by Sarah Bower
“And no doubt as healthy as a brood mare,” madonna had remarked when the comatre arrived, with a condescending letter from Donna Isabella. As though being as healthy as a brood mare set her at some social disadvantage.
I called for a slave to carry the crib from the room, but madonna clung to the lace hood and refused to be parted from it. She took out the pillow on which Alessandro had lain and cradled it in her lap, pushing her face into the fine white cotton slip as though she wished to smother herself. Yet she breathed greedily through her nose, inhaling the scent of milk and new skin which was all that remained of her son, then straightened up, smoothing the pillow over and over with her plump fingers, nipping its pleats and corners between her perfectly manicured nails.
“My husband must be told.” Though her cheeks glistened with tears, her voice was firm. Duke Alfonso was at Belriguardo. He had spent the summer there overseeing the renovations he had set in train since his father’s death. “And, there is another letter I must write. You will help me with it.”
“No, madonna, I…”
“Not to my brother, Violante. To Francesco Gonzaga.” Something in the way she said Francesco Gonzaga’s name made me wonder, for a moment, about Alessandro’s parentage, but I pushed the thought away as quickly as it came. I could find myself hanging in a cage from the Torre Leone for less. But a bitter echo remained, a mean little voice which told me madonna, at least, had the consolation of a new love to lessen the grief of losing her child.
She wrote the letter in her own hand, and I took it, as instructed, to a place near the main city gate, where there was a stall selling poultry set up just below a plaque in the city wall commemorating those who died in the Battle of Legnano. Ercole Strozzi hobbled out from behind a tottering pile of wooden cages full of angry chickens and bewildered partridges. He bowed and greeted me as though we met this way every day. He asked after madonna’s health, and hoped Don Cesare was comfortable in his new surroundings, and I began to wonder if the last year and a half had been no more than a bad dream from which I had now awakened to find all was as it had been before Pope Alexander died. I replied that I had had no word from Don Cesare, but madonna was making a good recovery, but as I handed Strozzi the letter and turned to go, he placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Life takes no prisoners, you know, little mistress. Your lady duchess knows that and you could do worse than learn from her example.”
“Thank you, Ser Ercole, you are wise.”
“Merely practical, my dear, merely practical.”
***
Duke Alfonso’s response to the loss of his son was to summon his wife to Belriguardo.
“He expresses the hope I will be distracted by seeing all the changes he is making there,” said Donna Lucrezia as she directed our packing. “Dossi is exhausted, he says, so he is bringing in a painter from Carpi to finish the main salone in time for a concert with that singer…what is his name…honestly, my memory...that’s what pregnancy does for you, ladies, be warned…” and on she prattled, as gay and brittle as a butterfly.
“Stay a moment,” she commanded me, once all the clothes chests had been carried down to the carts waiting in the courtyard, and the jewellery boxes entrusted to her majordomo. “I have one more errand for you before we leave.” Her expression was a mixture of exhaustion and indominability which reminded me, in spite of myself, of her brother, that last night on the battlements of Sant’Angelo. “You are to meet Ser Ercole as before. He will have something for me.”
***
Strozzi was not there when I arrived at the poultry stall. I waited, impatiently at first, in a wind from the mountains, sharp with the first snows, which whipped sawdust from the chicken coops into my eyes. Then, as the poultry seller began to mutter about people who hung about his wares without buying anything, in rising anxiety, I shifted a little, and pretended to examine a pyramid of yellow apples at a neighbouring stall. I had just picked out the least bruised, and handed over some coins to the stallholder, when I noticed another figure loitering near the poultry seller. A man I had never seen before, tall, bony, dressed with unremarkable shabbiness as though to compensate for his striking height and thinness. He must be a spy, I thought, madonna’s subterfuge had been discovered. Pulling my hood close around my face, I set off in the opposite direction, willing myself not to run, not to do anything to draw attention to myself. I was just a girl buying an apple. What could be more ordinary?
