‘He did not know that, your Grace. He was told it was for a jest and, when he protested that the Duchess would be angry at the ruin of her dress, he was told she was party to the jest.’
‘Where did the skin for Bandini come from? It could not be the same.’
‘There were several in the Festaiuolo’s store. He told me he cannot always protect them from theft, and the Lord Paolo’s men were very helpful over the entertainments.’ Sigismondo was assisting Angelo out of the skin and now he stood, clothed in blue, in that chamber hung with dark tapestry and draped in black, more than ever a creature of the sky. The Cardinal addressed him.
‘Tell us what happened that night.’
Angelo told, succinctly, the light a halo in his hair, how he had danced, spilt the drink, been chased out, had changed his clothes, been paid, and had seen his paymaster burn the bundle of the skin and then follow him out of the Palace grounds. ‘I tried to throw him off, but he followed. I ran, but he gained on me. I don’t know this town. He brought me down; and so I fought and killed him.’
There was no flicker on Sigismondo’s face to say this was not the tale he had heard, that Angelo, knowing he was followed, had lain in wait and knifed his pursuer without valediction. Such embroideries as this made the incident more forgivable to earthly justice.
‘How are we to know that the man was Paolo’s?’
‘I can’t tell, sir,’ said the angel, humbly. ‘He wore no badge or livery; as we fought, though, this chain came off his neck. It may be it’s known to someone.’
He pulled from his pocket, and put down on the table, a thin double-twist silver-gilt chain, broken, with a curious memento mori pendant of a small ivory skull with deep-set ruby eyes.
The Duke said in a voice without feeling, ‘One of my brother’s most constant attendants wears one such. Giannini, Giacomino, something of that sound. They are all in custody. It can be seen if he is missing.
‘So, you have found the dancer.’
Sigismondo said, ‘Do my lords wish to question him more?’ and as they made no answer the Duke waved dismissal. Angelo withdrew his celestial presence. The little skull lay on the cloth beside the Cardinal’s crucifix.
‘We have, my lords, one man, this Giannini, who cannot speak because he is dead. Another, whose story is necessary at this juncture, is also dead. It may be, however, that his Grace has the power to resurrect him.’
‘Have a care, my son,’ said the Cardinal smoothly.
‘Were he alive, my lords, this witness would be a dead man.’ The Duke frowned, but his quick glance at Sigismondo showed a face serious and considerate. The play on words certainly was not an effort to joke on a subject so grave. ‘He would be hanged for theft, and his witness is such that he would tremble for his life, did he live, at the telling of it.’
‘This doubly dead man can be revived?’ the Duke Ippolyto enquired.
‘I see that, if he lived, he would require a pardon for theft and an assurance of indemnity for what he might speak.’ The Duke, however stunned by grief he might be, was as quick of apprehension as ever. He regarded Sigismondo with an unfathomable blue stare. ‘A pardon for theft is not a heavy matter, but if he speaks the truth and trembles to tell it, against whom does he speak? Ourself? My innocence has been in question. The truth can only clear it. Why does this dead man tremble?’
‘Your Grace, he speaks against the dead.’
After a moment the Duke Ippolyto said, ‘All of us here now know that my sister was an adulteress. This witness could scarcely defame her.’
‘By digging out the mud, we shall come to clear water,’ said the Cardinal.
‘Let us hear your dead man, Sigismondo. Truth should be worth a pardon. If I do not promise him his life, what then?’
‘If your Grace will not promise it, he may not have it.’ Sigismondo bowed, and spread deprecating hands. ‘He cannot live.’
‘In the wars in Germany you saved my life,’ said the Duke, ‘and you have served me well now; or I tell you, you should not bargain with me. He shall have his life. Let him come.’
Sigismondo bowed once more, not a courtier’s bow, but a back bent in response to a concession not willingly granted. He went to the door and disappeared beyond it.
The Cardinal remarked, ‘The reconsecration of the Cathedral requires some days. I would suggest that the obsequies of the late Duchess take place in the Palace chapel.’
‘If that satisfies her Grace’s brother.’
‘God works ah for the best,’ Ippolyto sighed. ‘Diminished pomp is more to my mind, as things stand.’
The door and curtains opened. Sigismondo was standing aside to admit a hesitant and desperately anxious dwarf.
After the devil, the dead man.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Under the scrubby beard Poggio had industriously started to grow as a disguise, he was sweating heavily, and all the lines of his face, round eyes and a mouth Nature had designed to turn happily upward, looked stretched by fear. His hands knotted themselves together before him.
The Duke regarded him for a long moment and then spoke.
‘You have our pardon, Poggio, for your theft.’ His voice sharpened. ‘Now earn it.’
‘Tell his Grace how you came to hear what passed in her Grace’s chamber the night of her death.’
Plaiting and unplaiting his fingers, Poggio told. He explained his need for the Duchess’s favour, and how he had hidden while the waiting-women were there, in the inner room. He was pitiably embarrassed over the extreme necessity for tact about what he had heard, but Sigismondo’s questions, unemphatic, insistent, got the truth: he had been on the very point of emerging to speak to the Duchess when he heard her greet someone. The newcomer had spoken softly but was a man. Poggio feared to make a sound by shutting the jib door, and so he had unavoidably heard. They had made love. He could — though he tried not to hear — distinguish two voices, at least, two… He foundered at this point and Sigismondo suggested ‘the sounds of two persons’ — yes, the sounds of two people, until at last one of them had given an odd cry, a strange short cry; then, there was silence. After a moment, someone, breathing hard, had crossed the matting of the floor. Yes, he had heard more. At ease over this part, although puzzled, he said he had heard curtains drawn, then a brief scuffling and a sound as if something had been thrown on the bed. Then the curtains again; and silence.
The silence, made deeper by the rattle of fireworks, had gone on until he thought it safe to venture out. The Duchess lay there, her hand over the side of the bed. He thought she slept and he began to creep past her. He knew he could not approach her now, in case she might guess he knew of her lover. He never thought it could be the Duke as they were so hurried and spoke so low. He had looked up to check that she slept, and saw the knife. It stuck-
‘His Grace saw the knife,’ Sigismondo said. ‘What did you do, when you knew she was dead?’
Poggio looked up anxiously at Sigismondo, transferred his gaze to the Duke, and said, ‘I took her ring and I ran.’ For this, at least, he had a pardon.
The Duke brooded. Duke Ippolyto studied Poggio’s face as if to estimate his truth — Poggio licked his lips and fortunately decided not to smile at him. The Cardinal stroked the cross that still lay on the table.
‘You heard nothing after this — cry — and the noise of something being thrown on the bed?’ The Duke had gone unerringly to the heart of the matter. He had been listening to witnesses for a good many years, and omissions of truth may have become apparent to his ear. Now he watched Poggio, who was unwise enough to put on an expression of childlike innocence.
‘What I have said, your Grace. No more.’
‘No one could have entered after that without your hearing?’
Poggio, relieved that he could answer this in complete sincerity, did so. He had not been asked if anyone actually had come in, so he had no need to mention the Lady Violante. His private devotion to her and his desire to keep her out of any possible trouble with her father would not have stood up to the threat of torture, but so far none had been made, and his trust in Sigismondo was profound.