A Dancer in Darkness Read online

  He seemed genuinely concerned. Bosola did not quite know what to say. The Cardinal looked up at him. “We do not always do as we wish,” he said. “But what others do should play to our advantage.” He was sly now. “Do you understand me?”

  “No.”

  It was the first sign of rebellion Bosola had ever made. The Cardinal looked up thoughtfully. Then he sighed and put the sapphire down.

  “You will sell these and take her the money. To Ancona, if she wishes that. It was Ancona, wasn’t it? They are only trumpery things.” He paused. “It is Antonio di Bologna, of course?”

  Bosola did not answer.

  Again the Cardinal sighed. “I see,” he said. He smiled. “A man called Niccolò Ferrante once came to me. He was a fugitive from the galleys. I gave him preferment. Now I find he is wanted in Pavia. I have only to send him there.”

  “I am not Niccolò Ferrante.”

  “A dozen men will say you were. You said you were. They would behead you if I turned you over to them. And why should I not? You are nothing to me.”

  “It was Antonio de Bologna.”

  “Of course it was. I suppose they will meet at Ancona. The idea is romantic, but not paid for.” Suddenly he stood up, rustled round the table, and glared down at Bosola.

  “I am sending you to my brother.” He was not angry. He was merely contemptuous. And it was the contempt that Bosola would always obey. They both knew that.

  “You will do as he says. I suppose you think you have risen. Perhaps you could have once. But power is not the same thing as a new suit of clothes.” The Cardinal began to pace up and down the room. “Yes, you will do as you are told. Do you think we cannot do what we please with you? You, and your sister, too.” The Cardinal glared at him. “She at least is clever enough to get what she wants. But on our terms. You have not even the brains for that.”

  He tried to look amused. But his forehead was sweating. He sat down again and glanced up at Bosola with oddly candid eyes. “My brother cannot be stopped. Treat her gently if you can. She is very young.”

  The room grew quiet. The Cardinal shoved the jewel box forward towards Bosola. “Do as he says. But tell me nothing until it is done. Now get out.”

  Bosola got out. He had seen more than he had wanted to see. It was as though they had been talking at the end of a dark alley, and someone had held up a lantern to both of them.

  He did not mind what happened now. He was caught. He sought out Ferdinand. He would throw himself away, contemptuously; and it would be a pleasure to be whipped. If we can make ourselves grovel, then what others make us do so does not hurt nearly so much. It was useless to be Bosola. He had become Ferrante now.

  IV

  That news travels fast does not disturb us. What takes us aback is that it arrives so suddenly. One moment it is not there. The next it is.

  The Duchess’s party was encamped upon a hillside, half-way between Ancona and Loreto. It was morning and something had disturbed the birds. The air was thick with doves, who wove low webs across the air, and called and cooed their trouble as they flew. Only a hawk sometimes could make them dart that way. Or it may only have been their play. Who could tell?

  The Duchess woke drowsily, roused by a flurried murmur round her tent. It was the doves. She glanced around the tent, expecting walls. The light was pearly grey, and therefore disturbing. She turned to Antonio for comfort, expecting to find him asleep. He was not asleep. He was lying passively on his side, watching her. She looked at him so seriously that he smiled, but she could see that he was serious too.

  “It’s early,” he said.

  “Yes.” Something disturbed her. She did not quite know what it was. Something about their night had not been quite as things used to be.

  She did not want to get up. She wanted to snuggle away from the world with him, at the bottom of the bed, as though that were protection enough. For a while then they lay in each other’s arms.

  There was no real security in it. The inside of the tent was hung with frail white curtains, several layers deep, and looping about the bed as they cascaded from the ceiling. These now moved restlessly, and now fled abruptly up into the air, tugging at their rings, in invisible gusts of wind. The Duchess watched them. Outside the tent the birds sounded agitated too. Then, as the curtains were whipped in a particularly violent flurry, there came the tinkle of bells and the creaking of harness.

