His Last Duchess (10 page)

“No.”

Alfonso, with her hand still tightly clasped in his own, led her to a small hall just beyond the great entrance doors.

“I want to see if you can offer me another inspiring opinion on a work of art.”

Lucrezia felt sick.

“Here, Lucrezia, tell me what you think,” he said. He stopped in front of a small painting in a simple gold frame. It depicted a languid, bare-breasted woman, leaning on one hand. She had one leg stretched out before her, the other was bent up under her crumpled white dress, which seemed to Lucrezia to be little more than a draped sheet. Leaning over her was a man in Roman clothing, a coronet of leaves around his head. The painting seemed oddly unfinished: the brushstrokes were broad and free and there was little detail.

A gauntlet had clearly been flung at her feet.

“It reminds me of another painting,” she said slowly. “One I think I've seen here in the Castello. But this looks like a sketch—it's not finished properly.” That last remark slipped out before she could stop it, and for a frozen moment she thought she had said the wrong thing—criticized a new acquisition and thus proved her ignorance. She looked up at Alfonso, her scalp prickling with anxiety, expecting the dark eyes to be flashing with anger.

But he said, “I'm impressed. It is a study for the
Feast
of
the
Gods
that Bellini did for my father nearly forty years ago. You're right—you have seen it here, up in the Long Gallery. Do you like the study? I found it and bought it only last week.”

“I like it better than the big painting.”

“Why?”

“It's…” Lucrezia tried to speak sensibly through the winemuddled jumble of her thoughts. “It's like a brief second of reality, somehow captured by a brush. The finished painting is more…more static. Artificial.”

Alfonso did not speak again but took Lucrezia's hand and led her out of the room. As they went back past the banquet, the buffeting concoction of voices, clattering silverware and joyous music gave their covert passage past the great doors an unexpected frisson of illicit naughtiness. A tingling sense of anticipation began to creep over Lucrezia, and by the time they reached Alfonso's apartments, she was vividly nervous and excited.

Folletto the wolfhound scrambled to his feet as Alfonso and Lucrezia entered the largest of the three chambers. He uttered a few deep barks of pleasure at the sight of his master, but tonight, it seemed, his master's attention was elsewhere.

“Get out!” Alfonso hissed. He raised a booted foot and shoved roughly at the dog's side. Folletto yelped. Alfonso held open the door to the apartment and said again, “Go on, get out!” The dog's tail drooped and, with a reproachful look, he loped from the room.

Alfonso closed the door, turned to Lucrezia and walked her backwards to his bedchamber, unfastening laces as he went. He began to kiss her as they reached the bed. His mouth upon hers, he pulled open her now laceless bodice and, as she lay back, he pushed up her skirts, exposing her legs, bunching the cloth untidily around her waist. For some moments it was the experience Lucrezia had longed for and she revelled in sensing and seeing Alfonso's hands on her body—dark against her pale skin.

But then, poised on the brink of consummation, with, on this occasion, every expectation of success, her gaze met his. Earlier that evening, she had seen a naked hunger in his eyes—a hunger that had indeed fired her own longing for physical satisfaction—but his expression now was different. No longer hunger, but greed: a greedy, dissolute stare, devoid of warmth or affection. She had never seen such a look on his face before and it frightened her. There was no love in it. This was how a man might look at a whore. Her eyes wide with fear, she shrank away from him towards the pillows, crossing her arms over her breasts and pulling her knees up towards her chest.

Alfonso's expression changed. For a second, what appeared to be panic distorted his face, but then this was followed by a hard, shadowed anger. “
Cazzo!
” he hissed. Then, almost under his breath, in a voice somewhere between a mutter and a moan, he said, “
Merda!
Not again—not now!” And then louder, more guttural, “No, no, no—by the rancid piss of Beelzebub, you will
not
fuck it up
again
!”

He clenched his right hand into a fist.

Lucrezia gasped. For a cold empty second, already shocked by the venom of his oaths, she felt sure he was going to hit her; she shut her eyes tight and turned away from him, shoulders hunched, palms over her face.

But the blow did not come.

Lucrezia opened her eyes again and saw him get up off the bed. He bent and reached for his discarded doublet. Suddenly aware of her exposed legs and breasts, Lucrezia sat up, pulled the front edges of her bodice together with fingers that trembled, and then pushed her skirts back down over her knees.

