Sins of the House of Borgia (29 page)

As I scrabbled among the cushions for my discarded clothes he said, “Salvatore’s here. Says he’s intercepted a summons from Cardinal Orsini to Vitellozzo. And he’s got the assessment of fortifications at San Leo you asked Leonardo for.”

“It begins, then. Good. Let’s lance the boil once and for all.”

Michelotto cast me a suspicious glance as Cesare hauled on his hose and breeches. “Not a problem,” he said, in answer to his lieutenant’s unspoken query. No problem indeed; I had no idea what Michelotto was talking about, though soon all Italy would be talking about it too.

Michelotto tossed him the tabard. He pulled it over his head and stepped out of the loggia. As he buckled on his sword he turned to me and said, “Bid my sister farewell for me. Tell her... tell her we will spend Christmas together.”

And grinned, and blew me a kiss, and was gone, my last impression of him the clanking of his spurs overlaid by some choice remark about the state of the road to Milan. A saying of Plotinus came to me, one which had been a favourite of my father’s, that the life of every practical man is a bewitchment.

***

I do not know how long I remained as I was, lying half naked in the loggia. My body ached with frustrated desire, yet my limbs, as I stretched them, felt impeded by a kind of heavy languor, as though I were under water. The air I breathed had become oppressively hot, yet my sweat was clammy and the damp patch where Cesare’s seed had trickled out of me made a cold brand on my right buttock. It was that which roused me, the thought of my maiden’s blood staining Donna Lucrezia’s cushions. What would become of me if it were discovered? Shame burned my cheeks. Rolling on to my side, I looked over my shoulder. Thank God, neither my skin nor the cushions showed any marks, and I remembered what Angela had said about horse riding, and some of the things we had done together. My virginity had slipped away from me like a thief in the night, leaving no trace of itself.

I gathered up my clothes and began to dress, smoothing my rumpled shift and lacing my bodice as best I could with fingers that seemed reluctant to obey me. I rushed, I fumbled, both panicked by my nakedness in this place I had no right to be and thrilled by it because it marked my transition to womanhood in the arms of this man I so adored, who could—and did—have any woman he wanted and had chosen me, filling me with his intimacies until I thought I might burst with excitement.

Thunder rumbled. The gods, it seemed, were sceptical. I smiled defiance as I fastened my shoes and the first drops of rain smacked on to the leathery leaves of the orange trees and spread dark stains on the patio. No mere summer storm could threaten me, for I was the mistress of Cesare Borgia, the man the Roman gossips called the son of God. When people looked at me from now on, they would see the imprint of his passion on my body, the fever in his eyes reflected in mine. Anyone who brushed past me in the street might inhale the scent of jasmine clinging to my hair.

I could hardly wait to tell Angela everything, yet not everything. There are some transactions between lovers which, like the ancient paintings on the walls of the catacombs hollowed out beneath the streets of Rome, fall to dust on exposure to the air. How could I explain to Angela that the true change in me had been wrought, not by the physical act of penetration but by the power of words? It was like the powder burn all over again, to hear the terrible Valentino describe himself as a clumsy boy who got on his mother’s nerves and had a weakness for Turkish sweets. The child in the man had made a woman of me.

Dragging and dawdling like the idiot girl with the wall eye who sold violets by the Porta Mare in the spring, I made my way back to the Torre Marchesana. The rain sluiced down now, veiling the empty piazza, streaming from the cloisters. I began to be aware of unfamiliar pains in my body, muscles stretched in my thighs, my lips bruised and chin stinging from the abrasion of Cesare’s beard, a burning in my cunny that could not be described as purely pain. He had gone, he had made no promises, and my body was teaching me how loss feels.

Then a whiff of rosemary came to me through the dank smells of old, wet walls and moss-choked guttering. I stopped beside the bush clipped in the shape of a sword to breathe in its scent. Rosemary for remembrance. I glanced down at the moat, pocked by the rain until its surface resembled that of a battered pan, and thought of the baby, sleeping in the soft mud, among the quiet fishes. How right it was that she should be there, this child who had rejected the medium of air even before she had been pushed out into it. How far wide of the mark my own instincts had been, and how perfect Cesare’s. How he humbled me, how lucky I was to have been chosen to bear the stigmata of his passion.