  It was not easy to dress rapidly in those days. Cariola was nowhere about. The Duchess sent Antonio out to see what was happening. Shoving himself hastily into his clothes, he strode out of the tent, closing the flap behind him.

  She was alone. She could not help lying there to listen. The sounds were louder now. They were anxious, worried, surreptitious sounds. Antonio was a long time in coming back. When he at last did so she could tell from his face that something was seriously wrong. He did not undress again, but stood above her, looking down at her.

  “Some mischief is up,” he said. “They are standing about, whispering to each other. You had better call Cariola and get dressed.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Lord of Montferrato has turned back for Amalfi. I am afraid the others are going to follow.”

  “But they would not dare.”

  “They are frightened. Therefore they would dare anything. I’ll find Cariola.”

  “Can I stop them?”

  He hesitated, and shook his head slowly. Then he turned and went for Cariola.

  When she at last came she looked awed and frightened.

  “Is it true?” asked the Duchess.

  “Yes,” said Cariola. “Oh what does it mean?” Her face showed that she knew what it meant.

  “You may go, too, if you wish,” said the Duchess.

  “But where would I go?” The answer was anguished and trapped. The Duchess straightened to look at her. “Poor Cariola,” she said. “Then come with us.”

  “Where will you go?”

  The Duchess started to explain, but something held her back. “Never mind,” she said. Cariola’s fingers were trembling more than her own. At last, dressed, she was ready to see for herself. At the flap of the tent she paused. Then, while Cariola thrust the flap aside, she stepped out through it, and blinked in the hard cruel light.

  The encampment was on the crest of the hill. There had been perhaps thirty tents. Now there were at most fifteen. Below her she could catch glimpses of Montferrato’s caravan weaving uncertainly down the bumpy road, surrounded by his company. They had no pinions flying. Clearly they were in furtive flight. The biggest coward, perhaps, went first.

  She had only to look around to see what was happening. The servants were packing up. The nobles were nowhere to be seen. As she stood there, the rising wind toying with her skirt, she saw one of her precious following come out of one of the tents. He was in travelling costume. He saw her, hesitated, turned aside, and then came towards her. It was the Lord of Torcello, a very minor member of the company. There was something crestfallen and apologetic in his gait.

  He, at least, had the decency to speak to her, though she had too much pride to listen to his excuses. He was a practical man. He had to go where the others followed. But even he was not concerned about her. He was concerned only to make his own conduct dignified. She could not bear to hear him. She dismissed him, to his obvious relief, and went back to her own tent. She sat there with Antonio and Cariola, listening to the sounds of departure, which were hushed and muted. Did they still think she had any power over them? If they had, they would not have dared to flee. They did dare to flee, therefore this furtiveness ill became them. But then few of us have the courage to run away in pomp.

  Suddenly it was quiet. Even the birds were still. There was nothing left to agitate them.

  She jumped up, with a glance at Antonio, and went outside.

  “What does it mean?” she asked Antonio.

  “I do not know.” He went forward to investigate.

  For the tents were still sta
nding. They quivered in the off-sea gale.

  Antonio came back to report that they were empty and abandoned. The company had left in some haste, Montferrato having drawn all of them rapidly after him.

  “What did they know?” demanded the Duchess. “What can happen to us now, that is any worse than what has happened?”

  Cariola looked anxiously at her mistress. The Duchess fell silent. Then she turned and climbed the hill, holding up her skirts. The others followed her. From the top of it they could see the several retinues of the various nobles, wending their way silently through the harsh landscape, inland, back to an Amalfi that was hers no longer and would always be theirs, no matter whom they had to sacrifice to keep it. She swallowed hard. There was no music now, no outriders, and no flags. What she looked down on was the flight of locusts. She turned to face the other way.

  To her left lay Ancona. A ship was entering its harbour. It sparkled and glittered like a mirage of safety. To her right, down the coast, hidden by hills, lay Loreto. She looked at Antonio, who held her arm, to steady her.