Alfonso said, “Go to your chambers, Lucrezia—I do not think we should see each other again tonight. I…I will return to the banquet.” He stared fixedly down at the laces of his doublet as he spoke.

Without a word, Lucrezia crossed the room and opened the door. Folletto lay across the threshold, blocking her way out. As she made to step over him, he growled and stood up. His head was almost level with her shoulder.

“Oh, God, please move!” she muttered.

Alfonso swore again. “Folletto!” he snapped. The great dog pushed past Lucrezia, into the apartment. Turning back into the room, Lucrezia saw that her husband was facing away from her, staring silently out of the window. The dog seated itself at his feet and he laid a hand on its head.

For a long moment, nobody moved. Then, with hot tears on her cheeks, Lucrezia walked unseeingly along the two corridors and up the spiral staircase to her own apartment, barefoot, with her arms folded over her chest to hold her bodice closed.

***

Catelina stood up as the door to the Signora's apartment opened. At the sight of her mistress she dropped the shift she had been mending. The Signora's hair was dishevelled, her bodice was unlaced, her feet were bare—and her face was slick and swollen with tears.

“Oh, my lady—oh, dear God—whatever is the matter?”

The Signora shook her head, either unwilling or unable to speak. Catelina crossed the room and put her arms around her mistress. The Signora stood stiffly within the embrace; she felt small and thin, and that chicken-bone breakableness now quite tore at Catelina's heart. And then the stiffness dissolved and the Signora was weeping: great shuddering sobs that shook her whole body. It was, Catelina thought, a sound of utter despair. The thin arms crept around Catelina and the small fingers gripped the stuff of her dress. They stood clasped together for several moments, and Catelina stroked the Signora's hair, muttering soothing nonsense until the weeping subsided.

A fresco is a truly monumental form of art, Alfonso thought, as he lay on his back with his fingers interlaced behind his head. How long was it since he had seen those first sketches? Well over a year. Admittedly, Pandolf had been obliged to finish another commission and had not been able to turn his full attention to the Castello's fresco design until some ten months ago, but still, it had not been until that very morning that the letter had arrived, announcing his readiness to begin work on site. The sketching, drawing and cartooning had taken him the best part of a year. The enormity of the task pleased Alfonso very much; he ran a hand over and around Francesca's bottom, and admitted to himself that he was almost childishly excited at the prospect of the painters' imminent arrival.

“Get off!” Francesca murmured sleepily.

Smiling, he closed his fingers more tightly on one buttock. Francesca, eyes still closed, moved away from him and shifted position to lie on her back. The exquisite body was still damp with the sweat of their coupling and her hair had tumbled around her face and shoulders. He lifted a lock of it and wound it around his finger. He was thankful she had not attempted to bleach it, as so many women seemed to be doing now; it was still raven-black and lustrous. The lock of hair slipped from his finger and lay curled over her breast and around one brown nipple. Like a dark comma, Alfonso thought, punctuating the intoxicating statement of the perfect body.

Francesca sighed and ran a hand over her breast, pushing away the hair; her nipple slid into and out of the space between her first two fingers.

Alfonso watched her for a moment, but, rather than arouse him again, the languid voluptuousness of his whore made him think, unwillingly, of the contrast between her and the diminutive creature whose understated, boyish allure continued to obsess him. Francesca had always been pliant, enthusiastic, uninhibited: a willing vessel into which he knew he could pour himself whenever he needed to sate his restless energy. But even after so many long months, access to Lucrezia's more intimate charms was still denied him.

Although a persistent longing for his wife now tugged almost continually at his consciousness, his attempts at consummation had become increasingly rare; the scorching humiliation he felt at each failure had become so intensely painful that he knew he was now avoiding the issue as often as he could. But he had to continue trying. He had to produce an heir. Without an heir, the future of the duchy was dangerously unstable.

