visit her now and then for a change.
Pietro came back to Ferrara, and Lucrezia was delighted to see him, for it was wonderful to be with one who shared her love of poetry, whose manners were gracious and charming and who treated her as though she were a goddess, only part human, which was very different from the way in which Alfonso treated her.
Alfonso was alert. Never before, it seemed, had he shown so much interest in his wife. He gave her new attendants and they were all Farrarese.
“I have my women,” she told him. “I am satisfied with them.”
“I am not,” he retorted. “These women shall be in attendance on you in future.”
They were not her friends; they were his spies.
She wondered why Alfonso thought it necessary to spy on her. And one day she heard the sound of workmen near her apartments and, when she went to discover what was happening, she found that they were making a new passage.
“But why are you doing this?” she wanted to know.
“We have orders from the Duke, Duchessa.”
“Are you merely making this one passage?” she asked.
“That is so, Duchessa.”
“And how long is it to be?”
“Oh … it merely runs from the Duke’s apartments to your own.”
A passage … so that he could reach her quickly and silently.
What had happened to Alfonso that he was preparing to spy on her?
It was impossible that such mundane matters should touch the love she had shared with Pietro, which had no place in this castle with its secret passages through which an angry husband could hurry to confront an erring wife.
Lucrezia shuddered at the possibility of Alfonso’s discovering her and Pietro Bembo together. No matter how innocently they were behaving Alfonso would suspect the worst. What could he—that great bull of a man—understand of love such as she and Pietro shared?
She was careful never to be seen alone with Pietro; and it was only when they met, surrounded by others in the great hall of the castle, and he implored her to tell him what had changed their relationship that she could trust herself to explain, and tell him about the passage which Alfonso was having made.
“Soon,” she said, “it will be completed. Then he will be able to come swiftly and silently to my bedchamber unheralded, unannounced. He has had this made so that he may try to catch me in some misdemeanor.”
“Where can we meet and be safe?”
“Nowhere in Ferrara … that is certain.”
“Then come again to Medelana, to Comacchio.…”
“It is different now,” she answered sadly. “I am in truth the Duchess of Ferrara. Alfonso needs an heir. Do you not understand that I must produce that heir, and he must come into a world which is satisfied that he can be no other than the son of Alfonso?”
“But if we cannot meet in Ferrara, and if you cannot leave Ferrara, where shall we meet?”
“My dearest Pietro,” she whispered, “do you not see—this is the end.”
“The end? How could there be an end for us?”
“The end of meetings. The end of our talks … the end of physical love. I shall love you always. I shall think of you always. But we must not meet, for if we did and we were discovered I know not what would happen to either of us. Our love remains, Pietro. It is as beautiful as it ever was. But it is too beautiful to be subjected to the harshness of everyday life.”
He was staring at her with dumb anguish in his eyes.
Too beautiful, she thought. And too fragile.
IX
THE BROTHERS OF FERRARA
Pietro was lost to her. The tender relationship was over, as were the flowers which had bloomed so beautifully in the gardens which had provided its background.
Lucrezia was trying to give all her thoughts to the child who was due to be born in September. Her pregnancy was a difficult one and she often felt very ill. Alfonso, who could not endure sickness in women, left her very much alone, and now that Pietro had gone from Ferrara the suspicious husband no longer made his unheralded visits through the corridor.
Alfonso had many difficulties to contend with in those months and little time to spare even for his foundry. The plague had been more devastating than usual during the hot summer days; and the results of famine in Ferrara had been alarming; moreover the death of old Ercole seemed to have brought certain festering sores to a head. These were the petty jealousies and rivalries between the