His Last Duchess (17 page)

Jacomo said, “Ready?”

Lucrezia nodded.

He waited for the briefest moment. There was one stab of hot pain, which made her wince, and then a melting sweetness. She was surrounded by him; filled with him; consumed by him. Every sense was glutted with him.

***

Jacomo saw Lucrezia flinch, and heard a little indrawn breath. He stopped. “Did I hurt you?”

“Please don't stop.” She wrapped her legs more tightly around his waist and tilted her face to his. He kissed her again.

“I want this. I want to do this,” she said indistinctly through the kiss, “I want you inside me.”

Her words sent a shudder of longing right through him. Sliding one arm around her back, he reached for her breast with the other hand: she squirmed with pleasure.

It was, he thought, as though he were being offered a feast to sate starvation, water to quench a raging thirst. He could not get enough of her. This need for her that had been growing and swelling for days was now all-consuming; nothing had ever invaded him like this—nothing—not even the wildest, most explosive moments of his creative inspiration. He was drowning in her, she was all he could see and hear, the taste and smell of her were intoxicating and her skin beneath his fingers entranced him.

“Let me roll over!” Lucrezia said then, into his thinking, and he smiled at her, and rolled with her, their bodies still joined, until he lay on his back and she sat above him. She dipped her head down and ran the tip of her tongue around and around each nipple. Jacomo closed his eyes and the corners of his mouth crooked up in sybaritic abandonment.

They played together for what seemed like hours, breathlessly delighted, combining their bodies in every way they could devise: sprawled amid the rumpled bedding; standing pressed against the back wall of Alessandro's storeroom; at times they faced each other, at others Jacomo felt his breath warm on the nape of Lucrezia's neck as he pressed up against her back—until at last they sank in exhausted repletion under the thin and scratchy woollen blankets, as content as though sumptuously wrapped in imperial luxury.

They lay side by side. Jacomo let out a long breath and stretched. He felt something bunched under his knees and pulled out the scarlet woollen cap, crumpled and squashed. Smiling, he held it out above Lucrezia and laid it on her chest. Her eyes were closed. She fingered it with one hand, exploring it; then, feeling its rough woollen texture, opened her eyes and picked it up. She said nothing, just held the hat in both hands, then laid her cheek on his chest and, to his astonishment, he felt the hot dampness of tears.

He sat up. “What is it? What's the matter,
cara
?”

She curled against him. A little sob escaped her.

Jacomo put his arms around her. “Oh,
cara—
what on earth is wrong? Why are you crying?”

Lucrezia wiped her eyes. “Nothing—it's nothing. It's just…just—oh, Jacomo! This is the happiest I've ever been—ever!—and it's shown me how horrible everything has been, for so long, and…I can't bear to go back to it and—”

“Oh,
cara
.” He held her close; she tilted her face up to him and he kissed her, wiping away the wetness on her face with the ball of his thumb. The kiss was tear-salted, slow and soft.
This
is
the
happiest
I've ever been
. He stroked her hair, and her mouth was tender and sweet beneath his own; then he pulled himself up onto his elbows and leaned over her. Running a hand around her breast, he felt the kiss ignite again, flames licking at a soft-blown ember. Once more they clung together, hungry and searching all over again, once more they fed upon each other until sated, once more lay back, entwined in each other's arms.

Jacomo pulled one of the blankets up and over them both, and closed his eyes.

***

Lucrezia awoke in a drowsy tangle of warm limbs and untidy hair. Alfonso had never held her like this, she thought. This was the first time in her life that she had lain so, relaxed and content in the embrace of a lover. Cradled in Jacomo's arms, she lay with her head against his chest, listening to the soft bellows-pull of his breath.

Jacomo stirred and smoothed her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Are you all right now?”

Lucrezia nodded.

“Can I draw you?” he asked, still lying back on the pillows.

“Now?”

He made a rumbling noise of assent in his chest, against which Lucrezia's ear was still pressed.

“If you'd like to,” she said.

