The Marriage Portrait(12)

How much of the palazzo there was to see. And how well her father knew it: how confidently he strode about it.

Cosimo stopped at a small doorway half hidden between two others, and waited as a servant sprang forward to open it. They then descended a narrow staircase, down and down. At the bottom was another door—iron-clad, reinforced with studwork. Drawing out a slender dagger from his boot, their father tapped with the hilt.

They waited. Lucrezia saw Isabella shuffle towards Maria, saw Giovanni take her hand. Francesco’s face was pinched and white, looking up at their father, as if for a hint at how to behave.

The door swung open and the smell hit them: a choking stench of filth and ripe meat. The animals in there—and how many could there be?—were howling, yipping, baying, speaking in tongues that Lucrezia couldn’t comprehend, telling her things she couldn’t parse.

They passed a cage where two apes sat with their long arms around each other, glistening eyes fastened on them, in their nightgowns and shawls and slippers. A silver-brown wolf lay alone in the next cage, stretched out on the stone floor, as if disguising itself as a rug; a bear slumped against a wall, all four paws manacled together, its snout lowered. Further along, there was a tank full of water, but nothing disturbed the surface: whatever was in there was keeping itself hidden tonight. At a cage near the end of the row, their father stopped. There was the staggering sight of two lions pacing, circling each other, a male and a female, and with every fourth step—Lucrezia counted them—the lion tilted back his head and let out a yowl. The lioness swung her head towards them, took them in with her lemon-brown eyes, then swivelled away.

Lucrezia glanced up at her father. Was this the lioness he loved? The one he fed off an iron spike?

Her father was looking at the animal, his eyes following her path around the cage. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Lucrezia saw that the lioness’s ears twitched at the sound but she did not stop her pacing, did not approach the bars.

“Hmm,” her father said. “They are upset tonight.”

“Why, Papa?” Maria asked.

“They can smell the tiger. They know it is here.”

And at last, at last, their father moved on. There was an empty cage, another empty cage—and Lucrezia wondered what had happened to the animals who lived in them—and then he stopped.

It was the final cage in the row. On one side of it, Lucrezia could see, was the outer wall of the palazzo. They were at the very edge of the building. Beyond them now was a street, then another, and another, and then the river, cutting its ochre path through the city.

The cage had iron bars, running up, running down. The fire from the torch on the wall cast a triangular slice of light across the front of the cage but left its back recesses in darkness. A slab of meat, marbled with white fat, was lying on the floor, untouched. Other than that, there was no sign of the tigress at all.

Lucrezia looked. She looked and looked into this blackness; she strained her eyes for a glimpse of orange, a glimmer of eye, the slightest movement or sign that the creature was present. But there was nothing.

“Papa?” Isabella said, after a while. “Is the tiger definitely in here?”

“It is,” their father said, craning his neck forward. “Somewhere.”

There was another pause. Lucrezia pressed her hands to her chest. Please, she said inside her head, to the creature she had seen on the cart, imprisoned by a rough wooden slatted box, please show yourself. I am here. I won’t be able to come again. Please come out.

“Is it sleeping?” asked Giovanni, doubtfully.

“Perhaps,” said their father.

Isabella danced up and down. “Wake up!” she called. “Wake up! Come on, pussycat, come on!”

Their father smiled down at her, putting a hand on her head. “What a lazy pussycat this is,” he said at last, “not coming to make friends with you all.”

“Babbo,” Isabella said, taking his hand, “may we go and see the lions again? They were my favourite.”

“Yes, indeed,” their father said, delighted. “An excellent idea. They are much more interesting than a sleepy tiger. Come, let’s go.”

He ushered his children away from the tigress’s cage, back down the corridor, the servant following behind with a torch.

Not difficult at all, then, for Lucrezia to take a step or two then fall behind the servant, then stop walking altogether and allow the darkness to fold itself around her, like a cloak. Then it was perfectly possible to retrace her steps, back, back, back to the bars of the tigress’s cage.

She crouched down, resting on her heels. The only light now was from the brazier on the wall. She heard the others clattering away from her, towards the lions, which were still baying and pacing. She could hear Isabella’s high, questioning voice, asking about the lioness and if there might be babies soon and could she, Isabella, have one, for she would dearly love a lion cub of her own. Giovanni and Maria were saying, Me too, oh, me too, can we, Papa, can we?

Lucrezia looked at the slab of darkness. It seemed to pulse and hum. She scanned it from one end to the other. She tried to think herself towards the creature it contained, tried to picture what it would have been like to be captured in a far-off place, then brought by boat to Tuscany and left here, in a stone cell.

Please, she incanted again, far more fervently than she ever did in the pews of the chapel, please.