The Borgias (14 page)

Juan, therefore, left his brother, dismissed the few servants he had with him, except for a footman and a mysterious man in a mask who had joined Juan during the supper party at his mother’s and who, moreover, had been to see Juan at the Vatican almost every day for the past month.

Juan made room for this masked man to ride behind him on his mule, and they rode off together to the Piazza degli Ebrei, where Juan told the footman to wait there an hour and then, if he had not returned, to go back to the Vatican. Soon afterward the footman was attacked and badly wounded. Discovered in a pool of blood, he was dragged into a nearby house, whose owner was so frightened that he refused to report what had happened until the next morning, by which time the man was dead.

By now Juan’s disappearance was causing consternation at the Vatican Palace. Alexander VI hoped that perhaps he had spent the night with a woman and had not wanted to be seen leaving her house in daylight. But the longer Alexander VI waited for his son’s return, the more anxious he became.

He made urgent enquiries in the area where Juan was known to have been the night before. One of those questioned was a timber merchant whose practice it was to have his wood unloaded from boats in the Tiber not far from the hospital of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni. This man said that he had been keeping a watch on a delivery of timber when, close to midnight, he saw two men walk down to the riverbank, where they looked about them, presumably
to see if the coast was clear. Shortly afterward two other men stealthily approached the water, where they were joined by a man on a white horse, which appeared to have a corpse slung across its back. He and the four other men then moved silently along the riverbank, halting just past a place where sewage and rubbish were customarily thrown into the water.

Here the dead body was pulled from the horse and hurled into the Tiber. The rider who had brought it then asked the others if it had sunk. He was assured that it had; but, noticing the corpse’s cloak still floating on the surface, he threw stones at it until it had disappeared from view. The five men then left the river together and were soon lost to sight.

All this the timber merchant related when questioned. Asked why he had not reported these events earlier, he replied that he must have seen at least a hundred bodies thrown into the river at that point and had never thought much about it.

Fishermen and boatmen were now called up and ordered to drag the riverbed. They soon found Juan’s body. It was fully dressed, with a purse tucked into a belt, which still contained 30 ducats. He had been stabbed repeatedly in his body, legs, and head.

The corpse was then taken to Castel Sant’Angelo, where it was stripped, washed, and dressed in military uniform before being taken to the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in a procession led by over one hundred torchbearers, ecclesiastics, and members of the dead man’s household, all, so Burchard related, ‘marching along, weeping and wailing and in considerable disorder.’

Alexander VI was distraught, ‘shutting himself away in a room in grief and anguish of heart, weeping most bitterly . . . From the
Wednesday evening until the following Saturday morning, he ate and drank nothing, whilst from Thursday morning to Sunday, he was quiet for no minute of any hour.’

On the Monday, June 19, the pope made a solemn announcement at a special consistory called for that morning:

W
HEN HE HAD RECOVERED
from the first pangs of grief, the pope determined to reform the Curia, the papal government. ‘We are resolved without delay to think of the Church first and foremost, and not of ourselves nor of our privileges,’ he announced, adding that ‘we must begin by reforming ourselves.’ For years the Curia had been allowed to become lax and corrupt, manned by officials who were steadily enriching themselves at the Church’s expense. He established a reform commission that produced a highly critical report. His enthusiasm soon evaporated, however; and having ordered the arrest of one of his more self-serving officials, Bartolomeo Flores, the archbishop of Cosenza, Alexander VI quickly abandoned his proposed programme of reform and helped himself to much of the fortune that the archbishop had managed to accumulate.

Flores, deprived of his see, was taken from his dungeon to a cell in Castel Sant’Angelo, where he was required ‘to wear a gown of
coarse white cloth and a heavy white cap, to sleep on a straw mattress, to be content with one cask of water and three loaves of bread a day, one jug of oil and a lamp, a breviary, a Bible and a copy of the Epistle of St Peter.’ He died in his damp cell soon after his incarceration there, and his body was taken to the Church of Santa Maria in Transpontina, and there buried ‘without any torches, mourners, church ceremony or service.’

Meanwhile, several men had been questioned about Juan’s murder. Alexander VI had sorely missed his favourite son while Juan had been in Spain and had called him back to Rome, appointed him to command the papal armies, unsuited though he was to such a challenge, and had given him what was considered the undemanding task of turning the troublesome Orsini family out of the castle at Bracciano.

Juan’s failure at Bracciano and his seduction of Sancia, Cesare’s mistress, had infuriated Cesare, fuelling his jealous dislike of Juan as the obvious favourite, though unworthy and conceited second son. Jofrè also had cause to feel affronted at Juan’s behaviour. Nor were the two brothers the only men suspected of Juan’s murder, for this was a man with many enemies, particularly among the Orsini and their allies.

A few weeks after the murder, on July 1, the Florentine envoy in Rome reported that since Alexander VI no longer showed much interest ‘as to the man guilty of the murder,’ it was ‘held to be certain beyond any doubt that His Holiness has now discovered the truth, and that he thinks of nothing but the way in which he may safely lay hands on the guilty men.’ And later that year, Manfredo Manfredi, the Mantuan ambassador, told the Duke of Ferrara: ‘It seems that, more than ever, the Pope gives signs of blaming the
Orsini for the murder of his son; and it is believed that he is disposed to avenge it.’ At the same time, it was reported from Venice: ‘His Holiness intends to ruin the Orsini because they certainly caused the death of his son, the Duke of Gandía.’

Soon after these suspicions were voiced, it became generally accepted in Venice that Cesare, rather than the Orsini, was responsible for the murder. Sancia of Aragon seems to have suspected Cesare, and this was also common gossip in Spain, where both Queen Isabella and Maria Enriquez, Juan’s widow, were inclined to believe that the circulating stories of Cesare’s guilt were probably true.

