by Teresa Denys
For the first time the hazel eyes lifted from my face, and Amerighi returned petulantly, "What can be so urgent that it interrupts my private conference with my sister? Learn to know your time, sirrah."
"I crave your pardon, my lord Duke." The man bowed obsequiously, but I saw a measuring look in his eyes as he glanced at me. "But it is of the utmost import, and if you will come . . ."
"This fellow grows tiresome, Isabella." The smile Amerighi gave me was wry and completely charming. "It seems I must go with him—you will stay here until I return?"
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak for the choking in my throat. He let go my hands, and as he turned to go out with the captain at his shoulder, he said sternly to Domenico, "Guard your mistress well, fellow," and went out, his black-clad figure quickly swallowed up in the darkness. The captain lingered a moment on the threshold, looking back.
"It will be good to fight again," he remarked to the hall at large. "We grow rusty as nursemaids to a lunatic." Then the door closed behind him, and the footsteps died away across the courtyard.
As the sound faded, Domenico's left hand crept up to grip his injured shoulder, and I saw for the first time how gray his face had grown with exhaustion. But his voice was as curt as ever when he spoke, standing with his fair head bowed.
"Go and put on the clothes you came in, Felicia. I will send to tell our men that we leave within the hour."
Without waiting for an answer, he turned towards the staircase and began to climb. I watched him, unbelieving—could the tragedy of a man's shattered mind mean no more to him than so much political advantage, a stroke of luck that enabled him to get what he needed? Cold with fury, I said, "No, Your Grace.''
He looked around then, sharply, his eyes narrowing. "How?"
"I will not go with you." I spoke steadily, waiting for his anger. It did not come.
"Why will you not?" I was not looking at him as he spoke. I only heard the level, incurious note in his voice.
"Because I am not yours to command any longer—I care for your pledged word if you do not. I shall stay here with the Duke of Ferrenza."
"No." The single word made my blood run cold, but I was beyond caution.
"Why should you care whether I go or stay? You only want me to salve your precious pride! I will not be hauled through the mountains to pleasure you for a few nights more, just to gape at your triumph afterwards!" I looked up to see him standing unmoving, staring down at me, and then looked away again. I must forget that I love him, I told myself violently, and try to salvage some sort of life for myself out of this ruin. "Duke Niccolo won me fairly, and I will not cheat him now because he is mad. I shall stay and care for him—he needs me now more than ever."
He said, sounding shaken, "Do you not care that when he takes you to bed he will believe he is at incest with his scrawny sister?"
I ignored him; then it was as though my words came out in spite of myself, lashing at him blindly, uselessly. "You have had value for your thirty pieces of silver, have you not?"
He did not answer, and I felt the tears rising treacherously in my throat. To prevent them, I continued, "I am going to find my new master, and I shall look after him in exchange for the army you have stolen. And he loves what he believes me to be—that is something."
And I turned and left him, walking across the hall to the great door, feeling my heart tearing out of my body with every step.
Chapter Twelve
"I forbid you to go." The words were low, toneless.
I answered without looking back. "I am not yours to forbid. Comfort your pride with your conquest!"
I was almost at the door. I was thinking: It will be cold outside, but perhaps when I find out where they have taken the duke I can borrow a cloak to put around me. Then, as my fingers touched the latch, I heard Domenico's voice.
"Felicia!"
The raw anguish of it stopped me. Tears were threatening to spill from my eyes so that I had to bend my head, fighting for self-control, and I did not hear him come up beside me. His hand touched my shoulder, then dropped again as I shivered.
"Does this look like pride?" His voice was shaking. "Or must I grovel?"
He was on his knees at my feet, and as I watched he lifted the hem of my gown to his lips and kissed it. I made some sort of sound in my throat, but I could not speak.
"You cannot go." He spoke in a whisper, without lifting his head. "I love you. I have always loved you—I bought you from your vile brother because I could not live without you."
