The Borgia Mistress: A Novel (3 page)

“This is not what I want,” he said and kicked at the long red skirts of his cassock in disgust.

I would have replied, but just then the bells of Saint Peter’s grew louder, their voices joined by the bells of churches all over Rome. Together they hailed the day of consecration for Holy Mother Church’s newest and most unwilling prince.

The bells were still ringing as I made my way across Rome. Despite its being Sunday, most of the shops were open and the streets were busy. His Holiness—a man of commerce himself—had designated virtually every enterprise in the city as “necessary,” and therefore exempt from closing on holy days. For that, and for reining in the crime that had been rampant in the streets during the tenure of his predecessor, Romans loved him. But theirs was no longer the giddy love of first infatuation that brings a blush to the cheek and a glow to the eyes. Rather it was the brittle love of experience that teeters on the edge of disillusionment, when the faithlessness of the beloved is becoming all too evident.

In Borgia’s case, his boundless lust for women, power, privilege, and wealth was a mere beginning. What he really wanted—what he was determined to have—was nothing short of immortality. He intended to so remake the world in his own image that his name would ring down through the ages, never diminished, never forgotten, forever glorious. I imagine that he envisioned himself sitting Jove-like in the heavens, gazing down benignly at what he had wrought. Unfortunately, his enemies were coming to the same conclusion, and they were determined to stop him.

Despite the shadow they cast, the sun was out, a benediction after the constant rain of late. For a moment, a fragment of my interrupted dream flitted through my mind. I could just as easily turn toward the Campo and visit Rocco. The recent announcement of his betrothal to Carlotta d’Agnelli had made no difference to our friendship, and why would it? True, there had been a time when Rocco fancied that he and I should wed, but given what he now knew of my dark nature, he should surely be glad of his escape. Even so, we liked and trusted each other in the way of colleagues bound by mutual interests. If I still longed on occasion for what could not be, that was my secret to bear and keep. I owed him a visit, just not quite yet.

After more than a year in His Holiness’s service, living constantly within the darkest aspects of my nature, I could no longer ignore the anxious melancholia that hung over me on even the brightest day. In front of Cesare or His Holiness himself, I managed to maintain the appearance of confidence, but it was no more than a thin façade over my deepest fears. Constantly on guard, seeing danger in every shadow, I was haunted by the conviction that my soul, insofar as it still existed, would never see the light for which I yearned so desperately. Out of sheer bravado, I told myself that to be damned was a kind of liberation. Not for me the endless cycle of sin, confession, and bought absolution. But having gone beyond all that, I found myself in a purgatory all my own.

A cloud moved across the sun. I shivered in the sudden chill and pressed on. The Tiber having overflowed its banks, I was forced to hold up my skirts as I made my way through filthy water to the small apothecary shop secluded down a narrow lane. Several customers were inside. I waited, loitering just out of sight, as they were seen to one by one. When the last had gone, I stepped through the door.

Within, all was clean and ordered: every bottle and packet properly stowed, the worktable scrubbed down with sand, the air bearing the scent of drying herbs. No hint lingered of the suffering and death that had played out within those walls the previous year when desperate refugees—expelled from Spain at the order of Their Most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella—had streamed into Rome, their condition stark testament to man’s inhumanity to man. Any normal person would welcome the relative tranquility as evidence of the mercy of God, who, it is said, never sends us more than we can bear. To me, it had more the quality of stillness that precedes a great storm.

Sofia Montefiore finished rinsing her hands in the vinegar she used as a protection against spreading disease and reached for a towel. Seeing me, she frowned.

“You look a wreck.”

Friends can always be counted on to soothe one’s vanity; only good friends tell the truth. Sofia, a middle-aged woman with a sturdy build and a cloud of silver hair pinned up haphazardly around her plain but pleasant face, cared too much for my well-being to be less than honest. I could not do otherwise, especially as my best efforts to deceive her invariably failed.

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“That’s nothing new. What have you been doing about it?”

“Drinking,” I admitted. “Likely too much.”

“Nothing else?” When I hesitated, she came around the table to look at me more closely. I resisted the urge to squirm under her scrutiny.

“No opium?” she asked.

As much as I would have liked to feign shock, I could not manage it. Sofia knew what all of Rome knew: the Turkish sultan, who paid well to assure that his younger brother and rival remained a captive in the Vatican, supplied said brother with all manner of indulgences intended to keep him weak and complacent. Chief among these was opium, which the generous Prince Djem shared with his friends in the Church and among the nobility.

