So I feared that Sandino would follow the river downstream to try to retrieve it from my body, dead or alive. I had no way of knowing how far I had come. The river had been swift moving, swollen and flooded with rain. I guessed it had taken me several miles. Sandino and his men did not have horses and would therefore have to walk. Also he would spend time searching for my body along the banks. Hopefully he’d think I had been swept into the sea, or was caught in reeds somewhere being eaten by eels. Even if he suspected I had survived, if I crossed over and went back upstream with these men to the village of Perela, Sandino would not think I’d gone that way, back in the direction I had come from. My rescuers had horses, which meant I would travel faster. I decided that I should go with them and then run off when it was safe to do so.
‘We should be at Perela before dark,’ said Graziano.
‘We’re lodging at the castle there.’ Felipe addressed me. ‘It’s likely that they would feed a boy who could help in the stables.’
The Maestro reached out and put his hand on my forehead. His fingers were finely tapered, his touch gentle. ‘You’re still half stunned from knocking your head. I think we should carry you with us on one of our horses and take you there. Yes, Matteo?’
I nodded.
‘Will the Borgia be there to speak to you?’ Felipe asked him.
The Maestro shrugged. ‘Who knows where Il Valentino is, or will be? Isn’t that one of the features he has as a military commander? No one knows his exact location. He strikes like a snake, and then is gone, to reappear somewhere else when least expected.’
It was the first time I’d heard them mention Prince Cesare Borgia, known as Il Valentino, although I was familiar with the name. Who was not? The Borgia family was known throughout Europe. Rodrigo Borgia sat on the throne of St Peter and ruled the Church as Pope Alexander VI. This wicked man with his bastard children, the infamous Cesare and Lucrezia, meant to bring all Italy under their dominion.
His daughter Lucrezia, fair-haired and beautiful, was recently wed to the heir of the Duke of Ferrara. And I had seen this Borgia marriage celebrated in the spring of this year in Ferrara when I had been going about Sandino’s business. Her wedding had provided an entertainment for the citizens and spectators. Although, not all of them were kindly disposed towards her the bride being regarded by many of the Ferrarese as a deceitful woman whose father, the Pope, had paid their Duke Ercole a vast dowry to marry her to his eldest son, Alfonso, the future Duke of Ferrara. I’d heard murmurs and cat-calls on the day of her wedding as I moved through the crowd.
One woman commented on the shield given by the King of France to Alfonso as a wedding gift, saying, ‘The duke’s new shield portrays an image of Mary Magdalene. Was she not also a loose woman?’
Many people in the woman’s vicinity laughed, though some looked nervously over their shoulders to see if anyone had noted that they mocked the house of Borgia. The revenge of the Borgia to those who offended their family was terrible. But the mood of the crowd was festive and the quips continued.
As the procession passed to the great cathedral for the marriage ceremony a loud whisper echoed in the piazza: ‘Let the groom pray well, that he might live longer than her previous husband, strangled on the command of her own brother.’
So I discovered that these men who had rescued me, and with whom I had agreed to travel, had some connection to Cesare Borgia. But I reckoned that, at the moment, this might be more help than harm for me.
We crossed the river at a little stone bridge and turned towards Perela. It was a popular crossing place and many horses had trampled the path between river and road. The Maestro had placed me on his saddle in front of him. I was still bundled up in Felipe’s cloak and I kept my face hidden as he showed the bridge keeper the pass he carried, signed by the hand of the Borgia himself.
By the time we reached the village of Perela I’d had time to think more of Sandino and what he might do. I thought now that I should not run away at the first opportunity. In addition to covering Bologna, Sandino would have spies on the main roads around this area. But he knew that I had discovered that the Borgia family paid him to do their evil work. If these men, my rescuers, were to be lodged in the castle at Perela then, for a short time at least, remaining with them was the safest thing for me to do. Perela, a Borgia stronghold, would be the last place Sandino would expect me to seek shelter. He would not look for me there.
That is what I truly believed.
Chapter Five
‘PERHAPS YOU WILL let us hear your own story, Matteo?’
We were a number of days in the keep of Perela before I was called upon to tell the tale of my life. One evening after supper the Maestro beckoned me to him as he sat by the fire. He put aside the lute he was strumming and spoke to me.
‘You might wish to entertain us tonight, Matteo. I’m sure our hosts would like to hear how it came to pass that you nearly drowned under the waterfall.’
They had welcomed us warmly and fed us well, the commander of the keep, Captain Dario dell’Orte, and his family. And their hospitality seemed to me to stem more from the fact that they were plain and friendly people, than that my master carried a Borgia pass.
Perela was a very small village, no more than a great keep positioned on a hill, with a farm and one or two houses straggled about. The keep was a well-constructed building with solid high walls, and a stout castle door to protect it. On one side it over-looked a gorge, where the land fell away for several hundred feet to a ravine below. The kitchens were on the ground floor, with the hall on the first floor where meals were eaten and the family spent their daytime hours. Above that were bedrooms for the captain and his family, and two or three spare rooms. This was where they had lodged the Maestro and his two companions, giving them sleeping quarters and a workroom for him to set out his books and materials. The few castle servants there were slept in the kitchens, and a dozen or so men-at-arms in rooms above the stable block at the back. I was given a mattress in the attic under the roof.
