Sins of the House of Borgia (25 page)

“I will send Catherinella to find a doctor,” I said. “They are not all sick surely.”

“She would do better to fetch a priest.” Tears began to slide down madonna’s pale, puffy cheeks. “That it should all come to this,” she complained, her voice a frail whine.

This was Cesare’s fault, I thought furiously, then, anger rising like bile in my throat, wondered why everything must always come back to him. If he had not invaded Urbino, we would still be at Belfiore, out of harm’s way. I did not know, as I removed the basin and offered madonna a sip of water, which she immediately brought back up, if I loved him or hated him, or if there was any difference.

“Go,” I shouted at Catherinella. “Fetch a doctor.”

“But madam say…”

“She has no need of a priest. Not everybody dies.”

Though when the slave had gone, her bare feet whispering across the polished wood floor, madonna said, “It’s all up with me, isn’t it, Violante?”

“No, madonna, of course no…” But, confronted by her hard and hopeless stare, my voice trailed to nothing. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Look under my bed. There’s a chest. Fetch it out.”

I knew the chest she meant, a small box of scuffed leather bound with brass and locked with a key which madonna wore on a chain around her neck. I drew it out from beneath the bed and placed it gently in madonna’s lap. The key chain became entangled in her hair but she refused my assistance; no one but she ever touched that key. No one but she could go wherever it was she was going. With a small gasp of triumph she released the chain, drew it over her head, and unlocked the box. I hoped the mask of indifference we ladies-in-waiting were obliged to perfect had not slipped, but inside I was seething with indecent curiosity. What was in the case? Love letters? A secret hoard of gold or diamonds? A phial of poison as a last resort?

At first I thought it was empty, then, as the candlelight found its way under the arched lid, I saw that it contained the little filigree casket I had seen her with that night shortly after our visit to the dungeon of Ugo and Parisina. Quickly, instinctively, I glanced at the ceiling, looking for the false panel, but, if it were truly there, it was closed. Lifting the casket out of the chest, madonna held it for a moment in her cupped hands, smiling at it as though it held in its web of kinked and buckled wires some exquisite memory.

“Remember what I told you, Violante. If I should die, you are to give it to Cesare with my…” Her voice faltered, she blinked several times, rapidly, then went on, “with my sisterly duty and affection.”

I tried to think of some excuse to ask why it was so important to her, but nothing came to mind before Catherinella returned with one of Don Alfonso’s physicians, drowsy, dishevelled, and looking terrified. Familiar with nothing but the pox, I thought, hating him for frustrating my curiosity. Hating myself for having it.

It seemed that Donna Lucrezia, already weakened by her pregnancy and the exigencies of caring for Angela, could not possibly survive this latest blow to her health, but Don Alfonso was determined that every effort should be made to save her. Having acquired a reputation as a healer, and, I imagine, being considered dispensable, a mere
conversa
, I was commanded to remain with madonna day and night. Don Alfonso himself had a bed made up in her dressing room, from where he could be quickly summoned if her condition changed in the night. During the day, he was with her as much as his duties permitted, and always when she took food; even though I myself prepared her sick dishes of chicken broth and barley porridge over a brazier in the dressing room, and anyway she could keep nothing down other than a little water, Don Alfonso remained suspicious of poison. It was wishful thinking on his part; even poison was preferable to the fever.

As the news spread through the palace, the vultures began to gather, the ambassadors of other powers with their sharp eyes and enigmatic smiles, the painters and poets and musicians who enjoyed madonna’s patronage and had families to feed, the merchants who overcharged her for satin or soap, the priests and doctors who eyed one another up from opposite sides of the room, each profession secure in its own convictions and contemptuous of the other. Here was Gian Luca Pozzi, who had been Duke Ercole’s envoy to Rome for madonna’s proxy marriage and had been sniffing around her ever since in the hope of gaining her support for a cardinal’s hat in exchange for the positive—or at least, not hostile—reports he had sent of her to his master. And there, in a secluded corner, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark, lurked Francesco Troche, the man known as the pope’s fixer. From time to time he addressed a whispered remark out of the corner of his mouth to his fellow Catalan, Francesc Remolins, who had come from Urbino with news of the fall of Camerino to Cesare’s forces. The lords of Camerino were related to the Este too.

