by Teresa Denys
His fingers caught my chin and tilted my head back. "Struck dumb? We have been hedged about with ceremony too long, but tomorrow we shall be free of these preaching timeservers, and I am going to take you hunting."
Unease filled me as I saw the queer brilliance of his eyes; he was up to some devilry, but my protests died on my lips. There was nothing I could do but be ready when he bade me to ride with the Royal Hunt of Cabria.
The courtyard was filled to overflowing with men and animals; to stand on the Titans' staircase and look down was like looking into a black and white inferno. The morning sun was so bright that it bleached the color from everything and cast deep shadows like pools of pitch, and the sky seemed to flare like a white-hot shield. The horses were restive, whinnying and stamping excitedly, and everywhere underfoot there seemed to be dogs—the confusion of their cries rang and redoubled around the palace walls, and the noise was earsplitting.
Sandro was already up, mounted and fretting impatiently and cursing grooms and dogs alike with impartial good humor. I knew he was fond of hunting, and clearly he even relished its noisy prelude. A little behind me, Domenico was whispering with the one man at court to whom he did not have to bend his head—Giovanni Santi, Sandro's master of horse. I had never spoken to him, but I instinctively mistrusted him, for he was the picture of a black villain. Scarcely shorter than Domenico— there had once been a man who was taller, and Domenico had had both his legs broken to shorten him—he was twice as huge, massively built and heavy.
He moved lightly for so big a man and dressed with incongruous care, though without any of the extravagancies of the quartet. But it was his face I disliked: broad and meaty, with the flattened nose and fat red mouth of a pugilist, deep-set eyes under scowling black brows, a shock of tightly waving hair, and a heavy mustache. I judged the man ripe for any sort of mischief, great or small—Domenico, too, it seemed, for they were agreeing together well enough, and the duke's black eyes were sparkling with wickedness.
As I looked around at them, Santi bowed and hurried down the steps to help one of the kennelmen, and my eyes followed him with a sort of reluctant fascination. Then I noticed that the dog he had gone to tend was not one of the heavy-eared, belling hounds who were now beginning to muster: It was a different breed altogether, more like a wolf than a dog. I touched Ippolito's arm.
"What kind of dog is that?"
He stared. "I do not know; I have not seen 'em before. The duke has hired them from some fellow Santi knows—there is a boar loose in the woods, and those dogs are trained to fight boars. Small wonder, they look to me like killers."
"I almost pity the boar." The dog was snarling and straining at its collar; there were three of them, I now noticed, mingling with the pack.
Piero came almost jauntily down the steps, and Domenico flicked his fingers in summons. Piero obeyed it at once and was prevented from bowing by the arm that came across his shoulders.
"You have been too distant of late, Piero." The duke's wooing voice came clearly through the surrounding uproar. "I would have us friends again. What is it that offends you?"
"Why, nothing, Your Grace!" Piero sounded a little hysterical. "Rather, Your Grace has been too busy until lately to take note of me. My loyalty has not changed."
The two fair heads were close together, the true silver and the imitation. Domenico answered softly, "It may be I have merited that reproof, but let us forget times gone and enjoy the present."
"My dear lord, I would not have you forget all the times that have gone." Piero had slipped unconsciously back to Domenico's old title, and he had relaxed in the circle of the duke's arm. "Some of them were indeed happy."
"True." Domenico looked down at him, a little catlike smile on his lips. "One day we must live over those times together by recounting them to each other."
"My lord . . ." Piero broke off and rubbed his cheek against the duke's shoulder in a little gesture of affection.
I saw Domenico go still, but it was only for an instant, and Piero did not notice. There was no outward change in his expression, but somehow I knew that he was weary of his cat-and-mouse game. He disengaged himself and gave Piero a dazzling smile.
"My best Piero! Come and ride with me, and we shall start the best quarry of the day."
There was the usual flurry of mounting, and Ippolito came to lift me into the saddle before hurrying across to his own mount. As I gathered up the reins, I felt Domenico's gaze rest briefly on my face; then he had turned to Piero and was calling something, leaving me to trail unescorted in his wake. I knew from that tiny, compelling glance that I was to follow and say nothing, but the pain of seeing him turn his back on me was no less sharp.
