Alfonso knew he was referring to Lucrezia’s potential fecundity and could not trust himself to do more than shake his head. The lack of issue is not yet a catastrophe. But how long would it be before it was? The future stretched ahead: a desolate, endless road filled with a thousand unseen potholes.
There was a long and awkward silence. Then Francesco spoke again, rather obviously making an effort to change the subject. “I need to know when the land committee will be meeting again, Alfonso.”
“Not before the end of the month. Why?”
“I have several testimonials to prepare, and I find I shall have to be away from Ferrara for a week or so,” he said, “so I shall have to make sure everything is completed before I go.”
“Away?” Alfonso was surprised.
“My mother has been ailing, and…I received a letter from her this morning, asking me to come and see her. I believe from what she tells me that she is on her way back to health, but she rarely asks for me, and I think I should go.”
“Yes, of course you should.”
“I plan to take her something to ease her sleep. She is far too proud to ask, but she admits in her letter that she is wakeful at night, and I think she is troubled by disturbing dreams when she does manage to sleep.”
A problem, Alfonso thought, with which he was all too familiar. “Is there anything you wish me to do, Francesco?” he said.
“Yes, actually. Recommend me a decent apothecary. That scoundrel Corelei, in the Via Fondobanchetto, is as like to sell me a fatal hemlock brew as to aid me in easing my mother’s restless nights. He seems a veritable villain.”
“Alessandro Giglio serves the Castello and has always seemed to me both capable and honest. I will speak to him for you.” Alfonso gave his friend the answer he sought, and Panizato saw nothing unusual, but Alfonso’s mind was suddenly reeling and he felt close to falling. The words he had spoken echoed in his head as though his ears were blocked, and colour began to drain from what he saw before him.
Francesco had unwittingly handed him the key to the silent door at the end of the shadowed corridor in his mind’s maze. The door through which he knew he should never allow himself to go. Now, though, with the key in his hand, he would find it all but impossible to resist.
He knew all too well what lay within that room. In contemplating it, he felt winded and the seconds that followed hung frozen, as he imagined the unthinkable.
It would bring an end to it all.
But, afraid of letting his discomfiture show, he pulled himself back to Panizato and the heath. The two dogs were loping back towards him. Folletto had a rabbit in his jaws; there was blood around his mouth.
Alfonso pulled the lure from the bag. Looping the long tether across his hand, over and over, he swung the rook-winged bundle.
Strega dived.
He watched her streak down, slicing through the air in search of the lure—which he then swung wide to tempt her off her straight course. His little witch held fast to her aim and caught the lure in her talons in an instant. She hit the ground some few yards from where he and Panizato stood, and he threw her a dead pigeon by way of reward.
25
Lucrezia sat in the dark a dozen steps up from the bottom of the Torre San Paolo, wrinkling her nose at the musty smell. Her heart beat fast in her throat. She waited what seemed an age and then heard footsteps approaching. She stood up. Jacomo was running by the time he reached the first step and knocked right into her as she hurried down to meet him. He caught her in his arms to stop her falling and then, with a soft noise of longing, he kissed her mouth.
Lucrezia pulled back. “No! Not here—quick, let’s go to the roof, like you said.”
It was a long, long way up. Lucrezia’s heart was thudding against her ribs by the time they reached the dim little room at the top of the tower.
“Where now?” she said, her chest heaving.
“Up there,” Jacomo said, pointing to another flight of some half-dozen wooden steps. Lucrezia climbed them and turned the big iron handle of the door at the top. It would not move. Jacomo edged past and shoved the door with the full force of his shoulder. It gave, and he stumbled forward as it swung open. He scrambled back onto his feet and stood back to let Lucrezia through first, followed her, then pushed the door to behind him.
Pulling her into his arms, he began to kiss her again. It seemed to Lucrezia as though they sought to unify their bodies into one single being—as though by kissing they gave to each other their life’s breath. They moved, in their tight, awkward, wordless embrace, across the room—Lucrezia was walking backwards—until she felt the chill of the wall behind her.
