Sins of the House of Borgia (35 page)

“No one.”

Angela looked briefly puzzled, then gave a shout of laughter as revelation dawned. “I know that hand,” she said, “it’s Bembo’s. Nicola. Of course. He has a favourite sister or cousin or…God, could be his housekeeper. Anyway, I know there’s a Nicola in his life. It’s a
nom de guerre
, isn’t it? That’s why Lucrezia’s prowling about like a cat on hot bricks. It’s nothing to do with you having a miscarriage; it’s that letter. From Bembo. To her.”

“Bembo and madonna?”

“Of course. It’s no surprise really; she’s been going on about his pretty mouth and beautifully rounded vowels ever since Strozzi’s party. If you weren’t so wrapped up in your own affairs you’d have noticed.”

Angela could talk, I thought. She had not spent a night in her own bed for weeks. “If you were ever here we might have talked about it.”

“Violante,” she sat back on her heels, her wide, grey eyes fixed on mine, “if Cesare were here, living in a palace half a mile up the road, alone, and he wanted you, how many nights would you sleep in this room? What is it about people in love that they always think they’re the only ones? Darling, it’s not that I don’t understand, probably more that I understand only too well. I don’t crow over your pain; so don’t you deny me my pleasure.”

“Sorry. I just feel in limbo, you know, waiting. For the baby. For her to tell Cesare so everything can be out in the open. As things stand, everyone knows it’s Cesare’s child, yet everyone pretends they think it’s Taddeo’s and he and I have to play up to the improbable notion that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other until after the marriage. And when will that be? He won’t even commit himself to a betrothal ring until he sees what Cesare is going to do for the child and how it might benefit him.”

“She should have told him by now.”

“Can you speak to her?”

“Not about that. No one can ever speak to either of those two about the other. You know how they are. They play by their own rules.”

“I hate your family. One minute you’re all smiles, including everybody, the next, up go the shutters and no one’s good enough.”

“Aren’t all families like that?”

“How would I know? Mine bartered me away. I was just part of the package my father put together to help your Uncle Rodrigo buy Saint Peter’s keys.”

“And has it never occurred to you that Lucrezia, and I, even Cesare, were also part of that package? Though perhaps, since Senigallia, Cesare has enough credit to pay the piper himself.” We remained for a moment in silence, each thinking her own thoughts, then Angela said, “Come on, let’s not argue. If you want to continue in Lucrezia’s favour, you had better deliver that letter, or baby or no baby, you will find yourself banished to Occhiobello with no one but Ser Taddeo’s prize pike to talk to.” She rose and gave me her arm to help me to my feet.

“Fidelma saw me collect it; I’m sure of it. That’s why I brought it in here. To hide it until I could find a better time.”

“Give it to me. She has a jewel case with a false bottom. We’ve used it before.”

“Before?” I was surprised. Donna Lucrezia somehow gave the impression of having a constant heart, but she was a good actress. She had to be.

“Lucrezia has always had lovers, you silly goose. This is nothing new. I’m only surprised it’s taken her so long to choose someone. It’s the longest she’s been faithful to anyone except poor little Bisceglie.”

***

The following week, Donna Isabella arrived from Mantua, plunging our household into a chaos mirrored by the city’s preparations for Carnival. Donna Isabella and her retinue occupied Duke Ercole’s apartments in the old palace, the duke moved into Don Alfonso’s rooms, and Alfonso went to stay in a hunting lodge in the Barco which belonged to Ippolito, who was in Rome. With Cesare, perhaps.

Except for Donna Isabella’s old Spanish duenna, who had been with her since she was a child growing up in the Castel Estense, none of her Mantuan staff knew where anything was and were perpetually getting lost; if Donna Isabella wanted hot water, it would be cold by the time it reached her; if she asked for candied lemons she might well be offered writing paper by some bewildered maid who feared to return from a mission empty-handed. In this topsy turvy atmosphere, nobody noticed my furtive trips to the bathhouse to meet Ercole Strozzi beneath the Judas tree.

