by Sarah Dunant
A cockroach skids across the boards close to their feet. Cesare, an expert at detecting criticism in compliment, stamps fast, relishing the crunch.
“Why don’t you steer closer to the shore and launch the rowing boat? Corvetto can’t be far away. My men and I could be back in Rome by morning.”
“It is not safe, my lord. The coast here has hidden reefs. The boat could be blown onto them.”
“By what? The sea’s as flat as a nun’s chest.”
“Now, yes,” the captain says, his attention also on the deck and the sight of a second cockroach scuttling wildly. “But in these waters it can change without warning.” Behind it comes another, and another.
“Your vermin have good sea legs,” Cesare says angrily as his boot comes down again. “Or maybe they too are bored with waiting.”
The captain, ignoring the insult, lifts his eyes back to the horizon and moves off quickly down the boat.
Has he sensed it already, this man who knows the sea better than the body of a best-loved mistress? What is it? A certain tang in the air? A muscle movement of water in the distance? Or perhaps the cockroaches have told him, for God often gives unexpected gifts to His most despised creations.
Whatever it is, he knows they will not outrun it on the manpower of these oarsmen. He has never seen such a scrawny bunch of galley slaves. He sends a message to the sailor in the crow’s nest to unfurl a flag requesting that the Pope’s boat make up speed to join them. It would be safer if the two vessels were closer together.
—
Alexander registers the jolt as the oars start dipping and pulling at the water. He has been halfway across Italy in his thoughts, traveling with his daughter as she moves from town to town, her smile seducing everyone she meets. His sweet Lucrezia. It has been only a few weeks since they took leave of each other, but already her absence is a wound inside him. My God, her husband had better appreciate her or he will send an army to get her back.
The galley is picking up speed, and he turns to watch the oarsmen at work. From the raised deck he can make out their bowed heads and shoulders, hear their grunts, almost feel the stretch and heave of muscle and sinew. The fleet had been in dry dock when the late decision was taken to do part of the journey to and from Piombino by boat (Cesare’s whim as ever), and his Master of Ceremonies had spent hours fretting about having to pull men from Rome’s prisons to make up the bulk of the labor. Poor creatures. Even criminals who serve their Pope deserve to keep their arms in their sockets, he thinks. I shall bless them all when the trip is over. He, who would stitch up a dozen cardinals if he could bleed more money out of them, has always had a soft spot for those manifestly weaker than himself.
But it is not the moment to dwell on tender feelings. A slap of wind on his cheek pulls his eyes toward the horizon. In the west, where once there had been a spotless sky, a glowering band of cloud is now rising, heavy with rain. It is moving rapidly, lifting, spreading, darkening, so that even as he watches the low winter sun is swallowed up inside it. The temperature is dropping and the water is now an iron gray, the surface whipped up into flurries by the worsening wind. As the agitation grows the galley starts to roll under his feet. He braces himself against the rails. How fast the change! It is as if Neptune has filled his giant cheeks, and with one enormous breath is blowing a fully formed storm over the rim of the world.
His chaplains are already at his side, hurrying him toward the deckhouse as the first raindrops hit, fat as bird shit, soaking everything they touch. Above their heads a jagged line of lightning slices the sky. He grips the rail tighter. He is a man who knows about storms at sea and the havoc they can wreak. On a journey back from Spain as papal legate twenty—no, surely it must be thirty—years ago now, his fleet had been not far from this same coast when the water had started to rise and hiss and he had watched helplessly as his companion galley was blown toward shore only to be smashed like a bunch of kindling twigs on a submerged reef of rocks. For months afterward in his dreams he could hear the sound of the wind mixed with the screams of drowning men. The Lord had gained a brace of churchmen and courtiers that day, may their souls rest in peace. He can still recite most of their names and see a few of their faces. God damn Cesare’s impatience, he thinks. It is the disease of youth to mistake speed for strategy. They should have stayed in Piombino for another day rather than giving in to his insistence on returning to Rome.