But a creeping stickiness on my fingers made me realise I had dug my nails right through the skin of the apple. Then I felt the weight of a hand on my shoulder. The breath left my body in a little shriek. Somewhere, I heard the rasp of a sword pulled from its scabbard. A voice began to mumble the prayers we make in childbirth and other dangers, a woman’s voice, breathless and shaky. My voice.
Now someone else was speaking, a man. The spy. “Put up your sword, I mean her no harm.”
My legs gave way and I sank to my knees in the dust and cabbage leaves and dog shit of the street.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” said the spy. Placing a hand beneath my elbow, he raised me to my feet and began to dust down my skirt.
“Who are you?”
“Messer Ercole sent me.”
My relief was so overwhelming my legs almost gave out a second time, which irritated me. “Well why didn’t you say so instead of skulking around like a…a…”
“Poultry chef? Pigeon fancier?”
“There were no pigeons,” I snapped, but I could hear the smile in my voice and so, it seemed, could Ser Ercole’s deputy because his long, bony face was suddenly split by a huge grin. His teeth, I noticed, were large and somewhat crooked; a man of more delicate breeding might have ensured he kept them covered when he smiled.
“I think you are expecting something from me?”
It could still be a trick. “You mistake me, sir.”
“Surely you are Monna Violante?”
“How do you know?”
“I didn’t, until I heard you saying the Birchat-Hagomel. Then I was sure. Ser Ercole told me you were a conversa. The other conversa, he said.” He made a shallow bow. “I am Gideon da Quieto d’Arzenta of Mantua, the brother of the woman I believe you know as Fidelma.”
“The goldsmith,” I exclaimed.
“The very same.”
“If you had been wearing your star, I would have realised.” As I looked at him now, it was obvious. He had Fidelma’s gangling build, the same bony face, and fine, prominent eyes. He looked, I thought, rather like a hare.
“You think so? In my experience, conversos are the worst anti-Semites. Besides, I am wearing it.” He opened the homespun coat he wore over his doublet to reveal a star of yellow cloth sewn inside it. “It would hardly do to get arrested on one of Ser Ercole’s clandestine missions. Now, shall I give you the letter?”
“Why did Ser Ercole send you? Why did he not come in person?”
“Stop clutching your cloak like that, it makes you look like a cutpurse. He didn’t send me, I asked to come.” He laughed, and pulled me to the side of the road, out of the path of a mule laden with wide panniers. “Don’t flatter yourself, my fine lady. It was not the beauty of your face that inspired me, though it is very beautiful and if I had seen it before, perhaps I would have spoken to Ser Ercole sooner. It was your influence with the duchess. My sister tells me she reposes great confidence in you, and I am anxious to win a commission from her. Her brother is aware of my work and…”
“I know.” I wondered what had happened to those masks now. San Clemente had been thoroughly looted by the Orsini after the battle in Saint Peter’s Square. I wondered which of them might have the huspa to hang a gold death’s head beside his bed and concluded, with a sense of fierce pride, there was none. “But my mistress is not inclined to make much play of her closeness to her brother in the present circumstances. You might,” I went on, choosing my words with care, “make more capital from her rivalry with Donna Isabella Gonzaga.”
“So this is from Don Francesco?”
“Shhh. Keep your eyes open when the duchess leaves Reggio, that is all.”
***
It was reasonable to travel to Borgoforte, from where I expected we would go on by river to Belriguardo, but when Don Francesco met us there, he and Donna Lucrezia soon made other plans. He was adamant Donna Isabella wished to see her sister-in-law, to condole with her about the child, but, with her own pregnancy now so advanced, she was unable to leave Mantua. So, after a night at Borgoforte, we moved on to Mantua. While I thought it quite plausible Donna Isabella would wish to flaunt her fertility in front of my poor lady, it was obvious from her demeanour as I dressed her for the journey that she and Don Francesco had snatched some opportunity to exchange private words the previous evening. If Donna Isabella had planned a triumph, I suspected she was in for a disappointment.
