Sins of the House of Borgia (39 page)

“Let me have him,” I pleaded. “I think he must be hungry.”

As I put him to my breast and felt the sturdy pull of his mouth on my nipple, a kind of calm strength spread through me, a rich sense of well-being that banished the griping in my belly and the discomfort of the bloody cloths wadded between my thighs. Bending to kiss his fuzzy scalp, I was overwhelmed by the miracle of his existence. Gazing into his unblinking eyes I wondered what thoughts he had brought with him from the dark waters of the womb, and if they were mine, or Cesare’s, or all his own.

***

An outbreak of fever in the town made madonna determined Girolamo should be baptised immediately, long before my churching. As I would be unable to attend the ceremony, it became even more important to me to choose the right man to stand as his other godfather, and I wanted to choose Ferrante. Yet, since the death of Catherinella, I had found it difficult to be in his company. His presence was like my guilty conscience made flesh, and it soured my precious memories of Cesare, but I knew what he had done had shown the kind of courage and compassion I would wish for my son and could not, apparently, find within myself. I wanted Girolamo’s new life to atone for the cutting off of Catherinella’s.

Ferrante was not permitted to visit me during my confinement as he was not a relation, though he did send presents, a tiny taffeta cap and mantle for Girolamo, sunshine yellow with deep scarlet fringes, and a porcelain box of sugar-coated sweets and
pane bianchi
to help me build up my strength. I tried to write to him, but each time I tried to put pen to paper, the lines on the page seemed to transform themselves into the tattooed circles on Catherinella’s cheeks. Then I would find myself in tears, my tears dropping on to the page and smudging out my words.

Of the men at court, only Taddeo, as my betrothed husband, was allowed into the lying-in chamber. So, in the end, I asked him to be Girolamo’s other godfather. He blushed with pleasure, and could not look me in the eye, and stretched his mouth in the smile of a foolish suitor as he agreed, but I was not deluded. I saw where his gaze alighted as he told me how honoured he was and how this would cement his bond with my son and how he would be a father to him in all but blood.

Earlier that same day, a boat had arrived from Cesenatico. It had taken six mules to carry its cargo from the dock to the castle, so Angela told me, her tone mixed between excitement, teasing, and a kind of wary admiration. All this cargo was destined for me, or rather, Girolamo and me, and came under the supervision of a steward of Cesare’s household. My already cluttered room was now piled high with his gifts and I sat in my bed, with my infant in my arms, as though I were presiding over some Turkish bazaar.

There were lengths of fabrics of all kinds, from Egyptian cotton and Brussels lace for swaddling bands to heavy, figured velvets and brocades to make fitting gowns for the mother of the Duke of Romagna’s heir. Folded beside his crib were hangings of white damask, embroidered in gold with the signs of the zodiac, waiting to be pinned to the newell posts. A set of silver spoons sprouted from an ivory and enamel
cuchiaiera.
Standing in a corner of the room, hemmed in by a wooden fort festooned with tiny flags bearing Cesare’s arms, was a flautist in his master’s red and gold quartered livery. He seemed to speak no Italian. I think he was French, or possibly from somewhere in the Empire, but by means of signs he gave me to understand he was charged with playing the baby to sleep.

Gold coins were scattered over my bed like a map of Cesare’s campaigns, Venetian ducats and Medici florins,
louis d’or
and Spanish
doblons
, coins from the mints of Urbino and Pesaro and some bearing Saint Peter’s keys. They fascinated Girolamo, who gazed without blinking at the pattern of bright discs on my crimson coverlet. Taddeo stared at them too, as he helped himself to Ferrante’s sweets. “I think we shall be content,” he said.

“I’m sure we shall, my dear, but now, if you will forgive me, Girolamo will soon need feeding.”

There was a letter to accompany the gifts from Cesenatico, which I had tucked under my pillows, and I ached in my bones to read it. As soon as Taddeo had made his farewells, and edged out of the room around the bolts of cloth and boxes of perfumed wax, I drew it out and tore open the seal.

The hand was not Cesare’s own but that of his secretary, Agapito.

