“I want him,” she sobbed. “I must see him.”
Cariola stiffened. “You should not say such things to me,” she warned.
“Why not? I must speak to someone or go mad.”
Cariola thought how skilfully Bosola talked with her at night, and felt a sudden pity. But also she was curious.
The Duchess had had no one to speak to for six months. Now she had to say everything. Fear of her brother and utter terror of her own loneliness had paralysed her for too long. Besides, she was wary. She did not want to be taken advantage of. She saw all the faults in Antonio. She even saw faults of her own invention. And yet he had no faults. Nor was she any longer afraid of Ferdinand, even when inwardly she was afraid of him. After all, she was the independent ruler of a state. Why should she not do as she pleased? And no one need ever know. No one need know anything. It was not right that Antonio should suffer so, or she either. She did not even think of the Cardinal.
“Madam could send him away.”
“I have sent him everywhere. If he wanted to go, he would go. Why then should he choose to stay?”
Cariola had no answer. But she did not want to listen any more. She saw a danger in hearing too much.
“You must be more circumspect,” she said. It was all she could say.
In the small, stubborn lines of her mistress’s wilful mouth, Cariola saw that the Duchess had decided on something that might be fatal to both of them. For an instant she thought of those maids whom Cleopatra had compelled to enter the pyramid with her, and then quelled the thought. It was disloyal. Whatever happened, she would tell Bosola nothing.
“We are going away tomorrow, to Ravello,” said the Duchess. “You will bring Antonio here tonight.”
“Oh no,” said Cariola. But she saw that the Duchess’s face had the rapt expression of someone who is afraid no longer, the expression of someone afraid of life, who has at last found something worth living for. Protest was useless.
She went in the evening to fetch Antonio.
When she came back, the Duchess was at the windows, gazing down at the patterns of the snow against the barren courtyard and its rocks. She was a little drunk with what she had decided to do. She felt exhilarated and giddy with joy. It never even entered her mind that he might not wish to comply with her requests. She grew arch.
Looking at her, Antonio saw something of what was going on inside her, and breathed deeply. It was perhaps better so. Self-restraint can cripple us, and no man would be a cripple if he had the choice. It was better to go on.
Cold air swept in from the window. It stimulated the Duchess and excited her. She dismissed Cariola. Then they were alone.
The Duchess had suddenly turned into comedy. She decided, even while her eye caught the slim shadow of his legs, to tease him.
She began to talk of rents and her estates. He clearly looked bewildered. For it was not easy for them. They had been separated for so long they did not know how first to touch each other again. He doubted the rippling undercurrent in her voice, and thought she was making fun of him. His chagrin showed so clearly in his face that with a glance towards the door, which Cariola had shut, she came over to him, walked past him, and looked out the window again. The courtyard was deserted. She was aware of his standing behind her, and of his bewilderment. He shifted uneasily.
Then abruptly she turned, and he was looking at her with wide, sad eyes, slightly veiled, as though ready to be hurt. She smiled at him and stretched out her arms. Since he could not first approach her, it gave her pleasure to approach him. “Oh come,” she said. “Oh come!”
He hesitated.
She smiled more fully, extending her hands palms up, and wriggling her fingers, and then he was in front of her, kissing her hands. She could not raise him up. That would not have made them equals, as they should be. Instead, she sank down to the ground and they knelt on the floor, facing each other, with their arms about each other, while the cold air from the window blew around them.
For a long time, embracing, they did not say anything at all. She could feel his body tremble, and his face lit up with a curious, impish, boyish joy. They sat there, and each began to laugh, and then was solemn again, and a little abashed.
There were, after all, no explanations, and no words. It was natural between them, as though they had been together for a long, long while.
She lay extended, with her head in his lap. “Why could we not marry, as other people do?” she said. “In some countries, contract in a room, before a witness, is legal marriage. Why could we not marry like that?”
He stirred uneasily. Suddenly he looked frightened, like some saint surprised by the stigmata. She did not like that look. She did not care for that glimpse of reality. She pouted.
“Suppose we were ordinary people. Why should we not be equals and so marry? No one need ever know.”
“Your brothers would not allow it. You are Duchess of Amalfi. You have an heir and lands.”
The image of Ferdinand’s contorted face flared up in her mind.
“Privately,” she urged. “Privately, to satisfy ourselves, not the world. I do not want to be married to that hideous, rotten old man they married me to. I want to be married to you.”
He sat still for a long time. A little of her would always be wary. She had to know what he was thinking. She grew aware of Cariola in the next room, perhaps listening.
“There is a little town called Arosa,” he said at last. “Do you know it?”
She shook her head.
“It is back in the mountains, a few hours from Ravello. No one ever goes there. It is only a collection of huts, and a ruined house or two. We could go there.”
She misunderstood him. She did not care that they should hide out squalidly. “I am going to Ravello in the morning, with Cariola. I thought if I pretended to send you to Salerno, you could join me there.” She must meet him on her own ground, not his.
But that was not what he had meant. “There is a church there. The living is in the gift of the Piccolomini. Thirty years ago your husband gave it to the priest who is still there. He is dying. He would marry us, and no one would ever know. We could meet there, if you like.”
