Servant to the Borgia

by Elizabeth McGlone

  Betta thought again of the small cottage, the smiling faces and the waves had caressed the shore. If she had been raised in such a place, nothing could have forced her to leave.

  "Why..."

  Ruberto passed her the wine again, watching as she drank. It was becoming sweeter, coating the back of her tongue, making it thick and clumsy; her head was spinning.

  "A woman," he muttered. "It’s always a woman, ain’t it, saying I forced her, or I hurt her, or I took from her. That's what you’re thinkin', isn't it? I can see it in your face, that you think I wronged your mother, that great slut. I know how she was, taking other men into her bed. Maybe even those brothers of yours, careful as they were of her." Leaning to the side, Ruberto unleashed a stream of spit. It lay on the dirt, spit colored with wine until it resembled blood.

  Betta found her voice past the painful lump in her throat. "She was not a slut."

  The side of his mouth lifted, and he set the wine down. "Course she was. You're all sluts, but I know how to deal with you."

  He reached for her, pulling her down and covering her mouth with his hand. By the time she thought to scream, it was too late, his hand was between her legs, forcing them apart. Spots began to float across her vision as his hand pressed down, stealing her breath, and then she could not scream; all was darkness and a painful, tearing ache that went on and on.

  "You'll keep comin' and bringing those coppers, same as always," Ruberto told her later when they had returned to Rome, and the searing ache of her injury was replaced by profound despair as the act was repeated on the filthy pile of blankets that served as his bed. "Stop, you'll never see your sister again."

  Would that be such a bad thing? She wondered, mind numbed from pain. There was nothing left for her anymore, nothing but a life of work and this, the awful act that he had done to her, which felt as though her soul had been ripped from her body and stamped in the mud. But her sister was free of it, safe and happy somewhere far away.

  Ruberto must have seen the tenor of her thoughts because he crossed the room in three strides and yanked her back by the shoulder, spinning her to face him. The basin of water where she had been washing fell to the floor, splattering his shoes, and he muttered a curse.

  Evil temper flared in his eyes, and he wound her braid around his fist. "I'd hate to go and fetch the girl back again. Maybe she'd be good for the same sport. I've heard some take them that young."

  Horror seized her; Betta could not feel the pain between her legs or the bruises on her arms where he had held her down, teaching her, he had said. There was nothing left but his eyes, boring into her, and the vein throbbing in his forehead.

  "She is your daughter," Betta rasped.

  One shoulder rose in a shrug, the muscles beneath the fat of his frame turning the gesture into a threat, heavy with violence. "Who’s to say with a mother like that. But you keep comin' here, girl, or else she will learn, same as you’ve done."

  Betta spoke past the pain in her throat. "What about Nencia?"

  "Won't have me." Ruberto's hand clenched on her shoulder. "As though she were one to be choosy, the biggest whore in all of Trastevere. You'll do just as well, ‘til another comes along."

  As Betta limped back to the villa, she paused in the shadow of Our Lady of Santa Maria. The arched facade of the church was silent, the faint snores from sleeping beggars spoiling the solitude of the night. The church bells were quiet, the bustle muted by the hour when only the poor or the desperate were about. Soon they would ring out Vigils, then Matins at the start of the next day, calling the faithful to prayer.

  She thought of her mother, her brothers. Dead, all dead. All that was left was Ginevra, her sister, who had been ransomed for her behavior. The unfairness of it made her want to howl, to scream and then to toss herself from the Ponte Sant Angelo and make an end to it. Her faith taught her that God and his Holy Church would care for children, but the lie of that was before her eyes, every day. Children starved, babies were exposed or tossed in the river, and men raped their stepdaughters until blood and seed streamed down their legs like water. There was no one to protect her. There was only herself, and she could do nothing to stop him.

  Clenching her fists, she stared up at the tower. Hatred for all of it rose in her: for the church which let men live like princes while children starved in the street, for Ruberto, who took what she had no power to refuse. For herself, powerless to stop him. Even, she admitted, for her mother, who had brought this to her and then died, leaving her alone.

  "There is no God," she said and continued her solitary trek through the night.

  Chapter 14

  To Our Very Dearest Brother,

  The sweetest news that has ever reached my ears has filled me over with joy so that I feel as though angels sing hymns of praise on my shoulders. Our dearest Papa, seeking to strengthen his ties with our native land, has at last arranged my betrothal, and it is not to the merchant who pursued the alliance with such fervor. Instead, he has contracted me to one Querubi de Centelles, the son of Count Olivia.

  Though the match was doubtless made in part because of the high honor of our father’s position and the dowry provided me by the death of our brother Pedro Luis, my thoughts are consumed with happiness. I pray that if you have any knowledge of the Count or his family that you will make a full report to me, that I may better anticipate the forthcoming nuptials and how to please him. A painting is to be sent with his likeness, but I am confident that his face does full honor to his lineage, and he is a knight both brave and true.

