Over the next few weeks, Agata spent the daylight hours in a daze and the long nights by Bice’s side in the subterranean warren that had become her home.
Now that he felt he had won her loyalty, Prospero hardly deigned to address Agata at all, unless he had some new instruction in her care of Bice. He did not allow her to enter his other rooms, though she could hear muffled thuds and groans from them many of the nights that she visited and feel the occasional shaking of the walls. At those times she held Bice’s hand tightly, for Bice trembled whenever she heard these sounds, and Agata wondered, as she had so many times, what Bice had gone through to return to this body, to this realm.
They stayed together in Bice’s cell, which Agata had endeavored to make feel a bit more like Bice’s grand bedroom in the ducal apartments. She brought down blankets, and tapestries to hang on the walls, and a few of Bice’s things: her favorite rings, her lyre, her little collection of books. Bice had always devoured anything that she could read, from the family Bible to the impenetrable mathematical texts Prospero allowed her to borrow because it amused him. Now, however, she only held the books in her hands, as if they were objects whose purpose she could not recall. Never once did Agata see her open them to a page.
Just as she fixed up Bice’s quarters, so too did Agata attempt to improve Bice herself. She rouged her cheeks, and colored her lips, and dressed Bice in some of her old gowns. It always felt as though she were dressing Bice for her funeral anew. After all her fussing, Bice looked more human: still nothing like the vibrant and irrepressible woman she had been in the full bloom of her health, but Agata knew that woman was gone. What remained was a revenant. And yet every night she spent with Bice threw Agata into confusion, distancing her from the castle staff, still caught up in their mourning, still lamenting the loss of their duchess.
Prospero had of course revealed this particular secret to no one else, though she discovered, from her nights in the cells, that he had his own trusted forces inside the castle. She saw the slender servant boy who had summoned her to the workrooms that fateful night pass in and out of the laboratorium. A dozen others she knew, others she’d seen in sunlight. They acknowledged one another with nods, and she knew they would never speak of this in the world above. If they had made some pact with Prospero, she would not reveal them to Antonio. After all, she had made her own.
She had tried to seek answers from different priests in confession, revealing nothing of her true identity. But when she began to speak of souls brought back into dead bodies, they either dismissed her outright or reacted with vitriol, telling her she must never speak of such dark and vile sins. “These awful imaginings corrupt the virtuous, especially in the female mind, which is swayed and seduced far more easily than the male,” Father Rossi of Santa Maria delle Grazie told her. “Recite thrice the Hail Mary. Reflect upon the purity of our most beloved mother and banish such wicked thoughts from your mind.”
It brought Agata no peace to think about mothers these days. She did not wish to dwell upon the strength and serenity that motherhood brought, for Bice still considered herself a mother and knew her child was only floors away. She asked for Miranda incessantly, picking up new phrases as the days dragged on. “Bring me . . . Miranda.” “I want . . . Miranda.” “Please . . . I need . . . to see . . . Miranda.”
Agata did not know if it was due to the fumes that pervaded Prospero’s workrooms or her own true feeling for her cousin’s plight, but she had begun to consider the idea. Miranda would not necessarily know there was anything wrong with her mother, so glad would she be to see her again. And if she spoke of what she saw in the tunnels, it would only be the babblings of a child, a child who had made the servants’ lives a hell these past few weeks. She threw ceaseless tantrums, thrusting herself at the wall, digging her nails into the exposed flesh of anyone who came near her, urinating on the floor though she was old enough to know better. Agata had never seen the like. The child was too small to beat properly, in the manner Agata felt would improve her behavior. Only Prospero could subdue her, when he came to the nursery to comfort her, which he hardly did enough.
After one of these daylong crying jags from Miranda, and after descending to the tunnels to find Bice making the same plaintive request she always made, Agata confronted Prospero. He was working in one of his inner rooms, but she hammered on the door until he opened it, attempting to stand strong under his withering gaze.
