Blood & Beauty

by Sarah Dunant

  According to the guards, she had spent the first hours shouting abuse, hammering at the door, demanding that they bring her candles, food and clean linen, that they light a fire against the cold. If they had been less frightened of their own commander they might have done it, for there was no doubt she was used to being obeyed. Eventually, when she had got nothing, she fell silent.

  She is not, however, asleep.

  As he locks the door behind him and lifts up the lamp to scatter the darkness, she is facing him, sitting in a chair by the empty grate, the covers dragged from the bed and draped around her shoulders like a grand cape. She seems to be inviting study. Her great mane of hair has been tamed, twirled and knotted over itself high at the back of her head, a few stray curls falling free. Her forehead is high, the hair plucked away in current fashion, a network of fine lines running across it marking out her age. Her eyebrows arch perfectly over deep-set eyes, and her lips are full and fleshy. Though her skin is streaked with dirt, her cheeks have a blush to them, as if she has just pinched them to bring up the colour. Could it be that she has made an effort for him?

  Her breastplate is lying carelessly discarded on the floor halfway across the room. He imagines her breasts without it: creamy and ample, like soft, hanging fruit. He sets the lamp carefully on the table. The hardening of his prick cuts through his tiredness. There is no question as to what will happen between them. She has lost and he will write his victory on her body. He thinks of the parchment petition, rank with the plague, sent to his father, the drawbridge juddering upwards as she skipped laughing away from him, the Frenchmen’s eager faces as they argued for her. Five thousand ducats: Jews’ bollocks, she is the most expensive whore he will ever have. Anger sharpens his lust as he throws his cloak off and moves towards her.

  But she is already inside his head as well as his loins.

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ she growls, no melody to woo suitors. ‘Whatever rights you think you have, they do not include my body.’

  Only, as she says it, part of the cover slips down to reveal a naked shoulder, pale and firm.

  No one thrives on fear. Or if they do, then it is not fear any more. Caterina Sforza has felt it enough times in her life to know that it is what you do with it that counts. She has witnessed its impact on others, has watched grown men fall to the floor in front of her, sobbing like children as they beg for mercy. The first time it happened the sheer turmoil it triggered in her meant that she offered the man his life. Eighteen months later, when he was up to his neck in another plot, she had thanked him for curing her of such female weakness. If cruelty was what was called for to survive, then it was cruelty she would cultivate. After his public execution, his body cut down from the noose while still vital enough to register the agony of dismemberment, she had walked back into the palace to play games with her children. It was he who was suffering, not her. She did not feel anything. She was simply doing what had to be done.

  As she is here, now, in this room. She knows as well as he does what must come next, has played the whore often enough to be familiar with the part. Her first husband disgusted her so much she had taken to closing her eyes the minute he came near her. When he had drunk enough to give him the courage, he would hit her to make her notice him. Her humiliation had been part of his pleasure. As his enemies had sliced him into bits and thrown his corpse into the square, there was a part of her that was cheering them on. But instead she had played the devastated wife, weeping and pleading, giving herself enough time to think through a strategy of survival. Doing what had to be done. Survival. It has become her speciality.

  She has learned everything there is know about this pretty young man. She has heard the stories of iron in his soul as well as his body: a man so greedy for greatness that no triumph will ever be enough. She knows why he is here: that he needs to take the city all over again, this time on his own. And though of course he will win, it must not be given too easily. What glory would there be in that? Her challenge is not to be humiliated: to judge the line between resistance and surrender and to give him what he craves without him realising that his lust is being managed. That way, though he may take her body, she will wrest victory from defeat.

  Cesare is so close now that he can smell her, the scent of sweat, and something else, something stale, putrid almost. A duchess without her perfume bottles is no sweeter than a common whore. The idea excites him intensely. How could it not? He rips away the remainder of the cloth and her bodice and chemise rip with it, freeing her breasts, which, just as he imagined, fall full and pendulous.