The effort of keeping my seat and my place occupied me amply for a while; my riding served me by now on the bare, sloping fields around Fidena, but I had never ridden in the steep, thickly wooded hills near Diurno. There was no time to dwell on plots and subterfuges when an unseen rabbit hole might make my horse stumble and send me rolling to the ground, or when the boughs of trees were suddenly swooping obstacles that I must duck and dodge. I spent the first half hour pressed close to my horse's neck as flying twigs, bent back and released by the passage of other riders, came whipping over my head.
When they killed the first stag, I closed my eyes and turned away from the knives and the running blood. Setting after the second with the stink of slaughter still in my nostrils, I saw Sandro, his face set in a satyr's grin of excitement, leading the wave of riders. Already the first horses were plunging back into the trees, following the zigzag flight of the panting deer.
I was beginning to tire. My horse sensed it, and now he became rebellious; he began to dance and fidget, and before I could stop him, he was trying to rub me off against a tree. Only the shock of annoyance, and a sort of stubborn pride, kept me in the saddle. In reality I wanted nothing better than to drop peacefully onto the tawny earth and let the hunt go on without me.
A hand grasped my horse's bridle and pulled the animal to a standstill so suddenly that for a moment I did not realize what had happened. Then I looked down and gasped. Santi had dismounted from his gigantic piebald and was holding it with one hamlike hand while he gripped my horse with the other and cursed it roundly. The gelding, to my astonishment, stopped wheeling and stood quiet; when it was docile, the big man grunted approvingly and then looked up at me. "You are on the wrong path, lady. You must follow the duke."
I opened my mouth to retort that the duke was up with the huntsmen; then I followed the jerk of Santi's woolly head and realized that he was not. About a dozen or so had broken away from the main party and were going off to the left at a slow canter. I could see Domenico's fair hair gleaming against the leaves and gazed after him wonderingly.
"Where are they going?"
Santi's teeth flashed briefly. "It's my guess the duke is after rougher game than stags. He has taken the boar hounds with him, and he told me before we rode out that I was to see you kept up with him."
"Am I to have a jailer now?" Nervousness betrayed me into speaking more sharply than I meant.
"I cannot say, lady. I obey orders, that's all." I caught the faint tang of a Fidena accent on his tongue and for a moment felt almost homesick for the city and its common people. To quell the feeling, I drew myself up and said coldly, "Very well, sir," and when he had remounted, I rode stiffly after him in the wake of the disappearing riders.
The hounds were spreading aimlessly over the ground in search of a scent when we came up with them. It seemed strange that the duke should leave a flying quarry to follow a cold scent, but this was my first hunt and I knew nothing of how it should be conducted. Certainly Domenico did not seem concerned.
I heard him laugh as I rode towards him, and Piero said something and laughed, too. But it was not infectious gaiety. Ippolito's face was troubled as he watched them, and even the quartet had left off their chatter and sat their horses in silence, watching without a flicker of expression on their painted face
s. Riccardo's fixed smile held no trace of mirth.
Domenico bent lithely to adjust his stirrup just as I approached. For an instant of time it turned him towards me and away from Piero; and it was as though he had greeted me. Then he straightened and turned his shoulder and took no further notice of me. I saw the courtier's face light with almost indecent triumph, and a slow smile curved his weak mouth.
I could hardly bear to see how flattery had swelled the man. All his caution had been swallowed up in conceit, and his voice, high and overexcited, was the only one uplifted in the whole party. He talked of anything and everything—court gossip, court fashions, the latest political rumors—while far behind us the sounds of the hunt died away. I felt sick. Domenico's cruelty did not stop at keeping Piero ignorant of his doom; first he was letting him make a fool of himself.
We had reached a wide clearing in the woods, and by now the distant hunt was out of earshot. A tree had fallen across the track, its roots torn out of the earth by some recent gale. The duke reined in.