The family came, the duke accompanied by Sister Osanna and a bevy of his own pet nuns who wept and tore their clothes and assured His Grace of a miracle to protect his unborn grandson. Ferrante brought gossip and books of verse, and wept briefly on my shoulder. Even Sigismondo came to see his sister-in-law, to assure her the fever was yet another conspiracy of the rats and he had the matter well in hand. He even brought the corpse of one of the offenders which he had embalmed in pickling spice and wound in butter muslin to prove to her that victory was nigh. I shooed him out with his prize, relieved we had our own kitchen at the base of the Torre Marchesana.

The bishop of Venosa, His Holiness’s favourite doctor, scythed through the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea on his way to and from the bed chamber, assistants bearing covered basins and trays of cups and fleams, scurrying in his wake. Every time he emerged from the bed chamber, and the waiting faces, patient, anxious, curious, speculative, turned towards him, his expression was more solemn and portentous. Every time the door closed once more behind him, the murmured surmisings and conspirings resumed. The sigh of voices was like the whisperings of the daemons who live in the ether.

Then, one afternoon, when madonna seemed a little better and I had gone to my own room to rest and change my clothes, I returned to her apartments to find the crowd swept away and Michelotto da Corella, in the garb of a knight of Saint John, standing guard at her bedroom door.

“Well, well,” he said, plastering the nearest expression he had to a smile over his pitted features. “The little Jewess. There’s a nice bonus for my lord.”

“He is here?” I felt breathless. The floor began to lurch and slide under my feet like the deck of a ship. Michelotto nodded. I was afraid I might kiss him, though he reeked of garlic and rancid butter and had teeth like an old horse.

“But he is not to be disturbed.” He squared his shoulders and let his right hand hover conspicuously over the hilt of his sword.

“Donna Lucrezia will be looking for me.” I commanded my heart to remain steady, but it took no notice. “I am her special nurse, you know.”

“Not right now you’re not,” said Michelotto with a revolting leer. “You’ll wait here till you’re sent for. But I’ll have some wine before you make yourself too comfortable. And food. We were bloody nearly in Milan before he made up his mind to come here and we never even stopped to change horses.”

“We have very little. We have been besieged in the city by this fever. You did well to get through the gates.”

“Ah, but we are Hospitallers, see?” He pointed to the white cross emblazoned across the breast of his tabard. “We come to help the sick.”

Cesare, I thought, feeling I might explode with joy, could make a joke out of anything. “I will see what I can find in our own kitchen. I will go no further, mind.”

“Afraid he’s going to light out on you again? You’ll have to get used to that, girl.”

“Anxious to be close to my lady should she need me.”

“Fetch Torella, Michelotto. Quickly.” Cesare’s voice, light and strong as sunlight, with its little Spanish inflection. I was not ready; this was not how I had dreamed it. But at least my chemise was clean and my hair combed. I dropped a curtsey and waited, my gaze fixed to the floor, for him to address me.

“Violante. Thank God. Come with me.” No greeting, no surprise; we might have seen one another only yesterday.

“My lord.” Now, at last, I could look at him. His face was plaster white and rigid as a mask; even his lips were white, compressed, and his beard grey with the dust of the road. Fear flickered in his eyes, though whether he was afraid of what he had seen in madonna’s room, or that his expression might break and give him away, I could not tell. Turning his back on me he returned to the bedchamber, holding the door open behind him with the flat of his palm. He wore no gloves and crescents of grime edged his fingernails. His hand trembled slightly and I ached to touch it, to feel its human warmth and trace the fan of bones from wrist to fingertips.

