A Dancer in Darkness Read online

  Reluctantly he left the room, and went out into the court. The men provided by the agent were a savage bunch. Such ex-soldiers lurk in the back alleys of dingy towns, and if they do not become robbers turn their hands to any violence they are paid for.

  In the room he had left Antonio was also listening to the clatter in the courtyard. “Do you believe him?” he asked.

  The Duchess shook her head. “I don’t know what to believe.” She hesitated. “But I do not trust my brothers, either of them. They will give you no amnesty. They want you in their hands. No, you will not go to Rome.”

  “I will go if you wish.”

  Her voice rose despite herself. “I do not wish. I am still Duchess. They will not dare to touch me. They will only take me prisoner and return me to Amalfi. They want control of Amalfi. Let them have it. Bosola has the money from the sale of my jewels. You know these hills. I will send you to Milan, to beg for help there. Perhaps that will frighten them.”

  “There is no help in Milan.”

  “It will be a pretence. You can still get away. Actually wait for me at Ravello or Arosa. We do not know the people here. We know them there.” She sat down. “They will kill you if you stay. In Amalfi we are in our own territory. Do you remember the gipsies?”

  He nodded.

  “Why should we not join them? We can get away there, somehow.”

  “I cannot see you a prisoner.”

  “I cannot see you dead,” she snapped. She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. He hesitated and then kissed them.

  “Very well.” He made a wry face. “I cannot think of you as a prisoner.”

  “Go to Arosa, and you will not see me a prisoner long. Hurry. We have not much time.”

  He held her tightly. She scarcely felt it. She had frozen herself, in order to keep calm. Ferdinand loved her. If he found her alone he would do nothing to harm her. She had only to live patiently until they reached Amalfi. Then, somehow, she would be free. But Antonio she had to send away, for both their sakes.

  She summoned Bosola. “You have the moneys from my jewels,” she said. “Pay them over to Antonio.”

  Bosola glanced at Antonio.

  “I am sending him to Milan. He will be safer there. Then we will await my brother.”

  Bosola stared.

  The Duchess stamped her foot. “Do as I say,” she ordered.

  Bosola was only too willing to do so. For him it solved the problem of Antonio. Antonio rode away at once. The Duchess did not go outside to say good-bye. She could not bear to do that. But she stood at the window of the parlour, watching him canter across the plain. He was soon out of sight.

  No one intercepted him. She sighed with a relief that only partially stilled terror, and turned to face the empty room. She would have been lost without Bosola. Cariola was, useless. Fright had made her ill. She found Bosola soothing. Impatiently she waited for Ferdinand.

  But it was not Ferdinand who came.

  VIII

  The Cardinal reached Naples that morning, travelling incognito. It was a nuisance to go at all, but there were times when he trusted no one but himself, and this was one of them. Fastidiously he stepped his horse through the filth of the streets, towards the convent, glanced up at its bland walls, and went inside.

  It was scarcely dawn, but he knew that Sor Juana would be up. He found her sitting at her writing desk, gazing into space. She seemed subdued and disheartened, but she had a vein of iron in her that held her up, whether she would droop or not.

  “Take me to the child,” he said. He saw no reason to bother with preliminaries, and besides, he had been riding all night. He was too tired for either compliments or verse.

  She glanced at him and then rose. Something of complicity in her manner impressed him. It had not been there before. There were times when his own creatures bored him. She had been better before she had grown afraid of him. They would never be able to talk easily again, and there were many underlings in this world, but so few people to talk to. He shrugged his shoulders as he followed her.

  The dortor of the nursery was shadowy. She put her fingers to her lips, like a statue of silence, and they threaded their way through the quiet beds towards a farther door. There the child slept in its bed in a separate room.

  He looked down at it with interest. “It has grown,” he said. It did not look like a ducal child. But it was old enough now so that features had begun to emerge from the shapeless putty of its baby face. It occurred to him for the first time that the child was his nephew. He had not thought of that before.

