Cosima stopped dead, making him turn, and dragged her fingers from his clasp; and with the word paid singing in her head she brought her hand across his face as violently as she knew how. He reeled, his eyes amazed, his cheek reddening. Bandini and Angelo began to speak but she forestalled them.
‘I am a di Torre!’
If they had been startled before, it was nothing. Ugo Bandini drew breath raspingly, his son became for a moment a caricature of a handsome young man surprised, straight from her father’s book of physiognomy.
‘I am Cosima di Torre.’ She reinforced their surprise. ‘I did what I did because I had been rescued and you had not. If you suppose for one instant that I, or any of my family, could be paid to do any service of any kind-’
‘Lady Cosima,’ Ugo Bandini’s voice, being male and powerful, unfairly made itself heard above hers, ‘be assured my son spoke in ignorance-’
‘I could not know.’ He touched his cheek tenderly and then flung his hands wide. ‘Lady, most admired, most worthy lady, I have been rescued by your means and with your valiant help. I beg your forgiveness. I understand nothing. The Duke’s agent-’ he turned towards Sigismondo, but Sigismondo was not there. Only Angelo stood douce and vigilant behind Cosima — ‘The Duke’s agent rescued me and my father’s trusted secretary tried to prevent my escape.’
‘Giulio? To prevent it?’
‘Yes, sir, there was no mistake. He would have laid hands on me to prevent it.’ He put the back of one bloodstained hand to his forehead, and his father took hold of him at once, looked at his hands in horror, began to pull at his bloodstained gown to get at suspected wounds he had but just envisioned. ‘I’m not hurt, sir. That’s Giulio’s blood. He tried to stop me, he would have called the guard. She killed him.’ He nodded at Angelo, who, as Ugo Bandini wheeled to see him, curtsied politely. Cosima, sinking onto the bench and wondering what had happened to her knees, thought that the Bandini, father and son, had had all the surprises that they could manage for the moment.
Apparently Fate disagreed, for the door opened and Cosima had her own surprise, ushered in by Sigismondo. Her father, his furred hood falling back as he came in, entered and stood, mouth open, staring from her to Bandini, who gaped back at him.
Cosima had risen to her feet at sight of her father, ready to sink into her filial curtsy, with an automatic smile of welcome as she waited for the joyous recognition, the embrace for a daughter restored, like the one Ugo Bandini had given his son. Her father stared, and her smile faded. He strode forward to shake a fist at the Bandini.
‘Traitor! Murderer! Is this your revenge, devils? To bring me here to show me my disgraced daughter?’ He swung on Sigismondo who stood behind him by the door, gravely attentive to all that passed. ‘You called yourself the Duke’s man but now I see the stories are true; you work for Duke Francisco. Spare me your excuses!’ — though Sigismondo showed no sign of making any — ‘The evidence,’ and he flung a pointing hand out towards Leandro, ‘is here! None but a traitor would free a murderer.’ He struck his brow with both fists, almost dislodging his fur cap. ‘But you have failed! I disown her!’ and a sweep of the arm at Cosima brushed her out of his life. ‘She is no daughter of mine. You have dishonoured her and she is no di Torre! Do what you will, give death for her shame, she is no longer mine!’ He was weeping as he shouted and Cosima, astonished and angry, thought: Perhaps he cares about me after all, and simultaneously, I hadn’t realised he was so old.
‘Your daughter, my lord, since her abduction, by Duke Francisco’s men, was at first in the charge of the nuns of a convent in Castelnuova. She was then in the care of the Lady Donati, in whose sister’s house we are now. Everywhere, she has been suitably accompanied and her honour is unstained.’
‘Nuns?’ Sigismondo’s firm tone had carried conviction, and Cosima saw hope begin to dawn in her father’s face. The Bandini, father and son, had also made no protest against the accusations, but watched as though at a piece of theatre whose plot escaped them.
‘Nuns.’ Her father turned his head from Sigismondo to her again. ‘Nuns brought me her hair.’
‘They cut it off,’ she heard herself saying, putting her hands up and feeling the still unaccustomed shape of her shorn head under the folds of lawn. ‘I was a prisoner there.’ How pathetic I sound! Leandro was regarding her with sympathy.
Her father’s face had changed. ‘Duke Francisco…?’ and he turned again, to Ugo Bandini. ‘Then you had no part in this?’
‘I swear it. On my son’s life.’
This, which seemed to convince di Torre, raised other questions. ‘Your son-’ di Torre pointed.
Sigismondo came forward, raising his hand magisterially. ‘My lord, that’s another story. Let it suffice that your daughter has behaved with all the courage and breeding of a di Torre.’
Jacopo turned once more towards her; she saw Sigismondo beckon and she at last sank into her curtsy. Her father came hurrying to her and as she rose she was clasped to his fusty furs. He kissed her, rubbed tears from his beard, and then started and whispered urgently, ‘Your veil, girl! Good God, have you forgotten there are strange men present?’
Cosima reached over her shoulders and brought her veil down. Sigismondo for a moment smiled and she, remembering how boldly she had thrown back her veil in the prison, began to blush, the confining lawn making her face feel hotter still. He was speaking, however.
‘Sirs: your children are, for this moment and in this place, safe; but you and they are in danger and so is all Rocca and the Duke himself. I think you know this. You know that Francisco of Castelnuova is about to attack — that his mercenaries under Il Lupo crossed the border and are encamped tonight on Roccan soil.’
Neither man showed shock. It was true. They had known. Ugo glanced down at his son as if to conceal any expression. Her own father, who had released her almost at once from his embrace, had a self-conscious air. It was Angelo who, smoothing his dress, remarked, ‘Artful bastard,’ and drew all eyes.
‘Well, he’s chosen his time, hasn’t he?’ Angelo spoke still in his upper register, as a girl. ‘The city’s steaming like a midden. They don’t like their Duchess getting murdered and they don’t like Ippolyto’s men either, swaggering about sneering. They don’t like the street-fighting that ruins their goods.’ He nodded at Leandro and showed a hint of the crooked teeth in the lovely face; ‘They’ll be pissed off properly at not seeing the colour of your guts tomorrow. Some of them’s connoisseurs.’
Bandini indignantly enveloped his son once more in a protective embrace, but Sigismondo addressed Jacopo di Torre. ‘You were given instructions, my lord: the price of your daughter’s life and safety.’
Di Torre tweaked at the veil on his daughter’s shoulder, as if arranging it were of importance.
‘What were those instructions?’
Cosima found her wrist taken by her father, who displayed her and spoke in a quick loud tone. ‘What was I to do? Could I let my child die? My only heir? A di Torre?’
An object, a possession, a pawn… Cosima found these thoughts, which she had entertained all her life, rising to the surface. Her father never looked at her as Bandini looked at his son. Leandro was an heir, but he would keep his father’s name, perpetuate his line. She struggled a little to free her wrist, and her father at once let go without looking at her. She was deadly tired, and her feet burned, but her young lifetime’s practice kept her upright, with the face of complaisance expected in a young girl.
‘Indeed, my lord. You could not let her die. Nature and your love for her demanded that you obey those orders. What were they? How were you to come to the aid of Duke Francisco tomorrow?’