Duchess of Milan (44 page)

Beatrice prepared to ascend to her seat on Bianca Maria’s left; the Duchess of Milan would sit to the bride’s right. She gathered up her skirts and focused on the steps. The car swayed slightly; for all its opulence, it was just a shell of wood and fabric. She reached the top and carefully eased into her cushioned perch. Then she looked to her right. Her vision was completely blocked by the high, scrolled arm of Bianca Maria’s throne. She would not even be able to see Eesh until they got to the Duomo.

“Toto.”

Beatrice looked up. The future Empress, trying surreptitiously to glance downward without moving her head, swiveled her eyes with comic determination.

“Toto,” Bianca Maria whispered urgently, “my mother is going to let me get a monkey to take to Germany. Help me think of a name for him before we get to the Duomo.”

The bridal procession was so long that the head had passed beneath the huge central tower at the far end of the Piazza d’Armi before the tail had even left the Ducal Court. Upon leaving the Castello, the vast, splendid serpent crawled beneath a red-white-and-blue canvas awning, supported on rows of white wooden columns wreathed in ivy, that extended all the way from the gate of the Castello to the steps of the Duomo, running for most of its length down the Via degli Armorai. Huge crowds, not just armorers but tradesmen and merchants and laborers as well, stood in the shop and factory porches and cheered Milan’s latest conquest by marriage.

Inside the Duomo enormous draperies covered the walls, the sheen of candlelight on brocade alternating with the sunlit, transparent polychrome of the towering stained-glass windows. The high altar was heaped with silver vases, chandeliers, gold-framed icons, reliquaries, jeweled censers, and thousands of wax candles. In the center of the church, beneath the unfinished dome, stood an immense Roman-style triumphal arch crowned with Maestro Leonardo’s colossal, three-story-high plaster statue of Francesco Sforza on horseback, intended to be the wonder of the world when finally cast in bronze. The scent of perfume and incense was so strong that at first it was difficult to breathe; the music of the choir, trumpets, flutes, and organ drifted sonorously through this fragrant medium.

The service proceeded with the magisterial splendor of a dream. After the singing of the Mass had been concluded, the wedding ceremony and coronation began. Beatrice played her part with the awe of a spectator, accompanying Bianca Maria to the high altar along with her husband, the Duke and Duchess of Milan, the German ambassadors, and the Emperor’s proxy, the Bishop of Brixen, a slender eminence virtually consumed by his vestments and dome-shaped bishop’s crown. Isabella never even glanced at Beatrice; she seemed as self-absorbed as Bianca Maria.

Finally the Bishop of Brixen took up the imperial crown, two intersecting gold arches, studded with rubies, pearls, and diamonds, topped with a globe and cross. He carefully placed the crown on Bianca Maria’s marvelously motionless head. At that moment bells and trumpets resounded inside the church, followed by the massive percussion of cannons fired outside.

The cannonades continued at intervals as the entire wedding party proceeded laboriously out of the church. Beneath the steps of the Duomo a corps of gentlemen in fur-trimmed satin capes formed up to escort Bianca Maria to her horse. Beatrice and Isabella were expected to follow behind, but there was some problem in erecting the white damask baldachino that was to be carried like a big umbrella over the bride and her horse. Suddenly Beatrice found herself stranded at the top of the steps, shoulder-to-shoulder with her cousin. She couldn’t help herself and turned her head.

Eesh was so near, so familiar: the sharp dimple at the corner of her mouth, the reddish flare of her hair and the long, straight slope of her nose; the elegant, powerful neck, pale and lightly pulsing, so close; the smell of her, balsam and a faint hint of lemon. And yet she seemed unreachable, behind some perfectly transparent yet infinitely thick glass. Beatrice had the strange feeling that if she tried to touch Eesh, everything would shatter; even the stars would explode and fall to earth like glitter.

And she wondered if silence wasn’t preferable to anything they might say. Then, almost impulsively: “Thank you for your letter about my mother.”

Isabella tensed as if flinching from the cannons. But the guns were temporarily silent. “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. She did not turn her head. “About your mother.”