  He reached down and picked it up.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Sor Juana. Her voice was shrill with alarm. She almost sounded like its mother, and he glanced at her with curiosity. But her face, as always, was a bland mask.

  “It is no longer safe here. I am taking it away.”

  “It is quite safe here.”

  “You have a brother. Do you mean to tell me that any secret is safe from him?”

  Sor Juana was silent. Something in the rustle of her garments told him she was suddenly afraid. “What is happening?” she asked.

  “Nothing is happening. I gave you a trust. You violated it.”

  “He broke his way in here. There was nothing I could do.”

  That is what he wanted to know: whether she would betray Bosola or her ambitions first. “You have an all too accessible convent,” he said dryly.

  She looked at the sleepy bundle in his arms, whose legs dangled limply down to his sash. “What will you do with it?”

  “Make him a ruling prince. He is too young to be grateful. That is perhaps just as well. Gratitude is a treacherous thing.”

  The Cardinal looked up at her blandly. She said nothing and dropped her eyes.

  “But it needs care,” said Sor Juana.

  “You need not worry,” he said. “You are a capable woman.” He shifted the weight of the child, dandling it up and down. It was a pretty child. But it was a Sanducci. There was a sallow sharpness already visible in its eyes. He wondered what sort of person it would make, should it grow to maturity.

  “You will have your convent very soon now. And who knows? Perhaps a new patron.”

  A little light came into her eyes. Well, why should she not have it? She would be useful there. He left her staring down at the empty miniature bed, and went back to his horse. The child was well trained. It made no sound at all. It was a nuisance to have care of it, but he could not be absolutely sure of Bosola. The man was soft inside, as soft as Sor Juana was hard.

  He glanced at the Bay of Naples. The early morning light made it look viscous and dangerous. With a contented nod at its islands, he rode on. The child was his.

  IX

  Terror kept Cariola to a small room upstairs in the inn. Like many foolish women, she saw more than she was supposed to see. The room was dark and had only one narrow window. She lay on its bed, with her feet planted precisely together, tapered toes up, staring at the ceiling.

  The arrival of the soldiers only confirmed her fears. She heard them in the courtyard, and was sure she would be murdered within the hour. She was too tired to care, but conscience gnawed at her.

  There is a point beyond which fear leaves us in a certain peace. As it presses maniacally on the arteries at the sides of our head, something explodes inside us, and our head is abruptly clear. A jerky logic hacks its way through the jungle of our thoughts, clearing away the underbrush around a lost shrine. It is then we at last feel eager to sacrifice to conscience.

  The process is involuntary. We follow it whether we would or not. Cariola got to her feet, hating the cheap rustle of her borrowed dress, and stole out into the corridor.

  It was empty and silent, but the floor-boards creaked. She moved dreamily to the head of the stairs. She could see Bosola below her, whispering to a man she did not know. She drew back until they went away. Then, running slyly down the stairs, afraid of being intercepted, she slipped into the parlour.

 
; The Duchess stood at the windows, looking out at the bravos in the court. As Cariola shut the door softly behind her, she turned.

  “What is it?” she asked wearily.

  “Madam, I must tell you something.” Cariola looked round for Antonio, but he was not there.

  The Duchess waited a moment, sighed, and then shrugged. “Very well.”

  “It is about Bosola.”

  “Well, what about Bosola?”

  “He is the Cardinal’s agent, Madam.” As soon as she got it out Cariola felt better. Of Bosola she did not think at all. She did not even think of the Duchess. A good conscience makes us selfish, and she had removed the only bad on hers.

  “Oh!” The Duchess turned back to the window. Cariola became restless. Suddenly she wondered if she had done wrong. Then the Duchess’s voice came to her, small, calm and remote. “Have you known this long?”

  Cariola could not answer.

  The Duchess turned on her. Her eyes sparkled with anger. “Have you known this long?” she demanded, without raising her voice.

  Cariola still could not answer.

  “You were his mistress.”

  “Yes.” For some reason this hurt to admit. Why did it hurt, and not the confession? Cariola did not know. She was on the verge of tears.