"An omen," he said sardonically. "Fate is determined that this boar shall live—the dogs cannot get his scent. We will dismount for a little and let him go." As he swung fluidiy out of the saddle, I saw his hand clench tight on the pommel; he was nervous, taut with expectancy. The others dismounted in twos and threes, letting their horses wander among the trees—by now the silence was oppressive, even chaining Piero's tongue. Something was happening, and as I looked around the clearing, I began to guess what it was. My heart began to pound, slow, sickening thumps of apprehension. The courtiers made a ring— loose and seemingly accidental, but a ring. In the center stood Piero, dumb with unease at last, and Domenico.
I slid from my horse in desperate haste, thinking that somehow I must warn Piero, even as part of my brain said that they would not harm him without a trial; even after my flight the duke had clung to the form of law. Then I saw Domenico's face.
He had been standing with his head bent, letting the reins run through his hand. He was not riding his favourite gray today but a black, younger and more nervous, which moved like a shadow over the ground. As it felt the grip on its reins slacken, it twitched its head free impatiently and trotted away through the waiting circle. Domenico's head lifted, and he watched it go.
His face was as white as ashes under the bright hair; there was a small, wolfish smile on his lips, and his dark eyes were wells of greed. He looked like a god waiting for his sacrifice. Softly then, like a rustle of wind through the leaves, came a breath of "Piero" so gentle I wondered if I had imagined it.
"My most dear lord!" Piero's voice cracked with nervousness. Domenico drew something from his belt and turned, holding it out with a breathtakingly graceful movement.
"You lost this writing the other day. Take it."
The sloe eyes fell to the tiny roll of paper in the duke's fingers, and Piero paled. Slowly, like a man in a nightmare, he looked around the ring of impassive faces; then at last he looked up into Domenico's eyes. The outstretched hand never wavered.
"My lord, you mistake." His trill of laughter was almost convincing. "I lost no writing, if that is what it is—it looks more like an infant's scrawl."
"Do not belittle your penmanship." Domenico's eyes were almost shut. "It is written clearly enough for those who can read it."
"This is a jest, my lord!" Piero took the paper and scanned it, his cheeks burning as if with fever. "Why, it contains no words, no mark but scribbled lines! Who can write without words?"
"Any man who learns your cipher, I would guess." "Why, I know nothing of ciphers! You wrong me, my
lord." Piero began to laugh again, high and shakily. "These suspicions are unworthy of your greatness. I am no spy, nor would I ever betray one I have held dear for so long."
Domenico's arm fell slowly to his side, and when he spoke again his voice was infinitely gentle. " 'Fore God, Piero, tell me no more lies! This folly is your revenge for my neglect—a thing to gall me with, if I cared for such petty treacheries. Do not deny it further, or I may grow angry."
Piero looked for a moment at the still, fair face. "My lord . . ."
"Piero . . ."It was a vicious parody.
The whole clearing seemed frozen in a breathless silence. I saw the last defenses drop from Piero as he drew himself up with an odd sort of dignity and shrugged. The surrounding men were like so many ghosts, and the only living beings were these two men, accuser and accused, who stood beside the fallen tree.
"It is a finer plot than you can guess, my lord." Piero's expression was almost pitying. "You do not know the half— but let it go. I served only a tithe of its great estate, and it was ripe before I joined it. Long ripe."
"You lie. You broke this plot yourself to Ferrenza—if you had had his answer you would have had rebukes, not payment. Did you seek to wind him in with you to help Rome? Or have you been intriguing with Gratiana? Answer me!"
Piero shook his head. He was standing as he had stood so often in the court, one hand on his hip, his fingers stroking his pointed beard.
"You were always too proud, Domenico. You cannot see further than your avowed enemies when you search for treason. Though Gratiana hates you, sure enough, for what you did to her—casting her out because she poisoned your father in the hope of pleasing you. And wedding you, and ruling Cabria with you. Oh, I heard that." He smiled mockingly as Domenico's hand clenched. "I was outside with my ear to the crack of the door. I know you were dreaming of the gray-eyed witch you planned to steal for your bed, but you should not have spurned your mother duchess so harshly. She has borne you a grudge ever since."
