The Borgia Mistress: A Novel (2 page)

She did as he said, not looking away again even as the fire ran down the back of the cage and her mother’s robe caught. She watched as the flames engulfed her, as she twisted and writhed, as her arms reached out through the bars of the cage as though to embrace her daughter one last time.

Hélène watched until there was nothing left save smoldering ash and the cry of the wind around the empty crag.

When it was done, her father spoke to her and all the others, who stood, their faces streaked with tears and their lips bitten bloody where they had held back their cries.

“By their sacrifice, the Perfect Ones have proven the power of our faith and the rightness of our God,” he said. “As we dwell in this world of evil, never forget that.” He took Hélène’s hand in his and held it firmly. “Teach your children that they may teach theirs. The time of reckoning will come. And when it does, the Cathars will be prepared.”

The wind dried the child’s tears. The anguish within her hardened into resolve alloyed with hatred. She kept the faith, she remembered, and she taught her children.

As they taught theirs down to the present day.

1

Rome
October 1493

“Donna Francesca…”

I was in the Campo dei Fiore, walking toward Rocco’s shop. There was something important that I needed to tell him.

“Lady…”

I quickened my pace, avoiding the pushcarts and passersby, the piles of manure and the importuning peddlers, afraid I would be too late.

“Wake up!”

I really had to … it was important …

The street in front of me dissolved. I blinked in the sudden glare of light piercing the cocoon of my curtained bed. Portia, holding up a lamp, grasped me by the shoulder and shook me.

“For pity’s sake—” I squinted, trying without effect to cling to the dream.

“Condottieri are here,” the
portiere
said. “
His
condottieri. They say you must come.”

“They say—what?”

“You must come. They wanted me to let them in, but I said I would wake you myself. Even so, they are right outside. They won’t wait for long.”

Despite the coolness of early autumn, I slept naked. A film of sweat shone on my skin. The nightmare had come as usual, leaving its mark on me.

“I’ll kill him, I swear I will.”

The dwarf chuckled. She jumped down from the stool, found a robe of finely woven Egyptian cotton dyed a saffron hue, and held it out.

“No, you won’t. He’ll charm you as he always does and you’ll forgive him.”

Slipping my arms into the sleeves of the robe, I winced. “How can the sharpest-eyed
portiere
in all of Rome be such a romantic?”

Portia shrugged. “What can I say? He tips well.”

I started to laugh, coughed instead, caught myself, and strode out of the bedchamber, through the salon filled with my books and the apparatus I used in my investigations, all feeding the rumors about me. The robe billowed around my legs, gold mined from the crushed stigmas of Andalusia crocuses. I went quickly between light and shadow, pausing in neither. A cat, perversely white in violation of hallowed superstition, followed in my wake. The door to the apartment stood open. Beyond, I could see helmeted soldiers in shining breastplates pacing anxiously.

Their leader saw me coming and stiffened, as he damn well should have, given the circumstances.

“Donna,” he said and sketched a quick bow. “A thousand apologies, but I thought it best … That is, I wasn’t certain if you would…”

“Where is he?”

The captain hesitated, but he could not lie. Not to me. One of the benefits of my having a reputation as dark as the Styx.

“At a taverna in the Trastevere. He’s not … in good shape.”

I sighed and arched my neck, still struggling to wake fully. A thought occurred to me. “It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”

“It is, donna, unfortunately. We don’t have much time.”

“Wait here.”

I went back into the apartment. Portia, the only name by which I knew the
portiere
, was laying out clothes for me. As her eye for such things was much better than my own, I did not protest. Instead, I said, “Remind me to change the lock on the door. Either that, or just give me your key.”

She grinned and shook her head. “What good would either do, donna? The locksmith would be in the pay of the landlord and I’d have a new key before the day was out. Besides, who would look after things for you if you have to go away?”

I pulled a shift over my head, muffling my voice. “Why would I go away?”

Portia shrugged. “I’m only saying … it could happen.”

“What have you heard?” For surely the
portiere
had heard something. She always did.

