The Marriage Portrait(36)
“I thought only Papa saw you.” Lucrezia is shocked by this new version of a story she thought she knew backwards. “You were facing away from him, looking up at the ceiling.”
Her parents glance at each other and a private thread is being spun between them, as if one of Eleonora’s silkworms is at work in the air. Lucrezia’s father blinks, taking his wife’s pale fingers.
“No.” Eleonora’s jewels tinkle as she shakes her head. “I saw him but I pretended not to. I knew he was there. I knew he admired me. I knew, in that moment, how things would be.”
Her father holds his wife’s gaze and wets his lips, which always look so red inside the hair of his beard. Lucrezia averts her eyes. The church of Santa Maria Novella is behind her now, she knows, its great height looming up from the streets. Her mother is turning her head, asking if the other carriage is coming with the boys, and Lucrezia feels once more, like a heavy sack strapped to her back that she must forever carry, the knowledge that her mother loves the boys best, that nothing can replace them in her eyes, that Isabella is her father’s favourite and can do no wrong, that there has never been enough love left over for her, that she will always be the afterthought, tolerated at best, and she wants to say, why is it them you love, why not me, can you not see how cold Francesco is and how cruel Pietro is turning out to be, why am I being made to marry this man who will take me away to Ferrara, when Isabella is allowed to stay here, why am I the one who will be sent away?
The carriage pulls to a stop. Lucrezia swallows down these words like a bitter medicine. It is too late for such subjects: the time for them has elapsed and they don’t matter any more. Her new life is about to begin. She, Lucrezia, will be born anew, no longer the fifth daughter of Florence, small for her age and overlooked: she will be the Duchess of Ferrara.
She lifts her eyes to the stone cliff-face of the church; she sees where its campanile has stitched itself to the summer sky, the brown brick meeting blue, and she gets unsteadily to her feet.
* * *
The interior of the church is a relief: the noise of the city falls from her as she steps through the doors.
Her father and mother pause at the font, dipping their hands into the water; Lucrezia is about to do the same, but then, turning, she stops. The building ahead of her is astonishing: she has never seen anything like it. A long stretch of red-tiled floor sweeps away from her, with pale repeating arches on either side. Light enters at an oblique angle from invisible lofty windows, high above their heads, warming the apex of the arches, alchemising the white plaster to lozenges of gold. Candles gutter and flare, piercing the dusk, each at the centre of its own glowing corona. The lines of the roof, the lines of the aisle lead the eye irrevocably all the way to an altar surrounded by painted saints with golden halos, and windows of many-coloured glass.
Lucrezia steps forward, awed; she casts her eyes up, to one side, to the other, wanting to memorise it, so that she may be able to replicate it later. She will need paper, chalk, the colours of white, red, the azure blue of the windows, the vivid yellow, the gilt of the halos—and she feels a pulse of something like excitement or panic. How soon can she do this? How can she remember it all? And is it not incredible that a building of plain stone can conceal such a heart as this, a kernel of glory, fire and gold?
They are proceeding up the aisle. The air is laced with incense and smoke; she can see it coiling and turning in the narrow spears of sunbeams; somewhere there is low singing in Latin. Beneath her feet, Lucrezia sees a face cast in white marble, eyes shut, partially worn away, its body half submerged in the floor, like a person floating down a stream on their back. A strange place for a tomb, she thinks, the floor of a church, where all may scuff their feet against you, tread on your eternal rest.
They are reaching the altar, where a group of people are standing, one of them a priest in a white-and-gold robe so long it appears he has no feet, that he moves on wheels, or floats just above the floor.
Lucrezia is smiling at this thought for nothing can touch her in a place as beautiful as this, as heavenly, no bad thing could possibly take place here; she is filled to her outer edges with the soaring space, the insubstantial celestial rafters of light that mimic the prosaic wooden ones above. She is aware of her father stepping away from her, for a moment, she believes, and then she feels a sudden touch—respectful but sure.
A hand is taking hers. It is large, with long fingers and a warm palm. She can glimpse part of its wrist, in the gap between veil and dress; the rest is swallowed by fabric. Black hairs are growing in a single direction, away from the cuff, like a crop blown by a prevailing wind; it belongs to a tall person who is standing next to her. This hand covers the whole of hers.
Lucrezia hears herself gasp—a small inhalation inside the private space of her veil. Her hand appears to be gone, subsumed, her sleeve ending in the strong, proprietorial clasp of a stranger.
And so this is Alfonso. He is here, next to her, waiting for the ceremony to begin. How stupid of her not to realise. It is him, Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, the man who will stow her and her bags and her dowry and return with her to his castle. He is here and he is real.
A sword is raised and held over their heads and Alfonso is presenting her with a gold cintura, heavy with rubies and pearls, which he fastens around her waist. Then he straightens and places first one ring, then another, then another, on her hand. The third, bearing the impression of his crest, an eagle with outstretched wings, is slightly too large. She has to curl her fingers to keep it in place, and she feels its unfamiliar press on her flesh as she watches her father ceremoniously hand Alfonso a silver dish and boccale. The men bow gravely to each other.