“I’ve tried it,” I admitted. Shortly before Cesare’s investiture, when he was in the throes of realizing that his father would not relent and let him become the war leader he yearned to be, he had procured some for us to sample together. The euphoria it evoked was seductive in the extreme, but the drawbacks were obvious. “It dulls the senses too much. I have to be able to work.”

Sofia looked relieved. “It is as well you realize that. There is much you can do to help yourself without relying on—”

I did not let her finish but interjected, “There was opium in the sleeping powder you gave me a few months ago, wasn’t there? That’s why you refused to continue providing it.”

She did not deny it but said, “That was a mistake. I thought that if your sleep could be adjusted to a more normal pattern, it would remain that way after the powder was withdrawn. Now it seems that I may have only sparked a craving that lingers still.”

“My only craving is for sleep. I am desperate for it. Surely, under your care, following your instructions, I could take some form of the powder safely?”

I was prepared for her to reject the idea out of hand, in which case I had rehearsed my argument. Borgia was the Jews’ pope as much as he was anyone’s, insofar as they had provided the sums needed to elect him. In return, he had pledged them his protection. I, in turn, protected him. Sofia must see the benefits of keeping me functioning.

But before I could begin to convince her, she gestured for me to sit. Leaving me for a moment, she returned with hot water from the stove in the rear of the shop. As she prepared an infusion of chamomile and rose hip, she said, “David is back.”

I swallowed my impatience; no great task, as her news interested me. David ben Eliezer was the leader of a band of renegade Jews prepared to fight for the survival of their people. He and I had joined forces before to that end. The last I had heard, he was in Florence keeping an eye on the fanatical monk Savonarola, who, when he wasn’t railing against the corruption of Holy Mother Church, kept busy calling for the extermination of the Jews. Savonarola had an ally, a priest named Bernando Morozzi, who I believed was the man ultimately behind my father’s death. David had been watching him as well. Whatever had made him break off and return to the Holy City must be important indeed.

“What brings him to Rome?” I asked.

“The same concerns that keep you wakeful, I imagine. Borgia seems intent on collecting enemies, including some with the capacity to be deadly.”

I could not deny it. “He is determined to advance the interest of
la famiglia
at all cost. Witness his insistence on making Cesare a cardinal despite how it has outraged so many of the prelates.”

“Such hubris will be his downfall,” Sofia said with a sigh. She filled two stoneware cups with the infusion and handed one to me. As I sipped, she added, “I fear that we will have a new pope or we will have war. Most likely both.”

I could not dismiss either possibility, but had I been willing to accept them as inevitable, I would not have been sitting in her shop.

“If there is one thing I have learned,” I said, “it is never to bet against Borgia. Everyone who has done that is the poorer for it, assuming they’re still with us at all.”

Sofia did not hide her skepticism. “You really believe that he can survive?”

“Most definitely. The longer he does, the more frustrated and divided his enemies become. Eventually, at least some of them will seek an accord with him.” Or so I most profoundly hoped, for every other possibility loomed grim and lethal.

Before she could comment, I went on quickly. “But I need help, Sofia.” I gestured with my cup. “I am far beyond such remedies as this. Will you give me what I need or not?”

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “What will you do if I refuse?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” It was a lie, but I hoped a small one. I had considered various alternatives; I just hadn’t been able to come up with any that were remotely good.

Her eyebrows rose. “We both know that when it comes to such matters, your expertise surpasses my own.”

“You give me too much credit. I wish to sleep only for a few hours, not eternally.”

What I needed was beyond the limits of my dark calling. While I knew a hundred ways and more to kill, I knew next to nothing of how to heal. What little I had managed to learn I owed entirely to Sofia’s efforts to reform me.

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but her gaze remained serious. “In that case, I will see what I can do. But you must promise that you will follow my instructions without exception.”

Having assured her that I would not dream of doing less, I thought to linger longer in her company, but just then a customer arrived. I took my leave, greatly relieved now that I knew help was at hand. With the improvement in my mood, I was tempted once again to seek out Rocco. But when I reached his shop in the Via dei Vertrarari, the street of the glassmakers, I found it shuttered. Likely he and his young son, Nando, were visiting with Carlotta and her family.

Determined to ignore the sudden hollowness where my heart was, I returned to my own apartments. There I spent the remainder of the day pursuing an investigation that had sparked my interest. Recently, there had been a spate of deaths among older gentlemen who had in common both wealth and young wives. All had died after complaining of sharp stomach pains and passing blood in their urine. Naturally, this had prompted rumors of foul deeds. Ever on the lookout for signs that a poisoner might be at work in the city, and therefore a possible threat to Borgia, I made my own inquiries.

