Sins of the House of Borgia (6 page)

How long I had lain this way when I heard footsteps approaching, I have no idea. At first I hoped it might be Angela, or one of Donna Lucrezia’s slaves sent to find me. I would be disgraced, of course. Perhaps I might even be sent back home. The prospect made me feel slightly better, then I heard men’s voices, a murmured exchange followed by a sudden bark of laughter. A shuffling of soft shoes accompanied by the smart clank of spurred boots. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, my drunken brain convincing me that, if I could not see them, they would not see me.

Silence. Torchlight illuminating the filigree of veins in my eyelids. Winy breath on my cheek, a faint perfume of jasmine oil. The toe of one of those boots in my ribs, but gently, cautiously, levering me on to my side. Then the fear I would vomit again as a blast of foul breath hit my face followed by the warm slick of a tongue licking my nose.

“Drunk,” pronounced the voice of the boot wearer, rich with suppressed mirth. “Let her alone, Tiresias. If she tastes as good as a truffle, she’s mine, you damned dog.”

“Can’t see a mark on her,” said the other, his voice softer, almost whispering in my ear. His accent was not Roman. “Stinks like an inn parlour, though.”

“Must be one of Lucrezia’s girls,” said the boot wearer. “Page, go to the Hall of the Zodiac and inform Donna Lucrezia one of her lambs has gone astray.”

“My lord.” A boy’s treble, followed by scurrying footsteps and darkness, no, a shift in the light. The boy must have taken the torch, but lit one of the wall lamps before he did so. I opened my eyes.

Kneeling beside me was a young man in cardinal’s robes, one arm draped companionably around the shoulders of a battered hound whose albino eyes were milky blue with cataracts. The cardinal seemed to me all red and black, with his dark beard and his red gown and full, glistening lips.

“She’s woken up,” he said, smiling at me. The hound grinned too, tongue lolling over brown stubs of teeth.

Shadows shifted as the boot wearer squatted down behind his dog to take a closer look at me. This man was masked, and dressed entirely in black; even his hands, resting loosely on his knees, were gloved in black velvet and a black cap covered his hair. The light from the wall sconce haloed him, making it difficult to discern the details of his dress or mask.

“Well,” he said, “I hope all my sister’s women are not in the same state as you. Cardinal Ippolito and I were on our way to watch the dancing and it will be a pretty muddle if you’re all falling down drunk.”

Duke Valentino. I thought of the hand and the tongue. I closed my eyes again and clenched my teeth, and hoped so skilful a killer would be able to dispatch me without pain, the way the kosher butchers do.

Nothing happened. I opened my eyes again, wishing it would. For by now my befuddled mind had registered that, not only had the duke found me lying drunk on the floor, but also Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, the man appointed to be my godfather.

“Try to sit,” the cardinal was saying. “You’ll feel dizzy at first, but it’s best to be upright then all that wine running in your veins can drain from the head.”

“I’m so sorry, forgive me, I…”

“Never mind all that. Cesare, take her other arm and let’s get her to her feet. She needs some air.”

Each man placed a hand beneath my elbow, the cardinal’s a well-manicured paw, the duke’s fingers hard and lean under his glove. While he was briefly preoccupied with extricating his spur from the hem of my
camorra
, I stole a look at his face. The handsomest man in Italy, the girls at Santa Clara used to say, though I do not know if any of them had actually seen him close to, yet because of his mask only his neatly trimmed, auburn beard was visible, and pale lips which had a certain muscular mobility about them. It struck me that he wore his mask, a winged confection of black velvet, gold braid and pearls, because in him, even beauty was dangerous. Did he, perhaps, fear to look at his own face?

The blood seemed to rush from my head as I stood, and pool in my feet, weighing them down as I stumbled and swayed, with further profuse apologies, against the cardinal.

“Please,” he said roguishly, “the pleasure is all mine.” He slipped an arm around my waist as the duke released his grip on my elbow. I thought of my father and his good intentions, and felt tears pricking my eyes.

“Donata!” Angela. Oh, praise the Holy Name.

“Donata?” repeated the cardinal.

“Yes, your eminence.” Was that the right form of address? I hoped so.

