The Marriage Portrait, page 31
Lucrezia is about to go down the stairs, to see who this woman is, to try to help her, in whatever way she can—there must be something that can be done for the poor creature. But then she hears, quite distinctly, the woman say, “Alfonso, please.”
The name raps against Lucrezia’s head, each vowel striking a blow against her temple. Alfonso is down there? He is present? Is he trying to stop whatever is happening or is he witnessing it, perhaps even partaking in it? Lucrezia cannot believe it. She must have misheard.
The woman’s voice comes again: “Alfonso, I am begging you. Please don’t do this.”
On the floor below, a door slams, there are footsteps going down a flight of stairs. Then silence.
Lucrezia stands for a moment in the corridor, the icy breath of the castello moving about her. Then she stumbles towards her door and, ignoring the questions of her maid, pushes the bolts into their locks, one after the other.
* * *
The next day, the castello has a suspended stillness, its corridors and salons filled with a silence that presses at the walls, a pressure from within. Lucrezia doesn’t take her morning walk around the terrace; Elisabetta doesn’t send for her, requesting she come to her rooms; she doesn’t see Nunciata putting out her spaniel on the loggia for its morning air. Even the city, or the slices of it visible from Lucrezia’s high windows, seems subdued, with swirls of grey fog lingering at street corners and the edges of the piazza.
Breakfast is left outside Lucrezia’s door. The usual bowl of warmish milk, with its yellowing puckered skin on the surface and its silky, opaque texture, turns her stomach. She replaces it, undrunk, on the tray.
Emilia tiptoes around, straightening the wall hangings, wiping dust off Lucrezia’s paintings, the packets of pigment, the bottles of linseed oil. Clelia sits in an armchair by the window, sighing heavily at intervals, stitching inept petals along the edge of one of Lucrezia’s smocks.
Lucrezia sends her down to Elisabetta’s rooms with a message: Would Elisabetta care to take a turn around the terrace?
Clelia comes back saying that there was no answer at the door.
Towards the middle of this long morning, a servant from the lower floors knocks on the door to ask that the dress for the portrait be boxed up so it can be taken away, and also to deliver a message that the Duchess is to remain in her rooms today until further notice.
Lucrezia rises from her chair and goes to the door, where Clelia stands, talking to the man.
“Why am I to remain here?” Lucrezia asks. “Who sent this order?”
The servant bows low and says, “It was the request of His Grace, the Duke. He sends his regrets that he was not able to deliver this message himself but—”
“The Duke said this?” she asks. “Why?”
The servant looks panicked, unable to find a place to rest his eyes. “I…I cannot say, my lady, I was just told to…” His speech peters out, and he bows again, his face scarlet with embarrassment.
She wants to reach out and grip this man by his sleeve, to demand what he knows, what this signifies. But she tugs at the front of her bodice, mustering an appearance of calm.
“Why is the dress to be taken?” she asks him. “Where is it going?”
“To the…” the servant stammers, “Sala…the Sala dell’Aurora, where His Grace will be waiting. I believe…it is for the purpose of…Her Highness’s portrait.”
“The portrait?” She presses her lips together, mind whirring. “You are dismissed,” she tells him. “I shall bring the dress myself.”
The servant blanches. “But His Grace said that—”
“I know what he said. But, nevertheless, I am coming down.”
Inside, she tells Emilia and Clelia to prepare the gown. She watches the lid go down, sees the final flash of the plum-coloured silk, the black lattice design, which this morning seems to occupy the foreground, standing dominant over the delicate red. Then she tells Emilia and Clelia to bring the box; she walks ahead of them, head high, down to the Sala dell’Aurora.
The square room is empty, the painted faces of the deities and skies looking down on nothing. Lucrezia walks to the vacant space at the middle, estimating where the very centre might be. Just as she believes she has reached it, the door opens.
She turns and sees her husband, accompanied by three of his advisers and Leonello. There is something stern and forbidding about the five men, the way they walk in formation, as if they are carrying something heavy between them.
