The Scarlet Contessa

by Jeanne Kalogridis

  “You mean to murder the pope, then.” It seemed a mad, unthinkable thing . . . and yet, knowing that the pope was Rodrigo Borgia, it did not seem so shocking.

  My lady shrugged. “Call it preemptive warfare.”

  “But if you’re caught, they’ll kill you!”

  “Please,” she said, disgusted. “They intend to kill me anyway. Besides, what’s the difference between my hacking Cesare Borgia’s head off with a longsword and this? Now put out the lamp!”

  I lifted the glass globe and snuffed the flame with my thumb and finger, then crawled beneath the linens. As I lay awake, listening to the storm, the horror of what my mistress planned faded. I thought of all the cardinals who had died at the Borgia’s hands, and the thousands of innocents who would die in the Romagna, all to feed the Borgias’ greed.

  Suddenly, murder seemed a good thing—a necessary thing—and Caterina a hero.

  When the parchment was dry, Caterina put on two pairs of long leather gloves and wrote a letter to His Holiness in her own hand, begging for his mercy and asking for compromise. After that, she impressed her seal upon the wax, and wrapped the letter in velvet—scarlet, the color of a proud Sforza. The whole was placed inside a container of fine cedar, and sent with couriers to Rome.

  The assassination did not go well; seeing the container and knowing it was from Caterina, Pope Alexander would not open it, and immediately threw the men who brought it into the dungeon of the Castel Sant’Angelo. The head of the expedition from Forlì immediately confessed all.

  In late November, a mass and public celebration were held in Rome, thanking God for saving His Holiness from the wicked murderess in Forlì. In the church square, Alexander addressed the public—and especially the Republic of Florence, which he warned would face “disastrous consequences” should it provide the “daughter of perdition” with any further support. Cesare and his father now had good reason to pursue her relentlessly, and punish her as cruelly as they wished.

  Caterina never denied responsibility.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  December came, and with it Cesare Borgia and his army of fifteen thousand men. He rode with five hundred Swiss into nearby Imola, whose governor willingly opened its gates to him; within minutes of Borgia’s arrival, the city was his . . . and within minutes, the citizens came to regret it. The fearsome Swiss immediately started pillaging while Cesare had the most beautiful of Imola’s women rounded up and brought to him. Rumor said that he raped them all, a new one every night, and kept them as slaves until he tired of them.

  The fortress at Imola, however, did not bow. Its castellan, Dionigi Naldi, was unreservedly loyal to Caterina and held off Cesare’s army for days, despite the fact that he, Naldi, was wounded in the head. He sent word to the contessa, asking whether he might surrender in the face of overwhelming odds; Borgia was so impressed by Naldi’s loyalty that his troops escorted the wounded castellan home.

  At the news that the city had fallen, Caterina sent her eldest son, Ottaviano, off to Florence with his brothers; the youth put up little protest, but departed with alacrity before Borgia’s troops arrived in Forlì.

  He was not the only one to fear the approaching army. The next day, two Forlivese city elders requested an audience with Caterina in Ravaldino. She granted it, expecting to receive a promise from her townspeople to defend her; instead she was informed that Forlì intended to open their gates to Cesare as well. When the contessa pressed them as to the citizens’ change of heart, the elders confessed that Luffo Numai had been instrumental in swaying the Forlivese to surrender. Clearly, Numai’s loyalties lay with the one who possessed the largest army.

  Furious, Caterina turned the cannon on Numai’s palazzo, but it was dusk and we could not see whether the palace had been struck. As we stood beside the gunners, watching the sulfurous cloud dissipate in the air, Caterina turned to me with an urgent air.

  “Come,” she said.

  I followed her back to Paradise, where, at her urging, I put on my heaviest woolen cloak and changed into my sturdiest boots. Lamp in hand, she went into her trunk in the closet, where the mother-of-pearl flask was hidden, and retrieved a large black key, then signaled for me to follow her down the hallway leading back to the water closet. Halfway down the corridor, she knelt and ran her hand over the dark wainscoting on the western wall. I heard a faint click and stared, amazed, as a panel popped open. Like Caterina, I leaned toward the gap and drew in the stench of the latrine and mildew. She held up the lamp to the opening, revealing a narrow, apparently fathomless shaft leading downward; on one side of the mildewed stone wall were metal rungs.

