The Scarlet Contessa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  I confess, I felt a certain kinship with Cesare that day; I knew what it was to love a sibling desperately, and to want to kill those who would hurt him. I hoped that, unlike me, Cesare would find a way to protect the sister he so adored.

  Unlike his wife, Girolamo was so undone by the possibility of his father’s death that he rarely appeared at the Vatican. The papal captain’s discomfort had little to do with sorrow over losing his father and mentor, but rather with ambition: Girolamo could not bear the thought of losing all his power and returning to his embarrassingly small fiefdom of Imola and Forlì.

  Over Sixtus’s weak objections, Girolamo goaded the Orsini into fighting with the papal army against the Colonna, in hopes that he might obtain many of the Colonna’s grand palaces and fortresses outside the city, in the Roman countryside, before the inevitable occurred.

  I secretly pitied the Colonna, who did not deserve to be destroyed simply because they had disagreed with Sixtus. Caterina—aware, like Girolamo, that the time had come for the Riario to grab as much power and land as possible—supported her husband thoroughly in the war. Even though she was by this time obviously pregnant, she expressed hope that she could join him at the battlefront.

  Count Girolamo, however, instructed her to remain home with the children. And when the rains ceased and the weather turned pleasant, he led the papal army, along with the fighting force of the Orsini, eastward, into the rolling countryside. By midsummer, he had captured the town of Cave from the Colonna and claimed it for the Riario.

  The Colonna, who had not been able to muster an army strong enough to withstand the combined forces of the papacy and the Riario, surrendered and offered to make whatever apologies or reparations were sufficient to win the Holy Father’s blessing again. Girolamo wanted neither, but craved land and wealth. And so he continued his war, and in July, seized the town of Capranica from its Colonna lords.

  Giddy with success and the realization that he would be met with nothing but victory, Girolamo invited the patriarch Virginio Orsini, Caterina, and even the children to camp with him and his army outside of his next target, Paliano.

  Caterina was determined to go, despite being seven months pregnant by this time. I scolded her, but she pointed out that she felt robustly healthy and had no cause for concern; I accompanied her reluctantly, making sure that our company included a midwife.

  I had no taste for war or camping with soldiers in the mud, but Girolamo surprised us all. In the lush countryside outside of Paliano, he had set up huge silk tents adorned with banners and filled with all manner of comforts, including real chairs and beds, a freshwater well, and four private wooden privies. These were situated atop a hill, above the soldiers’ encampment and the oxen and horses, so that we were not exposed to unpleasant sights or foul smells. At first sight, it seemed more like a joust than war.

  One large tent housed Virginio Orsini and his sons, another Caterina and the children, and a third Girolamo and his closest aides—who, to my utter joy, included Luca, whom I had not seen since his master went to war. Later, after night fell, both Luca and I wandered out of our tents in search of each other, and went into the forest for a few hours of talk and pleasure.

  Girolamo remained certain of an immediate victory; Caterina and Virginio Orsini, along with two of Girolamo’s captains, were not so sure. Paliano was larger and more fortified than either Cave or Capranica, and scouts had reported that it had recruited more fighting men, too.

  But Girolamo was stubborn. On the third of August, he began the attack on the city. To his surprise, the Colonna were ready for him, and by the end of the very first day, had fought their way to into the papal camp in the valley below us. On the crest of the hill, Caterina stood with her protective arms around her sons Ottaviano, then only five, and four-year-old Cesare, as she pointed out to them the invaders below and explained their battle technique and how Girolamo’s soldiers responded.

  On the second day, the Colonna’s army managed to push our encampment back, obliging our men to move our tents back one ridge, under cover of night. By then, Girolamo was glum, and Caterina and the canny old warrior, Virginio Orsini, convinced him of the need for more supplies; I stood beside Caterina and watched as Luca, writing at impossible speed, penned a letter to His Holiness detailing what was required. Caterina remained confident and cheerful—for the sake of the children, perhaps, or because, like Girolamo, she could not countenance defeat. I found it more difficult to summon optimism; for each time I heard cannon fire, or the shrieks of the wounded and dying, the earth shook, and I felt myself spiraling headfirst, down among the shattered fragments of the Tower.

