‘She. That is the Lady Cosima. The nun who was tied up was Mother Luca, Infirmarian at the Castelnuova convent. She objected to losing her patient by other than natural means. It’s her clothes you saw at supper.’
‘Tied her up and stripped her? Infirmarian at the big Benedictine house on the hill near the border? In Duke Francisco’s country? Martin, you have a genius for trouble.’ Barley thumped a paw down on the shoulder beside him and leant to gaze admiringly into Sigismondo’s face. ‘Not content with stirring it up in Rocca, you have to thumb the nose at yet another duke. Had you all the lives of a cat you couldn’t satisfy them all.’
Angelo shifted on the wolfskin and, firelight gilding his face, looked up too. ‘Why, if you’re Duke Francisco’s agent, are you raping his nuns?’
Barley broke in, shocked. ‘He said no word of rape-’
‘Who is this nun who is Lady Cosima? The Lady Cosima who was snatched by bandits?’
‘By Bandini. That’s what they say in Rocca.’
‘They say in Rocca!’ Sigismondo’s cynical hum rose up the scale. ‘They say anything in Rocca. They say what they’re told in Rocca! But listen to a Bandini, you will hear how di Torre stole his own daughter to put the blame on them, then stabbed the Duchess and, stuffing Leandro Bandini into Wild Man rig, knocked him unconscious and threw him on her bed.’
Angelo was sitting upright, grey eyes narrowed. ‘Did he? Was it di Torre who hired me?’ A quality in the light voice suggested he was ready to go back to Rocca knife in hand once he knew who had hired both his assassin and himself. An unexpected answer came. Benno spoke.
‘The Lord di Torre?’ Benno spoke from an instinct to protect the Lady Cosima’s father rather than from conviction. ‘He wouldn’t do that, not my old master, he wouldn’t. Not stab the Duchess. Not ever so much to spite a Bandini.’ He looked round the faces turned to him. ‘What I reckon is, whoever killed her Grace really hated the Duke, really did, wanted to fix things so it’d stir a hornet’s nest, what with the Duke being called a murderer and the di Torre and Bandini tearing Rocca apart. Say there is an agent of Duke Francisco in Rocca, I reckon that’s what he’d be pleased to fix up.’
He nodded his head with finality, unaware that in |the eyes of two of his audience he had graduated from being a half-wit to being one of the party. Sigismondo’s hum was deep, like that of a bee in a flower.
‘Come on, Martin. What’s your story after the Duke gave you the push?’
‘Ugo Bandini hired me to find Cosima di Torre; the Duke had ordered him to produce her, no matter how swore he hadn’t an idea where she was. So I was to find her, to prove to the Duke that di Torre had hidden her in the first place.’
‘Did the man truly think the Duke would believe him if you turned up with the girl, swearing you’d found her in a field with no Bandini in sight?’
‘A man whose son and heir is scheduled for a public garrotting is not at his most logical. For the boy’s sake he was ready to do a deal with the Devil.’
‘And along you came.’ Barley’s punch was affectionate, easily fielded. ‘Poor bastard. I understand all right. But what of Duke Francisco? Where is his hand in this?’
‘Bandini changed his mind. At the start, he was sweating blood; ready to shower gold on me to find the lady, so he could bargain for his son’s life. Then his steward came whispering in his ear and he bustled off and left me for the best part of an hour. When he came back, he was singing another song and not even in the same key: he grudged any money save what would guarantee my leaving the house fast. I thought then that it was because he’d been told where the lady actually was. Now I’ve changed my mind.’ Sigismondo picked over the palmful of nuts Barley held out to him.
‘How had he heard? How did you find her?’
‘By following the wrong clue, perhaps. The only messengers to arrive were nuns from Castelnuova; and so we went there. While I was busy preparing to abduct the Lady Cosima from the convent, Benno, who as you know is little better than an idiot, was in the stables; and he was interested in two men who had little to do there. They seemed to wait for word from Mother Luca, Infirmarian of the convent. You note that he much resembles a bundle of old rubbish, and it was as such that he listened to her instructions; these were from Duke Francisco. Bandini was to be told that the wolf would be at the door on the feast of St Romualdo. There was an instruction in the same words to someone else, whose name they did not speak, and to Jacopo di Torre.’
Barley clapped his hands together, and Benno jumped.
‘I see it. You’re right, the old fox Francisco has everyone by the cods. Di Torre and Bandini do his will to protect their children; Duke Ludovico is branded murderer and his own people believe it; but the wolf at the door?’
‘My old master doesn’t have to do what he’s told now,’ Benno said. ‘We’ve got the Lady Cosima.’
‘Di Torre doesn’t know that.’ Sigismondo picked up his glass from the floor. ‘That is one of our reasons for going to Rocca.’
‘Give us another,’ Barley invited, hunting round his feet for a dropped kernel. ‘I like to know why I’m going to die.’
‘We have the Lady Cosima, but Leandro Bandini is still in the Palace dungeons. As long as he’s there, Ugo Bandini’s life and, what may be more important, his cash, is at Francisco’s disposal.’
‘What kind of money does Bandini have?’
Sigismondo’s hum was respectful. ‘The sort you lend Popes.’
Barley whistled. ‘And you are proposing, my crazed Martin, to disguise yourself as a rat, slip into the dungeons and gnaw the Bandini boy free?’ His gaze sharpened. ‘There’d be quite a reward, eh? Bandini’d cough up a few ducats to have his son and heir in his arms again?’
‘I knew you’d want to come,’ said Sigismondo, draining the last of the wine.
Chapter Seventeen
The small cavalcade left the Villa Costa a little later than dawn because of the preparations involved. A white spring mist lay in the valley below the villa and clothed them as they rode in ghostly silence. Benno cuddled a warm, drowsy and replete Biondello under his cloak and reflected with happy trust on what lay ahead. He knew from the talk last night that it was a future full of danger to all of them, himself no less, but his confidence in Sigismondo’s powers had not been dented in any way. Here was the Lady Cosima, whom he had found when she could not be found, and had rescued from an impossible situation, who now rode with them. Benno had seen in church a fresco of an angel, finger to lips, leading St Paul out of prison, and although Sigismondo would make a bulky and demonic angel, Benno foresaw a similar miracle for Leandro Bandini.
The Villa Costa was empty, save for servants and the sister-in-law, now paying for the enjoyment of so much wine the evening before. She would not have cared if the Last Trump had sounded, provided it put an end to her misery. She was past registering that the Widow Costa, visiting her briefly at dawn, was out of mourning for the first time since Federico’s death; nor would she have known the nun of last night, dressed in clothes long cast off by the widow’s daughter. Had she searched for Angelo’s beautiful face among the party ready to leave, she would have been flabbergasted to find it framed in yellow plaits twisted with lilac ribbons before the ears. A dress long preserved for sentimental reasons in the widow’s wardrobe, which had once fitted her younger, slenderer form, was, though not up to date, ravishing on Angelo, who had gathered folds of veiling modestly over his flat chest.
The widow, as dignified in mulberry velvet as she had been in black, rode in the character of her own sister, accompanied by daughter and maid, on a visit to her town house in Rocca. There, members of the family stayed now and then and, owing to the timely death of her steward two months ago, the staff had changed and no one was there who had ever seen the widow’s sister. Two servants attended her: a half-witted fellow carrying her little dog, and a burly great brute in a hood, whose bare chin looked sore; at her side where the road permitted it rode her chaplain, cowl over his shaven head, grave in his robes, reading his breviary with devout attention.