  Caterina set the lamp on the floor, then cautiously lowered herself into the shaft by catching the top rung with her hands and finding the lower rungs with her feet.

  “Here it grows difficult,” she said. “Tuck up your skirts, and mind the cloak doesn’t get in your way. It’s cold, but it’s easier without gloves. Just keep climbing down, and follow the sound of my voice.”

  Her head soon disappeared. I drew a breath and entered the shaft. The metal rungs were slippery and freezing cold; I had to grip them with all my strength to keep from losing my balance. The farther downward we crawled, the darker it became, and the more I noticed the bitter cold and the stink.

  After torturous minutes, Caterina’s voice said beneath me, “I’m at the bottom. Get ready to step down. I’ll be right behind you, to catch you. Don’t worry, you can’t fall.”

  I felt for the next rung with my foot, but encountered only stone. I felt Caterina’s hands upon my waist and, drawing a breath for courage, let myself drop. The soles of my boots immediately touched against solid ground, and I expelled the breath as a laugh.

  “Hush,” Caterina warned. “The soldiers might hear us.”

  I turned to her. My eyes had grown used to the darkness, enough to make out her form but not her features. We appeared to be in a gap between the fortress walls, and standing on bare earth; my nose told me that the latrine was very close by.

  “Now turn to the left, and take two paces forward.”

  I did so, and nearly stumbled over what seemed to be a wooden hatch. Caterina put her hand over mine and guided it to the handle, made of rope. The hatch opened onto pure blackness.

  “It’s a tunnel,” she hissed into my ear. “I went through it myself last night, while you were sleeping, just to be sure it was still open. It leads all the way past the city walls to an olive grove. You must leave, Dea. In another day or two, there will be armies marching through the streets of Forlì. But I can arrange to have a horse waiting for you in the grove by morning. I want you to go to Florence and raise little Giovanni for me.”

  I thought of Florence and wondered suddenly whether Luca might be there. But something rose in me, something as foolhardy and stubborn as Caterina’s refusal to surrender Ravaldino to the Borgia.

  “No,” I said.

  “You must! My son must be raised by someone I trust.”

  “You’re meant to raise him, not I,” I said firmly.

  Silence followed. I could not see Caterina’s expression, but I could well imagine the rage in it.

  “How many times must I say that I will not surrender!” she hissed. “I am a Sforza, like my father, and I will die honorably—by my own hand if need be—but I will not give myself over to Borgia!”

  “And if there is a third way?” I whispered.

  She ignored the question. “Dea, I am ordering you to go.”

  “Caterina,” I said forcefully, “I am telling you that I will not. You may punish me for my insolence, but I, too, must obey the instincts of my heart.”

  With that, I turned around and, after taking two steps, swung myself up onto the rungs and began to climb.

  Caterina did not speak another word to me that night, nor did she acknowledge my presence for the next two days; instead, she took her secretary, Giovanni di Casale, to her bed, forcing me to sleep downstairs in my room or else in her closet. Of course, she ha
d a legitimate reason to be sullen: our spies had revealed that the city fathers of Forlì had signed a document surrendering the town to Cesare Borgia.

  On the nineteenth of December 1499, the Forlivese opened the city walls and Cesare Borgia, captain general of the papal army and the Duke of Valentino, rode through the streets behind a battalion of five hundred Swiss.

  Caterina, her commanders, and I watched grimly from the ramparts, trying to catch a glimpse of the one called Valentino. The distance and the bitter, icy rain made it impossible to see his features, but we recognized him from the gold caparison on his black palfrey and the honor guard that flanked him. Few Forlìvese came to watch, given the weather, and the streets were mostly empty. Rather than parade through town in such foul weather, Borgia rode directly to the palace of Luffo Numai—a fact that made Caterina swear like her soldiers. His army continued on, to encamp in the fields east of Ravaldino.

