not wait for a reply, for I had some of my choicest words ready.
“I am happy to tell you that you have to endure such necessary privation for only one night more. You understand, of course, that I could not risk losing the thing dearest to me. After your travel plans in Venice.”
Hmmm. So perhaps she didn’t know what I had got up to in Bolzano. She certainly didn’t seem to know what I had got up to last night.
“For I have good news. Your father this way comes—he will be here tomorrow.”
Good news for whom? I wondered. I remained surly and silent.
“And he will of course have our own guards, so we will have to trespass on Lord Ludovico’s soldiers no longer.”
Madonna. At last I took her meaning. If the ducal guards were coming to watch me, I would never get away again. I’d have to get a message to Brother Guido. We’d have to leave tonight.
“And there is a further surprise, which I will let our lord duke share with you. For he desires that we accompany him this morning; he has great wonders to show us. Tell me, have you yet broken your fast?”
“If you mean have I had anything to eat, then no,” I said bluntly. I was not sure how to behave to this woman. In Venice I had seen a block of glass in my father’s palace, seemingly crystal white but which split the light into seven colors. A prism, Signor Cristoforo named it. My mother was just such a one—she had seven colors at least, and I never knew which hue of her character would appear next. But she did not seem to heed my rudeness, merely waved a hand to her lady’s maids.
“And tell them to bring me supper too, for I had fuck all last night either,” I yelled after the retreating maid.
My mother’s brows shot up to her hairline. “Soothly? An oversight, I’m sure.”
An oversight. Too busy feasting on suckling pig and march-pane to spare a crust for her daughter.
“Let us talk a little, while we are alone,” she said. (My mother had about three maids in the room—I told you she didn’t notice the little people.) “Softer! You are not shoeing a horse!” This last to one of those maids, who was drying my mother’s feet on a linen cloth. My mother kicked out and sent the poor woman sprawling on the rushes. “You know, of course,” she continued without pause, “why your accommodation here is a little less . . . commodious than in Bolzano?”
I watched the unfortunate maid scuttle to the door. I shrugged, not wishing to give anything away.
She held up one long white hand, and between her fingers, flashing in the sun, she rolled a silver coin.
My heart thumped so loud she must hear it.
It was the angel from the mine in Bolzano. That I’d picked up. And lost.
She collected my expression. “Yes. It fell from your sleeve as you slept in the carriage.”
The tinkle of metal that had woken me up, to see the lakes of Lombardy outside the window.
“I knew you had been out that night,” she said. “Marta, as you will note, is no longer with us.”
Whether or not Marta was back in Venice or with the Almighty was not clear, and my mother did not expand.
“Sooner or later, Luciana, you will see that you cannot win, and obedience to myself and your father, and indeed your husband, will prove the most direct path to happiness. Disobedience brings only privation, imprisonment, and despair.” She rose and began to walk the room purposefully, like a lawyer giving weight to her pronouncements. “Forget whatever you think you know of the business of politics; you are in error. Seek not to know further than the things you are told, for your own safety. That said, in deference to your overweening curiosity about matters of state, you will today be taken into the confidence of the great Ludovico Sforza. Look and learn since you are so keen, and tomorrow will make a new beginning. Ah, your meal is here.” She switched smoothly from politics to breakfast with no change in tone.
The repast, when it came, almost made up for the threats—salted beef, beer, fruit, and good white bread. I wolfed down the lot, as my mother watched me from under veiled lids, for all the world like Nehushtan. When I’d finished, I belched loudly for her benefit. She did not flinch nor censure but surprised me