Whatever Bembo wrote in his letters to madonna, it seemed to please her. I had never known her so light-hearted and girlish, though Angela said this was the truest she had been to her real self since her return from her self-imposed exile at Nepi and the announcement of her betrothal to Don Alfonso. Her energy seemed inexhaustible. This year she did not merely watch the Battle of the Eggs from the loggia over the palace gate, but went down among the crowd, cloaked and masked, and joined in. She took to rising early to go hunting with the men, riding out among her hounds and falconers while the morning mist still clung to the bases of trees and scenting was at its best. Every evening she devised entertainments for Donna Isabella. She choreographed wild Spanish dances with castanets and tambourines, in which she and Angela were the principal performers, tossing their long, loose hair and drumming their heels like gypsies.

Donna Isabella lacked the agility to do more than spectate at these events. She was a poor horsewoman and too heavy to dance well, and even if the Duchess of Ferrara was content to have her cloak pelted with eggs and her fine, kidskin boots caked in mud and horse shit, the Marchioness of Mantua had her dignity to think of. I kept her company when she was not with her father, or making visits to the homes of her friends in Ferrara. She talked incessantly of the betrothal of her son, Federigo, to Cesare’s daughter, Luisa. I wondered if she feared he might have greater ambitions for Luisa since the success of Senigallia. I wondered if she knew he was the father of my child also. It was impossible to tell with Donna Isabella; picking out what was important in her conversation was like looking for a safe channel in a perilous stream. She could shift from the balance of power between France and Spain, to the uses of allegory in painting, to how I could best impose my authority on Ser Taddeo’s household when I married, to the latest fashions in Milan, without drawing breath.

One morning, when I had been accompanying her on a walk through the rose garden which had been planted by her mother and was now in Donna Lucrezia’s care, she broke off in the middle of a tirade about greenfly to ask me what had happened to the black slave.

“Which black slave?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“The one your mistress brought from Rome, of course. Surely she cannot have sold her or exchanged her for this.” She gestured behind her, at the sallow, sharp-boned Dalmatian, who was following us with an armful of rugs. “She told me once how attached she was to the girl. A gift from her last husband, I believe.”

I had not known this before. “She died, alas,” I said, hoping Donna Isabella would not ask me how.

“What a shame. She was so striking, such a dense, shiny black. I was going to ask Lucrezia to lend her to me to model for the servant in a
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
I am commissioning from Squarcione.”

“I am sorry, madonna.” Her voice was like a wire passing through my brain from ear to ear. What does it matter, I wanted to ask, what difference is there to you between a Jew and a black? What is this false hierarchy you have set up to make Judith into one of your own, a great lady with lapdogs and slaves and her lover’s head in a silk purse?

“No matter. It happens all the time. They look strong then succumb to the merest sniffle. It all goes to prove we are the superior race. Now tell me, who will win the Battagliuola this year?”

“Madonna says the Ferrarese, Don Alfonso the papal force.”

“Ah, they are being kind to one another. Tell me who you think will win?”

“The side whose mothers get to market earliest, madonna, and buy up the biggest vegetables.”

The Battagliuola was an uproarious affair in which teams of children fought one another in the Campo Franco beside the convent of Corpus Domini with fruit and vegetables fired from slings. It commemorated an ancient victory of the Este over a papal army. For Donna Lucrezia, it was a point of honour that she should attend, so the people could see she was an Este now and owed her allegiance to Ferrara, not Rome.

We walked the short distance from the castle, Donna Lucrezia and Don Alfonso arm in arm at our head, servants following behind with chairs and rugs and braziers and two chests containing prizes for the winners and runners up. With the heir to the duchy now married to the pope’s daughter, there could be no losers. Don Giulio, masked as Spavente, his black ostrich feathers bobbing tall above his blond head, walked beside Angela in the guise of Columbine.

“I wish you could have seen the masks I sent to dear Cesare,” remarked Donna Isabella, more to Ser Taddeo than to me, I supposed, as I had heard them described in minute detail several times already. “The gold and silver particularly. The young sculptor who did them for me is a marvel, such a find. He understands just what I mean when I say all art must have a beautiful meaning.” Her voice was muffled by her own mask of black velvet trimmed with ermine tails which bobbed either side of her plump cheeks as she walked.

Ser Taddeo gave the smile of a benevolent lion. “Doubtless he was grateful to find so sensitive and understanding a patron, madonna,” he said. Donna Isabella lifted her chin, and her shoulders settled into an attitude of great self-satisfaction.

