Good day, Good evening,
I believed it was still early.”

“Now we must increase the tempo.”

“Therefore, Lady, while you can,
Don’t let time slip through your arms.
Take the measure of each day,
If you never fish, you will never catch.
As quickly as fire ignites the tinder,
So embrace your desire now.”

“That’s so true, Toto,” Bianca said with a practiced sigh. “I am fifteen years old. I feel I will wake up tomorrow and find that I am a
vecchia.”
As if underscoring Bianca’s melodramatic lament, the rain came down harder and the wind moaned.

“You are almost a year younger than I was when I got married,” Beatrice said, a gentle reminder that Bianca, who had celebrated her birthday only a month previously, would have to wait a while before she could move in with Galeazz. Then she reminded herself: I am twenty-one years old. If I live as long as Mama, I have already lived more than half my life. Suddenly Bianca didn’t seem so girlishly impatient.

“Toto, is there a way you can keep from getting pregnant? Caterina da Borromeo says that there is a book in Arabic in the library at Pavia that tells a hundred different ways, and that it hasn’t been translated because if it were, within three generations there would be no one left in Italy.”

Nothing Bianca said surprised her. “There is only one way that really works,
carissima figlia.
The method that is practiced by children, pious nuns, and the dead. And now that I think of it, there is also the method practiced by Caterina. But for everything else they tell you, there are a dozen women with fat bellies to tell you otherwise. Don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant right away.”

Beatrice glanced sideways at her stepdaughter. Bianca on the threshold of womanhood was gorgeous, her natural color more vivid than the typical Milanese lady’s ceruse and rouge, her small features perfectly shaped. But she was as fragile as eggshell-thin porcelain; it mildly frightened Beatrice to think of her in Galeazz’s powerful arms. But it simply terrified Beatrice to think of Bianca having Galeazz’s baby.

“You almost died with Ercole, didn’t you? They didn’t want me to know then, but I’ve heard about it since.”

Beatrice felt the vertigo of that black, silent descent. It hadn’t frightened her then. But now it did. “I don’t think I was that close to dying, baby. I really don’t. You know how the
vecchie
exaggerate. And by the time the story started among my ladies, well, by then I had not only received the stigmata and died, but three days later I was resurrected.”

“I think it must have been terribly frightening. Toto, you know my mother died having me. I dream about my mother sometimes. Once she warned me not to have a baby.”

Beatrice felt that icy finger along her spine. She took Bianca’s hand. “I will promise you this, baby. Whenever and wherever you have your baby, I will be there with you. That is my pledge. The solemn oath of the Beatrice and Bianca League.”

Bianca put her arms around Beatrice. “Toto, I will always be sorry that my mother died. But you are the best mother I ever could’ve had.”

In some ways, Beatrice realized, she was even closer to Bianca than she was to her own little boys. So much of raising little princes was letting them go, sending them off to lessons and instruction in the manly arts. Bianca was much more an extension of herself.

“This time we will both sing,” Beatrice said, plinking the keys of her clavichord. They joined in on the little ditty, but after the second refrain a light baritone broke into their harmony.

“Father!” Bianca said with an adolescent squeal.

Il Moro bent to kiss his wife and daughter. His face was relaxed, his eyes sparkled in a way they hadn’t since the “illness.” Then he stood and sang out, “ ‘Whoever would be merry, let them! / Of tomorrow none are certain!’ That is the refrain from my friend Lorenzo de’ Medici’s ‘Song of Bacchus.’ May God rest his soul. When I think of how Lorenzo loved life, and love, and then to hear what is going on now with this Fra Girolamo Savonarola proclaiming Christ the King of Florence. They are allowed to sing nothing but hymns in Florence these days, and children are taught to break into houses to confiscate paintings and poems and musical instruments. Of all the forms of government, government by priests is the worst.” He shook his head. “Well, this is not an occasion for melancholy. Today I received news from Lyons. His Most Christian Majesty has returned whence he started on his Crusade. It is over. It is finally, irrevocably over.”