Jacomo put his hands under her arms and lifted her, and it took only seconds to pull her heavy skirts out of the way so that she could wrap her legs around his waist. With one arm encircling her, and pressing her against the wall to hold her up, he snatched at his own clothes with his free hand.
It was rough and frantic, and the unplastered wall caught against Lucrezia’s back and head, but she hardly noticed the discomfort. No more than a few moments later, she gripped Jacomo’s shirt and turned her face into his hair to muffle a cry she could not prevent, as what felt like a great fist clenched itself inside her. Jacomo let out a long, slow, shivering breath and stood still, holding her more tightly, supporting her weight between his body and the wall.
They stayed like this for several long moments. That first time, Lucrezia thought, their loving had been carefree and joyful; they had relished taking their time to explore and discover each other in every way they could. Today was different. They had between them created a need for each other that was now consuming them, overwhelming them, blotting out everything around them. Quenching that raging thirst would take more than a few moments’ desperate embrace in the face of danger—but it was now no longer a matter of choice. Desire had become necessity.
She stood down on the floor once more and put her arms around Jacomo, breathing hard and resting her face against his shoulder. He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. A few moments later they sat down on the rough-hewn wooden boards of the tower room, pressed close to each other, Jacomo’s arm lying warm and heavy around Lucrezia’s shoulders.
Neither spoke for several minutes.
Then Jacomo said, “So he wants a portrait now, does he?”
“I think he sees it as a way to control me. But I don’t care any more. In fact, I am beginning to think it’s a perfect idea. Listen!”
She moved out from under Jacomo’s arm and sat on her heels, her dress rumpled and rucked around her. Holding both his hands in hers, she said, “Paint him a portrait of me, Jacomo. Make it beautiful—make it a portrait of a woman made beautiful by love. Give him a beautiful, lifeless work of art—that’s all he’s ever wanted me to be—an image of beauty confined and controlled by him. And then, once you’ve given him what he has wanted all this time, you can take from him the person he has never understood and never really wanted at all. And I will know what he will never understand: that I was in fact made beautiful in my portrait by love of you—not him.”
All the bitterness and anger that had seethed in her since Alfonso had dismissed Catelina and subjected her to such indignities rose like bile. Jacomo’s gaze flicked from one of her eyes to the other. He frowned. “What happened last night? Were you telling me the truth? Did he hurt you?”
“I told you—he did not strike me,” Lucrezia repeated dully.
“Lucrezia…”
She shook her head. She did not want to speak of Alfonso—not after the fierce joy of what she and Jacomo had just shared.
But he persisted. “Something happened last night, didn’t it? What did he do?”
Lucrezia turned away from him, unwilling to describe the terrible night she had spent. She hung her head, inexplicably ashamed. “I don’t know how to tell you,” she whispered. “It was horrible. I did try to stop him, Jacomo. I didn’t want him to touch me.” She wiped her eyes. “He didn’t actually
manage to…but…but he…”
She could not finish her sentence.
Jacomo looked stricken for a second, then pulled Lucrezia towards him. She felt his hand cup the back of her head, holding it against his shoulder; with the other arm he drew her in close to his chest. A rush of love for him, beyond anything she had yet felt, swept through her and she clung to him, as she remembered clinging to her mother as a tiny child. The tears she had held back began to fall, and she found herself sobbing. Her voice distorted with crying, she told him everything: the loss of Catelina, her fear at Alfonso’s wild anger, her terror and shame at what had happened after his return to the Castello the previous night.
Jacomo’s arms were warm around her. He held her without speaking until she had cried herself to silence.
***
Jacomo thought quickly. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this impossible situation, he knew for certain now that he would have to take Lucrezia with him when he left the Castello. His troubled conscience cleared. Married or not, he could not leave her here with that man—it was now unthinkable. The waiting-woman had already left the Castello and the fresco was only days from completion. But how long could they dare risk staying? How could he even contemplate another painting? What else, he thought, his stomach flipping uncomfortably, might that bastard do before they were safely away?
