I saw the light gleam on the supple line of Domenico's silvered body, and my breath caught treacherously in my throat. He was sitting on the edge of a nearby table, one foot swinging negligently, a wine cup in his hand; and across the uncertain patchwork of fire and dark his eyes were fixed remorselessly on my face, and he was watching me with a dark, malicious satisfaction.
He has found a new woman, I thought, and I felt the pain stab deeper even than the agony of my conscience. But I must not love him—it was a deadly sin. I almost murmured the words aloud.
The hand that swung his jeweled pomander in a bright arc gripped it and suddenly held it still. "Your thoughts are wandering, lady. What is it? Are you missing your gallant?"
"I have no gallant, Your Grace."
"True, you have not." There was an unpleasant smile on his lips. "Not now."
"Nor ever—"
"No?" His eyebrow lifted idly. "Well, time will show. Come and see him—the sight of you may loosen his tongue."
The protest died on my lips as he took my hand and drew it through the crook of his arm, closing my fingers on his embroidered sleeve. No one followed us as he drew me with him down the torchlit passage; only shadows moved behind us.
As. we walked, he talked lightly to me about the preparations for his coronation, now barely seven days off. The archbishop, he said, was half-dead with work, but now everything was ready, and it only remained for the courtiers to order their clothes for the ceremony. "I have passed an edict," he told me lazily, "that they may put off their mourning for that one day—it will make a braver show."
I answered him at random, for my thoughts were racing. Outwardly we were dawdling purposelessly through the deserted corridors, and yet I sensed instinctively that Domenico knew where he was going. We had long ago left the part of the palace that I knew; now we were in the bleak stone catacombs where the soldiers and the servants lodged. I stared around me uneasily, and Domenico's fingers tightened on mine.
"This should not be strange to you; you were lodged close by for long enough."
I moistened my lips. "Are we near the dungeons?"
"Directly above." He pushed open a heavy, studded door as he spoke, and I saw stone steps curling down into dimness. I did not recognize them, but I knew the smell at once—the rising chill of dank air with, I now realized, a faint tang of salt. The dungeons must be on a level with the caves that run from the bay, I thought detachedly.
The stairs led down to a dark, paved corridor like a tunnel where a single torch flared and guttered, and in spite of myself I clung tightly to Domenico's arm. He walked surefootedly even in the dark; I guessed he must have come this way often and fought not to let my teeth chatter between cold and fear.
The corridor led through a vaulted archway on to an iron-railed gallery, and I stumbled to a halt. Below stretched a vast, bare cavern of a room, bunched torches flaming against the stone pillars which supported the scooped roof, and as I saw the pieces of machinery scattered across the straw-covered floor, I had to suppress a cry. It was the torture chamber.
Chapter Five
I stared around me, fear choking in my throat. "Why have we come here?" I fought to keep my voice steady.
"To end this masquerade." Domenico spoke lightly, his lips smiling, but his eyes were brilliant as quartz with anger. "You must not think I am quite a fool, Felicia — I know you are not sick; that is the oldest trick in the world to hide a strayed affection. I warned you, did I not, of what would happen to any man you favored too much?"
"But I do not favor anyone! I—I want to lie alone, that is all."
"You should not have let me see your inclination," he continued as though I had not spoken. "Now the slave is small good to any woman, and never will be again—it is a pity, he was comely enough before."
I pulled back when he would have drawn me down the shelving steps. "Your Grace, I have no gallant. I give you my word—"
"You are lying. Come down and see him now; he has been here since last night and found it a harsher lodging than your arms."
My fingers shrank under his, and his hold tightened, clamping my arm cruelly against his side.
I whispered, "What have you done?"
His smile broadened. "Come, and I will show you."
My first thought was that the stench was unbearable. Blood and human filth mingled with ammonia and the sweet, sickly smell of burning flesh; the air was thick with the miasma of corruption. I could hear strange whimpers and ragged, panting breath from among the devilish machines on the straw-covered floor, and I wanted to cover my ears. I tried not to see the cadaverously thin, chained bodies and the torturers sweating at their work despite the cold.