  The Duchess smiled sadly, came over, and took Cariola’s arm. “It does not matter now,” she said. “But do not stay here. Go back to your room. I will call you when I need you.” Her voice was flat and impersonal.

  The door opened and Bosola came in. He looked quickly at Cariola, and then away.

  The Duchess was still ominously calm. “You need not pretend any more,” she told him. “I know what you are.”

  He looked taken aback. But the agent stood behind him. He cleared his throat.

  “I have come to take you prisoner,” he said.

  “On whose orders? Or do you serve more than one master?”

  “On the Cardinal’s orders.”

  “And where am I to be taken?”

  “To Naples.”

  The Duchess was relieved. Naples meant Amalfi. Indeed, being taken prisoner was little more than a safe conduct back to Amalfi. And beyond Amalfi lay Ravello and Arosa.

  “How considerate of my brother to save me from my brother,” said the Duchess. She turned to Cariola. “Do not stand there. Why do you not move closer to your lover?” Suddenly she smiled wanly. She had not missed the look of terror in Cariola’s eyes. She felt sorry for Cariola. Perhaps the woman had meant no harm. It was only something that had happened. “There is nothing left to pack. When do we leave?”

  “At once.” She had no compunction in making use of him, as a safe conduct across Italy. In this age of universal betrayal, why should she not?

  They left in half an hour.

  The journey to Loreto had taken a month. The return journey took eight days. The Duchess rode ahead on a palfrey, at first closely guarded, then less so. Cariola rode behind. Bosola skulked at the rear of the company. The Duchess felt almost light-hearted. They had no way of knowing that Antonio was not in Milan, but posting ahead of her. She was a little hysterical, a little jubilant. She knew every cranny of Amalfi. Even if they held her close prisoner, she would be able to escape. In perhaps two weeks she would once more see Antonio.

  For the rest, she was rather sadly amused, that those she had thought most loyal should prove to be least so. But the matter did not unduly bother her. If her brothers had been devious, now she would be most devious.

  She had no way of knowing that Ferdinand and Marcantonio followed hungrily along the ridges, always keeping their distance, but always there. Neither had Bosola.

  The trip was fatiguing. But when they came out behind Naples the Duchess felt exultant. It seemed to her that she came closer to freedom every day.

  It was for this reason that she submitted to everything. No doubt the others thought her cowed. She was not cowed. She was triumphant. Somewhere south in these hills Antonio was already plotting her release, and only waiting for the signal she would somehow contrive to make.

  That evening she was taken down to a boat, and boarded it gladly. The boat set out from shore, its sails unfurled. She stood at the poop, watching the Sorrentine peninsula. Amalfi lay beyond it. She paced up and down, as the boat drew into the centre of the bay.

  There unexpectedly the boat ploughed straight ahead through the flaccid water, rather than turning south.

  Bosola stood beside her.

  “Why do we stand out to sea?” she demanded. “This is not the way to Amalfi.”

  “We are not going to Amalfi, Madam.”

  “What?”

  “I have orders to take you to Ischia.”

  For the first and last time the Duchess lost all self-control. She clutched the rail and screamed.

  Before her towered the peak of Epomeo.

  NINE

  I

  There are four islands in the Bay of Naples: Capri, Procida, Vivara, and Ischia. No one ever went to Capri if he could help it. Procida was a rambling landscape with one small fishing village and a half-hearted citadel. Vivara was deserted, and lay submerged like a dead whale half awash, rolling and twisting with the tide.

  Ischia, however, was another matter. It was the largest of the islands, and very fair. It was the echo of Vesuvius, a volcanic mountain that erupted when Vesuvius did not. The mountain was called Epomeo, and dominated the view. It was always green, because it caught the fogs and mists. Wisps of cloud hung round its summit, where monks had hollowed a monastery out of the living rock. Below the monastery, a third of the way down, lay a tropical rain forest five feet tall. For the rest, the island was forested with stone pines, olive trees, and oak. Its wines were famous. Its fishing villages were prosperous. Its people were stubborn, proud, and wild. But this separate and self-reliant island had one dusky feature. That feature was the Castello. It was widely feared. No one had ever escaped from there.