—
“Get your men under cover.” On the boat in front the captain shouts to Cesare as he moves past him to reach the wheelhouse. “I need the deck clear for the crew.”
“I told you we should have used the oars! We could have been halfway to Rome by now,” Cesare spits back, the mast above them creaking under the whip of the wind. “How long will it last?”
“As long as the Lord decrees,” the captain mutters, making a rapid sign of the cross as he turns in to the force of the gale.
In her room in the ducal palace of Urbino, Lucrezia’s feet hurt. When she walks her soles burn and when her toes are released at night they still feel pinioned together. The pain is more than the bondage of fashion; her wedding dowry shoes, twenty-seven pairs of the finest perfumed Spanish leather made from a template of her feet, each one hand-sewn, gilded, jeweled, perfumed and shipped from Valencia, had arrived too late to be fitted and tested before they were used.
It would be better if she did not dance so much. But how can she resist? She, who loves to glide and twirl and skip through feasts and celebrations night after night, so applauded that after a while her partners fall away, clutching feigned stitches in their sides, to show off her grace and stamina. No, Lucrezia Borgia must dance; it is one of the joys of her life. And more than that, it is what is expected of her.
Perhaps if there were fewer miles between festivities. In the twelve days since they left Rome they have visited almost as many towns and are still only halfway to Ferrara. It would be a punishing schedule even in the best weather, for this is not so much a journey as a campaign trail, the Pope’s daughter conquering city after city with charm rather than cannons. In the beginning, she had wrapped herself in furs and battled the freezing air. Those first days it had been snowing—snow in Rome!—and she had been amazed how people flocked out to see her. She had waved and smiled and smiled again. If they could brave the weather then surely so could she. But the snow turned into heavy rain and ugly sucking mud, so that recently she has retreated to her litter. It is comfortable enough on the open roads, but when it comes to the slopes of the Apennines and towns like Gubbio and now Urbino, the steep winding paths have her lurching and jostled until her bones have started to protest.
She settles herself into the cushioned window seat in this latest bedchamber. There is a fire in the grate and tapestries on the walls. How delicious to be warm again. Outside, she hears the traffic of chests pulled along flagstone floors. It takes an age to settle the household of courtiers and servants who travel with her. Tonight’s accommodation is particularly magnificent. The palace of Urbino is famed through Italy as a treasure-house of the new culture. They will have precious little time to appreciate it, she thinks with a small sigh. The trunks will barely have been opened before they must be packed up and loaded again, and this evening will merge into all the others, an orgy of goodwill and gifts, bowing, kissing, sweet words, compliments and of course dancing. Her feet sing out in sympathy. She longs for a day when she can sleep later than the dawn, or pass a few hours reading or washing her hair; the chance to be alone, sullen, even sad for a while.
Above the marble fireplace is a sculptured frieze of naked cherubs, parading joyfully, clutching golden horns and tambourines. The miracle of chubby flesh hewn out of stone. Before she gave birth to Rodrigo she barely noticed such creatures. Now she sees babies and cherubs everywhere. The sculptor must have had boy children of his own to breathe such individual life into each body. She imagines one of them clambering onto her lap, fat little arms thrown around her neck. The marble skin grows soft and
warm in her mind. She bends her head involuntarily to smell the perfume of his scalp, such a mass of fair curls already, so different from the dark hair of his father.
“Madonna Lucrezia? Do I disturb?”
“No, no, Signor Pozzi,” she says, brushing the imagined little body off her skirts as she regains her composure. “I am savoring my surroundings. I still don’t understand why we can’t stay longer. The Duke and Duchess of Urbino are so magnanimous in their hospitality, moving out of their own palace to make room for us. It seems impolite to remain for only one night.”
The Ferrarese envoy shuffles his feet. This is a conversation he had hoped was over.