A wave of anger thrust up into his throat like bile: a black, bleak anger that Alfonso knew was directed as much towards himself as Lucrezia. Here they were, locked into a lifelong contract that was impossible to rescind on pain of damnation. Was this some game of God's? Was the Almighty punishing him for some unwitting misdeed? The injustice seemed catastrophic: his wife—the potential mother of the heir to the duchy—reduced him to the status of a eunuch each time he attempted to bed her. What did it signify that he could fuck Francesca like a lust-crazed satyr as often as he chose and that he had fathered upon his whore a pair of beautiful bastard children? Nothing whatsoever—for as far as the fate of the duchy was concerned, the only fact that mattered was that his wife…castrated him. Hobbled him. Rendered him impotent. The words sneered their way into his mind and Alfonso clenched his jaw, balling both hands into fists in an attempt to stem a rising tide of what felt perilously near panic.

He pushed back the bedcovers and walked across the chill brick floor to the window. The
villetta
overlooked flat fields, ditch-edged, fringed with regiments of rushes. Regiments, Alfonso thought sourly. An apt image. It seemed to him now that inside his embattled head, his thoughts were continually pushing their relentless way forward like massed legions. Knock one down, defeat another and infinite numbers of replacements would mobilize and continue the onslaught.

“What's the matter?” Francesca said.

Alfonso did not reply.

“What is it? Did I not please you today?”

He turned back into the room.

“You seemed content enough just now,” Francesca said. She rubbed her still chafed and reddened wrists somewhat ruefully.

“It is nothing you have done.”

Alfonso knew that Francesca would not question him, but he could see that she was stifling her curiosity. The great mass of unspoken truths lay heavy in his chest and the need to unburden himself swelled up into his throat like rising nausea.

“Lucrezia,” he said at last.

The four syllables hung in the air. Alfonso sensed Francesca stiffening. She said nothing, but sat up and raised both arms to her hair, which she piled on top of her head. Alfonso watched, holding his breath, as her breasts quivered with the movements of her fingers. Holding her hair with one hand, she reached out to the table next to her pillow and picked up a long ivory pin, which she pushed through the pile. She lowered her arms, her eyes fixed upon Alfonso's face. He breathed out slowly, trying to decide which of the myriad unpalatable truths he could bear to reveal.

“She is…indiscriminate,” he said at last.

“Other men?” Francesca said, sounding astonished.

He shook his head. “You misunderstand me. She is—is a gracious consort, and many of my guests continue to congratulate me on my good fortune in obtaining a wife as beautiful and charming as Lucrezia. But…”

The horrible truths were jostling for release, like flotsam building up behind a dam. For it was, Alfonso thought, not only in his bed that Lucrezia humiliated him so effectively. No, it was far more than that—her eviscerating influence upon him had become increasingly insidious and wide-ranging. She still seemed to have no sense of the signal eminence of the position he had bestowed upon her with their marriage. No, that was not right, it was not that she was unaware…

“Do you know what she said to me the other day?” he said.

***

Lucrezia
looks
at
him, perplexed, and irritation tightens around his throat like a garrotte
.

“It can hardly be difficult to understand,” he says. “You have married into a family considerably older and more prestigious even than that into which you were born.”

“I know.” She sounds suspicious
.

“Do you not think,” he says, “that, given the position in society into which you have now been placed, a certain sobriety of disposition might be seen as appropriate?”

She
frowns. “I don't know what you mean.”

“It is…” Alfonso searches for the apposite word “…it is—to say the least—
unfortunate
for
the
Duchess
of
Ferrara
to
be
seen
about
the
Castello
by
all
and
sundry, behaving little better than a street urchin.”

“I still don't know what you mean.” Her voice is a little louder this time
.

“You were begging food from the head cook in the kitchens again the other day, were you not? And this morning I find you doubled over with laughter in the central courtyard in the company of one of the stewards.”

“He's very funny.”

“He is a servant, Lucrezia!”

***

“Do you know what she said? Hear this, Francesca, this is my duchess! The most prestigious woman in the House of Este! ‘Surely,' she says to me, ‘surely, if a person is funny, or clever, or in any other way talented, they should be valued as such, whatever place in society God has chosen for them?'”

Francesca said nothing.

Alfonso continued. “She is
pleased
by
everything
! And everyone.”

Francesca frowned. “What's wrong with that? I don't understand. Is that not good?”

“It could be seen to be so, I suppose, but my duchess seems as pleased by the simplest and least worthy gift she is offered by a transient guest, by a smile from a kitchen drudge, by her elderly and foul-smelling mule as she is by the honour of my lasting gift of a place in the ancient Este lineage. It's—it's—” He stuttered in frustration. “It's…humiliating.”