Beatrice shared her husband’s relief; for weeks she, too, had worried that the hotheaded, impetuous French would change their minds before they made their final descent to impecunious reality. Kisses were exchanged all around. Then, with a knowing look at her father and his wife, Bianca demurely suggested that she was fatigued and intended to retire. Beatrice caught the sly gleam in Bianca’s eye and realized that her baby was already developing a woman’s instincts.

When Bianca had left, Il Moro lowered his head. His voice had a charming tentativeness. “Would I be presuming too much if I asked to spend the night in your rooms?”

“You would be presuming to know my fondest desire.”

He looked up. “Before we ... I want to say something now that should have been said many weeks ago. I am ashamed that I have never even acknowledged your courage and initiative, much less thanked you for what you did when I was . . . when I could do nothing. When I lay helpless. You saved us. You saved everything. And I did not even have the courage to thank you.”

This was it, his expiation, his full confession, all she had ever wanted or needed. They would never have to speak of the “illness” again. In reply she simply took his hand and led him to her bed.

They held each other for a long while before they began to make love, kissing softly, whispering, and caressing. He was softer, a bit paunchy, as if his body had yielded along with his will. And yet she found that this heightened her passion; it was as though she was now physically embracing the gentler inner spirit she had always loved, the part of him that was not the vaunted Il Moro, master of all Europe.

Everything was slow, dreamlike, exquisite. This was how she had so long ago imagined her wedding night, the way it had been when they first became lovers. His tempo rose and fell lyrically, so familiar to her again, a cherished poetry of caresses.

But as he rose to his climax something went wrong. He hardened all over, clutching her so tightly that she entirely lost the rhythm, pumping into her so furiously that it hurt. It was almost like the first time he had tried to make a son, that terrible night.

“Lodovico,” she whispered, trying to break through his rage. “Lodovico. Lodovico, you’re hurting me!”

He emerged as if from a trance. “God help me,” he gasped. His entire body was still rigid, but he no longer pressed against her. He was withdrawing, pulling the anger back into his depths. “God help me, I never want to hurt you,” he whispered harshly, staring past her into the fire-tinted shadows. “I have already done so much to shame myself in your eyes. I will lose your love. That is what frightens me. That is what I am clinging to. If I lost your love I couldn’t live. I simply couldn’t go on.”

“Oh, darling, you could never lose my love. I promise you there is nothing you could do that would ever make me stop loving you.”

She had imagined that her unconditional declaration would bring him back, draw him close in the way that they had been only minutes before. But he remained hard, distant, locked inside his shell.

Beatrice listened to the rain patter against the windows. In a sudden, awful vision her dead men paraded by, white-faced Gian and the corpses lying akimbo in black pools of blood on the streets of Milan. And then the dead she’d not seen but only been told of: the women and children thrown off the battlements of Fivizzano by the Swiss, the knights lying in the rain at Fornovo, their faces hacked to pulp, the walking skeletons dying in the ditches along the road from Novara to Vercelli.

She held her husband, vainly trying to embrace the soul she could no longer touch. The war isn’t over, she told herself, trying not to sob. It will never be over.

CHAPTER 55

Extract of a letter of Leonardo da Vinci, engineer at the Court of Milan, to international traveler and raconteur Benedetto Dei. Milan, 10 August 1496

. . . upon hearing that the French King was once again making intemperate comments concerning his intentions to return to Italy and pursue the conquests he failed to achieve in his previous sojourn here, my lord Il Moro determined that he must persuade the Emperor Maximilian to take a more active involvement in Italian affairs, as a guarantor of the peace against the aggressive intentions of the French King. To this end the Duke and Duchess of Milan embarked on a journey from Milan to the Abbey of Mais, which lies at the base of the prodigious massifs that separate this country from that of Germany. As one of those selected to join Their Highnesses’ suite, I can offer you the full particulars of this embassy. . . . We took leave of Milan on 5 July, journeying the length of Lake Como before taking the road east that passes through Bormio, all the while entertained by the magnificent and overawing presence of the great mountains to our north, a constant and daunting reminder of mankind’s insignificance against the achievements of nature. ... In the course of our journey I was able to make many observations concerning the motion of air over these great massifs and the attendant storms caused by the compression and condensation of clouds. . . .

