by Teresa Denys
"Not half so much cause as I shall give you." The wooing, sensuous note in his voice was against the sense of what he said; he was touching her as he spoke, rubbing his body against hers so that she melted against him in boneless delight, heedless of everything but that intimate, insistent caressing. I wanted to look away but could not.
"You have been too long at court, lady." The purr in his voice seemed to turn his speech to tenderness. "And I would not have you here longer, in case you should infect sound lovers with your own hot itch and coin scabs as fast as your tongue coins slanders."
I doubt that she heard him; she was still looking up at him with a sort of bemused eagerness. Then he bent his head as though to kiss her, and spat deliberately, full into her open mouth.
She made a sound like retching deep in her throat, a little wordless cry of disgust and disbelief. Staggering, she backed away from him with her body contorted like that of a woman who has been raped; and in her eyes was the look I had seen in those of a pursued vixen one day when the court rode to hounds. She tried to speak, but all she could utter were those incredulous, tearing gasps.
"You are banished." Domenico had turned away from her, quite unmoved by what he had done. "You will go to the Sisters of St. Francis at Arazzo and learn to govern the lusts of your flesh—the lepers whom they nurse will not heed your enticings."
I sat frozen, my hands clasping each other painfully. I could find no words in the face of Maddalena's torment and covered my ears as her voice gradually rose in scream upon despairing scream. Domenico, without sparing her a glance, went swiftly to the door and beckoned in the white-faced guards. "Take this jade away and silence her.''
I watched as in dumb show the men took hold of Maddalena and dragged her out of the room. Domenico still stood with averted head and lowered lids, contemplating the sparkle of light on one of the scattered rings which lay at his feet.
When I took my hands from my ears, the room was silent again. Domenico looked up as I moved, and there was a grim look on his fair face.
"Do not fear—I shall not touch you until this folly is concluded. You shall have proof enough that I am not your brother."
I said unsteadily, "You have sent her to a living death."
"A sweetly considered one. Maddalena spent her nobility whoring—she and my mother, Duchess Gratiana, between them consumed more flesh than the plagues of Egypt. Now she can make redress by tending carrion and nursing lepers she did not contaminate. She hated you," he said suddenly, sharply, "and you have no cause to love her; why do you look like that?"
"It is a dreadful thing! I think you take delight in suffering; you have such a care to inflict it."
"It is a just punishment."
"Like Bernardo's?"
"I punished his thought before it could grow to a deed," he said in an edged voice. "I was more merciful than I could have been—he had his eyes still, and his tongue, and nails on his toes and fingers."
I could not reply to him. Instead I said after a moment, "What will you do with him now?"
"That is for you to say." He sounded disinterested, like a child discussing a broken toy. "I will send surgeons to him if it will win your good opinion, but it might be more merciful to dispatch him quickly—there have been things done which will not mend."
I shook my head. "I have done him enough harm. I will not take his life in my hands."
His eyes smoldered. "You did that when you smiled at him and hung on his arm."
A guard came hastily through the doorway. He was panting and checked when he saw me, but his eyes went at once to Domenico.
"Your Grace, we have taken the man you sent for. I came ahead to tell you—the others are bringing him now. They are not far behind."
"It is well." Domenico's head had jerked up sharply. "Bring him here as soon as he arrives, and do it secretly. No one is to know he is here."
"As Your Grace wills." The guard withdrew, and I heard his footsteps clattering away on the flags.
I said bitterly to Domenico, "Who is your latest victim?"
He glanced at me swiftly, covertly, under his long lashes. "Wait and see."
I tried not to watch him as we waited: he was pacing the room impatiently, his head turning at every noise like a leopard listening. Neither of us spoke. I tried not to imagine what we were waiting for—who was to be the next sacrifice to this tyranny—and my thoughts were driven back to Maddalena, to Bernardo, to all the deaths the Duke of Cabria could mete out so uncaringly. Then he halted in his tracks, and I heard the sound of approaching feet in the gallery outside. One man's voice was arguing, another whining and pleading shrilly; and the second voice was one I knew. My eyes flew to Domenico's face, but it was still and unrevealing.
