Duchess of Milan (2 page)

The midwife began to lower the bawling infant to the porcelain tub of tepid water set beside the birthing chair. The Duchess reached out swiftly and snatched him away. “I made him,” she snapped, her upper lip curled. She wiped the cheesy white vernix from his face with the hem of her chemise. He stopped crying, and sputtered and coughed. The Duchess looked up at the witnesses. “You've seen my son. Get out.” The gentlemen murmured again, bowed, and exited.

Messer Ambrogio's assistant ligatured and cut the umbilical cord while the child was still in the Duchess's arms. When the Duchess convulsed to pass the afterbirth, the midwife reached for the baby. “Don't touch him!” The midwife, her beefy face flushed, drew back. After a moment the placenta oozed out and slapped the floor. Messer Ambrogio's assistant scooped the discarded pulp into a silver dish. “Take what is yours and leave me,” the Duchess said. Messer Ambrogio whispered to the midwife, bowed, and led his helper from the room.

“Help me out of my chemise.” The Duchess's voice was suddenly calmer, almost seductive, as if she were urging a lover. The midwife and the lady-in-waiting guided the sweat-and-blood-sodden garment over the Duchess's head. The Duchess kneaded a nipple, then stroked her baby's cheek; the infant opened his eyes, and his head wobbled as he searched for the pap.

“Your Highness . . . ,” the midwife protested. Her eyes widened as she studied the almost blasphemous vision of the Duchess of Milan: a naked madonna, seated in a chair that resembled an instrument of torture, legs splayed to reveal her bloodied genitals, suckling her child with the weary ecstasy of a woman exhausted by lovemaking. “Your Highness, you have had an extremely difficult birth. ...”

The Duchess heard nothing except a huge rushing of wind and light, carrying her away. “My son,” she whispered as she fingered his hot, sticky head.
“Gesu,
I have made a son.”

CHAPTER 1

Letter of Isabella d'Este da Gonzaga, Marquesa of Mantua, to her sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino. Pavia, 19 January 1491

My dearest and most desperately missed companion,

My sister Beatrice is no longer a virgin! After three postponements, Father's threats, and not least our journey in the most execrable conditions (I thought I was going to have to sleep with my sister's horrid old matron of honor Polissena, she was so cold--and I was so cold I would have been happy to do so!), it has finally happened. The wedding was three days ago, here in Pavia, as Il Moro must avoid any suggestion that he considers himself the Duke of Milan. I can now tell you with certainty that despite the name by which he is known--and all the jests with which we have plagued poor Beatrice--Il Moro is not a Moor or any other sort of
negre!
His hair is black, his skin fair, and the regal fashion in which he carries himself reminds me of the statue of a Roman emperor they have here. But he appears younger than I had expected, given his age (one year shy of forty) and how important everyone (himself included!) believes him to be. Beatrice is terrified of him! Fortunately he spent most of their time together attending to me. We arrived Sunday afternoon after journeying by water from Piacenza (there is ice along the banks of all the rivers, and the canals are frozen entirely in the mornings) and were allowed a day to thaw before the ceremony. Il Moro showed us about the
castello
here, and I can now verify that everything they say about his wealth is true. The silver, the majolica, the paintings, the jewels, the glassware, the tapestries, the books-- there is a
Chanson de Roland
with a pearl-and-gold binding, done God knows where (I don't believe there is even a shop in Flanders that could do it), that has got to be worth over twenty thousand ducats.
Per miafe!
It occurs to me while I am writing you this that you don't know about the necklace Il Moro sent Beatrice (it arrived after I left last summer--a peace offering to Father, who is not here regardless). Fifteen large pearls set in gold flowers, with a ruby pendant surrounded by pearls and emeralds. Two hundred thousand ducats!

Despite her new wealth, Beatrice was bedded in the usual barbaric fashion. Everyone came in the room with their noise-makers, jerking the strings up and down like drooling peasants masturbating and making a clamor like a cloud of shrieking locusts. Fortunately Beatrice's tears did not come until the next morning, by which time her husband was already back in Milan. I am not exaggerating! He cannot have been alone with her for more than a half hour. He showed the sheet, with a single spot where he might have spit (though Beatrice later confirmed that he achieved penetration), and rode off while it was still dark. Mama insists that he is merely anxious to see that everything goes well when we arrive in Milan. I am of the belief that Mama is keeping a secret--I know you have already guessed.

