His Last Duchess (12 page)

Chiara Rossi opened the door that led to the yard and called to her father. He did not appear to hear her at first, being deep in conversation with a tall young man in a scuffed deerskin doublet. The two men were standing by one of the lime-pits. Her father had peeled back the hessian covering and was squatting on his heels. The young man said something Chiara could not hear; he made a wide, measuring gesture with both arms, then indicated a height with one hand crooked horizontally above his head. Her father nodded, calculated something on his fingers, then both men smiled. They shook hands.

“Papa!” Chiara called again.

This time her father turned to her and raised his eyebrows in response. The dark young man turned too; Chiara wondered if the crimson stain on his cheek was a lime-burn.

“Will you be wanting dinner, Papa, or have I enough time to take the bread up to Anna's?”

“Go, if you want to,
cara
. Signor Pennetti and I need a few moments to discuss quantities and dates for delivery. We'll probably be…” he looked at Signor Pennetti “…about half an hour?”

The young man nodded.

“Thank you, Papa. I will be back as soon as I can.”

Chiara shut the door, crossed the kitchen to the little entrance hall, pulled a coarse linen wrap from a hook on the wall and shrugged it around her shoulders. Picking up a basket in which were several small loaves and a block of cheese, she left the house.

It took her no more than a few moments to reach Anna's little cottage—so shabby it might well have been described as a hovel. She did not bother to knock, but pushed open the door and walked into the main downstairs room. A small fire was burning in the furthest corner. An iron pot stood on a trivet over the flames, steam puffing gently from under the loosely fitting lid, and an elderly woman was hunched in front of it on one of two stools, a clay pipe wedged between her teeth, her hands clasped between splayed knees.

“Anna?” Chiara said quietly. She put the basket on a table near the door.

“Come and sit down, child,” Anna said. She unclasped her hands and patted the second stool, still staring into the flames.

Rather awkwardly, Chiara lowered herself onto it.

“Well? Have you told him yet?” Anna said.

“No.”

“Do you not think he has noticed?”

“I'm quite sure he hasn't.”

“The man must be blind. Or stupid. How are you feeling?”

“Better, in the last couple of weeks. At last.”

“And that Niccolò?” Anna said, somewhat sharply.

Even the sound of his name gave Chiara a sharp little pain in her chest. “I haven't seen him. I still don't know where he's working now.”

“What are you going to do?”

Chiara stroked her rounded belly with both hands, as if to soothe the child within. “I don't know.”

“Now, listen. Stupid or not, your father will know soon enough, child. You have no more than a matter of weeks now. It's only because your belly has stayed so small that you have been able to hide it so long. You must tell him.”

“But I don't know how. I don't know what to say.”

“Do you want me to do it for you?”

Chiara stared at the old woman, round-eyed. She did not know how to answer. She was lethargic with chronic anxiety, drowsy, detached.

Anna clicked her tongue irritably. She patted Chiara's cheek. “Wake up now, Chiara! One of us has to do it. We have to make arrangements for the birth,
cara
. Time is running out. A lime-pit is no place to bring a child into the world, and a group of ignorant slakers cannot be given the responsibility of attending your confinement. I am not well enough to do it—we must to arrange for you to go to the city.”

“He will not forgive me.”

“He will have to.”

“You don't know Papa.”

“Oh, I think I do, child.”

Chiara pressed her hands onto her belly. A small rounded lump pushed back against her palm, then slid to one side and disappeared.

“I'll tell him when I get back,” she said.

***

Eduardo Rossi stared at his daughter. As she finished speaking, his gaze moved from her face to her belly, over which her small hands were now spread protectively. He saw the neat swell of it beneath the linen dress, as though she held an upturned pudding bowl beneath her fingers. He saw the new heaviness of her breasts, and realised there was a fullness in her cheeks: unmistakable, unmissable. How could he not have noticed it? For a brief moment, the accusing face of his long-dead wife glared at him.
How
could
you, Eduardo? Just look at her! How could you have been so stupid? How could you have left Chiara to face this alone?
A flood of guilt at his lack of awareness pulsed cold behind his face; but then hot shame and an anger such as he had never felt before broke over him and swamped everything else in his mind.

