Sins of the House of Borgia (32 page)

Once the girl had mended the fire and left, she asked me, “Well? What was it you had to tell me?”

“I don’t know exactly. It’s just that, whatever is going on now seems to have begun with the rebellion of San Leo.”

Madonna nodded, as though approving my analysis. “Go on.”

“Well, when Michelotto discovered us, Cesare and me…”

“Yes, yes, stop your simpering and get on with it.”

“He said a messenger had come, then something to do with Vitelozzo, and that Leonardo had prepared the plans of San Leo Cesare had asked for. It made me wonder if Cesare organised the rebellion himself. To flush out the Magione conspirators.”

Donna Lucrezia nodded. “So you think there is nothing to worry about? That he is in control and his plea for our prayers is some kind of double bluff? You are either very naïve, or the only woman I have ever met who thinks as deviously as he does. All we can do now, I suppose, is wait and see which it is, but at least your news gives us something to occupy ourselves.”

“Yes, madonna.” Though it seemed to me that my pregnancy was also a matter of waiting and seeing.

“You must be found a husband. And it will be even less easy now than before. You know the duke is still withholding payment of some of my bride money, so I have little enough to endow you with and you, my dear, are a pill that needs a great deal of sweetening. A
conversa,
and now pregnant. On the other hand,” she mused, seeming to carry on the conversation more with herself than with me, “Cesare will own the child and he will be generous, so if we can find a man prepared to tolerate a well-fledged cuckoo in the nest…Yes, well, leave it with me. And look after yourself. You must rest, and avoid shocks. No dancing, no…well, that is unlikely, I imagine. You must stay out of the wind but not sit too close to the fire…”

“Madonna?”

“Yes?”

“May I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“Where is Senigallia?”

“It is a little south of Pesaro. Why?” My expression must have given her all the answer she needed. Leaning forward to close her hand over mine where they lay knotted in my lap she said, “I’m sorry, Violante. It doesn’t look as though he will be coming this way again soon, whatever he said to you.”

“Then I must write and tell him about the baby.” I must look forward, not back.

“No,” said madonna quickly, “let me do that. It will carry more authority, coming from me. He will not think you are trying to deceive him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Women do. He is wealthy and powerful, and because he can be gentle and charming when he pleases, they think they can make him believe sentimental lies. They think they know him. Do not make that mistake, Violante. You might make him a lifetime’s study and you would not know him.”

She had hit near enough the mark to embarrass me. A flush began in my cheeks but seemed to grow and spread until I felt as though a brazier had been lit in my belly. Mindful of Donna Lucrezia’s instructions, I shifted my stool back from the fire. “But you will tell him soon, madonna? I would not wish my condition to become known and my baby’s parentage remain unacknowledged.”

“When the time is right, I promise. Do not worry. Your child carries my blood too, remember. I will see it properly cared for. On that you have my word.”

“Thank you, madonna.”

“You may go. I will rest now. We have a long evening ahead of us at the Roverella ball, and I have promised the volta to Ferrante. He tells me Roverella’s musicians have practised nothing else for a week so it will not do if I am too tired to perform it.” I was relieved to hear her say she would dance with Ferrante, for I felt he had been out of favour somewhat since Catherinella’s death, almost as if Don Alfonso knew…

It was a season of balls. Almost every night, it seemed, we gathered in the castle courtyard after supper to walk or ride to the home of one of Ferrara’s foremost citizens to dance and listen to intermezzi and eat fairy palaces made of spun sugar and almond paste. It was nearly a year, now, since madonna’s marriage to Don Alfonso and the initial coolness of Ferrarese society had been replaced by, if not affection for their new duchess, at least a cautious acceptance of her. The dour Castello Estense had fallen prey to no orgies, there had been no poisonings or bodies found floating in the moat, nothing more sensational, in fact, than some redecoration and re-arrangement of the gardens. Glancing over their shoulders at the plight of the Duke of Urbino, still in exile in Mantua, some of the Ferrarese quietly thanked God for Donna Lucrezia, who stood between them and Duke Valentino a good deal more effectively than their old city walls which would have been no match for his French artillery.

