Sins of the House of Borgia (15 page)

“Oh,” I said. Charlotte d’Albret was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in France, a cousin of the queen, virtuous and devoted to her husband, even though he had spent scarcely four months of their marriage at her side. What else could I say?

“I wonder when she’ll turn up? Charlotte, that is. Maybe for carnival. All foreigners love to see an Italian carnival.”

***

The Princess Charlotte did not come for Carnival, prevented, it was said, by the weather in the Alps.

“She could have sailed,” said Angela. “I wanted to meet her.”

“Perhaps Cesare will come anyway,” I replied.

“Perhaps.”

But he did not; only his wife, it seemed, might have lured him to Ferrara.

So I had to make do with watching the antics of his gentlemen from the loggia over the great arch that gave on to the piazza from the Corte Vecchio. We wore masks and threw eggs, tiny works of art exquisitely decorated by Don Alfonso with the paints and enamels he prepared for his majolica. It was rumoured the whores gathered up the broken shells to display in the shop fronts whose storerooms and back parlours they used to ply their trade, as a mark of Don Alfonso’s favour. As Don Alfonso was known to be something of a connoisseur in that area, they found it good for business to have his seal of approval.

If we leaned out far enough over the balustrade, we could just see the bronze statue of Duke Borso flanking one side of the arch, sporting a conical paper hat with a horsehair plume. By craning our necks the other way, we could see his father, Duke Niccolo, his stern face covered by a cuckold’s mask adorned with rough-hewn wooden horns. No one knew who climbed the columns supporting the bronzes to mock Borso’s sagacity with a dunce’s cap or remind the city how Niccolo was deceived by his wife, but it happened every year, and Duke Ercole, though a proud man, never attempted to find the culprits or remove the decorations, and the people loved him for it.

***

The privations of Lent were exaggerated for us by Duke Ercole’s continuing refusal to hand over madonna’s bride money. Several of her Spanish musicians had been forced to return to Rome when she ran out of funds for their keep, though the singers seemed glad to go because, they said, the marsh air was ruining their voices. Now her goldsmith, her candlemaker, and assorted grooms were obliged to follow. Perhaps madonna hoped, when the Holy Father saw how his daughter was impelled to reduce her circumstances, he would threaten the old duke with excommunication if he did not take the padlocks off the coffers. Whatever her belief, she continued resolutely to smile and charm and acquiesce in all the new arrangements, and if she cried herself to sleep at night, we did not know it because she spent every night with Don Alfonso. As they were newlyweds, a papal dispensation had been granted from that aspect of the Lenten fast.

Our days were marked by attendances at Mass, followed by visits to Sister Osanna in her new quarters in the convent of Santa Caterina.

“I expect it will make Sister Osanna feel more at home, to see a familiar face,” remarked Donna Isabella, who accompanied us on one of our visits. “Of course, all Mantua is honoured by your highness’s interest in her, but I always doubted she would travel well.”

“She seemed perfectly content all the way here,” said Donna Lucrezia as we waited for our carriage door to be opened in the convent courtyard. “Do you not think, Violante?” Once again, I had been chosen to be madonna’s companion on this visit in the interests of my Christian education, and as custodian of Fonsi, who now went everywhere with her.

“No doubt she caught the mood of us all, madonna.”

Donna Lucrezia gave a faint, but grateful smile. She looked pale, and the flesh had fallen somewhat from the bones of her face, making her so like Cesare I could hardly bear to look at her and was relieved my situation obliged me to keep my eyes cast down for most of the time. If I ever forgot him, it was only the way we forget the world of nature surrounding us, merely to be drawn back into consciousness of it by the exquisiteness of a frost-furred cobweb or the sharp, lonely bark of a fox in the depths of the night.

“All the same,” countered Donna Isabella, popping a crystallised mint leaf into her mouth, “I had the feeling she was about to begin prophesying and the upheaval was bound to set her back. I would have counselled leaving it a little longer, had anyone asked my opinion.”