To the worthy and virtuous Monna Violante,
the letter began, and I blushed fiercely to think how the secretary and his lord might have sniggered at the choice of address. I read on with a chill in my heart, as though all the warm blood in my body had rushed into my cheeks.

We offer our most hearty congratulations and thankful prayers on the safe delivery of your son… “
Your” son, he had written; not “our” son, not “my” son, but “your” son. Well, he was just being cautious, choosing his words with half a mind to the powerful interests of his wife’s family. Surely the extravagance of his gifts proved he acknowledged Girolamo as his, even if he thought it wiser not to say so. I scanned the lines hungrily for some sign, some coded phrase that would make his pride and pleasure and love plain to me.

There was nothing, a mere half page of formal platitudes concluding with his official signature,
Dux Valentinus
. Struggling against the weight of a sudden, awful loneliness, I left my bed, crossed the room to the fire, and flung the letter into it. I watched the wax seal bubble and smoke, the bull and the keys and the lilies melt away. Very well, I thought, very well. It is just Girolamo and me, then, Girolamo and me against the world.

***

“Lucrezia tells me she is thinking about your wedding.” Angela lay beside me reading her letter as I suckled Girolamo. I seemed to spend most of my time with him either latched to my breast or stretched across my knees for winding. He was a very hungry child. Like his father, madonna said, and I clung to her remark. However cold Cesare had become towards me, at least he had not denied Girolamo’s parentage to his sister. “She wants you married and back at court. She misses you and your…special services.”

“You mean my courier services. We can speak freely here, Angela. We are in the outer reaches of the universe.”

We were at Taddeo’s house in Occhiobello, a full day’s journey from Ferrara for a new mother and her child travelling in a litter. The August afternoon was hot, and we had taken ourselves into the shade of a walled orchard which grew on the north side of the house, facing away from the river and the miasma which hovered over its sluggish waters. Bees droned and a fountain splashed in the formal garden on the other side of the brick walls. We had spread an old rug and sprawled on it to enjoy a picnic of strawberries and frascati wine cold from the cellar. Angela had stripped to her chemise, and I had unbound Girolamo from his clouts and swaddling bands so he could kick and wave his arms freely. I had no fear for the straightness of his limbs. He was quickly becoming sturdy and was, to my eye at least, as beautifully made as his father.

Donna Lucrezia had persuaded Angela to accompany me to my new home because, she said, it would add weight to the argument she intended to put to Duke Ercole in favour of a marriage between her cousin and Giulio if Angela could be seen to be capable of demure conduct and restraint, and loyalty to her friend. Besides, the duke was sending Giulio on a mission to Venice to try to woo the fashionable singer, Gian de Artigianova, away from service with the doge.

As I transferred Girolamo to my other breast, Angela sat up and kissed my cheek.

“What was that for?”

“Because you look so beautiful. It suits you, all this—babies, the country. I begin to believe you might be happy.” In the absence of Giulio, and with Taddeo gone for much of every day on estate business, Angela and I had resumed much of our old intimacy. “Cousin Cesare will be well pleased with you.”

“Oh, I don’t think he will care much either way.” I had not believed I could say such words and yet, there they hung, in the air between us, among the butterflies and dancing dust motes, and I was no different, just in a different place upon the road. “He does not acknowledge Girolamo, you know.”

“Not in so many words, perhaps. That is not his way. He does strange, reckless things, but deep down he’s as cautious and wily as any Catalan peasant, just like Uncle Rodrigo. He never makes a bet without hedging it.”

“I suppose.” I had reached the same conclusion myself, but still the fear lingered that he did not believe Girolamo was his child and I was loathe to let it go because it might yet serve to cushion me against any more disappointments. I could not afford to think well of Cesare; I could not waste my store of love on him now I had my child to think of.

“What presents do you think Giulio will bring me back from Venice? I asked only for a box of vanilla wax for I know he was snowed under with demands from Lucrezia and tips on where best to buy from Strozzi. But he will bring more, surely.”

I laughed, but she was serious. Though Cesare’s gifts proved nothing to me, Giulio’s were everything to Angela because they were honestly given.

“Oh Violante, I wish we could have been married before he went, then we could have had our honeymoon in Venice. Wouldn’t that be grand? I long to go there.”

