by Sarah Bower
“A bloody singer,” said Giulio, with uncharacteristic ill grace, when Gian Cantore first arrived in his rooms, “and one I procured for him myself in the first place. What I need is money. Christ’s balls, I cannot even hunt for my own table any more nor see to sign a bill for the very cloth to make my eye patches. How am I to live?” He was exaggerating, of course, and the singer knew it as well as I did, and it took little more than a new barzelletta from Tromboncino to restore his equilibrium. Music could always cheer him because he did not need his eyes for it; on the contrary, he discovered his ear was truer, his fingers more responsive to the tremor of strings without the distraction of sight. He joked, once, bitterly, that if Angela were ever to return to him she would find his touch could give greater pleasure than before. At night, he had added, with all the candles snuffed. He apologised immediately for his coarseness and never mentioned her again. Often it fell to me to fill the silences, which I did by talking about Girolamo. Though we never spoke of Giulia, somehow I knew Giulio understood my pain and that listening to me helped to ease his own.
Shortly after Easter, Duke Alfonso left for a visit to Venice and made madonna governor in his absence. He sent word to Giulio that he should return to his own palace, as he wished the duchess, his wife, to occupy his rooms in the Corte while he was away, and the rooms in use by Giulio would be needed for her household. He garrisoned the castle with a levy of Swiss mercenaries, though there seemed to be no reason for it, which sent a frisson of unease through the court. It reminded me of San Clemente during my last days in Rome. Whenever I went into the castle, it sounded like San Clemente, full of the guttural rumblings of the Swiss, the clank of spurs and armour, the click of dice cups. It smelled like San Clemente too, of leather and grease and steel, stale wine and men’s sweat.
I believed this to be the source of my unease, until, while helping Giulio to settle himself back into his home, I dropped one of his books and a letter fell out from between its pages. I would not have looked at it, except that I saw the name of Alberto Pio written there, and could not resist. Giulio himself was in his garden with Ferrante; I could hear their voices through the open window, Giulio complaining about the light and Ferrante telling him he needed air and exercise and would have to get used to it.
The letter was from Francesco Gonzaga, though not written in his own hand, which I would have recognised immediately. He thanked Giulio for his expressions of friendship and assured him his love for his brother-in-law and grief at his treatment were no less. Don Alberto Pio, he had written, will have conveyed to you in person, I trust, my sympathies for the action you and Don Ferrante propose to avenge the misuse of Your Excellency’s person by the most reverend cardinal... I dared not read on. What did it mean? It sounded to me like treason, for any revenge Giulio was proposing on Ippolito would be as much an attack on the duke himself, so close were they. Yet if they were planning revenge, how could Giulio and Ferrante and their associates be so inept as to commit themselves in writing? Perhaps it was just some joke after all, or an old letter, long past its relevance, tucked inside the book and forgotten. I looked at the book: some newly printed verses of Ariosto’s from which I had been reading to Giulio only days before. I looked at the letter again to see if it was dated; it had been written during Holy Week. Pushing the letter into my bodice, I called down to the men in the garden through the open window that I had to leave, as the duchess would be looking for me to help her dress for her evening audiences.
“Apparently a lady from Cento wishes to petition her to allow a tournament of ladies to take place in the Barco on Corpus Christi,” I told them, astonished at my own calmness.
“I hope she agrees,” Ferrante called back. “That would be a sight for sore eyes.” At which Giulio dug him in the ribs and they fell to scuffling like a couple of children. They had no inkling of what I had found nor what I intended to do with it.
What could I do with it? And how soon before Giulio realised it was missing and suspicion fell on me? I thought of taking it straight to Donna Lucrezia; she would do anything in her power to avert the distress of further discord between the brothers. But therein lay the difficulty. During her Holy Week retreat to the convent of Corpus Domini she had suffered a bout of tertian fever and was still weak. I feared a relapse if I showed her the letter. Walking back down the Via degli Angeli towards the Corte, however, I passed a man carrying bundles of trussed fowls suspended from a pole across his shoulder, and that gave me an idea.
