Elizabeth Eyre - Death of a Duchess

She had been lying on her face and there was very little left of it. Her small skull was blistered and scorched, the frizzled roots of her hair across it.

Benno ducked from the sight. He was weeping. He picked up a fold of her skirt and thrust it at Sigismondo.

‘My lady. My lady.’ Gold thread glittered in arabesques on the cream satin. A small pink embroidered flower had a crystal in its centre that winked in the light as Benno’s hand trembled. ‘They killed her. The devils …’

Sigismondo released her hands, which had been tied behind her, with one sweep of his knife, and Benno possessed himself of one of them and kissed it, weeping. Sigismondo sat back on his heels and waited. After a minute Benno made a questioning sound, blinked, and scrubbed at his eyes. He stared at the hand he grasped. Then he looked up and met the steady brown gaze of Sigismondo, who hummed thoughtfully.

‘You’re right, Benno,’ he agreed. ‘They’re not her hands.’

Benno said, ‘Sascha.’ He lowered the hand he held, gently, to the girl’s breast, as if to hide the rough, short nails, the needle-frayed fingers, callous from some routine work she would not ever do again.

‘Her maid, Benno?’

Once more picking up the embroidered hem of the dress, and holding it out to the brooding face opposite, Benno asked, ‘Why is she wearing my lady’s dress?’

‘A disguise. To fool people. To make any who saw such as your cousin Nardo, believe it was a lady riding away with horsemen.’

‘They only saw her cloak, not her dress.’ Benno stood up and glanced about.

‘No cloak.’ Sigismondo had seen that already. ‘The dress might have shown; they might have seen it, as they saw the horseman’s livery.’ Benno, reminded of the Bandini, clenched his fists, but before he could speak, Sigismondo leant forward and began to undo the girl’s dress.

‘What are you doing?’

‘If you’re my servant, you’ll not question what I do. In this instance, I’ll tell you. We’re looking for injuries.’

Benno scrambled nearer and helped to pull off the dress and the shift. He looked at the bruised throat and bloodied thighs and said, ‘Bandini devils. But I mean she was only a slave. That’s what servants get, isn’t it?’

Sigismondo began to put the dress on again, wrapping the terrible head in her shift. Then he crossed the girl’s hands on her breast and, kneeling up, pulled off his hood. Benno, once again startled by the totally shaven head, only automatically knelt, and as Sigismondo spoke phrases of Latin, Benno stared and failed to say ‘Amen’. Sigismondo looked at him and he hastily shut his mouth. However, his face had asked the question and Sigismondo, humming amusement, rubbed a hand over his bare brown scalp.

‘I’m not a priest, no.’

He said no more. They returned to the city with the girl in Sigismondo’s embrace under his cloak, Benno at his stirrup, unaware of the stripes of tears down the grime of his face.

Sigismondo commandeered a blanket from the inn where they had hired the horse, and rode on up to the palace, where he asked for a private audience with the Duke. That he was at once granted it made Benno’s jaw drop once more. He trotted after his master, turning his head constantly to admire painted columns, friezes, statues and tapestries, and coming up suddenly against Sigismondo’s back when they stopped at a door. While his master was admitted, Benno gaped at the marble door-casing and, it being suggested forcefully by the guard that he should remove his person somewhat, he stood back. He felt in his pocket for an old sweetmeat stuck to the lining, prised it out and put it in his mouth. He sucked at it loudly, and revolved slowly on his heels to take in the coved ceiling with its gold leaf gleaming in the torches’ light. There were decorated pillars with painted oak garlands twining up, and tapestries of the hunt that rippled in the draughts and made the figures seem to move. There were garlands of bay, tied with scarlet ribbons, that servants were busy hanging along the front of the gallery above; the work was done without the argument and shouting he was used to in the di Torre household. He was admiring the smooth black and white lozenges of the floor when he heard a familiar voice and slid prudently into the nearest shadows.

Jacopo di Torre had arrived, supported by his secretary, a man who would have looked at home in a weasel’s den and who had once deliberately stuck the point of his quill into Benno’s hand when he interrupted him at work; and his steward, who habitually kicked Benno whenever he saw him. Benno became one with the shadows.

His former master was, in these few hours, a changed man. Grief had dealt rather badly with his face, hollowing the cheeks and swelling the eyes and nose. Even the hair straggling from under the velvet cap seemed greyer than before. Now the swollen lids lifted and rage succeeded grief; secretary and steward changed their grasp desperately from support to restraint: Ugo Bandini approached with contemptuous slowness, furred gown dragging on the marble, pages in red and yellow two paces behind.

‘ Where is she ? I will have justice of the Duke! You shall be forced to give her up!’

Ugo Bandini chose the most infuriating response. He said nothing. A man of late middle age, he had lugubrious face all downward folds like that of a hound, and an expression managing to combine exhaustion with superiority. Benno, ingrained by the years of being partisan, could perfectly understand anyone wanting to kill him just for looking like that, let alone for stealing their daughter. Steward and secretary were having a time of it preventing Jacopo from surging forward to hammer Ugo into the black and white marble. Benno decided he would look rather well as the centrepiece to one of the bay garlands, his neck encircled by the scarlet ribbon.

Others were arriving now; the servants were being bustled to finish with the garlands by a man with a gold-tipped white wand, who used it to point out the bits they had not got straight. A page ran up the steps of the dais to brush the red velvet seat and carved back and arms of the chair of state, and to tidy its fringes of gold bullion. He ran lightly down again, his curled hair bobbing at each step.

Men and women already collected in gossiping groups near the dais. There was an impression of rich jewel-sewn cloth sweeping in sleeves and skirts, of fur and brocade, gold-woven gauze twisted round the women’s heads, great ornate brooches and pendants. Benno’s loyal eyes saw no woman as lovely as the Lady Cosima though several were as young – appearing in public only because they were married. Jacopo had turned away from the crowd, his cramped shoulders eloquent of the feelings barely under control. Most of the crowd glanced at the two men continually, isolated on either side of the hall.

The curtains of gold brocade over the door that had admitted Sigismondo now parted. The two pages in green and white with bannered trumpets swept them to their lips and blew, the sound hushing the crowd and turning them all like puppets to face the man who entered.

He stood for a moment magnificent, in an open gown, green lined with ermine, and a high-collared cloak, observing the bent heads, doffed caps and curtsies, and then he strode to the chair. When he sat, pages arranged the great spread of fur that draped three steps beneath him. A small movement of one of his hands made all rise from their reverences; a second movement brought Sigismondo’s dark figure to stand on the lowest step at one side. Benno was aware of a whispering in the crowd. Sigismondo, standing there, one foot on the next stair, with lowered eyes and bared head, his face grave, hands at his sides, produced an extraordinary sense of strength.