As it turned out, all of the gentlemen had been taking a commonly available compound made from the dried husks of the Spanish fly, which is in fact a rather pretty emerald-green beetle, renowned for stimulating the flagging vigor of the male member. I had become curious about how this effect was accomplished and had gone so far as to inquire of Cesare what he knew of it. After he got over being both offended and amused by my assumption that he would have any such knowledge, he relented enough to tell me that the compound appeared to greatly increase the flow of humors through the body, most especially that of the blood. While the result could be an impressive erection, it also could overstrain the heart, cause severe pain in the stomach, and interfere with urination. Despite so mixed a reputation, it remained much in demand among men desperate to hold on to their virility.

All that made me wonder: If a little of the cantharidin, as it was known, could accomplish so much, what might a more concentrated dosage do? Without dwelling on the details, I quickly discovered that the problem lay in the purity and strength of the substance. The gentlemen in question had had the misfortune to encounter an unusually potent supply. The source, a back alley seller unworthy of the title of apothecary, had agreed to sell me all of his remaining stock shortly before he departed Rome in considerable haste. I had set myself to study the effects—and how they might be made even more potent and deadly.

So occupied was I that I failed to notice the storm blowing in from the west. Wind-driven rain was splattering the floor of my workroom before I realized what was happening and hurried to close the shutters over the tall windows. As I did so, I happened to glance down into the courtyard. A figure was standing there, wrapped in an enveloping cloak and sheltered from the rain by an overhang. I could not make out any features, but the angle of the head made it appear that the watcher was looking up at me.

Having shut the windows and pulled the shutters closed, I told myself that my imagination was overwrought. With so little sleep and so much worry, likely I had conjured the watcher from shadows. Yet before I finally retired for the night, I glanced outside again. Nothing stirred in the courtyard, not even a bedraggled rat.

Perversely, I slept well, at least for me, waking shortly after dawn to the lingering scent of rain and the sound of trumpets blaring the news of a papal proclamation.

2

The old man with a bulbous red nose and bushy gray hair growing out of his ears spat as the Pope rode past. The great wad of phlegm he hocked up landed on the sodden ground just beyond the rump of His Holiness’s fine white horse. Borgia appeared not to notice. He continued making the sign of the cross above the heads of the sullen peasants driven from nearby fields to honor his passage.

Without breaking stride, a man-at-arms cuffed the miscreant, sending him sprawling into the mud. The grizzled
paesano
lay where he fell, staring up at the leaden sky. He appeared to have suffered no great injury and, for all the contentment of his expression, may have been contemplating the accolades he would receive from his neighbors as soon as the procession was out of sight.

So it had been every plodding step along the old Via Cassia north from Rome toward the allegedly charming town of Viterbo, our way proceeded by heralds and men-at-arms proclaiming the intent of His Holiness to make his first papal progression outside of Rome. A convoy of priests carried on their shoulders the glorious gold and jeweled Tabernacle of the Eucharist brought from Saint Peter’s Basilica. Borgia had announced that he was taking the Tabernacle along as a sign of his piety and personal devotion to the Savior. Romans like a good joke, and they appreciated that one. The truth, as everyone knew, was that he wanted a ready source of convertible wealth close at hand in case worse came to worst.

Not that anyone could tell that he was less than entirely secure. His Holiness rode immediately behind the Tabernacle, arrayed in scarlet and gold with the tripartite papal crown seemingly rock steady on his head. Despite his years and the burden of his office, he sat erect in the saddle. For a man about whom it was said that he was better suited to rule in Hell than reign in Christendom, he made a very convincing pope. Given the low state of Holy Mother Church, riddled by corruption and venality to rival a poxy whore, perhaps that was no great challenge.

Behind him dozens of prelates followed—among them several cardinals who still claimed to support him—as well as his personal household, including his young daughter, Lucrezia, and her husband of four months, the increasingly dour Giovanni Sforza. Il Papa had forbidden consummation of their marriage on the grounds that thirteen-year-old Lucrezia was too young for carnal intercourse. All the world, including Lucrezia, knew that His Holiness’s true intent was to preserve an easy path to annulment should the political winds, which were blowing particularly fiercely of late, suddenly shift.

I rode with the rest of the papal household, close enough to observe His Holiness but far enough back to avoid being spat upon. Renaldo d’Marco rode beside me. Borgia’s steward caught my eye and frowned.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

Renaldo had the misfortune to bear an uncanny resemblance to the common ferret in both manner and appearance. A small, perpetually nervous man, he fussed over the minutest detail and lived in dread of ever making a mistake. Accuracy was his shield against a world he too often found overwhelming, yet he had proven a true enough friend to me, whom others walked in fear of and shunned. Bound together by our mutual obligation to serve and protect
la famiglia,
we had long since fallen into the habit of talking over matters of shared interest.

