The Marriage Portrait(90)

After Elisabetta starts to take Lucrezia on daily rides with her, outside the city gates, and Nunciata cannot join them as she is not fond of horses, Nunciata sends to Lucrezia’s door a lady-in-waiting. Clelia appears without any warning one afternoon, just as Lucrezia is returning from a ride, saying, with a deep curtsey, that she has been asked to wait upon the Duchess Lucrezia. She comes into the room, her deferential tone belied by the way she looks about her with naked curiosity, taking in the painting table, the easel, Lucrezia’s collection of bird feathers, the delicate ivory of the fox skull on the windowsill. Her eyes have a slight bulge and tend to open so wide that the white sclera is visible all the way around the iris; she has, Lucrezia feels, a curious way of moving her feet, slapping the soles of her shoes down on the ground, and sighing deeply at intervals. Emilia is put out by her presence; Lucrezia catches her hovering, watching, as Clelia is performing some task—laying out clothes or polishing shoes. The two begin to compete, in what they believe are imperceptible ways, to be the one to take Lucrezia her morning drink, to slice her bread, to plait her hair, to fasten her bodice. Clelia is, Nunciata tells her, when she visits to find out how Lucrezia likes her new woman, the cousin of a noble family that has fallen on hard times. “She has breeding,” Nunciata raps out, casting a disparaging glance at Emilia, “and is a perfectly suitable companion for you.” Lucrezia is obliged to send Clelia on invented errands if she wants to paint or sketch or read, otherwise Clelia will move about the room with her slapping steps or gaze out of the window, sighing, as if she would rather be anywhere else but here.

“Give her a little longer” is Elisabetta’s advice, delivered with a gentle pat on the arm, when Lucrezia tells her how burdensome she finds Clelia’s presence. “She may settle. You may yet get used to her. She has,” Elisabetta says, “done wonders with your dress and your hair. Do you not think?”

Lucrezia’s hair, that day, has been done in the Ferrara style, similar to Elisabetta’s, with curving wings at either side of her temples, and a great many sharp-ended pins holding it on the crown of her head. She is not sure if she likes it, and the sensation of that great weight of hair balanced on top of her head makes her neck feel stiff. But she does not say this: she nods, she smiles, she says she will indeed give Clelia more time.

Elisabetta nods, pleased, then says she has to go: she has an appointment. Her eyes meet Lucrezia’s, as if to say, You know, don’t you, you have worked it out? And Lucrezia rises to walk with her to the door, matching her step to Elisabetta’s, silently telling her that, yes, she knows and will never tell.



* * *





Alfonso appears in her rooms earlier than usual that evening. Lucrezia is still preparing for bed: Emilia is removing her collar, pin by pin, and Clelia is unwinding the cintura Lucrezia wore at dinner, when he comes through the door.

“Please,” he says to the maids, who have paused, uncertain, in their tasks, “continue.”

He seats himself in a chair, on top of several items of clothing, but neither Lucrezia nor Emilia nor Clelia dare to point out to him that he is crushing the fabrics. When Clelia places the cintura inside its box, which is on a table next to him, he lifts it out and holds it in his hands, letting its gold links and studded rubies pass through his fingers.

“Your hair,” he says suddenly, “is different.”

Lucrezia is by now in her shift and skirts, standing in the middle of the room.

“Yes,” she says, turning to look at him. “It is a new style for me.”

She waits for him to say that he likes it or perhaps doesn’t like it or that it is the same arrangement as Elisabetta’s, but he is silent.

He gets to his feet, still with the cintura in his hands, walks to the window, then back, as if to regard her from all angles.

“I have some exciting news for you,” he says, with a smile. “Il Bastianino will arrive here tomorrow morning, for the portrait.”

“Yes, I’ve heard,” Lucrezia replies, “and—”

“You have?” He pauses in his pacing. “I wonder who told you.”

“Nunciata. She said—”

“And how did she come by this information?”

“I think she said…” Lucrezia wishes she had never spoken “…a friend of hers has commissioned something from Il Bastianino but the work will be late because he will be here, with us, instead of—”

“I see.”

He circles the room, from fireplace to window to doorway to chair. The maids have their heads down, their movements quick: they want to be out of here, Lucrezia knows, away from him. She is just about to dismiss them—the sooner Alfonso does what he came here to do, the sooner she can be alone—when Alfonso speaks again.

“You are spending a great deal of time with my sisters, I am told.”

Lucrezia looks at him. Is this a question or a statement? What would be the best reply here?

“I…yes…I suppose I am.”

“With Nunciata?”

“Yes.”

“Just Nunciata or Elisabetta as well?” His eyes travel up to her hairstyle as he asks this, then back to her face.

“Both of them. Initially, it was just Elisabetta who…” She trails away, suddenly feeling herself on unstable ground.