The Scarlet Contessa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  The first few days saw Caterina too busy to take much note of her surroundings; she was escorted to feasts, entertained by jesters, musicians, plays, and spectacles. Peasants surrounded the Riario palace and presented gifts of local delicacies, wines, and preserves.

  Her husband, Girolamo, had promised earlier to meet her at Imola, but after four days, she began to chafe. Her instructions were to wait for him until he gave word that danger from assassins and plague had eased. After twelve days, a letter came from Girolamo, but she would not open it. Instead, she set out the following morning for faraway Rome.

  We continued on the Via Emilia to Cesena, then due south. With each passing day, the weather grew warmer; by the time we passed Perugia, midway to our destination, we women stripped down to our chemises in the carriage, and hung out the windows, hoping to catch a stray breeze.

  After more than a fortnight of dull, miserable travel, our messengers went ahead of us into the Holy City, while we stopped a few hours shy of it, at Castelnuovo, owned by the powerful Colonna family. Caterina was again feted and overfed, and put in luxurious quarters.

  The next day she was anxious, and snapped irritably at me and at the maids as they outfitted her again in the grand gown she had worn on her triumphant entry into Imola. Our host, Stefano Colonna, honored her that afternoon with a banquet; by the time our unwieldy caravan again headed south, three hours before dusk, all of us were sated and drowsy. The Roman sky was cloudless, the sun merciless, the heat so sweltering that Caterina abandoned all notions of wearing the velvet cloak.

  Along with Caterina, I craned my neck out of the carriage at the driver’s shout: Rome lay shimmering in the near distance. They say the Holy City rests upon seven hills, but age has worn them to gentle swells, enclosed by the crumbling, overgrown remains of the Aurelian Wall. Bona had been to Rome, and while I was still a girl, she had had me schooled carefully in its culture, geography, and history. She had always spoken of it with such reverence that I had expected to see a crowded but shining heavenly paradise—and indeed, there were hundreds of palaces, cathedral domes, and churches of shimmering white marble, dazzling in the afternoon light. To my disappointment, however, there were far more squalid, crumbling structures, small forests, overgrown meadows, abandoned vineyards and orchards, and ancient ruins playing host to grazing flocks of sheep and goats, all within the city walls. The gleaming new Jerusalem was far too small to fill them; in ancient days, it had held close to a million souls. Now it was home to barely forty thousand.

  Nestled against Rome’s western flank, a brown river flowed north to south; on its eastern bank, which contained little more than rolling countryside, sat an isolated, aging complex of massive rectangular buildings. These were Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican, whose name meant vacant, uninhabitable. The land on which these were built had acquired its name in the first few decades after Christ’s death, when Caligula’s mother, Agrippina, had ordered the marshy, spring-laden hill to be drained so that she could plant her gardens there. Later, her son began construction of a circus nearby, which was finished by the tyrant Nero.

  Nero entertained the pagan masses by martyring hundreds of Christians on the spot. Many were crucified, others covered in tallow and burned alive; still others, forced to wear the bloody pelts of beasts, were torn to pieces by wild dogs. They died as the mad emperor himself took part in wild chariot races around them.

  The bones of these martyrs were too many to be recovered and properly buried, so a church was erected upon them to consecrate the remains, including those of Saint Peter, who had been crucified upside down in the very center of the circus. A blessing, the priest who tutored me had said, for he died looking up toward heaven.

  We traveled another half hour before those riding ahead of us issued a series of shouts; our carriage rolled to a stop. As the driver helped the Countess of Imola from the carriage, I followed, and glimpsed for the first time her husband.

  He had dismounted a black charger, and carelessly tossed the reins aside without waiting to see whether the groom caught them. His entourage was no match for his wife’s; he had brought with him a dozen men, including the Bishop of Parma, a pair of red-caped cardinals, and a man dressed in bright blue silk who turned out to be the Milanese ambassador to Rome.

  Girolamo Riario, the unacknowledged son of Pope Sixtus IV, wore a tunic of dark brown velvet embroidered with silver thread and trimmed with white ermine, despite the heat. His attendants wore the same brown velvet, sans embellishment, and they watched his every move with the same anxious attention I had seen Duke Galeazzo’s underlings pay him.