She was touched. She went to a chest in the corner. From it she withdrew a box, and from the box, a ring, massive, a baroque pearl set with enamel and small yellow diamonds. He watched her anxiously. She smiled at him.
“You shall give me this there,” she said. “We shall be married with this.” She handed him the ring slowly, looking into his eyes for the finer person she knew was there. She fumbled in the box again. “And I shall give you this. And——” She drew out a chain, and looked uncertainly around the room. If they were truly to be married, then they must not begin illicitly. He must go back to his own rooms, until tomorrow.
But this time he did not rush down the stair. He went reluctantly, as reluctant as she was to have him go.
Next day, in his report to the Cardinal, Bosola wrote that the Duchess and Cariola had gone to Ravello, finding Amalfi too cold; that the Duchess had graciously shown interest in the Cardinal’s proposal for a convent foundation, and had asked who Sor Juana was; that the revenues from the fish catch had fallen off; that the Count Carriocciolo had abandoned his suit to the Duchess, but was having an affair with a tavern girl; and that Mestre Antonio had departed on a mission to Salerno, in which there was nothing unusual, since the Duchess sent him there from time to time, on business connected with her house.
XII
Altogether the fates gave them three weeks of happiness. Since it was the only happiness they were to know, that was both kind and merciful. Not that the fates are either, but the fates are very busy. They cannot watch us all the time, and if we watch eagerly for the moment, when their attention is diverted, then it is possible to snatch a little joy.
The Duchess had not dared to take Cariola with her to their meeting. She rode along a faded track at the bottom of a steep gully, alone. Her thoughts were serious, and yet her
face was merry. The weather was cold and dusty. Occasionally she passed a patch of pock-marked snow, and once she saw a ptarmigan.
She came out above Arosa at high noon. It was nestled in the groin of the valley, as though it had tumbled down the hills from all directions, and then come to rest in the stream-bed. It was dominated by a single tree, and by a little chapel. On the opposite hill a figure picked its way on horseback towards the same goal. She saw with excitement that it must be Antonio. It seemed to her symbolic that they should converge upon this ultimate meeting place simultaneously. It also seemed to her a good omen. She urged her horse on.
No woman tells a man how she feels about her actual marriage, for it has a symbolic meaning for her that it does not have for him. And then it only happens to a part of her. The rest of her is merely watching it. And so it will be with everything she does with him, even though she might want the matter otherwise.
When her brothers married her to the Piccolomini, that was no marriage, but only a deed of sale. This was her marriage, and she watched it bright-eyed and eager, determined to find it romantic. Well, it was.
The priest was truly ill, and a little dazed at the prospect of having something to do. If he knew who the Duchess was, he said nothing. A small boy was busy in the interior with a broom. The priest refused to let them enter the church immediately, but went in alone, and then sent the boy out to them.
He had wanted to furbish up the church. The damp gloom was smelly with newly-lit candles, there was incense in the air, and from somewhere he had dug out his best altar cloth. It had been so long since the church had been used by anyone but himself. He stood at the altar, vague, and nodding his head happily, with the child to assist him to say a Mass. He was clearly enchanted by the candles and by the air of consequence. In a town as poor and remote as this, a donation of candles seemed a miracle. It occurred to the Duchess to send the altar-piece here. It seemed to belong here. And if we cannot please God, we can at least make easier the last moments of his ministers. She determined that that was what she would do. Antonio could bring it privately.
So they were married. It filled her with tenderness. She looked at Antonio kneeling beside her, and it seemed to her no accident that the only light entering the chapel fell full upon his face. The baroque pearl was already on her finger. The priest moved erratically through his Mass. The wall behind the altar was bare. The altar-piece would fit it almost exactly. She wished the priest well.
She wished the whole world well.
When it was time for them to leave, the priest said good-bye to them reluctantly. Because her life was so full, and she was so happy, the Duchess felt sorry for him, and wanted to do him a good turn. Besides, the Mass had so clearly tired him out. She bent down from her pillion and told him about the altar-piece. His face lit up happily, and she was content. All she had wanted was to see someone smile. She rode on.
But Antonio was disturbed.
“Did I do wrong?” she asked, delighted to be meek.
He shrugged. “No, but it is a pity that we have to hide every trace of ourselves away.”
“I only did it to give him pleasure,” she said. But of course that was not true, and he knew it. The painting was hidden away in the sacristy, but even so, it would have been better if it had never been painted at all. Here it would be better hidden yet.
It was evening when they came down behind Ravello. Once safely behind those gates, and the world was well away. Of course Cariola would have to know, but that only meant that she would have to be kinder to Cariola and more generous. There were no other servants at the villa. The Duchess had made these retreats even when Piccolomini was alive, camping out in the middle of the dusty, half-forgotten palace like a solemn child, sitting cross-legged on the floor, or dangling her naked feet in a fountain, like some Portuguese Princess.
She was too young to be a woman. It was nice to throw off that burden for a while and be a girl again. But not quite a girl. She had been a woman too soon and for too long to be able to manage that. Yet the imitation of innocence also has its pleasures, for then, and only then, do we realize what innocence can be.
