and strike the silver pinnacles of the cathedral. From here, too, I could see the twin towers of Sant’Ambrogio, and only these reminded me that last night was not a dream. I took the parchment from my bodice to look at the map once more but had to stuff it back instantly as the key turned and the door opened. There stood the sergeant at arms who had overseen the search yesterday. Holding a bolt of flame-colored silk.
“Your lady mother begs an audience with you in her chambers,” he said briefly.
‘Twas not a suggestion.
Instantly my heart began to thump and my cheeks heated, banishing the cold. Did she somehow know how and where I’d spent the night, using the same sorcery she’d used to guess I’d left my room in Bolzano?
“She bids you put this on.” The sergeant tossed the silk on the straw pallet. And I was a little cheered—I wouldn’t waste precious silk on a daughter that was for the chop, would you?
I wondered if the fellow would watch me dress—something I was used to back in the old days—but the door closed again. I wriggled out of my gown and into the flame-colored one. I was glad to say good-bye to the besmattered rose silk, for it was stiff with sweat from my long carriage ride and then my run through the streets of Milan the night before. I sniffed under my arms and wished I had some cloves to rub in my pits, but I would have to do. At least my mother had not sent a maid to dress me, for then the cartone might have been discovered, along with the money belt, wooden map roll, and the page from the Bible. My hair was loose and a mass of tangles, whipped into a bird’s nest by my windy tower, but I had no way of dressing it, no comb, no mirror. I combed it with my fingers as best I could, yanking through the worst of the knots and making one heavy braid, which I pulled over one shoulder. Not sure what to do, I knocked on my own door, and the sergeant turned the key, opened the door, and took my arm without a word.
I wrapped my mink around me and followed the soldier’s broad back down the same stairs my friend and I had taken last night. I was taken across the parade ground, still rimed with frost and crunching underfoot. A division of soldiers were being drilled, their sergeant’s voice echoing from the four red walls, bloodier than ever in the bright morning. I looked among the men beneath the ocher cloaks and copper helmets for Brother Guido, but he was not there. Had my mother recognized him? Had she had him arrested once more? I thought not—my mother never spoke to the little people, never looked them in the eye, she would never seek the face of a nobleman in a battalion of soldiers. But perhaps she had spied upon me, knew my movements of last night. My hatred of her, for imprisoning me, and starving me too, deepened to fear.
I crossed a small moat to the residence and entered a palace of such splendor I could not believe my poor prison was part of the same castle. Every wall was hung with apricot silk and cloth of gold, and the Sforza serpent was everywhere, fixing the court with a watchful single eye.
Nehushtan.
My mother’s apartments were just as beauteous, painted the pale blue of an eggshell, with silver cords sewn into the fabric of the walls. She sat at her looking glass in a gown of flame silk to match my own, to match also, I realized with a jolt, the little flames that adorned the cloak of Mercury—Milan. Was everything a key or a signpost to the conspiracy in which she was steeped? My mother was combing her own hair with a sandalwood comb, while her feet sat in a silver ewer filled with rose water. The air was sweetened with the scent but my fear soured to anger. The bitch had me locked in a tower, and she bathed in silver like the Queen of Milan.
But once again my mother surprised me. She set aside the comb, smiled graciously, as if I had just returned from a game of tennis, not a prison cell.
“Daughter,” she said, spreading her arms in welcome, “I am right glad to see you. I trust your accommodation is not too uncomfortable?”
Fortunately, she did