‘Do you swear on the Cross that the witness you have given is true?’
Poggio ducked respectfully as the Cardinal moved the crucifix towards him. The sun that had shone on Angelo’s hair was now lower. It struck rainbow sparks from the diamonds and rubies embedded in the gold, eclipsed by Poggio’s hand as he laid it on the figure and swore.
The Duke spoke.
‘Go. You have our pardon, but not our leave to be in Rocca. By the third day from now, your pardon fails and your life with it if you are found here.’
Poggio’s scramble for the door indicated that he was starting his exile at the double.
When the door was shut after him, the Duke called for wine, as if to help them swallow all that they had heard that afternoon. Sigismondo conveyed the message, and brought the wine when it came, the golden tray, with three jewelled cups, the flagon of gold and crystal. The Duke moved to the long window that overlooked the square, and opened the casement for a view uninterrupted by the Rocca arms in burgundy and ochre stained glass. The sound of crowds outside, which had been so aggressively loud in the Cathedral, had dwindled all the time since, and now, instead of a turbulent sea of heads with a spume of arms, the great empty shore of stone was left, with only a few knots of people. The largest tide-wrack was round the scaffold where were still displayed the head and body of their Duke’s brother, the lately loved and charitable traitor. This group seemed to be silent, and as members of it moved away they were replaced by others as silent. Children were lifted up for a better look, but when one was held out to touch the bloody hair, one of the Duke’s men on the scaffold fended the child’s hand away with a nudge of his halberd’s butt. The Duke’s eyes had lingered, but now his regard ranged to the outskirts of the square, decorated by lounging archers. They stood, or sat, and leant on walls.
‘Sigismondo.’
‘Your Grace.’ He was nearby. The Duke’s quick turn of the head showed he had thought him to be across the room.
‘Those men?’
‘They were the men who started the cry of Duca!’
‘Are we to hear why?’
‘All is open to your Grace.’
The Duke regarded him for a moment and then gave a quick nod. Turning, he swung back to the table as if he would now, at once, bring this enquiry to a conclusion.
‘So, my lords. We are to believe, from what we have heard, that my brother paid an entertainer to make pretext for the Duchess to lie with him in secret while I and the court watched the fireworks; that then he murdered her. The dwarf seems to have heard my brother put Leandro Bandini on the bed. Why did the boy not struggle? Why was he not there when she was found?’
‘Because he did struggle, your Grace. Drugged by the mulled wine offered him by Lord Paolo’s man — who wore, he recalled, a chain with a little skull on it-’ they all glanced at the necklace that still lay where Angelo had left it — ‘Leandro Bandini had not quite succumbed when he was brought to her Grace’s chamber to be hidden there. The blow on the brow did indeed come from either her mirror or the candlestick found on the floor, but she did not inflict it. He was knocked unconscious and hidden under the curtains on the far side of the bed, on the floor, before her Grace came up from the feast.’
‘She did not see him?’
‘He lay between the bed and the curtains, your Grace. Lord Paolo, after he had done what was planned,’ and Sigismondo’s even tone made nothing significant in the words, ‘had only to drag him out and put him on the bed. He was not quite as unconscious as they may have thought, as he had some memory, when I spoke to him that night, of the Duchess lying there. In his horror, he tried to come to his senses more fully. It seems he struggled to move, perhaps to draw away from her Grace, and rolled off the bed into the oblivion where he was found. I saw that the curtains were pulled taut on that side as if something held them to the floor.’
The Duke laughed, an unattractive sound. ‘So my brother was right to proclaim him innocent. If I had found him where he was meant to be, I would have his blood on my hands.’ He looked down at them speculatively. Then turning to Ippolyto he asked, ‘Are you satisfied?’
‘I have no more to ask. She brought her own death, cousin, deceived as everyone was by that serpent.’
Ippolyto held out his own hands, fine-boned, wiry, to clasp those of the Duke who, looking at him closely and seeing in his eyes those amber-brown depths that had once delighted him in Ippolyto’s sister, drew him into an embrace to disguise his desire never to see him again. The Cardinal smiled that such great men were at peace, and resumed his great cross again, the weight slithering to rest on the scarlet watered silk. Sigismondo had disappeared beyond the door curtain, and the low vibration of his tones could just be heard.
‘Tomorrow we shall see the Duchess buried. Tonight, let us dine together in celebration of our renewed alliance.’
The Cardinal improved the occasion, lifting his hand in blessing. ‘Amity is pleasing to God, my sons. May you flourish in such harmony.’ Rustling out, the Church took precedence of the temporal powers, and benevolently proffered a ring towards Sigismondo, who knelt to kiss it.
One temporal power, after seeing the other out, remained and beckoned. Sigismondo closed the door and returned. The Duke leant against the table in the last of the evening sun.
‘You were to tell me, Sigismondo, your final secrets. To whom do I owe my Duchy?’
‘Like so many sovereigns, your Grace: to mercenaries.’
‘Those men round the square, the men who cried Duca and took the crowd with them?’
‘The same. They, in conjunction with your Marshal, are in control. Those citizens paid by the Lord Paolo now no longer dare to speak.’
‘Mercenaries don’t act on promises. They were paid. Who paid them?’ The Duke reached out and closed a hand on the black velvet sleeve. The face attentive to his was strangely reassuring, hooked nose, thick-lashed eyes dark and intent, the mouth with the sensually curved upper lip full above the restraint of the lower one, a mouth for secrets, a mouth that now smiled, with deep amusement.
‘Your Grace: Bandini. Ugo Bandini paid the mercenaries.’
The Duke, willing enough by now to believe Sigismondo, leant back and stared into the smiling eyes. ‘Bandini. When I was about to have his son executed? God’s teeth, what’s his reason?’
‘Loyalty, your Grace. He had been approached by Duke Francisco to pay the mercenaries in his name; and he, on gaining the city, would free his son; but instead, Bandini paid them to shout Duca Ludovico. If they had shouted Duca Paolo, as was their original order…’ Sigismondo paused and hummed, with foreboding of what might have been.
‘I would be dead. Even if Paolo had died too, Rocca would have been held for Francisco. I owe Bandini my life, then.’ He gripped his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, and mused; then shot out a finger and prodded the broad chest. ‘You. You know more than you’ve yet told me. How did that boy escape from my dungeons? It seems to me that his delivery from death predated by a few hours this loyal gesture of his father’s. Would you say that?’ Prodding Sigismondo’s chest repeatedly, he began to laugh.
‘Impossible to deceive your Grace.’
‘And where is the boy? The innocent boy? Are you going to tell me that, you villain?’
‘Why, your Grace, he and his father will be among the first to congratulate you.’
The Duke’s laughter had more than a touch of hysteria in it.