Servant to the Borgia

by Elizabeth McGlone

  Papa says that now Juan is to be the Duke of Gandia, and for days he has answered to nothing else. When I forgot, he gave me such a pinch that my arm was black and blue to the elbow and he said that he would put snakes into my bed to devour me.

  Papa came last night, but it wasn’t to visit Mama after pranzo though she wore her best gown and white powder. He called me to the sala and said that Joffre and I are to leave this house. His cousin, Adriana de Milla, is lonely and would like to have children around her. Later I heard them fighting, and Papa said that a courtesan could not raise his children. What is a courtesan, Cesare? I know that you will tell me though no one else will. I think it must be foul, for when I asked Mama, she slapped my face.

  I work hard at my studies. The tutors who help me write this missive say that I am skilled in languages and writing and poor at sums, but that I am beautiful so it will not matter, for I will make an honorable marriage. Do you think I am beautiful? I hope so, for it is you I desire to please above all others.

  Send me a letter written in your own hand so that I may cherish it until your return.

  Lucrezia

  Chapter 7

  Although Betta had expected her term of service to last only until Easter, there was never any discussion of her leaving the household. Like a raindrop splashing into the river, her presence was absorbed into the workings of the villa. The seasons passed so quickly that she noticed their flight only from the changes in her duties. More work on feast days, the heat of summer leaving the scullery and halls as hot as ovens when the sunshine danced heavy across the rooftops of the city, the chill of her feet during the winter months when winter winds came down from the mountains.

  There were weeks of quiet when the master journeyed to Venice, taking his chef so that his palate would not suffer. Time dripped slowly then, and Betta spent hours watching the flies buzz in and out of the windows as she cleaned the same hallways and walls again and again until they gleamed, spotless as church windows.

  That the Signore died as the blustery winds of the next Lent tempered into the warm breezes of spring surprised no one, least of all those who watched and giggled behind their hands as his intemperate passion for the young courtesan sapped the vigor from his limbs. The rigorous exertions left his skin white, and he grasped his chest with blue fingers as he hurried from the villa each day.

  “A man of his age!”

  “Two times a night, the girl who dresses that slut’s hair said, and not in a bed, as proper folk do. Takes him in her mouth, they say, or they couple standing up or with her on top…”

  “On top? Wouldn’t his seed run out? Just as well, for the master’s son, that skinflint, won’t share his inheritance with no bastard while he’s a pack of sons of his own.”

  The housekeeper looked up from her bowl of gruel. From her position at the lady’s side, Betta could see that she looked tired, and there were lines of worry branching out from her eyes. Smoke hung heavy in the air, scented with the sweet fruits of a tart being prepared for cena. It must have been that which put the light sheen of tears in the housekeeper’s eyes.

  “Half the men in Rome have bastards, and they are as like to inherit as those properly born. “

  “Does the master have bastards, Donna Maria?” the upstairs maid asked, ignoring the wide-eyed stares and frantically shaking heads of the other maids.

  Maria looked at the girl. Betta, catching a glimpse of it, shivered, thankful that she had never received such a look from the housekeeper, for it promised retribution.

  “None still alive,” she said, sending the maids from the table to begin cleaning beneath the bedframes and credenzas, a task usually attempted only once a season.

  The villa was sold before the food served at the funeral feast had begun to sour, and Messer Leo, a taller copy of his father who insisted on wearing marten fur robes despite the heat, walked through the halls with a pleased expression. The chink of coins in a heavy purse sounded as he directed the removal of family treasures to his home near the Palatine, and as he walked through to door to a waiting litter, there was a chuff of pleased laughter.

  The bounty of the sale did not extend to the servants expected to continue their duties even after the last cart loaded with tapestries and chests rolled down the street. The frown between Donna Maria’s eyes grew deeper as the days passed without the new owner making an appearance. The servants were forced to subsist on barley flour bread and sour wine instead of the meat and gravy they had come to expect.

