The Marriage Portrait(39)

Emilia is putting a hand on Lucrezia’s shoulder. “You must stay there, lying down. You need to rest. I will go to the Duke and tell him you are unwell and he will send for—”

“No!” Lucrezia grasps Emilia’s hand. “Don’t go downstairs. Don’t leave this room, do you understand? Neither of us will leave. Don’t tell anyone you are here. I have to think, I have to—”

“Madam, you need a doctor. I will ask—”

“Emilia,” Lucrezia whispers, pulling the maid close. “Emilia. Listen.” She wonders for a moment what she has to disclose, how to make Emilia understand, but then she finds she is speaking the words before she has even decided what to say: “He means to kill me.”

If Emilia is startled by this utterance, it is no more so than Lucrezia herself. The sentence seems to slide from her mouth and gather like smoke in the air between them. It is the truth, Lucrezia realises in that moment. She knew it last night, at dinner, but somehow she persuaded herself—or perhaps clever Alfonso convinced her—that she was mistaken. But this is what she is facing. Death has come for her. It is knocking at her door; it is sliding its fingers through the keyhole; it is searching for a way past the lock.

Emilia has her head on one side, gazing down at her. She has heard the words; she is considering them, but instead of gasping and starting to wail, she pats Lucrezia’s fingers.

“Your Highness,” she says, “fever can fill a head with all—”

“Please listen to me,” Lucrezia gets out from her raw throat. “Please. You have to believe me. He will kill me. You understand? That is why he brought me here, without you, without anyone. No witnesses. You see?”

“Madam,” Emilia glances nervously towards the door, shifting from foot to foot, “remember, you have not been yourself for a while now, and perhaps—”

“He poisoned me,” Lucrezia says, gripping Emilia’s hand as tightly as she can. “Last night. I know it. The venison or the soup or the wine—I don’t know. But he did. You have to believe me.”

In the white winter light of the room, Emilia’s face undergoes a change. She looks at her mistress, she looks at the recently scrubbed floor, she looks at the sketches on the table, she looks out of the window at the fringes of the river. When she turns back to Lucrezia, her expression is tempered with a frown.

“I cannot believe it,” she says. “The Duke is a man of honour, and he loves you. He would never do such a thing. Not to you. Not to his wife.” As Emilia speaks, as she debates the subject with herself, Lucrezia can see the idea spreading its roots, slowly and stealthily, into her thinking. She can see Emilia begin to believe her, little by little.

“But he loves you,” Emilia says again, in a whisper this time. “He does. Anyone can see that.”

Lucrezia says nothing but keeps her eyes on the maid’s face.

“How could he ever…” Emilia exclaims “…how is it possible…What kind of a man would do that?”

Emilia sinks to the bed. She grips Lucrezia’s limp hand. “Oh, madam,” she says. “Whatever shall we do?”

Lucrezia loves her for that “we.” She revels in the sound of it. That single syllable is a balm to her disordered mind, to her aching and empty body.

“I don’t know,” Lucrezia says. She rubs her forehead, as if trying to erase the pain there. “I cannot say.”





Man Asleep, Ruler at Rest


Palazzo, Florence, & Delizia, Voghiera, 1560





It is the very end of her wedding day and she is sitting in darkness so profound she cannot see her hands in front of her face. It is the middle of the night, deep in the sunless hours, and the covered carriage waits just inside the bolted gates of the palazzo, under the arch. Outside, she can hear servants talking to each other, discussing how to secure this box here, to move that bag there, to add more straps to the luggage, to ensure that the horse is properly harnessed.

In her lap there is a rosary, a nosegay, and a woollen shawl with a slippery fringe. The seat beneath her is padded with a velvet cushion, studded with gold buttons, but she is only too aware of the unforgiving wooden slats of her father’s carriage beneath her.

Perhaps dawn is about to break: the starlings outside in the piazza are beginning their percussive chatter. It is possible to hear them through the darkness and the heavy wooden palazzo gates. She had thought that she and Alfonso would leave straight away, after the wedding Mass, that she would move seamlessly from the church into her new life. But no. No one had thought to inform her that after the Mass came an interminable wedding feast: long tables heaped with roasted meats and herbed breads, Lucrezia managing to swallow only a few morsels, and then the men left to watch the chariot race put on by Lucrezia’s father, and then, just as it seemed the feast might end, that she might be permitted to rise from her place at the table, the men returned, flushed and excited, and then musicians were entering and they began to play, while a tumbling troupe came leaping into the salon, and the nano Morgante got into a fight with one of the acrobats, and then came some dancing, and Alfonso partnered her, then Eleonora, then Isabella, and then he asked her again, and Lucrezia was by this time so exhausted that even to stand made her feel dizzy but she knew that her parents were watching, and members of the Ferrarese court, so she had to smile and put her hand into his, and to compel her feet to perform the steps, her head to stand upright on the stem of the neck, her face to appear agreeable; she was required to make her movements as graceful as possible—but not too much—when really all she wanted to do was to go to her chamber, strip off the heavy gold cintura and the cage of a wedding dress, and fall asleep.