“Have you told her how you feel?”

“As best I can,” he said.

“Perhaps the situation will improve when…” Francesca hesitated “…when she produces an heir. Perhaps she will rethink her position then.”

Alfonso winced. “Yes. Well. She has not managed to fulfil that task as yet,” he said sourly. Inwardly he cringed at his words, knowing how unjust he was being in reapportioning the blame, merely to ease his own sense of shameful culpability.

Francesca said nothing. She sighed and Alfonso wondered if she was thinking of her daughters. The two bastard children he never could, or would, acknowledge. They were beautiful, though, he thought. Beautiful, wilful, clever little sluts—just like their mother.

“What will you do?” Francesca said, at last.

“Nothing. As I say, I do not care to
make
her change her ways. I need her to understand and appreciate her position without my intervention. If I have
told
her what she should think, there can be no merit in her thoughts.”

Alfonso was surprised to see a scowl on Francesca's normally passive face, but he realised almost at once that it was a reflection of what she saw on his own countenance, for when he deliberately relaxed and softened his own expression, he saw the sulky lines vanish from her brow.

Crossing to the untidy pile of his clothes, Alfonso picked up his shirt and pulled it over his head.

Francesca sat up. “Don't go yet, Alfonso,” she said. “Perhaps before you leave—if you have time—I can…” The triangular tip of a pink tongue moistened her lips. “I can…raise your spirits a little.”

Alfonso checked to see how high the sun had climbed, and decided he might linger another hour before his presence would be required back at the Castello. Francesca came to where he stood and crouched on her heels in front of him, her hands on his hips. Alfonso closed his eyes and pushed his fingers into her hair as she bent forward.

***

A little later, Francesca knelt up on the bed and watched through the window as Alfonso swung his mare round and clattered away on the road to the city, then she lay back down and ran her palms over her face. She screwed her eyes shut and gently kneaded her jaw with her fingers, easing out the stiffness, then ran her tongue over her lips, which felt swollen and hot. She lay quite still for several moments, the faint draught from the window raising the hairs on her arms, legs and belly.

At least he had left in a better mood.

“One quick suck and he's smiling again,” she muttered aloud, remembering the first time she had ever been asked to perform
that
particular trick. On her first evening as a whore.

***

She
is
seventeen
years
old, newly arrived from Crespino, standing outside a tavern near the cathedral: penniless, hungry, warily anxious, but nonetheless happy to have escaped the prospect of replacing her late mother as the preferred target for the undisciplined fists of her frequently drink-sodden father
.

“God, you're beautiful
, mignotta
! What a mouth! How much would you want…just for a…?” the man says, pushing his tongue into his cheek and waggling it back and forth. He glances meaningfully at his breeches, then strokes her hair, cupping her chin in his hand. He is young, fair-haired, slack-jawed and smells strongly of grappa
.

She
has
been
expecting
something
like
this
for
days. The idea frightens her, but from the moment of her arrival in Ferrara, she has presumed that whoring will be her probable source of income. Feeling sick, she suggests a price, trying to sound unconcerned, experienced. He puffs out his cheeks in surprise, but then he nods, jerks his head away from the tavern and mutters, “Well, come on, then…” Taking her wrist, he leads her to a dark alcove beside the furthest of the little covered shops that nestle in under the long protective side wall of the great cathedral
.

And
then
she
is
on
her
knees
in
the
mud
and
his
iron
fingers
are
gripping
her
shoulders; she grabs fistfuls of his doublet to steady herself. He puts a hand behind her head, beginning to enjoy himself, and in the next few blind moments of gagging panic, she is afraid he will choke her
.

***

Francesca rolled onto her stomach on the big bed in the
villetta
, the never-forgotten nausea of it thick in her throat again. She remembered the fair-haired man finally groaning, releasing his grip and jerking away from her; remembered falling onto all fours, retching into the dirt, remembered the final humiliation.

***

“Well,” he says, “you certainly rate yourself a lot more highly than you deliver
, stronza
. I wouldn't suggest you ask for a fee like that again.”

Flipping
a
couple
of
small
silver
coins
onto
the
ground
in
front
of
her, he walks away, whistling and refastening his laces as he goes
.