Tomorrow we will depart by canal for Milan, and we expect to complete our journey on Sunday morning. The Duchess of Milan is going to receive us at a church near the docks, after which we will join Il Moro and the Duke of Milan and all proceed through Milan in suitable panoply. Do you know that the Duchess of Milan is our cousin? In fact she and Beatrice grew up together in Naples. We visited there when we were little girls, and Mama left Beatrice behind with grandfather--she was there for eight years. Mama is already worried that the Duchess of Milan will regard Beatrice as a rival--everyone here believes that Il Moro intends to make himself Duke of Milan. As if he isn't already in all but name! The Duke of Milan (we have not met him yet) is said to do nothing but chase after stags and drink like a friar, while Il Moro runs the state like a Florentine bank--you do not see him without a secretary at his elbow. But the Duke of Milan should be more secure now that he has provided his heir. The
puttino
is six weeks old-- I am choking with envy this very moment just thinking about their good fortune. I got my out-of-ordinaries three weeks ago and will have no happiness until I am reunited with my husband and can try again.

It seems a thousand years since I have enjoyed your kisses and caresses. I am hoping you are in better health since your last letter.

Your most adored, most special friend,

Isabella d'Este da Gonzaga, by her own hand

Milan. 21 January 1491

“Eels.” Polissena Romei, matron of honor to Beatrice d'Este, the newly wed Duchess of Bari, rapidly bobbed her seemingly bald head like an irate infant buzzard; her wizened forehead had been plucked for so many years in that long-discarded fashion that her hairline had given up and was now lost inside her black velour widow's hood. Polissena's fiercely indignant eyes remained fixed on Beatrice and the Marquesa of Mantua, who stood behind her sister, fastidiously straightening the ribbons encasing the bride's thick, waist-length braid. Polissena venomously addressed Beatrice's mother. “Your Highness, the Duchess and the Marquesa have been eating pickled eels, and now the Duchess is obstructed. I warned the Duchess in Pavia that she was eating too many, but of course her sister the Marquesa encouraged her to devour enough for a grown man. The Duchess thinks that she can eat so richly at supper and then, simply because she plays tennis afterward, will not suffer from an obstruction of her bowels. The Duchess of Bari now suffers chronically from obstruction.”

“Che chiacchiera,”
the Marquesa snapped, her tone suited to the vulgarity of the expression: what horseshit. She was sixteen years old and already one of Italy's most celebrated beauties: full, erotic lips, an exquisite milk-and-rose complexion, a figure that tended to voluptuousness, and, as her crowning glory, an extravagant halo of pearl-laced blond curls. She wore an enormous puffy coat called a
cioppa,
made entirely of black sable, along with a matching muff fashioned from a whole skin; there was a curious correspondence between the dead sable's belligerent, strangely animate stare and the Marquesa's lively dark eyes.

Undeterred by the Marquesa's lack of contrition, Polissena swiveled her palsied head as if she intended to admonish the entire wedding party gathered on the dockside piazza. At the perimeter, several hundred Ferrarese gentlemen, sheathed in black steel ceremonial armor, had already mounted and were arranging themselves into contingents beneath silk banners. Within this mounted cordon, order had yet to be imposed. Ferrarese noblewomen, wrapped in brocade-and-fur
cioppe,
gems and pearls sparkling like ice in their hair, chattered at their secretaries and chamberlains; chaplains in their cassocks, pressed into emergency service, joined the tailors and maidservants in making last-minute adjustments to the ladies' coiffures and couture. A dozen ducal singers assembled around two sheets of music while grooms saddled their caparisoned horses. Beatrice's uncle, Cardinal Sigismondo d'Este, sipped a sugared liqueur from a silver cup; a priest picked lint from the Cardinal's red velvet cape. A dwarf in a miniature suit of black armor scooted through the crowd, swishing past women's hems and barking nonsensical commands.

Eleonora d'Este, the Duchess of Ferrara, flipped a pudgy hand at her chief of protocol. “Messer Niccolo! Move them along now! The Duchess of Milan is waiting on us!” She turned, propped her palms on well-padded hips, and confronted her newly wed daughter.