“We should bring her Miranda,” she began, pushing out the words in a rush. “Their cleaving has left them both inconsolable, and nothing else will heal this rift. Let me bring Miranda here for only an hour, maybe two. Every fifth night, let’s say, so that they have something to look forward to.”
Prospero looked down at her with the distant expression he often wore, as though he were God Himself and she some unworthy petitioner, begging for His mercy. “No.”
“No?” She felt her cheeks flush at his refusal. “Your Grace, if they continue on this way, both of them will lose their minds. You cannot give a mother life again and keep her from her child!”
“I can.” He started to close the door, but Agata stuck a foot into the doorway. She breathed hard for a moment as he studied her, afraid that he might strike. But he only laughed. “One day, perhaps, Agata. One day, when the world I wish to make is manifest. This age has little room for genius, for vision. But it will change. I promise you; it will change.”
He pushed her back gently and closed the door.
* * *
The next night Agata almost abstained from visiting the tunnels. Prospero was away for the first time since Bice’s resurrection, on a trip to Turin, the purpose of which he had shared with no one. Agata doubted piety had anything to do with the pilgrimage. He had instructed Agata to care for Bice in his absence, but he would not know if she failed to visit. It pained Agata to see Bice night after night, pained her to touch this living ghost of her cousin, to try to comfort her, while having no idea what to do to help her or who she might turn to for aid in undoing Prospero’s evil work. But in the end she could not bear the thought of Bice sobbing her dry tears through the night, expecting Agata to come. And so she went, the key to the workrooms in hand, since Prospero would not be there to let her in.
She was surprised to find Beatrice out of her cell when she came into the laboratorium but was glad to see Prospero had let her wander a little. When Agata entered, Bice was in the room with all the books, sitting on the stone floor with no regard for its chill and leafing through the pages with her long, pale fingers. Agata saw illustrations of monsters and flayed-open bodies in the volume Beatrice held and averted her eyes, unwilling to so much as look upon the manuals for Prospero’s black magic. “Put those away, Bice. These books are unholy, and every one should be burned.”
Bice looked up at her with milky-blue eyes. “I’m . . . learning.”
She sounded for a moment like her old self, which somehow hurt Agata more than anything else had. Agata snatched up the foul book. “Read the texts I brought you, Beatrice. No good can come from these.” She replaced the book in its space on the shelf and offered her hand to Bice, who took it, standing unsteadily.
They sat together for hours that night, free of Prospero’s presence, and Agata read Beatrice passages from the Book of Psalms by candlelight. Only later—much later—did she realize Bice had not asked for Miranda once.
* * *
Agata awoke to screaming.
It had been her custom to return to her bed for two or three hours before the sun rose, to get some sleep before the rest of the castle began its day in earnest. She felt that she had barely been in bed a half hour before she heard the commotion coming from the direction of Miranda’s room, just a few doors down from her own.
She shook off sleep and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, stepping out into the cold hallway. The shrieking was farther off now, as if someone were moving through the courtyard. She listened to the repetitive sound, her mind too sluggish to perceive it as anything more than a bird cry. But then a word began to take shape, and her feet moved almost before her brain had grasped the meaning. “Bice! Bice! Biiiiiceeeee!”
She ran. She ran, fire and darkness blurring around her. She ran and she ran and she nearly tumbled down the stairs, following the screams. There were more of them now. Many more, a chorus, spreading through the walls.
She skidded to a stop as she came to the kitchens, for she could no longer determine the source of the sirens. The wall of sound pushed her to her knees, shaking with the knowledge of what must have transpired, what the name she heard all around her must mean.
Bice had escaped. Had Agata locked the rooms as she left them? She remembered the press of the gold key in her hand, the burn of her muscles as she pulled shut the solid iron door, but the hour was late, and she was exhausted, bone-weary after weeks of shock and strangeness. Had she left the door open so that Bice could leave? Had she meant to free her, somewhere deep inside of her mind, somewhere that could not deny Bice the right to see her child?