“It’s not very nice in the city right now. Too much rain, the Tiber flooding, rumors of plague. Certain people might think this was a good time to visit the countryside.”

“Oh, God.” Manure, pigs, bucolic romps, too much open space. I hated the countryside.

“Just get him to the chapel,” the
portiere
advised. “That will spare us all a lot of trouble.”

*   *   *

My name is Francesca Giordano, daughter of the late Giovanni Giordano, who served ten years as poisoner to the House of Borgia and was murdered for his pains. To acquire the means to avenge him, I poisoned the man chosen to take his place. Fortunately, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, as he was then, saw past my offense to perceive my usefulness. At his behest, I set out to kill the man I believed at the time to have ordered my father’s murder. Only God knows if Pope Innocent VIII died by my hand. What is certain is that his demise opened the way for Borgia to become pope.

Recoil from me if you will, but know this: No one feared the darkness of my nature more than I. Had I been able to recast myself into an ordinary woman—a wife and mother, perhaps—I would have done so in an instant, though it require me to walk through the fires of Hell. Or so I liked to believe. Saint Augustine, while still a young man wallowing in debauchery, prayed to God to make him chaste—but not yet. My own aspirations may have owed at least some of their appeal to the unlikelihood of their achievement any time soon. I was as I was, may God forgive me.

I was then twenty-one, brown-haired, brown-eyed, and, although slender, possessed of a womanly figure. I say this without pride, for in the parade of my sins, vanity brought up the rear. Working in a man’s profession as I did, my appearance discomfited more than a few. That suited me well enough, for while they were preoccupied with thoughts of either burning or bedding me—not excluding both—I did not hesitate to act.

The taverna was on one of the little
corsie
that ran off the Campo dei Fiore. When the marketplace was bustling, as it usually was, the place would be easy to miss. But in the hours before dawn, the light and sound spilling from its narrow door made it impossible to overlook.

A burly guard stood outside to deter the pickpockets who preyed on drunken young noblemen too busy slumming to notice that they were being robbed. He took one look at the approaching condottieri and vanished down a nearby alley.

“If you wish us to go in first, donna…,” the captain said.

I ignored him, pushed open the door, and stepped inside. The smell hit me at once—raw wine, sweat, roasted meat, smoke. I inhaled deeply.
Ah, Roma
. The looming threat of the countryside flitted through my mind, but I repressed it.

A lout cross-eyed with drink saw me first and reached out to grasp my waist. I eluded him easily and pressed on. The greater part of the din was coming from a large table toward the back behind half-closed curtains where a bevy of mostly naked young women clustered, vying for the attentions of the male guests.

A burst of deep laughter … a girlish shriek … a snatch of ribald song …

I pushed past a nubile young thing wearing only diaphanous harem pants, elbowed another even more scantily clad, and came at last within sight of the reason why I had been rousted out of bed in the wee hours of the morning.

Lolling back in his chair, a goblet in one hand and a rounded breast in the other, the son of His Holiness Pope Alexander VI appeared to be in high good humor. A blonde—to whom the breast belonged—straddled his lap, while a completely nude brunette posed on the table in front of him, her legs spread invitingly.

Cesare raised a brow, though whether in interest or amusement I could not say. His dark hair with a slight reddish cast was loose and brushed his shoulders. In features, he resembled his mother—the redoubtable Vannozza dei Cattanei—far more than he did his father, having her long, high-bridged nose and large, almond-shaped eyes. He had been in the sun even more than usual and was deeply tanned. In public he generally wore the expected raiment of a high-born young man, but that night he was dressed for comfort in a loose shirt and breeches.

He bent forward, whispered something in the ear of the blonde that made her shriek with feigned shock, and called for more wine.

“
Vino! Molto vino
for everyone!”

“Cesare.”

He blinked once, twice. A moment passed, another. He let go of the girl’s breast, set the goblet on the table, and sighed deeply.

“
Ai, mio,
he sent you.”

“Of course he did,” I said. “Whom did you think he would send?”

A murmur went around. The whisper of my name. The brunette paled, pressed her legs together, and fled. So, too, did most of the crowd. Scrambling off her perch, the blonde fell. For a moment, her smooth rump was high in the air before she picked herself up and followed the rest.

