Duchess of Milan (9 page)

He turned and faced Galeazz, his eyes no longer hard and distant but so open and luminous that Galeazz thought he could see the fires of ambition burning deep within.

“Galeazz, I am wooing Fortune. Not to hold her in my arms for an aching instant, as most men aspire, to smell her lingering and fading scent for the rest of a lifetime and beg her to pass my way again. I want to win Fortune, to win her adoration, to make her pause in her relentless caprice and submit wholly to me. I want to make Fortune my whore.”

Il Moro’s eyes burned for a heartbeat longer and then instantly went flat, and Galeazz could sense that the moment of intimacy had passed; he stood to take his leave. Il Moro scarcely seemed to notice Galeazz’s departure. He settled in his chair and began reading from a pile of documents stacked on the small table beside him. But after a moment he was distracted by the motion at the door; a man trailing a velvet cape swept urgently into the room. Tall and gaunt, with a parturient-looking paunch and bristling eyebrows, the visitor resembled a comic Mephistopheles on an errand of fate.

“Messer Ambrogio.” II Moro respectfully rose to greet the court astrologer.

“Your Highness,” Messer Ambrogio intoned with his strange, deeply sighing voice, “I believe you will find this evening propitious for the conception of a son.”

“Look at me well! Indeed I am she, I am Beatrice.
By what effrontery have you climbed this mountain?
Did you not know that here man is happy?”

Beatrice looked up from her volume of Dante’s
Purgatorio,
a gift from her mother. The pages, printed in Venice on fine goatskin parchment, had been bound in red damask by Dutch artisans; the corners and clasps were beaded with pearls and granulated gold. She envisioned herself as her namesake, confronting the poet as he completed his ascent of the mountain of Purgatory. Except that in her version Il Moro was the chastened penitent beholding the eternal beauty of the woman he had abandoned in this life, his heart suddenly turned as cold as the ice of the Alps at the realization that he had so grievously wronged her. Bitter tears of remorse coursed down his cheeks as he confessed that he had been enticed by the false allure of another woman. . . .

The fantasy failed to assuage Beatrice’s queasy stomach. She closed the book and settled into the plump down pillow propped against the ornate plaster headboard. The flames in the fireplace opposite her bed illuminated the terra-cotta lions supporting the mantle, a wavering chiaroscuro that made them appear to lift their paws and nod their fierce heads. She reluctantly admitted to herself that she was not Dante’s Beatrice, waiting to torment her errant lover with her divine beauty. She was someone now called the Duchess of Bari, waiting for her husband. In a parting warning, Mama had told her to expect him to call on her in her rooms once the wedding
feste
had concluded, and earlier in the evening Polissena had intimated that the visit would probably occur sooner rather than later.

She anxiously fingered the lace collar of her white wool chemise, hating the meaningless, mechanical act she was now forced to anticipate only because it represented her husband’s right to invade at his whim her rooms, her body, her thoughts. She could hear the droning noisemakers called
cacarelle
that had serenaded her first time with him, see the grave, mineral-black eyes that had appeared to refuse her image as effectively as a mirror coated with lamp-black, smell the faint scent of perfume on his nightshirt. He had performed with more efficiency than brutality; it had been no more strange to have him inside her than to have him outside her, his thick chest pressed down on her, his hand pushing her buttocks upward. This is nothing like Tristan and Isolde, she had thought to herself the whole time, staring up at the dim gold ceiling coffers over her head, that insistent banal thought spinning endlessly to the accompaniment of the
cacarelle
in the hall. This is what it is really like.

But what it was really like was still worse. Cecilia Gallerani had not been present that first time. Cecilia Gallerani, for whom he had postponed the wedding twice and had finally tried to void the marriage contract, Cecilia Gallerani who had stolen all the magic incantations of his love, Cecilia Gallerani who had engineered her utter humiliation. Beatrice had already devised a thousand ingenious ways to avenge herself on Cecilia Gallerani, but Mama had warned her that Father would send her to a convent if she said or did anything. More importantly, her sister had also urged caution, advising Beatrice to wait, strengthen her own position at court, and acquire intelligence as to Cecilia Gallerani’s weaknesses. Of course that was easy enough for her sister to say; Bel’s husband had sent her love letters since he was ten years old. And while the stealth and calculation Bel had suggested appealed to one aspect of Beatrice’s nature, so did the notion of doing something rash.