Domenico halted beside a long table in the middle of the chamber, and reluctantly, obedient to his unspoken order, I looked down at what was on it.
"How do you like him now?" His voice was taut. "He cannot kiss you—the ropes will not let him lift his head—but you can kiss him if he is so dear to you."
I did not answer him. I could not. I only recognized Bernardo da Lucoli by his mop of black hair; he had been in the torture chamber a long time.
"Have you racked him to the uttermost?" Domenico sounded almost scientifically interested as he surveyed Bernardo's broken body.
"Not far short, Your Grace. His joints are so loose that he swoons when I turn the wheel."
Hot tears sprang into my eyes, and I twisted free and ran blindly, back across the slippery floor to the gallery stairs, then up them, sobbing as I ran. I should have remembered the savagery that raged in Domenico if he were thwarted, I thought: but how could I have known he would do this?
As I reached the gallery, hands caught me and spun me around, and Domenico shook me viciously.
"So you weep for him—will you deny now that he was your lover?"
"Yes! And I will say it if you do the same to me!" I glared up at his tear-blurred shape. "Your pride will not let you believe I am unwilling, so you have invented a scapegoat. Bernardo has never done any more than kiss my hand—the rest you have imagined for yourself!"
"I have not imagined your coldness, Felicia. Something has made you harden your heart against me—what is it, if not love for another man?"
My lips parted, but no sound came. From somewhere below came a smothered scream, then the sound of someone sobbing.
Domenico continued, still gripping me, "Something has altered you. What is in that shallow boy to make you shrink from me after so long? Do you love him so much that you can forget what we have done together?"
I shook my head helplessly.
"Then why are you so changed?" It was the rage of a spoiled child who could not understand and could not accept that there was a thing he could not have. In that moment I loved him so much that I almost forgot the dreadful reason I had first denied him. A pulse was beating fast in his temple; he must be enraged almost past thought.
"I am not changed." My voice almost broke. "I want you to let me go free, that is all."
"Free? Why?" I sensed his sudden alertness. "Because I do not pay you richly enough?"
"No! I do not want..."
"You have been gossiping with that whore Maddalena." Now the anger in his voice was adult, cold and terrifying. "You have compared her price with yours, and you find my bounty wanting, do you not?"
The blood drained from my cheeks. "I do not want your money! I never did!"
"A jewel beyond price?" There was an ugly twist to his mouth. "Would you persuade me it is not for sale?"
"Not to you. Not at any price."
He smiled. "You must not be too ambitious; I will not barter my dukedom for one night's lodging. Come"—his voice was full of a poisonous softness—"what will you take in return for half an hour?"
He had released me and I backed away instinctively, my voice as dry as tinder. "Do not touch me."
"I will pay you well for it. Here...." Swiftly he stripped the rings from his fingers, the pomander from about his neck, even his silver sheath
knife, and held them out to me with a little contemptuous gesture. I stared at them for a long moment, and then they clattered on the flags as I turned my head away.
"You should have caught them in your lap as the other harlots do, sweet, but I am skilled enough at lifting petticoats."
The fetid air filled my lungs as I caught my breath to cry out, and I felt cold stone strike my back. Domenico's fingers gripped my jaw, wrenching my head around to face him, and his mouth on mine was a deliberate insult; yet the trembling that racked me when he lifted his head was not wholly fear. I gave a little cry of despair, and at once his grip tightened.
"God's death, what devil frights you to this chastity? Do not try to play the nun with me; it is your vocation to love me above all others."
"How can you blaspheme so?" I demanded brokenly.
"Blaspheme?" His voice sounded odd, and I remembered too late his old nightmare. When I looked up his expression was remote, his eyes watchful.
"You take God's office on yourself...."