Il Valentino, Cesare Borgia, being a cunning military commander, saw the position of the town as a key place between Bologna and Ferrara. In March 1500 Cesare had been made Gonfaloniere of the Church and Captain General of the Papal Armies, with instruction to conquer those parts of the Romagna that had slipped from the Pope’s dominion. But his dream was not just to assert the authority of the Pope in the areas that belonged to the Vatican; he wanted everything he could take. Italy was studded with important and wealthy cities – Ferrara, Imola, Urbino, Ravenna and Bologna. By assault, siege or trickery, over the last two years town after town had fallen to the Borgia, so that now Il Valentino sat firmly astride the peninsula and had Italy by the throat. And as he wanted his towns made proof against attack, each one, had to be inspected and its fortifications strengthened. Thus was his appointed engineer, Leonardo da Vinci, now in Perela.
Captain Dario dell’Orte had been injured in the service of the papal armies some years ago. Due to his damaged back he could no longer ride for long hours and had been installed as commander of this keep. He had come to the sleepy backwater of Perela in disgust, regarding himself as an old warhorse farmed out and, so he told us, prepared to be miserable and to end his days in dullness. But then the unexpected happened.
Despite being past his youth he had fallen in love with a young village girl, Fortunata, and to his astonishment she with him. He told us that the years he had been here were the happiest of his life. They found their joy in each other and their four children. His eldest son, Paolo – at twelve a year or so older than me – was a big lad with the same cheerful disposition as his father. After him came sisters closer to my age, both born on the same day, one more outgoing than the other, as is often the case with twins, and then another baby son, called Dario for his father. The whole family greeted visitors with enthusiasm and treated me as a guest rather than a servant. I was not set any task to do. The children saw me as a new playmate: Paolo, the older boy viewed me as a comrade,
someone with whom he could practise jousting and fighting. He was delighted when I arrived. There was a lack of boys of his own age nearby and he made friends with me at once, ignored my withdrawn manner and coaxed me to come outside to join him in training for soldiering. Almost as soon as I was well enough to stand, the girls pulled on my arms for me to play with them. Paolo, their elder brother, batted them away firmly but good-naturedly. He was their leader and they heeded his word.
This night when I was asked to speak he made his younger siblings sit on the floor to listen while they urged me to tell them my story.
So I did.
But I lied.
Partly because I did not want to admit to my origins, but also my terror of Sandino made me want to lay as many false trails as possible. So I lied, instinctively and easily, flouring my tale with a little truth to bind it together. I meant only to give them some brief outline of my life. But as we gathered round the fire that evening and I related my history, it gained more in the telling, and grew, as a snowball rolling down a slope.
I told them that I was an orphan. I said that I had been brought up on a remote farm far away in the hills but I could not recall its name. When my parents died a wicked uncle had taken their land and made me work for him for nothing.
‘Was your farm near the mountain that has snow on top in the winter?’ the more talkative of the girl twins asked eagerly. Her name was Rossana and, like her sister, she was very pretty.
‘I think so,’ I said.
Rossana nodded. ‘I can see that mountain from my window. It is very high. Mama says it is so high because the angels live there to be near Heaven. But it looks very cold. Was it cold when you lived there, Matteo? Did you see any angels? Does that mean that Heaven is cold?’
Elisabetta, her twin sister, shivered. ‘I don’t like to be cold. When I go to Heaven I will take a blanket from the bed with me.’
‘Hush, Elisabetta,’ her mother said. She picked up the littlest child, Dario, who was falling asleep with his thumb in his mouth, and sat him on her lap. He cuddled in to her and she stroked his head. ‘Hush, Rossana. Let Matteo continue.’
I didn’t mind the girls chattering on. It gave me time to consider my next lie.
‘The winters were very cold.’ I took the strand that Rossana had given me and wove it into my tale. ‘And I never had enough to eat. My clothes were thin and I was made to live in an outhouse and there was no wood for a fire. So a year or so ago I waited until it was spring time and then I ran away.’
‘Did you have many adventures?’ Paolo asked eagerly.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I will tell of them another time.’
‘I’d love to go out on the road,’ said Paolo.
His father laughed. ‘And sleep under a hedgerow? You, who cannot rise from your warm bed in the morning?’
I saw that their eyes were eager for a good story and I forgot about my need to be careful. Inhabitants in quieter places long for any diversion. Packmen and the hawkers who travel the country know that their customers live for news, any news. No matter how trivial the incident, no matter how insignificant the event, people thirst for a story. And those who add gossip to their goods make a bigger mark-up on their wares. A storyteller is often fed and accommodated for free in inns and castles. I’ve seen ladies buy more bundles of ribbons and hanks of embroidery yarn than they could ever use in order to keep the seller talking.