It seemed impossible. And yet: she could not be sure.
“Agata.” The sound of her name cut through the clamor, though spoken at a volume much lower. Antonio staggered towards her, his sword drawn, his eyes wild. “Agata, it’s Bice. She—Prospero has—”
“I know.” She could not deny it. She stayed kneeling before him, and the words came out as a plea for mercy. “I know, Antonio.”
He stared down at her for a long moment and then seized her by the elbow, pulling her to her feet. “You aided him.”
“I did not. I only—”
“You conspired”—he jabbed a shaking finger into her chest—“you cavorted with forces of darkness, you perverted her memory, the memory of sweet Beatrice, who should have died ere wicked Prospero could make her his bride. Better you had died ere you beshrewed her—”
She slapped him, the smack ringing out above the cries. He raised high his sword and then grabbed her wrist, dragging her to a cell in the northern tower.
* * *
It took a long time for Agata to reconstruct all that unfolded in the days that followed.
Scraps of stories were passed to her between the bars of her cell by the servant women, along with her meager meals. Patrizia, long the person Agata could count on to tell her when anything of vital note occurred in the servants’ quarters, informed her that Stella, Miranda’s night nurse, had awoken to see a figure standing over Miranda’s bed, lifting the girl into its arms. Stella had screamed, and then the figure had come towards her, its finger laid over its lips. She saw, though she could hardly believe it, that the phantom wore the face of the duchess Beatrice.
They had struggled over the child for a few moments until Stella’s howling brought the guards from the entrance of the ducal apartments, who froze in place when they saw who held the duke’s daughter in her arms. Bice darted past them, running down the halls, and they gave chase, following Bice to the tunnels and finally wresting the child from her grasp when she tripped, falling to the ground.
“And then?” Agata shuddered to think what might have happened to Bice after her capture. “What did they do to her then?”
Patrizia lifted her hands, palms up. “Nothing. They were afraid to touch her, and let her go. Antonio was livid. No one has been able to find her, though Antonio has guards combing every inch of the tunnels.”
Agata hated the flare of hope that thrilled her heart. She should not want Bice to escape. She should want this awful saga to come to an end. But the Beatrice she had once known would have run and found the best hiding spot she could. Antonio’s men could search those unmapped tunnels a thousand years and not find Bice if she wanted not to be found.
But Agata knew Beatrice would not last long. Prospero’s magic was not perfected: he himself had told her as much. Whatever animated Bice’s bones would fade soon, and she would die anew down there, perishing in the lonely maze like a rat. Let her soul be saved, Agata pleaded as she waited in her cell, to the God she was no longer certain heeded her tainted prayers. Grant her entrance into your kingdom, O Lord, once her long suffering is done.
Patrizia reported that Miranda was under armed guard day and night, and that Prospero had not yet returned from Turin. Agata knew this last part, for Antonio had told her what awaited him when he did. He had come to her cell the day after Bice’s escape and demanded she give over the identities of all Prospero’s lackeys and the keys to his rooms. She had done it. She had told him again that she had not taken part in Prospero’s dark deeds but only tried to ensure the salvation of Bice’s soul. “Tell that to the gulls,” he told her, his voice as sharp as a knife, “when we send you out to sea with my villainous brother. You have cast your lot with him. God, and Milan, will judge you both for his crimes.”
She trembled as he left her, but she did not cry. She had no tears left to shed. She only hoped that Prospero’s spies would alert him to the coup brewing within the castle walls, and that he would stay away, far away, so that she never had to see his face again. She could think of no worser fate than facing her sentence by Prospero’s side.
She would sooner take her own life, though the sin was mortal. If they pushed a barge with both her and Prospero into the sea, she would jump from it and swim until her limbs gave out, swim until she sank.
* * *
Prospero did return. He returned for Miranda and damned her by so doing.