“When? When did this happen?” His voice was shaking. He could feel his jaw trembling.

“The beginning of November.”

Eduardo calculated quickly. “My God! You are nearly seven months gone?” he said, utterly astonished. “Chiara, who is…?”

His daughter flushed a dull, dark red. She stared at the floor and said nothing.

“Who is the father of this child?” he said, his voice rising.

A long pause.

“Tell me, Chiara!”

Still she said nothing. And then a thought struck him. Young Contadino's departure at Christmas had been a disappointing surprise: a talented lad, with a good future ahead of him.

“Was it Niccolò?”

The tears that glistened straight away in Chiara's eyes gave him his answer. He saw her lip tremble, saw her bite it to steady the tremor. An unfamiliar sense of fatherly compassion moved deep within him, frail as an invalid unused to light and fresh air, but almost as fast as he acknowledged the emotion, it crumbled beneath the torrent of imagined accusations and the smug self-righteousness of friends and family. He knew he had never taken the time to care for his motherless Chiara, beyond providing basic material comforts. She had been an unpaid servant—cook, yard assistant, laundress—throughout the years since her mother's death, provided for and sheltered, but not, he realised now, truly loved or cherished. He had always had something else to do. No wonder, he thought, through another sickening, slippery skin of guilt, that she had turned in her loneliness to a feckless young man in search of amusement.

But he would not raise a bastard under his roof. He could not endure the shame. The child would have to be found somewhere else to live. He could forgive Chiara her mistake—of course he could—but he would not live with the evidence. She would have to be taken to Bologna to have the baby, not Ferrara—too many of his best customers were from Ferrara—and then perhaps the Dominican sisters would take it.

“We will have to find a home for the child.”

“No!”

Eduardo was surprised at the vehemence in Chiara's voice. He said, “I have no intention of keeping your bastard under this roof.”

“I won't let you do it!”

“You do not, I'm afraid, have any choice.”

Chiara's expression was unreadable. Then, squaring her narrow shoulders and lifting her chin in a gesture of defiance that reminded Eduardo forcibly of his late wife, his daughter left the room through the door that led to the stairs.

The sun was already high by the time Lucrezia opened her eyes. There would, she thought happily, blinking at the open window, be light flooding into the North Hall and along the long gallery all morning, just what the artists would need as they prepared the wall for the fresco.

She was pushing back the bedcovers when Catelina knocked vigorously on the door.

“Oh, Signora, you must come and see—they are up there already,” she said. “There's a boy chipping away at the old plaster—right down to the brickwork, he's taking it.”

Lucrezia dressed hurriedly and went with Catelina through the Castello and into the hall. In the carved wooden gallery three people were busily working. Fra Pandolf had the sleeves of his habit rolled up above his elbows and secured with twine. He was seated on a low stool, poring over an enormous sheet of paper. The skinny boy who had taken charge of the horses in the courtyard the day before, was balanced on a ladder, chipping at the plaster. He had already stripped bare a section some seven feet across, and from floor to ceiling, Lucrezia saw, so she imagined he had been at work for some time: his short black hair was grey with plaster dust.

And the tall, dark-eyed young man whose name was Jacomo was standing at the top of the spiral staircase, pulling off a shabby deerskin doublet. Lucrezia watched him covertly as he hung it over the balustrade, ran the fingers of one hand through tangled hair and then pushed his rucked shirt back down inside his breeches. He rolled up his sleeves. His hands and arms, she saw, were strong and brown. A hot little shiver moved down through her insides as she watched him walk the length of the gallery and squat on his heels next to Fra Pandolf. The friar laid a hand on his shoulder. They spoke together for a moment, though Lucrezia was unable to distinguish what they were saying. Jacomo handed a folded sheet of paper to the friar, who flapped it open, read it, nodded approval and pointed up at the wall. Jacomo reached into a big tool box and brought out a wooden hammer and a wide, flat chisel.

