The Marriage Portrait(71)

“I…” she hesitates, suddenly feeling the strangeness of her situation—alone with two young men of indeterminate station she has never met before, she might be in trouble if someone reports this to Alfonso “…I once saw a similar type of…fit.”

“And they cured it like this?” He gestures at the dish.

Lucrezia nods. “I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing. I just came upon him here, lying on the floor, and I was so frightened. He looked so terrible that I really thought he—”

“How incredible! You did exactly the right thing,” the second young man says, interrupting her. “You saved his life.”

“No,” she protests, “I merely—”

“You did,” he insists. Then he nudges his companion with the toe of his boot. “She saved your life, Jacopo. This beautiful young woman. Aren’t you lucky?”

Lucrezia stands. The man takes the dish and spoon from her, with an easy grace, and continues to give Jacopo small amounts, waiting to see when he has swallowed.

“What brings you to Voghiera?” she asks.

“We are here for the portrait,” he says, keeping his eyes on Jacopo.

“The portrait?”

“The marriage portrait. Of the new Duchess.”

Lucrezia leans against the wall. She isn’t sure if it is the shock of coming across a dying man, or the fear in the moments when she’d thought she couldn’t save him, or the relief that he is now back from the brink, but her limbs feel suddenly weak, her vision clouded. “Are you…the artists?”

This question makes the crouching man let out a cheerful laugh. “No,” he says. “Well, in a way. We are his apprentices. Two of them, anyway. I am Maurizio, and this,” he taps the prostrate form with the back of his hand, “is Jacopo. Who gives us endless trouble. But we love him anyway.”

“How many apprentices are there?”

“It varies. Between five and ten at any one time, depending on how many commissions we have. Jacopo here is the painter of cloth and I—”

“Cloth?”

“Yes.” He grins up at her. “The way it drapes over an arm or a leg, the way silk catches the light, the way the colour of fabric alters if near candlelight. It is not so simple. No one does it like Jacopo.”

“But does your master not—?”

“Him?” Maurizio scoffs. “Il Bastianino wouldn’t dirty his fingers for the cloth. Too much like hard work. No, he’ll do the face and perhaps the hands, if he hasn’t drunk too much—and Jacopo will do them, if he has. Don’t tell the Duke, though, eh?” He winks at her, grinning wickedly. “Jacopo’s speciality is cloth. Mine is the landscape behind.”

“Behind the person?”

“Yes.” Maurizio unceremoniously heaves Jacopo towards the corridor wall and props him in a sitting position. “The hills, the lakes, the trees. That’s what I do.”

“I had no idea that the work was shared like that.”

“Oh, always,” Maurizio says. “Everyone in the studio will have a hand in it.” He sits down, next to Jacopo. “So, what can you tell us about the Duchess Consort?”

Lucrezia is silent. She realises that, shoeless as she is, and with an overall covering her dress, she must look to them like a servant.

“We hear she is very young,” Maurizio is saying, “and very beautiful. Is that right? With hair like Venus herself.”

“I…I couldn’t say.”

“Have you not seen her, then?”

“Well…”

“Her husband keeping her under lock and key, is he? Wouldn’t surprise me, from what I’ve heard.”

Lucrezia presses her palms against the wall, and the back of her head. The solidity of the plasterwork feels suddenly necessary to her. “What have you heard?”

“Only that he is like Janus, with two faces, two personalities. And he can switch between them,” he snaps his fingers in the air, “like that.”

Lucrezia gives her head a shake, trying to marshal her thoughts. Lock and key? A Janus? She sees, for a moment, a depiction of the double-headed god, shown to her by her tutor, years ago: a young, smooth face looking one way, and a careworn, brooding face looking the other. Is this what her husband is really like?

“Anyway,” Maurizio is saying cheerfully, “we can’t wait to see this little duchess, especially if she is all that people say she is. Eh, Jacopo?” He nudges his friend, who manages to raise a bleary smile.

“What’s your position here, then?” Maurizio asks, looking her up and down, his eyes bright with appreciation. “I can’t say this job will be arduous if there are girls like you around.”

Lucrezia ignores him and addresses Jacopo: “How are you feeling? I must be on my way but I want to be sure you are fully recovered.”

Maurizio seizes Jacopo around the head with his arm, ruffling his halo of oaken curls. “He’s all better, I’d say.”

“Jacopo,” Lucrezia says, “are you quite well?”

“Oh,” Maurizio says, releasing Jacopo’s head, “he doesn’t speak.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Never?”