Antonio delivered the news to Agata himself, the day before he freed her from the cells. “They say the false duke returns this evening. The king of Naples has men at the ready to back me when he does. The priests have come to me to plead your case and beg me to allow the salvation of your soul. On their word alone I will liberate you, once Prospero and the girl are gone. But know that no penance will satisfy me, Agata.” He leaned closer to the bars, and she could smell his musk, as though he were the trapped animal, not she. “You live by my largess, but forgiveness I will never grant.”
She let the emotion drain out of her. She had loved this man, but she would not love again. If love had made Prospero do what he did, she wanted no part of it. She only wanted quiet now. She only wanted peace. “I understand,” she said dully. And then her mind snagged on the other part he had just said, the part fear and hunger had caused her to skip over. “The girl . . . Miranda? You’re sending Miranda to die?”
“Better that she perish before she learns what a monster her father is. What a monster he made of her mother. Better that she die than become a monster herself.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Do you believe any child born to a man like that could escape his influence, Agata? Do you? Bice could not save him, could not change him, and if not for him she would have taken her place among the saints. Any child of his seed will bloom as poisoned fruit, whether he is here or not.”
Agata heard the truth in his words. Prospero’s corruption had already crept into Miranda’s character, she was certain of it. But Bice’s heart would break, wherever she was, if she ever learned of her daughter’s fate. “Let me keep the child, please. Let me raise her. Let me save her.”
Antonio let out a barking laugh. “You? You, preserve her from evil? I would rather she be reared by a common bitch than fall into your clutches, woman. No, the child cannot live. Prospero’s line will end, and his reign will be nothing more than distant memory.”
“If you let them leave, she will be his. He will smother every spark of goodness in her. She will become a demon, Antonio, raised without faith, without hope of redemption.”
“She will never live that long. The seas are stormy, and God in His wrath will destroy them, for Prospero has committed the ultimate transgression against Him and the order of His world. Let the sea take them and scatter their bones. Let the fish feast on their flesh, and let the name Prospero never be heard again in all of fair Milan.”
* * *
From that day forward, as Antonio decreed, Prospero’s name was seldom heard. But Bice’s name still echoed through the halls. Only out of Antonio’s hearing; only as a story. A ghostly tale, passed on in whispers. Agata knew that young men and women sneaked away from court dances to look upon the portrait in the gallery and to try to find the place in the tunnels where Bice had lived. She chased them off whenever she found them lurking near the painting, and the workrooms were locked, their contents turned over to Naples as evidence in Prospero’s hasty midnight trial. Agata heard the court there did not believe the fantastical tales of the old duke’s wife come back to life. King Alonso hardly cared as long as Milan bent the knee.
Antonio had ordered Prospero’s portrait moved to the family vaults, perhaps fearing some supernatural retribution for its destruction, but had left Bice’s portrait alone, save for the shroud he commanded the servants to hang over its frame, the shroud he forbid them to lift. He himself lifted it, though. Agata knew, for she had come upon him there, standing in the galleries, and she had let him be, let him look upon Beatrice’s countenance for as long as he liked, though she herself could not bear the sight. She welcomed the covering, for it felt like the only true burial Beatrice had been granted.
She held her own funeral for Bice and Miranda, though there were no bodies. She went to the plot where Beatrice’s body once lay, and placed some of their garments beneath the dirt, and prayed for hours under the shade of the towering oak. She thought about leaving Milan, once the deed was done, but she had nowhere else to go. She seldom returned to Franciacorta. Her aunt and uncle seemed to blame her for Bice’s death, as though she had failed, in some way, to protect their only child. Their faces were drawn and wan, and they both, it transpired, did not have long left to live. She went home for the respective funerals and never ventured back again.
A year later, Antonio finally married, choosing as his bride the fair Isabella della Torre, who died not two years later in childbirth. Their son did not survive, as Agata remembered well. And yet she could see the child’s face; and yet she could imagine his laugh, the way he would run around the castle, pulling at skirts and pleading for treats. There had been no little boy, no little duke with Antonio’s dark eyes and his mother’s auburn hair. Antonio had never taken him to Africa, on his very first trip abroad, to see the marriage of the princess of Naples to the king of Tunis. Whatever she remembered was only a wishful dream.