She wanted to be private, but what do private people do? She did not know.
When Cariola brought in candles, and announced that such supper as they were to have was ready, she found them dancing in the undercroft. She was not to know they were married, for that would have frightened her. She would have more sympathy for an illicit escapade. So that is what their dancing seemed to her to be, and she looked at them fondly.
A dance without music is something peculiar. It makes available the secrets of a silent world. It is like moving gravely under the sea. Not since the court ballet, had the Duchess danced with Antonio, and now at last she could follow him into his secret world. The palace was built on the edge of the cliff. The undercroft was a long hall of heavy columns, open on one side to the distance and to space. It was always deep and shadowy. There they flitted like birds.
Cariola did not want to disturb them at once. It was a long time since she had heard two people laugh spontaneously together. The Duchess leaned against a column, and watched his white-clad figure, spinning in and out of the shadows. Then he circled around a pillar, and stopping in an open place, bowed to her gravely and extended his right hand. She went forward to meet him. Cariola coughed and announced dinner. They hesitated, and then hand in hand ran down the length of the hall towards her.
It was late before they went up to bed. The Duchess was not afraid of these corridors. She was used to them. She showed Antonio the way by the light of a single candle. Plaster had fallen from the walls, and some of the Cosmedin work had come loose and was tricky underfoot. The bedroom she had chosen was at the far end of the building, with a loggia over the garden.
The Duchess thought that it was not like that first night with Piccolomini. The marriages of great princes are half stud farm and half dynastic brothel. She had felt that way waiting for Piccolomini to dodder over her. Now, as she mounted into the great state bed, she felt gay. She nestled there complacently, waiting to be found, and knowing that she would be. He blew the candle out.
Darkness has its own geography, its flora and its fauna, a coal-black world of immense rustling ferns and almost intangible hills. Enormous beasts pad through that underbrush, and twigs snap under them like creaking furniture. There we float in the vast waves of a dry sea, in a world without barriers, under the thought of stars. In the darkness our bodies disappear, the flesh exists only to excite the finger-tips, and we are what we are. In darkness we flow in and out of each other as effortlessly as seaweed in a tidal pool, and then suddenly the current grows stronger, and we are all swept one way. We pour out of ourselves. Far off, over the spray, we may dimly hear the universal sea pounding down against the barrier reefs of the self, but we are no longer there. We swim together down a safe lagoon, beach on the most delectable of shores and, amiably exhausted, sleep together in the warm summer sand. There is no need to think of waking. The sun will wake us at the proper time.
Abruptly her fingers came away sticky, as though from a spider web at dawn. She marvelled. “Why are you crying?” she whispered.
“Because I love you.”
She hugged him closer and cried too. Then she vanished down into the endless passages of sleep, turning and twisting as they fell in each other’s arms through the green layers of a kindly sea. For a while there was silence.
Then it seemed to her that far off she heard the fretful io moro of a lute. She woke up.
Antonio was lying on his side, his hair spread out against the pillow like the tassel of a black flower. He was very slim and boyish there, and very vulnerable.
She was playing a little game. She wanted to hide, so that he would come to find her. She dressed rapidly and then went out into the gardens, leaving him to sleep. The gardens were in the Italian taste, with herbal knots, shrubs carved into grotesque shapes which, from neglect, sprouted fronds like hairs in the ear, and tall aven
ues of narrow yew. She went down the gravel paths until she came to the pergola overlooking the sea, at the edge of the cliff.
She waited for him there, wearing an old dress that had lain too long in a chest, and had the dusty, faintly puzzling smell of daffodils. It was part of her marriage trousseau. She hoped it pleased him.
It was there he found her, and everything was as she would have wished it. For those three weeks they were children, playing with the idea of marriage the way children play with toys. For that period the world was scaled down within their reach, like an expensive doll’s house. They made plans. They re-arranged the furniture. They acted like grown-ups. They played house. Not even Cariola had the heart to remind them of reality. She stood silently by, and something in her that had come half-awake with Bosola, came wide awake with them.
They saw no one but each other until the gipsies came.
She would have remained hidden in the safe confines of the villa, but Antonio had a passion for the gipsies. As he rode over the Duchy on the Duchess’s errands, he had made friends with them wherever he found them. This was the private side of his life that he had never shown to anyone. Among them he was a magic prince, and they were his spiritual kingdom. Therefore he wanted to show this kingdom to the Duchess now. He wanted her to inhabit with him every secret corner of himself.
He spent the afternoon setting torches about the path and garden. He would not tell the Duchess what he was doing. That night he and Cariola went out to set them aflare. Then he rolled back the massive iron gates, and the gipsies poured into the grounds of the palace. Antonio shut the gates behind them.
It was a motley company. Startled and a little frightened, the Duchess watched it from a window of the palace, for Antonio had told her nothing of this invasion. Gipsies were feared in those days, not merely as a thieving people, but as a supernatural one, as dispossessed and fallen in the world as fairies, but older than Egypt, and full of malevolent power. The torchlight caught a noisy, smelly crowd bustling about the gardens. Donkey bells clamoured in the shadows. Old women weighed down with grumbling and too much work set up the camp.
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