  Slowly at first, and then in a flood, they began to leave, finding other positions in the great houses throughout Ponte. Three of the four maidservants found employment with the Contarini, whose household had been ravaged by spring fevers. Master Bartolomeo woke from his bed one day convinced that he was to serve as new chef to Cardinal Piccolomini. Despite their attempts to reason with him, the master gathered the knives and pots that were his property and set out with a merry tune falling from his lips. Later, Angelo returned with the news that they had gone to live with his mother, who was beginning to grow stout from the variety of dishes the master continued to produce.

  Betta leaned her shoulder against the wall and rubbed her shoe back and forth across the tiles. There was nothing to do. Even Donna Maria’s fertile mind could not conceive of another chore to fill the interminable hours until the new owners of the villa arrived. From the top of the tiled roof to the stones of the foundation, the house had been scrubbed and polished until it gleamed. Not even the mark of a fingertip could be seen on the small circles of glass that decked the windows; they sparkled with diamond light.

  The cellarer and Donna Maria were speaking in hushed voices. Betta knew the subject of their whispered conversation and paid no mind. The food was almost gone. They all knew it; those who remained were planning to depart on the morrow. The remaining scullion was a simple-minded man with gray hair who played in the ashes of the hearth when he was not turning a spit. Betta did not know what would happen to him during the next days. Or to her. For the last three Sabbaths, there had been no coins to return to her family, and her mother’s quiet bravery had been more difficult to bear than the hunger.

  The noise of the street changed. Dogs barked, and the excited hum of gossiping women quieted before beginning again with greater fervor, the sound like the angry buzzing of bees.

  Donna Maria caught her arm. “Run, child, and tell me what you see.”

  Betta darted out the heavy door, following the whispers down the street until, far down the hill, she could see the approach of half a dozen massive wagons. Not pausing, she spun around and returned to the villa, nodding at the housekeeper as soon as their eyes met. The six servants who remained were standing around the courtyard. Maria turned on them with a ferocious look.

  “Straighten yourselves as best you can. If I find your duties are not done for the day, I will chase you from this house with a broom,” she hissed, the muscles in her arm bulging as she lashed out, striking the air.

  They waited, breathless with anticipation. The sun shone directly overhead, and mosquitos hovered over exposed skin. A bead of sweat snaked down Betta’s temple, and she brushed it away. Small, angry insects were dancing in her stomach, and she fought back the urge to spit.

  The gate flew open. Brawny porters swarmed over the Palazzo, arms laden with the chairs and large tables they removed from the carts. Their burdens did not stem the immediate tide of flirtatious glances between the porters and the serving girls. They flew like leaves in an autumn storm.

  In the center of the chaos, a man stood and surveyed the interior courtyard with a proprietary air. Clad in a plain brown doublet and cream hose cut so close to his legs that they appeared the same size and shape as the reeds which grew along the river, his presence confused Betta, for he was too plain to be a master and too weak and pale to be of the servants. With his sallow skin, he looked more like one of the clerks employed by the church that she had seen hurrying through the city.

  The clerk began is
suing orders, directing the chairs to one door and the disassembled pieces of a bed to up the stairs. It wasn’t until the clatter of a litter sounded from outside the gate that the man ceased his relentless movements and hurried out. Maria and Rudolpho, the cellarer, leaned forward, blocking Betta’s view; she missed the moment when the new mistress walked beneath the arched gate into the courtyard. There was an indrawn breath from the assembled crowd.

  Beautiful. The word was on everyone’s lips, and it was an opinion that did not change even during the first difficult weeks as the grip of the new mistress tightened around the villa. Signora Vanozza dei Cattanei was beautiful, or at least she had been so recently that it hardly mattered. Her skin was the palest shade of alabaster, as finely textured as silk and barely lined though she was well past the age when most women had begun to show the inexorable marks of time. No gaps appeared in the line of her teeth when she smiled, and the hair curled and braided into an elaborate style was a rich gold.

  Rumor soon informed them of her history. A courtesan, the matrons of the neighboring palazzos whispered — one who had borne Cardinal Borgia four children before being packed off with a rich bribe and a new husband.