Domenico stood dreadfully still. It was a magnetic stillness, like a panther poised for battle, and he did not answer a word.
"I thought till then that you knew she lusted after you—you have such a knack for knowing these things, my dear. But if an affronted virgin knew the language of the stews, she would have spoken as you did then. Was it the contrast?" He glanced across at me, the old gibing lechery in his eyes again. "Sure, the Duchess Gratiana looked like a moldy parrot and stank like vermin—but what you said to her was not kind or filial."
"She killed my father, Piero."
I shivered. From the menacing quiet had come a small, clear voice, and it was the voice of a lost child. I wanted to run to Domenico, to protect him from the tongue of the man he meant to kill, but I could not make my limbs move.
"Dear my lord." The title was a sneer. "I know how much you loved your father! You and I have drunk to his death through many a carouse, and you made a wax mannequin when you were fifteen-—paid wizards and alchemists, and I know not who else, to charm him into his grave. The cocks that bled for it would have stocked a farm."
"His Grace was but a boy then, Piero." Ippolito's voice sounded, and it was as though one of the trees had spoken. "He cannot have thought such tricks would do any real harm."
"Can he not? Well, never mind, for after all they did nothing but raise the market price of poultry."
"Stop quibbling." Ippolito sounded sickened.
"My dear man, I am quibbling for my life! Every word I utter is one more breath to me. I promise you, I shall try to talk till doomsday. I owe my rise to my tongue, do I not, Domenico?"
The Duke's eyes were like slits. Not a muscle moved.
"It was I who wooed you from your tears when del Castagno died, do you remember? And I who found out who betrayed him to your father. When I told you it was that creeping mute he kept as a body servant, you clung to me and vowed to be my friend forever. I even helped you to kill the little rat, the night you mounted my sister in Satan's name, and the demons came and frightened him to death. Not your first murder, I know— but your first in the court."
"Piero, for the love of God!" It seemed to burst from Ippolito.
"As you say, dear Ippolito. God loves those who speak the truth, and I should like to unburden my soul. My lord dares not let me speak when I go to the block—do you, Domenico?—so I shall speak it all now. It is a t
ale worth the listening to, but you may be tired of standing before I have done. Shall we sit down? No? Let it be, then."
He paused for a moment, watching Domenico with bright, malicious eyes.
"I have never known whether I loved you more than I hated you," he said almost conversationally. "God and the devil will have to winnow it out between them. But I fancy the devil will win; God may dislike my making you His rival and tip the scales so that I shall bum. And yet you never loved me, nor anyone." Again he glanced fleetingly at me, "save perhaps Domenico della Raffaelle. It is damnable." A spasm of sudden fury twisted his face. "I have longed to see you in thrall to one who did not love you, to watch you crawl for love as I have done and get cold answers still. And now I shall not see it!"
His gaze dropped to his quivering hands and he watched them, waiting quite deliberately until they were steady. Then he said in an altered tone, "Will you not speak to me, my dear? Will you not even curse me? You think I have only done you a little harm, and you are curbing your temper—but one day soon you will learn just what harm I have done you and damn my soul to hell a thousand ways. Do not stand there like a stone!" His voice had an edge of hysteria. "I will only use you then to whet my tongue."
"You flatter yourself," Domenico retorted harshly. "I will not spend my breath on your paltry treasons."
For an instant Piero's face contracted as if in pain. Then he said, "Do not say I did not warn you, then! You will find it more than paltry, I think—though paltry enough revenge for thirteen years' thralldom! "
Ippolito gave a muffled exclamation. "Thralldom! But . . ."
"Never tell me I chose it." Piero turned on him like a cornered jackal. "I did not choose a life spent dogging his heels and panting for his notice! I had no choice. He bewitched me." His voice rose. "Sure as those spells you say he did not believe in! He made himself my food, then stinted me. I tried to rule him, and so I did for a little; then he grew older and too proud to bear with me."
"Should the son of a duke be ruled by his lackey?"