“Forgive me. My lord cardinal, cousin Cesare.” Arresting her flight towards me, Angela dropped into a deep curtsey. The cardinal offered his free hand and she kissed his ring then, though the duke raised her to her feet and brushed her cheek with his lips, she continued to gaze at the cardinal through her eyelashes, with a charming affectation of modesty.

“Donna Angela,” reproached the cardinal, “I shall require you to take better care of my goddaughter in future.”

“Perhaps your grace should give me guidance in the matter.”

Horribly aware of my soiled and crumpled clothes, the wisps of hair matted to my forehead, my foul breath, I felt more inadequate and out of place than ever.

“Take a cup with me when you have attended to Signorina Donata,” said the cardinal, “and we will make a lesson plan.”

“Come, Ippolito,” said the duke, “we have done our good deed for today.” Though he said no more, I could feel the deeds he now contemplated hanging in the cold air of the corridor, and a curious thrill ran through me.

Seeing me shiver, Angela put her arm around me. “Bed for you, young lady. You have partied quite enough for one night.”

“Will Donna Lucrezia banish me?” I whined, both dreading and longing for her reply.

She laughed. “Good lord no. At worst, you’ll get a ticking off from Donna Adriana; at best, Lucrezia will just be amused. Elisabetta Senese once mistook the Holy Father for a chair cushion and sat on him. He was delighted. He gave her a great store of silk floor cushions that used to be in Prince Djem’s apartments. Her room looks like a harem now.”

“Who is Prince Djem?”

“Oh, he died years ago. He was the Sultan’s brother, but the Sultan paid for him to stay here so he wouldn’t have to murder him. Apparently that’s how the Ottomans secure the succession. They murder their brothers. We all loved Djem, especially Cesare, but Djem loved Juan the best.” She paused. I felt a calculating glance upon me, though we were far from the new, well-lit parts of the palace now, back in the maze of narrow, rickety passages where Madonna Lucrezia’s ladies-in-waiting had their rooms. “And I do mean loved. Juan was as pretty as a girl. Here we are.”

Angela led me into the room, feeling for the edge of the bed and pushing me down on to it while she groped in a little niche in the wall for the flint box she kept there at the foot of the wooden crucifix.

Emboldened by the fact that I could not see her face, I asked, “What did happen to Don Juan?” Though I was still quite a little girl when he died, all Rome had been abuzz with the gossip when his mutilated corpse was pulled from the Tiber by a fisherman, and the name Valentino was never far from people’s lips. The brothers had argued over the favours of their sister-in-law, the princess Sancia of Aragon, it was said, or over the fact that Juan, though inept as a soldier, had been made gonfalonier of the Church whereas Cesare, then cardinal of Valencia, was destined to follow his father up the steps of Saint Peter’s throne. No one had ever been convicted of the murder of the pope’s favourite son, so the rumours festered like an untreated sore.

Angela struck her flints and light flared from the candle on the nightstand. Bending towards me, eyes wide and earnest, shadowed by an exhaustion I had not noticed before, she took my hands and pressed them against my knees. “Donata, I want to be your friend. You are pretty and quick-witted and you can do well here. But there are some questions you must not ask, and some things you may see which you must keep to yourself. As for Juan,” she added, straightening up and admitting a lighter note to her voice, as though no mystery at all attached to his murder, “it was the Orsini. They have had it in for us ever since Uncle Rodrigo imprisoned Virginio Orsini for going over to the French in ’93 and then he died in prison. They were sure Uncle Rodrigo had had him killed, so they went after Juan for revenge. Honours are even now, so there’s an end to it.”

Honours were not even, of course; the cycle of the vendetta never ends, and I wonder if Angela really believed a word she was saying or was simply trying to protect me. As it turned out, in a roundabout way, the bad blood between Borgia and Orsini would transform my life, but not yet. Not yet.

Angela helped me to undress then tucked me into bed. The pallet stuffed with wool and horsehair felt as soft as a featherbed to my raw stomach and spinning head. Dabbing rosewater behind her ears from a small flask on the nightstand, Angela said she was returning to the dance and bade me goodnight.