Ignoring her mother's cue, Beatrice continued to stare at the cobbled pavement. A woman's tragedy might have been read in the subtle quiver of her mouth, but Beatrice's small, upturned nose and the exposed white teeth that seemed to wedge her lips slightly open made her every expression childish and somehow trivial. She was fifteen years old, and it was hard to say if her puffy cheeks were those of a very young woman on the verge of obesity or an adolescent who might someday shed her baby fat and become a rather attractive woman.

“You had a good cry this morning,” Eleonora said, “such a good cry that I cannot imagine that you could have any more tears. Every bride has such tears. But now you must remember that your husband, as his nephew's regent, has responsibility for the people of Milan, and so do you. If their initial perception is that you are of a weak and hysterical nature, you will never gain their confidence. And someday your life, your husband's life, and the freedom of your people may depend on that confidence. So today I know you will not cry.”

Polissena began to nod vehemently at Beatrice. “Listen to your sainted mother--”

“Polissena,” the Marquesa interjected, “if we hear one more time how Mama stood on the garden loggia to rally the city, with Father on his deathbed and the plague in the city and the Venetian army camped in the park, I believe that I shall start crying more hysterically than Beatrice did this morning.”

“If it hadn't been for your sainted mother's courage in standing before her people, the city would have fallen. I pray every night to thank the Holy Mother that I was delivered from the Venetians. To think of rape at the hands of those Greek savages they employ. It is a tribute to your mother's strength that you girls have never had to worry about such horrors as we have seen.” Polissena's head bobbed furiously.

“Polissena, if the Venetian mercenaries had been confronted with the prospect of savaging your virtue as the reward for their victory, they would have turned their pikes upon themselves. In any event, as my husband the Marquis is now the Captain General of the Armies of Venice, I think we can rest assured that the age of such outrages has ended.”

Eleonora scarcely heard the inevitable battle between Polissena and Isabella, the war with Venice being nine hard years behind her and her mind on more pressing issues, of which there were already too many. She had dreamed just before awakening this morning; such dreams were considered to be prophetic. Fortunately, she supposed, she had forgotten this one, but she had awakened with a foreboding nonetheless. A dark dream, shrouded in black drapes . . . Nonsense. Her girls would bury her, as it was supposed to be.

But things were not right here. Eleonora looked north past the city wall, a massive ring of russet brick. The seemingly endless skyline offered the grand sweep of Milan's history: ice-white marble domes in the current
all'antica
style; gray medieval battlements with toothlike merlons; thousand-year-old brick bell towers with salmon-hued tile roofs; stately rows of weather-stained ancient Corinthian columns, a reminder of the era when Milan had contested with Rome itself for control of the Roman Empire. Milan was five times as big as Ferrara, its vast dominions a hundredfold as wealthy. But Milan was no different from Ferrara, Eleonora reminded herself. It was not so much a state as a single house, a house dependent on the custodianship of one ducal family for its well-being, its very survival. And there was trouble in this house.

Eleonora made a final adjustment of the pearl-tasseled satin headband that intersected the part in the middle of her daughter's high, obstinate brow. “It is very gracious of your cousin to make the gesture of welcoming you,” Eleonora said. “It is important for you and the Duchess of Milan to be friends. I have already told you how delicate your relationship may be. ...”

She had become Dante's Beatrice, wandering in the gardens of the Earthly Paradise, certain that none of them could find her here. Everywhere she looked were the most extraordinary trees and flowers: cypresses made of jade, irises with amethyst petals, apples like huge rubies. Everything made music; the blossoms sang a lyric soprano chorus, the trees hummed like pipe organs. Her canary, Gia, who must have followed her from Ferrara, flew into her hand. The brook at her feet was as clear as liquid sky, and Gia told her that if she drank from it she would forget everything that had happened. She stooped and cupped her hands.

Mama's voice entered the garden like a cold wind. The petals of the singing flowers trembled in the bitter gust, and Gia flapped his wings and looked at Beatrice fearfully. They listened, horrified, as Mama's voice rose to a howling cyclone and the trees screamed, their gilded limbs shattering. The brook turned to dark and putrid ice. Gia flew into the storm and vanished, and stinging black sleet filled her eyes with tears. . . .