The Marriage Portrait(13)

The fat-laced meat was giving off a ferrous, acrid scent. Why hadn’t the tigress eaten it? Was she not hungry? Was she too sad? Was she scared of the lions?

Lucrezia was gazing into the depthless black, searching for movement, for colour, anything, but her eyes were too weak or she must have been looking the wrong way because there was a flicker of movement next to the stone palazzo wall and, by the time she turned her head to see, the tigress was almost upon her.

Liquid was her motion, like honey dropping from a spoon. She emerged from the shadow of her cage as if she had the whole stretch of the jungle at her command, the filthy mud floor of Florence rolling under her paws. No pussycat, she. She simmered, she crackled, she seethed with fire, her face astonishing in its livid symmetry. Lucrezia had never seen anything so beautiful in her life. The furnace-bright back and sides, the pale underbelly. The marks on her fur, Lucrezia saw, were not stripes, no—the word was insufficient for them. They were a bold, dark lace, to adorn, to conceal; they defined her, they saved her.

Closer and closer she came, allowing the triangle of light to fall upon her. Her eyes were locked on Lucrezia. For a moment, it seemed as if she would pass her by, as the lioness had done. But the tigress paused, stopping in front of the girl. Her mind was not elsewhere, like the lioness’s. She had noticed her; she was there, with Lucrezia; there was much the two of them needed to say to each other. Lucrezia knew this, the tigress knew this.

Lucrezia eased herself forward, coming to her knees. The tigress’s flank was there, beside her: repeating incisions and ellipses of black in the amber. She could see the breath entering and leaving her body; she could see where the torso sloped away into her tender underside, the soft spread of her paws, the quivering in her limbs. She saw how the animal lifted her lustrous muzzle, nosing the air, sifting it for all it could tell her. Lucrezia could feel the sadness, the loneliness, emanating from her, the shock at being torn from her home, the horror of the weeks and weeks at sea. She could feel the sting of the lashes the beast had received, the bitter longing for the vaporous and humid canopy of jungle and the enticing green tunnels through its undergrowth that she alone commanded, the searing pain in her heart at the bars that now enclosed her. Was there no hope? the tigress seemed to be asking her. Will I always remain here? Will I never return home?

Lucrezia felt tears welling in her eyes. To be so alone in such a place! It wasn’t fair or right. She would ask her papa to send the animal back. They could take it on to the ship, and sail to wherever they had found her, open the bars of her cage and watch her dive back into the lichenous towering trees.

Slowly, slowly, Lucrezia put out her hand. She snaked her fingers through a gap in the iron bars and stretched, spreading her fingers, reaching out of her shoulder socket, straining forward, her face pressed close to the cage.

The tigress’s fur was pliant, warm, soft as down. Lucrezia eased her fingertips along the animal’s back, feeling the quiver of her muscles, the flexing beads of her spine. There was no difference between the orange fur and the black, no join, as she’d thought there might be. The two colours overlapped and merged without trace.

The tigress swung her vivid, complex face around, as if to examine the person behind such a caress, as if to ascertain its meaning. To look into her eyes was to behold the visage of an incandescent, forbidden deity.

Lucrezia and the tigress regarded each other, for a stretched moment, the child’s hand on the beast’s back, and time stopped for Lucrezia, the turning world stilled. Her life, her name, her family and all that surrounded her receded and became void. She was aware only of her own heart, and that of the tigress, pulsing inside the ribs, drawing in scarlet blood and shooting it out again, flooding their veins. She barely breathed; she didn’t blink.

Then, a sudden cry, and Maria was shrieking, Papa, Papa, look, and the world and the palazzo came surging back. Maria was facing her, a startling white figure printed on the darkness, arm raised, an admonishing finger pointing at Lucrezia. Feet were clattering, people were shouting, and Lucrezia was being seized from behind and dragged backwards, away from the tiger, cracking her wrist on the bars. She could hear her father calling orders; one of her siblings was screaming, and her own voice yelling, no, no, put me down.

Lucrezia was then being hurried away, down the corridor, clutched in the arms of one of her father’s soldiers. Maria was somewhere nearby, saying, in her cold and instructive voice, what a stupid, stupid thing to do, she could have been killed, I told you she was too young to come, I wonder what will Mamma say when she hears. Lucrezia’s wrist throbbed with the blow, her fingers felt naked and raw: they still held the sensation of warm fur, of sleek stripes.

She had no thought for her siblings or her father—she didn’t know if they were with her or behind her or ahead or if they were still standing by the lions. All she knew was that she was being borne away from something she loved more than anything else in the world, that the distance between them was increasing, with every step taken. She was crying out, pleading to be let down, to be allowed back, but no one was heeding her. She kept her eyes on the cage, for as long as she could. She looked and looked over the shoulder of the man who was carrying her, strained her eyes into the dark, and saw—she was always sure of this, afterwards—the tigress gazing at her, for one final instant, then vanishing, back into her dark lair, with a whipcrack whirl of striped tail.





Venison Baked in Wine