“I’m taking the candle,” she said, and with the sudden descent of total darkness on the small room which had now become my home, I fell into a profound and dreamless sleep. I was unaware of Angela coming to bed.

***

I was excused attendance on Donna Lucrezia when she rose next morning, but summoned before her after the day meal in the small salon overlooking Saint Peter’s steps where she held her private audiences. Donna Lucrezia looked as though she had slept little; hectic spots of colour highlighted her cheeks like badly applied rouge and her eyes glowed like moonlight at the bottom of a lake. Though swathed in a cape of fur, she shivered intermittently, and I feared she had caught a fever. Donna Adriana was with her, and opened our interview, jowls atremble with indignation.

“My daughter-in-law, Donna Giulia, was disappointed that you could not be presented to her last evening.”

I bowed my head for fear the ladies would see me blushing.

“As was His Beatitude, my father,” added Donna Lucrezia in a tone that might splinter glass, “who surprised and honoured us with his presence.”

“Have you nothing to say, girl?”

“I am truly sorry. I am unused to wine, and such rich food, and the emotions of the day…It will not happen again,” I finished lamely.

A silence ensued. The cries of hawkers vending pasties and medallions of the saints on the basilica steps came to us, muffled by the glass in the windows. Donna Lucrezia glanced out, her carefully plucked brows drawn together briefly in a frown. I remembered that the Duke of Bisceglie, the father of little Rodrigo, had received the wounds which ultimately killed him on those steps, and wondered why, if she had loved her second husband as much as the
avvisi
said she did, she had chosen this room for her own.

I was surprised in this train of thought by Donna Lucrezia’s distinctive laugh. “You met my dear brother, Cesar, though,” she said, using the Catalan form of his name even though she spoke to me in Italian. I wondered if perhaps it would be better for me to leap from the window and meet my own fate on Saint Peter’s steps. If, perhaps, the duke was this very moment, hidden behind a tapestry covering a secret doorway, drawing a dagger from his belt with which to finish me.

“I was inclined to be severe with you, but both he and Cardinal Ippolito interceded for you, so I shall be merciful. I had intended that you should have three new gowns for my wedding celebrations, but now it must be two, to offset the cost of replacing the rug you ruined. Still, I dare say, with the
camorra
I gave you for your baptism, and the white velvet cloak, you will manage not to disgrace me.”

“But…”

Donna Adriana’s eyebrows arched alarmingly. “I told you you should have interviewed this girl more closely,” she said to Donna Lucrezia in a stage whisper. “Now she is answering back.”

“My decision does not please you?” Donna Lucrezia asked.

“No, madonna, I mean…you are very generous. I thought you would send me back to my father.”

“And that is what you wanted.” It was not a question, but a statement, delivered in a low, compassionate tone. “Oh, my dear.” Donna Adriana placed a warning hand on her niece’s arm, but Donna Lucrezia continued regardless. “We have to learn to want what our fathers want.”

***

The next few weeks sped by in a whirl of dress fittings and beauty treatments, petty, exquisite agonies of pins and hair plucking. Nor did Donna Lucrezia, conscious, no doubt, of the eyes of Duke Ercole’s envoys upon her, neglect her duties as godmother to me. She had been appointed regent at the Vatican, while the pope and Duke Valentino made a tour of inspection of the fortifications at Nepi and Civita Castellana, but nevertheless found time to accompany me to Mass every morning and to direct me in the correct ways to genuflect or cross myself or take the dry wafer these cannibals called the body of Christ, in my mouth. She supervised my needlework and singing, and graciously relented over the third gown when particularly pleased by my composition of a Petrarchan sonnet. Serene, smiling, and capable, she appeared to entertain no doubts that she would be happy with the homely man whose miniature she carried everywhere, suspended from her girdle by a gold chain.

Only on our weekly visits to the bathhouse did she relax and admit a little good natured teasing about Don Alfonso’s broken nose and unfashionably short hair. Of the more serious rumours about him, that he had been driven mad by the French disease and was prone to violent depressions during which he raged around the streets of Ferrara as naked as the day he was born, or that he kept a string of mistresses, she would hear no mention.