What other wonders were to appear went unheard, because the Duke rose, offering his hand to the Lady Cecilia. Her husband managed to get to his feet, but made an exit more remarkable for urgent speed than grace, ushered skilfully to a side door by pages. The Lady Violante followed her father, handed by a cavalier who bent obsequiously to listen as she spoke.
The Festaiuolo was still announcing further wonders, while the company made for the doors. Pages waited there with cloaks, for the loggia would be cold. Some kept their seats, and the servers still came with trays of small sweetmeats or dishes of sorbets, while the tumblers and the music resumed.
Sigismondo, perhaps aware of Benno’s urgent wishes, got up and accompanied one of his neighbours out, taking a hooded cloak at the door. Benno (the pigeon, still warm, in his bosom) was ignored by the pages, but outside, a servitor gave him a blanket wrap. He found a bench at the back of the loggia where a trio of gentlemen’s servants gave him three inches to stand on. Once he had placed where his master was, against a pillar towards the end, where he could see the company by the bonfire light, Benno gave his mind and soul to the entertainment.
He forgot everything for the next period of time. He gaped at the whirling lights, the moving figures, the fountains, the coloured explosions, the stars that burst in the night sky; his breath steamed on the air before his face but he noticed no cold. He came down to earth, literally, as somebody pushed past the bench and disturbed his precarious balance. He heard the question — ‘Signor Sigismondo?’ — and he wormed through the crowd after the servant. Sigismondo bent his head to hear the messenger, nodded and made for the nearest door. Benno slid after him. They made their way through a room full of knights in exotic pasteboard armour and some allegorical figures with towering headdresses, one an outsize skull, one in green with iron-grey teeth. Benno, bewildered, kept Sigismondo’s shoulders in view, followed him out and up a spiral staircase, along a blank stone corridor unlike the ornate public rooms, where the music and the pop of fireworks became distant and then louder as they emerged at a stairhead. Sigismondo crossed to a highly decorated doorway where a curiously pallid man-at-arms stood aside and opened one of the carved doors. Benno, prevented, sighed and waited where he was. Sigismondo entered. He saw, first of all, the Duke, who leant on the wall past the curtained foot of a bed. In a looking glass with a frame of carved gilt, his reflection in profile stared, the brooch on his cap winking. Sigismondo rounded the curtains.
The Duchess, in her shift, lay upon the bed; two fat wax candles showed her spread body, the hand drooping over the edge, the open mouth dark as the grave.
Chapter Five
The prevalent smell was of blood. As the small winter airs shifted in the room the smells shifted: blood, candlewax and smoke, scent and sweat, blood. Her shift was crumpled at the waist round the dark stem of a knife hilt, her thighs gleamed pale.
The Duke, his voice hardly more than a whisper, said, ‘I found her so.’
Sigismondo stepped forward. His hand flowed, from crossing himself, to touch the Duchess at the neck below the ear. He laid the back of his hand against her cheek, hummed, and brooded over the body without disturbing the knife. Next, he pushed open a jib door that stood ajar near the bed head, and glanced into the small closet there, where a light burned. A crackle of the fireworks the Duchess had paid for came through the closet window. The bedroom was close-shuttered and the smell of death was strong, alien to human sense.
Sigismondo stood with his head on one side as though he listened, and then moved with a pounce that brought the Duke out of his daze. From under the waterfall of brocade curtains at the foot of the bed, Sigismondo dragged out an inert figure. The head lolled back, showing a red graze on the brow. Dark hair lay on Sigismondo’s sleeve. Here, too, the mouth was open, but he breathed.
‘Leandro Bandini?’ The Duke was puzzled. He pointed at the tow-like hair that seemed to clothe the body like an animal’s hide. ‘The Wild Man?’
‘So it would appear, your Grace.’
Sigismondo bent and sniffed at the young man’s breath; he stayed, nostrils flared and mouth parted, like a cat that tastes a scent. He sniffed again. The Duke put a hand to the dressing table as though to prevent himself falling.
‘Drunk! He comes here drunk, forces my lady and kills her to save his skin.’
Sigismondo was examining the young man’s hands and did not point out that, if this had been Leandro Bandini’s intention, it had gone essentially wrong.
‘Not drunk, my lord. It’s a drug I can smell. There’s no blood on his hands or the Wild Man’s skin.’ He stood up. ‘Your Grace, this is a Bandini. We have not had reason to trust the words of di Torre or Bandini; nor should we trust what appear to be their deeds.’
The Duke looked at Sigismondo. He said, ‘Let him be committed to the dungeons, no one is to have access to him unless by my order.’
Sigismondo bent to take hold of the young man, but the Duke continued, ‘Wait.’
He drew from his finger a heavy intaglio ring, a sardonyx with the arms of Rocca, and held it out to Sigismondo.
‘Question whom you choose.’
The first person Sigismondo chose was the Festaiuolo hired by the Duchess to stage-manage the masques at dinner. He had received the Duke’s message cancelling the rest of the entertainment, and Sigismondo found him in the anteroom to the Great Hall; a small man in a highly mobile state of apprehension and annoyance, trying to deal with the performers cheated of their display. They stood about, grumbling, reluctant to remove the clothes they had lost the chance of showing, while Niccolo Sanseverino tried to collect headdresses and useful accessories such as Envy’s iron teeth and Fortune’s wig with its forelock, bald at the back. A wicker basket held Orpheus’s gilded harp, a horn of plenty also gilded and spilling out its contents of green silk leaves, wax apples and peaches and grapes; piles of ribbons, Cupid’s gilt bow and quiver. He was not at all inclined to spare time for Sigismondo, until he saw the Duke’s ring.
‘But of course. Anything I can do, sir. The Duke can command me at any time. But you must know the Duchess commands me this evening.’ His small black eyes glanced from Sigismondo’s face to the ring again, while with one hand he waved away an insistent bacchante. ‘Is she very displeased with what occurred?’
Sigismondo’s hum could have signified anything. He said, ‘Where can we talk unheard?’ and Niccolo, taking a belt of ivy leaves out of the hands of a boy in leopard pelt who had scarcely undone it, towed his property basket and led the way into an alcove, as tiny as the room off the Duchess’s bedroom, also with a single candle burning. He offered Sigismondo a stool and took one himself. Between them, a carpet-covered table was crowded with little pots of coloured lard and dishes of white skin paint. A slate on the wall, written in almost illegible script, bore a list ticked, half erased and written over.
‘It’s the Wild Man, isn’t it? He finished it for us.’ Niccolo, sagging with sudden weariness, poured wine into a horn cup and offered it to Sigismondo, who bowed his head, lifted the cup to him, drank, and handed it back after wiping the rim.
‘What can you tell me about the Wild Man?’
‘Drunk. He must have been drunk. There’s no accounting for what he did in any other way. I should never have taken him on. All my instincts warned me.’ He shook his head and poured more wine. ‘A vagabond.’ He drank it back, his greasy black curls brushing the costumes hanging in a bunch behind him.
‘This mistake. Tell me about it.’
A hulking form filled the entrance, its arms embracing a huge bundle of white silk. ‘Where you want this?’
‘There.’ Niccolo pointed behind Sigismondo, who rose, took the bundle and put it into a lined basket against the wall. He sat, reaching to pull the curtain across the alcove.