It was getting dark, the sky an intense green behind the distant hills, the pale violet of spring twilight overhead, when Cosima, weary, set off on her second journey through the city streets to the Castle prison. Again, she was accompanied by Angelo, wrapped as she was herself in a cloak now that the bitter little wind of evening keened round the alley comers. There were as many people in the street as before, but an unease struck her; there were groups who talked in low voices. The man who went ahead now was not Barley but Sigismondo, cowled, and furled in his black robes. She observed something strange; although he parted the crowds with easy confidence, as they approached the Palace his gait altered, grew less sure; his shoulders hunched, as though he shrank from what was to come. For the first time Cosima thought truly what peril they were all in: that even Sigismondo, on whom she had to rely as implicitly as Benno did, had good reason to fear.
The guard at the door had changed. Cosima’s heart missed a beat at the unfamiliar face, but evidently they were expected. The new guard was just as entranced Angela’s smile and just as ready to accept a bribe to let them in as the other had been. His colleague, who had not been at this door either, seemed inclined to take his bribe from Angela in the form of a kiss, to which the maid acceded very readily. The priest, clicking his tongue, called them to order and they continued on their way, Cosima increasingly disturbed at Sigismondo’s stumbling walk.
‘Can you manage the steps, Father? Not easy at your age, I know.’ The guard seemed a kindly man, if amorous; but as he put out a hand to help Sigismondo, Cosima sent up a piercing prayer that he would not feel, through the woollen folds, the steel muscles of this ageing priest. She understood now why Sigismondo’s height seemed to have lessened and his step become shaky. He must seem pitiful and not threatening. She remembered his saying that he had already visited Leandro in prison. The jailer might well recognise him. The guard was now pinching Angelo behind, and got a cack-handed little feminine punch on the arm for his pains. He left them at the top of the last crooked flight of steps. Cosima picked her way down the worn treads, skirts bunched in her hands — telling herself that her heart beat so fast because of the danger they were in, and not because of the coming meeting with Leandro Bandini.
Piero had heard them and waited, lantern in hand aloft, in an expansive mood suitable to a wedding. From the extra layer of smell on the air, he had been drinking their former bribe in anticipation. He greeted Sigismondo with a respect that from him was gruesome, bending his knee and head together.
‘Your blessing, Father. Makes a change from hearing confessions down here, having a marriage. May be the first the place has seen, who knows, since the Romans built this,’ and he slapped the wall. ‘A wedding, and then straight to the last rites, eh?’ His laugh, Cosima thought, sounded as a rat might if it choked on a gobbet of flesh, and she pinched her nostrils shut as they followed him down the dank passage to Leandro’s cell. He was still expatiating about the Romans as Sigismondo tottered at his heels making little yaps of assent.
‘Here is your bride, Bandini!’ Piero flung wide the cell door with a flourish, jangling his keys like wedding bells. Leandro was ready for them, Cosima saw, anxiously smiling. She was touched to see he had brushed the straw from his clothes and combed through that thick hair with his fingers. How he must have suffered in this place! What had he thought, all these days, as he waited for death?
Sigismondo was bent over his breviary, tilting it towards the lantern, his shaking hands making it tremble as he muttered words that Cosima was surprised to recognise as good Latin. What kind of man was this who had first emerged into her life dressed as a widow? But here was Angelo, putting back her veil for her, handing a ring to Leandro, standing beside her with meek bowed head while Sigismondo maundered on, turning the page. The jailer held the lantern near, the light sending knows swimming across their faces, Sigismondo’s but invisible beneath his cowl. She was aware of Piero’s eyes on her, his head cocked to see into face. Leandro, directed by the ‘priest’, took her hand and put the ring to each finger and at last to the ring finger itself. He had said the words, she had said the words… If Sigismondo had really a priest — and she was visited by the chill idea perhaps he was — she would now be married to Leandro Bandini and her father would die to hear of it. If he saw her now he would certainly succumb to apoplexy.
‘Is it all over, Father?’ Piero put the lantern down on the threshold and, horribly, advanced on her. ‘First kiss from the bride! Piero’s reward for a soft heart.’
She had no time to shrink from the foul breath that preceded him, hardly fell the grip of Leandro’s hand draw her back, only saw a violent movement behind the advancing Piero like a whirling darkness against darkness itself. Piero’s face lurched towards her, large as nightmare, eyes suddenly starting like a hare’s, tongue thrust out as though it would reach her first. A curious loud retching sound filled her ears and the next second she found herself pulled round against Leandro’s chest, held against his thudding heart.
‘The keys. Right…’
Despite Leandro’s hand, which tried to keep her head against his chest, Cosima twisted round to see. The lantern’s light flickered, protected though it was, as if the wind of struggle had nearly doused it. But its uncertain light showed Sigismondo and Angelo busy over something on the floor in the corner. As they stepped back, she saw a huddled figure on the pallet and Angelo twitching the ragged blanket up over the grey greasy curls. Sigismondo was unwrapping his rosary from his wrist and knotting it again at his belt. She felt once again a heave of nausea as she knew what she had seen: Piero being strangled… He deserved it, she told herself, with dismissive anger. This was not a time to be squeamish. Sigismondo was pulling a dark robe of fine wool from under his habit, and he and Angelo flung it over Leandro’s head, like a couple of bizarre tirewomen. Sigismondo was thus restored to his usual figure. Angelo took up the lantern, Leandro seized her hand and they left the cell, Sigismondo bringing up the rear. She heard him lock the door.
She needed both hands to manage her skirts up the narrow flight of worn stairs, and Leandro, letting go, whispered, ‘I’ll never forget this! Never! You shall have anything in the world-’
He was cut short by the sudden appearance of a figure carrying a lantern of its own, at the head of the stairs. Leandro halted a moment, Cosima gasped. It was another figure out of nightmare, too small for a man, too thickset for a child, and with an iron-grey beard. So far from challenging them or raising an alarm, he put a finger to his lips and then, turning, beckoned them on and led at a rapid pace down a passage branching off the one they had used before. Cosima, as they all followed, fancied for a moment that they had slipped into one of the tales told by her nurse or by Sascha, and that they might see a witch, or a monster barring their way, before they could come to the world outside again.
This did not happen until they had traversed quite a few passages, some so narrow they had to edge in single file, one so low that only the dwarf could walk upright. Cosima understood that he led them by ways known only, perhaps, to his own kind. She had heard of the Palace dwarves and she imagined, as she parcelled her skirts close to her chest and felt her veiling catch on rough stone, that the whole ancient Castle was honeycombed with such ways where the small people might go about their lives unseen. The present passage seemed to be a tunnel cut in the rock. She thought the dwarves might almost have made it themselves.
Here she stumbled on some debris, and Sigismondo’s hand was instantly under her elbow. If he was bringing up the rear, any danger must be expected from behind, pursuit rather than confrontation.