  “Which?” she asked. But she knew which she would choose. Her eyes went back to Ancona.

  He shook his head. “Someone must have started this. The Cardinal must have agents here. If we went there, we would be intercepted at once. We could not defend ourselves. Better to pretend to make for Loreto, and then slip away by night. The players are still here. They will help us.” He looked sternly at Cariola. But so long as she spoke to no one she was safe enough. Now there was no one for her to speak to. He shrugged.

  “We must get there,” she said.

  He pressed her arm more firmly. “We shall.”

  An hour later, surrounded by the sparse company of musicians and drolls, who did not seem so merry either, they were headed away from safety, towards Loreto.

  “But if the roads are watched, how shall we get back?” asked the Duchess.

  “We will not use the roads.” Antonio stood in the stirrups and gazed at the hills. “There are bandits here, and gipsies. We will trust to them.” He called one of the players to him, murmured something and sent him off.

  Both he and the Duchess watched the montebank post towards the hills. He was their messenger to hope.

  Behind them, on the knoll, stood the abandoned encampment, its tents still unstruck, and flapping unattended in the wind. Later, the bandits would come down from the hills, to pillage what they could, Turkey carpets still on the earth floors, and serving vessels tumbled on the ground. The tents they would leave as too bulky. A wind might knock them over. Perhaps it might take the winter to destroy them, or the season’s sun would rot their fabric away. Meanwhile they stood along the crest, like a row of architectural ghosts, and the wind flapping through them made eerie and minatory noises.

  Ancona fell behind. Out of sight of it, and the Duchess drew closer to Antonio.

  V

  Antonio was right. There were agents in those hills. What he did not know, and what the agents themselves did not know, was that there were two sets of them. Like a farmer, the Cardinal was driving cattle down a narrow funnel towards the yard, and he counted his brother with the cattle. But the Cardinal moved only behind the scenes. Of this Ferdinand knew nothing.

  Night and day he had posted across Italy, with Marcantonio, two more bravos, and Bosola. Now he drew rein on a rocky outcropping above the Ancona plain.

  Bosola looked at him warily. He had never spent so much time with Ferdinand before. He realized Ferdinand was like Marcantonio. Even when his head was clear, the man was physically insane. And of all the forms of insanity, the physical is the hardest to control and the most intemperate. Like any other kind of insanity, it has its own logic, and its only means of self-expression is violence. And an insane body cannot be reasoned with. Violence is amenable only to violence, and Bosola had no strength.

  Certainly Ferdinand’s mad rush to Loreto had been peculiar. For one thing, he would not let Bosola leave him, which made Bosola uneasy, for though he might appear to be serving Ferdinand, he knew whom he was really serving, and he was supposed to go on to Ancona. He did not quite dare to do that. In his present mood Ferdinand might destroy anyone for any trifle. Nor was travelling with Marcantonio pleasant. The man had nasty little ways to enjoy himself when he was bored. Men like Marcantonio lived by choice in those torture chambers of the mind where Bosola lived only by necessity.

  Or did he? He no longer knew.

  Now they looked down on the deserted camp. They had already met the noble caravans returning to Amalfi. Ferdinand saw that was his brother’s work. He spurred on, until his horse’s blood dropped on the road. Figures came out of the tents, and looking up to the horsemen on the ridge, themselves mounted and fled. Ferdinand and his company came down on the deserted tents.

  Ferdinand strode moodily through them, kicking aside here an ewer, there a rug the robbers had been in the act of rolling up.

  “How did they know we were coming?” he stormed. “How?”

  “Perhaps they did not.”

  Marcantonio had found some wine in an ewer. He sat down with it. Ferdinand looked at him contemptuously.

  “Where have they gone? Loreto?” he demanded. “Why Loreto?”

  Bosola had said nothing about Ancona. That was on the Cardinal’s advice. He knew he must get there, but he did not know how to get away.