Only the Spaniards remained. Arrogant, high-nosed young men, scions of ancient families, swift to take offense at any slight to their honor, real or imagined. They were lately come to the court of the Pope, who still considered Valencia to be home, and had been drawn inevitably to the company of his son.

“Who is this?” one of them demanded, resolutely ignorant.

Cesare Borgia rose unsteadily, adjusted his breeches, and made a token effort to straighten himself. He smiled grudgingly.

“My conscience, alas.”

Outside in the street, surrounded by the condottieri, he held his face up to the cool night air. A fine mist carried the tang of the sea miles off at Ostia. He breathed it in deeply, as did I. For a moment, the lure of far-off places and different lives filled us.

“Say you couldn’t find me.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference if I did. Your father would just send someone else. Be glad he sent your own guards and not his.”

He sighed. “Have you no pity? My life is ending.”

I fought a smile and lost. He was so young still, this boy-man with whom my own life was so unexpectedly entwined.

“You are scarcely eighteen years old and you are about to acquire more power and wealth than most can ever dream of. Do not expect anyone to weep for you.”

“All well and good, but this isn’t how I wanted to get either. You know that.”

“Who among us gets what we want?”

“My father has.”

I conceded the point with a slight nod. “True enough. Now let us see if he can keep it.”

Torches burned in brackets set into the walls of the palazzo near the Campo, illuminating the marble statues in the entrance and the loggia beyond. Despite the hour, the servants were all awake and scurrying about. I went with Cesare up the curving stairs to his private quarters and waited as he threw off his clothes and sank into a steaming-hot bath. As he sweated out the effects of his indulgence, I mixed a restorative from powders I carried in a small bag that hung at my waist. I never went anywhere without that bag or without the knife nestled in a leather sheath next to my heart.

He swallowed the potion I handed him without delay, testament to his trust in me. Watching him, I wondered how many people I knew would do the same. A dozen, at most, if I really stretched? And half of those would at least hesitate.

“That’s vile,” he said.

The tub was carved from a single piece of marble and decorated with ample-breasted mermaids. I sat on a stool next to it. “You’ll be glad of it all the same.”

He was leaning back, his head against the rim, his eyes closed, but he opened one to look at me. “You could get in.”

“I could.…” I appeared to consider it. “But you know what would happen. Tired as we both are, we’d fall asleep afterward and then we’d drown.
Che scandalo
.”

He laughed, accepting my refusal with better grace than I had expected. I took that as evidence of how truly low his spirits were.

When the water had cooled, he rose and stood naked, legs braced and arms held away from his sides. Droplets sluiced down his skin kissed by the sun. He was leaving the lankiness of youth behind, coming into his own as a man and a warrior. His shoulders had broadened first, followed by his torso, but lately the bands of muscle across his abdomen and thighs had become even more evident. So far at least, his body was without imperfection, a condition he lamented as he longed to prove himself on the field of honor. Scars, he insisted, were the true mark of a man; all else was pretense. His father, Christ’s Vicar on Earth, thought otherwise, and his will ruled, at least for now.

“This really doesn’t bother you?” Cesare asked as his long-suffering valet finished patting him dry.

I shrugged. “Why should it?”

He looked so uncertain suddenly that I went to him, wrapped my arms around his broad chest, and pressed a light kiss against his lips, the softness of which surprised me, as always. He stirred against me, making me laugh and causing my gaze to drift just for a moment in the direction of the bed. Only the light stealing through the high windows gave me pause. That and the great bells of Saint Peter’s that just began to ring on the far side of the river, heralding the dawn.

“Of course it makes no difference. How could it possibly?”

The valet cleared his throat. “Pardon me, signore. It is time to dress.”

I sat in a comfortable chair with my feet up and sipped a light cider from the first apple pressing while I waited. The procedure took longer than usual, no doubt because Cesare was donning clothes he had never worn before. When he emerged finally from the dressing room, my breath caught. I rose, smiling.

“You look exceedingly handsome.”