She studied the life-size porcelain doll sitting on the brightly painted wooden storage chest set at the end of her bed. The most truly dramatic thing she could do would be to do nothing. Nothing at all. She would not eat, she would not drink, she would not leave her bed. She would lie there, as unmoving as her doll, to wither and die even as they all stood beside her bed in a tragic chorus, begging her to live. She could see the great crowds weeping at her immense black bier, her pale face haloed with the light of a thousand candles, so beautiful in her eternal repose that Il Moro would clutch at his frozen heart in agony and remorse. . . .

Two rapid knocks at the door were followed by the entrance of Polissena. She crossed the room with short, furious steps, her wooden soles rapping the marble floor. “His Highness is coming.” Polissena vehemently snatched the doll from the storage chest; porcelain legs swung as though kicking in protest. “You won’t be needing her tonight,” Polissena cawed. “You’ll have proper company. Remember what your sainted mother told you, and we will be seeing more of the Duke of Bari. It means nothing that he wasn’t taken with you the first time. It’s something you must learn, like riding a horse. I’ve seen more than one man of His Highness’s experience become so enamored of a girl your age that he wouldn’t leave her alone.” Polissena’s head bobbed admonishingly. “You may think it is uncomfortable now, but you are strengthening your female parts so that your births won’t be so difficult. The pain you pay tonight is a coin you won’t be asked for later.”

Clomping about the room, Polissena tucked Beatrice’s doll and books into the storage chest, saw that the brass snuffer hung from the oil lamp on the wall, and made certain there was water in the majolica pitcher on the small table. Finally she returned to the bed and wrestled Beatrice’s chemise over her head. Beatrice stiffly submitted but glared up at her tormentor. “You’re his wife,” Polissena explained. “If you’re feeling modest, keep the covers pulled up.” She smiled toothlessly. “But I can tell you that the sight of bare breasts will put His Highness about his business more quickly.”

Polissena’s slippers rapped out her exit; she left the door ajar. Beatrice pulled the covers up to her neck. She tasted the dry bitterness of fear, and her heart seemed to want to explode through her ears.

“His Highness the Duke of Bari,” Polissena announced on her return. She curtsied with arthritic formality, then closed the door behind her.

“Cam esposa,”
Il Moro said grandly, as if he had an audience in attendance. He wore a cerulean-and-gold brocade tunic with blue hose; his hands cradled a parcel of gold-striped green velvet. He sat on the bed and unfolded a magnificently embroidered and tailored
camora.
“This cloth arrived from Genoa just two days ago. I don’t believe I have ever seen such an exquisite
riccio sopra riccio.
I put our seamstresses to work so that I could present it to you tonight as a token of how very pleased I am at the marvelous compliments I am constantly receiving about you. Remarks, I hasten to add, I have conveyed to your father’s ambassador--”

“Did your seamstresses also make a
camora
of this cloth for Cecilia Gallerani?” The words came almost automatically, like the Latin recitations Beatrice had memorized as a small child.

There was no perceptible change in Il Moro’s expression. After a moment he turned his head very slightly toward Beatrice, making some minute adjustment in his opaque gaze. “My darling, I think you should understand about Madonna Cecilia. When a man waits as long as I have to marry, it is only natural that he amuse himself with--”

“She is having your baby.”

“I am afraid that is an inescapable consequence of such amusements. I know that you have a half-brother and a half-sister. The honor your father and mother have shown both those children honors the house of Este.” Ercole d’Este’s two bastards had been raised alongside the legitimate children; Beatrice’s half-sister Lucrezia was almost as dear to her as her sister Isabella. “I like to think that we Sforza will also show charity to those who carry our blood, even if they will never have the rights of those progeny born with God’s sanction. Can you now see why I cannot turn Madonna Cecilia out of her rooms? After Cecilia’s child is born, of course we will make other arrangements for her and her baby.”