As I stared down at his bowed, bright head, the earth shook under my feet. This could not be happening, I thought; it was a lie, a trick to beguile me when his force or his threats failed. But there was a note of shame in the ragged, shaking voice, and desperation in the white fingers gripping my gown.
"I did not think you would not come to love me—women have always loved me. I thought that if I kept you long enough you would cease fighting me at last. But you have not." There was a note in his voice that shocked me. "Only once or twice I thought—but then you were as cold to me as ever, as if you hated yourself, and me for making you yield. But you were such a goddess in my arms, I could not forbear you."
Cold to him, I thought dizzily, when I have had to fight not to kneel to him as he knelt now to me, not to beg for the crumbs of his love? Surely my love must have lain in my eyes a hundred times for him to read?
But it had not, for now he knelt humbled beside me, his fair cheek pressed, almost unconsciously, hard against my thigh, and I felt him trembling as he had done in the grip of one of his nightmares.
"I meant to wed you." The words were muffled and difficult. "I thought no woman would scorn to be Duchess of Cabria—and I knew that once I got your faith, you would not break it. Then when you were mine forever, you might have come to love me at last, for what I had given you if for nothing else."
The bitterness in his voice hurt me like a physical pain, and my hands went out to him; but he stirred as though he thought I meant to put him from me, and the silk of my gown tore between his clutching fingers. "No." It was a child's nightmare gasp. "Not yet . . ."
I stood very still.
"It was to stop you flying from me that I did not tell you, and I invented Savoy's bastard daughter to hoodwink you and silence my damned great-uncle. He would not have a commoner on the throne of Cabria, he who turned his church into a brothel before he grew too old for whoring!" His voice shook. "So I sent out messengers, pretending to find out your father and published it in council that it was old Savoy. I knew he would not gainsay me—he fears Cabria—and the tale did him no harm. Those ancient whoremasters debated for four days, but in the end I wrung their consent from them and consigned my uncle to Diurno to prepare at once for my crowning and my bride."
"I?" I murmured, half to myself.
He nodded, still without lifting his head. "Those slaves in Diurno accepted the tale easily enough—no one save Ippolito knew for sure that I had no proof of your parentage. He forged me your pedigree to show the council. And that harlot Maddalena guessed the truth; she was spying on me and thought she could stop my intent by frightening you with that story of my father. She was jealous, the whore."
"And the portraits?" I asked softly. "All you told me of the bride who was to supplant me?"
"To get some sign of jealousy from you. But you did not love me enough, and I had forgotten it when I tried the trick. Why should you be jealous of me?''
I stopped to stroke his hair and felt him go still under my hand; then as he raised his head to look up at me, I saw the look on his face. My heart seemed to stop beating.
"Felicia." It was little more than a whisper. "Stay with me."
Laughter shook me, like a surge of pain; on his lips even pleading became an order. I asked unsteadily, "Nothing else?"
For a moment the world seemed to stop as it had on that far-off night in the Eagle. His lips moved soundlessly; then he spoke my name in a strange choking voice and rose hastil
y to his feet in the only ungraceful motion I have ever seen him make; then somehow I was in his arms, laughing and crying
together.
"I love you. I love your" He was whispering it against my lips, breathing the words into my mouth as he kissed me, and I clung to him, past speech and almost past thought.
When at last he lifted his head, his eyes were warm and slitted, and the white ridges of muscle were gone from his mouth.
"You love me, too." Even a hint of the old imperiousness was back in his voice. "Say it."
I said, "I love you," and in that instant my boats were burned behind me forever. He made an incoherent little sound and, cupping my face between his hands, kissed me with a sort of punishing tenderness that made my senses swim. We were both shaking from head to foot when at last I rested in his arms. I caressed him, loving him, while his eyes searched my face hungrily.
"Why would you not admit it?" he demanded.
"I thought you would hold me as cheaply as all the others if I told you—I have pride, too. But if I had known you loved me, I would have been as free with my tongue as I was with my body."
