‘The Duke should banish the Bandini, then!’
The nun seemed surprised that the others laughed at her fierce reply. Barley said, ‘One story is that Jacopo di Torre had the Duchess murdered and the Bandini boy left at her side.’
The nun looked, for a moment, horrified, and Sigismondo said, ‘Rumours, rumours. Truth lies at the bottom of a well, and I dare say was drowned long ago.’
The door opened to servants with more dishes: apple fritters, pumpkin fritters, a compote of mulberries, and little biscuits. The maid, taking away dishes of the former courses, avoided Angelo and watched him with wary, fascinated eyes. As the door shut, Sigismondo continued, to Angelo, ‘One thing we may be sure of, is that the man who hired you was not alive to hire Barley. But is the same person behind them both?’ He smiled, widely benign. ‘It’s someone who hired men who are strangers. But let’s consider that in the morning. Tonight, there’s good company and good wine and food.’
‘And I drink to our hostess. May she enjoy peace all her days.’ Barley raised his replenished glass and bowed to her. She, murmuring that peace was not always concomitant with enjoyment, acknowledged also the others at the table who raised their glasses to her and echoed variations of Barley’s toast. The companion hiccupped loudly in the quiet while they drank.
‘Oh! Your pardon… unaccustomed to strong wine…’
Barley looked round about him on the floor. ‘What was it? Did a mouse fart? It is excellent wine, lady. Blame nothing on the wine.’
Perhaps not unconnected with this, the widow now decided that the men had best be left to their drinking while she saw the women to their beds. Sigismondo said that Benno could wait on the drinkers, and she did not demur but sent her servants to their beds as well.
Benno brought, as she had bidden, another great flagon. More wood was put on the fire, one candle snuffed; the men moved to the fire, Barley bringing the silver basket of nuts and each man his glass. Sigismondo sat in the big carved chair, Barley sprawled along a Venetian day bed. Angelo folded himself down on the wolfskin rug, Benno hunkered with his back to the stone pilasters by the hearth at Sigismondo’s side. He cracked walnuts with the fire irons, but Barley used his fist alone. The house sank to quiet about them as they munched and drank, and they heard the hunting call of an owl as it ghosted outside in the night. Barley heaved himself round to throw nutshells in the fire and said to Sigismondo, ‘There’s altogether too much you haven’t said. You listened to Angelo’s tale. You know why I’m here — the Duke wants you dead. So what have you done?’
‘Did the Duke himself tell you he wanted my death?’
‘I heard his wishes from the lips of the Lord Paolo.’
‘Mm-hm. And why choose you?’
‘Who else looks like me?’ Barley sat up, throwing out his chest, and smiled in his beard. ‘He saw me trying out an act for the Festaiuolo. I’m not to be missed in a crowd.’
‘A crowd of dwarves,’ said Angelo, and rolled away from Barley’s kick. ‘The Lord Paolo oversaw the entertainments on the Duchess’s behalf. He watched us all try out, and came to see us rehearsing too, making suggestions; and not bad ones either, for an amateur. The Palace people said that’s his way. He’s such a saint they’ll cut him up for relics when he’s dead.’
‘Too good to be true?’ Sigismondo hummed, as if in deprecation of his own comment, and Barley wagged a finger at him.
‘He loves his brother like his own life. Like that crippled son he dotes on. He’d kill for that one. Every time that boy puts his foot to the ground he steps on his father’s heart.’
‘You’re a poet, Barley. Of course they say the English are a race of poets-’
Benno ducked and dropped a nut into the ashes as his master seized Barley’s wrist as the hand grabbed for his throat. He relaxed as Sigismondo broke into laughter.
‘A Scot, a Scot! The English are nothing but rhymesters and only the Scots are poets.’ Sigismondo threw the hand from him, and Barley sat back. ‘So Lord Paolo and the Duke think me a traitor. Do they think I am an agent of Duke Francisco?’
‘Are you? By God, Duke Ludovico’s days are numbered, then.’ Barley shouted with laughter and, tilting his beard at the ceiling and its painted beams, threw a handful of nuts into his mouth. ‘Why were you in Rocca in the first place?’
‘I came looking for work, as you did, my sweet Scot. I’d done the Duke a service in the past, and he trusted me enough to employ me in the matter of the late Duchess.’
‘What could you do there? The Bandini boy is a lamb to the slaughter if the Duke himself killed her. Were you hired to make it look otherwise?’ Barley’s small eyes surveyed Sigismondo acutely, and Angelo too rolled over to look at him.
Holding out his glass to Benno, Sigismondo hummed. ‘That’s more than I can tell, as yet. Much in this whole business,’ he extended a broad hand and closed it on the air, ‘is like grasping a cloud.’ He leant forward and put the hand on Barley’s massive thigh. ‘One thing for sure: it’s a cloud will rain blood soon.’
He paused and looked around, at Angelo, at Benno, again at Barley. ‘We must leave for Rocca at dawn.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘You’re anxious to get us all killed?’ Barley, staring, crushed a handful of nuts and held them in his fist, thumping it on his knee to mark his points. ‘Rocca? Here’s Angelo: he’s dyed his hair, and killed the fellow who wanted his money back, but we all know that was another man from the one who hired him and who could recognise him as the dancer who played the Wild Man.’ He paused while Angelo turned up his eyes and drew the edge of his hand not across his throat but, to Benno’s surprise, across his belly. ‘He’ll end up spilling his guts on the scaffold with the Bandini boy.’
Barley stopped to sort out kernels from shards and to bat them into his beard. ‘Then, there’s me,’ he went on, obscured. ‘I was supposed to kill you, remember? If I turn up without your head in a bag someone is going to require mine instead. And people notice me. My death too is waiting for me in Rocca.’
‘Death waits for us all, even the most overgrown Scot amongst us; but with some, he is forced to have greater patience than with others.’ Sigismondo held his glass towards Benno to be filled, and went on, ‘And I am officially a traitor and so in Rocca any man’s hand can be my ending. We must all seize the moment when our watchful Death yawns, and we tiptoe by.’
The vision of Sigismondo and Barley tiptoeing past anything, whether or no it were equipped with a scythe, gave Angelo a silent spasm of amusement. Benno, however, was anxious about someone else.
‘What about the Lady Cosima? They’ll be looking for her, won’t they? Now you tied up the nun and all.’
Barley and Angelo both turned to look at Sigismondo, who sat, fondling his chin, smiling.
‘Tied up the nun? That’s my Martin! What now? Was it the pretty nun at supper? I’d tie her up myself if she hadn’t the look of one who’d bite. Who is the Lady Cosima?’