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they passed,
for they all looked dead, faces and hair and hands as white as mold. Here and
there someone's natural coloring escaped the fashionable leprosy—a woman's
high-piled hair gleaming like a helmet of bronze, a man's soot-black curls—but
all the rest looked like living corpses bedecked for a macabre dance of death,
their lizard eyes blinking gummily in the sunshine. I watched them with a
feeling of revulsion as they paraded past, fidgeting and exclaiming with
impatience at the slowness of the cavalcade. Now, as the procession moved on
down the street, horses and men were becoming entangled and the whole line was
moving in fits and starts, I could hear the thin, drawling voices raised in
complaint above the cheers. Then, with a jolt, the courtiers surged into motion
and trotted forward as the obstruction ahead was cleared. Beyond them I could
see a banner borne high above the rest: a silver hawk on black, with a
ruby-studded miter set above it. The crowd was suddenly hushed, and I knew that
the tall figure in scarlet who rode after must be Archbishop Francesco della
Raffaelle, the duke's uncle.
    I
could remember my mother telling me the story, only half-understood, of how the
duke's father and the pope had quarreled and how the pope was only waiting for
the archbishop to die before the whole state was excommunicated for heresy. I
had not really believed her, but I had accepted it, because she seemed so
distressed, and the truth of it had not mattered when I was a child. But now,
looking down on the legendary archbishop, I could see etched in his gaunt face
the burden of all the souls that hung upon his life's thread.
    He
sat his horse proudly, straight as a ramrod. He must have been past seventy
then, but so haughty was his bearing that I did not think of his age. There was
a martial glitter in his eyes beneath the tall miter, and the cadaverous face
betrayed no pleasure; there was more of the Raffaelle prince in this forbidding
man than the Shepherd of God. When he had passed, there was a sound among the
people, like a sigh, and suddenly their shouts rose again.
    The
silver hawk impaled with the Spanish eagle meant nothing to me, but I guessed
that the woman in the litter behind must be the duchess Gratiana. All I saw of
her was a glimpse of a hooknosed profile, a skirt heavy with gems, and a dark,
clawlike hand waving now and then to the crowd. There was no way to tell how
she was digesting her disgrace.
    More
soldiers, line upon line, followed the litter, and at last I saw the only arms
I knew—the silver hawk crowned for the Dukedom of Cabria and flanked by two
canting angels. Forgetting the sheer drop that yawned below me, I leaned out
eagerly, and all along the street other heads craned, too. The procession
eddied again, checked, and came to an untidy standstill.
    The
duke and his followers had halted just short of our very door; if I leaned out
as far as I could, I would be able to see them.
    With
a fast-beating heart I stretched from the window, feeling the sun on the back
of my head, and looked beyond the black and silver banners. A burst of loud
laughter startled me; a man in the street was pointing to the window of one of
the houses opposite, where a group of women clustered, dressed in their best.
The women were blushing and laughing and kissing their hands to him, and I
watched them with the sort of envy I would feel for a bunch of bright
butterflies. Then I looked down at the horseman who was bowing to them so
ponderously and saw the gleam of gold about his head.
    But
for that I would never have known him, for he was old. Rumor said that Duke
Carlo was past his prime, but that he should look so—older than his uncle the
archbishop—was somehow shocking. The thickset body was decked in ornate silver
armor, mantled in scarlet and gold, and the fashion for that leper-pale
fairness had led the duke into unclean extravagance. Gold powder dusted his
white hair to give an illusion of youth; paint mantled