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wished it. We’d always been friends, as children we played together in her father’s house. I came with her to Rocca when she married. I married a man of Rocca so that I might stay near her. It was right that I should do the last things for her.’ She unlaced her hands, took her cup from the carved chest at her side, and drank. A log burning on the big hearth collapsed in a shower of sparks and she started and set down the cup with a rattle.
    ‘Do you know who killed her?’ She turned once again towards Sigismondo, the gold net grating softly on her jewelled collar. ‘Was it not Bandini? Why is he not dead?’
    Sigismondo shook his head, a slight, slow movement. ‘His Grace wishes me to make sure that justice is done. There are no certainties at this moment.’
    ‘Leandro Bandini is in prison.’
    An equally slight shrug. ‘Leandro Bandini is unconscious. When he can speak, we’ll learn more.’
    ‘But he was found, his Grace tells me, at the foot of the bed. He had been struck on the brow, and a candlestick was lying beneath her Grace’s hand. Who else could have done it?’ She stared at the fire now, not glancing at the man who sat before her. ‘A man had lain with her before she died.’
    Sigismondo hummed in assent. His silence was interrogative. She began to speak and stopped. The fire, consuming the log greedily, gave a hot glow to her face. ‘The Duke was with her when you came there.’
    Her statement, which he did not deny, was left in the silence between them, its implication too dangerous to be put into words: if the last man to lie with the Duchess were the Duke, might he not be her murderer? If the last man to lie with the Duchess were not the Duke, if he had found her as they had seen her, might he not have killed an adulterous wife?
    Sigismondo’s question was delicate, a great cat tapping a mouse with its paw to see if it would run.
    ‘Do you know of any who loved the Duchess?’ There was no harm in being loved, only in loving.
    ‘Many loved the Duchess.’
    The mouse would not run.
    ‘Men can be reckless. Did Leandro Bandini show his love?’
    ‘That one.’ She turned her long neck scornfully, with the net’s sibilant little sound. ‘He paid court to all. Handsome, rich, he believed the world lay at his feet.’
    Now he had been thrown on the straw of a dungeon somewhere below them.
    ‘If he paid court to one more than another, it was to the Lady Violante. He made eyes at her, wrote her poems, rode by her side when he could. But it is fashionable to court her, and men also will do such things to draw eyes away from their true love.’ Especially, she did not say, if the true love were a married woman, the wife of their Duke.
    A draught strengthened, flattening a candle flame. Wax spilled down the candle, over the dish of the holder and onto the dark oak beneath. ‘The knife—’ her voice was choked, reluctant — ‘It was a wound made by a knife... Is it known whose knife it was?’
    Sigismondo shook his head once more. ‘A knife such as anyone might carry.’
    ‘Not the knife of a rich young man.’
    He acknowledged her sharpness with the lift of an eyebrow. Unspoken, again, that a knife not likely to be carried by a rich young man would be less likely to be carried by the Duke. The idea of sudden murder in a fit of rage receded; yet, as the lady had said, men were given to ruses. The Duke, had he intended to kill the Duchess, would be most likely to bring an anonymous weapon.
    As they sat, contemplating the fire without speaking, an angry voice sounded outside, demanding. A mouse like squeak protested in reply. The door was opened, the curtain dragged aside, and Agnolo di Villani stood there in a nightgown of purple-black velvet, his face indicating unmistakeably that his wedding night completely failed his expectations. He glared at Sigismondo, who had risen and bowed, and at his wife.
    ‘You did not send to say you had returned. Who is this man?’ His interest in