“Lucrezia,” he said, “after last night—we should go as soon as the fresco is finished. Forget the portrait.”
“No!”
He was surprised at how definite she sounded. “But—”
Lucrezia sniffed. “All those things we talked about before. There’s the reverend brother—Alfonso will be sure to blame him if we run away before the portrait is done. You said yourself that he might. And—”
“I know what I said, but—”
She interrupted him: “And I don’t think Alfonso will come near me again for a while.”
Jacomo was unconvinced.
“He usually stays away from me for days after an embarrassing ordeal like last night’s.” Tears glistened again in Lucrezia’s eyes. “I’m almost certain he won’t try anything for at least a week.”
Jacomo made a disbelieving noise in his nose. He reached for Lucrezia’s cheek and stroked it with his thumb. “I meant to tell you,” he said. “I had an idea for a change to the fresco—I’d almost forgotten.”
And he began to tell her about his plan. She sat staring at him as he spoke, nodding from time to time, the ghost of a smile flickering across her tear-blotched face. “It’s so clever. It’s a wonderful idea, Jacomo,” she said, as he finished. “I love it. Will you need any more drawings?”
“No. The image I want is fixed in my head.”
“And the portrait?” she said. “You have to do the portrait. I want it to be here after we leave. I want him to have to see it every day so that he won’t be able to forget.”
As she spoke, Jacomo suddenly knew, with an exhilarating rush of inspiration, just how his portrait would be. “I’ll paint you as Persephone,” he said, smiling.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see—you’ll have to wait.” He stood up, and held out a hand to help Lucrezia to her feet. She unfolded her legs and stood awkwardly, stiff from having sat so long in the same position. “Come on, cara,” he said. “We should go.”
Lucrezia said, “I shall have to see you often or I think I shall die.”
Jacomo wrapped his arms right around her again.
“I’ll come to the gallery when I can,” Lucrezia said. “If I can arrange to see you, I’ll try and find a way of telling you when and where.”
He smoothed her hair behind her ears. “Come at first light tomorrow—you’ll be able to see the sketch before it disappears.”
“I’ll try, I promise,” she said.
He led her to the top of the stairs. They went down the many steps, pausing before they reached the bottom.
“Stay there a moment,” Jacomo said quietly. He crept down the last few steps and peered out into the corridor. It was deserted. “Come on,” he said.
She followed quickly and, with one last kiss, she hurried away towards the Roof Garden, while Jacomo ran back to the North Hall.
***
The following morning, Jacomo reached the gallery a little after dawn. Fra Pandolf was still sleeping and Tomaso had been no more than an angular, hunched lump under his blankets when Jacomo had left the room. He had to get this drawing done, and cover it with the day’s intonaco before the reverend brother came down to begin work. These sections would be the last of the great fresco, and, Jacomo thought, his silent gesture of defiance had to be made and hidden before it was too late.
He struggled up the spiral staircase with a heavy folding screen in his arms.
The sinopia had been cured and ready for some time and the many tiny marks made by the pounce charcoal were easily visible. But that morning Jacomo took a cloth, dipped it into a bucket of clean water and began to scrub them off the smooth surface. He wanted the plaster unmarked this morning.
While he waited for the water to dry, he mixed the day’s intonaco in a big bucket and readied his pallet and trowel. He put the folding screen up behind him. It would give him, he thought, a little more privacy, but there was no time to waste and he wanted to be able to cover his subversive statement as soon as he could. It was not to be seen—only he and Lucrezia would ever know it was there, unless future inhabitants of the Castello ever decided to redo the fresco and take back the top layers of plaster, and then it would be uncovered and their secret defiance laid bare. Literally. Imagining the expressions on the faces of those unknown future castle decorators, Jacomo smiled to himself.