A glint in Donna Lucrezia’s eyes conveyed the impression that she, like me, found it hard to believe Donna Isabella would wait to be asked her opinion before giving it freely.

“I know it’s Lent,” Donna Isabella went on, her plump fingers scrabbling for a second mint leaf in the gold and enamel thread box hanging from her girdle, “but I can’t get the taste of that pike we had at the day meal out of my mouth. I’m sure it had gone off. You’ll have to take firm charge of the kitchens here, my dear. There has been nothing but men running the house for far too long.”

“You should try cardamoms, Isabella. They have more power over the breath than mint, and no need of sugar to preserve them.”

The coachman’s boy placed a step beside the carriage door and I carried Fonsi down into the courtyard to relieve himself before helping Donna Lucrezia from her seat while Catherinella arranged her train. She had had no appetite for two or three weeks and seemed weak. A chill, she insisted, brought on by the change of season, but we were all certain she must be pregnant. After all, Don Alfonso had not missed a night in her bed and, as Angela put it, her voice tinged with envy, they obviously weren’t whiling away the midnight hours playing cards. Bets had been laid and we ladies were counting the days until madonna’s next course was due as carefully as those who had lovers but no husbands counted their own.

A novice led us to the nuns’ parlour, which was divided by a wrought iron screen. On our side were upholstered chairs, a jug of wine, and a plate of unsweetened oatcakes held for us by Catherinella, whose ability to stand perfectly still for hours at a time continued to amaze me, though Angela said it was in the blood of Africans, to help conceal them from lions and elephants in the jungle. Donna Isabella also seemed to marvel at Catherinella, for I noticed she kept touching the slave, on her cheek or hand, almost as though trying to provoke her into movement. On the other side of the grille, Sister Osanna perched on a stool and drank water from an earthenware beaker to dull the sharper edges of her Lenten hunger. She was accompanied by Sister Lucia da Narni, who also bore the stigmata and had been wooed from Viterbo by Duke Ercole with the promise of this grand new convent.

“She looks peaky,” said Donna Isabella. At first I thought she was referring to Donna Lucrezia, and was astonished at her bluntness, then realised she was peering through the screen at Sister Osanna.

“Do the wounds look infected? Can you see, Lucrezia?” Donna Isabella craned her neck to one side, her string of pearls disappearing into a gully of flesh between neck and shoulder. “Bandages look clean anyway. I would have expected no less. Sister Lucia sets the highest standards. Spends every night sweeping the church herself, you know, except when she has her trances. Don’t you, sister?” Donna Isabella raised her voice to ensure she could be heard through the screen; the effect was as if she were trying to make herself understood by an imbecile.

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck; my scalp prickled. I was certain that, somehow, Sister Lucia had looked into my heart and put there the image of Mariam sweeping out our house in preparation for Shabbat
,
and myself trimming the candles in the
menorah,
always with one eye on the square of dimming light beyond the open shutters where soon the evening star would appear to mark the beginning of our holy day.

Donna Isabella, whose plump fingers had been creeping once more towards her box of mint leaves, redirected her hand to the oatcakes as Sister Osanna, fixing Donna Lucrezia with her gaze, said, in that loud, flat voice of hers, “You must look to the foundations, daughter. Fires may be set there. Do not give them air to breathe.”

I was afraid of how madonna might react in her present frail state, but she merely frowned, as though presented with a puzzle to which she did not have the key.

“Perhaps her words are meant for me,” said Donna Isabella hopefully, through a spray of crumbs which attracted close attention from the little dog in my lap. But Sister Osanna seemed scarcely aware of her existence. Her eyes, I noticed, were set very shallow in their sockets; they lay on the surface of her face like puddles of silvery water.

A hectic flush appeared on Donna Lucrezia’s cheeks and an angry glitter in her eyes. “I think not,” she said, “for Sister Osanna prophesied in my presence in Rome.” Her phrasing was careful, but if she lost her temper she might reveal more than she intended.