I wished Angela was with us, but she and Giulio were returning to Ferrara. They had no desire to go to Belriguardo, where they were bound to encounter Ippolito. I could not have confided my suspicions to Fidelma, even if I had wanted to, as I did not want to give away her brother’s role in the affair. Or my own, for that matter. So I kept my counsel, and if there was gossip, I did not hear it. My presence usually had the effect of striking madonna’s new girls dumb. Angela used to say it was because I had come from Rome; there was about all of us, she joked, the odour of Borgia sanctity. But I knew it was more than that. Though none of them were even aware of Girolamo’s existence, I wore his loss like a shroud; I was a ghost, unwelcome in their vivacious round of fashions, flirtations, and parties.
I was not present when madonna was received by Donna Isabella, but once we were embarked on Don Francesco’s bucentaur, the enforced intimacy of shipboard life made gossip redundant. Madonna made sure only those she felt she could trust travelled with her and Don Francesco, with everyone else following on a second boat. So I was surprised when, leaning over the prow our second morning out, I found myself standing next to Gideon d’Arzenta. The creak and splash of the oars mingled with snatches of music from Don Francesco’s string players, creating a curtain of sound between us and the lovers who were seated in a makeshift bower at the stern of the boat. The smell of fresh tar and smoke from their brazier stung my nostrils.
“I think we can expect rain,” remarked Gideon, squinting up at the cloud which hung low and yellowish over the brown waters of the river. “I’ll wager you didn’t expect to see me again, did you?” he went on when I made no reply.
“I have not thought of you one way or the other, Ser d’Arzenta.”
“And there I was thinking you would have wasted no opportunity to recommend me to your lady.”
“Had there been an opportunity, I would not have wasted it.”
He laughed then, tilting his chin to expose the brown skin and jutting bones of his throat. Turning his back to the deck rail and leaning his elbows on it, he said, “You’re a sharp one, Violante. I don’t envy your husband. I think your embrace must be pricklier than the iron maiden’s.”
“How exactly do you come to be here, messer?”
“Ah, I am Donna Isabella’s eyes and ears.” My alarm must have shown in my face, for he laughed again, touched the inside of my elbow with his fingertips and said, “You’re an easy target for a joke, mistress.”
“There are some things you should not joke about.”
“And the amours of people such as your duchess and our upstanding Marquis of Mantua are to be taken seriously?”
“Love is a very serious matter.”
“Were we talking of love, I would agree with you. But that,” he nodded towards the stern of the boat, “that is merely a game. I would take calcio more seriously.”
Part of me knew he was right, that Don Francesco’s hand lying in Donna Lucrezia’s lap hurt nothing and nobody. Yet if I did not believe in the sincerity of their kind of loving, how cheaply had my own heart been broken? “All the same,” I said, “I believe my lady’s conscience is sufficiently sensitive for her to resist the presence of Donna Isabella’s eyes and ears.”
“In exchange for my admittedly vague promise to report to her about her husband and her sister-in-law, Donna Isabella gave me a letter of recommendation to Donna Lucrezia. I will send her something non-committal. After all, what have I seen? A lady and a gentleman taking their ease on a boat. A grieving mother seeking the consolation of a friend. I sleep on deck among the galley slaves and all that disturbs my sleep is the clank of their chains when they get up for a piss. Excuse my bluntness.”
“I am getting used to it.”
“I am glad, because I hope to have much more conversation with you once I am installed at Ferrara. I think there are deep seams in you to be mined.”
“I suppose that is a compliment. From a goldsmith.”
***
At Sermide, on the border between the states of Mantua and Ferrara, Don Francesco took his leave of us, and those who had been travelling on the second boat joined ours so Don Francesco had a means of transport home. Among the gaggle of Donna Lucrezia’s girls hemming me in with their questions and speculations, only Fidelma kept silent, whether through disapproval or an altogether more subtle kind of curiosity I could not be sure. I expected her at least to raise the subject of her brother, but she did not, and I only once saw them talking together, when I was taking Fonsi for his daily walk around the deck. They seemed ill at ease in one another’s company, the sharp angles of their bodies cutting the air between them into awkward shapes, their big feet shuffling around one another in a clumsy dance.