The door opened again to reveal four men bunched on the threshold. The leader beckoned the others, a prisoner and two soldiers. "Antonio Guardi, Your Grace."
Antonio was shaking all over, his fat body wobbling and his face drained gray with fear. His protests were stilled on his lips as he stared around him like a boar in a strange thicket; then as he caught sight of Domenico his eyes nearly bulged out of his head.
"Excellency, you! I did not know—these men said the duke sent for me, and I thought . . ."
"I am Cabria." Domenico spoke curtly. "I sent for you because I require intelligence regarding your sister."
Antonio gasped. "My—my sister! Excellency . . . Your Grace . . ."
Watching his working face, I wondered what he thought had become of me. It must have seemed to him that the devil had spirited me away, and now the Duke of Cabria himself called him up in the middle of the night to question him about me. No wonder he was sweating. Then he noticed me suddenly, and I thought he might be going to faint.
"Felicia!" His voice gurgled in his throat. "I thought you were lost long since!"
"No, brother; I am the duke's guest." I spoke gently, to soothe his obvious fear. "It was he who took me from your house the night I vanished, and I have been here ever since."
"But you—the duke—did you know he was the duke?"
"No," I said wryly, "not then."
"No more than you," Domenico murmured unpleasantly.
"I did not know where you had gone," Antonio said in a defensive tone. "I could not fetch you back—are you angry with me?"
It seemed wrong, somehow, that the bully I had feared was cringing in front of me, looking at me as though he feared what I would say. I responded levelly, "No, for however closely you had kept me, I think His Grace's men would have defeated you. Now I am only glad there was no bloodshed"—I glanced up into Domenico's hooded eyes—"the night I was taken."
The duke gave a strange smile, and after a silent moment Antonio began to babble: his shock when he found me gone, the inquiries he had made, the search he could not pursue in the city because no one there knew that he had a sister. "In the end," he concluded, stammering with eagerness, "I decided you had run away as you threatened to do. Celia was near-crazed with grief, but we decided there was naught we could do if you decided to leave our house."
I had to repress an hysterical laugh; the thought of Celia near-crazed by my disappearance was almost irresistible. They had not cared—why should they? And, as I had known even in my first feverish desperation, they had been too glad to be rid of me to care where I had gone.
"Sirrah," Domenico's voice interrupted, "rest assured that your sister is in the safest hands in that she is close to us." His glance sent the betraying blood surging up in my cheeks.
"Your Grace, I know she could wish for no greater honor. I was not aware of Your Grace's puissance the night you honored my humble house. . . ."
"It is no matter. We sent for you on an important matter." One swift look dismissed the guards, and the three of us were left alone in the chamber. Antonio, his arms free of their pinioning hold, bowed hastily and abjectly. "However I can serve Your Grace . . ."
Domenico's eyes were almost shut. He looked lazy, almost disinterested, and when he sp
oke his words were measured and deliberate.
"You swore when I saw you last that you had no knowledge of the facts of your sister's birth. I let it rest then, because it was not important, but now the case is altered, and it will make money for you if you speak. If not, Felicia will tell you that I have many means of charming stubborn tongues to speech."
My name on the duke's lips appeared to distract Antonio. He cast me a wild glance, and then said, "I told you true, Your Grace. I know only a little."
"A little is more than nothing." Domenico's eyelids lifted, and his black eyes bored into Antonio's blue ones. "Speak it."
"What do you wish to know?" Antonio watched him fascinatedly as he moved to stand behind me. I was horribly aware of the fluid strength so close to me but not touching, of the hand that hovered above my bare shoulder without descending. I longed to lean back against his hard body, to draw down his waiting hand, but I knew I must not; if Antonio could not disprove Maddalena's story, the sin would be as great as ever.