  How she had gained the palazzo mattered little to Betta and the other servants. The chef that the Signora employed, Master Giacomo, was a dour, fat man who brought with him an apprentice only slightly smaller and less humorous than himself, two assistants, a pastry cook, and three scullions. The feeble-minded scullion disappeared from the kitchen one day, and Betta never discovered where he had gone. Donna Maria, not missing a step, moved her duties from the kitchens to the interior of the house, replacing one of the housemaids that had fled during the long wait.

  Light danced across the multi-paned windows, spilling in small even circles along the length of the floor. Flies buzzed in the sunshine, drifting up from the courtyard where the horses waited, twitching their tails.

  The day was warm for summer; after an hour’s scrubbing of the floor of the walkway, sweat-drenched the bodice of her new gown and darkened the hair escaping from her coif to black. The strands clung limply to her skin; sweat burned as it dripped into her eyes. One day soon, she would ask her mother to show her how to bind her hair up in a cloth so that it would stay confined throughout the day. The slithering horses’ mane on top of her head resisted all efforts to constrain it.

  Betta dipped her brush into the water; the soap stung her hands. Signora Vannozza maintained a rigorous level of cleanliness throughout the villa, far greater than what had been expected by Signore Brachhis, who had insisted only that his linens be changed every second Friday. Signora Vannozza believed in lye soap, brooms, and working her servants every hour that the sun was in the sky.

  A footfall sounded, soft on the tiles. Betta ground her teeth, the ache in her back growing worse with the frustration. If one of the grooms approached, she would be forced to begin her task again, scrubbing the floor to remove every trace of mud well-seasoned with horse droppings from the sparkling tiles. She wondered if anyone had ever noticed the subtle differences in the color of the flooring that lay closest to the door. The lack of harmony bothered her mind, and she could not help but scrub the tile, trying to change its shade.

  Jeweled slippers interrupted her ruminations; delicate, embroidered slippers, heeled and fastened with silver clasps. They could never be worn out of doors, where a single step on the cobbled streets of Rome would shred them to ribbons.

  Betta knew who the shoes belonged to, for they were too small for Signora Vannozza, who possessed nothing so luxurious. But the servants who had accompanied their mistress from the Palazzo Pizzo di Merlo had spoken freely of the children born to the preeminent cardinal in all of Rome. La Princessa, she was often called. The little Madonna Lucrezia.

  “What’s your name?”

  Betta stood and dipped into a curtsy, eyes on the floor. She answered, deciding that the rudeness of staying silent in the face of a direct question was a greater insult than ignoring the housekeeper’s instructions to remain silent before the family.

  “Elizabetta, Madonna.”

  “Hmmm. I have a sister named Elizabetta. I could never call you that, it would be silly. Do you have another?”

  Betta nodded, still not looking up. Standing next to the girl, she was conscious of the way she smelled, so different from the light floral scent of rosewater that seemed to float on the breeze. There were sweat stains beneath her arms and her only ablutions for the past week had been in a basin without the benefit of soap, the servant’s hall the only place where Signora Vannozza believed it to be an extraneous expense.

  “Betta.”

  The slipper came a step closer. “Are you a slave?”

  Pride stinging, Betta answered sharply. “No, I am not!” Then, after a moment, she added, “Madonna.”

  The girl turned away, and Betta took the opportunity to study her. Madonna Lucrezia was gazing at the light of the sun where it was falling through the windows while carefully keeping herself in the shade. The skin of her arm, reaching up to touch the rays, was ghostly pale, so white that it looked to have never seen the sun.

  “I should like to have a slave. My papa says that when I am older, he will buy me a dark-skinned blackamoor to carry a parasol so that I may visit the market. Wouldn’t that be splendid, to have him trailing behind me?”

  Betta bit back a sharp response and voiced a grunt of agreement before sinking back to the floor. Dipping her brush back into the bucket, she shook the excess water off and brought it down in a sweeping motion, cleaning away the dirt and grime. A slave, she thought, grinding her teeth until her jaw began to ache.

