Perhaps an hour later, when the street had become quiet and the crowd louder, the lock clicked and Sigismondo entered. He was in the black boots, hose and jerkin in which Leandro had first seen him, though he also wore a loose black robe and carried another. He wore no shirt, which made him appear both more muscular and also more ruffianly.
‘If you wear this, and keep hooded, you may watch from the roof loggia,’ he said, and held out the robe. ‘The house is empty of servants; they’ve all gone to see you die.’
Through the house Leandro went, treading the rough brownish marble of the upper stairs, finding his way by guess. He heard a door clang shut below. He came out at last under the tiles on an open gallery, to find Cosima sitting beside a comfortable, handsome woman who greeted him warmly as her guest. Behind them, eating something from an earthenware jar, was a scruffy little man whose appearance suggested attendance on horses rather than ladies. A cheerful one-eared dog, grubby and curly, came bustling to investigate him.
‘Sit here,’ said Cosima di Torre. ‘There’s a perfect view of the scaffold.’
They could see the upper part of the square, the face of the new Palace and the Cathedral, the side of the old Castle. The baroque facades facing them had each a balcony across the piano nobile. On the Palace balcony, benches and velvet chairs had been placed, and some of the Duke’s guard stood there. The Cathedral balcony was filling with clerics. Minor members of the Court had emerged into the sunlight from the apartment behind the Palace balcony, like those too early for a party. Two came out on the apron that was the scaffold, looked at the garrotting post and made exaggerated gestures of horror. Leandro wrapped his borrowed cloak more tightly round him and wished he owned a less active imagination, one which would not so persistently confront him with images of himself in the stages of being slowly strangled.
‘I’ve never seen an execution,’ Cosima remarked, ‘and now I’m not going to.’ He thought she need not have sounded so regretful.
The Lady Donati was busy netting. ‘I don’t go any more. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’ She offered them marzipan.
More of the Court appeared. The Lady Violante, sumptuously enfolded in black velvet dagged with gold, stood talking. The crowd suddenly booed and she turned and, from her posture, was doing the same: up from below had come the executioner, masked and brawny, and his assistant, slight and with golden hair on his neck under the leather cap. He unrolled a black bundle and laid out an array of instruments.
‘I’m glad Hubert’s arrangement with the Duke’s headsman came off all right,’ remarked the Lady Donati.
‘That’s Sigismondo?’ Cosima all but squealed, amazed.
The Duke Ludovico and his brother-in-law Duke Ippolyto appeared in the long windows. White and green banners flared out beneath the trumpets and a fanfare sounded. There was scattered cheering in the crowd, but also an underburden of discontent, a subterranean tremor. The Lord Paolo joined them and this time there came enthusiastic cheers. The Ducal party sat, the Duke signalled, and the assistant went to call the accused. People craned to be the first to see, so that the whole crowd seemed to lean forward.
A man in the Duke’s livery appeared from below. He approached the balcony, knelt, and spoke to the Duke who leant to hear him. A note of speculation swept through the crowd.
‘Bit late,’ Benno said. ‘Looks like they’ve only just found you’ve gone missing.’
‘They’ll have found Piero,’ Cosima said. ‘It must have been a perfectly revolting surprise.’
Sigismondo stood gravely waiting, arms folded. He did not move in the slightest. Crouched over the instruments, Angelo waited, the breeze stirring the golden fronds on his neck.
The Lord Paolo leant to speak to his brother, and then advanced. He raised his arms and the crowd slowly obeyed him. He looked round the great piazza, at the crowded windows, the side streets where armed men seemed to be pressing in through the crowds there like dark tributaries to a lake. Finally his voice rang out.
‘People of Rocca! The wretched boy accused of this terrible murder is not here…”
An outbreak of indignation was hushed among the crowd as Paolo again raised his arms.
‘But I tell you that the true murderer is here, is present in this place. The vile deed robbed you and all of us of a kind and loved benefactress. I cannot tell you with what unwillingness I speak or how I grieve, but I saw her die and can no longer hold my tongue. There, there is her murderer — her husband!’
His outflung hand pointed.
Chapter Twenty-One
A roar came from the crowd, an animal howl. The Duke was on his feet and had advanced. Duke Ippolyto, sword drawn, ran forward, overtook him and turned, sword arm back for a thrust. A swirl of black velvet had followed him and Violante’s hands fastened on his sword arm. He swung round, lost his balance and thudded to the boards, Violante falling on him kicking and shouting, her grasp relentless as he tried to free himself and rise. The Duke had wheeled and gone into the Palace, with Paolo after him. Sigismondo and Angelo leapt the struggling royal scuffle that had hampered Paolo, and pursued, Sigismondo’s guise cleaving a way before him as if he used the axe he now suddenly carried, his grip near its head.
The Duke, entering the gallery behind the balcony, found not the sea-green and white of his guards, but his brother’s slate-blue and sulphur livery, on men who closed on him as if on a criminaclass="underline" but he was armed, and not only with his sword. One man fell back on meeting his imperious eyes. He ran their leader through and fled on up the room, a confused pursuit at his heels. Without pausing, he sliced the cord holding the door curtain, which closed on the foremost man behind him. Others thrust by, until the man in the curtain convulsively pulled it all down. Paolo and two of his guards had got through; two agile black-clad men leapt over this second confusion and gained on the chase.
A vertiginous flight of rose marble led down on the right. One of Paolo’s men lost his footing and brilliantly overtook the Duke, but not in any position to apprehend him. The Duke also shed his cloak on the stairs, a vast hazard of fur and purple which slithered after him. Sigismondo leapt it and landed soft on the reviving guard spread-eagled at the foot. Angelo followed him. Behind them streamed a trail of courtiers, a mêlée of guards in the two colours who at least knew whom to fight, and at the stairfoot all these were joined by a covey of dwarves who brought down a dozen of them before anyone knew. The rest fell over these.
The Duke had gone ahead into the Cathedral.
His running feet startled the priests round the Duchess’s bier, his drawn sword startled them more. Tebaldo struggled to his feet at the prie-dieu in a side chapel. The priests scattered, shouting interdictions. The Duke paused by the catafalque, lowering his blade as if he believed that here no one would attack him. He breathed hard. As Paolo approached he called in stupefaction, ‘Why did you say that? Brother-’
For answer, Paolo attacked.
Having said what he had said, there was no option for him but that. He could hear the massive shout in the square. The shout was for the Duke and not for him. He had heard it when he stood on the scaffold and Ippolyto’s blow was foiled. The mercenaries surging from the side streets had not roared Paolo as they were paid to do. It rang in his ears now: ‘Duca, Du-ca! Lu-do-vi-co!’
They fought. As they circled and swung and parried, priests, one with a processional cross, hovered around them, moving as they moved, trying to summon courage to run in and part them. A pair of black shadows stalked beyond. The Duchess lay in her black velvet, remote and pale. A tall, gilt candleholder, touched by a working elbow, rocked, swayed and crashed. Angelo had been poised with his knife; he jinked and altered aim, altered it again as they circled. Wax spread on the floor, cooling at once. The Duke’s boot stamped, slipped, and he was down, his sword sliding away across the marble. A priest ran in, but Paolo stood over his brother, sword raised.