“The old man?” I replied. “What of him?”

“He wasn’t the first. There was a fellow about an hour ago who waited until just as His Holiness was passing to pull out his cock and take a piss.”

I shrugged. “Who can explain the curious customs of country folk?”

Under his breath, Renaldo said, “You can’t dismiss such behavior, Francesca. The peasants are emboldened to show their contempt for our master because they do not believe he will be pope much longer.”

Equally quietly, I replied, “They do not know him as we do. If they did, they would be far more circumspect in their behavior.”

The steward looked unconvinced. “Perhaps, but this cursed progress was ill-advised. It makes it look as though he is running away.”

It was true that Borgia’s departure from Rome could be seen in that light, and his enemies would not hesitate to present it as such. But his real purpose in going was no secret.

“By personally inspecting the fortifications at Viterbo and elsewhere to the north,” I said, “he is declaring that he will not shy away from war, should it come to that.”

“Heaven and all the saints forbid,” Renaldo muttered.

I shared his sentiment even though I nurtured little hope of divine intervention. We were all of us gamblers to one extent or another, but no one gambled so furiously or for such high stakes as did Christ’s Vicar. His boundless ambitions for
la famiglia
had put him on a collision course with some of the most powerful rulers in Europe and made war, as Sofia had said, inevitable. Any such conflict would threaten Borgia’s papacy and give his enemies within the Church the opportunity they sought to unseat him. How, precisely, he intended to work his way out of this particular problem remained a mystery. I was confident only that, being Borgia, he had a plan—or, more likely, several.

“What if it really does come to war?” Renaldo asked. “What then?”

“Then I can think of one person at least who will be very happy.”

The steward did not have to ask whom I meant. My relationship with Cesare was hardly a secret, but I had not seen my sometime lover since shortly after his consecration as a prince of Holy Mother Church the previous week. Rather than deal with the ongoing recriminations spewing from his son, Borgia had put him to use by sending him ahead to Viterbo, ostensibly to keep him safe from the plague rumored to be stirring in Rome but really to rally the local nobility and strengthen the garrison. In his absence, my bed had grown cold.

“Cesare’s attitude toward becoming a cardinal hasn’t improved at all, has it?” Renaldo prompted. “He remains unreconciled to his father’s will.”

“Did you imagine it would be otherwise? He has dreamed his whole life of winning great victories on the field of battle. To be bound in a red cassock and chained to a desk in the Vatican is unbearable.”

“Even so,” Renaldo said, “the touts are giving five to two against there being a falling-out between them anytime in the next year.”

I was not surprised. Romans will bet on anything—the number of bodies pulled from the Tiber on a given day, the sex of a cardinal’s next bastard, the longevity of a pope, all are fodder for the spinning wheel of fortune upon which our lives are balanced and where, on occasion, there is money to be made.

“And if there is war?” I asked. “How go the odds then?”

“Three to two that Il Papa will prevail.”

“Interesting … considering that he has virtually no army in comparison to the French and that the support of the Spaniards is more vital than it is certain.”

Renaldo did not disagree, though he did point out what I knew to be true. “But he has such brio, such a sense of his own inevitability. He’s like a force of nature. Who really wants to bet against him, especially when the alternative is that old stick, della Rovere?”

I laughed despite myself and won a smile in turn from the steward. We were passing along an aisle framed by beech trees, approaching the inn at Ronciglione where we were to spend the night. An army of carpenters, glaziers, and painters had worked ceaselessly for the better part of a week to assure that His Holiness would be properly housed for the single night he intended to stay at the inn. Wagonloads of servants, furniture, wall hangings, artwork, and other necessities had been brought from Rome. The entire upper floor had been set aside for His Holiness’s use, leaving the ground floor to accommodate all the prelates and their staffs. Dismounting, I heard grumblings about the arrangements, but there was nothing to be done for it; Borgia loved his privileges and loved even more to make lesser men accept them as his due.

He also had a fondness for generating chaos, or so it seemed by the level of activity ever swirling about him. I stepped aside quickly as a troop of men-at-arms went by at a run, only just missing trampling me. A wagon driver bellowed in anger as another blocked his way. Pages and kitchen boys scurried about, helping to unload a steady stream of boxes and barrels when they weren’t tripping over their own feet. Anyone would have been pardoned for thinking that the papal court was settling in for a month or more rather than for a few scant hours.

