The Marriage Portrait(11)
The tutor came past Isabella, said nothing, and just as he neared Lucrezia’s slate, Isabella called: “Papa!”
He turned, his hand on the door. “Yes?”
“I have heard a rumour,” Isabella said, her fingertip pressed to her cheek.
“Is that so? And what rumour is this?”
Maria jumped in: “That a tiger has arrived.”
Their papa stared, amazed. He was silent for a moment, and then he smiled. “Incredible. Did you hear that, signore? My daughters know everything that goes on.” He wagged a finger at Maria and Isabella. “You are just like your mamma, the pair of you, in every way.”
Isabella clasped her hands together. “May we see it? Please, Babbo, will you let us? Will you?”
Their father laughed. “Perhaps. I will take you all, if the signore tells me you have done well in your lessons today.”
* * *
When the lesson is over, and the children have been ushered away to their music master on the floor below, instruments tucked under their arms, the antiquities tutor will walk about the schoolroom, tidying away slates and styluses. He will be sore of foot and longing for the plate of beans and bread he will be given in the kitchens before he retires to his small cell-like room. And he will be hurrying in this, the final task of his teaching day, eager to get to his own studies. Even so, when he reaches Lucrezia’s little desk, at the back of the room, he will pause, puzzled, lifting a sheet of paper between finger and thumb, examining what he sees there: not Greek lettering but a study in perspective, with all lines and principles perfectly observed. He sees, to his incredulity, Aulis: the becalmed fleet, the motionless sea, and here is Agamemnon, waiting at the duplicitous altar, and there is poor Iphigenia, making her way towards him.
He will be so taken aback that he will look up and around the room, as if he suspects some trick has been played upon him.
How can this be the work of a child so small, so quiet that he often forgets she is there? It seems so unlikely but the tutor can think of no other explanation. He tries for a feeling of outrage—that the child should have been paying attention to his lesson, instead of sketching—but the image is so compelling, so arresting, that his teacherly disapproval dissolves.
The antiquities tutor will scroll the drawing into itself, tuck it into his jacket, where it will remain for the rest of the day, its presence temporarily slipping his mind. When he undresses that night, it will fall to the floor, and he will study it again, by candlelight, once more transported to the strange and windless place of Aulis. The next day, in a back corridor, he will pass the drawing teacher—a somewhat effeminate young man with a fondness for velvet caps, from the studio of Giorgio Vasari, the court artist.
I have something I wish to show you, the antiquities tutor will say to him, producing Lucrezia’s drawing out of his leather folder. What do you say to this?
The drawing tutor will stop with a smile—he has a latent fondness for this man, so scholarly and earnest, the way the lenses of his spectacles catch the light. He takes the page with a flourish and his most winning smile, shaking his cap’s tassel off his brow. He is not expecting much: his thoughts are more engaged in whether or not he should invite this man to leave the palazzo one evening, to abandon his dusty studies, and walk out with him into narrow streets of the city. His light green eyes skim the page, considering how to frame the invitation. Then he will forget all about it. His gaze will flit from horizon to ship to altar to curtain; he will take in the walking figure’s sense of motion and lightness, the waiting man’s hulking threat; he will note the way the edges of the pathway are tapering, the sizes and angles of the ships, and how they are devised to give a gradation for the eye, from foreground to background.
Who did this? he will ask instead, turning it over and back. Not Maria? Il principe—Francesco?
The antiquities tutor will shake his head. Lucrezia, he will say.
The drawing tutor will have to think for a moment. The very little girl who sits at the back?
Yes, her. The antiquities tutor will nod gravely, then say: I thought you should know.
Then he moves off, along the corridor, books and maps held to his chest. The drawing tutor, staring after him, realises he has missed his chance, once again. He looks again at the drawing in his hand. There is something unguarded and animate about it. Something improbable. Servants and guardsmen make their way around him as he stands there, considering what to do about the drawing and the child who produced it.
* * *
The nocturnal walk to the Sala dei Leoni would be something the five children would always remember, in different ways. Francesco would recall the soldiers stationed at each gate, their weapons in their fists, saluting his father as they passed. Maria would think again and again of the water spurting up from the fountains, and how she had been surprised to see they still flowed at night, the dolphin ceaselessly swallowing and regurgitating water. Giovanni would remember most of all the way Isabella imitated the solemn expressions of the portraits they passed: the male ancestor who looked out peevishly from beneath a cornered hat, the woman who seemed very pleased with herself as she fingered a rope of pearls, the haughty man with a preposterously small dog at his heels, the pair of whey-faced children with a globe behind them. Isabella captured them all, her eyes gleaming with mockery.
Lucrezia held tight to her papa’s cloak, her feet hurrying, her head turning one way then the other, taking in as much as she could. The wide stone staircases, the handrails set into the walls, the rooms leading off other rooms, the ceilings painted with stars or golden lilies, the family shields carved into the lintels, the shuffling servants, who stepped to the walls, lowering their eyes when they saw the Duke and his children, the heavy doors that her father unlatched and pushed his way through. The way the opal light of dusk fell at an oblique angle into the first courtyard, funnelled down from the sky above, but the second courtyard was darker and larger, with doorways and arches leading off it, and water spigots hidden in corners. The way it was possible to sense the Sala dei Leoni before you saw it.