The Marriage Portrait(84)
* * *
He doesn’t come that night. Lucrezia listens out for the purposeful tread of his boots up the private staircase, for the sound of the door latch lifting without so much as a knock. But neither comes.
She makes preparations for retiring, Emilia turning back the covers, then drawing the curtains around the bed, with Lucrezia inside: a songbird in a fabric cage. Still no sign of him.
Lucrezia waits. The room fills with darkness, the stars pushing their distant cold light through pierced holes in the sky. She pictures herself, in her tower room, at the corner of the castello, where two of its sides meet. This room seems to hover in space, above the city, high above the green moat. If she were to lean too far out of the window, she would lose her footing and drop like a stone into the water.
She asks Emilia to sleep not in the small closet off the chamber’s anteroom but on a pallet beside her bed. The maid obliges, carrying her bedding through and settling herself quickly, without fuss.
But sleep will not come for Lucrezia, refuses to hear her call. Her mind, made restless by the journey, by the new rooms, has too much to do, too many impressions to review and polish and store away, too many questions to pose and ponder. Elisabetta and her high gold shoes, her delicate cheekbones, the secret Lucrezia barely comprehends but must keep from Alfonso, Nunciata and her ill temper, her stubby fingers, the sleek, peeved face of the spaniel, with teeth like white needles, the vanished French mother, the elder sister whose putative marriage would pose a terrible threat, the court over which Alfonso must exert his authority, like a falconer bringing a bird to glove, the feast to come.
The castello, under its mantle of night, respires with strange noises: the creak of joists, faint ripples of footsteps, a shuffle and clink outside in the passageways, which Lucrezia tells herself will be the guards doing their rounds, but which the fevered part of her brain tells her is some spectre or dead spirit, dragging chains and instruments of torture around the castello’s quiet spaces.
She tries to harness her hearing, to bring it under control, like a wayward bloodhound, orders it not to listen out for all that is distant, but to focus instead on what is in the room: the brush of the bed curtains as they move in the draught, to the deep and regular sound of Emilia’s breathing.
Lucrezia is the guide for this night, its companion, its confessor. She hears doors swing open and slam closed; she hears a cart clatter along the street below; she hears the rumble of a voice—male—perhaps on the floor below, and a woman answer it, in tones that, to Lucrezia, seek to reassure; she hears, far in the distance, beyond the city walls, the plaintive cry of a wolf. She sees the darkness weaken, grapple by degrees with the dawn, then cede its sovereignty to a vitreous grey mist. And, just as this night, her first, is very nearly over, as it is ushered into obliteration, she falls asleep, an exhausted guide, her task complete.
* * *
Alfonso’s singers at the banquet stand at either side of the dais, their heads tilted upwards, their voices seeming to rise not from their mouths but from a place somewhere behind them. The sound is like nothing Lucrezia has ever heard: their voices carry more strength, more power, than any other singers’. They begin a note and, without pausing to draw in more breath, sustain and stretch it for so long that Lucrezia feels a sympathetic dizziness. How can they sing for the count of eight, nine, ten and beyond? Their voices intertwine, rising to the vaulted ceiling, twisting and growing; they sing with each other, against each other, the melody veering back and forth between them, like a shimmering kite on a string.
She glances around, wanting to know if others share her astonishment. Nunciata, on the other side of the table from her, seems oblivious, deep in conversation with someone introduced to Lucrezia as a poet. Her spaniel stands on the table, lapping from a dish, its little haunches convulsed by shivers. Elisabetta is facing the performers but her gaze has slid sideways, fixed on the far side of the room. Others listen for a moment, then turn to their neighbour to murmur a remark or an aside; two women, one in an emerald-green dress and a frothy half-ruff, the other’s hair adorned with small, stuffed birds, are whispering together, their faces close, their shoulders trembling with silent laughter. A man at the end of the table has one hand inserted into an arrangement of fruit, his fingers straying over grapes, peaches, apricots; he settles on a fig, drawing it out of the heap and dropping it, whole, into his waiting mouth. Catching Lucrezia’s eye, he gives her a wink, his lips mobile and moist. She looks away. Only Alfonso, Lucrezia sees, is intent on the music. He leans forward, one elbow on the table, chin resting in his hand, his index finger beating out the tempo of the song on his temple. He is rapt, transported; he is caught up in the music, a willing butterfly in its beautiful frail net. She pictures the notes and phrases rippling through his head, like many-coloured pennants.
She is wearing her wedding gown as she sits at the banqueting table. He had come to her rooms earlier in the day, looking tired and unslept, to request this of her. He was sorry, he said, that he was not able to visit her yesterday evening. State matters had required his attention—many people had needed to speak with him, it is often so when he has been absent from the castello—but would she please wear the gown to the festa arranged in her honour? Courtiers would be happy to see her in her wedding clothes, and he would be proud to escort her into the room and present her to the court. She had looked like a goddess and he wants the whole of Ferrara to see her thus, at his side. Emilia clapped her hands when he had gone and ran to fetch it. She was so happy, she said, as she straightened its skirts and teased out the gold panels, that Her Highness would wear it again, and so soon.