  After eight days of fighting, Girolamo had still not received the requested supplies, and his army had been pushed farther back into the countryside by the Colonna’s superior forces.

  “If things do not turn in our favor by tomorrow,” my lady sighed, “I will join the fighting myself.”

  She said this in the late afternoon, before our soldiers had returned. We sat in our tent looking at the hill before us, which blocked any sight of the war being waged just beyond it. One of the children’s nurses had taken them back to the bedroom, separated from us by a white silk flap.

  Nearby, one of Orsini’s sons, twenty-year-old Paolo, was reclining on a sofa beside a pile of armor. At midday, he had fainted in battle because the weather had turned miserably sultry, and a friend had rescued him and brought him here to safety. After Caterina’s ministrations of water and cool compresses, Paolo had recovered enough to consider rejoining the fighting, but she dissuaded him, with good cause: it was late afternoon, and the temperature had soared even higher. A short jaunt to fetch water beneath the unrelenting sun had convinced me to seek shade as soon as possible.

  “Rest here,” Caterina cajoled him, “in the comfort of our tent. By the time you put on your armor, it will be dusk anyway, and the fighting will be over.”

  As we sat, indolent from the heat, hoofbeats thundered up the hill toward our tent. Paolo took up his sword and went outside to investigate. He returned with a young rider, rumpled and forlorn, who looked as though he had not slept in days. He was covered in dust, and had ridden so fast he had lost his cap.

  He bowed to both of us ladies, and said, “I bear a message from Rome for Her Illustriousness, Caterina Sforza.” His hand went to the leather pouch slung over his shoulder, and brought forth a sealed letter.

  Caterina rose, frowning. “I am she.”

  The lad genuflected as he handed over the letter.

  Caterina broke the seal as the three of us watched. Her glistening face was brown from the sun, and her eyebrows bleached almost white; I watched the latter rush together above the bridge of her nose, but she remained calm and otherwise expressionless. I remember thinking that Sixtus must have denied us the desperately needed supplies, and that she was taking the news remarkably well, when she glanced up from the parchment and nodded at the messenger.

  “You have done well,” she said briskly to him. “Go to our kitchen—two tents away”—she pointed—“and get yourself and your horse food and water. When you see my lord Girolamo, relay this to him.”

  She returned the letter to the courier, and disappeared behind the flap to go in the bedroom and speak softly to the nurse. In the next instant, she was back.

  “I must leave immediately for Rome,” she told Paolo. “But it will be very dangerous, and I am in need of your protection. Will you come?”

  Paolo nodded; he could hardly refuse his captain’s wife.

  Caterina then turned to me. “I will not order you to attend me—though of course, you know why I want you to. The choice is yours.”

  “To go to Rome?” I imagined that she was going to confront His Holiness to demand the supplies.

  She gave the curtest of nods, and said, with perfect composure, “Sixtus is dead. The fate of the Riario now rests in my hands.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  We would not learn the full story until much later: Ca
terina’s uncle Ludovico became fearful when he learned that Venice was urging the powerful duke of Orleans to bring an army down from France to invade Milan. Ludovico had immediately contacted Florence and Venice and negotiated a truce with them, finally ending the Venetian war that Sixtus had launched so long ago. Venice received a small but succulent plum, the fertile northern region of the Polesine; Florence was given nothing, but a blind eye would be turned to its efforts to capture the fortress at Sarzana and the city of Lucca.

  Ludovico revealed his true feelings for Caterina, or rather, the lack thereof, by not negotiating with Sixtus; the papacy and the Riario received nothing. Once His Holiness died, there would be nothing for Girolamo save two towns in the bucolic Romagna.

  Sixtus received news of the truce on the eleventh of August. He responded by furiously shaking his fist in the air and shouting at length about the peace he called “shameful and ignominious.” He was inconsolable, much to the despair of his attendants and physicians, who feared for his health.

  Their concerns were justified. By that afternoon, Sixtus was ill with one of Rome’s deadly summer “fevers,” and before dawn the next day, on the twelfth of August, the pope was dead.

