When the dancing was over, and the applause ringing out, Angela demanded of Isabella: “Do you not think Madonna Lucrezia dances like an angel, Donna Isabella?”
“An angel? I was thinking of a Spanish gypsy. Donna Lucrezia dances with fire and spirit, as I hear they do.”
Angela was furious, but Giulio was beside her, laying a restraining hand on her arm.
There was talk and laughter throughout the company—and Angela cried to Giulio: “Are you all afraid of her … this sister of yours?”
But Lucrezia was sitting back in her chair, while one of her Spaniards fanned her. She was smiling, as though she had not understood the malice behind Isabella’s remarks.
That night Alfonso and Giulio danced together for the enjoyment of the company, and later Alfonso played his viol.
It was strange to see his somewhat clumsy fingers, the foundry grime still on them, making such music. Lucrezia began to wonder then whether there was a side to her husband which she had not yet discovered.
Isabella would soon return to Mantua, and she was determined that she must leave some lasting memory of her visit behind for Lucrezia.
She sought out her father. Ercole was pondering over his accounts.
“Do you know, daughter,” he said, “that there are still more than four hundred guests in the castle? What do you think it costs me to feed them?”
Isabella, never having time for other people’s problems, ignored the question.
“Your daughter-in-law will make Este into a Spanish Court before she has been here long.”
“She will do no such thing,” retorted Ercole.
“And how can you be sure?”
“Because I would never permit it.”
“It will creep in subtly before you realize it. Oh, she is so calm, so smug. There are no tantrums with Madonna Lucrezia. She merely looks like a fragile flower and says ‘I want this. I want that.’ And because no one takes her seriously and tries to stop her she gets it.”
“I have no time for your women’s quarrels. Over four hundred guests! Calculate the food that means! And four hundred guests is not all. What of their horses?”
“Those dresses of hers are half-Spanish. All that gold. It is Spanish, I tell you. Spanish! Do you know she wears zaraguelles?”
“What is that?”
“Zaraguelles. Those silk pantaloons, all richly embroidered. She wears them beneath her dresses. It is a Spanish custom. It should be stopped. Father, you will have no peace with that woman and her Spanish attendants.”
“Oh, let her be and help me devise a means of ridding myself of these guests who are making of me a poor man.”
“Father, if you sent away her Spanish attendants you would have fewer mouths to feed. She has too many attendants.”
The Duke was thoughtful, and Isabella smiled. She had made her point.
The loss of her friends was going to hurt Lucrezia more than any of the pin-pricks which Isabella had been able to inflict. She wished she could rob Lucrezia of her more intimate circle—that watchful Adriana, sly Nicola and the saucy Angela. But to go so far as that would certainly bring down the wrath of the Pope. For the moment she must content herself with banishing the Spaniards.
She wrote to Francesco telling him that she was tired of Ferrara and was longing for Mantua. She wished to be with her husband and her little son Federico.
Reading the letter Francesco laughed.
He guessed that the young Lucrezia was holding her own against Isabella, and wondered why he should feel so pleased.
At last the ceremonies came to an end and the guests began to depart. The ambassadors came to make their farewell speeches to Lucrezia, but Isabella contrived to be present with Elizabetta, and it was she who answered them, Elizabetta following her, although the thanks and good wishes of the ambassadors had been directed at Lucrezia.
Lucrezia did not attempt to stop them, but when they were over she offered a few modest and well-chosen words as though she had not been ousted from her rightful place.
The ambassadors thought her meek and nervous, but there were some among them who believed that she considered the open animosity of her sister-in-law too foolish for her attention.
These too were Lucrezia’s thoughts; she was also reminding herself that Isabella had a home in Mantua. She could not desert that forever. And it was a happy day when Isabella and her retinue set out for Mantua. Lucrezia could not hide her pleasure.
But, as she went on her way, Isabella was smiling, well satisfied; she knew her parsimonious father would soon deprive Lucrezia of her Spanish attendants, and that Lucrezia’s patience was going to be strained to the limit by life in Ferrara.
VI
IN THE LITTLE ROOMS OF THE BALCONY
When the guests had departed Lucrezia relinquished the apartments in which she had lived in state and prepared to settle in the “little rooms of the balcony” (gli camerini del poggiolo) which had been reserved for her own special use.
She examined them in the company of Angela and Nicola, and all three were delighted with the cozy intimacy of the place. Here, Lucrezia realized, she could shut herself away from the main castle, receive her friends and make of the rooms a little corner of Rome in Ferrara.
Angela bounced on the bed to test it and as she did so there came the sound of tearing material. She saw that the bed covering had split; she touched it and tore it still further.
“It is perished,” she said. “It must be hundreds of years old.” She looked at her hands black with dirt; the grime of years was on them.
Lucrezia pulled back the coverlet. The sheets, she found, when she touched them, might have been made of paper.
“It is as though they made my bed a hundred years ago and it has been waiting for me all this time!”
Nicola had shaken the velvet hangings and a cloud of dust emerged to hang in the air.
“They are in tatters,” she cried.
In despair Lucrezia sat down on a stool and the brocade on its seat split as she did so.
“So these are the little rooms which Duke Ercole so magnanimously gives me,” she said.
“It is characteristic of your welcome,” cried Angela. “Lavish enough on the surface, full of enmity beneath. If I were you, cousin, I would go at once to your miserly father-in-law and demand to know what he means by giving you such miserable quarters in his castle.”
Lucrezia shook her head. “I doubt that would do me any good.”
“I should write at once to the Holy Father,” suggested Nicola. “He will send orders that you be decently housed.”
“I wish to live in peace,” explained Lucrezia. “If I complain of this it will only make trouble. No. We will strip off these ancient furnishings and put new ones in their place. We’ll have it gay and brilliant. We’ll have upholstery in morello and gold, and until it is finished I shall go back to the apartments I have occupied so far.”
“So you will do it at your own expense?” murmured Nicola.
“My dear Nicola, how else could I get what I want in Ferrara?”
Angela took Lucrezia’s hand and kissed it. “You look like an angel,” she said, “and verily I believe you must be one. Your husband spends his days and half his nights with other women; yet you greet him with a smile when he visits you. Your father-in-law insults you by offering you the dust and grime of ages, and you smile sweetly and say you will refurnish your apartments at your own expense. As for that demon, Isabella d’Este, your sister-in-law, she behaves to you like a fiend, and you behave—outwardly at least—as though you respect her. Nicola, what do you think of my cousin? Is she not an angel?”