The Marriage Portrait(57)

“What he needs to do, as a matter of some urgency,” Leonello says, looking her straight in the eye, “is produce an heir. And then,” he wafts a gloved hand through the warm air, “the whole problem disappears. And so here you are. At last. The great hope of Ferrara.” Leonello bares his teeth at her in a smile. “You must understand the pressing nature of this. There are—how can I put this?—no other possible contenders for his heir.”

Lucrezia takes a small step back, away from the man and his horse. “I’m not sure what you—”

“No previous, shall we say, indiscretions? No illegitimate issue?”

She shakes her head. “I—”

“He has never fathered a child.”

Lucrezia looks down, away, anywhere but at this man who spouts words that are so base, that go beyond sense. She wants to cover her ears, to protect them from his vile sentences. But his voice continues, in the same dispassionate tones.

“Most men in his position—as you yourself know only too well—have at least one or two bastards, sometimes more, sown in the folly of youth, children who can be ushered into use, if all else fails. But not our Alfonso. People are beginning to say that perhaps he is incapable in some way, a rumour that must, of course, be disproved.” Leonello draws off one glove then the other. “So now he has you, daughter of the famous La Fecundissima of Florence, and all those troubles, I am certain, are at an end.”

Leonello tugs at the bridle of his waiting horse and presents her with his arm. “Shall we?” he says, indicating the villa.

Lucrezia ignores the proffered arm. She will not touch this man; she will not go anywhere with him.

“We all have our part to play,” he says mildly, “don’t we? And mine, at this present moment at least, is to make sure that nothing untoward happens to you.”

Lucrezia is silent. She is considering Leonello’s extraordinary revelations. Everything he has said—the sisters who want to leave, their putative children who could strip Alfonso of his dukedom, how he urgently requires an heir, that he might be incapable—threatens to pierce the armour she has constructed against this man and his sardonic tone, his vying for position. But, she reminds herself, she sees him for what he is, a person who always wants to be first, to win in the race for the affections of Alfonso. She will not engage with this particular competition. She will not listen to him, to his nasty whispers and insinuations. She refuses.

“You are not accompanied by your guardsman, are you? You’ve left the villa without him?” Leonello makes a show of looking up and down the path. “He is a good man, with a family to provide for—I chose him for the job myself. It would be a pity if he were to be punished for letting you leave alone. Would it not?”

She allows there to be a pause. It grows between them, there on the path. A dignified silence, one that tells him that she is a duchess, above behaviour as petty as his, that she is considering his suggestion and will let him know her answer in good time.

She will not look at him while she maintains this stillness. She considers the path leading away from her, the way it draws the eye along the valley floor, between fields and enclosures, through woodland, narrowing and vanishing. She looks back at the villa, its gables glowing red, the windows reflecting repeating squares of clouds.

“Very well,” she says finally, and she turns back the way she came. Leonello gives the bridle of the horse a sharp tug, and walks along beside her. From their saddle gibbet, the hares swing and sway.





A Curving Meander of the River


Fortezza, near Bondeno, 1561





“I must get up,” Lucrezia says, and begins to push back the covers.

“No, no,” Emilia, who is kneeling at the hearth, trying to rekindle the fire, protests. “You should stay in bed.”

“Really, I must.”

Lucrezia edges towards the side of the bed and pauses there, resting her feet on the floor. The room swings slightly, its corners coming closer, like people in a dance, then receding back to their rightful place. Her limbs feel weak and boneless but she forces herself upright, allowing Emilia to place the furs about her shoulders.

She staggers to a chair, head clasped in her hands. What to do? She poses this question to herself in a tranquil cadence, as if it is of no more significance than what she should wear that day or whom she should invite to a gathering. She needs to do something, to take some course of action. But what? What is a woman supposed to do when she suspects her husband of trying to murder her? To whom should she appeal?

She tells Emilia to bring her ink. Her hand trembles as she presses the penknife to the shaft of the quill, her arm remembering the force of the sickness, still quaking in fear of it.

The knife slices cleanly through. She is in luck. The nib she has cut is a good one—strong, ending in a sharp point that will not fray on first contact. She presses it to the pad of her index finger, watching as the blood flees from it, creating a white depression in her flesh, cringing away from its power.

She lowers the quill into the waiting ink and writes, in a laboured, uneven hand, the words I need help. She dips into the ink again: Please send assistance.

To whom is she writing? She has no clear idea. To whom should she address this plea? Her mother would dismiss it, saying she is being dramatic, that Lucrezia is, as usual, letting her imagination run away with her. Her father, then. Would he read this letter, if she could get it to him, if it could be brought to his attention in time? Or would it be buried by the heaps of letters arriving at his desk?