Duchess of Milan Read Online Free

her once awkwardly dominating nose, with its slender tip and long, masculine bridge, now had a striking elegance. A tight leather glove sheathed her hand; her clasp was cold, even through Beatrice's glove. Isabella's eyes, Beatrice thought, were the exact gray-green color and mysterious opalescence of the Bay of Naples before a storm.
    The vision of Isabella vanished behind Eleonora's bulk. “I have hot spiced wine for the ladies,” Isabella said after she had returned her aunt's embrace. Her throaty voice had a beautiful, sexual melancholy, as if pining for some absent lover.
    A hand came into Beatrice's, a faint warmth like a small bird. The girl standing beside her was so haunted and beautiful that for a moment Beatrice thought she had invented her: china-white skin, lips as brilliant as berry juice, heavy black eyebrows, and feverish brown irises glowing within deep, shaded sockets.
    “I am Bianca, Your Highness,” the girl said in a high, fragile voice. Bianca could not have been older than ten or eleven. She tugged on Beatrice's hand and led her out of the circle of ladies.
    The Marquesa drew Eleonora aside and whispered: “Mama, who is that girl with Beatrice?”
    “That is Il Moro's bastard.”
    “Per mia fe, Mama. Does Beatrice know?”
    “I told her this morning. She . . . accepted it.”
    “Mama.” The Marquesa paused. “Mama, there is something else, isn't there? Something you have not told her.”
    Eleonora grasped the Marquesa's sable muff as if she intended to strangle the dead beast. “I will not permit--” A Milanese lady drifted within earshot, and Eleonora smiled graciously.
    Bianca guided Beatrice to a chapel in the south transept. Shadows nickered over carved marble figures hoisting a huge white sarcophagus. “The man in there was formerly our Duke,” Bianca said in a wondering voice. She looked up at Beatrice. “My bird died. I would have preferred that she be buried in a church, but of course that couldn't be. We buried her in a marble casket carved by Ser Domenico. Her name was Daria.”
    Having not spoken since the previous night, Beatrice was now convinced that only this enchanted child could hear her. “When my first parrot died, we wrapped him in black silk and lit candles around him and sent him down the Po”--the Po was the river that ran through Ferrara--”in a little galley that we had painted and gilded. Perhaps he is still floating far out in the sea on his beautiful ship.”
    “My mother is dead. I never saw her. I imagine that she was very beautiful.”
    Beatrice gave Bianca's hand a comforting squeeze. “I'm sorry about your mother.”
    “I imagine I already prefer you to the Duchess of Milan and certainly to Duchess Bona,” Bianca chirped. Bona of Savoy was the Duke of Milan's widowed mother, the dowager Duchess of Milan.
    Beatrice leaned over and gave Bianca a light kiss on her cheek. As she did, she glanced back at the ladies. Isabella was watching her. For a moment the Duchess of Milan's face was shadowed; then the candles washed her features with light. Beatrice remembered something about her cousin's eyes, the narrowing, the elongation at the corners. A twist of her lips, a way she had of looking amused and angry at once. The memory lured Beatrice across time, and she again confronted her cousin on that balcony high above the Bay of Naples, this time to see the end of it: Isabella smoothing the doll's dress, looking at her like that for a long moment. And then the palla bat blurred past and Bella's head exploded and her entire body flipped off the railing. Beatrice could see her falling, her white satin dress iridescent in the sun, the fragments of her head showering into the sea like a shattered snowball, and she could hear Isabella laughing. . . .
    Beatrice blinked the present into focus. But her cousin was still looking at her, her bemused expression unchanged over all these years, as if she, too, remembered that day.
     
    Satan did not raise Jesus to a high