Jacomo was fiddling with her hair now, winding strands of it into ringlets around his fingers. Lucrezia reached for his hand, pulled it away from her hair and began examining it. It was strong and square, blunt-fingered, ingrained with coloured flecks of paint. A hand gifted in many more ways than painting, though, she thought, another hot little pulse of wanting sliding down through her belly. She drew a circle on his palm with the tip of her tongue, then slowly sucked each finger. He tasted of paint, and woodsmoke, and brine, she thought, as he grunted softly with pleasure and pulled her in more tightly to him.

She released his hand, and he cupped it around her face. “I left my bag downstairs, with my paper and charcoal,” he said. “I'll get it, and see if I can find a couple of candles.” He kissed her, pulled his arm out from underneath her; then she gasped softly as he bent over her and ran his tongue around one of her nipples. “Don't move,” he said. “I won't be a moment.”

Lucrezia watched him walk to the stairs, his buttocks round and tight as a couple of apricots. He went down into the shop below and a moment or two later, a yellow glow preceded his reappearance. He climbed slowly, carrying two lit candles in a wax-encrusted candlestick. Slung over one shoulder, bumping against his bare leg, was a scuffed leather bag. The candle flames dipped and bobbed as he walked, sending frantic, dancing black shadows around the low walls of the storeroom.

“Can you see to draw in this light?”

“It's not ideal, but I expect I'll manage.” Jacomo put the candlestick on a table, opened the bag and took out a roll of paper and a small wooden tube plugged with a wad of cloth. Unplugging the tube, he shook out a handful of thin sticks of charcoal. He beckoned to Lucrezia to sit nearer the foot of the bed, and knelt next to her on the mattress. She smiled up at him as he moved her limbs into the position he wanted, but then he stopped. Lucrezia was startled to see him looking suddenly concerned and serious. He reached towards her and gently ran the fingers of one hand down the inside of her thigh. She looked down to see what he was doing, and saw a long smear of dark red.

“Is it your time to bleed, Lucrezia?”

She shook her head and ran her own fingers along it—it was dry. “I might have bled because…because that was my first time, Jacomo,” she said.

He stared at her. “I don't understand.”

Lucrezia said nothing.

“You've been married nearly two years.”

“Alfonso…” Lucrezia paused, drew in a long breath and let it out again. “Alfonso has…difficulties. Our marriage…has yet to be consummated. But,” she said fiercely, “I don't want even to think of him, Jacomo. Forget him—just forget him. Please, do your drawing.”

“But, Lucrezia,” he said anxiously, “if you should have a child now, after tonight…”

Lucrezia did not know what to say—she had not even thought of this. But the fear that she knew it should have inspired in her was in fact quite smothered by a warm rush of delight at the prospect.

“Don't think about it now—just do your drawing.” She tried to resume the pose Jacomo had begun to create.

The crease between his brows disappeared as he began again to arrange her arms and legs to his satisfaction. The twist he wanted in the pose was tiring to hold, and at first, because she was concentrating more upon watching Jacomo than on what she was doing, Lucrezia realised that she was being a poor model. Three times Jacomo had to lean towards her and replace her limbs from where she had allowed them to move from their position, but at last he seemed satisfied. “Now—don't move again!” he said firmly.

***

Jacomo drew for about an hour, stopping and moving Lucrezia into new positions from time to time. Some were quick sketches, taking only seconds to achieve, while two were more careful drawings, meticulously observed. It struck Lucrezia as curious that her husband's appraising gaze should so often leave her feeling like a lifeless work of art, while this painter's intense scrutiny as he
created
from her a work of art should kindle her to such a vibrant sense of energy.

At last he laid down his charcoal. Lucrezia stretched and yawned, hunched and rolled her shoulders, then rubbed her feet, which had chilled as she had sat motionless. She said, “May I see what you've done?”

Jacomo nodded. Lucrezia stood up, then walked behind him and looked over his shoulder. What she saw took her breath away.

There could be no doubt.

“Oh, Jacomo, they are…they are
your
drawings!”

“Obviously.”

