“Do they not sleep?” she said.
“Not this close to the river, not for hours yet,” Jacomo said.
The river. The Po. She smelt it long before they arrived at the wharf, a drifting concoction of sodden wood, fish and spices. They crossed a wide piazza, where merchants’ and artisans’ stalls crowded under the arcades. Some, Lucrezia saw, were darkened now and closed for the night, but others still plied their trade. Chickens clucked crossly in cramped coops, a rainbow of silks and damasks gleamed in the flickering torchlight, while nearby an armourer’s furnace glowed a vivid red-gold and sparks showered as hammer was brought to blade with a ringing clang.
There were shouts, cries, laughter all around. Lucrezia started as a woman shrieked—a woman in wild, mismatched clothes—but the shriek was one of mirth. Her painted face was cracked in broken-toothed lasciviousness, as she grinned up into the laughing face of an elegant man who, Lucrezia thought, should probably have known better. The woman was lost from view then, as a noisy crowd of rowdy young men swaggered past in front of her. Lucrezia’s eyes widened as a knife-blade caught the torchlight and flashed for an instant in one waving hand.
“Come on, this way,” Jacomo said, pointing down another street.
In sight of the river now, they stopped outside a shop, whose wide window was lined with blue and white jars, labelled, Lucrezia saw, with whispering names that made her think of adventurous ships in faraway seas: anise and cardamom, cinnamon and saffron. Jacomo stood in front of her and held both her hands in his. He looked at her for a long moment and then said, “We’re here. Are you quite sure you want to do this?”
Lucrezia nodded. She felt as though she were melting. She and Jacomo looked at each other, not speaking, cocooned in a conjoined separateness around which the jostle and madness of the riverside nightlife milled and thronged, entirely unaware of the two anonymous strangers on the brink of an enormity.
Jacomo put his hand into a leather bag and brought out an iron key. He opened the narrow door to the darkened shop, and the two of them stepped inside. He closed and locked the door behind them and the noise outside faded.
It was too dark for Lucrezia to see much, and before she had had time to gain more than a brief impression of jar-lined shelves, hanging bunches of herbs and polished floorboards, Jacomo had taken her hand again and was walking her towards a cramped staircase, which rose awkwardly out of the shop: more a ladder, Lucrezia thought, than a flight of steps. He stood back to let her climb first.
“It’s a great deal easier in breeches than skirts,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Jacomo.
“It’s a pleasure to watch, too.”
Lucrezia felt once more that hot, slithering thread, sliding down from her throat to hook deep in her belly.
She climbed into the upper room. It was clearly some sort of a storeroom for the apothecary: barrels and baskets and boxes stood ranked and piled, and dozens more bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling beams. Three enormous sacks stood along one wall, sagging plumply like a trio of fat old men, and several shelves were lined with glass bottles and jars, indistinct in the half-light from the open casement.
“Alessandro lent me the room,” Jacomo said. Lucrezia was suddenly anxious, but Jacomo smiled and took her face in his hands. “I didn’t tell him who I was bringing here.”
Lucrezia tilted her face upwards within his hands and Jacomo kissed her.
“He told me last week that he sometimes stays here overnight when he’s been working late,” he murmured, “but he has a house elsewhere, where he lives when he isn’t working, he says.”
Jacomo led her between the barrels and boxes to a low truckle bed that stood against the furthest wall. A linen sheet covered the straw mattress; several pillows were piled at one end and a jumble of blankets lay untidily across the other.
He turned to face her.
“Are you quite sure you want to do this?” he repeated.
“Oh, Jacomo!” Lucrezia said. “I think I shall die if I don’t.” He smiled at her, his mouth in parenthesis again, and the melting feeling in her belly intensified.
“Well, let’s get those old things off you, then,” he said quietly. He held her gaze as he unfastened the brownish-grey jerkin. Lucrezia reached forward, between his arms, and her fingers began exploring the knot in the lacing of his shabby deerskin doublet, working by feel; she was reluctant to take her eyes from his face.