  The towns of Ischia nestled at the foot of steep cliffs, on the Vesuvius side of the island. The Castello rose from a slab-sided rock five hundred feet off shore, connected with the mainland by a causeway. It was impregnable. It could be reached only by steep tunnels carved through the dripping, naked rock, spaced at intervals with portcullises which rattled down from the roof at an instant’s warning. There was no other way into the Castello whatsoever. The cliffs were unscalable and had no toeholds and no beaches.

  The castle itself was enormous, and rambled all over the top of the rock. Parts of it were already in ruins, but that made no difference. The cliffs themselves were defence enough. There had once been a convent here, but now it was abolished and had fallen into decay. So had the huge church attached to it. Tunnels and dungeons ran everywhere through the naked rock. The castle itself rose above the former convent, and had been tricked out with Renaissance and Baroque decorations, to make it habitable.

  Even so nobody had inhabited it for thirty years, for it was a gloomy, damp, and haunted place. It was here the Cardinal had decided to hold the Duchess, while he examined the minute indecisions of his own mind. From its windows she might look across to the mainland, if she wished. And if anything happened to her there, the world need never know exactly what.

  He did not know quite why he did this, except that death is final, and she was his sister. Perhaps he wanted to shirk events. Perhaps he wanted only to inflame Ferdinand.

  But the Duchess, as her little band of gaolers led her across the causeway from Ischia, thought she understood very well. The sun beat hot upon her, and though she walked proudly, with her head up, she gripped Cariola’s hand. They were two women alone together now, against a man’s world. The boots of the gaolers echoed like metal on the paving of the causeway. On either side the water was slabs of gelatine. You could see the black fish swimming in orderly fashion at different levels far below. The townspeople watched from the shore. The company entered the black hole in the cliff that was the entrance. Here they took donkeys, and rode quietly up t
hrough the dark, damp tunnels, lit fitfully by flares. It was like being swallowed alive.

  In half an hour they emerged abruptly into an open space tumbled with weeds. Even though light shafts were let down through the rock, to air and light the tunnel every hundred yards, the sunlight out here was cruel. It made them blink, and the company was silent. The Duchess looked around her curiously. Here, she knew, she would die. She glanced up at the citadel ahead, on the topmost pinnacle of the cliff.

  And yet, what mockery, the gardeners and servants were lined up on either side of the top entrance to the tunnel, along with the brightly striped and plume-hatted guards, and bowed down before her as she passed, even as the portcullis behind her rattled down into place, and the guards’ pistols and crisp daggers glittered in the sun.

  II

  The Castello had the peculiarity that everyone in it was a prisoner, including her own guards. And this none of them seemed to realize. As men who take Orders placidly think their monastery is the world, and the world a monastery too, so do soldiers, bravos, bandits, gipsies, guards. We live in plural worlds, and think our own unique. Each man’s profession is his universe. Only those who stand outside consider that pathetic. So women will never understand the vastness of even the smallest man’s affairs.

  And women are masochists. They see sadism through the wrong end of the telescope, and so naturally it looks small to them, just as women look small to men. And of all forms of discipline our preferences and predilections are the most inexorable. Thus Bosola.

  Though the Duchess did not know it, there were other prisoners in the citadel, held far underground, or, if they were favoured and could still walk, permitted an hour’s airing on the lower platforms. These Bosola visited, on the invitation of the Commandant, for military life has few amusements, and boredom finds one in the tortures of the damned. His captives had been in the citadel for two weeks. But the Commandant and his guard had been there for five years. There was little enough for them to do but toy with the prisoners. The only difference between a prisoner and a soldier is that the soldier may occasionally claim leave. It is not a difference so large as one might suppose, for freedom of action is success, and everything else is failure. Soldiers know what the world thinks of them. Therefore, in their own way, in time of peace, they bicker, gossip, and have their revenge in a series of little wars.