The image was clear in his mind as he mixed up a small pot of grey paint. He took a largish riga brush, wet it, sucked the bristles to a fine point and began to paint.
The identity of the two figures whose intimate and passionate embrace he now depicted on the wall was clear: the years he had spent before his apprenticeship, capturing likenesses in streets and taverns had served him well, he thought. Had the Signore approached him unawares at that moment, he would have been presented with such unequivocal evidence of his wife’s infidelity that both Jacomo’s and Lucrezia’s lives would quite certainly have been instantly forfeit.
He finished his sketch and looked with longing at the image he had produced.
There was a sound of footsteps.
He froze.
If this were not Lucrezia, he had no chance of hiding the painting in time.
“Jacomo?”
He closed his eyes and let out the strangled breath he had gasped in. “Here—in here, quick!”
She appeared around the end of the screen and stopped. “Oh. Oh, Jacomo! It is—it is…oh, I’m so glad I was able to see it in time…”
“So am I.” He kissed her. Then, his mouth still on hers, he reached across and touched the paint with the tip of his finger. It was almost dry already: the intonaco could be laid on. He drew back from her.
“Can I help you? It will be quicker with two.”
“No—if you get dirty, we’re finished. Stand back.”
He saw frustrated disappointment on her face, but she stood away from him as he scooped the plaster from the bucket onto the big square pallet.
“Wait,” Lucrezia murmured, as he raised his trowel to slice on the first arc of plaster. He waited, and she reached forward and gently laid her small hand flat on the painting, as if, Jacomo thought, in solemn benison.
Then she stood back and he began to layer on the intonaco. Within minutes, the painting had gone and a gleaming layer of pristine plaster glistened in the early sunlight.
This beautiful, triumphant, insolent depiction of covert infidelity was now—like the reality—hidden from all but the two of them.
Jacomo saw, too, with a frisson of pleasure, that the shadow of the folding screen was falling exactly where he wanted the new addition to the fresco to be placed—and that the effect w
as precisely as he had hoped it would be.
“I had better go before anyone sees me up here,” Lucrezia said then. Kissing him once more, she slipped behind the screen and left the gallery. Jacomo’s whole body ached for her, but well aware that he needed to finish at least half of the new addition to the fresco that day, he told himself sternly that he had better stop daydreaming and concentrate on the task ahead of him.
26
Catelina leaned against the wall of the smaller of Giorgio’s two upstairs rooms and looked down at the two sleeping faces. The girl’s cheeks were still tear-streaked and dirty; and the baby boy, whose head now lay in the crook of her thin arm, was small and blotched, his straggly black hair plastered flat to his skull, like wet feathers.
“Well done,” said a soft voice.
Catelina smiled at the fourth occupant of the room. What an extraordinarily beautiful woman she was, Catelina thought. Even like this, all dishevelled and tired and grubby. She did not think she had ever been this close to someone so lovely. There was something hard and pinched around her eyes, though. And one of those eyes was bruised.
“Thank you for helping, Signora,” Catelina said.
“Francesca,” said the woman.
“Francesca,” repeated Catelina. “I’m so very grateful. I don’t know what I should have done if you hadn’t been there…”
“Having seen you at work, I’m certain you would have managed perfectly well without me. But I’m glad you thought to knock. I’m proud to have helped.”
“I’m still very grateful. Whatever you say, I didn’t know what best to do. I was close to panicking. We’re all very lucky that Giorgio has such a capable neighbour.”
Francesca smiled. “Don’t think of it.” She took Catelina’s hand and squeezed her fingers, then turned and made for the stairs. Catelina heard the front door open and close. She looked back at the girl and her baby. What in heaven’s name would Giorgio say when he arrived home? It had been a momentous day. Giorgio had asked her to marry him; he’d left her to make herself at home in his house. He had given her some of his precious money and sent her out to buy the wherewithal to make a meal, and what had she done? She had brought back a homeless waif and delivered a baby without his knowing anything about it.
His Last Duchess Page 24
