Page 373 - The Grotesque Children's Book

“Yes! Only it will be I who does the pulling. You’ll get in the cart and I’ll pull it. I’ll be
your goat, Bianca. I’ll pull you!” Francesco made head-butting gestures and little prance-steps
with his arms, as though pulling a cart.

Bianca shivered. The smile left her face. “They’ll never let us go,” she said.

“Who?”

“Your men. Your magistrates.”

“It’s not up to them. I’ll tell them they can’t come.”

“If you tell them that, they’ll know you’re gone, and you’ll have ruined the whole
scheme.”

“Then I won’t tell them.”

“If you don’t tell them,” said Bianca, “they’ll be expecting business as usual, and when
you don’t show up for your morning meetings, they’ll suspect the worst and begin combing the
countryside looking for your kidnappers.”

“So we must stay, imprisoned in a world we have made ourselves.”

“I have it!” shouted Bianca, suddenly bright again. “You must tell them I’m going.”

“I told you I won’t let you go alone. It isn’t safe.”

“You tell them where I’m going, only you tell them Genoa or Padua or some place.
They’ll follow my carriage down to Padua, only...and here’s the trickery...it won’t be I who’s in
the carriage!”

“Who will it be?”

Bianca smiled slyly. “Do you remember the girl who posed for my portrait?”

“The one who stole the jewels.”

“Precisely. She is incarcerated right now, waiting for us to issue some orders and
directives. We’ll get her to dress in my clothes once more, and she’ll be the one who glides into
the carriage.”

“Where will you be?”

“I? You and I will slip out the back way, unnoticed and unseen. We’ll go to Villa a
Caiano with our little goat cart, long before they figure out that we’re not actually in the carriage
they thought.”

“It’s brilliant.”

“It’s exciting.”

“It’s dangerous.”

Francesco, of course, thought all this was beneath him. He would not put some servant
girl in his Duchess’s clothes while he slunk away on some undignified flight out of Florence.

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