She supposed they must be near the Palace, then. She already felt tired. She had walked farther than ever in her life. Angelo, stepping forward, offered her an arm. Cosima thought vividly of her maid Sascha, whose arm she had leant on in walks through the country park. She was here to avenge Sascha, too, against those who had killed her. For the moment it slipped her consciousness that she was leaning on the arm of a young man, and when she thought of it, she faltered. Angelo misunderstood.
‘You don’t have to speak when we reach the door. I’ve got the money; the guard will let us in. Leave everything to me.’
At the door, while Angelo in his new light tone talked and demurely repelled flirtation, Cosima repeated to herself what she was to say.
Angelo now led the way and followed the guard. Barley, stopped at the door, lounged there so unconcernedly that Cosima took heart. Smooth cool stone under her feet was a blessing after the rough streets. The guard kept looking back, and slowing sometimes as if he hoped the lovely creature at his heels would collide with him. Cosima, who had seen the lovely creature with a knife in its hand, was aware of a glow of excitement, of adventure, as though she were being swept towards something dangerous that she wanted to meet.
They were being taken deeper and deeper by dark passages down into — not the heart, rather the guts — of the castle. She noticed that they met no one. The guard was bringing them by unfrequented ways, giving them full value for the small leather bag that Angelo had pressed into his hand. Of course, though, he was probably as anxious to avoid notice as they were.
They met one person now. They had descended a final flight of worn stone, lit by a torch in a bracket on one of the sweating stone walls, and here was a man who could only be a jailer. He stood there at the foot of the steps, large, suspicious, blocking their way, the lantern he carried sending an additional upward and infernal glow onto his gross features, while the torchlight was reflected oddly in his eyes, red like a rat’s.
‘What’s this?’ His voice grated; she had the fancy that this was because he seldom used it and it had rusted up. ‘Who are these? No one to come down here without my leave.’
‘Visitors for the Bandini. That’s all I know.’ The door guard, with a last look at Angelo, who returned it, took himself and his own torch away, having come to the end of what their coins had bought. The jailer stood where he was, eyeing them with increasing disbelief.
‘Bandini? No one sees Bandini till he dies.’ A grin split his face like a wound. ‘Then you’ll see more of him than anyone’s seen before — more than he’ll enjoy.’ The grin seamed itself shut again. ‘What you want with him?’ He raised the lantern to shine on Angelo’s face. ‘Pretty bird to fly into my cage.’ The wound once more gaped, showing teeth black as gangrene at its edges.
‘My lady must see her affianced before he dies.’ Angelo approached the jailer — Cosima instinctively holding her own breath in sympathy — and whispered in his ear, at the same time transferring another small leather bag into his free hand, which closed readily upon it. Angela’s golden, ribbon-trimmed plaits mingled for a second with greasy grey curls and, as the rat eyes swivelled to look Cosima over, she was glad of her veils.
‘Ah. That’s the case, is it? Piero’s a friend to true love, he is.’ He weighed the bag and pushed it into the front of the stained leather tunic. ‘Just a few minutes then, because Piero loves a lover.’ His chuckle sent a miasma of garlic and rotting teeth through Cosima’s veils and she felt her stomach heave. Of all things, I mustn’t vomit now. She was too innocent to know that her involuntary spasm and swallowing were convincing evidence to Piero of the condition Angelo had hinted.
‘My lady.’ Angelo’s hand, thin and hard, was under her arm, supporting her, leading her in the wake of the jailer who had turned and was stumping down the passage. ‘All is well; but a moment and you will see your beloved.’
My beloved! My mortal enemy! What would my father say? This beat in her head as she heard the key turn in the lock of a huge low door. The jailer held up the lantern to peer through the judas first, and now as the door groaned open he cried with dreadful joviality, ‘A little bird to see you. Master Bandini! A little lovebird!’
Angelo supported her across the threshold. The moment had come. A shape had got up from the straw, was standing there. She could sense bewilderment. Boldly, she did as Sigismondo had rehearsed her: she stepped forward, flinging back her veil and holding out her arms. They closed round a young man’s shoulders, the first she had ever touched, and she pressed her cheek to a rough one, whispering urgently in his ear, ‘Pretend to know me. If you want to live, join with what we say.’
She felt his sudden tension, his deep breath. Then hands held her shoulders. He said aloud, ‘My love?’
Cosima put her forehead down on his shoulder. She heard Angelo speak. The prisoner crushed her to him and said again, ‘My love! You came — you came at last!’
And, unaware that it was Cosima di Torre he held in his arms, Leandro Bandini kissed her with heartfelt enthusiasm.
Cosima di Torre, who was well aware she was being kissed by a Bandini, almost at once lost appreciation of that fact. Her lips seemed to be connected to the whole of her body in a completely new way. If this was what being kissed by a young man was like, then it was perfectly obvious why unmarried girls should be protected from the experience. Rapturously she returned the kiss. His arms tightened, wrapped round her further, so that suddenly she remembered the situation and who she was. Flushing, horrified, she made an effort to release herself and they sank together on the straw. The jailer had set his lantern down in the doorway and was engaged in a muttered exchange with Angelo; a bar of light fell across the two where they sat in the straw, gilding the face of each to the benefit of the other. Cosima was amazed that a Bandini could be so handsome; her imagination had foretold a face marked by generations of evil. Leandro thought it only fitting that someone who had come to rescue him should resemble a being from Paradise.
‘My lady.’ Angelo bent over them, plaits swinging, blocking the light to their mutual disappointment. ‘We must go; but we’ll return with a priest. Piero has agreed to allow the marriage.’
‘Marriage!’ Leandro’s start and cry brought an oily chuckle from the jailer.
‘They get you in the end, lad, even with the gallows waiting.’
‘Sweet Leandro-’ how strange the name sounded in her mouth. She bent her head modestly and managed to utter the words she had rehearsed, wishing she could sink through the ground — ‘it is for the child’s sake.’
Leandro snatched up her hands and bent his head to kiss them, most likely to hide the astonishment she had momentarily seen. Cosima felt it appropriate to her role to lean forward and kiss his rumpled hair, and managed to breathe ‘Trust us’ as she drew back.
Angelo helped her to her feet before the jailer could, and with professional swiftness arranged her veils over her face against his leering glance as he raised the lantern.
‘No more kisses, little bird, until the priest says so. Been too many already, eh? Oh, how lucky you are to find Piero here. He’s got such a soft heart for lovebirds in distress. Such a soft heart.’
Wagging his head in approval of his nature, Piero ushered them out, clanged the door to and clashed key in the lock while Leandro peered through the until it was shut on him. Cosima thought she saw such a look of hope on his face that her heart melted. Poor young man, to have been brought up a Bandini.
Chapter Eighteen