"I am God's deputy," he interrupted tightly. "I rule in His name."
"Over a land stolen from the pope!" Suddenly my bitterness overflowed. "And now you set yourself up to be greater than God. You keep the knowledge of my mortal sin from me as if you had power to remit the fault yourself—Lucifer was cast out of heaven for less insolence!"
A spark stirred in the dead depths of his eyes. "What sin have I kept from you? We have done no more than we did at first—it is the same gate, though we take different paths to it."
I could not stop the shamed blood staining my cheeks. "I did not mean that. You know..."
"No, I do not know what you mean. Is that what has brought about your coldness? Answer me!"
"It was cruel to let me stay ignorant when you could have taken another mistress who was no kin to you." My voice shook. "You could have spared me when you found out."
"Found out what?"
Hot anger swept me. "Do not pretend you do not understand! I have known of the news your spies brought you for the last four days, thanks to Maddalena Feroldi. I do not care about knowing my father's name—if he were any other man it would not matter—but not to tell me I am your father's bastard!"
He shook me again, jerking my head back so that I saw him through a sparkling blur of tears. "Did she tell you that? That you are my sister?"
I nodded and heard him draw a sharp breath.
"The lying jade—witness," he bent his head to mine, "that this is no brother's love."
His kiss almost stopped my breath before he freed me, then led me back up the twisting stone steps and through the maze of dimly lit passages. I hurried beside him in silence, aware even through my own misery of the tension in the harsh grip on my wrist, but it was not until we had reached the privacy of his bedchamber that he spoke again.
"Tell me." There was peril in his dulcet murmur. "Did Maddalena say how I found out who your father was?"
I answered drearily, "She said you had sent spies to discover who my parents were. When they brought back the news that Duke Carlo had sired me, she said you would not tell me because you thought I would not come to your bed."
"Belike I would not—if her tale were true. I did send, but my servants could find no trace of who your father might have been."
"And I am to believe you?"
The next moment I had nearly jumped out of my skin as a delicate mother-of-pearl box went smashing to the floor. Domenico turned on me, panting, his color risen dangerously. "You will believe a jealous harlot without evidence and then presume to doubt me! In the name of God"— another ornament went splintering—"you will believe me before this night is over!"
Before I could guess what he meant to do, he had gone to the door to call. Shivering, I heard him give orders that Maddalena was to be fetched. "She will be with Sandro," I said as he closed the door again, and his lips tightened.
"My brother's name comes more glibly to your tongue than mine."
Strangely the childishness of that lessened my fear, and I waited almost tranquilly for Maddalena while Domenico prowled restlessly around the room. Losing patience, he went to the door again and summoned three soldiers; this time the orders were long and detailed, and too quiet for me to hear. Moments later Maddalena came in, disheveled and wary, her lips still swollen from Sandra's kisses. As she entered the room she looked from me to Domenico and back again, and her face flamed with such hatred that I began for the first time to doubt her.
"What do you want?" She spoke not to me but to the duke, and there was a veiled challenge in her deep voice.
"You are to attend your mistress." The heavy lids hid his dark eyes. "Undress her for the night."
She glared at him, but with a defiant toss of her head she fetched a furred dressing gown from the closet and began to unlace my gown. I heard her catch her breath as she saw the marks of Domenico's fingers on my shoulders. He stood like a silver statue before the empty hearth, his gaze never leaving the two of us while Maddalena undressed me, holding up the robe for me to slip into it while she unfastened my petticoats. When the mockery of retiring was completed, Maddalena turned to look across the room with hungry eyes. "Was that all you wanted, Your Grace?" She spoke smoothly enough, but no one could mistake the eagerness that pulsed behind the question.
"You do not change." The contempt in Domenico's voice would have made me wince, but it left Maddalena unmoved. "Did you think I wanted you for any other reason?"
"I did not know it was you who wanted me." She smiled. "I would have come swifter."