  Rome lay a long, hard day’s gallop from Paliano. Caterina did not believe I was capable of defending myself, and insisted that I be her passenger on her horse. She was ready for battle: a heavy breastplate was strapped over her swollen midsection, and her shield tied to her steed. She wore a broad-brimmed French hat with huge white plumes, tied beneath her chin, into which she tucked her golden hair; around her waist was buckled a velvet moneybag, heavy with gold, and a thick leather belt that held her current favorite weapon, a huge curved scimitar.

  Paolo Orsini, good soldier that he was, posed no questions, but as I fastened a canteen to my belt, I asked, “Where are we going precisely, Madonna?”

  She swung up easily onto her horse and looked down at me as if I were a simpleton.

  “To the Castel Sant’Angelo,” she said brusquely, as if it should be obvious, and gestured impatiently at me.

  I climbed up behind her to sit on the mare’s blanketed back, and wrapped my arms around Caterina. My grip was at first ginger; later, as we reached breakneck speed while tearing through the countryside, it grew desperate.

  When night fell some four hours later, our wild ride stopped; I expected to encamp and continue at dawn. But Caterina had a different plan. I returned from relieving myself in the woods to discover that she and Paolo Orsini had lashed lanterns to the shoulders of their horses, and intended to continue riding until we reached Rome.

  “Too much time has already passed,” she said, ignoring my complaints about my aching backside.

  Again we rode, this time at a slightly reduced speed. I tried to make sense of the tiny strip of terrain rushing toward us, illuminated by the lanterns’ wavering arcs of yellow light, but it left me dizzy; I closed my eyes and clung fast to Caterina. After a time, the land flattened out, and our way grew easier as we took the more-traveled paths to Rome. I remember passing through the countryside and hearing distant church bells announcing the hour of Compline, when good Christians said their late-night prayers before retiring.

  By my calculation, we arrived at the walls of the city near midnight. Orsini and Caterina both agreed that we should enter via the southwest, as a small contingent of Girolamo’s soldiers had encamped near the gate, at the Church of Saint John of the Lateran. They could provide us with enough protection to cross to the other side of the city and the Castel Sant’Angelo.

  We approached the main gate known as the Porta Maggiore to perceive, just inside, the flare of torches and shouts of men, as a few members of the papal army tried to disburse some two dozen ruffians. The crowd’s chant rose on the air:

  Colonna! Colonna! Death to the Riario!

  I could not see Caterina’s face, but at the sound, she wheeled her horse about. Paolo Orsini did the same, and followed as Caterina’s mount thundered southward along the city wall. Soon we came upon a second, smaller gate—the Porta Asinaria—which was not only deserted, but also located very close to the Church of the Lateran and the papal barracks.

  We rode through the gate, staying close to the city wall, under the cover of the trees that lined it. The air was hazy with dark smoke that made my eyes stream; Rome was burning, or at least parts of it. To the north, the sky glowed an unnatural pink-red. Closer by, through the branches, the monastery and basilica of Saint John could easily be seen; the huge windows of the church were brightly lit, as were half the windows in the monastery. The tents that once housed members of Sixtus’s army were gone, replaced by a dozen infantrymen and half as many mounted guards, all of whom patrolled the perimeters.

  We were fortunate to have entered a zone protected by the army, but the city’s hills before us flickered with torchlight, and the streets beyond echoed with the shouts of rioters, eager to take advantage of the political chaos following the death of a pope.

  One of the infantrymen spotted our torches at once, and cried, “Halt! Who goes there?”

  Followed by Orsini, Caterina emerged from the shelter of the trees; two mounted soldiers approached her at once.

  One of them, a commoner as large as the count but twice as fat, gawked at her in surprise. “A woman!” he called to his companion, with a hint of lasciviousness in his tone. “Two women.”

  Orsini rode up alongside Caterina, which caused the riders to reach for the hilts of their swords. “I am Paolo Orsini,” he said sternly. “And these are not women, but ladies.”

  Before he could say another word, Caterina pulled off her hat to display her golden hair. “I come from my lord and husband, Count Girolamo.”

