The Marriage Portrait(19)
His arms press closer; she hears the struts of her bodice creak under the strain.
“You don’t need to thank me,” he says. “But you can give me another kiss.”
He turns his head, away from the light, and indicates his other cheek. After a moment, she dips her head and kisses it. Then he turns towards her and raises his mouth.
She makes herself smile. She makes herself move towards him. His features, the closer she gets, merge together, and she lowers her eyelids. He cannot mean her harm, because he wants her to kiss him, and here are his lips, beneath hers now, and there is pressure, his mouth covering hers, his large hand closing around the back of her head, and no one would do that if they meant to, if they intended to, if they were planning to— No, it is impossible, she must be mistaken, he must love her after all, he must treasure and respect her, because no one would kiss someone like this, with passion and heat and mouth and the slash of a tongue-tip, would they, no one would think of killing someone at the same time as kissing them as if they meant to pour their very soul into them?
She must have been wrong. She is overwrought from the journey, from her recent illness. She has let her imagination get away from her. Yet again she has let it lead her astray. Her handsome and sophisticated husband means her no harm. He loves her. He must do. He is kissing her at such length. How lucky she is, to be married to someone so devoted.
The kiss goes on. And on. She allows it. She laces her hands together around his neck and lets her thoughts wander. There is something incompatible about the temperatures in the room. One side of her is too hot, her left cheek and arm scorching in the fire’s heat. The other, facing the room, is too cold, the freezing miasma of the fortezza coating her.
His hands are brushing the fabric of her sleeves. Then, all at once, he pulls away.
“Come,” he says. “I will show you to your chamber.”
Lucrezia raises herself from his lap and decides to broach the subject that has been worrying her since they left court this morning.
“I wonder,” she says, in the lightest tone she can manage, as he lifts a candle from the table and takes her hand in his, as if the matter is of no consequence at all, “when my maidservants will arrive. It is getting so late and…”
He doesn’t look at her when he says: “I expect it will be tomorrow or the day after.”
“But I thought they were coming directly after us, because you said—”
“Can you not survive without your women?” He seems amused. “Even for one night?”
He moves towards the door and opens it, standing to one side to let her pass through.
“I suppose I could,” she says, stepping out into the corridor. He means me no harm, she says to herself. He loves me, he does—he says he does.
“They will come as soon as they can.” Alfonso takes her elbow, moves off down the corridor, the circle of candlelight tremulous around him; she has to lengthen her stride to keep up. “The roads would not be safe for travel after dark. You wouldn’t want your women to run into danger, would you?”
He reaches out and touches her chin, pinching it between thumb and finger, angling her face to the light. He tells her she looks beautiful. The country air is agreeing with her already.
“I miss your hair,” he says, letting her shortened plait run through his palm, “but it is still lovely.”
She nods, says, “Thank you.”
He leads her up a spiral staircase slippery with moisture and moss. She must cling to his hand so her shoes don’t skid, so she doesn’t stumble on the hem of her gown. It is only by the candle’s weak yellow penumbra that she can see where she is, the walls and corridors of this place. They go up a flight of stairs, along a corridor, and up a narrower set of steps. She finds she is trying to remember the way, to create a map of this building in her head, just in case: left out of the hall, then up the stairs, then right along a low corridor, then through an archway and—
“Here,” he says, stopping just ahead of her and pushing open a heavy wooden door. “This is where you shall sleep. I ordered a fire to be lit, so it will be warm and aired. After you, my darling.”
Everything Changes
Palazzo, Florence, 1557
By the time the four eldest children of the ruling family were approaching the end of their childhood, their futures were already mapped out for them. Their parents and emissaries and secretaries and advisers had been working on these plans since the children’s births.
Maria would marry the son of the Duke of Ferrara. Isabella was betrothed to Paolo Giordano Orsini of Rome. Francesco would one day be Grand Duke of Florence. Giovanni would excel as a cardinal.
One by one, Lucrezia’s elder siblings left the nursery. If she had felt lonely before, she was unprepared for how it would be when her older siblings grew up. To mark their betrothals, Isabella and Maria were given their own chambers. Francesco and Giovanni, on their thirteenth birthdays, also took rooms on the second floor, and Francesco was expected to join his father every day in his offices, to learn about matters of state.
Lucrezia slept alone then, on a narrow truckle, while her younger brothers took the larger bed. She sat at a desk on the other side of the schoolroom from Pietro, Ferdinando and Garzia, who were just learning their numbers and letters. She stayed up in the evenings, listening to Sofia and the other nurses converse in their native tongue: malleable vowels with interesting stresses, occasional words that were half familiar to Lucrezia’s Florentine ear. It was well known in the palazzo that Sofia would permit only young women from her Neapolitan home village to work alongside her in the nursery. Lucrezia sometimes wondered if the reason for this was really what Sofia claimed—that these girls made the best nursemaids—or whether it was because the arrangement enabled her to talk with her helpers in their own secret dialect, believing that no one else understood.