  By sunset, the rain had tapered off, leaving the city coated in ice. It was not enough to discourage Cesare’s soldiers, who could not wait to attack the helpless public; screams and shouts filled the air throughout the night.

  Unlike his men, Cesare chose to bide his time and play the civilized Christian conqueror, holding his fire until after the holidays had passed. No doubt he would spend them in the luxury of Luffo Numai’s palace.

  By Christmas Eve, Borgia’s troops had installed artillery on the other bank of the moat; more happily, Caterina had forgiven me for my refusal to leave. She seemed to be at peace, finally, with whatever fate awaited her, and the holiday found her in a strangely festive mood.

  I could not say the same for myself. The fact that I was now truly trapped inside the fortress filled me with an urgent restlessness, the feeling that there was something that I needed to do before I died.

  By dusk, Caterina and all her advisers sat in Paradise’s great dining hall. The hearth had been lit and was blazing so fiercely I began to perspire immediately after entering; since Caterina could not go cut a Yule log per the Milanese custom, she had stacked the fireplace high with wood, so that the flames would last through the night. It was the only visible symbol of the holiday. I thought of my last Christmas Eve in Milan, just before the duke had been murdered, and felt a sudden sadness.

  This Christmas Eve could not be the same. Inside, Paradise’s heavy dining table, capable of seating a hundred people, was occupied by only a dozen, all sitting on hard wooden chairs at the edge nearest the fireplace. All of them, save Caterina, were near-strangers to me: her lover, the red-headed Giovanni di Casale; Alessandro and Francesco Landriani, her half brothers; an adviser, Ser Antonio; Caterina’s favorite condottiero, Bernardino da Cremona; Girolamo’s natural son, the huge and muscular Scipio; and the dreamy-eyed warrior-poet known simply as Marullo. I sat between Ser Antonio and Scipio and smiled with the others, though my thoughts were of Duke Galeazzo’s marvelous singers and how we had listened to them in Bona’s chamber the day the brick tumbled from the hearth and sent roasting pignoli scattering.

  Caterina offered up the first toast of the evening. Duke Ludovico, she optimistically proclaimed to her guests, was already amassing an army to retake Milan. Once he was safely back, he would send several battalions to Forlì. This provoked shouts of approval.

  Three roast geese, a platter of the obligatory chestnuts, and candied almonds were set before us. When these were devoured, the musicians—soldiers all—were summoned. Two pipers and three drummers played with such abandon that the floor beneath my feet vibrated.

  Caterina, of course, grabbed di Casale’s arm and pulled him from the table onto a bare stretch of marble floor. Immediately, she launched into the vigorous skip, step, hop of a driving saltarello; given the heat of the fireplace, her face soon flushed pink.

  Before Scipio could turn and invite me to dance, I rose and called to Caterina. “Your Illustriousness, I am in need of fresh air.”

  I did not wait to hear her reply before rushing through the antechamber to the door that opened to outside, where the air was sweet and cold. Without thinking, I ran up the stairs to the roof, and leaned against the freezing stone battlement to look down at Forlì below.

  On the other side of Ravaldino’s moat, slivers of moonlight gleamed dully off the long barrels of Borgia’s artillery. Beyond them, lamps painted the windows of the larger dwellings in town. I could hear faint, off-key carols and the drunken shouts—in French, German, and Italian—of the conquering army. But these were nearly drowned out by the laughter and singing coming from the hundreds of inebriated mercenaries on the floor beneath me, and the driving music coming from Paradise.

  I stayed until I began to shiver, at which point I headed reluctantly back toward my lady’s apartment. As I descended the last flight of stairs, I met Caterina coming up; like me, she had come without her cloak. She was smiling faintly, but her eyes held something poignant and resigned.

  “Come,” she said gently. “I want to give you a present, in private.”

  “But I have none for you, Madonna,” I said.

  “You have already given me everything,” she replied.