  “Your Illustriousness!” The other soldier, a younger man whose speech marked him as higher born, bowed immediately on his horse; the heavy man followed suit.

  “And your name is?” Caterina demanded of the younger.

  “Antonio da Fiorentino, Your Illustriousness.”

  “Antonio,” she said, “I charge you and your compatriot to escort us safely to the Castel Sant’Angelo. Count Girolamo has ordered me to secure the fortress in his stead until he can arrive.”

  Caught in the light from the torches lining the exterior of the basilica, Antonio’s sharp features revealed temerity.

  The heavier soldier said, “We cannot, Madonna. It’s far too dangerous! The streets are filled with enemies of the Riario, especially near the Vatican!”

  Antonio waved his companion silent. “Of course we shall obey, Your Illustriousness. But you shall need more than Sandro and I to escort you. Let me bring more men at once.”

  We rode alongside Paolo Orsini, with Antonio and Sandro flanking us on either side; an extra swordsman rode alongside Antonio, to afford us women more protection. Two soldiers armed with pikes rode ahead of us, and two behind. Caterina wisely chose to avoid the populous areas of the city, instead taking narrow side streets to the birthplace of Romulus and Remus: the Palatine Hill, inhabited by pines, overgrown Roman ruins, and flocks of sheeps and goats who grazed the area during the day. I stared at the crumbling, roofless skeletons of two-thousand-year-old palaces, rendered ghostly by wisps of smoke and the ever-increasing reddish glow from the fires in the wealthier districts.

  From there we passed down into a quiet, sparsely peopled area, where we kept to wooded areas before entering the Trastevere, where the working commoners dwelled. There we were forced onto narrow streets, past homes guarded by their owners; more than once, menfolk noted the papal uniforms and stuck their heads out of the windows to cry out, Death to the Riario!

  At last, we made it to uninhabited marshes, and as the horses picked their way through the vile-smelling muck, Caterina questioned Antonio, who rode beside us. Most of the news was not good: our home of several years, the Palazzo Riario, had been destroyed, and all the belongings stolen or burned. I let go a cry of loss and indignation at the revelation; Caterina listened silently.

  “We are sorry
, Your Illustriousness,” Antonio said. “With so many of our forces gone with Count Girolamo, and the rest protecting the Vatican, we did not have enough men to protect his palazzo. The crowd moved so quickly . . . the servants barely escaped with their lives. What the servants did not take, the crowd did, and what they did not want, they set afire. I’m afraid that many of the fine palazzi have been completely destroyed.”

  Caterina’s tone was grim. “What has become of the cardinals? Are they in conclave to elect a new pope? I am concerned for my husband’s cousin, Giuliano della Rovere, of course. And I hear that Rodrigo Borgia has made many enemies.”

  Antonio shook his head. “They are all well, so far as I know. Most are in conclave at the Vatican, under heavy guard. But I have heard that Borgia and della Rovere are communicating with the conclave via messenger; neither one dares leave his palace. Borgia has several cannon trained on the street, and della Rovere’s palazzo is similarly well guarded.” He paused. “Unfortunately for the Riario, Cardinal Colonna has been freed from prison and has joined the conclave. He is surely doing everything in his power to ensure that Cardinal della Rovere is not elected.”

  “And the Castel Sant’Angelo? Who holds it?”

  “Our troops. Though I must say, Your Illustriousness”—Antonio lowered his voice confidentially—“that the fortress has been attacked several times during the day by an organized, trained militia. My fellows have fought them, and say that some have been seen wearing Borgia’s colors.”

  “I am not surprised,” Caterina said drily, turning her attention back to the swampish ground ahead of her.

  We followed the snaking Tiber until the ground grew more solid, and we came upon the carefully maintained Vatican gardens. From there, we rode eastward alongside the massive southern façade of Saint Peter’s, its high, narrow windows aglow. Our soldiers reassured us that we would be safe crossing through the square; indeed, we passed through one of the archways into the plaza to find it surrounded on three sides by armed papal guards. On the steps leading to the atrium in front of the basilica, and at the northern archway leading to the Vatican, were several cannon, their muzzles trained on the passage leading out to the street.