The Marriage Portrait(108)

This is a different man, surely, from the one who ordered Contrari’s death. It cannot have been him. This is her husband, who loves her, or seems to; that was the ruler of Ferrara. They are the same man; they are different men, the same yet different.

“You are nauseated and cannot keep down food, I hear. Is that right?”

He is leaning close to her, fingers curled around her arm, a lopsided smile on his face.

“I…No, it is more…” Lucrezia tries to order her thoughts. “Who told you this?”

“Nunciata wrote to me. It’s true?”

“I have felt…I have no appetite.”

His face breaks into a wide grin. “The physician is outside,” he says, springing up from the bed. “May I ask him to come in?”

Lucrezia is mystified. Why would Nunciata write to him about her appetite? And why is he suddenly being so charming and attentive to her?

“A physician is not necessary,” she protests. “I don’t need—”

“You have nothing to fear. He is the best in the whole of the region. He will take excellent care of you. I have sent away your women but I shall remain in the room with you the whole time.”

Lucrezia raises herself to a sitting position. “Alfonso, why—?”

The physician steps over the threshold, performing a deep bow first to Alfonso, then to Lucrezia. He has a bald pate that gives off a glaring sheen and carries a bag of rigid leather.

“Your Highness,” he says, coming to the side of the bed. “His Grace, the Duke, has requested that I examine you. Might I be permitted to take your pulse?”

He bows again at the end of this speech and, when she nods, lifts her wrist in icy fingers.

He waits, eyes raised to the ceiling. He then asks her to open her mouth, so that he can examine her tongue. He looks into both ears, he kneels and looks into the contents of the chamber pot beneath the bed. He lays a hand to her forehead, her arm; he asks to view her breasts and abdomen. He palpates her stomach, with care at first, and then with more pressure.

“Well?” Alfonso says, when the doctor has indicated that Lucrezia may once again lower her shift. He is, Lucrezia suddenly realises, simmering with unaccustomed tension, a tendon standing out in his neck, eyes gleaming with an avid light.

“I believe it is unlikely that Her Grace is with child. The stomach is soft, the veins are not enlarged, and I would venture to suggest that there is an excess of choler in Her Ladyship. She seems low in spirits and perhaps might benefit from—”

Alfonso slams a hand against the wall, startling both Lucrezia and the doctor.

“You think her spirits,” he spits out, “are my concern here?”

He turns away and stands with his back to them, head bowed. The doctor glances helplessly at Lucrezia and she gives a silent shrug, as if to say, Do not look to me for help.

The doctor straightens, as if summoning courage, and changes tack.

“I understand this must come as a disappointment to His Grace, but we must not give way to despair. I see no reason at all why Her Ladyship will not be in a happy state very soon. She is young, she is healthy. Her colour is excellent and her body is neither too fleshy nor too thin. She has a pretty, rosy sort of face, and good circulation, all of which indicate that she will conceive a son.”

Alfonso turns around. He has tucked the hand that struck the wall into the fastenings of his giubbone, as if to tame its impulses, as if to ensure it doesn’t give him away again. He shoots Lucrezia a level, evaluating glance, then leaves the room, indicating with his head that the doctor should follow. The door between chamber and salon closes.

Lucrezia listens for a moment and, when she discerns voices beyond the door, she gets out of bed and presses her ear to the wooden slats.

“…has been almost a year,” Alfonso is saying, in a low tone, and he must be pacing about because she hears his voice get louder and then softer, louder again, and the tap of his boot soles, “which ought to be sufficient time, would you not agree?”

“The body,” the doctor says, “of a woman is like a fine instrument and it takes care and practice to produce the desired music—”

“How much longer, in your opinion, will it be before she will produce a child?” Alfonso demands.

There is a pause, as if the doctor is assessing the situation in which he finds himself, its pros and cons, and its possible implications for himself.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” the doctor says, “for such a question but how often do you lie with her?”

“It depends. Frequently. Every night.”

“Might I suggest a regular system of every fifth day, with a gap of abstinence in between? Such a practice ensures that the seed be enriched and matured, and falling on the replenished soil of the female. Any more than that and too much strain is placed on the male body and brain.”

“Every fifth day?”

“Yes, Your Grace. And let her see her confessor in the gap, so she may be appropriately shriven. This has proved a most efficacious method, in accordance with Greco-Roman science. Also, with the utmost respect, and the forgiveness of Your Grace, at such a time, it is considered best that a man should confine himself solely to the embraces of his wife, not to expend himself elsewhere, in—”

It interests Lucrezia that Alfonso interrupts the doctor at this point, speaking over him, cutting off what he was about to say.