“My lady, I assure you they understand very well the constraints that the journey and the weather put upon us. We have a great many miles to travel to Ferrara and the date of your marriage is—”
“Oh, I know the date as well as you. It is engraved upon my heart and I would give anything for it to have arrived already, as I am in a fever of expectation to meet my dear husband.” And it is said so prettily that who could doubt its sincerity? “But.” She pauses. “If I am to please him in the way I would wish, then I must be allowed to catch my breath.”
Born Gian Luca Pozzi, this seasoned diplomat is known to everyone in the Borgia entourage as Stilts, because his legs are unnaturally long for his body so that when he walks he must take stilty little steps to allow the ladies to keep up with him. He has been at Lucrezia’s side for months, sending back reports to his master, the Duke of Ferrara, on her character and worthiness for marriage into the House of Este. Now it is his job to get her to the wedding ceremony on time.
“Also, not only is Urbino joined in dynastic marriage to my new home in Ferrara,” she continues with a pointed seriousness, “but it is in alliance with His Holiness Pope Alexander. I think both of my fathers would see it as politic for us to enjoy more of the city’s welcome, wouldn’t you agree?”
The envoy munches at his cheek. When the Pope is brought into play, it is always a sign that this delicate young woman, who often appears to have no thought in her head past the choice of her next outfit, is digging in her heels. Outside, the rain is a percussion of nervous drumbeats against the leaded windows. Urbino is famous for its modernity, and not all her rooms have been so finely protected against drafts. Throughout the palace there is an air of people shaking out their wet clothes and settling in to stay.
“My dear lady, you must help me here. I—”
“And”—her voice remains sweet despite the rise in volume—“you will have noticed that a few of my ladies are at war with phlegm and fever. This morning Angela was almost too sick to travel. If she should pass such an ailment on to me…well…Duke Ercole, my new father, would never forgive you if I arrived in Ferrara weak as a kitten.”
Pozzi smiles bleakly. His employer will forgive him even less if she gets there late, since the astrologers singled out the date six months ago and half of Italy is on the move to be there in time. As for Madonna Lucrezia’s health, there are things he could suggest: she could dance less and sleep more, or cut down the time spent on her daily toilette. But there would be no point. The Pope has made it clear to all that having paid a fortune to marry off his daughter, he intends to gets his money’s worth, using this journey as a way to show her off.
Not that she will disappoint. Of that he is sure. There may be more beautiful women in Italy, but there is something in the mix of grace and vivacity, especially when she is on the dance floor, where her feet seem barely to touch the ground, that seduces whoever is in her orbit.
Like many others, he had arrived at the Vatican court, his ears ringing with gossip, expecting to find some vain vixen, racked by lust and cruelty. Yet within weeks his dispatches were filled with descriptions of her sweetness and modesty. It has taken him a little longer to come upon the metal under the softness. But then it has been years since the state of Ferrara had its own duchess, and it’s possible he has forgotten the subterfuge of clever women, how stubborn their gentleness can be. If the lady will not be moved, then what can be done? He lifts his hands in submission.
“Excellent.” She laughs, victory lighting up her face and making her look younger than her twenty-one years. “We shall leave the day after tomorrow well rested. My brother’s emissaries will guide us through his cities to Bologna and from there we can travel by barge. Which will be kinder to all of us and”—a hint of the coquette now—“once I am caught on your glorious river Po, well, I shall not be able to get off. Isn’t that right, my dear Pozzi?”
He bows, his smile as professional as his frown. Tonight’s dispatch is already written in his head: in battles of diplomacy no skirmish is too small to fight and no defeat so big as to mean the loss of the war.
He is barely out of the door before she is on her feet calling to her ladies. “Angela, Nicola, Camilla….Leave the unpacking. The palace of Urbino is waiting for us!”