His eyebrow arched. "What, do you still hope I may want you back again?"
"It is not so impossible!" She had moved away from me to confront him like an antagonist in the center of the room. "I am as fair now as I was when you seduced me...."
"Would you call it that?" He sounded clinically interested. "I do not remember."
Her eyes blazed. "Domenico, how can you be so cruel to me? I have been rash in loving you, yes, but that does not matter—you made me yours, and I would be yours again for the asking!"
"That news would interest my brother," he interjected softly.
"He is not important, no more important than that peasant slut there. I would send him packing tomorrow if you would take me...."
Domenico's eyes rested on my face. "Listen well, Felicia."
"She may hear if she likes." Maddalena cast me an angry glance. "She is too stupid to understand anything. She is an illiterate commoner and was never worthy of the time you bestowed on her. Domenico, she does not matter! I have been so miserable...." She took a step towards him appealingly, but still he did not move.
"And caused some misery yourself, I hear." He was looking down at her impassively, his face a mask of almost inhuman beauty. "You have been busy fashioning lies, lady."
That stopped her. She stood utterly still, and I could see the sudden fear that gripped her thin body. "Lies? I do not know what you mean."
"I have heard a tale of my mistress's parentage"—he spoke slowly, watching her from between his lashes—"fit to frighten her from my arms, if she believed it. Did it come from your foul mouth?"
I saw her square her shoulders, and then she answered him with an arrogance to match his own. "What if it did? It might be true, as well as not. I would say anything to win you back again."
I said urgently, "You were not telling the truth?"
"I might have been." Her voice was full of malice. "Who knows who your father was? Do you, Domenico?"
I saw him tense a little, an almost invisible shifting of his weight, and the laziness drained from him. He was still looking down at Maddalena with a bored curve to his mouth, but now his slitted eyes were as hard as slate, black and watchful.
"No matter who he was, my concern is with who he was not. This plot is too subtle to be all of yours, lady—your tricks do not rise above a few weak lies to make a man jealous or tearing your rival's hair out of her head. Who told you the way to lull Felicia's doubts, how to make
her believe you when she knew you were jealous of her? And who told you I had sent out to discover who her father was?"
Maddalena bit her lip. "Everyone knew you had sent out messengers."
"But not why I sent them." Domenico's voice was dangerously even. "This cunning smacks of my damned great-uncle; it is his way to twist what is until it shows like what is not. So he said he would help you to rid the court of your rival?"
She hesitated, then nodded sullenly. "He said if I could keep her from you, he would have her packed off—to his nunnery in Genoa, or to her death; he did not care which. He said the business of your marriage made ridding you of her important."
Domenico's smile was breathtakingly beautiful, but his devil's look blazed behind it. "His policy grows something stale, I think. I am not to be duped so easily."
"Domenico, it may be true after all!" Maddalena burst out. "You cannot prove she is not your sister. If you take me..."
"You wrong me, lady." His tone was almost gentle. "If I must forbear my sister against my will, I shall not be so far damned as to rob my brother. More especially I will not rob him of a stale morsel I gave him long ago because he was hungry."
Maddalena's thin hands clenched. Then I saw her shoulders shake and realized that she was crying, as much in anger as in grief. "If I am stale, it was you who made me so, you and your precious brother! How dare you taunt me with that?"
"You forget yourself." The words fell icily into the sudden silence. "I am not to be berated thus."
"I beg Your Grace's forgiveness!" she retorted bitterly.
His eyes narrowed, and he moved forward, circling her like a prowling cat, and she turned with him, warily. I could see her tension from where I sat, but it was not the tension of fear; it was expectation, even hope, that quickened her breathing and parted her lips.
"I marvel you can still weep," he remarked dispassionately. "I thought you were proof against tears."
"You give me enough cause." She swayed towards him as he stopped in front of her, longing lighting her sullen face to a voracious beauty. His bright head bent, and he smiled into her eyes.
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