  Girolamo gazed frowning upon his young wife. A gigantic, solid man, long of torso and limb, he stood three-quarters of a head taller than his tallest companion. His low forehead was hidden beneath light brown bangs, his dark eyes were wide set, his nose short and straight. His lips were red and small and round as cherries. His hair, cut like a page’s, fell just to his shoulders, framing a long, horselike face with a massive jaw that overwhelmed his face, though he could not be called ugly. It was not until he walked toward us that I saw he had a sparse mustache and goatee, both better suited to a raw youth than a man of thirty-four years.

  When he stepped up to Caterina, he smiled, revealing crowded, overlarge teeth, but his eyes held no joy, only guardedness. He took in the golden glory of his bride—precisely twenty years his junior—with only the briefest flicker of carnal admiration. He was ill at ease; he glanced anxiously about until a sextet of armed guards encircled him, and the chief of them gave a short nod that it was safe to proceed.

  “Madonna Caterina,” he said stiffly, in a husky bass, and gave a perfunctory bow. “Beloved consort, Countess of Imola, I’m glad to meet you. How lovely you look.” His unimpressive little speech was halting and clearly rehearsed; he spoke with such a pronounced Ligurian accent—nasalizing half his words and swallowing most of his r’s—that we all had to listen keenly to make out what he said. All the ermine and silver embroidery in the world could not hide the fact that he still sounded like a backward commoner from a tiny fishing village.

  When Caterina, flushed from heat and nerves, proffered her hand, he took it clumsily and led her to the Milanese ambassador and the bishop, whose florid praise for her beauty made her husband’s words seem all the more lackluster. After the two dignitaries fawned over her a moment more, Girolamo grew impatient and led her over to a copse of tall, ancient oaks, accompanied by the guards.

  I watched from a short distance, discreetly trying to swat away mosquitoes as the two of them spoke. Girolamo presented a necklace of very large pearls to his wife, and Caterina responded with gratitude; he tried, awkwardly, to fasten it about her neck, but grew frustrated and left the task to a guard. Through it all, he kept glancing about, utterly distracted and wearing a faint, sullen scowl; at the end, when Caterina ventured a few questions, he cut her short with a wave of his giant hand. And then he raised his voice so that Caterina’s maids and I, and all his male companions, could hear.

  “I wasn’t happy,” he said, in his peasant’s accent, “when I heard you were coming. I wasn’t joking when I said there was plague, and there are men plotting to kill me—and now I’m forced to expose myself in a public procession through the streets! I sent a letter to Imola explaining these things to you. Didn’t you get it?”

  For the first time, he fastened a distinctly menacing gaze on his bride, and became very, very still. He drew up to his full height to emphasize the point that the crown of Caterina’s head did not come so high as his shoulder; although his hands remained at his side, they coiled into fists.

  Caterina, too, grew still. She dropped her gaze, now flinty, and tucked her chin in a manner that usually preceded an outburst of temper. She held this pose for only a few seconds and looked up at her consort with a smile only slightly less disingenuous than his had been.

  “I did not,” she replied with cloying sweetness, in a breathless, feminine voice I would never have expected from h
er lips. “I would never want to endanger you or disobey you. Forgive me: I was so eager to see you in the flesh that I could wait no longer. And now, having met you, my happiness is complete.”

  The last sentences were uttered with gushing obsequiousness; Caterina was mocking him openly. Girolamo, however, did not yet know Caterina well enough to know it. He digested her words and nodded to indicate her reply was acceptable.

  “Let’s go then,” he said flatly, “and make quick work of this. I have pressing business.” He turned his back on his noble-born wife without the simple courtesy of leave-taking, and waved to his men as he headed back to the horses.

  Caterina did not move. Instead, she stood staring in the direction of the vacant spot where Girolamo had stood, her craven smile rapidly fading, her eyes narrowing with suppressed rage. While the others were mounting their horses and hurrying back to carriages and wagons, I touched her elbow.

  “Your Illustrious Highness,” I said. “We must go, too.”