A crack of thunder which must have been directly overhead, putting up a pair of swans from the moat, brought me to my senses and the realisation that my feet were sodden, my shoes probably ruined. Even worse, I was sure to have been missed by now. I must try to sneak back to my quarters to change my clothes without being seen. With any luck, everyone would still be too busy attending Donna Lucrezia to notice me. Though I hoped Angela might be in our room to wrap me in a towel and hear my confession.

“Well, my dear, this is fine weather for mooching among the oranges.” Ferrante, holding open the door at the end of the walkway. “I went to condole with your lady, and found her very peevish for want of her ministering angel. She said Duke Valentino had unaccountably left without bidding her farewell and you had disappeared. I did try to suggest you might be resting, but you were seen. Gossip and the smell of boiled cabbage—both can somehow get into every corner of the building. I must say you look…well, perhaps try to wipe that smile off your face before you enter the presence. She has just lost a child.

“And there is another thing you should know before you go up to her. Another loss. The slave, Catherinella.”

With all that had happened, I had quite forgotten Catherinella.

“She is hanging from the Torre Leone in a cage,” Ferrante continued, his tone flat, without emotion. “There is a wooden plaque around her neck. It says, ‘Catherinella, slave, displayed at the command of the illustrious Don Alfonso for showing disrespect to his noble wife, the Duchess Lucrezia.’” We stared at one another; we both knew whose command lay behind that of Don Alfonso. “It is an unfathomable love they bear one another, your inamorato and his sister,” said Ferrante, and I looked away.

“How long must she hang there?”

“Until she dies. It will not be long in this heat, without water. For that we must thank God.”

Everyone has a price, he had said.

“But it’s raining. We must get her down.”

Ferrante looked at me as though I had proposed dislodging the moon from her orbit or asking the sun to shine at midnight. “How? And what could we do with her? Alfonso would never let your mistress take her back, even if she wanted to after she had shown such dishonesty.”

“She wasn’t stealing, Ferrante, she was…oh, never mind. But she wasn’t stealing, I know. How are the cages hung? We must just do the same in reverse.”

“The gaoler’s men just throw them over the parapet. They fasten the chains into rings set into the roof and throw them over.”

I thought of the cage, spinning and smashing into the wall of the tower, bouncing over pediments and window frames. “Well it wouldn’t take much to haul it back. Catherinella doesn’t weigh heavily; she’s only small, not much more than a child I think, though it’s hard to tell.” Sometimes she seemed as ancient as Africa itself.

“Violante, be reasonable. It cannot be done. We would be discovered. Alfonso would surely have the slave killed and we would be punished also.”

“What can he do to us? He is not duke yet, remember. Besides, we both know it wasn’t him who imposed the sentence, whatever the plaque may say. We will do it. You must find someone to help. What about Vittorio?”

Ferrante sighed. “Vittorio is Cesare’s creature, Violante. I tolerate it because he has certain…attributes I find irresistible. Cesare knows that. That is why he chose him to escort Donna Lucrezia to Ferrara.”

“God, Ferrante, you’re such a…such a woman! I will find someone and do it myself. A couple of madonna’s footmen. That’s it. She will protect us—even from Cesare.”

“You think so?” he asked quietly. “What about Urbino?” His question surprised me. Somehow, I had never considered the possibility that Ferrante interested himself in politics. He waited a moment then, when I made no reply, went on, “There is something. A shoddy compromise, I’m afraid, but Alfonso would tell you that is my forte.”

“What?” I demanded.

“Don’t ask, child.”

I’m not a child, not any longer, I wanted to point out, but Ferrante’s tone had been sympathetic, not patronising, so I held my tongue. I had to trust him.

“Now go to your mistress. I am sure the distraction of your…adventures will aid her recovery.”

I stood at the door a moment longer, watching Ferrante trudge back along the walk towards the orange garden, his shoulders braced against the echo of himself Cesare left everywhere like a malign and charming sprite. Why did I love him? I might as well ask why my heart beat or my lungs breathed.

***

The following morning, as a company of us were crossing the square to attend Mass in the cathedral to give thanks for madonna’s recovery, we were distracted by a commotion among the knot of onlookers gawping up at the slave in her cage. People pointed and muttered. Instead of standing still, the small crowd whirled and shifted in agitation. Even the street hawkers, who rarely took much notice of prisoners hanging from the tower, had paused beneath Catherinella’s cage with their necks craned upwards, regardless of light-fingered beggar boys making off with apples or apricots or hot pumpkin tarts from their trays. I looked up, but could see nothing other than the plank floor of the cage which emitted fine points of yellow light through its cracks. I glanced at Ferrante, standing beside Don Alfonso with his missal clutched across his chest. He refused to meet my eye. I saw him pluck at his brother’s sleeve and try to urge him on, but Don Alfonso was already despatching one of his gentlemen to find out what had happened.