Lucrezia's eyes seemed to have taken on a strange determination of their own: if she tried to look away from Jacomo, she could feel a tugging at her vision, pulling her gaze back to his face, to his hands, to the crescent-shaped creases around the corners of his mouth, like iron to a lodestone.

She wanted him to notice her.

She did not want him to notice her.

She sat on one of the wide window recesses, wriggled herself into a comfortable position and watched as Jacomo placed the chisel against the old plaster.

***

Tomaso had done well, Jacomo thought, during the time that he, Jacomo, had been at the plasterman's that morning. It had been a worthwhile trip: it was good-quality lime, which boded well for the success of the fresco. He had been happy with what he had seen, and the plasterman had seemed to know his business well.

“It's coming off fairly easily, Jacomo,” Tomaso said, patting the wall affectionately. Jutting his bottom lip outwards and closing his eyes, he puffed a breath up and over his nose to clear the dust.

Jacomo ran one hand across the newly exposed brickwork, picking over the rough surface with his fingertips. “This is good,” he said. “It's completely dry, and the whole wall seems to be brick from end to end, thank God. We can get the coarse scratch coat up as soon as the whole site's cleared.”

“Not always so straightforward, eh?” said Tomaso.

“No. Certainly isn't.” Jacomo studied the remaining length of wall. “Come on, let's get it finished. I'll start from the far end and meet you in the middle.” He stepped over a pile of rubble, went to the other end of the gallery and set the edge of the chisel into the plaster.

He always enjoyed this time spent preparing a wall. Though he knew many patrons were surprised that an artist of Fra Pandolf's reputation did not have a team of plasterers, it had been Jacomo's own suggestion that they manage the work between them. He had always found that the early hours spent close to the wall on which the fresco would be created were invaluable. Fresco was unlike any other form of painting: you had to establish a relationship with the wall, with the plaster, with the pigments. They were all unpredictable elements. You had to understand their demands, and at the same time impose your own restrictions and obligations: preparing the brickwork was, Jacomo thought, not unlike the tentative, introductory conversation you might have with a new acquaintance, forming the foundations of a friendship, a love affair, even. And, as well as getting to know his materials, Jacomo liked to spend time with the space he had been given, planning the task ahead, thinking through the shape of the overall design, deciding how he would divide it all into the separate
giornate—
the sections that could be completed in a single session.

He and Tomaso chipped away at the wall together for some time, prising off the layers of plaster, pulling it back to the original pink-red brickwork right along the length of the gallery. Tomaso chiselled away, frowning, stolidly mute, but Jacomo whistled softly as he worked, adapting his tunes to the rhythm of the blows of his hammer. Rubble and grit piled up around both men.

A short while later, Jacomo turned from the wall, needing to cough, to rid his nose and mouth of the dust and dirt. Looking down into the hall over the balustrade, he saw a small figure sitting on one of the window-ledges: a thin girl in a pretty green dress. The duchess.

He remembered the expression on her face that time a year or so ago, when she had caught him glaring at Pandolf over the early sketches they had brought to show the duke. He wondered if she had understood the cause of his anger. There was no earthly reason she should have done, but, seeing her now, Jacomo had an unnerving feeling that she might have indeed understood quite well.

He held her gaze briefly and then smiled. The duchess blushed and smiled back. The sweetness and warmth of her expression took Jacomo by surprise.

“Do you mind if I come up and see what you are doing?” she called.

Jacomo raised an eyebrow at Fra Pandolf, who nodded amicably. Turning back to the duchess, he beckoned to her to come up the stairs. She seemed pleased; she slid off the ledge, picked up her skirts and ran like a little girl towards the spiral steps.

At the top of the stairs, she peered along the length of the partially stripped wall, then, dropping her gaze to the rubblestrewn floor, began to pick her way onto the gallery. Jacomo walked towards her and reached out to help her across the largest pile of plaster. Her hand was small and smooth. She did not meet his eye at first; gripping his fingers, she was watching her feet and holding her skirts bunched out of the way. But as she stepped into a clear space, she let her skirts fall back down and looked up at him. She was very close to him and their two clasped hands seemed an inappropriate intimacy, as though he was holding her fingers up to kiss them. They both let go very quickly. The duchess's eyes widened for a second—just a brief second—and then she stood back and looked down at the floor again.