After hearing the petition from the lady of Cento, which she declined, and others on the more usual matters of property disputes, marriage dispensations, pension claims, and requests for patronage, madonna went to rest and I was able to slip away. Donna Lucrezia’s influence had enabled Gideon to set himself up in the workshop of a popular silversmith who had his business under the arcades bordering the piazza, so I did not have far to go. The early evening was fine, and people were still spending enthusiastically after the privations of Lent, so the old town was thronged with shoppers and porters, fishmongers with the smell of the river clinging to their clothes, campesini with earth under their fingernails wheeling barrows of squashes still capped with their little yellow flowers. A swordsmith and a knife grinder were fighting a duel of words about the quality of their wares which almost deafened me as I ducked into a tiny alley beside the apothecary’s shop, where the scent of ground nutmeg mingled with the reek of pig. At the end of this, past the pigpen and a woodstore, and a rack of saltpans spread with drying olive pits, stood the silversmith’s workshop where I hoped to find Gideon.
As I entered, pushing aside the thick leather door curtain, I heard whistling, and bursts of tiny percussions from somebody working with small tools. No lamps were lit, but blades of light struck through the gloom from gaps in the plank walls and the roof, forming a bright grid in which motes of gold and silver dust drifted and turned with the draught. As my eyes adjusted, this prison of light seemed to dissolve and I caught sight of Gideon, stooped over the workbench, chipping away at something with a chisel no bigger than the tweezers I used to pluck madonna’s eyebrows. He had a magnifying lens in some kind of wire support strapped to his forehead and a plate of bread with slices of smoked eel lay untouched beside him. The food glittered with a dusting of gold powder. I cleared my throat, suddenly shy of interrupting him. He jerked upright, almost hitting his head on a roof beam. The lens bounced then slipped over one eye and would have fallen had he not thrust up a hand to catch it. Unravelling the leather strapping which had bound it to his head, he put the whole contraption down on the bench. The back of his hand, I noticed, also glinted gold, and gold scored the lines in his face when he smiled at me as though all the pores of his skin were filled with it.
“Ah,” he said, as though he had been expecting me.
“I need your help,” I told him, feeling it was important not to waste his time.
He rested his buttocks against the workbench and folded his arms. “I see. In what way can I help you?” He made no attempt to avert his gaze as I rummaged in my bodice for the letter which had slipped further inside my gown as I walked. As my hand brushed my breast, I had a sudden sense of his hand lying there, patterning my skin with gold dust, and a slow fire ignited in the pit of my stomach.
“Can I do anything?” he asked, with laughter in his voice. I turned away from him. I should not have come. I should have gone straight to Donna Lucrezia.
“I found this,” I said, at last laying hold of a corner of the letter and drawing it out of the neck of my gown. As I handed it to him I was aware how warm it was to the touch, and how the vellum had bent to the shape of my body. Holding it in one of the shafts of light, fading now and more oblique as evening drew on, he scanned the letter quickly, his mouth tightening and a frown scoring itself between his brows as he did so.
“Where did you find it?”
“It fell out of one of Giulio’s books. I didn’t mean…it’s just that…” But how could I explain? This was not the time
to tell him my story.
“You would have done better to put it straight back.”
“But if Giulio is planning to…” I could not bring myself to say it. “And Ferrante. They must be stopped. Don Francesco is clearly using them, perhaps because of madonna, perhaps on account of some new argument he has with the duke. And if they are caught, do you think he will protect them?”
“They are his brothers-in-law also,” he said, but he did not sound convinced. “But anyway, what has this to do with me?”
“I remembered what you said on the boat. About being Donna Isabella’s spy. I know it was said lightly, but all the same, if you have her ear, you could tip her off and she could tell Don Francesco and…”
“She’d be more likely to go straight to the duke or the cardinal. And she’d want proof; she’d want to know how I came by it.”