Word came just as the choir concluded the Te Deum, passing from mouth to mouth like fire jumping between buildings. The slave was dead. Somehow, she had acquired a length of rope, by which she had hanged herself from the great bolt in the roof of the cage that held the chain in place. Don Alfonso’s thick neck was flushed beneath the line of his short hair. Next to him, Ferrante’s head was bowed as if deep in prayer. I hope the All Merciful forgave him for what he did, risking his immortal soul for the dignity of a slave.

T
HE
B
OOK OF
B
ROKEN
P
ROMISES

She does know the earth

is run by mothers, this much

is certain. She also knows

she is not what is called

a girl any longer. Regarding

incarceration, she believes

she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

Louise Glück, “Persephone the Wanderer”

C
HAPTER 1

F
ERRARA,
S
EPTEMBER 1502

I gave you nothing but an empty casket and a borrowed verse.

Angela told me I was lucky.

“At least your face is clear,” she said, straightening up and blowing out the candle by whose flame she had been examining my private parts. I had believed it was just a severe chill, hardly surprising considering I had become soaked to the skin during the storm and had been obliged by Donna Lucrezia to sit with her for as long as it took to explain, so far as I was able, why her brother the duke had left Ferrara with nothing but some futile promise to return at Christmas. That, she railed, with a renewed vigour I was too tired and cold to feel grateful for, was no use to her. It was now she needed him, now when she had to face up to the Este having not only miscarried but miscarried a daughter. She made no mention of Catherinella, though the body was left hanging for a fortnight, until the crows had had her eyes and much of her flesh and people passing by in the square below marvelled that her bones were as white as theirs.

Then Angela noticed me scratching. I cannot tell you which was worse, the shooting pains in my arms and legs which kept me tossing and turning all night in search of relief, or the itching and burning between my thighs which drove me into dark corners, behind screens or doors or garden trellises, anywhere I could scratch myself in private. I dreamed of sitting on ice blocks; I drank as little as I was able to avoid having to piss knife blades.

“It’s just a chill on the kidneys,” I said, levering myself on to my elbows.

“See for yourself,” replied Angela, handing me a small mirror which I angled between my legs until I could see the reflection of my privities. A small ulcer filled with yellowish pus perched on the lip of them, hard and painless to my touch. “He has definitely left you a little
memento amoris.
”

“I thought he was cured.” My voice sounded plaintive.

“Surely you don’t imagine he has been a model of monkish virtue since Torella’s famous mercury baths, you little goose. I suppose he has caught another dose himself.”
Sickness smoulders in me like fire at the heart of a damp haystack; it ticks in the night like a death clock in the rafters
.

“I wish Torella was still here.”

“Oh, we’ll manage. We need a frog. Or a chicken. That would be easier. The main thing is to keep it from Lucrezia. It will not help her marriage plans for you if she cannot pass you off as clean and virgin.” Since her recovery, this was madonna’s great project, to find good husbands for us all, good Ferrarese husbands to help repair the damage done to her standing by her miscarriage. Angela was supporting her cousin enthusiastically in her endeavours as Donna Lucrezia was now championing her own prospects of marriage to Giulio.

“A frog?”

“A live frog, split in two and applied to the sore. Or a chicken.”

“In the same way?”

“Yes. It’s one of Ippolito’s remedies,” she confided, “and it must work because I am clean.”

“But how long is it since you lay with him?” Ippolito had not been in Ferrara since before the fever, and even before that, it was my understanding Angela had begun to decline his attentions. She blushed; she fiddled with the mirror which I had handed back to her while I straightened my clothes.

“It’s difficult,” was all she would say.

***

Though we made several attempts at catching a frog by means of flower pots and small keeping nets, pretending in front of madonna and the rest of her ladies that it was a game we had devised to ward off the chill of the autumn afternoons when we walked in the gardens, our efforts failed and a chicken had to be acquired. It was a messy process, for the bird had to be split and applied to the affected area while still alive. Lying flat on the floor, to save soiling my bedding and raising questions among the laundresses, with my legs spread and my skirts bunched around my waist, there was little I could do to help Angela keep a firm grasp on the protesting bird, a task made harder for her by her decision to wear a hawking glove to save her hands from its pecking and scratching.