  We walked into her stark bedchamber. She went to the wardrobe and brought out a plain wooden box half the size of her hand, then sat on the edge of the mattress and gestured for me to do likewise. She did not wait for me to open the little box, but pulled out what lay inside: a thin, unremarkable golden chain with a plain, heart-shaped golden pendant hanging from it.

  I was perplexed by the gift, but thanked her politely all the same. She held it beyond my reach and responded, “Just watch.”

  There was a tiny latch on the side of the heart; she pressed it with her thumb, and the pendant sprang open. Tucked inside was a neatly folded bit of thin paper.

  “Don’t ever open this unless you intend to use it,” she warned. “I put the powder inside the paper so that it won’t spill out when the latch springs open. One could take it with wine, if the opportunity arose. In an emergency, the paper could be swallowed easily enough.” Her tone grew confidential. “It’s a large dose. It should kill rather quickly.”

  I folded my hands in my lap and stared at the innocuous-looking piece of paper. “The cantarella,” I said.

  She nodded. “Cesare Borgia will never take me,” she said. “Either I am killed in battle or I use this, a gift from his father.” She snapped the pendant closed, unlatched the chain, and put it around my neck, then sat back to admire it with a faint, unhappy smile. “I have one, too. Would you help me put it on?”

  I was too stunned to disagree, but waited while she fetched the second from the wardrobe. As I unfastened the chain and draped it around the tender skin of her neck, my hands began to quake.

  “You must not do this, Madonna.”

  “If I am captured, I will. Would you prefer to see me raped and tortured by Cesare Borgia? Dragged back to Rome and sentenced to an even worse fate?”

  I turned my face away at the thought.

  “Now,” she said softly, “it’s Christmas Eve. Shall we read the cards one last time, to see what the new year holds?”

  Despite the tightness in my throat, I nodded and retrieved them from my trunk. When I sat on the mattress and untied the black silk scarf that held the deck, I ran my hand over the worn plaster on the cards and thought of my mother. I wondered who would take the cards after I was dead.

  I prayed silently to the angel, who had never seemed more distant. Bless the cards, and let my words be true. Then I opened my eyes and waited until conviction gripped me; these were not just Caterina’s cards, but mine, too.

  I shuffled the cards myself, slowly, thoughtfully, and set the deck down between us. “Cut them, Madonna.”

  She cut them into three piles, drew three cards from the top of the third stack, and set them down in front of me.

  The first was, as we both knew it would be, the Tower, and God’s gilded lightning bolt. I saw not the Tower of Babel, but Ravaldino itself, shattering into a hail of jagged stones.

  N
either Caterina nor I uttered a word; we knew well what it meant.

  I turned over the second card, wishing for a glimmer of hope, and there it was: the Nine of Batons. It was a simple-looking card, nine golden scepters arranged against a background of white, edged by green foliage.

  “Strength,” I said. “Whatever befalls you, Madonna, you have the strength to endure. There is success here, against all odds.” I did not utter all that my instinct told me—that this was strength pushed to the limits of exhaustion, and victory earned at the bitterest cost. I looked on it with dread, but kept my expression carefully neutral.

  Caterina nodded solemnly, and pressed a finger to her lips.

  In silence, I turned over the third card.

  On its face was the painting of a man suspended upside down from a gallows by a rope tied to his ankle. His free leg was bent at the knee and crossed over the other leg, so that his lower body took on the shape of an inverted Arabic numeral 4.

  “The Hanged Man,” I whispered. This card, too, needed no explanation. Sudden tears welled in my eyes.

  Caterina saw them and put a comforting hand upon my forearm; surely she thought I was looking at her death. I drew a steadying breath.

  “There are two possible fates here,” I said at last. “The choice is yours, Madonna. Whichever you choose, you have the strength to endure.”

  Only then did I begin to sob. Caterina put her arms around me, and we wept together like sisters.

  Caterina went back to her dancing that night, and did not return until the first black hours of Christmas morning. I slipped quietly from the bed at dawn, and as I dressed myself in the dark closet, I decided to find the leather-bound collection of Ficino’s writings that Ser Giovanni had so kindly given to me.