I had not thought of that. I wondered if I had thought of anything, except that the man with the fowls had reminded me of Gideon with his Hanukkah goose.
“Why not go to Donna Lucrezia? She clearly favours you, and she strikes me as the kind of woman who would be adept at smoothing over a feud.”
“She has been ill. I did not wish to upset her.”
“Well perhaps you could blame the messenger, this…” He scanned the letter to remind himself of the name. “…Pio. Just say you’re sure he got the wrong end of the stick but…”
“No!” I shrieked.
Gideon looked momentarily alarmed, but then an expression of understanding spread over his features. “Aha,” he said. “So you do have a sweetheart. I knew it.”
“No...no, you have it all wrong, Gideon. I have no sweetheart but…I would not wish to impugn Don Alberto falsely.” My explanation was lame, but how could I begin to justify my concern for Don Alberto’s good name? I suddenly, passionately did not want Gideon to know I was the cast off mistress of the disgraced Valentino, the mother of a son I was not thought competent to raise. I wished he could melt me down in his furnace as he might a poorly cast ornament and turn me into something new. I struggled, I blinked, I swallowed and gritted my teeth but I could not prevent the sobs that overwhelmed me.
Gideon pushed himself up from the workbench and gathered me into his arms. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “whatever I’ve said or done I didn’t mean to. I’m really, really sorry.”
He must, I thought, be a similar height to Cesare, because his collarbone pressed against my temple in just the same way as Cesare’s used to, but the fabric next to my cheek was homespun, not velvet, and spattered with wax. He smelled of woodsmoke and wool and rough wine, not the dark and dangerous seductiveness of jasmine and other men’s fears. A good man, I thought, with a mixture of disappointment and relief.
“It’s all right,” I said, lifting my face free of the folds of his tunic. I sniffed. He pulled a threadbare kerchief from his sleeve and offered it to me. I blew my nose and he laughed.
“Now you have a golden nose,” he said, which made me laugh too.
“Tell me, do you get your clothes laundered for free, so long as the laundress can pan the washing water for gold?”
“They are queuing up to wash my shirts. Can’t you tell?”
I plucked at the crumpled sleeve of his shirt which had, I supposed, once been white. Beneath it his arm was warm, its muscles hard and sinewy. Standing on tiptoe, I placed a kiss on his wide mouth with its lopsided smile. He started back with a baffled expression, making me feel ashamed.
“I should go,” I said. “You’re right, I should simply go to Donna Lucrezia and let her sort it out.” Our conversation had gone far enough, perhaps too far; I did not want to risk any further mention of Don Alberto Pio. I turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said, putting a hand on my arm. I stiffened; the fleeting bond forged by my tears was broken now, and his familiarity was unseemly. He withdrew his hand as though from a fire. “Do you fish?”
“What?” His question was so bizarre I turned back to face him, to see what might have prompted him to ask it.
“Fishing,” he said again, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. Which, of course, it was, in some people’s worlds. “Come fishing with me on Sunday.”
“I have to go to Mass on Sunday.”
“Not all day, surely.”
“Twice.”
“Good, then you can come.”
“I doubt madonna would permit it.” Though even as I said this, I knew madonna would not mind. I would make some formal excuse, plead illness perhaps, to explain my absence from the day’s round of needlework and readings from the lives of the saints, and she would wish me a speedy recovery. We would both know the other was lying and that, though she liked me, and sometimes confided in me, as I no longer had any currency in her marriage market, I was free to do as I pleased.
“She wants to see the finished medals. I will bring them tomorrow and we can persuade her together.”
“Why fishing? A lady would usually expect an invitation to admire a garden or listen to music.”
“So fishing will be something new and original for you. I’ll wager Ser Pio doesn’t take you fishing, or I would if I were a betting man.”
“I scarcely know Don Alberto Pio, honestly.”
