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Sigismondo’s name seemed less acute than his interest in the colour of his entrails. The Lady Cecilia, however, was perfect in charming brute suspicions, an art she might have learned with her first two husbands; she stood up, hurried to him and twined her fingers in the velvet of his bulky sleeves. She arched her long neck to rub her face along his chest like a cat that caresses itself on another. For this moment she was a different woman.
    ‘My lord. It is the Duke’s man. He has authority to enquire into the matter of the Duchess.’
    Di Villani looked over his wife’s head at the Duke’s man, his dislike complicated by the need to show compliance. He spoke in a growl, a bear waiting for a long-delayed dinner.
    ‘What is to be known? The Bandini boy’s taken.’
    ‘The Duke has instructed me to find out all that can be found concerning the deed.’
    ‘Why employ you? There are his own men here.’ Of whom I am not the least, he might have said.
    ‘For the same reason that he first employed me to enquire into the disappearance of the Lady Cosima: that I belong, and am known to belong, to neither faction, sir.’
    ‘The Lady Cecilia is tired. It is late.’ It would have been later had the feast continued as planned, before the bridal pair were bedded, but the happy exhaustion brought on by an excess of merrymaking is very different from that caused by laying out the murdered body of your closest friend. Sigismondo bowed and made to withdraw. Agnolo di Villani acknowledged the bow with an uncouth jerk of the head, and turned quickly towards the tall curtained bed in the room’s shadows.
    The tiny page stood at his post outside, apparently unwearied and ready to escort Sigismondo back through the palace warren. He had scarcely picked up the flambeau when the Lady Cecilia appeared, lifting the curtain and glancing back over her shoulder. She came so close to Sigismondo that he could smell the musky scent she wore, heavy with civet as well as jasmine, and she whispered, ‘Her ring.’
    ‘Her ring?’
    ‘Her ring, her Grace’s ring that never leaves her finger. It was missing.’
     

Chapter Six
‘ Did I kill the Duchess?’
    There could be no doubt whatever that the truly happy people in the duchy that night were the beggars. Outside the gate they feasted on handfuls of venison pie, hatfuls of jellies; faces dripped pepper-and-vinegar sauce. Children gorged on gingerbread, tench, spiced veal. They tasted strange unknown mixtures of saffron, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger. A vast upturned pie had been eaten in seconds, its pork and eggs, almonds and dates stuffed into ecstatic mouths, the pastry cleaned from the stones. Over and over, the name of the Lord Paolo was spoken in blessing; the men who had brought the feast out to them had not said who had thought of them out in the cold, but that livery was well known.
    In the Palace, Sigismondo and the small page exchanged bows and the page accepted a coin given for his services with the flambeau. Sigismondo strode on towards the tiny room allotted him. Knots of servants still whispered in corners, drawing out their tasks to give time to gossip. They watched as he passed, and more than one crossed himself as if seeing an ill omen.
    Benno had somehow obtained a small box brazier and a bundle of wood. The room glowed with comfort and Sigismondo paused inside the curtain to smile. Benno had wound himself into the cloak as well, and now struggled to rise, but Sigismondo, pausing only to feed the brazier and to push the bedding further from its sparks, folded himself down on the pallet beside him.
    ‘That’s a good find.’
    ‘No one wanted it. It was where the players were to eat.’
    ‘Have you eaten?’ There was a smell of roasting meat, and Benno’s nod and look of satisfaction were not surprising. Grease shone on his beard.
    ‘There was a lot of food going.’
    Sigismondo nodded. ‘And what have you heard?’
    ‘Some think the Duke killed her because of a lover,