“We will. Madonna says we all will, in the autumn, because Don Alfonso wishes her to accompany him there. I expect by then you and Giulio will be married, so you will get your honeymoon.” I winded Girolamo and lay him on the rug to sleep. He grizzled a bit, until Angela tickled his belly with a feather and made him laugh. Then Angela turned the feather on me, tracing a fine line down my throat and between my breasts, staying my hands as I attempted to refasten my bodice. I put my arms around her and kissed her mouth and could make believe, with my vision blurred by closeness, that her fair, fine-boned face was that of my lover.

***

We were still lying on the rug, drowsing in one another’s arms, Girolamo asleep at my side, when I heard Taddeo calling my name. Lifting Angela’s arm from across my shoulder, I struggled to my feet, straightening my clothes and smoothing my hair out of my eyes. Angela mumbled something, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

“Get up,” I hissed, picking up her bodice and throwing it at her. “Taddeo’s back.” Girolamo began to whimper as Angela sat up, rubbing her eyes. She took the baby in her lap and began to dress him. He always resisted swaddling, and his whimpers soon turned to a fully fledged bawling.

“Give him to me. You’d better make yourself decent.” Our eyes met and we giggled like a couple of schoolgirls caught out in a prank.

“Here you are.” I could see Taddeo was trying to smile at the image I presented with my loose hair and dishevelled clothes and my naked baby in my arms. The pastoral Madonna. But he seemed unable to arrange his features quite right. His mouth stretched more in a grimace than a smile. He would neither hold my gaze nor look directly at Angela. With a sudden, furious flushing of my face and neck, I wondered if he had been in the orchard longer than we thought, if he had seen Angela and I together. Well, it was not a sin; only between men could such a thing be sinful because women had no bodily means of penetration. I tilted my chin defiantly.

“We have been picnicking,” I told him. “Would you like a cup of wine?”

“What..? No…I…I have news.” His tone filled me with foreboding. His words fell like drops of ice water into the drowsy heat of the afternoon. Angela finished lacing her bodice and stood up and stepped into her skirt. I held Girolamo against my chest, like a shield.

“You will have to go. Both of you. Immediately. The pope is dead,” Taddeo blurted out.

“Uncle Rodrigo? He can’t be,” said Angela, but of course he could be. He was more than seventy years of age. Angela began to shake; her fingers fumbled at the laces of her skirt. Low, keening sobs forced themselves down her nose, between her compressed lips, then she opened her mouth and started to scream. I tried to put my hand on her shoulder to calm her, but Girolamo was squirming and crying so hard I needed both arms to prevent him slipping from my grasp. Above the noise I scarcely heard Taddeo’s next remark.

“Poison,” he said. “They say the duke will die too.”

“The duke? You mean..?” My brain felt slow and sodden, like a wet sponge. It absorbed his words but could make no sense of them.

“Cesare,” said Taddeo, coughing with embarrassment at his unaccustomed use of Cesare’s given name. “He is probably dead already.”

I clutched my baby so fiercely I fancied the tiny cage of his ribs might fuse to the curve of my clawed hands. He gasped and fell abruptly silent. I braced myself for the onslaught of grief, but it did not come. Instead I felt angry, a cold, clear-headed fury which both urged me to hit Taddeo and cautioned me this was not my best course of action. “He is not dead. I would know if he were dead. He is not going to die.”

Perhaps infected by my own ruthless calm, Taddeo finally managed to look me in the eye. “As far as you and I are concerned, madam, he might as well be dead. What power is left him without his father? How long before those he usurped come creeping back into their cities and he is flung into the Tiber one dark night like so much rubbish? Or his brother Gandia?”

“You would be well advised to take back those words if you don’t want to wind up drowned yourself, sir. My lord’s eyes and ears are everywhere.” Angela, a Borgia from her dark red hair to her toes which curled in on themselves because she favoured sharp-pointed shoes, squared her shoulders and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “As are those who love him,” she added, putting an arm around my waist and fixing Taddeo with a look of grim impassivity which made me think of how Cesare might have looked as he listened at the door to the upstairs dining room in Senigallia.