"I thought you must have guessed it." There was tenderness in the smile that touched his cruel mouth. "Did you not? Every spy at court was buzzing with it before I silenced the greater part and scotched the less—my hoary great-uncle knew it that first day, and that was why he tried to spirit you away. Or did you think I always left my father's feasts to seek out a face I had seen in the Via Croce?"
"I did not know how you got your mistresses," I retorted.
"More easily"—his hand cupped my chin—"than I have gotten my wife."
Breathless and half-drowning in his kiss, I made one last effort to recover my sanity. "Your shoulder, Domenico, your shoulder.''
The black eyes glimmered down at me. "Will you only call me by my name for my hurt's sake? I will take forty such pinpricks to hear you name me."
I was about to return a laughing answer when the door beside us opened again and the captain of the guard was standing there, a knowing expression on his face.
"My lord Duke, the Duke of Ferrenza is safely stowed." His eyes rested ironically on the arm which held me bruisingly hard against Domenico. "What orders have you now?"
Domenico's hold slackened, and he said sharply, "Are all your men in readiness?"
"They are mustering now. They will be ready in half an hour."
"Then summon my own men, and tell them we ride out in half an hour. Call me when that is done."
The man nodded briskly and went out.
As the door closed, Domenico looked down at me and said, "There is no time to waste, Felicia. Come." His lips touched mine lightly. "We will fire Gratiana and her men out of my city."
I knew myself forgotten as he turned away. Now the thought of revenge on his hated stepmother was making him blaze with inward excitement; but even as I gazed ruefully after him, he checked and turned back to me, holding out his uninjured hand.
"Come," he repeated softly, and I went to him and put my hand in his.
My horse's hooves bit into the churned earth as I urged it down the slope and away from the frowning shadow of the watchtower. It was late afternoon and the sun's fierceness was ebbing, but my tunic and breeches were sticky with sweat and dust from the long, parching hours of waiting. The horses were listless and sluggish and had been so ever since the noise within the city walls had faded to silence. They had been restive and nervous at first, but they soon calmed and began to graze indifferently.
Since the gray hour just before dawn, when Amerighi's men had ridden down these slopes toward Fidena and left us behind, Baldassare Lucello and I had talked together or been silent, paced restlessly or sat still, trying to divert our own minds and each other's from what was happening below. Domenico had given Baldassare command of half a dozen bored and surly mercenaries to guard me when it became obvious that Santi had no intention of staying behind in safety when he might be fighting. Saddled with me as he might have been with some inconvenient but valuable piece of luggage, Baldassare had discharged his duty with discretion and tact. He had chattered like a magpie when I asked him to talk, fallen silent when he realized I was no longer listening, and now and again when he saw my fears plain in my face, he did his best to allay them.
"The Spanish will not be expecting a counterattack yet," he had assured me as the last muffled hoofbeats died away into the darkness. "We crossed the pope's lands so swiftly that we will have overtaken their estimations. You shall see, His Grace will surprise the duchess's forces."
"Swiftly!" I had stared at him in disbelief. "It has taken five days more to travel here than it did to reach Ferrenza, even with the help of Duke Niccolo's safe-conduct!"
"True, but we were few when we set out and carried no arms and no supplies—the cannonry and the sumpter wagons are what slowed us down, and even so we have made better speed than armies commonly do. We could have forced a greater pace, but that would have meant going into battle without guns and with tired and hungry soldiers. And you must own, madam, that we have fared better on this journey than we did on our first."
I had nodded reluctantly, not truly convinced. "But still he—we may fail. Fidena is a strong fortress. . . ."
"So it is, but the duchess is a poor general. She lets her passions rule her head." Baldassare smiled with a hint of reminiscence. "When she should have kept her troops fast within the city, she sent them out scouring the countryside for my lord's Grace. She has not set men in the old watchtower, because she does not think it important. I swear to you, madam, that it was Lord Sandra's brain which steered the duchess's army. Now that he is dead, she will be confounded quickly."
