‘Is it known here that the Duchess is dead? Murdered by an unknown hand?’
The silence continued. Duchesses, alive or dead, were no better news than Dukes. Murder was not news at all. They had some of their own, from time to time, and felt entirely no need for more. If Sigismondo had not been sent by the Duke, who therefore knew where he had got to and might presumably send soldiers along if he didn’t come back; and if he had not sounded like a man who knew what to do with an axe, the village would have swallowed him up, servant, saddlebags, horses and all.
‘The Duke has commanded me to seek out the dwarf Poggio. The first who tells me where he lives will get a reward.’
The silence changed quality; perhaps a speculative mutter almost below the limit of sound showed that various factors were being weighed. Matters beyond the visitors’ ken tipped the balance: the airs Poggio’s mother had given herself since her son had been taken on at the Palace, the pig she’d bought herself with the money he sent. Yet many would get a share when she killed the pig, whether a cheek or half a trotter. Then there was the fact, awkward at the least, that she was a witch.
The tall man in the black cloak was tossing a coin up, and again. It shone brighter than the harvest most of them never saw. There came the crab-like scampering, across the ruts and the blowing snow, of a larger bundle of rags. The hen squawked and flew, the dog cowered. The bundle extruded a hand like a root and pointed at the farthest hut in the village, retrieved the thrown coin and scuttled from sight. Sigismondo, followed by Benno leading the horses, and by the dog, picked his way to the Poggio residence.
It was tilted at a debauched angle in a nook of the hillside. Poggio’s mother let Sigismondo in by hoisting the door open. Like all the village, she had been closely observing until now, and she had formed her plan and now carried it out. She denied, not Poggio’s existence, but his presence. She had not seen him since last summer. He was too busy to visit his poor mother. It was a pity he was not here when the gentleman had come to see him, but his poor mother…
She was a large woman, a woman whose bulk in a village such as this showed a source of food denied to the others. Food was the only currency they had with which to pay for her skills, as midwife, as layer-out of the dead, as mixer of potions for enemies and lovers, for wives to endow fertility or to check it. Bunches of herbs hung in the half-dark round her head like suspended bats, a fire of twigs and rubbish gave off an unpleasant smell, to which a tallow lamp and Poggio’s mother contributed. A snuffling grunt in the shadows told that a pig shared her accommodation.
Sigismondo heard out her excuses and lamentations without further question. He pushed back his cowl and hood and her eyes took in the shaven head.
‘A priest? Oh, Father, I’m telling the truth. I’ll swear it on your cross. My Poggio isn’t here, I’ve not seen…’
The priest produced, not a cross convenient for her to perjure herself on, but a sword. She screamed. Three hens which had been quiescent in the rafters launched themselves into the room. The pig squealed. Benno, outside with the horses, on guard over beasts and saddlebags with a cudgel in hand, wondered if Poggio had been found.
He was not, at first, but as the sword enquired into the corners, somewhere halfway up one of the wattle and daub walls a quantity of straw plugging a hole fell out and a face appeared. It was a large, intelligent face with a wide mouth, turned-up nose and very bright eyes that examined Sigismondo with care. The next minute the large face was followed out of the hole by a small body in a green jerkin and red hose. With the agility of a stoat he put his foot on a projection of the wall, his hand on another, and dropped to the floor. He flourished a Court bow.
‘Poggio, and your servant, lord.’
Poggio’s mother, infected by these courtesies and unembarrassed by her son’s proving her a liar, fetched, and wiped clean with the filthy sacking of her apron, a three-legged stool. When Sigismondo was seated, she put a cake of dung on the fire and poured a brew smelling of tansy into an earthenware cup which she offered him, showing several teeth in an ingratiating smile. Poggio dumped himself on a pack of straw, presumably the bed, and seemed surprisingly ready to talk.
He was sorry to hear of the death of the Duchess. She had been kind to him. Yes, he had made a foolish joke about her, and the Duke had been angry. The Duke was often angry. All the dwarves had to be careful. Poggio had been hoping to be summoned back from exile at any time, but now that her Grace was dead, the Duke was not likely to want jokes.
Sigismondo drank his thin ale and smiled comfortably at him.
‘On the contrary, his Grace has sent for you.’ He held out the hand on which the Duke’s heavy ring gleamed. ‘As you hoped.’
Poggio’s face contorted into what he probably would have liked to be an expression of surprise and pleasure. To his mother, who was skilled in reading his face, and to Sigismondo skilled in reading faces, it was plain he was terrified. Sigismondo’s smile widened.
‘He wants to question you about her Grace’s ring.’
It was not particularly warm in front of the meagre fire, but Poggio’s face shone with sweat.
‘I know nothing of her Grace’s ring. I cannot. I was not there.’
‘You were not there — when?’
Poggio glanced desperately at his mother who, quick on cue, bent to fold him in her arms where he all but vanished.
‘My child! Of what do you accuse my child? He has been with me all this time. What could he have done?’
Sigismondo rose, genial still. ‘That’s what the Duke’s torturers will discover. That’s their task. Mine is but to escort your son to the city.’
A wail from Poggio’s mother, a convulsive wriggle from Poggio and he was free from her and heading for the door. Sigismondo’s sword across the door had the speed of him. Had Poggio been able to think, he might have preferred a quick death then to a slow one later, but a sword can be an eloquent object in the hand of a man with Sigismondo’s face. He stopped. He was gestured back to the bed, and Sigismondo sat down again, holding out his cup to be refilled. Once full, it was handed to Poggio.
‘Now you will answer my questions. Tell me the truth, and I shall know if it is the truth; and you will be spared the torture.’
It was not a complete surprise that Poggio did not know where to begin when the end was so clearly in sight: a gallows. To confess to stealing the Duchess’s ring was to ask for death, which would be likely to arrive in a quite complicated way. Poggio drank his ale and was silent.
The pig found something in a corner and ate it, loudly.
‘Did you see her Grace, dead?’
It was a brutal question asked brutally. It startled Poggio into a reply.
‘I didn’t know she was dead, at first. Thought she was asleep.’ He was aggrieved. The Duchess had imposed on him, had put him in a difficult position.
‘How did you come to be there?’
‘In her room?’
‘In the Palace at all. The Duke had forbidden you. How did you get in?’
Poggio could not resist a smile. It made his eyes crease and his nose turn up even more. He had a face made for telling jokes.
‘There were plenty of us about. The big folk never know one from another. I know all the ways in and out of the Palace… There’s a little room just off the Duchess’s-’
‘By the bed head, with a jib door.’
Poggio nodded. ‘I waited there to see if I could talk to her Grace, alone. To ask her to speak to the Duke for me. She had a kind heart.’ He crossed himself; the kind heart beat no more. ‘I thought I’d have to wait until the feast ended, but I’d hardly dozed off when I heard her voice coming nearer. That’s a bit of luck, I thought.’ Poggio’s voice had almost a cajoling note, the note of innocence hard done by. ‘Thought it all the more when I heard her sending the maids off. No Lady Cecilia either, which is a lady I’d avoid if I could. So I was coming out of my corner, and ready to slip through the jib door and go down on my knees, not a trick I find easy, when I heard her Grace talking again.’