Duchess of Milan by Michael Ennis Read Free Book Online

contemptuously. “You're mad.”
    “You are going to do it, little slut, or I will make known your business with the Cardinal.”
    “My father already knows,” Caterina spit back. “He introduced me to the Cardinal. He needs a place for my idiot brother, Cesare.”
    “I wasn't referring to your father. I meant your lover.”
    Caterina thought to say: In your case that would be the same, but she decided she didn't want to die in this place. “Messer Bernardino doesn't care who else I sleep with,” she offered in a sulking voice.
    “I didn't mean him. Or Galeazz.” Isabella's delicate lips scrolled a subtle smile. She came closer. “I saw you drinking in the grandstands at the joust. You must have been quite besotted to come down here with that pervert.” Isabella was close enough to whisper in Caterina's ear. “You are really very pretty. The most lovely of all my ladies. I don't know why you waste yourself.” Isabella touched her lips to Caterina's cheek. Caterina's head jerked slightly, and her solid breasts swayed.
    Isabella's kisses moved down Caterina's neck, then along the slope of her bosom. Her tongue flicked at Caterina's nipple, raising a tight knot. Caterina shuddered. “You like it, don't you?” Isabella whispered hotly. Caterina hiccuped and circled her head, her eyes closed.
    Isabella stood straight up. “But you like it better with Madonna Giulia, don't you?”
    Caterina's eyes shot open. Giulia Landriano, a married woman in her late twenties, was also one of the Duchess's ladies-in-waiting--like Caterina from a prominent and ambitious Milanese family. “When I tell Giulia how you have betrayed her love, she will use her knife far more readily than any cuckold. Do you remember that serving girl who was stabbed during Holy Week the year last?” Isabella smiled at the terror in Caterina's eyes. “I am certain you know that she, too, committed the error of disappointing your Giulia.”
    Caterina broke down with a series of explosive dry sobs; finally the tears came. Isabella untied her and helped her from the wheel, then took her in her arms and began to stroke her hair maternally.
    “Y-you might as well kill me now,” Caterina whined with genuine pain. “Either way I am finito.”
    Isabella laughed. “I don't mean for you to assassinate Cecilia Gallerani, nor do I intend to. All I expect of you is to help me sharpen someone else's blade. Now, you are going to need an accomplice to assist you. Someone extremely facile in conversation.” Isabella began to lace up the bodice of Caterina's camora. “Your friend Giulia has an agile tongue, does she not?”
     
    The Sala della Palla was the largest room in the Castello di Porta Giovia. Used variously for state banquets, balls, and tennis matches, it was a three-story, ribbed-vaulted hall overlooked by a long balustraded mezzanine gallery. For the ladies' ball arches of woven ivy spanned the vaults, creating an enormous indoor arbor, beneath which were suspended wheel-shaped silver candelabra. Musicians in gold tunics, playing trombones and large woodwinds called piffari, clustered at one end of the chamber. Rows of pages in red-white-and-blue uniforms stood along the walls, holding up trumpet-shaped ceremonial torches. The torches illuminated a series of new frescoes depicting the manifold victories of II Moro's father, the legendary condottiere --mercenary commander--Francesco Sforza: a sweeping martial pageant featuring dashing mounted knights, forests of lances, elegantly choreographed surrenders, and ornate victory dedications to the Virgin.
    Beatrice stood on the open mezzanine gallery, surrounded by her mother, sister, ladies-in-waiting, and the Duchess of Milan and her attendants. She was screened from her cousin by the Duke of Milan's unmarried sister, Bianca Maria Sforza, an astonishingly beautiful and perpetually distracted seventeen-year-old; Bianca Maria was presently destroying the effect of her sublime dark features by childishly