A Dancer in Darkness Read Online Free Page A

Bosola was only one of many they had trampled underfoot in their greedy scamper after power.
    Unobserved, Bosola mounted the stairs and made his way into the palace. That was the advantage of his dress. If he had been tricked out as a gentleman the world would have wanted to know his business. As it was, they assumed he was on some errand the nature of which it would be better for them not to know.
    He made his way up the state staircase to the loggia above, and found himself walking warily, on the balls of his feet, and hugging the wall. It was in a corridor such as this that he had murdered the man for whose death he had gone to the galleys. He smiled grimly, wondering what the Cardinal would make of his resurrection.
    The light grew dimmer. He was now in the oldest part of the palace. Dust lay heavy on the floors. When she was a child, these rooms had been the Duchess’s. She had lived here almost alone and almost unseen, ignored in a stone cul-de-sac, until she was old enough for her brothers to marry her off.
    A door opened ahead of him, and he had just time to drawinto shadow. A large buxom woman came into view, holding in her arms an enormous pile of stuff whose silver threads caught the light. She could not see him. He could see her.
    It was Cariola, the Duchess’s nurse, and now her gentlewoman . She was a heavy-skinned woman of forty, and her eyes glittered with a coquettishness gone sour. She scurried down the corridor and despite himself he was upset. She might prove difficult.
    When she had gone down the corridor a little way, he stepped out of the shadow and followed her.
    She looked over her shoulder. Light from the window hit him, lighting up only his hose and boots. She stopped. He had seen that look of listening attention in frightened birds. He did not move. From a distance of thirty feet they peered at each other in the tricky light, then she went into a room at the end of the hall and closed the door.
    He did not think he had been recognized. He walked on and stopped before the door she had entered. The light was very bright here. He heard Cariola’s voice raised loudly and grinned. That voice had lost none of its peculiar mixture of cloying sweetness and the nag. That was what came of being a gentlewoman in reduced circumstances.
    Then he heard the other voice. It was a voice of a curious silvery lightness. The Duchess, who had been Aemelia Sanducci , had none of her brothers’ cruel Spanish tastes. Yet the voice had authority. It was as though she would not be put down. Her will was taut as wire.
    The two women went on talking and he could not make out the words. There was nothing more for him to learn here. He went in search of her brothers.
II
    Ferdinand was not hard to find. He was in the courtyard .
    The courtyard of the palace was its one pleasant feature. On two sides there were open second-floor galleries, and the third had double casement windows. The fourth was a wall. A crowd was gathered there when Bosola entered. He was ashort man and the crowd hemmed him in, but he could just catch a glimpse of what was going on.
    Ferdinand must now be thirty-three. He moved through life jerkily, and it probably never even occurred to him that his elder brother, the Cardinal, pulled the strings. He was little more than a young tough with a title.
    Because they were poor and preferment had only been available to them through the Church, Duke Sanducci had become Cardinal Sanducci, and left the title to his younger brother. Thus, as they began to rise, it was Ferdinand who reaped the pomps. His brother the Cardinal kept only the power.
    Now Ferdinand swaggered down below. It could not be denied that he swaggered well. He had a certain blind phallic ardour. Bosola peered at him scornfully.
    The Commedia del Arte players had come into the courtyard , and Rosina was back with them, looking none the worse for her experience. Ferdinand had had chairs set up to watch them. He sat clicking his fingers clumsily.