Duchess of Milan Read Online Free PDF

heavy, almost vitreous white jowls framed by graying dark hair. The vivid sea-green irises were alien to her, someone else's eyes. She could not find her guilt in them.
    Then, in a terrible instant, the girl behind those eyes materialized and mocked her. Eleonora could hear that girl laugh derisively, telling Cardinal Riario that she had wearied of his feast in her honor, and watch every man at the gold-and-silver-strewn banquet table strain to hear her childish complaints as if they had received miraculous clues to her ineffable soul. She contemptuously snorted back at the girl, who'd had no soul then, only a girl's dreams. Eleonora was now thirty-six; when she had married Duke Ercole d'Este, eighteen years previously, she had been the most famous beauty of her generation. Her nuptial journey from Naples to Ferrara had become virtually a religious event; in every town and village along the route manic throngs had come out to gawk at her as if she were an incarnation of the Virgin Mary. But this virgin had required the constitution of an ox to present Duke Ercole with six children in the first six years of her marriage, and she had been rewarded with a suitably bovine physique. Of her beauty only the luminous green irises remained, eyes she could no longer confront. Not because there was no soul behind them but because they still harbored a dream.
     
    Light scampered in the ribbed ceiling vaults: cherry amber light from the massive stone fireplace, syrupy golden light from rows of candles arrayed along a carved wooden chest placed against the wall, illuminating a gilt-framed portrait, the ghost of this room --Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the previous Duke of Milan, dead to assassins' knives for fifteen years. Isabella was drawn as always, and always against her will, by the face of the father-in-law she had never known. In many ways Galeazzo Maria had looked so much like his son and heir, Gian Galeazzo. The thick neck and proud square jaw, the pretty, sensitive lips, the narrow shoulders and the almost effeminate pose of his gloved hand. But the nose and eyes were not Gian's, were not even human. The late Duke had been posed in profile, looking toward the picture frame, but nevertheless his small dark eyes seemed about to pivot and attack.
    The nose was enormous, hawklike, a cruel beak modeled in mortal clay by a sculptor of infinite vision and insight, to warn mere men that the mind of a demon lived behind that high, effete forehead. But when that face had lived, by the time most men saw its terrible truth they were already lost.
    “Who have you been with?”
    The French-accented voice came screeching from the shadows. “And don't tell me you haven't, puttana. When you are this late it means one thing to me: You have stopped for the first greasy pair of hands that want to wander up your skirts. It is a scandal to everyone how you go about whither you will without a single lady-in-waiting to attend you. It sickens me to think of how many have touched you.”
    Isabella peered through the black gauze bed curtains and located the pale round face of Bona of Savoy, Duchess Mother of Milan; even through the shrouds, her mother-in-law's bulging eyes leered with owlish ferocity. “I am not late, Duchess Mother,” Isabella said, her voice artificially high and taut. “Messer Ambrogio has added an ingredient to your draught that he says will ease the swelling in your feet.”
    “Poison!” Duchess Bona barked, but with a swift clawing motion she snatched the goblet and took the draught in three audible gulps. “I wouldn't need the attentions of Il Moro's sorcerer if I hadn't had to stand at the gate of the Castello all morning waiting on that Este brat. They took their time on the Via degli Armorai, to wallow in the treason of those filthy swine. I heard them! I heard them!” Duchess Bona snorted vilely. “She is short and will be as fat as her mother before she is your age. I do not believe that Il Moro even slept with her in