The Marriage Portrait(56)
“Good day to you,” he says, in the curious way that he has, barely moving his lips, his words leaning into each other, “Duchess.”
The final word is spoken with a drawn-out emphasis. It is an utterance that has been held back by a minuscule but deliberate pause. She knows it; he knows it. It has air and space around it, that word, that title, and in that space swarm many things he is not saying, numerous ideas he is thinking but at the same time withholding.
Lucrezia does what she always does in situations such as this. She did not grow up with four older siblings, who continually put her down, kept her in her place, excluded, teased and belittled her, and learn nothing. The dynamic he is hoping to create is as familiar to her as the shape of her own fingernails. She is expert at dodging such invisible blows.
“How are you, cousin?” she murmurs. She will not raise her voice to him any louder than this; if he wishes to hear her, let him bend down from his saddle. “I see you have been successful in your hunt.”
How will he take the “cousin,” which lays claim to a familiarity and establishes the irrefutable fact of a marriage that has taken place, possibly against this man’s advice and wishes? Lucrezia understands enough about how such things work. Leonello perhaps had a sister or a family member he wished to elevate by marriage to Alfonso. Maybe he favoured a match with a foreign princess or a daughter of another region, and Alfonso went against his advice in choosing her. Or he might bear some grudge against Lucrezia’s father’s house or influence. Who knows? Lucrezia will not ask; she will never let on to Alfonso or anyone else how this Leonello treats her. To ignore it is to drain it of its power.
Leonello, still high on his horse, waits before he speaks. “Success indeed.” He adjusts the string harnessing the hares to his saddle, so that the animals, for a moment, appear to stir, to come back to brief life. “Did you sleep well?”
Despite everything, despite the outer calm she has willed upon herself, she feels her cheeks flush. He knows, of course; he can guess at what took place last night. But she manages to hold his gaze, to look into those gold-brown eyes, unabashed, defiant, and to say, in a steady voice: “I did, thank you. It is so peaceful here.”
“You weren’t disturbed by…the wind?”
“Not at all.”
She bestows upon him a gracious yet distant smile, that of her mother.
“I see we are both early risers,” she says, then adds, with the same intonation he used, “cousin.”
There is a flicker of something across his face—mild surprise, perhaps, at her verbal parrying. Lucrezia realises, in a rush, that she was mistaken: Leonello had no other bride in mind. What he dislikes is that someone else has been allowed, in the finely calibrated hierarchy of court life, to step between him and Alfonso; Leonello enjoys being the new Duke’s closest companion. It is his whole purpose and identity, and he doesn’t wish to share it with anyone else, including a young wife. This makes her want to laugh—his hostility to her seems suddenly child-like, riven with insecurity.
He eases his feet out of the stirrups and dismounts.
“Allow me,” he says, “to escort you back to the villa. It is not good for you to be out here alone.”
“There is no reason I should not—”
“Alfonso will not like it.”
“But he—”
“You are, as I’m sure you’re aware, a very valuable asset. Perhaps his most valuable, at present, given the situation in Ferrara.”
He speaks these words as if he is in jest, as if the idea of her as a possession, a costly one, is a joke between them. But she is not taken in by his jocular tone; she knows he means every syllable and that his purpose, in saying these things, is to disconcert, to unseat her peace of mind.
“What do you mean? What situation?”
Leonello smirks, slapping the reins across his gloved palms. “You don’t know?”
“I merely—”
“Alfonso hasn’t told you?”
“He—”
“I’m referring to the old Duchess, of course, his mother. Her continued refusal to comply with Alfonso’s wishes, consorting right under his nose with known Protestants. The edict from the Pope, ordering her exile back to France. And, now, this new desire of hers to take Alfonso’s sisters with her.”
Lucrezia listens, aghast. She cannot take in the enormity of this information. “The Pope?” she repeats. “He has ordered her exile?”
“Yes.” He slaps his reins across his glove again. “I assumed you knew.”
“And Alfonso is…going against this order?”
“Not against,” he squints up into the morning sun, “but not necessarily with. He has decreed that the old Duchess must leave only when he chooses. He wants it known that she will act according to his own orders, no one else’s.”
“And does he not take a great risk, in provoking the displeasure of the Pope?”
Leonello shrugs. “That is the least of his worries. If his sisters were to go to the French court with their mother, and find husbands there, their offspring could lay claim to Alfonso’s title. And the duchy would pass into the hands of the French. He could lose everything. Everything. Unless—”
“But can he not persuade his sisters to remain with him in Ferrara? Even if the mother must go into exile, then certainly—”