‘When I last called you before me,’ said the Duke, and his voice grated with anger, ‘I warned you that one single act more in this feud from either of you would be punished. The fine I threatened then is now exacted. You are both confined to your houses, you and your families.’
As both men began to speak, he strode to the front of the dais and there towering above them said, ‘Silence!’ The secretary’s quill skittered and squeaked, recording his decree. Sigismondo had stepped back from between the men and stood with hands clasped before him. The Duke’s surge of movement was a tangible force that stilled the antagonists.
‘You would speak? You would object? Protest at our mercy? I tell you now — do you mark me, Bandini? Do you hear, di Torre? — that this is the last of our mercy to you. If either lifts hand or causes hand to be lifted against the other, their kin, goods, chattels, servants or lands, that man forfeits his possessions to the State, his household goods and merchandise, moneys and bonds, clothing and chattels, and his very life shall be at Our mercy. I will have these wars no more. Bandini, you will restore the girl. This is Our decree this day and shall not be revoked.’
He turned on his heel, and strode from the chamber, the great cloak swirling behind him. The secretary still wrote, the guards opened the doors and the Duke’s Marshal entered. Both antagonists seemed stricken to stone. Di Torre recovered first, hurrying to meet his secretary and steward, talking to them frenetically as they followed him to the door, and paying no heed to the slave girl’s shrouded form. Bandini spoke to Sigismondo, who bowed slightly, before he went out by another door. The girl’s body was lifted and taken away. Courtiers entered, crowding round the great fireplace, speculating loudly and with animation on what might have passed, guessing and making bets. Sigismondo turned and came down the length of the room. With one hand he collected Benno from his niche and propelled him past the men-at-arms at the side door into an anteroom of plain unadorned stone. He gave Benno’s head a slight cuff that set it ringing.
Benno followed him down a stair and into an unexpected small room in a bend of the flight. A leather curtain shut it off from the stair, a lantern burnt on the floor beside a pallet. There was a decided lack of space for anything else. Sigismondo lifted a corner of the bed and pulled out a roll from below it, which undid into a cloak resembling the duke’s only in size, being plain dark wool. He lent Benno a corner of it, furled himself in the rest, and said, ‘We have time to sleep before the feast. If you can make yourself cleaner you may stand behind me at table and get a share.’
Benno, who had long ceased to smell his own ours, and who had been smelling the feast for some time, felt cheerful. He had not given any thought to how he might eat; that was Sigismondo’s responsibility as his master and he felt well catered for in the prospect. He curled up on the end of the pallet. ‘I’ve never been to a feast before,’ he said.
‘Make the most of it. Tomorrow may be well occupied.’
‘What-’ Benno said, and stopped.
‘Mm — mm. Well done… I’m far from sure that Bandini will be able to restore your lady to her father.’
‘What’s he done with her, then?’ Benno straightened up, alarmed, and the bed’s ropes creaked.
‘I’m far from sure that he ever did anything with her.’
‘But his colours, that Nardo saw?’
‘His colours, like the ones di Torre hung on a nail in his house? We may be looking farther than Bandini. Perhaps even beyond Rocca.’
‘Beyond?’ Beyond the city itself was far enough for no to envisage. He knew the road to Jacopo di Torre’s country villa, and some of the rides round it where Cosima was allowed out as she could not be in the city, but it had not occurred to him that there was more. The Lady Cosima was very learned, and had told him there were places called Rome and France, and her explanations had placed these for him in the sky beyond Rocca’s wide valley.
‘The Duke Francisco has an interest in causing trouble.’
‘I thought the Duke was called Ludovico,’ Benno said.
Sigismondo suddenly hummed in a sound like laughter. ‘Our Duke Ludovico is Duca di Rocca. All the world is made up of states like Rocca. To the east is the Duke Francisco. His duchy is mountainous and he’d like the rich farmland and the sea coast of Rocca. Like the di Torre and the Bandini, these dukes have their rivalries.’
A vast and terrifying horizon opened to Benno, a world of confusion, distance and the unknown. He took breath.
‘How…’
‘Mm. Ask.’
‘Does it go far?’ Benno asked uncertainly.
‘Does what?’
‘The world.’
There was a silence in the near-dark. Sigismondo’s voice came at last. ‘I’ve travelled over some of it. It’s much the same everywhere: rocks, fields, hills, streams, cities, farms. I’ve been to places where they speak other tongues — Muscovy, the Holy Land, Hispania, England, the Low Countries.’
Benno sighed. He could make out Sigismondo’s head propped against the wall with the square shape of the leather pillow behind. His eyes were shut. The smell of cooking distracted Benno’s mind, and he evaded the thought of all that strangeness by homely imagination of the feast.
The night was a cold one. Even the Duchess, giving the feast for the Lady Cecilia, could not command it otherwise; a wind with ice on its breath came down from the snow-sprinkled hills to the north, to investigate the preparations. The bonfire in the Palace courtyard, that was to burn all evening, flamed more brightly to its gusts, and sparks blew away to the cold stars; round the courtyard were the windows and balconies where spectators, waiting for the feast, leant out to admire the conflagration and to throw down sweetmeats at the crowd below. They held their furs and velvets close round their throats.
The wind was less kind to the beggars crowding outside the walls, trying to cram into what shelter they could find, waiting patiently enough for what would come their way when the feast was over. The wind at its keenest brought the sound of drums, tabors and the confused roar of people enjoying themselves inside.
As there must always be those who starve while others gorge, so there must be those who work while others benefit in idleness. The kitchens were ablaze with fires and quarrels, sweat fell into the dishes as cooks bent to arrange the last touches, to press the last bit of gold leaf that kept falling off, to spread the peacock’s feathers behind the roasted bird so that it could sail in its glory on the golden dish and make the guests applaud. They would be less pleased when they came to eat it, but they knew that anyway.
Already goose fat had been smeared on burns, kitchen boys rubbed their kicked bottoms or the bruises from ladles, one cook was so drunk his knives had been taken from him; and the cage of small birds, waiting to be popped into the baked pastry coffin and later to entertain the company by flying out when it was cut open, was knocked over onto the floor, and burst, filling the pastry-kitchen with the hustle of wings. Birds flew into the fires, banged against the shutters, tried to escape up the chimneys, knocked linen caps askew, were panicked by flying aprons, and muted into everything. A tart of little jellies in almond milk in the shape of various animals was luckily already coloured with saffron. There was otherwise a great wiping, scraping and covering with sauces.
In another part of the castle, a white palfrey was still having its mane and tail plaited with ribbons by grumbling grooms. It was well used to the process, and did no more than step sideways on someone’s foot. Out in the yard, painters put the last touches of silver to the azure cut-outs of wooden waves, harassed by the carpenter anxious to fix the waves to a boat whose wooden wheels they were meant to hide. The boat had already capsized twice and a boy with a stinking gluepot was aboard fixing sails again. In a room near Sigismondo’s a number of dwarves were putting on gaudy costumes, posing in feathered hats and squabbling à l’outrance as to who should wear the one with plumes dyed superbly scarlet. Two dwarves sat in peaceable silence in a corner, mending long chains of iron-grey paper, rustling like a nest of mice as they worked.