The Marriage Portrait(65)

“Everyone is saying that the Duke will go to Ferrara as soon as he can.” Emilia’s words continue to rattle on as she fixes the neckline of Lucrezia’s gown. “I don’t know what he’ll do there but—”

“Thank you, Emilia,” Lucrezia says, waving her off. “You may go.”

She crosses the room and steps into the corridor, shutting the door behind her with a forceful snap, leaving the maid to restore the chamber to order.

When she steps outside into the loggia, she is assaulted by glaring white daylight. It has poured into the courtyard, filling it mercilessly to the brim; the sky above the rectangular space seems to seethe and glower, like a furnace, breathing ferocious fumes down on to the villa.

Her eyes, accustomed to the dim cool of the interior, cannot adjust. She takes a step, and another, then has to lean her hand against a pillar, half closing her lids.

Before her, she sees the bleached shapes of people: two standing together opposite another. The heat and the light seem to strip them of all colour and contour, so that they resemble skeletons or branchless trees. She is aware of their voices, an ascending and tremulo lilt, weaving through the thick air. She can discern the tones of her husband, deep and rumbling, a voice of a slightly higher pitch, and another, flat in intonation and delivered down the nose—Leonello, she would guess.

Lucrezia adjusts her head; she strains her ears. Like a plant, she leans out towards the light, extending her neck, opening herself out to whatever the air may hold.

Increasingly erratic, she hears her husband murmur. An insult, says Leonello, designed specifically to undermine you, and you cannot be seen to let this pass. You must make an example of her, of all of them. And the third man, the emissary, says: Perhaps if Her Highness and her daughters could be—

A figure, tall and lean, breaks away from the arrangement, and comes towards her, limbs and torso filling out as it gets nearer, acquiring dimension and features. A finely embroidered shirt, a head of black hair.

“Lucrezia,” Alfonso says, in that way he has, barely moving his lips to form the word, and he reaches for her hand.

She looks up at him. He does not seem like someone who has received bad news or had a terrible rupture with his mother or whose court is in dangerous uproar. There is not a single glimmer of tension on his face: he looks calm and poised. Can what Emilia said be true? Is it possible she has misunderstood?

“Shall we walk?” he asks, tipping his head in a minuscule motion towards the men he has so recently left, indicating that they are excluded from this pairing, that he finds their presence irksome and wants only to be with her. How adroit he is at communicating so much with so little.

“Of course,” she says.

He draws her arm through his and they proceed along the length of the loggia. Her gown trails after them, making a suuh-suuh sound over the tiles. Lucrezia is aware of Leonello and the other man observing them; she focuses her gaze on the end of the walkway, then her husband, who is saying something to her about a hunt he undertook that morning, then the walkway again. She will not turn her head towards the watchers, not let them know she even cares that they are there: she wants Alfonso to believe she knows nothing. This, at least, she can do for him.

As they near the end of the loggia, Alfonso does something unexpected. In one swift movement, he steps behind her, and covers her eyes. She cannot see, suddenly, she cannot move; his palms obliterate most of her face, his arms pinion hers, the length of his body is pressed against her back.

She draws in a quick, shallow breath. How can she tell him that this is a game for which she has a particular dislike? Maria had a habit of seizing her, blindfolding her, either with her hands or lengths of cloth, then leading her carelessly about the nursery for sport, laughing when she bumped into chairs or tripped over fenders.

Her hands rise up of their own accord. Instead of her own familiar features—the protrusion of her nose, the smoothness of her cheeks and brow—she feels instead fingers, the hair on his wrists, the ridged row of his wide knuckles. She tries to prise his hands away in what she hopes is a playful manner, but she feels her panic rising. What is he doing? Why is this happening? Does it have anything to do with his mother or the trouble at court?

“I have a surprise for you,” she hears him murmur.

“For me?” she says, trying to keep her voice even. He would never lead her deliberately into a hard object. He would never want her to bruise her shins or her knees. Would he?

“Yes. I…” there is a rare hesitation in his speech “…I have to go away, unexpectedly.”

“Where?” she hears herself ask, even though she knows the answer.

“To Ferrara. I shall be gone a day. Perhaps two. No more than that. There is something that requires my presence, unfortunately, otherwise I would leave it to Leonello. So I shall have to go, my little bride, but not for long.”

“I could…come with you?” she suggests, from behind his hands. She can feel the heat and sweat gathering where his skin touches hers, her lashes scything against his palms.

“Not this time. Before long, I will take you to Ferrara, to present you at court. I had thought we would spend another month or so here but I think we shall need to return sooner than that now. We will ride through the city gates together—there will be a festival, people will line the streets, and all shall see you for the beauty you are. But for today, I have to travel quickly and without fuss.”