The Marriage Portrait(49)
This thought effervesces inside her, bubbling up her throat, to exit her mouth as a sound halfway between a laugh and a squeak.
Around her, the garden stretches, impassive and incurious. She is alone. (Apart, that is, from a man with slightly bandy legs and a curved knife in his belt; Alfonso said this man would accompany her on her walks, always at a distance, and that she must not give him a second thought, and that if she wanted for anything, she could summon him and he would be at her side in seconds.)
For now, today, she wanders past a bank of flowers with thick purple blooms, which undulate and vibrate with the preoccupied movements of hundreds of bees, rising and resettling. She ducks beneath the bower where the star-like petals of jasmine leak their scent into the air. The hem of her dress trails after her, netting twigs, fallen petals. She passes herb beds, a row of peach trees, some waving grasses, and then she finds she has circled back, without realising it, to the fountain at the centre of the garden—an oval, tiered structure in veined marble, with a sea monster joyfully gargling water into the bright, scented air.
She still cannot believe that such liberty, such motion, is allowed to her. After she had breakfasted on the milk and honey cakes brought to her chambers, and dressed with the help of Emilia, she had been led across the villa’s courtyard to a long room where Alfonso had been sitting at a table, attending to some papers and giving orders to a man who held his cap in both hands.
He had leapt up upon seeing her, pushing aside his papers, dismissing the man, and taken her arm, bringing her out here, through the courtyard, to the villa’s gardens, and told her she could “wander at will” whenever she liked. The garden, he said, had been laid out with the leisure and pleasure of ladies in mind.
Impossible to say to him, as her arm lay through his, her fingers aware of the smooth fabric of his shirt sleeve, that she had never been permitted to wander at will, anywhere, that her parents believed girls should be kept under attentive watch, in a limited number of rooms, until marriage, that they should be closely supervised and never left alone.
But here, Lucrezia had thought, was marriage. The arm of a man cradling yours, his tall presence beside you on a path, his voice telling you which architect had laid out this walkway, that arbour, where the marble for the fountain was mined. A walled villa with angels and gods on the ceilings, and all about it rolling fields and dense woods and, in the distance, the meandering line of a river, like a line of gold-brown embroidery thread tacking through the valley.
Alfonso had accompanied her through the first garden and into the second, his head turned towards her, as if everything she did—walk, speak, gesture, shade her eyes from the sun—was interesting to him. He was just about to take her through a third gate, telling her that this was his favourite part of the walk, when he suddenly and without warning broke away, his attention drawn by the unobtrusive cough of a person, who materialised from a line of almond trees, a sheaf of papers dangling from his hand.
Lucrezia had stood for a moment, uncertain, her arm falling back to her side, wondering if she should wait for him, if she should approach him or stay back—what was the best course of action? But he had waved her on, retracing his steps to speak to the man, and she had needed no further encouragement. She continued, secretly delighted to be alone, even for a minute or two. She moved along the path with rapid feet, under the frothing almond blossom, and out into the third garden, with a symmetrical network of narrow paths, lined by low hedges, along which she was now trailing a hand.
The cool prickle of the waxy evergreen leaves against the lines of her palms. The options of left, right or straight on at each junction in the path. The warring wafts of scent from different flowers. The enormous expanse of blue sky that stretches from one distant horizon to the other. Never has Lucrezia seen as much sky as this—above the roofs and windows of Florence, the sky is hazed by smoke or mist, and seen in hemmed-in patches.
She turns to face the villa and sees the low reddish side of the building, the line of trees, and Alfonso, his head bent, in conversation with the man who holds the papers. Alfonso: a tall figure in dark hose and pale shirt, bareheaded; the man shorter than him, in a grey shirt, a cap set back on his lion-coloured hair.
As Lucrezia watches them, the shapes they make against the thick foliage of the trees, she realises that the man with the cap is not a servant. Lucrezia has spent her life observing people at some remove; it is an ability she has, or one that she has developed over her lifetime. She can decode stance, clothing, gesture, the positioning of a head, a facial expression, with a mere glance; the moment she walks through a door, she can tell who in the room possesses the most power, and what type, and who is whose rival, whose ally, who might be withholding some secret.
As she wanders there, among the flowers and fruit trees of the villa’s garden, she casts covert glances at the man who is now her husband, and the person next to him, who has drawn Alfonso’s attention. His clothes do not speak of servility—the shirt is finely cut, with draped fabric and embellished lappets; the cap glints with spiked ciondoli decorations—and his stance, next to the upright height of Alfonso, is casual. He leans towards Alfonso, his weight on one foot. There is, she can tell, an ease or intimacy between them. The elbow of the man glances against Alfonso’s, briefly, as they peruse the papers’ contents together, and Alfonso does not draw away.
Lucrezia watches, fascinated. Could this be the friend Alfonso mentioned, the one he practises fencing with? Or perhaps a brother or cousin, come from the city? She is sure she has been told that Alfonso’s only brother is a religious man, a cardinal, and lives in Rome.