“No! Not these—the fresco! All those pictures, of Jason and Medea and the ship, and—
you
did them, didn't you?” She stared again at the drawings on Jacomo's lap. There was no mistaking the style—the hand was one and the same.

“Ah.”

“But
why
?” Lucrezia said. “Why let Fra Pandolf tell everyone that they are
his
work?”

Jacomo picked up another blanket and draped it around Lucrezia's bare shoulders. Hutching another around his own, he sat down on the end of the bed, his face dramatically underlit by the wobbling candle flames. He took Lucrezia's hand.

“Pandolf is a great painter—well, he
was
,” Jacomo said, “before his sight started to fail. He's taught me a great deal.”

“But—”

“It's not as simple as it seems. I'll try to explain. I was apprenticed to Pandolf three years ago by my father. I think Papa was ambitious for me, but he had no money to pay for a formal apprenticeship—he's just a fisherman. It had taken him a long time to get over his disappointment that I was never going to follow in the family tradition—God!—we had any number of terrible arguments about it—but in the end, he gave in. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it started to dawn on him that if I made a name for myself as an artist, it might actually mean some money coming into the family, potentially far, far more than he and the rest of them could ever make with the nets.”

Jacomo saw a crease pucker between Lucrezia's brows.

He said, “I think he chose Pandolf partly because of his reputation, but also because of the fact that he was a friar. Pandolf waived the normal apprenticeship fees, out of some sort of charitable instinct, perhaps, and took me on, on the understanding that I'd stay with him, for nothing, for as long as he thought I could be useful to him. He'd feed me, clothe me, teach me, provide me with materials, but no more than that. Papa was worried about the stories he had heard about artists, as well—their reputation for licentiousness and debauchery.” Jacomo laid a heavy emphasis on the last three words, and his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I think he hoped that being in the care of a religious order would keep me under some sort of control, stop me learning bad habits and behaving badly.”

He leaned towards Lucrezia and kissed her mouth. “That part of it hasn't quite worked, really, has it?”

She smiled at him, and he said, “The original plan was for me to learn with Pandolf until he and I both felt I was capable of undertaking major commissions myself, at which point, we agreed, I'd move on and begin work as an artist in my own right. Pandolf suggested I might like to contribute some of my first earnings to the friary, a sort of charitable donation if you like. I was quite happy with this idea, and we were both set to work towards it—but then it all went wrong because of Pandolf's eyes.”

“What do you mean?” Lucrezia said. She pulled the blanket more snugly over her shoulders, tucking it around her legs.

Jacomo paused, choosing his words carefully. “It seems that, despite his appearance of Franciscan humility, the reverend brother has a distinctly worldly streak of pride in him. I don't think he has ever confessed it, either.” He felt the familiar bite of resentment tensing along his jaw.

“I don't understand.”

“A couple of years ago, Pandolf began to complain about his sight. Said it was starting to be like seeing everything through a mist.”

“How horrible!”

“It's worsened over the months, and it's reached a point now where I don't think he can see much in detail beyond the stretch of his arm. Painting anything delicate is now almost impossible for him.”

“So how is it that he is still accepting commissions like this one?”

Jacomo hesitated, then said, “I do all the work.”

There was a long pause.

“And he takes all the praise?”

“Something like that.”

“Those were your sketches, weren't they, that day you both came to the Castello a year or so ago?”

Jacomo nodded.

“Is that why you seemed so angry when Alfonso was telling the reverend brother how much he liked the pictures?”

“You
did
notice, then. I thought you had.” He went on, “I knew I might have difficulty in establishing myself—”

“But why? Your work is wonderful.”

Jacomo raised his fingers to his cheek. “This,” he said, patting the crimson stain. “There are any number of potential patrons who don't wish to have their costly commission undertaken by someone with the Devil's fingerprints on his face.”

“Surely nobody is that stupid.”

Jacomo huffed a small laugh. “In our
enlightened
times
,” he said drily, “you would perhaps have thought it impossible. But though people don't tend to come out and say such things directly to your face, it's obvious from the muttered comments and the furtive glances…”

Lucrezia reached out and stroked the red blotches tenderly.