"Tell me her father's name." The duke's voice was suddenly, shockingly raw, and the little color that Antonio had regained fled from his face again.
"Your Grace, I do not know! I swear I do not! No one ever knew save my mother, and she would never speak of such things to me. The man was one of the guests at my father's inn. That is all we know. She refused to tell anyone who he was."
"Beware of lying." Domenico's voice was absent, but it made me shiver. Antonio stepped back a pace.
"Your Grace, I swear it on my father's soul and mine! If we had ever known Felicia's father, we might have had money for her keep from him."
There was a long pause. Then Domenico said, "She says she was born here, in Fidena."
"Yes, Your Grace. In the house where we used to live before I married and bought the Eagle."
"How long ago? Twenty years? Twenty-one?"
Antonio looked startled. "Why, no—she is not yet nineteen; she was born in the winter of 1587."
"And therefore begotten," Domenico counted swiftly, "in the spring of 1586—what month was she born in?"
"In January, Your Grace, on the feast of San Paolo."
I was wondering, with absurd astonishment, why he had never bothered to tell me that, when Domenico's hand gripped my shoulder in fierce possession and I caught the crow of exultation in his voice.
"Our thanks, sirrah; we need not trouble you further. You have resolved the question in my mind and done your sister some service—take your payment." He stooped to one of the rings he had discarded and tossed it to Antonio. My brother's fat hands closed greedily around it, and he peered in awe at the diamond.
"Your Grace, is there no more . . ."
"No more, I tell you. Get you gone."
Antonio bowed, his curious gaze fixed on the white fingers lightly caressing my shoulder. "I would bid farewell to my sister, Your Grace."
The fingers tightened, and I said breathlessly, "Farewell, Brother. Commend me to Celia, and assure her you left me alive."
"Yes," Antonio nodded absently as he watched, "I will do so. And you must visit us, Felicia, when your leisure serves you, and any of your friends will be welcome for your sake."
Even at this moment he was seeking grand customers, personages he could boast of whose names would swell his trade. I smiled wryly and nodded, and did not bother to tell him that no one had friends in the court of Fidena; only allies, or enemies, or lovers.
Domenico spoke to Antonio, but I could feel his eyes on me.
"That will not be for some time, sirrah Antonio; tomorrow the court travels to the capital, and your sister comes with us to attend our coronation. We will be gone three weeks and more."
I must have stiffened under his hand, but Antonio did not see it: he was staring at Domenico with eyes the size of plates.
"That is an honor for her indeed! When you return then, Felicia, visit our house, and then you shall have good welcome— and tell us how you have passed these weeks."
"You must not task her too far," Domenico murmured mockingly.
"Brother," I found my tongue, "I will visit you when I may. Till then, farewell."
"Farewell, dear Sister." Domenico's ring flashed incongruously on Antonio's finger as he held out his hand, and we shook hands like strangers. "I will look for you on your return."
"My men will see you conveyed back to your house." Domenico's patience began to fray, and Antonio allowed himself to be chivvied peremptorily out. The echo of his footsteps had died before I thought that I might never see him again.
"Felicia." The duke spoke my name imperiously, and I looked up, between fear and hope, to meet black eyes liquid with triumphant laughter.
"Now let me hear no more of brother and sister." His voice had warmed and thickened. "Unless my father was a sort of devil and could be in two places at once, he did not sire you."
"How do you know?" I hardly dared believe it.
"Because in the spring of the year you were begotten, he was nowhere near Fidena—he was fetching himself a bride from Serrato, a week's hard ride away. On his honeymoon journey"—his lips twisted scornfully—"he went to Rome to gather in the news and so that his bride might visit the pope, her godfather. From Rome they traveled to Diurno and thence back across the mountains. He was gone at least three months."
"Three months . . ."
"That and more." Domenico was watching my lips. "He left the capital for Serrato early in March that year and did not come here until June. My brother stayed for him in Diurno to greet him when he returned; I waited here in Fidena. My father was a lecher." His eyelids drooped. "But no wizard."
