The Marriage Portrait(98)

“I’m sure,” Alfonso is saying, “that your father operates in the same way, shielding your mother from elements of his rule that he deems—”

“On the contrary,” Lucrezia cuts across him hotly, forgetting who she is and to whom she is speaking, “my father shares everything with my mother. He consults her on many issues, he cedes his rule to her whenever he is away, he seeks and values her opinion and her—”

“That is all very touching.” Alfonso utters these words through rigid lips. “But your father is one man and I am another. And you, my love, are no more than a child.”

Over the shoulder of her husband, which looms above her, blocking out most of her surroundings, she sees that Jacopo has reached the door of the salon. He seems to hesitate on the threshold for a second or two, placing a hand on the door latch.

“So, please, do me the courtesy of returning to your rooms, as instructed, and remain there until I tell you that you may leave,” Alfonso says, grazing the line of her jaw with his thumbnail. “Do you understand?”

She nods, with a rapid dip of her chin. Jacopo pushes open the door, steps through and, casting one final look at her, closes it behind him. Lucrezia has to quell a strong urge to break away from her husband and run after him. She wishes, for a wild moment, that she had concealed herself within that box, that she had folded herself down within the dress so that Jacopo could spirit her out of the castello, through the gate, over the drawbridge, and away.

“Yes,” she says, instead, tilting her face to look at Alfonso, at his hair, which still carries the tracks of his comb, at the still-raw gouges on his cheek, as if someone has clawed at his face with their fingernails. “I understand.”



* * *





Back in her room, Lucrezia dismisses her maids. She draws her shawl more tightly about herself and stands at the window, where she has a view of a section of the moat, the main drawbridge, and a number of streets, which lead off the piazza at opposing angles.

Winter seems to have arrived with a peculiar abruptness. She doesn’t know if it is the northern climate or the dank humours of the Po valley but the seasons in Ferrara turn like the handle of a crank; one day it is summer, the next, the trees are dropping their leaves, then frost descends and icy winds are seeking out gaps in the walls and windows. She is used to the Tuscan climate, where there is a slow tapering-off of warmth and light, a gradual tip into autumn, winter arriving in an apologetic creep.

She waits at the window, fingertips pressed to the pane, forehead leaning on the cool glass. A modest patch of mist appears before her every time she breathes out, and disappears when she breathes in.

A group of guards marches out across the bridge, in a controlled formation, three sets of two, their swords held over their shoulders. They move across the piazza, and vanish down a side-street. A man in a black cloak comes striding over the bridge and is admitted by the gatehouse. Two servants carrying baskets scurry out, parting in the middle of the piazza, the taller one calling something to the shorter, who waves a hand.

And then the drawbridge rattles with the sound of wheels. A cart is speeding out of the gate, pulled by a piebald horse, a servant standing up to wield a whip over the beast’s back; three other servants run along beside it; they are calling to each other, words of admonishment. Several guards run after the cart, their hats in their hands, their heads bare and their faces wild and anguished.

In the back of the cart—Lucrezia cranes her neck to see, straining up on to her toes—a long, rectangular shape is covered with blankets.

This, Lucrezia realises, is what she had been waiting for. She doesn’t quite know what it means, what it signifies—any of it. The haste of the servants, their alarm, the vicious crack of the whip, the ragged running of the guards who are following the cart, even now, as it careers through the piazza, then turns a corner and is swallowed by a narrow gap between dwellings.

Lucrezia fixes her eye on this gap, long after the guards have given up the chase and returned slowly to the castello, one with his arm about his comrade’s shoulders, long after the cart has gone. She doesn’t move her gaze from it, as if the cart might reappear to explain everything, as if the servant on it will be calm, his cargo entirely innocent and normal.

She argues with herself, with her eyes, with what they thought they saw, what they might have seen, how mistaken they could be. But she knows; her heart knows. The shape in the back of the cart had been long and thin, with squared edges. Like a box or a bed. Or a coffin.

She stays at the window for a long time. She watches the people of Ferrara come and go, walking one way across the piazza, then the other. She watches children hold the hands of their parents. She watches a woman lug a large bale of cloth on her back, a man roll a barrel using his bare and filthy feet, a young girl tugging a dog after her on a length of rope, two brothers carrying armfuls of firewood. She watches as the sky empties of light and the stone of the buildings acquires shadow.

She is still at the window when the cart reappears. The servant is now sitting on its edge and he lets the horse idle its way across the bridge; the whip is folded and furled, under his arm. The back of the cart is empty.

Emilia and Clelia find her there, stiff with cold, when they return. They help her to a chair, they chafe her frozen hands and feet, and Emilia spoons hot broth into her mouth. Clelia chides her for letting herself get so cold.