Sins of the House of Borgia (5 page)

Was Papa right to say she would have approved of what I was doing, or had he lied to convince me? Or perhaps never understood his wife? Well, it was too late now for such speculations. Tomorrow, at morning Mass, the daughter of the pope would take my bird-boned hand in her plump one and lead me into subjection to her father. Tomorrow, Donna Lucrezia would become my mother in the sight of God. I would be washed clean of my sins and the sins of my people; I would become a
tabula rasa
.

As I was about to begin changing, a gentle, almost shy knock came at my door.

“Who is it?”

“Papa.”

“Come in. I was just…getting changed,” I finished lamely, seeing his expression as he took in the sight of his daughter in her baptismal gown.

“I…er…,” he cleared his throat, “have to dine out this evening, with Fugger’s man. Something to do with rising port duties on pepper coming into Venice. Important, when you think how much pepper we consume. I shall be back late, I expect.”

“You can wake me.” We both knew it would be a long time until we saw one another again. He and my brothers could not come to the church tomorrow, nor could they make social calls to Santa Maria in Portico, and I had no idea how much time or liberty my new duties would leave me, if any.

“I’d rather not.” Coming towards me, he placed his great hands on my shoulders. “You’ll want to look your best tomorrow, no rings under your eyes.”

“It’s not…” my wedding, I almost said.

“It’s good that Donna Lucrezia favours you so. Good for your future. Your mother would be so proud,” he finished, all in a rush as though plunging into a cold bath or swallowing bitter medicine, and before I could reply he had turned on his heel and was gone, leaving nothing behind but a light scent of the ambergris he used to keep his beard glossy.

I took off my christening garments and laid them on top of the travel chest which would be carried in the morning to the palace of Santa Maria. It was a fine chest, new for the occasion, covered with red Spanish leather and bound with brass. It contained special, cedar-lined compartments for small linen, hair brushes, girdles and shoes, and two trays for gowns. Somewhere in this mix of practical planning and careful craftsmanship lay the soul of Donata Spagnola.

***

Christian baptism is a strange rite. We Jews place a great emphasis on food in the celebration of our faith. We eat our roast lamb with garlic and rosemary and
matzoh
cakes at Passover, our red eggs and saffron rice on the eve of Shabbat and—my favourite, these, because of their association with Queen Esther—the syrupy
orejas de Haman
at Purim, their sweetness almost unbearably intense after the three days of fasting. But we do know they are simply made of dough, rolled and curled to resemble a human ear; we do not believe they are somehow magically transformed into Haman’s ears as we eat them. How many ears can one man have, even if he is the most devious and scheming of courtiers who ever listened outside a king’s chamber?

Yet here I was, dizzy from the thick scent of incense and the sickly soprano voices of the boy choristers, washed, oiled, and salted as though ready for the spit. Garish, bleeding saints were everywhere, on walls and ceilings, atop plinths or looming from alcoves. Kneeling before the altar, flanked by Donna Lucrezia and a bishop whose name I cannot now remember, acting as proxy for my other sponsor, Donna Lucrezia’s brother-in-law, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, I was now expected to consume bread and wine and believe they had been transformed into the body and blood of Christ by some sleight of hand of the priest. I, a Jewess, who had only ever consumed flesh from which all the blood had been washed, who was forbidden even to eat an egg which had blood spots in it. I prayed, not for the Holy Spirit, but that my throat would not contract and cause me to choke.

It was a morning of driving rain and bitter wind, so Cardinal Vera, who was to preside over the service, was content for the ceremony to be held inside the church door rather than outside as laid down. Perhaps that is why the Holy Spirit decided to stay away. Once the Cardinal had pronounced the exorcism and placed the veil on my head, all I knew as I approached the altar, Donna Lucrezia and the nameless bishop each holding me by the hand, was that the salt on my tongue was making my stomach cry out for its breakfast. Water dripped from the ends of my loose hair, soaking through my clothes on to the backs of my thighs. I shivered. Donna Lucrezia squeezed my hand and smiled in the direction of the altar; perhaps she thought my shivering was a sign of divine intervention, the wings of the dove fluttering across my skin.