As we waited in the square for our chairs to be set up, and a servant went round with jugs of hot, spiced wine and little cakes, Ser Taddeo asked her for the man’s name. “I am such a poor suitor,” he said. “I have not even given my intended a betrothal ring yet. He sounds like just the man for the job, to invest our marriage with a beautiful meaning.” He squeezed my elbow.

Had madonna finally told Cesare about the baby, then? Had she heard from him? His intentions towards the child? There must be a letter for me.

“He is called Gideon. Gideon da Quieto d’Arzenta.”

There must be. Cesare would not let such news go unacknowledged.

“That is my brother, madonna.” Who was speaking? Whose brother? The wine. It was too strong.

A sudden shriek from Donna Isabella brought me to my senses. Donna Isabella was embracing Fidelma. She looked like a great spinnaker sail draped around Fidelma’s mast-like straightness.

“Gideon is your brother!” exclaimed Donna Isabella, her voice soaring to such a pitch on the word brother that people stopped what they were doing and turned towards her.

“Yes, madonna,” said Fidelma, staggering discreetly beneath Donna Isabella’s weight. “Before I came to Christ I was Juditha da Quieto d’Arzenta.”

It was the first time I had ever heard Fidelma make reference to her family or her life before her conversion. I remembered the bargain she had struck with her father, and thought her well named, for she was faithful. She did not break her promises. A gust of wind blew dust into my eyes and made them water. My baby kicked and somersaulted as though he wished he could join the excited combatants, now jostling around men in the papal and Este liveries who were handing out ammunition and last-minute tactical advice. What would he be, I wondered, pressing my hands to my belly to calm him, this child of the oath breaker and the victor of Senigallia?

“Oh look,” said Taddeo, pointing towards the ducal party who were arranging themselves in the chairs set up by the servants. “There’s our poet.” It was a gallant conceit of Taddeo’s to refer to Bembo as “our poet,” because his recital at Strozzi’s party had been the occasion of our first meeting. I looked. Bembo, conspicuous in his scholar’s black, was making his way directly towards Donna Lucrezia. I glanced around for Strozzi, who was nowhere to be seen, but I did intercept a hard look from Donna Isabella, who had disengaged herself from Fidelma and was watching the poet’s progress across the crowded square with as close concentration as if she had placed a bet on the time of his arrival.

“Excuse me, messer,” I said to Taddeo. “I must make sure they give madonna the right cushions. She is a martyr to her back since her miscarriage last summer.”

Just as Pythagoras tells us, two straight lines moving towards one another must intersect at an apex. Using my great belly to forge a path through the melee of shrieking children and their scolding mothers, piles of wizened winter oranges and misshapen parsnips, and servants clustered around the braziers they had set up to mull wine and roast chestnuts, I managed to cut off Bembo a few feet from madonna’s chair.

“Monna Violante.” He bowed, and as he straightened up I saw he was blushing. So he knew, then, that I was the letter bearer. “I was just…The duchess asked me to declaim a eulogy for the winners.” He withdrew a folded parchment from a satchel he had fastened across his chest like an arquebusier’s ammunition belt.

I had not got my breath back enough to speak before Donna Lucrezia exclaimed from behind me, “Ah, Messer Pietro, there you are at last. I had begun to think we must start without you.”

Bembo craned his neck to see her around my bulk. “I am guilty of leaving your commission to the last minute, duchesa. Forgive me. Perhaps you would like to cast your eye over the work, to make sure it meets with your approval.”

I glanced behind me to see her reaction. Don Alfonso looked interested, but madonna made a dismissive gesture with one gloved hand. At the same time, I was aware out of the corner of my eye of Bembo thrusting the parchment towards me with some insistence. I took it. Only then did I realise a second parchment was tucked inside the folds of the first. What was I to do? Don Alfonso was already reaching out his hand to take the verses from me. In my haste to prevent him, I lunged for the parchments and they slipped from my grasp. Unable to bend and pick them up, I stared in horror at the corner of the secret enclosure poking out from the folds of its outer wrapping. Bembo stooped swiftly to rescue them, but not as quickly as Vittorio, whom I had not noticed until now.