With sudden spite, Beatrice wanted to say: I read your letter to your father. Then Eesh turned and looked at her. Isabella’s eyes had a brilliant, crystal clarity, the bloom of pregnancy. Her full, innocent lips trembled as if considering words. But after a long pause she said nothing. The cannons boomed again and her shoulders tightened reflexively and she turned away.

The cape-clad gentlemen successfully raised the baldachino over Bianca Maria. Two Milanese noblemen stepped forward to assist Beatrice and Isabella to their horses.

The two duchesses rode back to the Castello without looking at one another again.

Il Moro propped his son on the broad stone window ledge overlooking the city. Little Ercole, dressed for the wedding in a blue-and-gold satin jacket and matching cap, his legs still swaddled, milled his arms in excitement and looked back at his father with a smile and a stream of ba-bas and trills.

“I don’t like him there,” Beatrice said. They were at the highest observation level of the Castello’s central tower. Milan, lit with tens of thousands of torches, was a huge wheel of light beneath them.

“Your mama is the most recklessly courageous woman I have ever known,” Il Moro told his son playfully. “Every time she gets on a horse I fear for her life, but she is afraid to let her big boy sit here in his father’s arms. Your mama is silly.” Ercole responded with a fine sentence of babble. Il Moro answered him in the same incomprehensible tongue.

By ducal fiat Ercole was allowed to remain on his perch while his father pointed out the principal sights of the torchlit city. Suddenly a clarion of every bell from every tower rang the hour, and Ercole screamed in concert and pumped his arms. After the clarion died away, the city was almost supernaturally quiet. Then several pops like small mortars firing sounded from somewhere out in the wheel of light. A moment later a huge whoosh, like some great door closing, swept across the city.

The black sky filled with sparking pinpoints of light and then exploded into multicolored brilliance. Fusillade after fusillade of fireworks thundered skyward and fell back to earth in dense showers of sparks. Beatrice had never seen anything like it; her father’s fireworks displays had not used in an entire night a hundredth of what burst over Milan every few seconds.

Ercole sat captivated for a moment, awe stilling his little arms. Then without warning he began to cry. His flushed face, lit by the incandescent sky, glowed an eerie red. He screamed hysterically, and Il Moro immediately pulled the little boy away from the open window and tried to comfort him. Ercole continued to writhe and howl even when Beatrice held him. Only when his wet nurse interceded did he pause to hiccup and paw at his nurse’s breast.

“He wants to go down,” Beatrice told the wet nurse. “I’m certain he will sleep after he has fed.”

Ercole, his nurse, and Il Moro’s two guards vanished into the staircase, leaving Beatrice and Il Moro alone. The storm of light continued. Beatrice glanced at her husband. He was totally absorbed, his eyes sparking with all the colors of the exploding rainbow. A sequence of booms like rolling thunder announced the final salvo, and the sky glowed so intensely that she drew back from the window ledge with an almost physical fear.

In profound silence the sky darkened, and a last fine veil of sparks settled and dissolved against the tile roofs of Milan. All over the city, the torchlights began to go out. Beatrice imagined she could hear Fortune whispering in her ear, cautioning her.

Beatrice put her arm around her husband’s waist. She wondered if he would answer her question. “I was asked at least a dozen times today, ever so discreetly, what you intend to do about the investiture. The rumors are flying. Did you arrange anything with the German ambassadors?”

Il Moro continued to stare out over the city, studying the fading pattern of lights. Beatrice accepted his silence; she realized she already had whatever truth she needed from him. But there was a moment of the old pain, and a tinge of fear.

She was surprised when he spoke. “The new Emperor does not wish to invest anyone as Duke of Milan until he has settled the usual internal disputes that follow a succession. We do not even intend to discuss the matter until next spring, much less when this investiture will take place and who will be invested.”

“Do you still want it?”

“Of course. But if the Venetians will not permit it . . .” He shrugged and pulled back from the window ledge. For a panicky moment Beatrice thought he would turn and question her again about her meeting with the Doge. Even as she realized that she had fallen in love with him, she was determined more than ever to keep her secret, the last defense for her naked heart, the one power she could always wield over him. But he said nothing.

“Wouldn’t it be better in that case to deny all the rumors?” she asked. “Why antagonize Naples and give the French a pretext for attacking Milan?”