As for Alexander VI’s opinion of the identity of the murderer of his son, the pope did not commit himself, but he did exculpate, for one reason or another, most of those upon whom suspicion had fallen. Among these were Giovanni Sforza and his uncle Ascanio Sforza, who was known to have quarrelled recently with the Duke of Gandía, and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, who had fought with Juan against the Orsini but, after being taken prisoner, had been left to languish in prison until ransom was paid by his loyal subjects.

‘S
HE WAS PREPARED TO
. . .
SUBMIT HERSELF TO THE EXAMINATION OF MIDWIVES
’

L
UCREZIA RECEIVED THE NEWS
of her brother’s horrific murder in her rooms in the Dominican convent of San Sisto, a tranquil place situated on the Via Appia, opposite the Baths of Caracalla, surrounded by orchards and vineyards, and some distance from the centre of Rome. She had taken refuge here on June 4, ten days earlier; when, shortly after she arrived, papal guards came to conduct her to the Vatican, the abbess assured them that Lucrezia was staying in the convent at her own request and persuaded them to leave her in peace.

Her desire had been to escape the stories that were spreading like wildfire through the city to explain why she had been abandoned by her husband, Giovanni Sforza. One report mentioned that she had ‘left the palace and gone to a convent,’ adding ominously, ‘Some say she will turn nun, while others say many other
things which one cannot entrust to a letter.’ Rumours of her incestuous relationships with her brothers and even her father, the pope, abounded; within days of the murder, Giovanni was suspected of committing the crime ‘because the Duke of Gandía had had commerce with his wife.’

At the time of Juan’s murder, however, Giovanni was not in Rome. The alliance between the Borgias and Milan, which had seemed such an excellent idea three years before, had now lost its appeal, and the pope was determined to end it. Threatened and taunted by the Borgia brothers, fearful for his very life, and worried that he might be obliged to repay the 31,000 ducats he had received as Lucrezia’s dowry, the lacklustre Giovanni had fled Rome on Good Friday, March 24, for Pesaro. His fears had grown when, after begging Lucrezia to join him, she – encouraged by both Cesare and the pope – had refused to do so. These fears had been realized at the end of May, a fortnight before Juan’s brutal murder, when Alexander VI’s lawyer had arrived in Pesaro to serve him with a writ for divorce.

At first it had been thought that since Lucrezia’s first betrothal to Gasparo di Procida, the Count of Aversa, had not been formally dissolved at the time of her marriage to Sforza, it would be possible to use these grounds to claim that the marriage was invalid. But this weak excuse proved unacceptable to the wily lawyers involved in the case. So it was decided instead to argue that the marriage, which had taken place in 1493 when Lucrezia was just thirteen years old, had never been consummated, thus leaving her a virgin and free to take another husband more to her father’s political taste.

Lucrezia duly signed a declaration to the effect that ‘after three years of marriage . . . without sexual relations or carnal knowledge, she was prepared to swear on oath to this and to submit herself to the examination of midwives.’ Alexander VI now insisted that Giovanni make a public declaration that he was impotent, a humiliating prospect and a cruel one.

The unfortunate Giovanni was understandably furious, dismissing the allegation as absurd. He was far from impotent, he protested; he had, he insisted, made love to his wife on countless occasions. Moreover, he pointed out that his first wife had died in the course of giving birth to their child. Finally he approached his uncle Ludovico Sforza for help, but the duke did not take him seriously. He suggested Giovanni should prove his virility with Lucrezia, somewhere outside Rome, with witnesses who could observe the event; or a public demonstration could be arranged with some complaisant lady in Milan, with the papal legate, the cardinal of Monreale, who was one of Alexander VI’s nephews, as a witness.

Giovanni now declared that the pope wanted to get him out of the way so that he could enjoy his daughter’s body more conveniently himself. Moreover, he hinted that while he had not been allowed to share a bed with Lucrezia, now aged seventeen, both her father and her brother Cesare had done so. The rumours of incest, a sin as offensive then as it is now, spread like wildfire through Rome and all of Italy. Born out of Giovanni’s desire for revenge on the family who were taunting him so unfairly, the story stuck.

Many who saw Lucrezia in public, smiling in the company of her adored and adoring family, found the sensational rumours easy to believe, as they did when the pope left her in charge of papal affairs
while he was absent from Rome. Yet it was unusual for a daughter to be given this responsibility, though not because she was a lady – the rulers of Italy’s courts regularly left their wives in charge of their affairs while they were fighting, earning their livings as mercenary soldiers, and the pope was doing no more than leaving the reins of power in the hands of the person upon whose loyalty he could rely utterly. And those who saw her in the circle of her household found the persistent talk of incest difficult to credit. She seemed too demure, too innocent.

Cesare, meanwhile, had official duties to perform. A week before Juan’s assassination, the pope had nominated his son, still a few months short of his twenty-second birthday, to the prestigious position of papal legate ‘to anoint and crown the most serene Federigo of Aragon’ as king of Naples. He arrived in Capua, where the coronation was to take place, in good time for the event, which was planned for August 6, 1497, entering the city with an imposing cavalcade that included seven hundred horses as well as numerous servants, guards, prelates, and a straggling crowd of camp followers. Unfortunately he was suddenly taken ill soon after his arrival, and the coronation had to be postponed. He recovered quickly, however, from this illness, which was rumoured to be some sort of venereal complaint, and on August 11, gorgeously attired in red velvet and cloth-of-gold, he was carried in one of his father’s papal chairs to the cathedral, where he played his part in the delayed ceremony with dignified composure.