Jacomo closed his eyes, then laid his hand over hers, pressing it against his face. “So, as I say, I knew it would be hard, but I'd planned everything. I was ready to leave, eager to go and prove myself.”

“Then why did you not do it?”

“Pandolf pressured me. ‘Just this commission, Jacomo, please. Help me with this one—I cannot turn down an opportunity like this.' I'd say to myself—very well, I'll do this last one with him and then go, but then I'd see his terror at the thought of his incapacity being discovered, and I'd weaken, yet again. It's been like that for months. But this is definitely the last one. I've told him, quite categorically, that I won't do another commission with him.”

“What will you do?”

“I knew exactly what I was going to do until yesterday.”

“What?” she said, in little more than a whisper.

“Finish this fresco, then go to Rome. I've enough put aside to live for a month or two with no work, in case I need it; I thought I'd start by painting uncommissioned portraits and trying to sell them. See what happened.”

“And now?” Her eyes were dark in the candlelight.

“And now I have no idea what to do.” Jacomo laid his drawings on the floor and gestured towards the pillows. Lucrezia shuffled back up the bed. She was still wrapped in her blanket but looked, Jacomo thought with a stab of longing, like a nymph from one of Buonarotti's ceilings. He sat next to her on the mattress, put his arm around her shoulders and pulled another blanket around them both.

“Why don't I come with you?” Lucrezia said.

Jacomo froze. He said nothing.

“We could leave now. Not go back to the Castello, just go from here to Rome, like you said.”

There was a tremor in her voice. Jacomo watched the flickering shadows on the ceiling for a moment before he answered. “I wish it were that easy,” he said, picking up one of Lucrezia's hands and holding it to his mouth. He lipped around her fingers and fiddled her thumbnail between his teeth.

“Why? Why can't it be that easy? No one knows we're here. We'd be long gone before anyone even suspected.”

His longing to do as she suggested was so acute that it began to hurt deep in his chest as he imagined it: the two of them, hand in hand, arriving in Rome, searching for lodgings.

He said, “No one would know tonight, that's sure enough. But we can't do it, Lucrezia. Think of tomorrow, when it's discovered that you are not to be found anywhere in the Castello—”

“Well, it would be too late then.”

“And when I fail to turn up to work on the fresco, how long do you think it would take them to work out what had happened?”

“What would it matter if they did? We'd be miles away.”

“Yes. And what about your little waiting-woman, left behind in the Castello? I'd wager that before the day was out, she'd have been accused of collusion, and would be languishing in one of the dungeons.”

“Oh, dear God, do you think so?”

“I'm sure of it. I doubt the duke is the sort of man to endure such a humiliation without exacting some form of retribution on whoever happened to be nearest to hand.”

Lucrezia looked stricken.

“Do you really think he would just let you go?” Jacomo said quietly.

There was a long pause. Jacomo said, “And Pandolf. There's Pandolf to consider.”

“What do you mean? You said you wanted to leave him.”

“Yes, I know I did, but I can't leave him in the middle of a commission. I owe him a great deal, Lucrezia. He's taught me everything I know—far more than just the painting. I've learned Latin and Greek, history, poetry, philosophy—
so
much. I can't just abandon him—he simply couldn't finish what I've started here. It's beyond him now. He'd have to admit to the deceit, which would destroy him, or he'd try to complete the fresco and ruin it, but that's not the point. Either way he would be forced to face the duke's displeasure. Which I doubt would be easy for him. Your husband—” The word caught in his throat as he uttered it. “Well…I don't think he would be very happy, shall we say. He's set quite some store by this commission, I think.”

“Yes, he has,” Lucrezia said.

“Too many people would be hurt too badly if we were to do this.”

Lucrezia sat up. He saw that her eyes were wide and scared now. She said, in a voice pitched high with fear, “But, Jacomo, I shall die if I can't be with you! You can't go from the Castello and leave me there!”

She was trembling. She looked frightened and vulnerable and younger than ever. Putting his arms around her, Jacomo kissed her and said, “I won't leave you. I can't.” He paused. “But we cannot go now, like this.”

