The Marriage Portrait(106)
“Yes,” she manages to say, her mouth finding the familiar shapes required for the dialect, “but there is nothing to be done.”
Jacopo looks at her. He requires no further information, just as she knew he wouldn’t, but glances quickly around the hall, then back at her.
“There is very little time,” he murmurs, “they will be back in a moment. So listen well. There is an entrance for servants, at the back of the kitchens. Maurizio and I will stuff the lock with rags on our way out.”
“What?” she says, in her own tongue, distracted and stupefied by the sight of herself, in splendid attire, across the room, visible over the back of a person who is trying to fold a billowing sheet into submission, by the headache that has descended on her with the claws of a raptor, by the way the air feels so cold when she breathes in, packing her lungs with frost, by these words spoken to her in such a rough and rude voice.
“So that you may open it,” he says quickly. “I will be there waiting for you, in the trees, as soon as it is dark. I will stay until dawn. After that, it will be too dangerous.”
“You’ll wait for me?” she repeats, her tongue thick and unwieldy in her mouth. “Whatever do you mean?”
He looks at her, his face attentive, full of concern. Then he reaches out and touches her, at the place where the neckline of her bodice ends and her shoulder begins. She flinches with the shock of it. Part of her wishes to lash him with her voice, to say, how dare you, do not touch me, people like you are not permitted to approach me, have you any idea what my husband would do to you if he saw, what my father would—
But the feel of his fingertips—stained today, she has noticed, with patches of green, irregular in size and shape, as if his hand is the open ocean, studded by an archipelago of unmapped islands—against her skin produces a sensation the likes of which she has never felt before. It is the opposite of the convulsions that shook her in the night: it is light, fluttering, and causes concentric circles of heat to expand down her arm and up her neck. It is gentleness, it is care. It is far from anything she has felt in the bed at the delizia or in the castello or here in the fortezza. It is a touch that topples a wall built somewhere within her, that crashes through a thorned thicket that has grown and spread about her heart, through necessity and neglect. It is contact that removes obstacles, sweeps them away, hurls them into the air.
She opens her mouth to speak, to say she doesn’t know what he means, that he must be out of his mind, but also to say, if only I could, if only that were even slightly possible.
Maurizio, across the room, is muttering, Enough, Jacopo, enough, someone might come, let’s go, now.
Jacopo removes his hand, steps away from her and she only just manages not to reach out for him and grasp his arm. The circle of flesh at her neckline feels singed and bare.
“You cannot stay here,” he whispers, in the language of the faraway south. “You know that. You must leave, as soon as you can. Make sure you come.”
Then they walk away, without looking back, and she is alone again.
A Presence Malign and Predatory
Castello, Ferrara, 1561
After her mother’s letter, the need for motion leaves Lucrezia. She still spends her time outside but instead of pacing, she stands staring up at the sky. She eats little, has no desire for the company of any courtiers. Nunciata orders the evirati to sing for them after dinner one evening, but Lucrezia leaves before they finish, saying she is tired. By all means, Nunciata cries after her, rest! You should rest!
That night, enclosed in her castello bed, Lucrezia dreams that she is moving through a damp, misted place with narrow streets and unmoving channels of water. Behind and in front are children, walking along with her. They don’t assume a clear corporeal form but she knows, with the clarity of a dream, that they are her children, those yet to be born. The ones waiting, like actors poised to enter a stage, ears cocked for the cue that will summon them forth. Despite her diurnal fears about conception and motherhood, she longs to touch these creatures, to feel their small bodies against hers, to stroke the silk of their hair, to kiss the creases of their palms: she can feel these impulses beat through her, and the sensation is like a river breaching its banks to form small tributaries that course off in unexpected directions. The dream-children, who are visiting from an unknowable future, elude her grasp, though. When she reaches for them, they slink sideways, they duck into the doorways of the buildings or they skip towards curious little stone footbridges, and her hand closes on nothing but moist air. Their faces are indistinct, turned away, but their little hands brush hers, every now and again, their pliable fingers working their way between hers. Where are you? she tries to ask them. What is this place? How can I find you, and when will you come? But they don’t answer or don’t hear her. They are busy, calling to each other as they bound along, down alleyways and on to jetties, their voices passing back and forth like shuttles, the foggy air the loom cloth, their words a phantasmagorical thread.
* * *
In the room, before she goes to her own bed, Emilia is burning amber resin in a bowl. She wants Lucrezia to sleep well, and for a long time. Only through sleep, her mother always told her, will recovery come.
Grey feathers of smoke waft over the bed where Lucrezia is lying, eyes shut tight, hands gripping the bedclothes.