Some days after Epiphany, Ercole Strozzi gave a ball in Donna Lucrezia’s honour. Though Strozzi’s family, who were successful bankers, moved in the highest society of Ferrara, Ercole himself, being a poet and a man famed for intense and hopeless love affairs, was different. As Donna Lucrezia put it when she received his invitation, “at least in that house we shall be treated as guests rather than entertainers.” Strozzi was attached to madonna more for herself than who she was. They shared a passion for poetry and extravagant clothes, and each carried a colourful past in their wake like the train of a magic cloak; the truth of each was largely invisible to anyone outside the charmed circle they had drawn around themselves.

I should have been looking forward to the Strozzi ball but I could not rid myself of a nagging discontent. None of my clothes fitted properly any more, yet I must appear corseted as usual as madonna did not yet wish my condition to be known. As far as I knew, she had made no move to tell Cesare and no doubt felt he should know before anybody else. I could understand her delay; we had had no further word from him since his Delphic note about da Lorqua and his march on Senigallia. But I was anxious. If he were in danger, if he were at risk of his life, I wanted him to know about the child in case…before…but I could not put my fears into words. If madonna were serenely concerned with no more than which shoes would look best with her white tabi
ballgown, and how soon the yellow velvet would arrive from Venice to make up the tabards she had promised for Cesare’s lutenists, I could only follow her lead and keep my worries to myself.

I missed him. Whatever the feelings proper to my condition, I wanted him. His seed was growing in my womb, yet he had left an ache of emptiness inside me that the physical changes in my body seemed to make only more acute. Madonna recommended a paste of fig kernels mixed with oil to soothe the tenderness in my breasts, but when I applied it I felt only a longing for the balm of my lover’s tongue circling my nipples. Angela said I should also anoint my women’s parts regularly with oil, for this would make the delivery easier and ensure they did not remain stretched afterwards. Men, she said, might enjoy a moment’s sentimentality about the birth of a baby, but it could quickly turn to resentment if it led to a dulling of their pleasure. I could not apply the oil without succumbing to the ecstasy of my memories of Cesare’s touch, and then I feared the child would be tainted by my lust and arrive in the world already sick with love.

So, although the night sky was thick with stars and the light from our torches sparkled on a crust of ice over fresh snow as we crunched up the long carriage drive to Strozzi’s house, and ice broke from the frozen fountain with the tinkle of fairy laughter, I felt out of sorts and irritable. My corset dug into the pads of flesh which had developed just below my armpits and chafed the welts already there from the day before and, despite the cold, my feet had swollen so my shoes pinched my toes as much as the frost did. When madonna was pregnant, I thought savagely, she would have had herself carried this distance. She would not have walked as I was obliged to, every step jarring my aching back and sore breasts. It would serve her right if I miscarried and Cesare was angry with her.

Yet she had lent me a sapphire diadem, which matched my eyes, she said, to complement my sleeves slashed with blue satin. And she had made me raspberry leaf tea with her own hands after the evening meal. My foul temper was graceless and unjustified. Oh, if only Cesare were here, everything would be all right. He would work his enchantment and I would be floating over the snow instead of trudging through it. But I would be forced to watch him dance with other girls while I sat aside among the matrons and granddams and flat chested little girls. Watch him smile and flirt and juggle their hearts like a masked mountebank. If only he would send word he was safe. That would be enough.

After the first intermezzo, Strozzi himself passed the flame to madonna to begin the torch dance. Dutifully, she executed the opening steps then carried her light to Don Alfonso.

“No surprises there then,” remarked our host, easing himself into a chair at my side. He propped his crutch between us and began to massage his stiff knee. “Damn cold. I should go and live in the south. Or Outremer, perhaps. What do you think, Monna Violante?”

“I think we would all miss you very much if you left Ferrara, Ser Ercole.”

“Nonsense. Your mistress is the very image of uxoriousness. See now, how she whispers sweet nothings in Don Alfonso’s ear.”

“I expect she is telling him to be sure and choose Donna Angela next, so she can hold the torch for Don Giulio.”

