Leonardo's Swans Read Free Page B

to restrain her, the girl was allowed to run wild, much to the king’s amusement. It was said everywhere that the mean old man encouraged the girl in her antics, much the way that little boys tease their dogs until they bite. So that when the sentries realize it is just Beatrice, they shake their heads and jump out of her way, one even bowing as she rides by as if inviting her passage. Isabella knows that they assume, as does Francesco, that Beatrice will give a little performance for her companions below and then come down. Isabella knows her sister better.
    Beatrice looks down at the astonished Francesco, taunting him by taking off her little cap and tossing it in his direction. “Remember me!” she cries. Then she cracks her leather whip on the horse’s flank and is gone. When the sentries realize where she is headed and at what breakneck speed, they abandon their posts, futilely running after her on foot.
    “Beatrice! Stop!” calls Isabella. The girl hears her, she is sure, but only looks down once with a fast and gloating glance to see that she is leaving the others behind. Isabella kicks her own beast, racing along the walls to catch up with Beatrice.
    Isabella imagines her sister’s big, round laugh freezing into a circle of panic when the girl sees what is ahead. The wall comes to an end, dropping off many feet below where a few bricklayers work lazily in the cold from wooden scaffolds. Perhaps ten feet of empty space separates the new path from the old. Isabella anticipates the calamity, and prays that her sister has seen the danger. She does not quite like or understand this untamed creature, spoiled by too many years of Neapolitan splendor, untempered by parental discipline, but she does not want to see her hurt.
    Beatrice, long brown plait flying behind her like a kite, makes no motion to pull in the beast, but pushes him on, faster and faster, toward the crevasse. Francesco and Isabella both scream madly for her to stop, but the girl either no longer hears them over the sound of her horse’s hooves on the uneven bricks, or she does hear but is out of her mind, possessed by some demon that causes mental disease—something Isabella has considered about her before. The desperate sentries chase after the duke’s daughter, and the others keep yelling her name louder and with increasing horror.
    Beatrice’s elbows pump wildly as if she believes she can take flight over the great gap in the wall. Like a creature in a fairy tale suddenly transforming into a bird, she leaps into the air on her animal’s back, and he, like Pegasus, flies beneath her. Her body is aloft, high above the seat, as the horse stretches its length, trying to please the will of its rider.
    The animal’s natural stride is impossibly short to gap the distance, and Isabella wants to turn her eyes away to avoid seeing Beatrice tumble down the wall, the horse falling upon her and crushing her to death. But something about the way that her sister seems to float above the animal, relieving it of her weight, forces her to keep watching.
    Francesco is now making the sign of the cross with the heavy silver crucifix he wears at his neck in utter earnestness and is calling upon his God. But Beatrice does not need Divine intervention. The horse’s front legs close the distance, hitting hard the bricks of the old pathway. Before Isabella can feel any relief, she sees that the animal’s back legs are slipping down the gap. The horse scrambles to achieve balance, his hinds churning as if he is trying to turn them into wheels. It looks for a moment as if animal and girl might careen backward down the wall and onto the bricklayers who, instead of leaping from the scaffolds to their own deaths, or at least to broken bones, hunch over, hands on heads, to try to protect themselves from the inevitable. But Beatrice, unfazed, yells, “Oh, come on!” and pushes the animal, against all laws of motion, up the craggy wall and onto the footpath. Triumphant,