He is silent as he crosses the room, as he takes in the scene before him: his wife, her maids, the servant he dispatched, the box containing the dress. His appearance is immaculate: black hose, black giubbone, black boots.
“My dearest,” he murmurs, as he reaches her, his eyes flickering from her to the box to the maids, gathering information, calculating what the situation holds.
He takes her hand, standing very close to her, and bows over it for a moment, then says: “I did not expect to see you.”
How very like him this utterance is, Lucrezia thinks. A mere seven words, a seemingly bland construction, but it carries so much. He appears to say simply that he is surprised to see her, but what he is actually conveying is his displeasure that she has taken it upon herself to come down to his apartment like this. Why, she wonders, does he not want her here? For what reason does he require her to stay in her rooms?
“I thought,” she says, “I would come down myself, to ensure the dress was delivered safely, and in case I was needed for work on the portrait.”
His face doesn’t move; her hand, still in his, grows hot beneath his touch.
“I would have sent for you,” he replies, “if that were the case.”
She shrugs. “The change of air does me good.”
He nods, drops her hand, turns towards the table where the box has been laid. He places his palm upon it. “This is it?”
He seems to be asking the maids but since he is not looking at them, Emilia doesn’t realise and doesn’t answer. He waits, the picture of patience and forbearance, one hand still on the box, until Clelia leaps to her feet, curtseys, and says, “Yes, Your Grace.”
“Why…” Lucrezia addresses his back: she is going to ask him the reason for her to be kept to her rooms, she is, she is about to, but somehow she feels that to keep him talking, not confront him, might be her best course of action, the way to get as much information as possible out of him, so she swerves instead into “…is the dress to be taken away?”
“It is the usual practice,” he says. “To spare your time, to avoid trespassing on your patience. Il Bastianino will take it for a short while to his studio, where he will pose and paint it. Then,” he turns towards her, “it will be returned, when the portrait is complete.”
Lucrezia sees, for the first time, that he has an injury to the left side of his face. Under his cheekbone, just in front of his ear, are three scratches, fresh and vivid, cut deeply into the skin.
“Your face,” she exclaims, moving towards him. “Did you—?”
“It is nothing.” He touches a fingertip to the livid stripes. “I had quite forgotten.”
“But you need a salve or a—”
“It’s nothing,” he says again. “Do not concern yourself.”
“Alfonso,” she says, in a low voice, unable to hold it in any longer, “I am…I need to ask you something.”
He doesn’t reply, just keeps his eyes on her.
“There were dreadful noises in the night. And this morning I sent word to Elisabetta but heard nothing back. What is happening?”
“Leave, please,” he says, without moving, and for a shocking moment, she thinks he is addressing her, that he is ordering her from the room, in that imperative voice. But, without hesitation, Leonello, the advisers, the servant and her maids all get to their feet and file out of the door.
And then, she and Alfonso are alone, in the beautiful room where, above their heads, Aurora in her golden carriage pushes back the gloomy presence of Night.
“There are things,” he begins, in a voice barely above a murmur, “that will happen in our lives, from time to time, that may seem inexplicable to you. You do not need to involve yourself. It is my duty to deal with anything that threatens our status and our reputation. Not yours. I sent word requesting that you remain in your room, and yet here you are. What occurred last night was—”
This astounding speech, which causes Lucrezia’s limbs to tremble beneath her skirts, is interrupted by the door opening at the far end of the salon.
Jacopo the apprentice is walking towards them, his cap held in his hand. Alfonso gives him a sideways glance, then holds out a hand and points at the box. “There,” he says.
Jacopo directs his steps around them, circumnavigating the centre of the room, where Lucrezia stands with Alfonso. He takes out a leather strap from his bag and begins to fasten it around the box.