* * *
Agata’s days passed a dozen years in drudgery. Antonio ignored or abused her at his leisure. The servant girls seemed to grow younger as she grew older, and stupider by the year. Patrizia had long since passed away in the last plague. All her friends were gone from this world. She was thirty-three years old, and she longed for this lingering life to pass. Daily Mass was her only peace.
She preferred the Duomo to the closer-by Santa Maria delle Grazie and to the smaller castle chapel Antonio had revived after many years of disuse under Prospero’s reign. The Duomo, with its sky-reaching ceilings and perpetual construction, reminded her that the work of God on earth was still unfinished. The kingdom of Heaven, in its perfection, was not yet revealed to man. Stone by stone, they would create it here.
As she walked back one Sunday with a contingent from the castle, she saw as they approached the gates that a caravan was passing through. Perhaps Antonio had returned from his trip to Tunis, for he had been due to stay a few days afterward in Naples.
She came through the gates and entered the courtyard to find servants running hither and thither, talking amongst themselves in murmurs. She took hold of one girl’s arm as she passed, arresting her mid-step. “What’s going on here? Has Duke Antonio returned?”
The girl looked at her with wide eyes. “Antonio is the duke no longer. Haven’t you heard? The old duke is returned. And his daughter—” She pointed towards the landing, where a dark-haired young woman stood. “His daughter—”
At the sight of the woman’s face, Agata’s heart nearly stopped. Bice had returned. Bice had left the tunnels, had survived this decade and more. Bice—
Miranda—
Bice—
Miranda!
Bile rose in her throat as she realized the truth, as she took in the girl’s meaning. The old duke is returned. “Get her something to cover her face,” she hissed to the girl. “Do not allow her to take it off. Tell the rest—if they permit her to so much as lift it for a moment, they will answer to me.” The girl gaped at her, and Agata thrust her away. “Go! Now!”
The girl fled, and Agata walked in the opposite direction as fast as she could, seeking refuge in the halls. She walked, and she gasped, and her hands began to tremble, and she feared that she would faint, when she turned a corner and there—
He’s here.
There—
He sees us!
There was the old duke, the Devil himself, his eyes as blue as the sea meant to drown him. “Hello, Miranda,” he said, but that was wrong. She wasn’t Miranda, she was—
He knows we aren’t Agata, Dorothea, he knows—
“Playing games?” He came towards her, one slow step at a time. “Messing about in minds? Leave the magic to me, girl. You meddle in what you do not understand.”
It’s only a dream. Miranda felt the terror shooting through her, the blood pumping and the throat tightening back in the body she had forgotten she had. A dream, a dream, a dream—
He was closing in. Miranda could feel Dorothea nowhere. We have to get back. We have to get out. He sees me, he sees—
Her father held out his hand. “Let me help you. You’ve wandered off the path and into dark woods, Miranda. Let me help you sleep.”
Agata-Miranda recoiled and forced herself to remember Dorothea’s smile. Her touch, her laugh, her presence in the real world, the world beyond this shadow play. Somewhere out there, Dorothea lay beside her, and Miranda needed to find her.
“Miranda—”
She could hear it. There. Below his voice. Below the sounds of the castle, the vivid illusions of this recent past. A pounding, even and steady. Two rhythms, entwined. Her pulse, and Dorothea’s, beating fingertip to fingertip.
The world began to dissolve around her. She saw her father snatching at the air as she sank into blackness, swallowed by the void. Around her she heard laughter. Howling, hysterical laughter, not Ariel’s voice, but a thousand screeching wails, a cacophony, tearing at her eardrums. They drowned out the twin pulses, and she grasped for purchase against the slippery sides of the void. Dorothea! she cried out. Then, in the voice of the child she had once been, she pleaded now as she had pleaded then: Mother! Mother! Mother!