And Galeazzo, who dealt with everyone with the same cool, refined affability, knowing that the fixed smile of ceremonial courtesy would instil a sense of his superhuman, Byzantine power in all who met him, was distinctly more courteous to Lytto than anyone else. He would joke with him every morning, offer him something sweet to eat at midday, and ask him every evening to remember him in his youthful prayers. This gave the impression that of all people Lytto was closest to his heart. In fact Galeazzo behaved in this way simply because he realised that the boy would respond only to gentleness, and in that sense this affectionate treatment differed little from his usual system of government. He felt no greater love for the boy than for anyone else, nor would he permit himself such a love, knowing as he did how dangerous it was for a ruler to have a favourite.
And so this little celebration came to its end. Thereafter the days were filled with a formal, ceremonious monotony. They rose at dawn, to the calling of birds. Everyone had his prescribed duties. The only variety in Lytto’s life came through his studies, his tutors being the Duke’s learned secretaries. To Galeazzo’s great delight, he mastered the Latin language in an astonishingly short time, then the Greek, and became an inspired and enthusiastic student of the classics. These studies made him even more serious than before — what had previously been instinctive in him, his religious piety, his humility and his profound respect for the Duke, were turning into the altogether deeper qualities of a well-educated young man.
A consequence of all this study was that his eyes began to open, and he became aware of things inside himself that he could not understand. For some time now he had been assailed by strange feelings. Galeazzo was a great lover of music, and sitting listening to it at his master’s side drove Lytto into a state of irrational agitation and distress. He loved to gaze down from the arched windows of the castle at the city below, lying there silent under the stars in all its unknown, forbidding splendour. He shed tears over the story of Nysus and Euralia. He yearned for some strange and thrilling adventure involving heroic deeds, and was haunted in his dreams by the twin stars of friendship. His loneliness tormented him and served only to deepen his feelings of tenderness towards Galeazzo, the only person (since he was uniformly ignored by the morose inhabitants of the court) who ever took any trouble with him. He never ceased hoping to be able to show some sign of his affection.
And then at last his opportunity came, albeit a melancholy one. As a result of sitting up through the long winter nights, continuous work and a refusal to spare himself, the Duke became ill. He fell prey to nightmares, and his doctors feared for his life. But while everyone else tiptoed round the sickbed in despair, these were wonderful days for Lytto. He was with the patient at all times, cheerfully sacrificing his nights and his beloved studies. He carefully measured out Galeazzo’s medicines (a single drop too many might prove fatal), prepared his poultices, and delighted in the fact that the man who had never before depended on anyone now found him indispensable. For the Duke could not bear any sort of woman near him — gossips and poisoners every one! Only from the boy’s gentle, love-inspired, womanlike care could he hope for cure. And with time everyone came to feel the same way. Lytto had won limitless power in the curtained sickroom, where Galeazzo’s peevishness made it impossible for anyone else to enter. And he wore his new power modestly, the sole, if double-edged, reward for his loving.
In the castle chapel Mass was said for the Duke’s recovery. Wearily, unfeelingly, the courtiers counted their beads, while the mercenary guardsmen stood by in grim rows. Lytto went there too for a while, to supplicate the spirit of Divine Love. When the host was raised he summoned all his strength to pray, to appeal to the Presence on the altar from the very bottom of his heart. To add a genuine inwardness to his devotions, he pictured Galeazzo in his mind as already dead and lying stretched out in full armour, surrounded by his bodyguard. Next, his thoughts turned to the Duke’s great armchair, in which no one would ever again sit as he had, swaddled in furs. And his whole future life stood before him — without purpose, meaningless and lonely as the sea. He burst into loud sobbing. He saw, in his grief, that without love there could be no true life for him; never again would he enjoy the miraculous taste of Love’s feast, for if, in all the endless, empty universe, there were nothing to love, then perhaps God’s spirit, that is to say, God’s love, might never again hover over him.
He continued to pray through his tears. Soon afterwards, Galeazzo’s fever began to abate, and under Lytto’s careful nursing he started to recover his strength. On many a bright and sunny winter’s afternoon the two would sit together out on the terrace. To the accompaniment of his lyre, the boy would sing deeply poignant Italian love songs, and every now and then Galeazzo’s sunken face would turn languidly towards him with an expression that could almost be mistaken for warmth. For all his frailty, the Duke could still tell amusing tales of students, artists and merry widows, none of whom he had ever met in the flesh but whom he knew of with all the hopeless yearning of those who read books. He was now a stooping, heavily wrapped figure. After so much self-neglect, he looked like an old man.
Meanwhile the city down below bathed in the sunlight, in its petty day-to-day business and its seething hatred. For Lytto, it was as if those people did not exist. He inhabited a different, more silent world, almost as lonely as Galeazzo himself. Except that he had someone to love, and that love was enough to link him with all those others down there, dashing about with their own busy loves and hates. Galeazzo had foreseen everything but this: that in time Lytto would come to love him. In that respect, his plan had failed.
Around this time the police arrested Orlondhi and his eleven accomplices in a plot against the tyrant’s life. Galeazzo condemned them all to death. Lytto went down to the courtyard in the castle where the executions were to take place. Ever since childhood he had been told of attempts to assassinate the Duke and of those involved being executed, and he had heard the story so often he had come to accept it as normal. Now for the first time he began to wonder why it should be, and who these people were — what sort of deep-dyed criminal would want to end the life of such a benevolent ruler? In considerable trepidation, like someone about to witness a supernatural horror, he dragged himself to a corner of the courtyard and prepared for the worst.
To his extreme surprise, up the steps of the gallows the executioners led twelve fine-looking young men, their heads held high. As they came forward to place their heads on the block, every one of them, by prior agreement, shouted out for all to hear: “Long live freedom! Death to the Tyrant of Milan!”
Profoundly troubled, Lytto made his way as quickly as he could back to his room, his eyes fixed on the ground, like a little boy who feels ashamed of his father and doesn’t know why. Having been used since childhood to the fact that other people took no interest in his purely personal feelings, he sought advice from no one. Instead, he locked the door and spread out his books, his little silent senate, on the table. Above all else, he needed to understand why, and how, those twelve young men could plot the murder of an old man and then mount the scaffold, not trembling and downcast, with the distracted, faraway look of assassins being thrust forward at every step into the arms of the devil, but looking around in triumph, their faces radiant, victorious unto death.