  Her back was to all the others; only I could see her face, hear her voice.

  “Ignorant fucking fisherman,” she muttered softly, then fixed the artificial smile upon her lips and turned back to her waiting entourage.

  Caterina rode on horseback the rest of the way while the maids and I rode in her carriage; as we drew closer to the city, we were obliged to stop every quarter mile for Caterina to dismount so that she could be greeted by scarlet-clad cardinals and prominent Romans. By nightfall, we arrived at the palace of the Cardinal of Urbino on the northern outskirts of the city. Despite the grandeur of the dwelling—newly renovated, with a marble façade, columns, friezes, and pediments—the street leading to it was in disrepair. Weeds sprouted between the bricks, and our coachman had to shoo away grazing goats; hares scattered in front of the horses’ hooves and quickly took refuge in a field across from the palace.

  Exhausted, Caterina slept soundly despite the unrelenting heat; she did not stir even when wolves howled beneath our bedchamber window.

  I woke at daybreak to the sounds of retching, and rolled from the bed to discover my naked mistress huddled over the basin, emptying her stomach. I found a cloth, wet it with water from the pitcher by the basin, and gently lifted her damp hair to press the cool cloth against the back of her neck.

  When she had finished, she straightened and looked up at me. Her face was ghastly pale, her eyes and nose streaming.

  “Was it the food?” I asked. We had both dined on a surfeit of rich dishes and a good deal of wine.

  She shook her head. Her entire body was trembling and her brow slicked with sweat from the oppressive heat. “He is a horrid man,” she whispered. “A boor and a bully. I want to go home.”

  I freshened the cloth with more water and cleaned her face. I considered telling her that her bridegroom had simply been nervous and in ill sorts, that he was surely a nicer fellow than he had seemed, but that would have been a lie. Instead I said, “I am with you, Madonna. He would have to kill me first before I let him hurt you.”

  Perhaps I said the wrong thing; her eyes filled with sudden tears. But she swallowed them deliberately, and said, in a stronger voice, “I’m not sick. It’s just this damnable heat.”

  I judged the first statement to be true, the second a lie, but did not contradict her. Instead I rinsed the cloth, wrung it out, and pressed it to her warm brow.

  “Ride with me,” she said. “I want you by my side today.”

  She would not listen to my protests, but made me put aside my widow’s unadorned black, and gave me a gown of cobalt silk embroidered with silvery white leaves; it was only slightly too short, and a bit too full in the bodice.

  Despite the heat and the sun, already relentless at that early hour, she dressed in her full wedding regalia: a kirtle of black damask imprinted with a pattern of roses, and quilted with gold thread in a diamond pattern; her black bodice and sleeves were similarly quilted and studded with gold beads. Over this went an overdress of crimson satin and a heavy black damask cloak embroidered with the Sforza crest. Large rubies hung from her ears and around her neck on gold chains thicker than my thumb, along with the long strand of pearls from Girolamo.

  It was Pentecost, and all of Rome was in a festive mood. Girolamo arrived wearing a faint, forced smile, a sullen gaze, and a shimmering silk tunic of Riario sky blue, embroidered with the golden oak. He and his male entourage led the way on horseback, followed by Caterina on a white mare. I rode just behind my mistress, ahead of representatives of the most powerful Roman families—the Gonzaga, the Orsini, the Colonna—and her large Milanese contingent. We made our way through the heart of the city, along the broad Via Recta, roughly paralleling the course of the River Tiber and recently repaved with brick and widened by Sixtus. Rome hosts hundreds of churches, more than I had ever seen, and every bell was ringing; their chimes, along with the cheers from the crowd that lined the street, deafened me.

  Caterina’s nerves were forgotten. Once in public, she was again the poised, confident contessa, wife of the second most important man in Rome; she turned her head from side to side as she waved to the masses, allowing me a glimpse of her joyous, beaming face.

