Free Death of a Duchess by Elizabeth Eyre Page B

authority. Leandro, still suffering from the drum in his head, wondered weakly where the instruments of torture were, where the assistants? He had heard of the rack — one had to be fastened to it. Then, someone wrote down the confession, a clerk. All this was so unorthodox that he did not answer.
    The question was repeated, while a hand felt carefully over his scalp. It found an area that made him flinch.
    ‘You’ve been struck more than once. A light blow on the brow, that shows. Perhaps you hit something as you fell. And now, sir,’ and the man reached for the lantern and, turning its light on Leandro, looked his face over, moving it by the chin as one might an animal’s, ‘you were going to tell me how you came to be in the Palace although it’s forbidden to you.’
    Of course this was the preliminary enquiry. The interrogation would come later. He would have to confirm all he now said, under torture; or say what he was told to say, his limbs broken to confirm each painful lie. The deep patient voice in his ear reiterated the question: how did he come to be in the Duke’s Palace?
    Slowly, he began to tell. It was not, he supposed, what they wished to hear, but he began, still among waves of nausea that heaved in his stomach almost in time with the throb in his head. With the prospect of torture, he was aware of an immense fondness for his body, of pity for it to be treated so.
    The man had come closer, so close that Leandro feared the foulness of his breath would reach him. Indeed, it must have done so, for the man, after a sniff that must have confirmed this, drew back a little and squatted on one heel, listening. There was a quality about this listening that made Leandro anxious to be exact, to convince him of the truth, whatever was to happen later.
    ‘I never meant to disobey the Duke — would that I never had — but for the message.’
    ‘The message?’
    Leandro recalled the man who had brought the message, and his insistence on secrecy, the cowl hood pulled forward over a face he could hardly see. Once he had heard who sent the message, of course, secrecy was understood.
    ‘From the Lady Violante. She sent to say she wished to see me during the feast. I was to come to the Cathedral door of the Palace at — I’ll remember the hour...’
    ‘No matter the hour, sir. Continue.’
    Leandro held his forehead. ‘I can’t remember. But a disguise would be given me. This one. I didn’t care for it, but then, the lady...’
    A low humming told him that the niceties of the situation were understood, were being weighed. Confidences about the Duke’s young widowed daughter, apple of his choleric eye, were almost as dangerous to receive as to make.
    ‘Did you expect such a message?’
    The question really asked what terms he was on with the lady. It was a question he would expect to be asked in an ambiance of red-hot pincers, not merely an enquiring tilt of the head.
    ‘The lady has scarcely spoken to me. I didn’t think she cared what I did. Of course I’ve paid her attentions. One does. I wrote poems — it’s the proper thing to do. It means nothing. I never went beyond — I expected nothing. But when the message came it was amazing. I felt... I don’t know. I never thought she had taken me seriously. But even if it was only a caprice of hers, it was my courtly duty to go; and I hoped that she really meant...’ Leandro’s stomach heaved. He thought he might be about to vomit again. The strain of thinking was more than he could manage. ‘She has the choice of the nobility. I’m only a rich banker’s son.’ The rich banker’s son, dressed in his canvas and tow suit, stained with vomit, shivered in the filthy straw contemplating his short future.
    ‘Would you know again the man who gave you the disguise? Was it the man who also brought the first message?’
    Leandro held his head once more, because it seemed to prevent the drum inside from bursting through his temples. ‘I did not really see