. . . we reached the Abbey of Mais, finding the said abbey a Benedictine establishment of ancient and noble construction, admirable in its simplicity of form . . . the Emperor came to greet the Duke and Duchess on 20 July, and then closeted with both Their Highnesses for a considerable duration of time--the Duke of Milan conducts no business of any import unless the Duchess of Milan is also present. ... As a result of this embassy, in which I was pleased to participate, the Emperor has agreed to come to Milan in September to advance discussions intended to ensure peace, concord, and stability. . . .

. . . thereupon I returned to my labors on the fresco depicting the Last Supper of Our Lord for the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The Dominican friars who will dine beneath this glorious representation have become exceedingly vexed at my careful habits of work, and thus their Prior complained to my lord Il Moro that considering the great amount of money His Highness has advanced toward the completion this prodigy (indeed it is no great amount, my dear Benedetto), why had I not begun work on the head of Judas? When His Highness posited the Prior’s noisome question to me, I told His Highness that I have already devoted the better portion of a year to traversing at great risk to my person the streets of the most scurrilous and disreputable quarter of Milan, seeking in vain the face of a heinous criminal who might provide me with the features suitable to the most villainous man who ever walked this earth. However, I informed His Highness, if the Prior was indeed so impatient, I could with no trouble employ the said Prior’s own likeness for the head of Judas, as his character and appearance are perfectly suited to the task, and indeed I had not done so already only out of concern for the Prior’s feelings. His Highness was most amused with this. . . .

Vigevano, 15 August 1496

From the grassy crest of the gradual slope, Il Moro and Galeazzo di Sanseverino could see back to the town of Vigevano, a circle of red tile roofs dominated by the tower of the Castello Sforzesca. Before them stretched a largely flat expanse of wooded parkland, the horizon bounded by the cool, mist-purple wall of the Alps. The countryside glistened beneath the midmorning sun.

Galeazz breathed rhythmically from the brisk ride. He looked over at Il Moro, tanned and taut-looking, his thick chest rising only slightly. “I don’t remember that you’ve ever ridden this well,” Galeazz said genuinely.

“Perhaps you are slowing down.” Il Moro gave Galeazz a brilliant smile.

“Just the same, you’ve never looked better in the saddle. And that perception has nothing to do with the decline in my abilities.”

Il Moro indeed hadn’t looked better in many years. The trip to Austria had invigorated him, and he had gone on a riding regimen since his return. He’d also dyed his hair to eliminate the traces of gray. Only the tight lines around his eyes betrayed his age and experience.

“There are my wife’s ladies, quite without her supervision,” Il Moro said, pointing to the flat meadow just below them.

“How is Her Highness?” Galeazz asked.

“Messer Ambrogio examined her after she called him early this morning. He insisted she stay in bed. That of course means nothing. What is surprising is that Beatrice decided to take his advice.”

“I hope she is well.”

“She thought she was bleeding. But she has had two successful births. This one will be no different. I think as she gets older she is only becoming more prudent, not less robust.”

Il Moro looked down at the cluster of a dozen or so young women, surrounded by game wardens and pages. The ladies were all mounted sidesaddle, wearing heavy damask skirts that billowed around them as if they were sitting on immense cushions. But the bodices of their
camore
were so tight that their torsos might have been painted with silk. They carried light silk parasols to preserve the delicate pallor of their liberally exposed shoulders, breasts, and backs. Every so often they lowered the parasols--particularly at the approach of a gentleman--allowing their jewels to sparkle in the sun.