He clung on to the arm that had held him up during this. His lips were trembling, but he turned urgently and demanded:
‘Did I do it? Did I kill the Duchess?’
Chapter Seven
In the night, or what remained of it, while Sigismondo and Benno slept in their tiny room, the Duke lay awake in his great bed in his own room alone, and Agnolo di Villani enjoyed his rights, someone was busy outside the Palace. In the grudging light of a winter dawn, those whose business took them out so early into the great square began to collect round the huge doors that kept the main entrance to the Castello. The paving-stones held no trace of the beggars’ banquet, the dogs having cleaned what the beggars could not scrape up. The crowd stared at the doors, and moved on as more came. Some signed themselves, few risked a word. They stared at blood, dried now, that had run in streams down the oak as though some giant hand had flung it there in accusation. No one needed to interpret. The news about the Duchess’s death was common throughout the city already. The people of Rocca, although they had cause for both their love and fear of their Duke, were human enough to be ready to think the worst.
By the time the Duke sent for Sigismondo, he had heard Mass in his chapel, where priests had been saying prayers for the dead all night by the body of the Duchess, lying in state under a black velvet pall sewn with the Rocca arms in gold. Tall wax candles burnt in torchères around her. The Duke had knelt at the foot of the catafalque before Mass, joining the priests’ prayers, and had stood to look at the pale face. It was beautiful in death, not as he had last seen it and had seen it before his eyes during the night, but composed to serenity by loving fingers. The little crease in her cheek which had always been there even when she was not smiling, gave her still that air of being secretly, remotely, amused.
Sigismondo found the Duke in his study pacing restlessly to and fro. His secretary, a dark man with thin, apprehensive face, stood at the lectern, fair-copying from his tablets onto parchment. The Duke’s great seal, and wax and ribbons, waited ready on the marble table. The Duke’s hound, uneasy at his master’s unease, sat near the hearth, swinging his head to follow the Duke’s pacing. An enormous fire burnt in the cavern of the hearth, now and then a gust of wind from the mountains sending an eddy of apple-wood smoke into the room.
‘You see this?’
The Duke pointed towards the secretary’s work.
Sigismondo, who could not be expected to know what was being written, acquiesced as to seeing it, and the Duke continued, ‘I have a messenger waiting to carry this to the Duke Ippolyto. It invites him to come himself, or to send those who may represent him, to witness the execution of his sister’s murderer. In a week’s time, on the Feast of St Romualdo.’ He reached the tall window in his pacing and, framed against the pale blue of the winter sky, stared at Sigismondo, and asked, ‘Is the one to be executed Leandro Bandini?’
‘That is for your Grace to say. There are certain things in the matter your Grace would wish to know.’ Sigismondo’s eyes flickered towards the pages and secretary. The Duke banished them with a word, then beckoned Sigismondo and for a moment they stood together looking down on the square below, its patterned pavement sloping a little down from the Castello and the Cathedral. People passed to and fro and gathered in knots by the fountain. Stalls were there as usual, and those who bought and those who sold had leisure, even on this chill day, to linger and talk. An arm was outflung towards the Palace gates. Some watched the Duke’s men supervising the scrubbing away of the blood. The splash of water as well as a cry of voices came up through the glass.
‘What can you tell me?’
‘He was drugged, your Grace, in a cup of wine.’
The Duke’s eyes fixed on him in concentration. ‘By whom?’
‘He would not know the man again.’
‘You have only his word for that?’
‘I could tell he had drunk valerian, its smell concealed by verbena, in a draught of spiced wine which would disguise any strange taste; it would cause him to lose control of his senses, perhaps to see visions.’
‘Would it lead him to force her Grace?’ The question was delivered coolly but the Duke’s voice was harsher than ever.
Sigismondo watched the square below, the small figures moving beyond the distorting glass; then he said, ‘There was no sign of forcing. Her Grace’s wrists were unmarked, there was no trace of violence other than her wound. There were no scratches on Bandini’s face, neck or hands.’
‘Yet she struck him with her mirror or the candlestick.’
‘Someone did.’
‘Or he fell, fleeing?’
‘It is possible, your Grace.’ Sigismondo’s tone all but dismissed the theory. ‘He was also struck, harder, on the back of the head.’ His hand indicated the place on his own smooth scalp.
The Duke put long fingers to his forehead and massaged the creases between the fierce brows. He returned as if in despair to the thought that would not let him rest.
‘She lay with him by consent.’
The deep voice was firm. ‘With him, or with another.’
The Duke’s hands flew together, fist into palm. ‘Find him. I shall not have peace until his death.’ He swung to look at the square as if he could see the scaffold and the moment that would set him free.
‘Did your Grace take a ring from the Duchess’s hand last night?’ Sigismondo, broad hand splayed on the brocade curtain, pressing back its folds, looked down at the square as though his question had little significance. The Duke grasped its importance at once.
‘What ring? I did not touch her.’ His vehemence sounded as though he answered all the voices in the city who accused him.
‘The ring her Grace always wore.’
‘The emerald her brother gave her? Is that gone?’
‘Was your Grace with the Duchess until the Lady Cecilia came? You did not leave her until that time?’
The Duke shook his head.
‘Then we conclude that the ring was taken before you discovered the Duchess.’
‘The murderer. There was no ring found on Leandro Bandini?’
It was Sigismondo’s turn to shake his head. The Duke clasped his hands and, steepling the forefingers, struck them lightly against his lips. He frowned still. We are dealing with a thief? Nothing else was taken?’
‘The Lady Cecilia spoke of the ring only.’ The Duchess’s honour, which was also the Duke’s, had vanished during that time before her death.
‘You will enquire further, no doubt, of the Lady Cecilia, the Mistress of the Robes.’ He paused. ‘A week. I cannot give you more than a week. I cannot delay the message to Ippolyto; he will come here at and must be answered.’
They looked down at the Duke’s messenger, in green and white over total black, walking a great black horse in the inner court, to and fro, as the Duke had paced above. Man and beast walked in a cloud of their breath in the chill air.
‘In a week my justice must be seen to be done.’
If Sigismondo could find no more likely candidate for the scaffold, Leandro Bandini had not a long time left in which to regret coming to the assignation last night.
‘Her cross is gone too.’ The Lady Cecilia raised her eyes to Sigismondo with a look of dismay. Her gold was confined in a black silk net, her white skin ghostly in her black velvet gown against the dark panelling.
‘What was it like?’
‘It was of diamonds and pearls. It had belonged to Duke’s first wife, the Duchess Maria. My lady seldom wore it, being of the opinion that it did not become her. But everything became her.’
Sigismondo brooded over the marquetry jewel case. Its crimson velvet was a voluptuous nest for engraved gems of sardonyx and crystal, brooches of balas rubies, table-cut diamonds, strange-shaped pearls that were the bodies of Nereids or unicorns; a cluster of amethyst grapes with golden leaves; clasps of jade; a set of diamond buttons; rings of all kinds, the mount of one a pair of gold hands delicately presenting a large sapphire; a rose of rubies; filigree earrings; chains of gold and enamel work, heavy chains with links of twisted gold, ropes of pearls, in soft colours or the true pearl; a small lion lay on the velvet, a lion rampant, of gold, a gold collar attaching him to a chain, his eyes rubies, in his mouth a pearl the shape of a heart. The case was perfumed. Its musky scent lingered in the air of this empty room.