He turned and smiled. “Because I want to antagonize Naples. I want to frighten King Ferrante into entering into a binding treaty of peace with us and put an end to this nonsense about Alfonso marching on Milan and Gian assuming full ducal authority. When that is done we will not have to worry about the French or Naples. At least as long as Ferrante lives.”

“And that will satisfy your ambition?”

Il Moro looked out over the darkened city. “Ambition,” he said vaguely, as if he wasn’t certain what the word meant. “Ambition. I should tell you about my ambition.” He paused again, seemingly lost in thought. “Twice in my life I have found myself at an impasse from which I thought no ambition could ever lead me. The first time was when my brother exiled me from Milan. I believe now that in some grotesque fashion he loved me and didn’t want to kill me, as he inevitably would have had I stayed. I wandered between all the courts of Italy, to France, to Spain, to Germany. Always the same welcome for the fourth son of Francesco Sforza: the women with desire hot in their eyes, the men with cold smirking contempt for a vagabond with no destination. Years with no purpose, my strongest years wasted on drink and games and meaningless embraces. And then Fortune contrived to make me my nephew’s regent. I won’t lie to you and say that Cecilia wasn’t a part of that rebirth, and that when she . . . left I did not think that my life had once again ended. She was my strength. Cecilia wanted me to be Duke of Milan more than I ever wanted it for myself.” He smiled faintly, fondly.

“I am forty-one years old. I have learned that something happens to a man at this time in his life. Perhaps the circle of people and possibilities around him is greater than ever. And yet he has never been more isolated, never felt more confined by what he has made of his life. Loneliness is what he fears, even more than he fears death and failure. He is terrified that he will reach out in the dark and no one will be there. I don’t mean just a body. That he can buy. He wants to touch another soul. Without that, his ambition is meaningless. He is a fool building a tower to reach God, when God is only someone beside him in the night who truly knows his soul.”

He faced her directly. “I never thought I could love again after Cecilia left. Even when you and I became lovers.”

Beatrice felt completely empty, as if whatever he said next would occupy her entire soul.

“I know the conditions you demand for love. Perhaps I can never be the lover of whom you have always dreamed. But I want to try. I want to try to love you in that way. I imagine you charging headlong through the darkened labyrinth of my life, finding pathways I have never tried before, leading me to some center I have never been able to find. You and Ercole. You will be the last and best of all my lives. You are my ambition.”

Perhaps once she had imagined a joy as explosive as the fireworks, the music of the spheres bursting into ever-expanding, all-encompassing circles of light. But this was quiet, like wandering into a huge, hushed cathedral, waiting for the dawn that would reveal its unimaginable splendor.

She put her arms around him, and he looked into her eyes in a way that made her knees weaken. When he kissed her the wheel of possibilities whirled, and she said to whatever fate she had empowered, Stop. Stop the wheel. This is my choice.

As if he had heard that command, he simply held her, no longer needing to speak to her or caress her, the city below them so dark and silent that they might have been the only two people in the world.

Extract of a dispatch of Antonio Stanga, Milanese ambassador to Naples, to Lodovico Sforza, “Il Moro,” Duke of Bari and regent for the Duke of Milan. Naples, 1 January 1494

. . . After some discussions of the points you instructed me to raise, His Majesty King Ferrante of Naples suggested that as proof of his determination to arrive at a settlement guaranteeing peace he would willingly journey to Milan to negotiate such an agreement. To that end, and to expedite his progress when he receives your reply, he has already begun to assemble his ships for the voyage to Genoa. . . . King Ferrante burns with the spirit of accommodation . . . and the cause of Italian unity has entered this new year with the brightest prospect we have seen in many long and fearful months. . . .

Extract of a letter of Isabella d’Este da Gonzaga, Marquesa of Mantua, to Beatrice d’Este da Sforza, Duchess of Bari. 1 January 1494

Your most illustrious Highness and my only sister,

You will have heard that I have given birth to a daughter-- born 31 December--and that both she and I are doing well, although I am sorry not to have a son. But this is Fortune’s determination, and so I have determined to love her with all my heart. ... As you also may have heard, we have named her Eleonora after our mother of blessed memory. It is a bitter joy to know that Mama is not here to hold her, and yet strange to tell, I have felt throughout that Mama is here. . . .