  The water in the bucket grew shallow. Standing, Betta prepared to return to the kitchen to fetch more only to find that the girl stood within arm’s reach. It struck Betta that she had never seen so beautiful a gown, not even on Signora Vannozza. Silver embroidery picked out a floral design that lay in glorious profusion along the hem, rising past her knees. She recognized roses and lilies and hyacinths in the shimmering thread. A damask giornea in a violet shade hung in rich folds over a blue-violet gamurra, the sleeves of which were slashed to reveal swatches of ivory so light that the opalescent sheen of the skin beneath could be revealed. Jewels adorned the throat of the cardinal’s daughter, small pearls strung on a chain with purple gemstones and an enameled ring with a portrait of the Virgin. A golden net the same shade as her hair kept the mass of golden curls tamed, though a few locks escaped, laying along her neck.

  Madonna Lucrezia had noticed her wide-eyed stare. “Am I beautiful?” she asked, curiosity evident in her voice. “Everyone says that I am, Papa and Cesare and the tutors that Papa sends to the home of Adriana de Milla where I live. And I think that I am, but not as beautiful as Giulia, for Papa says that she is the most beautiful girl in the world and he spends hours each day with her even though he says he comes to visit me.”

  Betta looked down, feeling color staining her cheeks. “Yes, Madonna. You are beautiful.”

  The girl smiled in response, and what had been only politeness became the truth. A smile of joy and sparkling innocence turned Lucrezia Borgia from pretty into beautiful, an angel painted on the ceilings of churches.

  From behind the violet skirts, a leather ball was produced, the size of an apple. Lucrezia threw it back and forth.

  “Could you play with me?”

  Betta bit her lip. In the dusty streets of Trastevere, there was none to equal her at ball games; quick and sure-footed, she could catch and return sticks and balls with deadly accuracy. And she was fast. No one was faster, not even her brother Franco, who moved like a lumbering ox by comparison.

  “I have duties.”

  Lucrezia’s bottom lip protruded. “But I want you to play with me. Papa says…”

  A quavering voice drifted up from the courtyard.

  “Lucrezia!”

  The girl sighed, stowing the ball within the folds of her skirt, a resigned expression moving across her face. “My mot
her must have sent her to find me. It is time to return to the Palazzo. Goodbye!”

  With a little wave, she was off, running across the tiles. The bright rays caught the jewels in her gown and around her throat, and for a single moment, she was surrounded by the colors of them, silver and purple and the gold of her hair. It dazzled Betta, stealing her breath. Beautiful. In the strange girl’s presence, she had felt surrounded by the light of a thousand stars, and their light touched her.

  Chapter 8

  To the Lady Lucrezia

  The Palazzo Montegiordano.

  It is my sincere hope that this missive finds you in the same fullness of health and beauty that you possessed before the journey to Perugia, where my studies have already separated me from your presence for too long a time. Though it caused my heart much happiness to see you during my visit to the Palazzo, the sight of your ever-increasing loveliness fills me with dread, knowing that soon, you will belong to another. Were it possible, I would keep you forever by my side.

  Of my course of learning, I shall say little, knowing your distaste for such matters, but I would impart to you the particulars of an incident that has lately filled my mind with unease. Only to you, dear sister, can I tell the whole of that strange matter, for it is often in my thoughts of late and I find that I cannot sleep without the import echoing in my mind.

  It came in this way. Within Perugia, a sister of the Dominican order has lately gained much popular acclaim by the performance of many wondrous miracles, casting out demons and cleansing of the stricken of foul diseases. But it is her prophecies that have gained her the most fame, for they seem to be whispered from the lips of angels and their veracity is lauded. Columba de Rieti, she is named, the Dove, a sign, it is said, of the mark of God's favor that hovered over her as she was baptized. Recalling as I did the prediction which set our granduncle onto the glorious path which culminated in his election as Pontiff, I could not help but be diverted by the prospect of visiting one who possessed the prophetic gift. Possessed of a similar spirit, Grifonetto Baglioni accompanied me to San Domenico, where the honor of our father's name granted me an immediate audience.