The Marriage Portrait(85)

So Lucrezia has put it on, once more: the blue skirt, the huge sleeves, the gold cintura Alfonso gave her. This time, however, she was able to instruct Emilia to fasten the bodice as she wishes, to ignore the marks made by her mother, indicating where the lacings should be tied, to make it her own. Tonight, it doesn’t feel like Maria’s but hers and hers alone. She is no longer an imposter, an interloper assuming the life of her sister, but herself: Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara.

There had been music when she and Alfonso entered the banqueting hall—trumpets sounding out trilling arpeggios—and outbursts of exclamation and applause. People were lining the long sides of the room, and Alfonso had led her on a circuit, pausing every now and again to present a particular person to her: a cousin, a friend, a courtier, a poet, a sculptor, a companion, some of Nunciata and Elisabetta’s ladies-in-waiting, a lute player, the head of the guardsmen. Lucrezia had inclined her head to these people, accepting their curtseys and bows, trying to imprint their names on her mind so that she would remember them. The dresses of the ladies were narrower than those in Florence, with higher collars, more lace, and bodices longer at the front. She examined these gowns from the corner of her eye, as an adviser of Alfonso informed her of the number of exits and entrances in Ferrara’s city walls, while Alfonso stood at her side, his hands clasped behind him. She could feel him vibrating with amusement at the man’s determination to reel off the names of all of the gates, enumerating them on his stubby fingers. She nodded, as if fascinated by this information, all the while wondering if she could draw these Ferrarese dresses in a letter to Isabella, who had told her to write with detailed descriptions of the fashions here.

It is through this lens that she views the entire festa. How would she relate this to Isabella, she is wondering throughout a long and somewhat meandering theatrical performance of a historical dramatic verse about a king who accidentally poisons his wife, and is then for evermore haunted by her ghastly and reproachful apparition. Which of the dishes, she considers as she eats, will she describe in her letter? The stuffed head of the cinghiale—its mouth forced open with a yellow quince, its eyes closed to the indignity—the fish broth, the twists of almond pastries, the frittata, the white slabs of lardo crudo, the slices of cheese so fine you can see the light through them.

She composes sentences in her head, as she sits at the table: It is a very refined court, she will write to her sister, who has remained in Florence, at their parents’ side, who has not been sent to live with her husband. They value not acrobats or nano antics but theatre, poetry and music. Or: The ladies wear their hair piled high above the radius of their ruffs. And: There was a recitation of an epic poem, followed by two singers with extraordinary voices—I only wish you could have heard them.

The thought of writing this letter brings a sharp and novel pleasure. She will be able to tell Isabella about things she does not know. She allows herself to imagine Isabella reading closely, avidly, then feeling pangs of jealousy, of wishing that she, too, could go to Ferrara. She might visit, perhaps. Lucrezia could invite her, if Alfonso permits it, and Isabella could ride over the Apennines and reside for a time here with her, in the castello.

Lucrezia sighs. The music and the voices of the singers have taken a melancholic turn, sliding into a minor key. It is unlikely that Isabella will come. She is so caught up in her life in Florence, so absorbed by it. If Lucrezia wrote to her, describing this festa, in all likelihood Isabella would lose interest halfway through the letter, toss it aside, and go off to find one of her friends or whichever courtier is her current pet.

The sentences fade in Lucrezia’s mind; they fall silent. She smooths the folds in her skirt and concentrates instead on the room, which flares with murmured conversation and song, the swaying light from the candles, which finds its echo in the jewels about the ladies’ necks, in their rings, on the hilts of the men’s weapons.

The song builds to a climax, both singers hitting the same high note, its sound swelling and amplifying in the air between them. Then, glancing at each other, they close their mouths in perfect unison, snipping the silken rope of the note in half.

Applause descends like a rainstorm. People stand up from their seats, raising their hands to clap; women wave their handkerchiefs; men call, bravo, bravo, more, again. The people who applaud the loudest, Lucrezia notes, are the ones who talked through the performance.

She claps and claps until her palms sting. The singers blow kisses into the crowd, moving towards each other, with a curious sideways gait, clasping each other’s hands and bowing low. Lucrezia is used to tumblers, acrobats, jesters, but there is something elevated and indefinable about these singers. They are tall, with long, tapering limbs, and pointed feline faces; the flex and motion of their wrists, their arms, is mesmerisingly agile, as if their joints are oiled to move more smoothly than others’. While they were singing, that is what they were—singers, geniuses, angels—but standing, as they are now, bowing and calling words to people in the room, they are once more human.

Alfonso bends towards her through the noise, shrinking his height so that he might look into her face. “You are enjoying the music?”

“Oh, yes,” she says. “It is like nothing I have ever heard. It is sublime—they are extraordinary. Their singing, the way they can switch from a low note to a high one—I don’t know how they do it, how they flex their voices in that way.”