I sat still, for fear my relief and joy should betray how much I loved him. He waited a moment, and when he spoke again there was a note of impatience in his voice.
"You may ask anyone you please if it is not so, any man old enough to remember it. Ippolito, Piero, my brother Sandro— any of them will confirm it. Now what have you to say?"
He was standing directly before me now, one foot on the edge of the bed, and by turning my head a little I could have leaned my cheek on his thigh. I found myself wondering anew at the grace of him, the thoroughbred elegance that belied his great strength; at the fierce and arrogant beauty that stooped between me and the torches. I could not speak, but with a sound of sheer exasperation he pulled me into his arms, and as he bore me back, my arms locked tightly around his neck.
Crushed beneath the satin-skinned hardness of his smooth body, I forgot the deaths that seemed to stick to his hands; I forgot that the priest had called my unwillingness my salvation, for now it was as though it had never been. Now I gloried in his driving strength and the demand that spread my legs inexorably wide; I was straining to meet him as urgently, my nails clawing at his back in animal impatience.
I heard him say something against my cheek, and then a sound I scarcely recognized as my own voice, gasping shameless release and satisfaction.
When at last we uncoupled, he did not release me but still held me hard against him, deliberately tormenting me with the ease with which his least movement could arouse me, taking a long revenge for my coldness. I was half-laughing, half-cryingwith frustration as his hands cupped my breasts, hiding the capitulation in my eyes by pressing my mouth to the strong column of his throat and tracing the sweep of muscle from his neck to the curve of his shoulder. I was almost beyond caution; I only luxuriated in the momentary joy.
The drop of sober reality in this Lethean draught was the knowledge that he cared nothing for me—I was a piece of goods reclaimed at a bloody price, a thing desired and taken; his triumph was the triumph of a prince entering a reconquered fortress. He did not care who yielded to him, came the fleeting thought; the surrender, not the woman, was what satisfied him.
It was much later, gazing up at the ceiling, that I suddenly remembered something Domenico had said to Antonio. "Your Grace . . ."
He was running an idle hand up the inside of my thigh and grunted an enquiry.
"I did not want to visit my brother, so you need not have lied to prevent me. Now he will know when the court does not go to Diurno that you were speaking falsely."
"But I was not." He rolled over so that his weight pressed me back on the pillows, and he nuzzled my outspread hair. "The court leaves tomorrow morning, and you with it."
"For Diurno!"
"For Diurno, sweet. Did you think I meant to be crowned out of the capital?"
"I did not know. I never thought of it."
The black eyes glinted. "I did not send my tottering great-uncle there for his health. He has gone to oversee the last of the preparations and order the ceremony in the Cathedral of San Giovanni."
I dimly remembered that the archbishop had taken his leave days ago, the day after Maddalena had spoken to me. In the pain of losing Domenico I had paid little heed to his departure, assuming only that he was going back to his own palace. I said, "No one told me where he had gone."
"And you had other things to think of." His arms tightened around me. "Like denying me your bed. Belike if I had not sent him hence so suddenly, you might not be living now. . . .You must take heed not to trust my uncle too far if he is so determined to rid you hence. And do not eat or drink with him, for I know"—there was a strange twist to his mouth—"the sort of herbs that grow in his garden."
"He might only mean to send me to Genoa," I argued, but I did not believe it.
Domenico's laugh was half-choking. "Whatever he means to do, I will prevent it. You must now fix your thoughts on Diurno, for I will not spare you on so long a journey."
It was a long journey. It lasted six days, each as interminable as the days of my imprisonment. At first I was in a fever of excitement, seeing buildings and landscapes I had never thought to see, the thrilling steepness of the mountain roads, the towns set like jewels high up on the rocky passes. But by the third day, when we were past the mountain peaks and had turned due south for Diurno, I had begun to notice the discomforts of travel more than its excitements.