Nor was she certain how long the dying fowl should be kept pressed against the ulcer. Until it’s cold, was the suggestion of Ferrante, who had procured the gauntlet and kept watch outside our door; it was impossible to trust any of the rest of Donna Lucrezia’s women, for Angela and I were more resented than loved for being her favourites and the pious Fidelma had made herself a focus of hostility towards us, believing we led madonna astray and were probably responsible for her miscarriage by encouraging her to dance and keep late hours. We compromised. Angela kept the squirming, blood-pulsing mound of flesh and feathers braced against my privates until it fell still and its blood stopped flowing and it was clearly dead. Then she threw it on the fire and the stink of burning feathers made me cough as I stepped out of my soiled petticoats and sponged my thighs.

“Perhaps we should have made a broth of it, for good measure,” I said.

“I swear I will never eat anything made of a fowl again.” Angela flung the washing water after the fowl in an attempt to damp down the bitter smoke, but only made matters worse.

“Well now we shall stink of giblets. You’ll have to lend me your perfume.”

“Only if I can wear your rubies. Giulio says they bring out the colour of my hair.”

That evening, there was to be a new play devised by Ercole Strozzi, and madonna was entertaining him to dinner beforehand. Despite his twisted leg and the receding forehead that seemed to thrust his eyes and nose forward like those of a large ferret, we all adored Strozzi because he made us laugh. Madonna’s friend, Barbara Torelli, was much given to intellectualising about the erotic power of laughter, and she should have known for she was sleeping with Strozzi; it was an open secret.

***

Whether by luck or Angela’s healing skill, the chicken remedy worked and, as the autumn progressed and we began to look forward to the short season of Carnival before Advent, I felt wonderfully well. My appetite, which had tended to be modest since I joined Donna Lucrezia’s household with its Christian eating habits, grew ravenous. I devoured everything, from creamy risottos seasoned with juniper broth to crayfish we grilled ourselves over small braziers and ate straight from the shells when we “picnicked” in Donna Lucrezia’s apartments before donning our carnival masks and venturing out to join the revels in the town. One day, watching acrobats perform in the piazza, I ate so many sugared almonds and sweet cheeses Angela muttered she was afraid our stand would collapse and Fidelma permitted herself to wonder if I were fattening myself up in anticipation of the Advent fast, like a camel contemplating a desert journey.

Though hunting and hawking were duties I previously undertook solely at my lady’s command, that autumn I rode out at every opportunity, savouring the meaty warmth of fresh-killed game mingled with the smells of horses and saddle soap and frost on water. I loved to watch Don Alfonso’s truffle hounds at work in the woods and to eat fine slivers of the pungent, earth-scented fungus fried in butter over woodsmen’s fires. The truffles were the colour of long-buried bones, and I wondered if this was why the hounds were attracted to them.

When the dressmaker came to fit us for the new gowns madonna was to give us for Christmas, he consulted his notes and found my waist had grown by half a hand’s width. My breasts, too, had acquired a more womanly gravity and, said Angela, with an unreadable look, I was developing a little pad of fat beneath my chin identical to that Donna Lucrezia had inherited from her father. She spent half an hour every morning with her chin raised and neck extended, massaging the flesh in an attempt to dissipate it.

“I shall change your name,” announced Angela. “From now on you will be La Bolognese, because we all know how they enjoy their oral pleasures.”

Something drew up tight in my gut in response to her innuendo and her casual dismissal of the name Cesare had given me. “My name isn’t yours to change,” I spat back, and tipped my platter of bread with oil and anchovy paste on to the floor where Fonsi snaffled it.

Sometimes, we behave in certain ways only because we do not know why we are doing it. Once I realised I was eating to fill the empty place left by Cesare, though I was often still hungry at odd times of the day and night, the ache in my belly became confused with that in my heart as I waited for word from him which never came. I consoled myself with endless rehearsals to Angela of my small stock of memories, until her eyes became glazed, her smile fixed, and she nodded at me like an automaton. I made excuses for him. To begin with, he was with the French court in Milan. Perhaps his wife was there; even if she was not, as she was a cousin of the queen, perhaps it was difficult for him to get a letter to me without his infidelity being discovered. Then, once his letters to his sister and Don Alfonso informed us he was back in the Romagna, well, he was a busy man, with much to secure before he could return to Ferrara for Christmas.