“There will be many things,” Alfonso resumes, as if Jacopo isn’t in the room, and Lucrezia recalls that Alfonso perhaps still labours under the impression that Jacopo is deaf as well as mute, “that it is better for you not to know. But I ask you to ensure at all times that the compass of your loyalties is pointing in the correct direction: you are my wife and I scarcely need to remind you that your first and foremost duty must always be to me. No one else. Not your women, not my sisters, no one. I am your husband and also, yes, your protector. So allow me, please, to protect you.”
She sees, behind him, Jacopo cast a sideways look at him, at her. He is hefting the box to his shoulder. He does this slowly, with great caution, taking as much time as possible. His steps, as he moves towards the door, are slow, and it seems for one unsettling moment that he might change course and walk towards them. But then he seems to think better of this. He adjusts his hold on the strap, on the box, and it comes to her that he is carrying her gown, that he will, very soon, be opening the lid at the studio, inhaling the air trapped there, air from her chamber; he will be touching the cloth with his hand, lifting it out, shaking it, examining it, deciding on the right combinations of pigments to replicate it on Il Bastianino’s portrait. He will be picturing her inside it, considering how it held her body, draped over her limbs; he will linger over it, examine it; it will haunt his days and flit through his dreams at night.
“I’m sure,” Alfonso is saying, “that your father operates in the same way, shielding your mother from elements of his rule that he deems—”
“On the contrary,” Lucrezia cuts across him hotly, forgetting who she is and to whom she is speaking, “my father shares everything with my mother. He consults her on many issues, he cedes his rule to her whenever he is away, he seeks and values her opinion and her—”
“That is all very touching.” Alfonso utters these words through rigid lips. “But your father is one man and I am another. And you, my love, are no more than a child.”
Over the shoulder of her husband, which looms above her, blocking out most of her surroundings, she sees that Jacopo has reached the door of the salon. He seems to hesitate on the threshold for a second or two, placing a hand on the door latch.
“So, please, do me the courtesy of returning to your rooms, as instructed, and remain there until I tell you that you may leave,” Alfonso says, grazing the line of her jaw with his thumbnail. “Do you understand?”
She nods, with a rapid dip of her chin. Jacopo pushes open the door, steps through and, casting one final look at her, closes it behind him. Lucrezia has to quell a strong urge to break away from her husband and run after him. She wishes, for a wild moment, that she had concealed herself within that box, that she had folded herself down within the dress so that Jacopo could spirit her out of the castello, through the gate, over the drawbridge, and away.
“Yes,” she says, instead, tilting her face to look at Alfonso, at his hair, which still carries the tracks of his comb, at the still-raw gouges on his cheek, as if someone has clawed at his face with their fingernails. “I understand.”
* * *
Back in her room, Lucrezia dismisses her maids. She draws her shawl more tightly about herself and stands at the window, where she has a view of a section of the moat, the main drawbridge, and a number of streets, which lead off the piazza at opposing angles.
Winter seems to have arrived with a peculiar abruptness. She doesn’t know if it is the northern climate or the dank humours of the Po valley but the seasons in Ferrara turn like the handle of a crank; one day it is summer, the next, the trees are dropping their leaves, then frost descends and icy winds are seeking out gaps in the walls and windows. She is used to the Tuscan climate, where there is a slow tapering-off of warmth and light, a gradual tip into autumn, winter arriving in an apologetic creep.
She waits at the window, fingertips pressed to the pane, forehead leaning on the cool glass. A modest patch of mist appears before her every time she breathes out, and disappears when she breathes in.
A group of guards marches out across the bridge, in a controlled formation, three sets of two, their swords held over their shoulders. They move across the piazza, and vanish down a side-street. A man in a black cloak comes striding over the bridge and is admitted by the gatehouse. Two servants carrying baskets scurry out, parting in the middle of the piazza, the taller one calling something to the shorter, who waves a hand.
And then the drawbridge rattles with the sound of wheels. A cart is speeding out of the gate, pulled by a piebald horse, a servant standing up to wield a whip over the beast’s back; three other servants run along beside it; they are calling to each other, words of admonishment. Several guards run after the cart, their hats in their hands, their heads bare and their faces wild and anguished.