Gideon gave a sceptical snort. “Now,” he said, “go, before it’s dark. I will see you tomorrow. And good luck.”
“Good luck?”
“With the letter.”
I had almost forgotten it. I had been thinking about fish.
As I turned out of the alley towards the Corte, a figure emerged from the shadow of the arcade and stepped in front of me. With his cap pulled over his eyes and his cape swathing the bottom half of his face, I did not immediately recognise Ferrante.
“Violante.”
I flinched. My hand flew involuntarily to my breast where I had replaced the letter.
“It’s me, Ferrante. Nothing to fear.” Lowering his cloak, he revealed an ironic smile which did nothing to dispel the anxiety in his eyes. “I will escort you back.”
“That is most courteous of you.” My skin prickled with sweat; perhaps the ink would run and Don Francesco’s dangerous words would become no more than a black smear on my skin. Ferrante offered me his arm. I took it.
“Thank you for helping Giulio. He has so little confidence and you have been very kind to him.”
“I count myself his friend.”
“In all company?”
“I would like to think so.”
“Then you should return to him what you have taken.”
“Me? I have taken nothing.” My voice sounded forced and unnatural. I felt the pressure of the letter like a stone on my chest.
“Oh well, perhaps I was mistaken.” His tone was light, conversational, but he pulled his elbow in to his side, trapping my hand against his ribs. “As you profess yourself to be Giulio’s friend, doubtless there is nothing to worry about.”
“I hope not, Ferrante, I really do.”
We had almost reached the Corte by this time, but at the gate Ferrante steered me away and we continued walking along the palace wall. Dusk thickened in the piazza and the crowds of evening shoppers thinned out as the merchants put up their shutters and prepared to count their money. Ferrante and I, shrouded in the half-light, might have been the only people in the world, and it crossed my mind to wonder if he intended to kill me, to slip his knife between my ribs or snap my neck. The thought calmed me, because, if that was his intention, there was nothing I could do about it. Like all the Este brothers, Ferrante was a big man.
He stopped then and turned to face me as though he had come to some decision. I thought of Gideon and wondered how long he would wait for me on Sunday before giving up. I wondered about pain, and praying, and whether, in any deep recess of his heart, Girolamo would ever remember me.
“You could join us,” said Ferrante. Interpreting my dazed silence as permission to continue, he said, “help us get access to Alfonso and Ippolito and we will give you your
son back.”
My heart lurched. “How?”
“Once they are…out of the way, I will be duke. We could marry. I would have to have a wife, I suppose, for form’s sake, and what better for me than a woman who already has a son? I would make Girolamo my heir. He could be the next Duke of Ferrara, think of it.”
I tried to think of it, but my mind seemed to be a whirl of dust in which shapes and possibilities loomed but never became clear. Then, to my astonishment, Girolamo’s father came to my rescue. I thought how he had taken my son from me, how he and Donna Lucrezia had packed him off to Carpi as though he were no more than a gift of carriage mules or sugared cedri. If I agreed to Ferrante’s proposal, I was surely no better. I, too, would be using Girolamo for my own ends. You follow love, said Mariam, and sometimes it takes you in the opposite direction to the one on the signpost.
“No, Ferrante, I’m not getting involved.”
“Do you have the letter?”
“I’ve told you, I’m not getting involved, and you and Giulio should stop now before any more harm is done. You merely add a bruise to a wound.”
Abruptly Ferrante dropped my arm and slumped against the wall beneath one of the Corte’s high, barred street windows. “God I’m tired of this,” he said. “I don’t want to be duke. Can you imagine it? I just wanted to help Giulio and now…well, the whole thing is out of hand.”
“Go away for a while. Go to the baths at Porretta. They have entertainments to your taste there, do they not?”
“I never cease to be amazed by you, Violante. How would a young lady like you know what goes on at Porretta?”
“Don Francesco has spoken of it.”
“In front of ladies?”
“For the duchess’s…elucidation.”