Off the Tuscan coast, both galleys are now playthings of the storm, though the Pope’s ship, farther out to sea, is taking the brunt. The rain is a sheet of water driven horizontally by the gale, with waves rising high as a fortress wall so that as each one hits it is impossible to tell freshwater from brine. The vessel is equally confused, one moment pushing forward, climbing up a cliff of water to a crest, where it seems to stop like a gasped breath before crashing down with a force that feels each time as if it must shatter the hull. Then everything shifts and suddenly the boat is yawing and what is not nailed down yaws with it, careering from port to starboard and back again. The deck is a death trap; any man losing his footing will save himself only when he slams into something nailed down, and unless his grip is iron tight he will be ripped up by the next wave and thrown into the sea. In the stern, the oarsmen are lying flat, their oars tied under their bodies; in such violence any untethered object becomes a battering ram or a flying club.
The crew, who earn free liquor onshore by telling shipwreck stories that have landlubbers’ eyes popping out of their heads, are paying dearly for every embellishment uttered. Each lashing, smashing wave brings another emergency: a shred of canvas, yanked from the furled sail, a bucked timber, more bailing as the galleys take on yet more water. It is an old torture, sticking a man in a prison pit where the water never stops rising so that the only way to survive is to keep on pumping. In their nightmares they will be bailing water for years to come. As the next wave hits, a few start to wail and cry out, their voices barely heard against the mad shrieking of the wind and the snarls and groans of splintering wood. The storm is discordant with its own orchestra of suffering.
And in the midst of it all, inside the deckhouse, the Holy Pontiff of Rome, vicar of all Christian souls on earth, wedged in his chair, encased in furs, is singing psalms loudly.
Fortune, a wayward goddess at her best, is at her most capricious at such moments. When events spin out of control she will happily abandon men who daily practice only unfailing kindness and virtue. Equally, she takes perverse pleasure in protecting those who, merciless in life, show a natural magnificence when the dragon roars in their faces. Rodrigo Borgia has always been such a man. Faced by enemy guns outside of Rome, he opened the gates and invited them in. When a thunderbolt split a chimney in the Vatican, pulling a ceiling down on his head, and the palace went mad bewailing the death of the Pope, he had sat calmly under a mountain of rubble until they pulled him out unscathed, saved by a miraculous conjunction of two fallen rafters that had locked a few inches above his head. His beatific smile as he emerged had been something to see.
He is lucky in another way too: inside that cart horse body sits the stomach of a merman. So while others are emptying their guts onto the cabin floor, it is now, with the storm at its height, that he sees fit to take himself out on deck.
Inside the howling rain, Cesare’s galley is nowhere to be seen. Still, Alexander is sure it is out there, somewhere close. For so many years he has been working for this moment of his life: the founding of a Borgia state in Italy
through the muscle of his son and the loins of his daughter. They have come too far and are too close for it to end here. He would never feel such calm if at this moment Cesare was sinking under the waves. Not even the most righteous God would be that cruel.
The captain, lashed to the wheel, sees the outline of the papal bulk in the rain, and starts yelling and gesticulating for him to go back inside. But Alexander, flanked by two chaplains, only lifts his hand in blessing. Two nearby sailors register his presence, and in the lull before the next wave hits, they throw themselves at his feet, burying their faces in the wet silk of his hem, crying out for him to save them with his prayers. He gestures for the chaplains to raise them up and blesses them individually, taking their sodden bodies into a deep embrace, like a father to his sons.
As the next blinding wall of water hits, the chaplains use their own weight to pin the Pope against the deckhouse to shield him from the worst. When they see him emerge from the soaking still standing, other sailors start calling out in prayer.
“Do not fear, my sons,” he bellows into the wind. “The Lord shows the violent Majesty of His work to those He loves most. You have His greatest servant on board and He will not let you down.”
They can barely make out a word he is saying, but the fact that he is there at all is a thing of wonder. Sailors know the scriptures of the sea better than any man: Jonah given shelter in the body of a whale, Moses parting the waves with his hands, and the Lord himself, choosing only fishermen to follow him, calming troubled waters and walking upon the sea as if it were the land.
The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer.
The Pope bellows out the words of the Eighteenth Psalm.
In my distress I called upon the Lord.
