Mirror Mirror (7 page)

I
N THE
shadows, I watched Don Vicente de Nevada hand his daughter to the housemistress and begin to shout orders. Some associate was on the road, following along behind with an entourage that included a noblewoman. They were making their way up the slopes at a slower pace, but would arrive in an hour or so.

If the bedding was rank with disuse, it must be aired at once. Mulberry twigs scattered under the bedsteads, to draw the fleas from the mattresses. Flowers gathered for the tables, floors swept, pastries prepared, wine decanted. Everyone at Montefiore must come directly to receive instructions. Is there asparagus in the ground, or has it gone by?

They ran to their work, as humans will, with vigorous shortsightedness. As if the presence of a fresh pastry can change how the world works. As if flowers might interrupt the flow of slow ire, or a better
bottle of wine halt in its path the progress of verdigris upon a bronze statue of a horse and rider in some town square.

But I sat in the shrubs, biding my time and chewing the haunch of some boar that had crossed my path. I enjoy the spasmodic tics of human endeavor, the aimless urgency, the pride of it. The
superbia
. Hurrying feet, muttered curses, cross remarks sent winging about the estate. The child fled to keep out of the way, and hunched on the bottom step of the outer staircase, hugging her knees to herself.

I could make out the very lashes on her inky eyes, you see, I could smell her very purity.

Vicente was tersely chiding a maid about the unsavory state his better attire seemed to be in. From the kitchen, Primavera's voice rang with impatience. Fra Ludovico kept himself safely out of the way, polishing the ornamental candlesticks to be used at Mass. So Bianca happened to be alone when the entourage rounded the last steep curve in the road and drew abreast along the stone wall that shored up the gardens hanging above. The urchin stood there with her chin dropped, studying the roof of the palanquin, until the mounted soldier said, “Run and tell the lord of the house we have arrived.”

“Who is it?” said Bianca, a reasonable enough question, as the man was only one, and
we
implied a pair at least.

“The Duc de Valentinois and his sister.”

A pale hand appeared in a seam of velvet drapes, as if considering whether or not to open them to the light. My eye fell on the jewel, an irregularly faceted ruby of uncertain clarity but with striking purple depths.

“Oh,” said Bianca, “a friend to play with.”

Then the hand disappeared—perhaps the sister had caught a glimpse of Bianca, or had realized that a voice so youthful wasn't worth the effort of attending. The brother apparently knew his sister well and waved the bearers on. Sweating and grunting, the attendants pressed forward until the equipage had been lifted up the last rise to the villa's front door, and set down on a length of tapestry laid out for the purpose.

“De Nevada. You rascal, we're here,” shouted the man. “You'll leave us languishing like a fishmonger and his prize salmon out here?”

The attendants stood back. As Vicente rushed out, in a robe of charcoal blue, the curtains in the palanquin parted and the sister emerged, blinking as if she'd just woken from a sleep.

Bianca moved forward from the shadows to see.

I am a girl
who did no wrong

I am a girl who did no wrong.

I walked this side of Gesù when I could.

I kept an angel in my apron pocket.

I do not think it did me any good.

Cesare

T
HE MAN
was a young brute, one of those handsome men who knock mountains to one side in order to clear the view. Primavera was both smitten and on her guard. She saw how his feet gripped the ground as he dismounted, as if his boots were filled with bronze feet, as if he were in the act of being cast already as his own statue. His dark eyes were tigers, prowling to strike at threats.

“Vicente,” he said, “a basin of water for the face, a basin of wine. There are plans to arrange tonight, and little enough time.”

“That man has a storm of beauty in his face,” said Primavera, backstairs. “He looks as if he could easily wrestle any squid out of the water.”

“He is a monster sinner,” said Fra Ludovico, fussing at his vestments. “Don't you know who it is? It's Cesare Borgia, the son of the Spanish Pope. To plot a vendetta, no doubt, to lay waste to more of our homeland. Is he requisitioning troops again?”