“I hope so. Those two make a fine couple on the dance floor, though I doubt the Cardinal would agree with me.” He paused as we both glanced in the direction of Ippolito, conspicuous in his scarlet and the air of isolation surrounding him, even though he was locked deep in a game of dice with the Hungarian ambassador. “But speaking of fine couples,” Strozzi resumed, “are you not dancing? Should I flatter myself you are staying out to keep an old cripple company?” He gave me a questioning look, although I am certain he had already guessed why I was not dancing and sought merely to confirm his suspicion. Strozzi was like that, quick to solve a mystery but quite unable to leave it alone if it had potential for creating gossip.

“I do not know the Spanish steps, sir.”

“Strange. And you the chosen dancing partner of Valentino by all accounts.”

“He is a good leader. One does not need to know the steps to follow him.”

Strozzi laughed, slapped his thigh, and winced as one of his rings struck the weak knee. “I like you, Violante, I like you very much. But I must deprive myself of your company now, for there is someone here who wishes to meet you.”

My heart rocked on its moorings. For one second I thought, it’s him; they are playing a trick on me. I looked up, expecting a tall figure in black, wearing a mask, feathered and jewelled, wearing a white smile and a beard the colour of blood and sunlight. I saw a man of middle years, powerfully built, with the broad shoulders and squat stature which marked out the men of the Padano. He was prosperously dressed, his knee-length gown of sober blue velvet trimmed with sable and his cap set with a substantial pearl.

“Monna Violante, allow me to present Ser Taddeo di Occhiobello.”

I held out my hand. Taddeo di Occhiobello bowed over it. His eyes were not beautiful; they were small and shrewd and coloured the greenish brown of an under-ripe chestnut. He was, perhaps, the age of my father. Without a word being said, I knew exactly why he desired to meet me, and the knowledge seemed to shrivel me. My tongue stuck to the roof of my dry mouth; my lips felt as though they would crack if I smiled. My hand, in Ser Taddeo’s, was a winter leaf. I looked for Strozzi, hoping for some witticism to carry me over this impossible barrier, but he had melted away among the crowd gathered around the dancers and now, to an audible intake of breath from their audience, and even applause from some who had left their inhibitions at the bottom of a wine jug, Giulio and Angela took to the floor.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” I could not help myself. Like everyone else I was swept into the race of their passion. So close they danced that Angela seemed to have stepped right inside the filigree of fire made by Giulio’s swooping, circling torch. She moved like a flame herself, sinuous, effortless, so perfectly in time with the music you could not hear the beat of her footsteps and she seemed to be dancing above the ground, on an invisible cushion of desire. Then their figure ended, and Giulio spun her off into a knot of young women simpering and giggling among their chaperones like a flock of chickens behind a fence. He handed the torch to Fidelma, who held it stiff and straight in front of her as she plodded through the steps on her great, flat feet, and Giulio became like water flowing around a rock. Only then did I realise I had been holding my breath; only when I began to relax did I feel the ache in my shoulders which had been tensed as if for flight.

I turned to Ser Taddeo. “Forgive me. I am very fond of dancing but I have…sprained my ankle. It is most frustrating.”

“I am not much of a dancer myself,” he replied. He sounded defensive, prickly. I became aware of Donna Lucrezia’s eyes upon me from the opposite side of the room. Who else was watching me? Cesare had his spies everywhere; probably Donna Lucrezia had not written to him about me because she had no need to; probably the girl who could count to four, and ensured the piles of clean cloths appeared in my clothes chest each week I was due to bleed, was in his pay; possibly even Ser Taddeo, already. I had made my choice when I fell in love with Cesare; there was no other.

“I am sure a man of affairs such as yourself has far more serious things to think about.” I smiled, and my lips did not crack, though perhaps my heart did, a little. He responded to my invitation by telling me he was, indeed, a busy man, dividing his time between his estate on the banks of the Po, where he grew vines and nurtured ponds full of pike, and his duties as secretary to the Savi, the governing council of Ferrara, of which his good friend, Ser Strozzi, was a member. He was, he was quick to inform me, a widower with three grown children, a daughter of twenty years and two younger sons. The youngest of these enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal Ippolito and was destined for a career in the Church.