“As you see, Signora, we have begun,” Fra Pandolf said, beaming.

“I see you have begun to demolish the Castello Estense…” she said, and the corners of her mouth twitched.

It took Pandolf a moment to laugh. Jacomo, however, straightaway puffed a soft laugh in his nose, and the duchess's gaze immediately moved to his face. His stomach lurched as he saw her glance at his cheek, but her eyes were alight with interest.

“Can you explain what you've been doing?” she said. “I've been watching you for some time.”

“We have to strip the whole wall right back to the brick, Signora,” Jacomo said. “Any plaster already in place has to go. After that, we'll put on what's called the rough scratch coat—half lime-plaster, half sand—and then that has to dry out.”

“And you paint into that, do you?”

Jacomo smiled. “No—it's rather more complicated than that.”

Pandolf bustled up. “Indeed it is, my lady, indeed it is,” he said. “Several coats of plaster have to go up before the wall is ready for painting. As I heard Jacomo tell you, we start with the rough scratch coat, and then—”

A voice interrupted him. “My lady?”

A black-haired girl, in a corn-yellow dress, had appeared. The duchess laid an apologetic hand on the friar's sleeve and turned from him to lean over the balustrade. “What is it, Lina?”

“My lord says he would like to see you before he leaves for Firenze.”

“Oh.” The duchess paused, and then said, more to herself than to anyone else, “Yes, I had forgotten he was going.” She called, “Yes, Lina, I'll come now. Wait for me.”

She looked briefly at Fra Pandolf and then at Jacomo. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much for showing me what you're doing. I should very much like to come and see the wall taking shape tomorrow, if I won't be in your way…”

“It'll be dirty work, Signora,” Jacomo said.

“Oh, I don't mind that at all.” The duchess began to walk back across the plaster-strewn floor, skirts bunched again in one fist.

“My lady?” Jacomo said, offering a hand.

“Oh—thank you.” He helped her to the top of the spiral staircase.

“I shall see you in the morning, then,” the duchess said. Her eyes lingered fleetingly on his mouth, then she let go of his hand and began to descend the steps. Jacomo leaned on folded arms against the balustrade, weight on one foot, and watched as she drew her maid close, as though to share a secret.

She turned briefly, glanced up at him, then left the hall.

***

Something hot turned over itself in her belly at the sight of his smile, a tangled knot of excitement, guilt, wonder and wanting. She saw the little crescent-shaped crease on each cheek crook more deeply around the corners of his mouth and the knot tightened.

***

Catelina was shocked. She had never seen her mistress's face lit up like that. As the Signora came down the stairs from the gallery, she had looked quite different from the sad little creature she had been over the past months. Ever since the day when she had seen her in that terrible state—oh,
cielo
! Catelina had been so distressed by the sight of her on the day of that banquet, dishevelled and frightened and so dreadfully unhappy. As for the revelations her mistress had sobbed out that night…Catelina had been struck dumb. She had always had her reservations about the Signore, she admitted as much to herself, but had never imagined he would have the problems the Signora had described. Quite the opposite! She had always presumed he had at least one other woman somewhere in the city—she had seen that gleam in his eye on so many occasions when he left the Castello on that fancy ginger horse of his, the gleam she had so often seen on her father's face when he used to disappear off to the wrong end of Mugello, right under the nose of her poor mother. She knew it well. She was sure she was not wrong—so how could it be that things were as they were between him and the Signora, if what her mistress had said was true?

“I've been learning how to prepare a wall for a fresco, Lina,” the Signora said. Catelina saw her turn briefly and look back up at the dark lad with the big eyes, who was leaning on the balustrade and watching them leave. Well, Catelina supposed she should say he was watching the
Signora
leave: she did not think he had spared a glance for herself. The fat little monk and the skinny boy had gone back to work on the wall.

Catelina felt suddenly sick.

She hoped to God that the Signora was not planning on doing anything foolish while the Signore was away.

If she did, and he found out, Catelina thought that he might well kill them both. And probably her too, simply for being the maidservant.