I remembered how the Holy Father used to like to watch Cesare and Donna Lucrezia dance together, how their shared blood flowed in unison when they led the Catalan sardanas and the haunting voice of the flaviol made their father weep. I saw again in my mind’s eye Donna Lucrezia’s old dancing shoes with their scored soles, and Cesare in his delirium, hacking at my shoes with my meat knife. And perhaps I would have seen further, except that at that very moment our boat slid past the jetty at the bottom of Ser Taddeo di Occhiobello’s garden, and I turned away and went below decks.
I had thought madonna was resting, but as I climbed down the companionway, she called out to me from her cabin. As I entered, and made an awkward curtsey in the cramped space, she patted the bed beside her and commanded me to sit. There was no room for a chair, or even a stool; all the available floor space was taken up by madonna’s clothes chests. I found myself thinking how out of place Don Francesco must have looked among the spillage of silk and lace. I put down the little dog on his satin cushion and balanced myself on the side of the bed.
“What do you know of the young man Fidelma says is her brother?” madonna demanded.
“I believe he is her brother. They certainly look alike. Ser Strozzi trusts him.”
“Strozzi?”
“The last time you asked me to meet Ser Strozzi in Reggio, madonna, he sent Ser d’Arzenta in his place.”
“You mean..?”
“I was circumspect, madonna. I accepted nothing from him until I was certain of him.”
“Certain? How could you be certain, foolish girl? He might have been sent by anyone. Donna Isabella, my husband…” She paused, then went on in a softer voice, as though talking to herself, “no, not him. Isabella, it must be. Did Fidelma not say he had worked for her?”
“Madonna, I have spoken with him a little. I really do not think he is interested in…”
“He will be interested in what he is paid to be interested in. That is the way the world works. Fonsi, bad dog.” The dog, tired of not being the centre of attention, had jumped into madonna’s lap and was on his stout hind legs, trying to lick her face. Usually this would make her laugh, but now she swatted him impatiently on the nose. “Get him down here, Violante,” she went on, raising her voice over the dog’s whimpers. “Let’s find out what he’s up to.”
I found him still on deck with Fidelma.
“Donna Lucrezia wants to see
you,” I said.
His face lit up in that crooked grin of his. “Really?”
Even Fidelma looked less solemn than usual, and began to fuss around him, tucking a loose thread into his frayed cuff, telling him to smooth his hair, hide his star, and not to look so...well, so Jewish. “And have you got your drawings?” she demanded finally.
He patted the battered leather scrip hanging from his belt. “Always,” he said.
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much,” I warned him, but he was striding ahead of me towards the companion hatch, and the wind snatched my words out of his hearing.
***
I wondered what he saw as he stood in the cabin doorway and bowed. Did he perhaps see wealth and influence, the focus of his ambition? Did he see power and majesty, or some last residue of the magnificent decadence of her father’s court? Or did he see what I saw? A woman lying on her bed, clad in deep mourning, with her hair unbound and the ash cross on her forehead which we refreshed every morning from the flask of holy dust she kept among her pots of carmine paste and white lead. Had he noticed the steel in her grey eyes, or was she going to take him by surprise?
“Ser d’Arzenta,” she said.
“Duchesa. You do me great honour.”
“On the contrary, it is I who should be flattered by your attention. You must forgive me for not having noticed you before.” She waved one deceptively flaccid hand. “So many men, you see…It was ever thus.”
He walked straight into the trap. “Your great beauty, duchesa…”
Donna Lucrezia sat bolt upright, dislodging one of her pillows, which hit Fonsi on the nose as it fell. He set up a frenzied yapping in response. I saw Gideon wince as the sound sliced the musty air.
“My beauty is none of your concern, boy,” said madonna and her voice, though low with menace, was perfectly audible above the dog’s cacophony. Gideon was staring at her now, and I pleaded with him silently to look away. Ambitious he might be, but he had clearly taken no trouble to school himself in the ways of the court.
“So you will avert your eyes from me, and tell me just exactly what concern it is that brings you aboard my boat.”