“What shall we do, then?”

Jacomo considered. “We have to go back to the castle before daybreak. That's for certain. I must finish the fresco—that's about two more weeks. And then…”

“And then?”

“When the fresco's finished and Pandolf, Tomaso and I can leave the Castello, you'll have to make sure that your waiting- woman finds a believable excuse to be absent. Is there ever a time when you leave the castle without attendants?”

Lucrezia shook her head. “No. Well, I suppose I could say I want to take Violetta out—my mule. I don't normally go far on her—but I do ride alone sometimes.”

“That's it, then.”

***

A fine drizzle was falling as Jacomo and Lucrezia walked along the last few deserted streets and neared the Castello. Droplets of rain clung like tiny diamonds to the wisps of Lucrezia's hair that stuck out of the ridiculous red hat, and a smell of wet dust rose from the cobbles as they went.

The Castello loomed ahead of them, huge and square, as they walked through the archway and found the basket still hidden in the shadows of the poplars. Jacomo took out the rolled-up dress and shift, which were a little damp, and began to unpick the twine, as Lucrezia pulled off the cap and unfastened the grey doublet.

He saw her glance around to ensure they were alone, and then she wriggled out of the doublet and hose. She pulled the undershirt off over her head and Jacomo's insides lurched with longing as he held out the shift. Lucrezia pushed her arms up and into its sleeves and let it fall down around her nakedness. Jacomo held out her dress. She stepped into it and he pulled the laces tight. She shook out her hair, wound it into a knot, then slid her feet back into her shoes.

He smiled. “There you are,” he said. “No one who sees you now could possibly connect you with the grubby little red-capped urchin who went down into the town with me last night.”

He kissed her.

“Jacomo,” she said, as he stopped for breath.

“What?”

“Finish the fresco soon.”

He held her tightly to his body.

“Alfonso will be back before long,” she said, into the stuff of his doublet. “If he suspects, I think he might kill us both.”

“When I was a little boy,” Jacomo said, his cheek resting on Lucrezia's hair, “my friends used to mock me because of the marks on my face. They were worse then, the marks—a darker red, much more noticeable. The boys didn't mean much by it, I don't think—it was largely in fun, but it upset me, just the same. I used to try to impress them—wanted to make them forget about my cheek—so I'd climb the most difficult trees, scramble up sheer rocks, jump into deep water. Anything to prove myself to them. My mother used to call me her
piccolo
spericolato—
her little daredevil—she was forever bandaging up my cuts and bruises, mending all the clothes I'd ripped. I broke my leg a couple of times too and cracked a rib once, but I never minded the danger. It got me what I wanted—I ended up as the leader of my little gang of friends.”

He put a hand on either side of Lucrezia's face and tipped it up towards his own. “I've not changed. I'll do what I have to do. I won't leave you here.”

They clung together, not speaking, for a long moment. Then Jacomo said, “We have to get going—it's past dawn. Go on, get back inside. I'll take these things back to Tomaso.”

“Those are Tomaso's clothes? Did he not mind?”

“He doesn't know.”

She smiled. “What will he think?”

“I shan't tell him. He won't notice. But if he does, I think he'll be jealous—he's told me he thinks you're very beautiful.”

Even in the grey half-light, Jacomo saw her blush. He hugged her. “Go on—I'll wait here till I can see you're inside.”

“I have to see you again later.”

“Not today. Too dangerous. I'll be working on the fresco till the light goes, and it's courting disaster to meet again after dark, so soon. Come up to the gallery tomorrow. Don't come today.”

Lucrezia picked up the now empty basket and walked backwards for the first few steps, her eyes fixed upon his; then she blew him a kiss, turned and ran. He watched until she had rounded the corner and crossed onto the main drawbridge, then began walking the other way, scuffing the damp stones on the path with the toe of his boot.

The marriage was unconsummated. The duke had never bedded her. The thought bugled in his head: an unconsummated marriage could be dissolved. It was possible. He felt his hands ball into fists and pushed them down into the pockets of his breeches.