So, although omitting any mention of travellers or travellers’ camps, I could not resist using some of my real experiences. My journeying took me to many places, I said. I had been in Venice, the city that has water in its streets, and we had watched the gondolas sail over the lagoon. I had wandered past shipping docks and seen boats disgorge cargoes of silks and spices from Cathay and Arabia, and others laden with unusual fruits and strange delicacies that had come all the way from the New World. I had stood in the public squares of famous cities and witnessed executions and carnivals. In Ferrara I had been in the houses of wealthy men and women. Such furniture and furnishings! Chests of golden oak and cedar wood, tables covered in damask with gold embroidery, colourful frescos and wall hangings, statues of bronze and marble, satin cushions in many colours. And how they dressed! It dazzled the eye to behold them!
The dell’Orte girls begged me to describe these clothes and jewellery and I knew why they were so interested. The keep where the dell’Orte family lived in Perela was not richly furnished. A single tapestry covered one wall of the great hall, but the rest of the inside was only roughly plastered. The girls’ clothes were not made from expensive cloth, nor were they of the latest fashion. They and their mother were keen to hear any details I could supply about more up-to-date clothes, shoes and hairstyles.
I described to them the things I had seen earlier that year in Ferrara – at one of the celebrations on the occasion of the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia to Alfonso d’Este. Special platforms were erected in the street so that people could have views of the clergy and the nobles and their attendants as they passed by. Their dresses and doublets were of padded silk under velvet cloaks trimmed with miniver. They wore perfumed gloves with heavy rings upon their fingers. Musk-scented rosary beads trailed from the ladies’ hands. Rubies, emeralds and pearls decorated their necks and hair.
Lucrezia Borgia had given a dress made of cloth of gold and adorned with a long train in the Spanish fashion to one of her jesters. He put it on, and minced through the streets after the procession, aping the gait of the nobles. In one hand he held a fan, in the other, a long staff, painted red and hung with little bells. In the piazza this buffoon shook his stick under the nose of Cardinal Ippolito, setting the bells jingling, and would not leave off until the cardinal took a coin from his purse and flung it at him. Then he capered about in front of the cathedral, flouncing his petticoats and preening himself, for the amusement of the crowd. And Lucrezia Borgia, who was renowned for her earthy sense of humour, had laughed and applauded his antics.
That night at Perela everyone gathered round me, listening intently to hear about the most scandalous woman in all Europe.
‘Is she as fair as they say?’ Donna Fortunata asked me.
‘She is very fair,’ I replied. ‘Her hair is long and when she moves it shimmers like water when the sun is upon it. In an inn I heard a man whose wife worked as a servant in the palace telling everyone that it took Lucrezia’s handmaids two days to wash and dress her hair. She uses a preparation containing saffron and myrrh, both very expensive, and this is why her hair shines like gold. And to keep her complexion fair, the whites of six fresh eggs, the bulbs of six white lilies and the hearts of six white doves are ground together and mixed to a paste with fresh white milk. She applies this to her skin each month.’
‘Did she look wicked?’ Rossana asked me.
‘She looked . . .’ I paused, to search for the truth in this matter for it would not make any difference to my own history to tell my true impression of Lucrezia Borgia. ‘She looked young, and – and—’ I glanced down at Rossana gazing up at me, lips parted, eyes shining, her hair loose around her shoulders, and the next words I spoke were intended with no artifice at all. ‘She is almost as beautiful as you.’
There was laughter, and I looked up, confused.
‘If you wish to pay court to my daughter, Matteo, you must first speak to me,’ Captain dell’Orte said in mock severity.
Rossana’s face coloured pink.
‘Elisabetta is also very beautiful,’ I said quickly, thinking to cover any embarrassment, but also because it was true.
The adults roared with laughter.
‘Now Matteo seeks to woo both girls with one compliment,’ said Graziano.
More laughter followed his remark.
‘Such economy Felipe would approve of,’ the Maestro added.
My face flamed red. I did not know what to do. When I said that Rossana and Elisabetta were beautiful it was because I saw that they were. As the comments and the laughter continued through the company i
n the hall I realized too late that I had made an error in etiquette. I did not know how to proceed.
The girls clung to each other, giggling.
Paolo, who had more authority over them than either of their parents, quietened them down. ‘Enough,’ he commanded them. ‘Allow Matteo to continue with his story.’
‘They say that Lucrezia Borgia can speak many languages,’ said Donna Fortunata, encouraging me to begin again. ‘And that she has an agile mind, more clever than many men.’
‘But that she uses her wits to scheme and plan the undoing of others,’ murmured Felipe.
Suddenly the room went quiet.
We were in dangerous territory. I recalled the real reason that I had been in Ferrara and I knew I should find a way to move my story to a safer place.
Captain Dario dell’Orte must also have become uncomfortable at the direction the conversation had taken. He, being a captain under contract to Cesare Borgia, was aware of the consequences if any wrong words were related to his master. It was known that Cesare held a strange affection for his sister and it would not do well if anything untoward about her went back to the ears of Il Valentino. Not so long ago, in Rome, a man accused of speaking ill of the Borgia family had half his tongue cut away and nailed to the door of his house.
The Medici Seal Page 2
