Read His Last Duchess for Free Online Page B

hung low and yellow in the night sky.
    Alfonso lay back and closed his eyes. Apart from the increasingly sporadic chirrups from the crickets outside, all was silent. He ran both palms up and over his face, pressing the heels of his hands onto his eyes; flickering patterns of light and dark erupted beneath the pressure and his thoughts, surprisingly calm for most of the day, exploded into their usual clamouring confusion.
    In through an eye and out through an ear… like a child unable to resist picking at a scab, he returned to this horrible image yet again: the moment at which, a fortnight before, the resisting firmness of King Henri’s eye had given way and the wooden shard had pushed inexorably through into the softness within. He imagined, with a nauseous squirm of the guts, the white-hot, panicked agony of it. The speed and the sharpness. Sharp. You would have to respect someone, wouldn’t you, with a reputation for ferocity and an impressive skill with a knife ? She seemed, he thought, to have a modicum of a sense of humour, which was to be encouraged, though somewhat to his disquiet, this appeared to be allied with an unsettling and disrespectful tendency towards independence. That must be contained. How best to do it, though? The image he was beginning to build of his perfect duchess had to be maintained. How would this child compare with his whore? Would she—could she—be happy to accept from him what Francesca so energetically enjoyed? Would she be as accommodating as his pleasure-loving wanton with her ripe-peach breasts and that backside that would make Aphrodite weep? What was it Francesca had said? Shall I be redundant now, after your marriage? Will you still need me? Would he? Would he need Francesca once he had this girl in his bed? Once the resisting firmness of Lucrezia’s maidenhood had given way and he had pushed inexorably through into the softness within? Inexorable. Exceptionally inexorable. Exceptionally productive, Este, exceptionally productive . Would Lucrezia be so? An heir was imperative, after all. Imperative.
    Alfonso’s thoughts climbed over each other, frantic to reach the top of the pile; the images that accompanied them danced ever more frenetically, and snatches of music from the evening’s meal wove their way in and around it all. Alfonso gripped his skull with his fingers. “Stop it!” he said aloud.
    The wolfhound shifted in its sleep at the sound of its master’s voice.
    He made himself breathe slowly. He would walk through the maze again. Taking himself on the familiar journey through the ill-lit, tortuous passages in his mind, he would concentrate on counting his footsteps as he moved slowly through the darkness towards the inevitable final door. He would not go through, though. Could not. He would wait outside it, looking at it, leaning against it, knowing what lay on the other side, both entranced and repelled by his awareness of what he wanted, but needing the respite from the chaos.
    ***
    â€œWill you stop this, Eleanora—I simply cannot understand why you are making such a fuss.” Cosimo de’ Medici pulled the sheets up to his chest and jerked the bed-hangings shut. “The man is obviously cultured and intelligent—his opinions on the Ghiberti bronze panel—”
    â€œOh, Cosimo! I simply couldn’t care a fig if he knows everything there is to know about every artist in Italy,” Eleanora snapped. She glared at her husband. “You’ve been refusing to listen to my worries ever since you first suggested this alliance, and now that it has gone too far to retract—”
    â€œWhy on earth would I want to retract?”
    Eleanora felt a shout of frustrated anxiety fist itself in her throat. “Because I don’t think this marriage is going to make her happy. That’s why.” She flung back the bedcovers, flapped aside the hangings on her side of the bed, swung her legs out and stood