I had not believed him then but had forced a smile and let it go. It was only as the hours passed and I could see the turmoil outside the city gates and hear the crash of cannon and the shouts of men borne on the humming air that my fears came back to overwhelm me afresh.
Worst of all was the sheer monotony of waiting. It was impossible to tell what was happening at so great a distance, and the attacking soldiers made no more than an unrecognizable stir of activity against the bleak gray walls; the battle sounds were a mere meaningless discord punctuated by the roar and thud of the guns. After a while I turned my back on the city, too sick with fear to try any longer to ascertain what was going on.
Again and again as the hours passed, I thought: I could ride down to the city now and no one would notice that one more boy had joined the fighting. Yet the memory of Domenico's set face as he held me during the night before we reached Fidena, his feverish lovemaking and broken murmurs, prevented me. I had given him, in spirit if not in words, my promise to wait, and I knew that if I broke my faith with him, I would never be able to restore it.
I had begged him to command the fighting from a place of safety, and when he refused that, I had thought I was to go with him into battle. Now, when I knew he loved me, I could hardly bear him to be out of my sight. It had not crossed my mind that injured as he was he would insist on fighting. But he had insisted, ablaze with his desire for revenge, and had seemed not to hear my pleas to be allowed to follow him. Then, when I had turned away from him to hide my helpless tears, he had gripped my arms hard and twisted me to face him.
"I will not have you hazard your life, Felicia. It is too precious to me."
"And is yours less so to me?" I demanded brokenly. "Domenico, whether you live or die, let me share it!"
The bright head had moved in negation. "If I could be certain it would be so, you should stay fast by my side; but Gratiana's men will take no account of any man's will. Death by your side"—he had touched my wet cheek—"would be a fine thing, but if you were killed and I survived . . ."—there had been an odd, harsh note to his voice—"I should be back in hell."
I had thrown my arms around him and held him, and he had taken that as my consent. So he had left me, in the midst of a discontented little group of soldiers at the foot of the old watchtower, and had ridd
en off into the half-light of the morning. All I had gained was his promise to let me know how he fared, and I had doubted that he would remember.
But he did send. A little while after the sun came up, just as the Ferrenzan cannon began to bombard the city gates, I saw a single horseman break away from the attacking army and come spurring towards the tower. It was one of the Cabrian pages, wild with excitement, who poured out to Baldassare an account of the duke's attacking strategy.
"They have mounted an attack on the main gates, messire, with fifty men and one of the guns, but the duke and Messire Giovanni plan to storm the wall by the northwestern gate. They say it is lower there, and the ports for trading are not so well maintained for defense as they are on the southern wall."
Baldassare shrugged, and for a moment I glimpsed the courtier who scorned to admit the existence of an area so squalid as the trading quarter of the city. "Messire Giovanni will know," he agreed. "Are there any hurt?"
"Only four or five. Our troops had reached the walls before their crossbowmen could raise the alarm, and now . . ."
"Is the duke safe?" I could not control the question. The boy started and crossed himself almost superstitiously.
"Yes, madam, he leads the attack on the northeast wall."
With a small cry I turned away from him, holding my arms across my breast as if to contain a physical pain. He cannot be killed now, I told myself. He must not.
The other men beckoned the boy over and began to question him more closely while I stood with closed eyes, fighting my inward despair. A light touch on my arm made me open my eyes again.
"I spoke with one of Ferrenza's men yesterday," Baldassare said quietly, "and he told me he had been champion of his regiment with the pike and halberd. They are all such men, I believe; each is an expert in his own province, and they have served together a long time."
"Yes." I spoke with an effort. "Duke Niccolo told me as much the night we . . . the night we supped with him. I know they are very skillful, messire, but I cannot help being afraid." I had more courage once, I thought suddenly, when there was only myself to fear for. But love for Domenico made me suddenly, terribly vulnerable.