Jacomo’s clothes were easier to unfasten than her own, she discovered. She removed his doublet and shirt with ease, but as she and Jacomo soon discovered, Catelina had, in her agitation, tied all the unfamiliar laces very tightly; it took Jacomo several moments of delicate knot-picking to release a visibly quivering Lucrezia from her borrowed garments. But at last she was free of them, and before long, she and Jacomo were facing each other in the torchlight, skin to skin.
Lucrezia moved to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear—and realised she was still wearing the scarlet cap. She raised her hands to her head, but Jacomo laughed and held her wrists.
“No—leave it on,” he said. “It’s beautiful. Piccolo ragazzo.”
Still clasping her wrists, he held his hands out, sideways and down, holding Lucrezia’s arms away from her body; he crouched before her so that his mouth was on a level with her breasts. For a moment, she closed her eyes, and her breath came in shallow, shivering gasps as he kissed her there.
Then he stood up, both her hands now held inside his own. “Ready?” he said.
Lucrezia looked at his long, lean, brown body, and then at his face, her limbs taut and trembling with longing. Eyes fixed on Jacomo’s, wearing nothing but a boy’s woollen hat, she nodded, and scrambled backwards towards the pile of pillows on the untidy bed. He followed, pausing only to shift a pile of baskets that were blocking the window; a shaft of light fell fitfully across the bed.
“I want to be able to see you,” he said. “All of you. I’ve been imagining you for weeks—and drawing what I imagined—but now I want to see as much of the reality as I can.”
“Did you ever imagine me in a hat like this one?”
Jacomo laughed. “It has tended to be what I imagined you without rather than with.” He kissed her again.
For a time they did not speak, had no need for words as they began to search and learn each other’s bodies—as they explored and discovered every cleft and crease with eager fingers and hungry mouths. Lucrezia found herself brim-full of an unprecedented energy; Alfonso’s attentions had always paralysed her, she realised—left her each time as little more than a passive puppet—but now the touch of Jacomo’s hands was freeing her, creating in her a vibrancy she had not known she possessed.
After a time, Jacomo laid the length of his body along hers; he gently kissed her mouth, leaning his weight upon his elbows. Then, nudging her legs outwards with his own, he slid on top of her. Lucrezia wrapped her legs around him, lacing her fingers through his hair and pushing her breasts up against his chest. She held her breath, feeling a sudden fierce rush of unexpected gratitude for all the months of humiliation she had had to endure, because, she realised, it meant that now, even after two long, difficult years of marriage, it would be Jacomo who would be the one to take her maidenhood from her. A gift, she thought, that would be most willingly given.
Jacomo said, “Ready?”
Lucrezia nodded.
He waited for the briefest moment. There was one stab of hot pain, which made her wince, and then a melting sweetness. She was surrounded by him; filled with him; consumed by him. Every sense was glutted with him.
***
Jacomo saw Lucrezia flinch, and heard a little indrawn breath. He stopped. “Did I hurt you?”
“Please don’t stop.” She wrapped her legs more tightly around his waist and tilted her face to his. He kissed her again.
“I want this. I want to do this,” she said indistinctly through the kiss, “I want you inside me.”
Her words sent a shudder of longing right th
rough him. Sliding one arm around her back, he reached for her breast with the other hand: she squirmed with pleasure.
It was, he thought, as though he were being offered a feast to sate starvation, water to quench a raging thirst. He could not get enough of her. This need for her that had been growing and swelling for days was now all-consuming; nothing had ever invaded him like this—nothing—not even the wildest, most explosive moments of his creative inspiration. He was drowning in her, she was all he could see and hear, the taste and smell of her were intoxicating and her skin beneath his fingers entranced him.
“Let me roll over!” Lucrezia said then, into his thinking, and he smiled at her, and rolled with her, their bodies still joined, until he lay on his back and she sat above him. She dipped her head down and ran the tip of her tongue around and around each nipple. Jacomo closed his eyes and the corners of his mouth crooked up in sybaritic abandonment.