  We wended our way past countless churches, most of them in serious disrepair, with broken spires, missing bricks, broken windows, and stone steps so badly worn by the centuries as to be unnavigable. There were shops—some new, some old, most selling religious items to pilgrims, who were obliged to traverse the Via Recta on their way to holy sites—and parks, some desolate and overgrown, and the occasional cluster of filthy shacks. There were also massive palaces belonging to the wealthy families and to the equally wealthy cardinals; I imagined that the ancient Roman temples, when new, had appeared much as these square white travertine structures, their entrances flanked by marble columns topped with ornate pediments, the whole embellished wherever possible with the forms of gods and cherubs.

  Our cavalcade turned west and crossed the bridge leading to the imposing papal fortress that once housed the emperor Hadrian’s bones. This was the Castel Sant’Angelo, a squat, stark cylinder, many stories high, of brick so bleached and weathered its original color was uncertain. Some nine hundred years earlier, it was said, when the city was in the throes of a deadly plague, the Archangel Michael appeared atop the fortress and sheathed his sword; with this act, the pestilence retreated and Rome was saved. As we passed over the River Tiber—murky brown, littered with floating garbage and reeking of raw sewage—bile rose in my throat, and I covered my nose with my hand.

  From there, our way led straight to Saint Peter’s Square, where papal guards held back the cheering throngs. At the steps leading up to the gatehouse in front of the basilica, we dismounted. I stayed close behind Caterina as she, Girolamo, and a Milanese orator were met by a middle-aged cardinal, whose height and long limbs marked him as one of the groom’s many cousins. This was Giuliano della Rovere, who otherwise resembled Girolamo not at all: Giuliano’s features were even, his jaw square, his cheeks sculpted, his nose straight, his chin delicate, with an attractive cleft. He was, in a word, pretty, and his gestures and movements graceful and refined. The rest of the nuptial entourage followed us through the arched gateways and across the atrium known as the Garden of Paradise to the church proper.

  As I write this some thirty years later, the old basilica is no more, having been replaced by something new and shining and obscenely grand; I am grateful to have had the opportunity to set foot in it before its destruction. For the original Saint Peter’s—worn and stained, patched and crumbling as it was—dazzled not the eye but the soul. Its most impressive trait was not its architecture; the sanctuary was laid out in the simple shape of a Latin cross, with a broad central nave supported on either side by interior columns and flanked by two smaller aisles on the right and left, the whole covered by a leaky gabled roof. Nor was its adornment impressive; the great dark wooden doors were plain and deeply scarred, the marble floors worn and patternless, the small windows set high, admitting only na
rrow shafts of sunlight. Set upon a high platform of dark gray marble, beneath a plain, scarred wooden crucifix and a frieze supported by four spiral columns, was the altar, covered with gold brocade. Above the frieze, in a small half-cupola built into the wall, was the basilica’s most notable work of art: a mural of Christ attended by Saint Peter and Constantine, its builder.

  None of these things awed me as much as its overwhelming vastness and its age. Its length and breadth allowed the gathering of several hundred souls in the central nave alone, and its height was more than three full stories. The windows were so high they blocked all view, forcing one’s attention away from external matters onto the spiritual. The instant I stepped inside, I felt a thrill, knowing that beneath my feet lay the bones of the first martyrs and all the popes, including Peter himself. Here trod Nero and Constantine and all the powerful men of Rome, past and present. And though the air was close and warm, filmed with the smoke of incense and redolent of human sweat, I breathed it in, and felt sanctified.

  We made our way down the right aisle, passing the marble columns and the hushed congregation of hundreds, rich and poor alike. Upon the tall dais containing the altar, Pope Sixtus IV sat on an overlarge throne, surrounded by a scarlet flock of some two dozen cardinals.

  Bona had raised me to revere the Holy Father, and despite my anger at God over Matteo’s death, I was still awed by the realization that I stood on the very ground hallowed by the bones of Saint Peter, staring at his successor.

  The former Francesco della Rovere was grotesquely obese, a mountain of jiggling flesh covered by white linen robes and a chasuble of bright gold brocade edged with panels of crimson velvet; his cloak was of white satin embroidered with red and gold thread. On his crown sat a mitre of white silk trimmed with gold braid and studded with rubies, amethysts, topaz, and emeralds. A large pectoral cross of gold inlaid with diamonds rested upon his wheezing chest.