Beatrice’s mind churned in debate. Her childish fantasies of vindication called out for a total rejection of this nonsense (as did some far more acute instinct that she was hardly aware she had); since he had failed to convince her that Cecilia didn’t exist, he was now claiming that she was merely transient. But the young woman struggling to establish her marriage observed that everything he had just said was reasonable, consistent, even honorable. A skilled negotiating position perhaps, but what was marriage if not a negotiation? And there was something beneath his cool, detached demeanor that seemed charmingly earnest, that made her desperately want to believe him, almost as if in believing this she could hear the words she desperately wanted her lover to tell her. . . .

“Carissima,”
he said, and touched her cheek. He slid closer to her, and his thumb traced lightly across her jawline. His hair shimmered in the firelight.
“Carissima sposa,”
he whispered in her ear. His lips were dry and soft on her cheek, like warm silk. Her head buzzed. He gently pressed her against the pillows and lay down beside her. His lips played softly at hers, and her head became so light that she imagined she was floating. “I’m afraid I rushed you the first time,
amatissima,”
he murmured, stroking her collarbones, his fingers hot and smooth. And then the words. He whispered to her the words that she had always dreamed of hearing, words such as Tristan had told his Isolde and Petrarch had written his Laura, words that flowed through her mind like rivers of sparking molten gold.
“Amore, amore, amore . . .”

His fingertip brushed her nipple, and a shiver rippled through her entire body as he reached beneath the covers and stroked her thigh. His tongue teased her ear. “I want you to have my son,” he whispered hotly.

In the same way that she could detect a discordant note among a roomful of lyres and lutes, Beatrice heard the slight, but to her unmistakable, change in her husband’s timbre. The realization, when it came to her, was like a cold gust rifling through the room: What he has just told me is his true desire. All the rest has been a lie.

He pressed impatiently against her sudden tension, his kiss so aggressive that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. His full weight pinned her, and he drew the covers back and forced his hand into her crotch. She wrestled an arm loose and pushed at his jaw. He groped crudely at her genitals. She pressed her fingernails into his cheek and pulled.

Il Moro lurched back and frantically pressed his hand to his face. After a moment he took it away and examined his fingers. It was the first time Beatrice had ever seen a genuine expression on her husband’s face. He stared at his fingertips as if they were covered with gore. But there was not even a drop of blood; Beatrice had only raised welts on his face.

“I warned your father that you were too immature for the duties expected of you.” Il Moro stood and looked down at her. His chest swelled, followed by an audible exhalation through his nose. “All I am going to ask of you is that you make the proper appearance of a wife for the sake of your family and the people of Milan. If you can agree to that, we can forget this evening, and the prospect of its recurrence, entirely.”

Beatrice felt as if she were choking on a cold stone. She quickly nodded assent, hoping he would leave before she started crying. She closed her eyes, and the welling tears spilled onto her cheeks. When she opened her eyes again he was gone.

“He’s hungry, Your Highness.” The wet nurse looked proudly into the glazed eyes of Francesco Sforza, the six-week-old heir to Milan. Francesco fed in greedy surges, his tiny mouth flattened against the dark areola, his jaw pulsing.

“I loved that,” Isabella said. She sat on a simple wooden stool beside her baby and his nurse. “I wanted to keep doing it. But of course Messer Ambrogio and the Duchess Mother wouldn’t hear of it.”

“You’ve so much else to concern you, Your Highness. This one wears me out with all his feeding. He’s going to be quite a man. Aren’t you,
bello puttino.
It’s a joy just to look down and see him, Your Highness, he’s so pretty.”

“I love to look at him too. I never get tired of watching him.” Isabella looked up quickly. An old woman came into the nursery and curtsied before the Duchess.

“Your Highness,” the old woman said, “Cecilia Gallerani is still occupying her rooms.”

“I did not expect any change there,” Isabella said idly.

The old woman worked her sunken mouth. “The Duke of Bari went to his wife’s rooms last evening. He wasn’t with her more than a few minutes.”

Isabella took her baby and held him to her shoulder and patted his back. The windows behind her opened onto the Piazza d’Armi, the large central court of the Castello. The sun had broken through a thin layer of gray clouds. The field of glistening snow reflected such an intense light that from the old woman’s vantage the Duchess of Milan was a dark silhouette surrounded by a glaring white halo.