Sigismondo dropped the man he was holding and brought his fist down on the angle of the howling man’s neck.
Benno was the only man to rise to his feet. The lane had recently been traversed by the pigs. Biondello shook himself and released his feeling in a fury of barking. He had, in defending his masters, outraged the conditioning of all his short lifetime, and he was utterly confused. Sigismondo saw the assassin’s knife in one attacker, and looked where Biondello’s victim lay with eyes open to the cold sky, and blood at his mouth’s corner and in his ear. Biondello, calming as nothing further happened, lifted his leg on the nearest body.
Sigismondo picked up the man from the sky, taking his head between his broad hands.
‘Speak to me! Ah…’ and a hum of disapprobation followed. ‘Still no one to tell us anything.’ He let the man drop. ‘Do you know any of these, Benno?’
Benno, who had been searching them, stopped to examine their faces. ‘No. They look like tavern roughs to me.’
‘So who hired them? Benno, we’re just getting too good at this.’
At the use of the word ‘we’, a slow smile dawned in Benno’s lamentable beard.
The Palazzo Bandini was a far more modern building than the Casa di Torre. This latter may have represented established wealth, but Bandini’s house was constructed to let the world know the family could afford the most fashionable architects. A classical portico framed the entrance from the street, with columns flanking muscular marble statues showing rather more strain in supporting the Bandini arms than was perhaps tactful. Inside, everything that could be gilded had been, and every ceiling had a pagan sky brimming with nymphs.
Benno was denied these revelations. He judged it politic to remain in the street outside, fearing to excite Bandini henchmen because of his previous affiliation, or to get thrown out on account of his filthy state. He prepared comfortably to spend the time watching any interesting female who passed.
His master was ushered past a complicated marble representation of Apollo and Daphne, past a very large relief panel of a goddess rewarding either Piety or Learning, through an over-pillared lobby into Ugo Bandini’s superb new library, filled with books for which he had paid a fortune and which were unlikely to be read, especially if his son died.
Since Sigismondo last saw him, before the Duke, Bandini had aged — even more than his enemy di Torre on his Cosima’s loss. Every lugubrious fold of his face had deepened as though tugged down by grief, and the eyes examining Sigismondo peered from swollen lids.
‘Did you tell the Duke I had asked you to come?’
‘I no longer work for his Grace, sir. There was no further need.’
A gleam came into the eyes bloodshot with weeping. ‘You’re at liberty to work for another? For me?’
The hum was neutral, enquiring. ‘What work would that be, sir?’
Ugo Bandini beckoned Sigismondo closer, with an oddly furtive little movement of the hand, until he stood within a foot of him, when he uttered in a hoarse whisper:
‘Find di Torre’s daughter and I will pay you more than the Duke could ever give you.’
If Sigismondo found this request ironic he gave no sign, but continued with his head politely inclined that Bandini was unpleasantly reminded of a priest hearing confession, and of the final one his son might be making in so short a time. About to take hold the man’s sleeve to emphasise the urgency of his task he found a reluctance to touch him. The attentive silence, however, forced more explanation than he had intended.
‘His Grace has sent to me. He believes now,’ and by now Bandini meant now that he believes my son murdered the Duchess, ‘that it was not di Torre but I who spirited away that wretched girl. He has enjoined upon me to produce her before the week be out.’ Again, both men knew what lay at the end of that week.
‘Where do you believe she is, sir?’
‘In that old fox’s country villa! That’s where you should look.’ Ugo Bandini brought his fist down on the polished crimson marble of his new library table, making some account scrolls skip. ‘He is trying to kill me and mine. I can in no way imagine how he has contrived it, but I am sure in my soul that he is the cause of my son’s doom. If he murdered her Grace to effect it, that is well within his nature. He would stop at nothing to cause me suffering.’ There were tears in the folds of the cheeks that would certainly have rejoiced di Torre.
‘Have I liberty to conduct the search as I wish?’
Bandini’s reluctance gave way to the pure urgency of his feelings: he clutched the man’s arm. ‘Yes, yes. And you shall have gold, anything you want, my best horse, my household at your command, only find the girl. Find her, and the Duke may have mercy. My son must not die.’ The tears ran among the furrows of his cheeks and one fell on Sigismondo’s hand.
A tap at the door interrupted them as a man in an indigo gown looked in.
‘A messenger, sir. Says it’s very important.’
Bandini frowned in irritated surprise, seemed inclined for a moment to wave the interruption away, then releasing Sigismondo’s arm he went to the door, where the man whispered in his ear, the sound like a trapped fly. Bandini’s frown darkened, he patted the air towards Sigismondo indicating that he was to wait, and hurried from the room after the secretary.
Sigismondo, thus left alone, strolled along the shelves, pausing from time to time to take out a book, examine the gilded binding with appreciation and, opening it, read a little. He was doing this almost half an hour later, when Bandini returned and stared at him in suspicious surprise. Sigismondo, with a hum of amusement, turned with the book in his hands.
‘I was consulting the sortes Virgilianae. The omens are excellent.’ He read: ‘Nusquam abero, et tutum patrio te limine sistam, which may construe, “Nowhere will I leave you and I will set you down safely on your paternal threshold.”’
Bandini’s mouth, whose lips had peeled apart when he saw a man, hardly more than a bravo, reading Latin, closed again without his having found anything satisfactory to come out of it.
His manner had curiously changed; he seemed as anxious as before for Sigismondo to leave, and stood there making unconscious twitching movements of the hands towards the door. All the personal urgency, however, had left him.
‘Anyone will tell you where to find the di Torre villa; perhaps you’d do well to say you came from the Duke.’
Sigismondo shook his head with decision. ‘His Grace would not care for that. If he were by chance to hear-’
‘Oh, quite, quite. You must do as you think best.’ Bandini picked up a silver bell made to resemble a pear, and shook it. The man in the indigo gown had been at the door, for he popped immediately into the room and held the door wide for Sigismondo to leave; he, however, paused as he came to Bandini and genially murmured, ‘Expenses, sir?’
Bandini looked fretful. His hands took on their own life, brushing the air towards the door. ‘It is arranged. My secretary will-’
‘And the horses?’
Bandini’s expression would have been a good response to a request for camels, but he waved his hands more spaciously still, and said, ‘He will see to it. Go with him.’