As Donna Isabella’s brows rose in interrogative arches, I felt compelled to speak, whatever the consequences. “She assured my lady that her marriage to Don Alfonso would be happy and fruitful, madonna.” Well, it was done now, and what would follow, would follow, but at least Cesare would be safe from any divulgence of the curious scene I had witnessed between him and Sister Osanna in Rome. Though I had no idea of its meaning, some instinct told me he would not welcome its being bandied around the salons and dining halls and bathhouses of the fashionable set in the Veneto.

After waiting for Donna Lucrezia to reproach me for my boldness, which she failed to do, Donna Isabella arched her eyebrows a notch higher and said, with a scornful snort, “You could scarcely call that a prophecy.”

“Given your family’s antipathy to the match I would call it little short of miraculous,” Donna Lucrezia came back, as fast and hard as if she were hitting a French tennis ball.

Donna Isabella retreated. “All the same, I am surprised you allow your ladies so much liberty. You should not have spoken for your mistress that way, girl.”

“Monna Violante and I are of a single mind in this and many other matters.” Donna Lucrezia turned the full force of her gaze on me, the candour of her wide, grey eyes having the effect of letting daylight into a long darkened room. Of course she had understood from the beginning about Cesare and me. How could she not? If she had said nothing it was because nothing needed to be said.

That night, though she dined with Don Alfonso as usual, Donna Lucrezia slept alone. There was much speculation among us ladies as to what excuse she had made to her husband, and whether or not it might be the truth. Certainly, said Elisabetta Senese, he was smiling as he called for a torch bearer to accompany him into the town.

In the depths of the night I awoke, thinking at first I had been disturbed by the ringing of the Matins bell from one of the city’s monasteries. Then the sound of a woman’s anguished weeping reached my ears, so heartbroken it had pierced my dreams. Parisina, I thought, and held my breath. My lungs shrivelled and froze in my chest. I dare not wake Angela because if I moved, Parisina would hear me and come looking for me, cradling her weeping head in her arms. I do not know how long I remained listening, rigid as a corpse under my bedclothes, before nature compelled me to take a deep breath and with air came common sense. The sound was coming from the direction of Donna Lucrezia’s dressing room, which was separated from the chamber I shared with Angela only by a set of double doors.

I wrapped myself in my robe, lit a candle from the embers of our fire, and went to attend my mistress. She was sitting at the table where she normally kept her cosmetics and perfumes, but all these had been swept to the floor. Glass vials with their stoppers dislodged released scents of rose and lavender, bergamot and clove oil into the chilly night air; the marble tiles were patterned with lead powder and cochineal. Her head was in her hands, her elbows either side of a small, ornate casket worked in gold filigree and velvet lined, which might once have contained a piece of jewellery. So intently did she seem to be peering into it, I wondered if she had lost something, or feared it stolen.

“Madonna?”

She did not appear surprised to see me. “I was dreaming,” she said, turning to me. Her eyes were puffy and snot trickled unheeded from her nose. “About Ugo and Parisina.” Her teeth chattered, her words squeezed between cold stiffened jaws. I removed my robe and put it around her shoulders.

“When I heard you crying, I thought for a minute it was Parisina’s ghost.” I gave a sheepish smile but she did not seem to notice.

“I can’t do this, Violante. I thought I could but I can’t.” Dropping her head into her hands once again, she clenched her fists around hanks of loose hair and let her tears fall into the empty box. “Everywhere I am watched. D’you know why I came in here? Because I have discovered there is a loose panel in my bedroom ceiling.”

“Just something in need of repair, I expect, madonna.”

She recovered herself slightly, more indignant now than distressed. “And what is above my bedroom? The roof. Where my husband has his lenses set up for looking at the stars. Or so I thought.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. I began to pick up some of the bottles and jars from the floor. I was cold and needed to do something to warm myself. But when I tried to move the casket to one side she grabbed it fiercely and held it to her chest, though it contained nothing more precious than her tears. I wondered what made her so fearful of being seen with it, yet so reluctant to give it up. Had it contained a gift from Don Alfonso?

“What do you think Sister Osanna meant by her words this afternoon?” she demanded.