They played together for what seemed like hours, breathlessly delighted, combining their bodies in every way they could devise: sprawled amid the rumpled bedding; standing pressed against the back wall of Alessandro’s storeroom; at times they faced each other, at others Jacomo felt his breath warm on the nape of Lucrezia’s neck as he pressed up against her back—until at last they sank in exhausted repletion under the thin and scratchy woollen blankets, as content as though sumptuously wrapped in imperial luxury.
They lay side by side. Jacomo let out a long breath and stretched. He felt something bunched under his knees and pulled out the scarlet woollen cap, crumpled and squashed. Smiling, he held it out above Lucrezia and laid it on her chest. Her eyes were closed. She fingered it with one hand, exploring it; then, feeling its rough woollen texture, opened her eyes and picked it up. She said nothing, just held the hat in both hands, then laid her cheek on his chest and, to his astonishment, he felt the hot dampness of tears.
He sat up. “What is it? What’s the matter, cara?”
She curled against him. A little sob escaped her.
Jacomo put his arms around her. “Oh, cara—what on earth is wrong? Why are you crying?”
Lucrezia wiped her eyes. “Nothing—it’s nothing. It’s just…just—oh, Jacomo! This is the happiest I’ve ever been—ever!—and it’s shown me how horrible everything has been, for so long, and…I can’t bear to go back to it and—”
“Oh, cara.” He held her close; she tilted her face up to him and he kissed her, wiping away the wetness on her face with the ball of his thumb. The kiss was tear-salted, slow and soft. This is the happiest I’ve ever been. He stroked her hair, and her mouth was tender and sweet beneath his own; then he pulled himself up onto his elbows and leaned over her. Running a hand around her breast, he felt the kiss ignite again, flames licking at a soft-blown ember. Once more they clung together, hungry and searching all over again, once more they fed upon each other until sated, once more lay back, entwined in each other’s arms.
Jacomo pulled one of the blankets up and over them both, and closed his eyes.
***
Lucrezia awoke in a drowsy tangle of warm limbs and untidy hair. Alfonso had never held her like this, she thought. This was the first time in her life that she had lain so, relaxed and content in the embrace of a lover. Cradled in Jacomo’s arms, she lay with her head against his chest, listening to the soft bellows-pull of his breath.
Jacomo stirred and smoothed her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Are you all right now?”
Lucrezia nodded.
“Can I draw you?” he asked, still lying back on the pillows.
“Now?”
He made a rumbling noise of assent in his chest, against which Lucrezia’s ear was still pressed.
“If you’d like to,” she said.
Jacomo was fiddling with her hair now, winding strands of it into ringlets around his fingers. Lucrezia reached for his hand, pulled it away from her hair and began examining it. It was strong and square, blunt-fingered, ingrained with coloured flecks of paint. A hand gifted in many more ways than painting, though, she thought, another hot little pulse of wanting sliding down through her belly. She drew a circle on his palm with the tip of her tongue, then slowly sucked each finger. He tasted of paint, and woodsmoke, and brine, she thought, as he grunted softly with pleasure and pulled her in more tightly to him.
She released his hand, and he cupped it around her face. “I left my bag downstairs, with my paper and charcoal,” he said. “I’ll get it, and see if I can find a couple of candles.” He kissed her, pulled his arm out from underneath her; then she gasped softly as he bent over her and ran his tongue around one of her nipples. “Don’t move,” he said. “I won’t be a moment.”
Lucrezia watched him walk to the stairs, his buttocks round and tight as a couple of apricots. He went down into the shop below and a moment or two later, a yellow glow preceded his reappearance. He climbed slowly, carrying two lit candles in a wax-encrusted candlestick. Slung over one shoulder, bumping against his bare leg, was a scuffed leather bag. The candle flames dipped and bobbed as he walked, sending frantic, dancing black shadows around the low walls of the storeroom.
“Can you see to draw in this light?”