  She cries out, pulling up her hands to cover herself, she who has gone half naked to the world when it suits her. How dare she? Now he hits her, the back of his ringed hand hard across her face. She falls halfway off the chair, her head turning sharply with the blow, so that he cannot see the light in her eyes as she recovers herself, biting down on her lip to accentuate the damage. When she turns back blood is welling from her mouth.

  ‘I am a duchess of the Sforza family,’ she says, her voice low and trembling. ‘You dare to touch me again and I will scream your new city awake with your cowardice and shame.’

  ‘Scream away, lady. When they realise it is you, they will be shouting for more.’

  He grabs her hands, lifting her up out of the chair, kicking it away and slamming her against a wall. Even if she was fighting with all her strength now she would not be able to free herself. He pins both hands above her head using only one of his own.

  ‘Nooo!’ she howls. He uses his free hand to hit her again.

  ‘What? Has the Virago of Forlì lost her appetite for the fight?’ he says, using his other hand to wrench up her skirts, tucking them into her belt so that her belly and legs are free. ‘Not got the stomach for it any more?’

  But, at the same time as he knows he has the better of her, she is already ahead of him. I have you now, she is thinking. You can’t help yourself. Oh yes, I have you now.

  She clasps her legs fast together so that he has to work for it. As he separates her thighs and finds her, plunging his fingers inside, she hears him growl his triumph. There it is: the sound of desire, fat and mindless, melting iron into common-or-garden male madness.

  ‘Why don’t you put your prick in me and find out?’ she says fiercely, looking straight at him. And his desire is so naked that just for that second she allows the triumph to show in her eyes.

  She would swallow the words back if she could, for she feels their impact immediately, sees him freeze, watches as his dazed eyes focus into something else. His fingers slip out of her. She cries out, closing her eyes and struggling. But this time he does not hit her.

  Instead he is staring at her, an expression close to disgust on his face. He brings his cupped fingers up in front of him. They are black and wet, the soot of the guns stained with menstrual blood. Of course! That had been the smell: Amazons in battle have no time for clean linen. He lets go of her, her arms falling suddenly free, as if there might be some kind of infection in her very touch.

  She stands there, breathing heavily, trying frantically for a way to bring him back. But with warriors as finely matched as they are, there is no second chance. With the lust draining away, he looks at her again, as if for the first time. He sees a mouth like a bloody open wound, breasts slack with their own weight, the spreading flesh of abdomen and upper legs, stretched and sagging – the impact of decades of motherhood. The streak of dried blood staining her inner thighs matches a knot of bulging veins that run down the side of one leg deep into her calf. She might pamper herself with all manner of bleaches and ointments, but there is nothing to heal the ravages of multiple pregnancies and births on a woman’s flesh.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he says. ‘Look at you. You have the body of a sow. No wonder you don’t lift up your skirts in public any more.’

  She laughs, eager to show how much she is immune to him, but it comes out more like a cry. The hurt is deeper than anything his prick could have inflicted. She launc
hes herself at him, but he is ready and will have none of it. He meets her halfway, slamming her back across the room, and she loses her balance, falling heavily.

  ‘What witch potions did you give your husbands that they could stay hard for you?’ he says, spitting on the floor next to her as if to get any taste of her out of him.

  It is her misfortune that this moment should trigger such a black memory in him. A certain prostitute during a night of whoring and drinking in Naples. It had become a contest of stamina: him, Alfonso and other nobles showing the papal legate a good time. The Borgias like to fuck. That’s what they had been told. They also like to win. Maybe they had been told that too. The last one had been his. The last and the best, they had promised. A legend in the city. The sweetest snatch, just don’t look in her eyes. The devil is in there. She had been propped against a wall, on cushions in the darkness, cooing to him in Spanish, the voice siren-sweet. He was so drunk that he almost couldn’t get it in. When he did he found himself inside a marshland, big as a flooded tomb. As he pulled himself off her in disgust he reached for the lamp. She was a hag: a million years old with skin like a cow’s hide, and when she grinned she had no teeth. It had given him such a fright. He, who was never frightened. Outside in the street, the others were falling over themselves laughing.

