The Scarlet Contessa. Jeanne Kalogridis

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СКАЧАТЬ her eyes oddly bright. “When?”

      “I will not hear of this,” Bona interjected. “Fortune-telling is pure wickedness, an abomination. . . . I wish to God that you had never seen those accursed cards! How could you have taken them from me?”

      “Soon,” I answered Caterina. To Bona I said, “Forgive me, Your Grace. Of late, my mind seems not to be my own.”

      Bona crossed herself. She was on the verge of weeping, I realized, and so I fell silent and answered no more of Caterina’s questions.

      The duchess never said anything more about the cards that I had taken without her permission, yet from that moment on, she developed a perceptible coolness toward me. I had stolen from her, and Bona would not forget it.

      Chapter Six

      On Christmas Day, three masses were said in the duke’s chapel; custom demanded that Galeazzo and all of his courtiers attend. I missed the first, however, as I slept poorly, given my throbbing lip, and Bona told me to stay abed when the others rose.

      I attended the other services and the great banquet, but wore my black veil to hide my swollen lip, and ate and drank little. When the dancing began, I retreated to Matteo’s chamber and tried again to make sense of the cipher in the little leather-bound book from his saddlebag, without success. I also wondered what became of the triumph cards I had left with the duke and his brothers, but did not dare ask Bona.

      The next day was the feast of Saint Stephen, the first martyr. As such, the duke was expected to attend mass at the church of Santo Stefano in the southeastern quarter, a short ride away. But normally temperate Milan was in the grip of the coldest weather most of its citizens had ever seen; an ice storm had glazed the city during the night, and been followed by a dusting of snow and a fierce wind that blew the clouds away, leaving trees, bushes, and roofs glittering in the early-morning sun.

      The wind howled as I rose and dressed in my black mourning. A quick glance in the duchess’s large hand mirror revealed that the swelling in my upper lip had gone down, though the skin was still purplish and bore a dark red scab where it had neatly split; I lowered my dark veil again. Bona kept her bed curtains pulled; she had been up retching during the night, and Francesca, I, and the chambermaids all agreed we would not wake her, but send a message to the duke that she was too ill to rise. Beyond the window, branches bowed low, snapping from the weight of the ice and groaning in the wake of the wind; I expected that most of the court, Galeazzo and his magnificent choir included, would refuse to go out in such weather, and instead celebrate the saint’s day here at the castle.

      I was wrong. An hour after we sent word to the duke that the duchess was indisposed, Caterina came running into Bona’s chamber, her pale, pretty cheeks flushed and damp with tears. Her mother, Lucrezia Landriani, one of the duke’s dearest, and most prolific, mistresses, lingered in the doorway, lest her presence offend the duchess.

      “I won’t go!” Caterina exclaimed, pouting, as she entered. She was dressed in a confection of white watered silk trimmed lightly in crimson velvet and studded with gold beads; her long yellow curls had been neatly contained in a hairnet littered with diamonds and tiny rubies. “Where is the lady duchess? I must speak to her!”

      “Duchess Bona is ill, Madonna Caterina, and cannot be disturbed,” I said in a hushed, warning tone.

      Caterina recoiled slightly at the word ill and moved no farther; she gestured at me. “Help me, then! My father the duke is insisting that all of his”—she lowered her voice out of respect for Bona—“ladies and children accompany him to Santo Stefano!” His mistresses, she meant; perhaps it was Galeazzo’s way of getting even with his wife for not accompanying him in the cold.

      “In this weather?” Even I was surprised.

      Caterina nodded; a cascade of diamonds and rubies sparkled at her ears. She was truly magnificent to behold that day, a porcelain beauty with gleaming golden hair, dressed in shimmering white, the dark red trim serving to accentuate her pale glory.

      “He would have us walk halfway across the city in this wind,” she said, and as if on cue, a gust rattled at the window. “Only the bishop and the ambassadors will be allowed to ride beside him on horseback. Please, Dea,” she said, “can you not wake the lady duchess? She could send a note asking His Grace if my mother and I could ride beside him in the Lady Bona’s stead. She could even say that I am weak from a recent illness. . . .”

      Bona’s flat, weary voice emanated from behind the tapestry bed curtains. “Have you been ill, Caterina?”

      From the doorway, her mother, Lucrezia, called softly back, “Your Grace, she is being difficult because she is jealous—the duke called upon his sons to visit him this morning, but has ignored Caterina, who is eager to show him her lovely new dress. She thinks that if she rides beside him in a place of honor, he and everyone else in Milan will have a chance to admire her.” She shot a sour look at her daughter. “You must not bother Her Grace. The duke has decided to go, and we must hurry. His priest and choir are already waiting at Santo Stefano; the others have all gathered in the courtyard.”

      “Dea,” Bona called weakly, “will you go with her in my stead? And relay to the duke that I would humbly ask his favor for a horse for Caterina and her mother?”

      “Of course, Your Grace,” I answered, and in a lower voice said to Caterina, “but he will not give them if I ask.”

      “Why not?” she said, studying me carefully, and I remembered that I had, in fact, predicted Galeazzo’s doom and walked out of his chamber alive and barely scathed.

      I took a step closer to Caterina. “You must get your cloak and gloves, Madonna,” I told her. “The duke will not suffer our being late.”

      Bona called again from behind the curtains. “Go,” she said to me, “and pray for my husband. I have had a night of evil dreams.”

      We almost were late. I would have far preferred to remain inside the warm castle to tend the duchess that morning, but for Bona’s sake, I borrowed Francesca’s black woolen cloak and gloves and went down to the huge courtyard with Caterina and her mother. By the watchtowers, a crowd of perhaps fifty nobles—most of them women with their children, the duke’s illegitimate get, and the rest of the duke’s favorite male courtiers—had gathered, their splendid attire hidden beneath swaths of fur and thick wool. Nearby, a half dozen grooms held the reins to some thirty horses.

      The mood of the waiting nobles was sour, their teeth chattering. Caterina and I joined them, and stamped our feet to keep warm until the grinning duke at last appeared in a crimson cloak lined with white ermine, his arms linked with a fellow hellion, Zaccaria Saggi, the Mantuan ambassador. The stooped, gold-mitered Bishop of Como and the duke’s brothers, Filippo and Ottaviano, followed close behind, trailed by the Florentine ambassador and a dozen gentlemen of the chamber. The whole was flanked by a score of guards in full armor, long swords sheathed at their hips; among their ranks was a great tall Moor with yellow eyes and dark brown skin. In place of a helmet, he wore a large white turban; in place of a sword, a scimitar.

      I moved toward the duke, paused a generous distance away, and bowed deeply as I relayed Bona’s request.

      He stiffened, unnerved by the sight of me, but cupped a hand to his ear to catch my words. A sudden bitter gust drove them away; impatient, he frowned and waved me off. Caterina thinned her lips and uttered an indignant curse beneath her breath as I returned to her side.

      Galeazzo then briefly addressed the waiting crowd, speaking perhaps of the holiday and СКАЧАТЬ