The low, bestial growling and gargling entered my consciousness only gradually through the dizzy distraction of Cesare’s sudden closeness after the months of yearning. I hurried after him, almost collided with him as he stopped short just inside the door, pushed past him to madonna’s bedside, felt my flank and shoulder grazed by every fibre of his Hospitaller’s tabard, burned by the heat of his body as we touched.

Though she had been in bed when I left her, madonna was now lying on top of the covers, wrapped in her dressing gown, which had slipped from her shoulder and fallen open to leave one leg exposed. Her back was arched to a degree where I feared her spine must snap, her eyes had rolled up into her head, a foam of saliva slicked her chin, and the unearthly growling came from deep in her stretched throat. Fonsi, who was, as usual, sitting beside her on the bed, set up a frenzied yapping

“We were just talking and…”

“What? I can’t hear.”

He tried again, but could not make himself heard above the dog’s ear-piercing racket. He grabbed the dog by the scruff of its neck. It whimpered; I winced. “Shut up,” he told it, and rapped its nose before replacing it at the foot of the bed, where it remained, snout on paws, perfectly silent. I wanted to be Cesare’s dog, I thought, lying at his feet, secure in the smell of him, to be kicked or kissed at his whim and grateful for his attention.

“I can’t deal with this,” I said. “She needs a doctor.”

“I brought Torella. She seemed quite well, so I sent him to rest. He’s not used to hard riding like Michelotto and I. Michelotto!” This in the direction of the door. “Where the devil is Torella? How long can it take to find someone in this bloody hutch?”

No reply.

“Now you must help me,” I told him; this was no time for deference, and if he thought me impertinent he could deal with me as he saw fit once the crisis was over. One way or the other. “We must put her on her side. There. You hold her steady while I pile the pillows behind her so she can’t roll back. And her tongue. In the falling sickness, they say people bite off their tongues.”

Cesare remained with his hands clamped over his sister’s flank as though his flesh was fused to hers by the heat of her fever. “She doesn’t have the falling sickness,” he said, while I hunted about the room for some strap or stick to wedge over her tongue.

“The fever can do it sometimes. I have seen it in others.”

Nothing. Perfume bottles, hair brushes, tubs of cochineal paste, jewelled girdles, and hat pins. What was needed was…

“Your sword belt. Give me your sword belt.” The sword was already unclipped from it and propped in a corner. But he stayed frozen, unable to move. “The sword belt,” I shrieked, leaning across the bed, only inches from his face. He started, straightened up, tried to unbuckle the belt but failed, his fingers all of a tangle. Racing around to his side of the bed, I squeezed myself between him and it, our thighs and bellies pressed together in a parody of lust of which we were neither wholly aware nor unaware. I unfastened the belt, clambered on to the bed, and, kneeling behind Donna Lucrezia, pushed it into her mouth. She tossed back her head and bucked like a stubborn horse resisting the bit. Attempting to soothe her, I rubbed her back. It was then I realised the bedding bunched and rucked beneath her was sodden.

“Her waters have broken,” I told Cesare, twisting round on the bed to face him.

“It’s two months too soon.” We stared at one another with the calm of complete hopelessness; even Donna Lucrezia fell quiet, coming out of her fit with a long, shuddering sigh then lying as if asleep, spared the pains of labour as though the child too knew there was nothing to be done. Then Cesare blinked and shook his head as though shaking off a dream.

“Torella!” he roared. “Name of Christ, where are you, man?”

The arrival of Gaspare Torella, still clutching a lump of bread and cheese, was immediately consoling. I had met Cesare’s physician on several occasions in Rome, for he was a man as well versed in the social graces as in the profession of healing, and I liked him. He came from Valencia and he used to make me laugh. Cesare, I knew, held him in great trust since Torella had cured him of the pox by a complicated regime of purgings, blood lettings, and mercury sudations which were the talk of the spa at Stigliano while Cesare was enduring them. Torella had then written a treatise on the cure, with the patient’s enthusiastic connivance, and had, from the proceeds of his growing fame, presented his young patron with a gold and enamel pill box in which to keep the pills of celandine and aloe he was supposed to take each day with meals to prevent a recurrence of his illness.