  ‘Did she smile at you? She is a Sybil as well as a whore. If she smiled you are Fate’s favourite. A man to whom everything will be given. She does not often smile, my lord legate.’

  He had laughed it off. God knows, he had done worse to friends. Next morning they all had sore heads and little memory. But Alfonso had gone out of his way to make sure he was all right. Weeks later, when the pain and the boils had started, though it could have been one of dozens of women he had known it was her. God damn the House of Aragon. How many reasons does he have to hate his brother-in-law?

  ‘Five thousand ducats, for a sack of skin and a worn-out snatch,’ he says flatly. He thinks of the bodies disembowelled, the eighty-year-old man’s head splitting open as it bounced off the cobbles, two husbands chopped up into bits and dumped like trash. For what? This overripe flesh? It doesn’t even warrant kicking.

  ‘If you still want it so much, maybe the jailers in Castel Sant’ Angelo will help you out.’ He moves towards the door, picking up his cloak. He has got what he came for. ‘As long as they blow out the light first.’

  ‘You think you can do it any better than me?’ she screams after him. ‘You won’t last a season here. They are traitors to their fingertips, all of them, and they will hate you faster than they hated me.’

  He does not answer. Her fury follows him down the stairs.

  But when he wakes, two days later, one of his first acts is to call together the leading families of the city and announce a freeing of all political prisoners, a reduction in taxes and subsidies from the papal coffers to finance the rebuilding of the fortress and the damaged town. Defeating one’s enemy: it can be done in all manner of ways.

  CHAPTER 48

  The victory parade that brings Duke Valentino and his army into Rome takes place in the last week of February. Carefully picked by the Pope, it is a wondrous piece of timing: jubilee fever combined with Carnival to provide a captive audience of thousands of pilgrims and revellers, plus a flood of villagers who have swelled the ranks of the army as it approaches the northern gate, eager to join in the largesse that accompanies victory. The last time a Borgia son had come back from war, there had been food and wine free for the taking. And he, the Duke of Gandia – that was his name, yes? Already people can barely remember – he hadn’t even won a battle.

  But Cesare Borgia – oh, Cesare Borgia has proved himself a great warrior. The city is in an agony of anticipation. Beyond the gates the army stretches out half a mile, almost every man in new cloth or polished armour. Alongside the papal insignia and the colours of Valentinois, his men carry the banners of Imola and Forlì. Those same banners, copied and enlarged, are emblazoned across newly constructed towers in front of Castel Sant’ Angelo: two great cities of the Romagna returned to the papacy. Everyone knows that, by rights, there should be a third banner flying there – the state of Pesaro, a gem waiting to fall into the duke’s lap. But that is not what happened.

  No one had felt more thwarted than Cesare himself.

  ‘My lord, wake up. You are needed.’

  Early morning, barely a week after the taking of Forlì, and he is sleeping the sleep of a man who has only just gone to bed.

  ‘God’s wounds, Michelotto,’ he groans, rolling over. ‘Your face is a foul sight to open one’s eyes to. This had better be important.’

  ‘It is. You are about to lose half the army. Ludovico Sforza is on the march to retake Milan.’

  Who would have believed the old tyrant had it in him? After the humiliation of his flight he had been consigned to the dungheap of history. But the poison he had been pouring into the ear of the German Emperor, Maximilian, has apparently borne fruit. To have Italy overrun by France and supported by the papacy with the Pope’s own son leading the way: such an outcome would skew the whole balance of power in Europe. If Spain did not have the stomach to resist, then Germany must.

  ‘Where are they?’ Cesare is already up and dressed.

  ‘Heading towards Lake Como.’

  ‘Then we still have time. If we break camp now we can reach Pesaro in a week.’

  The French, however, have other ideas. ‘It is just too difficult,’ Yves d’Alegre says, throwing up his hands in defeat. ‘To move a whole army out so fast, and in such… well, inclement weather.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it can be done.’ Cesare has brought his own artillery expert with him. ‘Vitelli?’

  ‘I would say two, maybe three days to move the guns. Less if everyone pitches in.’