In the back of the cart—Lucrezia cranes her neck to see, straining up on to her toes—a long, rectangular shape is covered with blankets.
This, Lucrezia realises, is what she had been waiting for. She doesn’t quite know what it means, what it signifies—any of it. The haste of the servants, their alarm, the vicious crack of the whip, the ragged running of the guards who are following the cart, even now, as it careers through the piazza, then turns a corner and is swallowed by a narrow gap between dwellings.
Lucrezia fixes her eye on this gap, long after the guards have given up the chase and returned slowly to the castello, one with his arm about his comrade’s shoulders, long after the cart has gone. She doesn’t move her gaze from it, as if the cart might reappear to explain everything, as if the servant on it will be calm, his cargo entirely innocent and normal.
She argues with herself, with her eyes, with what they thought they saw, what they might have seen, how mistaken they could be. But she knows; her heart knows. The shape in the back of the cart had been long and thin, with squared edges. Like a box or a bed. Or a coffin.
She stays at the window for a long time. She watches the people of Ferrara come and go, walking one way across the piazza, then the other. She watches children hold the hands of their parents. She watches a woman lug a large bale of cloth on her back, a man roll a barrel using his bare and filthy feet, a young girl tugging a dog after her on a length of rope, two brothers carrying armfuls of firewood. She watches as the sky empties of light and the stone of the buildings acquires shadow.
She is still at the window when the cart reappears. The servant is now sitting on its edge and he lets the horse idle its way across the bridge; the whip is folded and furled, under his arm. The back of the cart is empty.
Emilia and Clelia find her there, stiff with cold, when they return. They help her to a chair, they chafe her frozen hands and feet, and Emilia spoons hot broth into her mouth. Clelia chides her for letting herself get so cold.
Something has happened, she says to them, over and over again. I know it has.
Emilia avoids her eye, focusing instead on the broth, the fetching of blankets, the building-up of the fire.
I know, is all Lucrezia can say to them.
How can she know? Clelia mutters to Emilia.
Don’t think about it now, Emilia tells her, patting Lucrezia’s arm. Don’t think about anything.
But when Clelia leaves to order water from the kitchens, so that they may bathe her, Lucrezia turns to Emilia, she grips her by the shoulder, she makes her sit down next to her, and she says: Tell me what has happened. I know you know.
Emilia begs, No, do not ask. It is better you don’t dwell on it.
Lucrezia says, Tell me.
Emilia suggests they play a game of cards or that Lucrezia does some drawing. Would her mistress like her to bring some paper?
Lucrezia says: Emilia, your mother nursed me, we are milk-sisters, you and I. You have known me longer than I have known myself. We have come a long way together. Please tell me.
Emilia touches the scar on her face, with first one finger, then another; she lowers her eyes; she speaks falteringly. She heard, she tells Lucrezia, from a kitchen maid who heard it from a man who serves in the Duke’s office that His Grace, the Duke, discovered that Ercole Contrari had—and here Emilia hesitates, choosing her words—had compromised the honour of the Duke’s sister the Lady Elisabetta. The Duke had condemned Contrari, head of the guardsmen, to death.
Here Emilia’s story stops, with what Lucrezia immediately sees as an inconclusive suddenness.
Go on, she says.
No, Emilia whispers, shaking her head.
Yes, Lucrezia says. Tell me.
So, Emilia says, her voice wavering, because the Lady Elisabetta showed no remorse, and refused to condemn Contrari, saying that she loved him and that he loved her, the Duke ordered—Emilia pauses, swallows—he ordered that Contrari be strangled to death and the Lady Elisabetta be forced to watch.
Lucrezia listens to every word, to the separate sound of each, their syllables, the gaps between them. She runs them through her head, sentence by sentence. She picks over them, with care, with her full attention, so that she is sure of their meaning, their significance, so that she completely comprehends what Emilia is saying.