Next to the inn a large, unadorned building of raw wood planks had been thrown up to house the traveling kitchens. Fires had been lit, spits were turning, and delectable smells filled the air. I sniffed appreciatively. The mundane truth of my profession is that most of it involves food; and with good reason, for nothing is easier to poison. Grains of arsenic can be slipped between folds of beef, cheese can be wrapped in poisoned cloth that will transmit its deadly properties, and so on. With the proper tools, it is even possible to introduce poison into a fresh egg still in its shell. As a result, I not only inspected every item that Borgia might ingest with the greatest care, I also made sure that my presence was felt where it could do the most good.

Having bid Renaldo farewell for the moment, I had walked only a short distance through the well-churned mud toward the kitchens when my way was blocked by a dour-faced condottiere wearing the sash of a captain of the papal guard. Vittoro Romano was in his fifties, still straight-backed and strong-shouldered despite a rough-and-tumble life, whose saturnine nature lulled the unwary into believing that he took little notice of anything around him. I knew better, having observed him through all my years growing up in Borgia’s household. Since I had assumed my father’s duties and sworn to take vengeance on his killer, Vittoro and I had become friends. I counted on him to tell me anything I might need to know, and he did the same with me. Only rarely did we disappoint each other, and never without good reason.

“Francesca,” he said, speaking quietly so that we could not be overheard. His manner was such that we might have been discussing the weather, mercifully drier than of late, the rain holding off until just then, when the first dank drops began to fall.

“There has been an incident.” Vittoro took my arm as he spoke, guiding me around the back of the inn. When we were alone, he said, “A kitchen boy was found dead an hour ago.”

Any sudden mortality within the Pope’s household was always brought to my attention on the chance, however remote, that it might signal a danger to His Holiness. Thus far, every death I had investigated had proved to be from natural causes, but I did not presume that that would always be so.

Vittoro had arranged for the body to be placed in a wagon drawn up along the far edge of a field, where it was not likely to attract notice. As we approached, two men-at-arms emerged from behind nearby trees. Seeing their captain, they stood aside for us to pass.

“I have cautioned those who are aware of the boy’s death not to speak of it to anyone,” Vittoro said.

That would buy us a little time, but not much. Climbing into the back of the wagon, I paused for a few moments to let my eyes adjust to the dimmer light. The rain had begun to fall more heavily. It splattered on the canvas covering strung over the wagon bed. The boy was laid out on a plank of wood supported at either end by a crate of supplies. He was naked.

“Who removed his clothes?” I asked.

“I did,” Vittoro said. “I wore gloves.” After a moment, he added, “There is plague in Rome, or so it is said.”

He spoke calmly, but I understood his dread. If it was plague, we could all be dead within days, if not hours. Quickly, I lifted the boy’s arm and looked under it. The telltale buboes from which the scourge took its name were absent both there and in the groin. That did not absolutely rule out the possibility of plague, but it did make it unlikely.

Nor was there any sign that a contact poison had killed the boy. Had there been, I would have found signs of a pinprick rash and overall bluing of the skin where the poison had touched him.

“Did he vomit or soil himself?” I asked.

“I found no evidence of either.”

That ruled out many poisons, though not by any means all. Steeling myself, I began at the top of his head and moved my gaze slowly down over every inch of his body. When I had finished with the front, Vittoro and I turned him carefully so that I could examine the back. There were no obvious signs of wounds, punctures, or other injuries. The boy’s skin where it had been exposed to the sun was tanned, the rest of him being pale enough for me to make out the blue etching of his veins just below the surface. His hair was brown, as were his eyes beneath the film of death when I lifted the lids to examine them. I judged him to be about thirteen, which made him a little tall for his age and gracefully built.

We turned him again. Fortunately, the rigor that follows death had not yet set in so it was not necessary to break the jaw. I found no foam in the mouth or around the lips. Inhaling, I observed that the boy had eaten garlic not long before his death; hardly unusual, as it is greatly favored not only for its flavor but as a protection against illness. Slipping a hand beneath the bodice of my gown, I withdrew the knife I habitually carried and made a small slit along the side of the boy’s neck. At once, his blood began to flow. The color was dark red.

“Not cyanide,” I said. Had it been, the nicked vein would have produced bright cherry-red blood, the only certain indication that the poison is present. One of the reasons cyanide is so popular among those of my profession is because the public, in its infinite wisdom, believes that it can be readily detected by the scent of almonds it gives off. But the scent is easily masked by any number of substances, including garlic, thereby instilling a false sense of security that can be very useful.