Leonardo's Swans by Karen Essex Read Free Book Online Page B

stone-faced, his thin eyebrows arched and indignant, but the other man snickers.
    “The girl spends her days on the back of a horse,” Leonora says. “I will not have you suggest such things about a princess of the House of Este. If you take that idea out of this bedroom, I assure you, it will cost you your position at this and any other court in the land.”
    The man is silent. No one would doubt Leonora’s ability to carry forth the threat.
    Beatrice marvels at her mother’s ability to intimidate not one but three men with nothing but a pair of big brown eyes and a haughty voice. Not only that, but how is it that someone can be so alert so early in the morning? Would this be expected of her now that she is a wife?
    “The child pleased her husband. There is the proof. Now take the sheet and carry out your duty. The marriage is officially consummated.” The men start to back out of the room, like the servants from exotic eastern lands that Beatrice saw once in Venice. “Your every word will reflect nothing but happiness over the success of this event.”
    Beatrice is surprised that all of her insides have not spilled out onto the sheets. The smattering of blood staining the white cloth brings back last night’s event. Avoiding the faces of the receding men, of her mother, and of the two ladies who are removing the evidence, she wraps the robe tightly around her frame and turns to look out the window. Snow has fallen overnight, weighing down the landscape. The trees seem burdened; the branches, ready to drop under the weight of the icy overlay. Beatrice’s womb, jostled from its virgin’s slumber the night before, also feels similarly heavy. She squints her eyes against the white vista, which reflects its brightness back to her, startling her memory. As images come rushing into her mind, the activity in the room falls away, and the memories of previous days flush her face with shame.
    Could the weather have been more inauspicious for a wedding? It was so cold this winter that Beatrice’s father had to hire ice cutters to chop great frozen blocks out of the Po River so that the wedding party could depart for Milan. Beatrice had watched the men hack away with their giant axes, hoping as the frozen splinters flew like sparks into the brittle air that the ice would prove too thick, and the wedding would have to be postponed. Perhaps in the interim, she would fall off of one of her horses and die.
    But she had no such luck. After many cancellations and excuses, Ludovico had finally confirmed the date, but for the most frigid time of year, when traveling down icy rivers and through frozen paths was usually impossible. Beatrice and her family were certain that he was trying to buy himself yet more time.
    On the twenty-ninth day of December, after the coldest Christmas in memory, Beatrice and her mother and the rest of the wedding party, wrapped in blankets of wool and ermine, were loaded into bucentaurs, finely decorated river barges. From Ferrara, they would sledge and trudge through the treacherous, glacial river all the way to Pavia in the duchy of Milan, where they were to be met by Ludovico for the official marriage celebration. The journey was full of disasters. The boat containing provisions for the wedding party got stuck miles behind them in the ice, leaving them without a morsel of food for two days. Their beds and blankets were stiff with spray from the river and water from the damp, freezing air. No one was in any mood to be cheery about Beatrice’s great good fortune in marrying one of the most powerful men in Italy, least of all the bride.
    Isabella, having married Francesco one year prior, had traveled from Mantua to meet up with the Ferrarese delegation before their departure. Isabella complained loudly that she felt like a living ice sculpture. She was doubly annoyed because Ludovico, by letter, had requested that she reduce her entourage to a mere fifty people and thirty horses. Every important personage