  Behind d’Alegre, the Bailly de Dijon is busy making faces. Money, thinks Cesare. That is the only thing that enlivens those flabby features.

  ‘Ah – here, you see, we encounter a little problem. The Swiss and Gascon infantry are very tired after their magnificent work taking the fortress.’

  ‘Tired?’

  D’Alegre shrugs, as if to say, What can I do? Such a talent for war brings temperament with it. ‘And then, when the call comes for us to march to Milan, as it must, they will be…’

  ‘Even more tired,’ Cesare says lightly. It has proved one of the hardest lessons of war, learning to keep his temper at bay. ‘What do they want?’

  The Frenchman studies his cuffs. They are frayed; such a long time on the road. He could do with a return to court to contact his tailor. ‘When things go well, it is customary for elite troops to be rewarded with… how do you say?… A rise of pay.’ He sighs extravagantly. ‘Ah! I tell you, this business of making war is so expensive. Sometimes more when one is on the winning side.’

  Cesare snorts. ‘So why don’t you share out your ransom money from your “protected prisoner”? Or maybe I could rent her out for a couple of nights, raise a few hundred ducats that way. I’m sure we would get enough takers.’

  D’Alegre laughs. ‘Oh duke, you are a man of sublime wit. It is no surprise that our king is so very fond of you. But, of course, you will remember that you ’ave not paid us for the lady yet.’

  ‘… manners of pigs and the morals of money lenders. French scum, all of them!’ The plates and goblets at the dinner table chatter under the weight of Alexander’s fist. ‘Your brother is risking his life to bring glory to the Mother Church and what do they do? Sit in their tents scratching their balls, demanding more money. If they had moved faster, we could have taken Pesaro by now.’

  Four years on and Pinturicchio’s own brush-strokes in the Room of the Mysteries still shine off the walls. Inside the stone fireplace a roaring blaze lights up the gaudy-coloured painted curtains and gilded tassels that drape and fall around the bottom half of the room. In comparison, the papal table in the centre offers a poor man’s feast. The taking of the cities in Romagna may be costing the Church a small fortun
e, but the Pope, as ever, is frugal: a jug of average Corsican wine and a couple of dishes of pasta and fried sardines to mark the Friday fast day. Whatever spices may be lacking are added by his spirit; sweet or sour dependent on the daily dispatches from the battlefield.

  ‘Dear Papà, it is not such a disaster. The campaign is already a triumph. Everywhere you go in Rome, people talk only of Cesare’s victories.’ Lucrezia’s face, though it may have lost its plump prettiness, gives off a different glow these days. Perhaps it is as simple as happiness. It is also infectious. In the weeks since the birth of Rodrigo, the Pope cannot get enough of her. With his eldest son at war, he feels the need of his family around him.

  ‘No, no, Father’s right! They are scum,’ Jofré, well oiled as usual, jumps in gleefully. Barely two weeks before, the French army had been the glorious toast of the table. It had not been an easy mouthful for a family full of Aragonese in-laws to swallow. ‘Cesare should have shoved their pay rise up their arses. That’s what I would have done.’

  ‘Then we must thank God you are nowhere near any army that bears our name,’ Alexander thunders. Jofré’s sojourn in Castel Sant’ Angelo has done little to improve his relations with his father, though it seems he is the only one not to notice it.

  ‘Oh, he does not mean it, Father,’ Sancia intervenes gaily, sliding the wine jug out of her husband’s reach. ‘It is only his humour.’

  Under the table Lucrezia reaches out for her own husband’s hand.

  ‘It’s not the French but the Sforzas who are to blame. They are the reason Cesare lost half his army,’ Alfonso says quietly.

  She knows there is part of him that is cheering Ludovico on: an army recalled to Milan cannot also be an army invading Naples. He is more of a politician these days, her fun-loving husband.

  ‘Awh, I know all that well enough.’ Jofré is already in search of the wine jug. ‘The Sforzas! They are worse than scum. The Sforzas are… they are lice!’ And his petulance is as funny as it is stupid, allowing everyone, even his father, to laugh at him.