  “We must not alarm my sister,” said Ferdinand. “My brother would let them off. In other words, he would keep them for his own purposes. We must take them by surprise, and him.” He grinned. He would let Marcantonio have Antonio. He had already promised him that. He was content to watch. Marcantonio knew so many things to do. He would have the Duchess watch also.

  “So,” he grunted. He turned to Bosola. “Ride after them. We will follow through the hills.” He grinned. “I know whose thing you are. We will keep a watch on you. We shall know what to do when you find them.”

  Bosola hesitated and glanced towards Ancona. Ferdinand followed the glance, but said nothing. “Go,” he said. Marcantonio put down the ewer of wine and stood up, hands on his hips, and stared at Bosola.

  “Well, go,” he echoed his master.

  There was nothing else for Bosola to do. He mounted his horse, and turned it aside on the Loreto road. It was a little after noon. The sun stood to one side of the meridian, and both he and the horse poured with sweat. All afternoon he passed through the landscape, and saw nothing. The Cardinal would have some message waiting for him at Ancona, so he must get there, but he knew better than to make a break for it until darkness fell. For though the landscape looked empty, Ferdinand and Marcantonio were grimly following him along the ridge. They were itching for violence. They trembled with desire for it. Any false move from him, and they would string him up behind his horse and send it galloping through the stony dust. The only thing he could do was to dawdle. That would make Ferdinand furious, but Ferdinand wished to remain concealed. His brother might also have agents here. He would not descend the hills to make Bosola go faster.

  So Bosola’s pursuit of the Duchess and Antonio became an agonized amble. At dusk he would make for the shore, on whose sands riding would be swift. But he dared do nothing until then. He was a prisoner in a landscape without walls.

  Thus the curious triple pursuit went on all afternoon, each side dawdling so as not to reach its goal, and each side moving furtively in the bright, paranoic sun. Towards evening the shadows began to turn purple. They lengthened. The sparkle of the sea grew dull. The leaves of the olive trees rattled crisply in an off-shore breeze. Only an occasional church bell cracked the silence.

  Fortunately there would be no twilight, for in those regions dusk did not descend. It plummeted over the unwary like a gladiator’s net.

  It came.

  Bosola instantly spurred his horse down the first arroyo leading towards the sea.

  VI

  The Duchess and Antonio had not been able to dawdle slowly enough. They had already long since passed the point
in the hills where the local gipsies were to meet them. Darkness caught them under the bastions of Loreto.

  The Duchess looked up at that holy city with despair.

  It reared out of its olive groves like a prison, framed in the hard, green spears of poisonous agave plants. Its olive groves were ghostly. The bastions were built of narrow-laid rose brick. The windows were blind. The dome and campanile brandished themselves like weapons. It was huge, unyielding, and unsafe. It was not a sanctuary, but a trap. The battlements of the cathedral apse seemed to be mounted with cannon. And it was utterly silent. There was no Virgin and no mercy there. That the Duchess felt instinctively.

  Antonio touched the bridle of her palfrey. “Now,” he said. His voice was a tense whisper.

  She looked back at the carts, which the players had taken care of. Now the players were melting into the landscape. The carts stood abandoned on the road.

  These were her household goods.

  “No,” said Antonio gently. “We can take nothing.” One of the players rode up to him. “Come. He knows the way.”

  “But they will find them.”

  “Better they find them, than us,” said Antonio. He tugged at the bridle. It was still trimmed with little tinkling bells. Taking his knife from his boot, he cut them off. They fell one by one to the road, tinkled, and lay still. That, more than anything else, impressed the Duchess with how shorn she was of any last vestige of power.

  Shivering, she nudged her horse into the shadows of the road.

  “Get down,” ordered Antonio.

  “What?”

  “You cannot ride properly side-saddle. It will be rough country. Get down.”

  She slid from the horse, and beckoned Cariola to follow. Antonio bent down, and with a quick slash of his knife, ripped up her skirt and petticoats. The Duchess flinched.