“His campaigns cost me the lives of both my sons,” said Prima-vera. “They were fools to allow themselves to be conscripted, but they were my fools. I hope Don Vicente is cannier than they were, rest their souls.”

“He's a guest of our master,” said Fra Ludovico. “Don't get any ideas about dishing up vengeance or anything foolish like that, or we'll all be slaughtered in our beds before morning.”

“I like a man who wears his implement so prominently,” said one of the maids. “It makes my work easier.” She rubbed her bosom as if polishing a knob of furniture.

“I like a man who needs forgiveness so obviously,” said Fra Ludovico primly. “It makes my work clearer.”

“He's a young one, to have taken so many lives in war,” said Primavera. “Lives of his soldiers, lives of his enemies. Now, what cruel nonsense does his handsome head plot with our good master? Bianca, take this salver of cheese and fruit upstairs. Bianca! Where is the child?”

Lucrezia

I
NEEDED
the air, I needed freshness on my skin. I needed to see what was to be seen. I didn't wait for the hand of my brother to prompt me from the carriage. I, the daughter of a pope, I, who had been the
governatrice
of Spoleto at the age of nineteen, I never waited for prompting.

“Vicente. The comfort of reacquaintance.” I used our common Iberian tongue, toying with his Christian name as a courtesan teases a drunken courtier, with malice and pleasure at once. “Vicente, before you are seduced into intrigues of state by my brother, be so good as to favor me with your welcome.”

I awaited a kiss but accepted his hand. It's best to acquiesce to custom, at least when one is in the country. Avoiding his eyes, I trained my attention on the child instead, feigning an interest I didn't possess.

“Who are you, who looks on a Borgia with impunity?” I said, though the child had hidden her eyes behind her father's legs. I could
examine Vicente's form while pretending to play find-the-child. A tiresome pretense, but even a young Borgia had to observe some proprieties, as scurrilous spies are always lurking about to report on our deeds and misdeeds.

“Bianca,” murmured her father, “surely you remember my Bianca?”

“I haven't taken her measure before,” I answered. “She was a shit-smeared froglet the last time I was by. Why, she's turning into a person.”

“They do, you know,” said Vicente.

“Let me see the
cherubina,
then,” I said. “Come to Lucrezia, child.”

The child was wary. She didn't obey me until her father nudged her forward.

And we looked at each other, that girl and I. She out of childish curiosity and caution, I out of the need to have something to talk to her father about. I had no native interest in this child. I attest to that now. I would have been happy never to see her again. She was no more than a saucer of spoiled milk to me.

Though she had her beauty, I'll grant you that. She curved, rushlike, against her father's well-turned calf. She had the face of a new blossom, a freshness and paleness one could imagine some sorcerer growing in a moonlit garden. Her hair was pinned up in a womanly fashion, despite her youth, and its blackness, under a net of simple unornamented cord, had a steepness to it, a depth. Odd how such things strike one. Her eyes were hidden from me; she wouldn't look up. Her skin was white as snow.

I am a woman who slept with my
father the Pope

I am a woman who slept with my father the Pope.

They say I did, at least, and so does he.

And who am I to make of the Pope a liar,

And who is he to make a liar of me?

What I saw then

S
OME OF
us are born many times. Some are born only once. Primavera says that some are born dead and live their whole lives without knowing it.

I can't say much about earlier childhood memories. One knows things with a complicated and unreliable conviction. The sky-blue sky is as blue as the sky. White beans in a brown pot are more delicious than milk. The purr of cats and the claws of cats are not the same thing. One can't remember how one learned to breathe, at least the first time.

But then one is born anew, usually at the moment that the breath begins again after it has been held.

I released the air of my lungs, and breathed again, and looked at my father's visitor. And I remember her with a vividness that strikes me, to this day, as preternatural. But surely this is true of all children?—that one day they come upon an awareness of themselves, of
their own knowing, and in that moment they shuck their animal natures off and begin to hoard the treasury of knowledge that will make them capable of grief and remorse as well as pity and love?