I knelt, on a white silk cushion. I recited the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, then Cardinal Vera himself, the cords in his weathered neck reminding me of well-hung venison, administered the Sacrament. Bread and wine I told myself, just bread and wine, and neither of them very good at that, as I swallowed the little disc which tasted like paper and the wine which left a fiery aftertaste in my throat. How did Donna Lucrezia manage this every morning on an empty stomach? I wondered. I glanced at her, kneeling beside me, head bowed, lips moving in silent and seemingly impassioned prayer, then took my cue from her to rise and process back towards the door as the clergy pronounced various blessings and graces.

I noticed Battista Farignola and Isotta de Mantova among the congregation, but they were too busy trying to catch the eye of a group of fashionably dressed young men lounging against a pillar and chatting in loud whispers to return my smile. This seemed to me to be thrillingly wicked. At synagogue, girls and boys only met after the services, under the watchful, calculating eyes of parents and matchmakers. The Christians, however, appeared to think nothing of the sexes mingling in church, so whole courtships of looks and gestures, of fans fluttered and kisses blown, could take place over the bowed heads of devout patriarchs and their pious spouses. If they thought Eve was the mother of all sin, they had only themselves to blame.

I also could not help but notice Giulia Farnese. She was the loveliest woman I had ever seen, with her eyes as warm as roast sugar and her honey coloured hair twisted with ropes of huge pearls beneath a veil of gold tissue. She held the hand of a plump little boy about four years of age whom I presumed to be her son, Giovanni, known as the Child of Rome though less grandly presumed by most people to be the child of Pope Alexander. He was as plain as his mother was beautiful and his imposing title seemed to sit ill on his round little shoulders. La Bella Giulia inclined her head to me, which caused a flurry among a group of ladies standing behind her, mostly young, with watchful eyes. Only one of them seemed unconcerned with the social adjustments which needed to be made to admit me to the favour of the pope’s mistress. Covering her mouth with a sable muff, she yawned then winked at me. I thought I must be imagining it, but I soon found out I wasn’t.

A reception was to be held for me at the palace. This makes me sound very important but, of course, I was not. That household needed little excuse to throw a party, and it was only a small party, a day meal followed by dancing, to introduce me to the rest of Donna Lucrezia’s ladies, with Giulia Farnese as guest of honour. On my arrival at the palace, the slave, Catherinella, whisked me away through a maze of corridors and showed me into a small room on one of the upper floors.

“You change clothes,” she said, in her slow, precisely enunciated Italian, “I help you.”

My travelling trunk stood at the foot of the bed which, along with a nightstand and a simple wooden chair, constituted all the furniture in the room. I saw that it had been opened and my best gown, of dark blue velvet, had been laid out on the bed. Next to it were a
camorra
of a bright, emerald green brocade, lined in silver silk, and a necklace of pearls with a sapphire pendant.

“From my lady,” said Catherinella.

I was as puffed up with pride as a courting dove that Madonna Lucrezia should give me such presents. Surely it was a sign of special favour. I did not realise, then, that among people whose wealth is as fabulous and careless as that of the Borgia family in those years, it is the small presents which count, not the lavish ones. A bracelet of plaited hair, an empty casket which once contained a poem. I was certain that, the moment I entered the salon where the meal was laid, every head would turn and all conversation cease as Donna Lucrezia’s ladies struggled to contain their envy of the new favourite, the rising star, Donata Spagnola arising like the phoenix from the ashes of Esther Sarfati. Oh how thoroughly she was erased, that girl from Toledo on the remote edges of the Christian world, and how thoroughly Roman was Donata in her velvet and pearls.

As it was, only one person detached herself from the peacock throng milling about the room, the girl with the sable muff, a little older than me, I now saw, and unmistakably a Borgia, with the same high-bridged nose and large eyes, slightly too close together, as Donna Lucrezia.