“It’s not ideal, but I expect I’ll manage.” Jacomo put the candlestick on a table, opened the bag and took out a roll of paper and a small wooden tube plugged with a wad of cloth. Unplugging the tube, he shook out a handful of thin sticks of charcoal. He beckoned to Lucrezia to sit nearer the foot of the bed, and knelt next to her on the mattress. She smiled up at him as he moved her limbs into the position he wanted, but then he stopped. Lucrezia was startled to see him looking suddenly concerned and serious. He reached towards her and gently ran the fingers of one hand down the inside of her thigh. She looked down to see what he was doing, and saw a long smear of dark red.
“Is it your time to bleed, Lucrezia?”
She shook her head and ran her own fingers along it—it was dry. “I might have bled because…because that was my first time, Jacomo,” she said.
He stared at her. “I don’t understand.”
Lucrezia said nothing.
“You’ve been married nearly two years.”
“Alfonso…” Lucrezia paused, drew in a long breath and let it out again. “Alfonso has…difficulties. Our marriage…has yet to be consummated. But,” she said fiercely, “I don’t want even to think of him, Jacomo. Forget him—just forget him. Please, do your drawing.”
“But, Lucrezia,” he said anxiously, “if you should have a child now, after tonight…”
Lucrezia did not know what to say—she had not even thought of this. But the fear that she knew it should have inspired in her was in fact quite smothered by a warm rush of delight at the prospect.
“Don’t think about it now—just do your drawing.” She tried to resume the pose Jacomo had begun to create.
The crease between his brows disappeared as he began again to arrange her arms and legs to his satisfaction. The twist he wanted in the pose was tiring to hold, and at first, because she was concentrating more upon watching Jacomo than on what she was doing, Lucrezia realised that she was being a poor model. Three times Jacomo had to lean towards her and replace her limbs from where she had allowed them to move from their position, but at last he seemed satisfied. “Now—don’t move again!” he said firmly.
***
Jacomo drew for about an hour, stopping and moving Lucrezia into new positions from time to time. Some were quick sketches, taking only seconds to achieve, while two were more careful drawings, meticulously observed. It struck Lucrezia as curious that her husband’s appraising gaze should so often leave her feeling like a lifeless work of art, while this painter’s intense scrutiny as he created from her a work of art should kindle her to such a vibrant sense of energy.
At last he laid down his charcoal. Lucrezia stretched and yawned, hunched and rolled her shoulders, then rubbed her feet, which had chilled as she had sat motionless. She said, “May I see what you’ve done?”<
br />
Jacomo nodded. Lucrezia stood up, then walked behind him and looked over his shoulder. What she saw took her breath away.
There could be no doubt.
“Oh, Jacomo, they are…they are your drawings!”
“Obviously.”
“No! Not these—the fresco! All those pictures, of Jason and Medea and the ship, and—you did them, didn’t you?” She stared again at the drawings on Jacomo’s lap. There was no mistaking the style—the hand was one and the same.
“Ah.”
“But why?” Lucrezia said. “Why let Fra Pandolf tell everyone that they are his work?”
19
Jacomo picked up another blanket and draped it around Lucrezia’s bare shoulders. Hutching another around his own, he sat down on the end of the bed, his face dramatically underlit by the wobbling candle flames. He took Lucrezia’s hand.
“Pandolf is a great painter—well, he was,” Jacomo said, “before his sight started to fail. He’s taught me a great deal.”
“But—”
“It’s not as simple as it seems. I’ll try to explain. I was apprenticed to Pandolf three years ago by my father. I think Papa was ambitious for me, but he had no money to pay for a formal apprenticeship—he’s just a fisherman. It had taken him a long time to get over his disappointment that I was never going to follow in the family tradition—God!—we had any number of terrible arguments about it—but in the end, he gave in. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it started to dawn on him that if I made a name for myself as an artist, it might actually mean some money coming into the family, potentially far, far more than he and the rest of them could ever make with the nets.”
His Last Duchess Page 18