Yet scarcely a day passed without a letter for madonna. Sometimes she would share passages with Angela and me. The woman’s brazenness was scarcely credible, she told us one day, but Donna Isabella had written to Duke Valentino requesting an antique Cupid from the gardens at Urbino, “knowing that Your Excellency does not take much pleasure in antiques.” And this while the erstwhile duke and duchess were still in exile in Mantua. He had sent the Cupid, and an accompanying Venus, by special messenger; the gift had given him particular pleasure, he added, as the statues were not antiques but fakes, mocked up by the Florentine, Michelangelo. He had recognised the work immediately, because the Florentine had made some similar pieces for the vestibule of his palace in Rome. He had also, he added, sent Guidobaldo the
De Consolatione Philosophiae
from his father’s library, before having the rest of the books boxed up and dispatched to the
rocca
at Forli for safekeeping until he had decided what to with them. Though we all laughed, I felt only my laughter came close to the same bleak and mordant tone of the letter.

Only once did I receive a message from him. Enclosed in a letter to madonna sent from Imola was a small sketch on a rough palimpsest. It showed Cesare’s head and shoulders, the expression on his face characteristically self-contained, his mouth drawn down at the corners, his eyes shielded by their long, thick lashes. Ghosts of a cramped, crooked handwriting shadowed his cheeks and had become entangled in his beard.

Give this to Violante
, madonna read.
My engineer, Leonardo, did it while I was looking at a map he has made me of Imola, just as if he had flown over the city on the back of a great bird. He has made me look like an Old Testament prophet so our little Israelite should appreciate it. This Leonardo does me many services. The other day, as a group of us had dined together and were being treated to Sperulo’s latest panegyric on my achievements, he let loose on the table a small lizard with paper wings fastened to its back, each quartered red and yellow in my livery. Chaos ensued, most of the women screaming and running from the room, and Ramiro stabbed Torrigiano in the hand trying to spear the lizard to the board. When I asked Leonardo later if he was pleased his rival sculptor would be out of commission for some weeks, he simply said he had noticed I was falling asleep—the room was crowded, the fire banked high, the wine heavy and, to be honest, Sperulo’s version of the fall of this fine city somewhat tame for my taste—and so had devised this joke to wake me up.

Madonna continued to read, though silently, now smiling, now frowning, leaving me to torture myself with thoughts of the women Cesare mentioned so casually. Who were they? The wives and mistresses of his dinner guests, or his own? Was Dorotea Caracciolo among them? Was she truly so beautiful Cesare had risked the wrath of Venice to have her? I stared miserably at the drawing clutched in my hand, this substitute of parchment for my lover’s own, warm skin, this reduction of the fires running in his veins to lines of charcoal.

Donna Lucrezia, I thought, did not need even a picture of her brother, for his words conjured him up for her. His letters were the start of long, internal conversations between them as though they remained somehow physically present to one another despite the distance of miles and the worsening weather as winter set in and the Advent fast imposed itself upon us. My loneliness would have been incomprehensible to her, even if she had noticed it.

But she did not. She was too busy repairing the damage done to her position by the loss of her daughter, passing her evenings and nights with her husband and her days in the company of his brothers. She would even, from time to time, listen gravely to Sigismondo as he expounded his plan for poisoning the rat king with the blood of a pig held upside down and beaten to death. Though she warmed, as always, to Ferrante’s wit and Giulio’s singing, it was Ippolito, now returned from Rome and full of news from the Vatican, who commanded most of her attention.

The two little boys, Rodrigo and Giovanni, had looked enchanting in the velvet caps she had sent them and were thrilled with the parrot. The Holy Father remained, God be praised, in robust health and as sharp in his mind as ever. His pride in his children was undiminished, though he grieved for Lucrezia’s loss and was currently exasperated by Duke Valentino’s mysterious silence and inertia. Overhearing Ippolito’s conversations with Lucrezia, I learned that the fortress of San Leo, in the Duchy of Urbino, had rebelled against Cesare in October and a league of his enemies had been signed against him at the Orsini stronghold of La Magione. Yet Cesare, apparently, did nothing but go hunting around Imola and trade jokes with Leonardo.
The ground is burning beneath their feet,
he had told the Florentine orator,
and there is not enough piss in any of their maidens’ bladders to put it out.