“I’m Angela,” she said, holding out her hand. She had a firm, dry grip and a candid stare. “Lucrezia’s cousin. Well, one of them. There’s Geronima too, but she’s terribly…Spanish. Wears black, always in church, you know the sort. Oh lord, I mean, I’m sorry, you’re Spanish. But then, Jews are Jews, aren’t they? So you’re not really Spanish.”

Not really Jewish either, I thought, trying to feel insulted but disarmed by Angela’s frankness and the warmth of her smile. “Are Catalans really Spanish?” I asked.

“Oh God.”

I winced. How carelessly these Christians invoked the Holy Name.

“We Borgias are something and nothing, really,” Angela went on, and I found myself wondering if Duke Valentino had ever heard her talk this way, and how long her tongue might stay in her head if he did. “The Romans say we’re
marrano
and they’re probably right.”

“Then we’re the same.”

Angela was still holding my hand. Now she pumped it merrily up and down. “And we shall be friends. I’ve arranged for us to share a room. I hope you don’t mind.” I could not say I minded, but it gave me pause. Having no close female relatives, I was unused to sharing a bed. What if Angela snored, or ground her teeth, or kicked out in her sleep? What if I were guilty of any of these?

If Angela noticed my reservations, she certainly did not let them bother her. “Now,” she prattled on, “who is that tall creature admiring her reflection in the silver? One of your friends? Can you perform a
moresca?
My cousin Cesare likes to see ladies dance it rather than gentlemen.
”
Tucking my hand beneath her arm, she kept up her bombardment of questions except when she interrupted herself to introduce me to somebody or pass comment on a hairstyle, or the width of a sleeve, or the heaviness of someone’s makeup. If Angela said we would be friends, I thought, then there seemed to be little point in arguing with her.

Donna Lucrezia sat at the head of the table, with Giulia Farnese to her right and Angela to her left. I sat next to Angela, though the honour of sitting only one place removed from Donna Lucrezia was lost on me now, and I longed to be as far from the high table as possible, with my friends from Santa Clara, where nobody was watching me. No one could eat until we at high table had taken our first mouthful of each dish. There were crayfish; there was veal in a cream sauce and suckling pig stuffed with figs. Repeatedly I reminded myself that it was no longer a sin for me to eat these dishes, but it was as though my body and mind had become disjointed from one another; my brain commanded my body to eat, but my gullet squeezed shut and forbade me to swallow. With the aid of copious swigs of wine, I managed to force down a few mouthfuls, then, glancing down the length of the salon to where Isotta and Battista were seated, saw everything double and realised I must be drunk. I remembered Simeon listing double vision as one of the symptoms.

I longed for water but dare not ask. The liveried pages who stood behind each of us were as stiff and solemn as the effigies on tombs; I could not believe they would deign to hear me even if I could summon the courage to speak. So I drank more wine and, when the meats were cleared and bowls of fruit brought in, accompanied by dishes of sweetened curd cheese, found myself suddenly ravenous. My plate was indecently heaped with pomegranate skins and stones from bottled peaches in pools of syrup when Donna Lucrezia clapped her hands and announced that we should remove to a larger room on the ground floor where the musicians awaited us.

I tried to stand, but felt as though I were once again at sea, in a squall, the deck rolling and slipping beneath my feet. Sugar water filled my mouth and nose with its sickly sweetness. Certain now I was about to vomit, I stumbled over the bench, pushing one of the solemn little pages out of my way, and fled the salon with Angela’s “Donata? Are you all right?” cutting through the buzz in my ears.

Air. I needed air. I had to find a way out, but we were on the first floor and I had no idea where the stairs were. A window. Anything. I ran, turned, ran in another direction, tripped over the edges of rugs, caught my sleeve on a wall sconce. My mouth flooded with bile. Too late. Retching till I believed my throat would tear, I fell to my knees and threw up my dinner all over a rather fine silk runner laid down the centre of the marble floor. Without the strength to rise, I crawled away from the stinking mess I had made and lay on the floor, my forehead pressed to the cool marble. All I wanted was to sleep, but I had no idea how to find my bed, in that small room buried at the old heart of the sprawling palazzo
.
Besides, if I closed my eyes, my head began to spin and I feared I would be sick again.