  For my part, I am overcome with the great honor which my lord has done me and look with pity on those unfortunates whose future happiness was not provided for in so splendid a manner. The preparations for my trousseau have already begun though it will be at least two years before the vows will be said.

  Of the other news which you have asked me to share there is much. Papa says that there will soon be war with Naples. King Ferrante, who our great uncle Calixtus tutored during those years as secretary to King Alonso of Aragon, has refused to pay tribute to the Holy Father, sending him instead a white palfrey. Papa says that its white coat should have been better suited red, for there will be blood for this and His Holiness has summoned the armies of France to aid him in the coming struggle. There is such bad feeling in our father’s voice when he speaks of the King of Naples that I cannot help but wonder at what our uncle told him of the man’s character. Perhaps he is like Juan, who drowned the kittens in the well because it brought him pleasure to hear them scream.

  Juan continues to provide fodder for the gossiping matrons of Rome, spending little time at his martial studies and much at mischief. Each night he rides through the city with a group of young men known for their brutality. The Brotherhood of the Blade, he calls them, and Papa laughs at his daring. With my own ears, I have heard Juan boast that each night his sword is quenched in a different fountain. Men tremble as he passes, though it is not for fear of his gifts with the sword, which pale before your own prowess. Instead, it is our Papa that men fear, for he is disinclined to allow our brother to suffer a moment’s harm, and much gold has been expended to soften the tears of young girls and to comfort women deprived of their sons. Or that is what Giulia, my friend, tells me. Should our father ever attain that blessed office he so desires, I fear what Juan would become, for the blackness of humor that we knew in him from his earliest youth is ever on display now.

  Forgive my prattling, for it is only in these letters to you that I find the solace once enjoyed in your presence. Papa has summoned a jeweler to the Palazzo to commission pieces for my trousseau. Perhaps he will even gift a few baubles to Giulia, who he much admires for her beauty and her friendship to me, for I have heard him many times say how he adores her, and that she and I form the two halves of his heart.

  Lucrezia

  Chapter 15

  Downy hair grew on either side of Signora Vanozza's temples, stretching down to her brows, the color light against the pale skin
. It was the only indication that the lady had begun her life with the golden hair now possessed in such abundance by her daughter. That the golden hair arranged each morning on top of Signora Vanozza’s regal head was a matter of art more than natural gifts was a closely guarded secret; as such, the entire household knew. The third Saturday of each month, a small, dapperly robed man would knock discretely on the gates, signaling an end to the unsightly line of brown that had begun to appear through the increasingly elaborate hairstyles. The hair along her temples was also dealt with, plucked back to reveal a smooth, pale forehead.

  Betta never learned the surname of the man, if he belonged to a guild, or what family kept his allegiance. She knew only that she liked him. The quick way that he walked pleased her, the searching glances he threw at the tresses of every female who crossed his path. Better still was his kindness to the servants.

  "Watered wine, for your courtesy," he would say, the tone as carefully modulated as if he were the son of a lord, and its arrival would be rewarded with a small smile. After his labors were complete and the potions were being rinsed from the Signora's hair and skin, he would accompany Betta to a small chamber where steaming hot water and cloths were waiting. Each of the instruments of his art were the highest quality, silver tweezers and brushes, the paints and potions kept in tiny jars of decorated with brilliant blue glaze.

  He hummed as he worked. Betta liked that as well, the light trilling notes of the song he sang as he washed his tools and slid them into embroidered cases. It brought to mind distant memories of her father, another man who had loved his craft, and made music while he worked.

  "What did you think of it today?"

  It was another part of the ritual, the constant stream of chatter that followed each of his silent sessions with the Signora, who had little liking for talk from those of a lower rank.

  "Beautiful, Messer." Her fingers touched the smooth surface of a long cylinder of iron, still warm from the fire.

  The messer shrugged. "The hair, it is less vigorous each time. Soon it will begin to fall out. I have sought to warn her, but will she listen?" He shrugged again, this time with both shoulders.

  Betta looked down, trying to conceal a smile. During the ensuing silence, the messer finished cleaning his instruments before packing them into a leather sack. She was readying herself to show him to the back gate when there was a gentle brush against her temple; Betta reared back, almost knocking over the basin.

  "Peace, child, I have no ill intent." Behind the deeply hooded eyelids, his dark eyes were kind, surrounded by a fine webbing of wrinkles that she had not noticed before because of the loveliness of his smile. "I merely... May I see?" He gestured at her headdress.

  Betta's hand flew up to the tight band of the linen coif that held her hair close to her scalp. She was no longer a child, able to run through the palazzo with loose hair flying. It was bound tight to her scalp, as she had begun to bind her breasts.

  It was not that she feared the hairdresser; he was no larger than she, and she had long become adept at discerning the intent of another. Except that he had frightened her, she would never have shied from his impersonal touch, it meaning no more than the casual brush of a stranger in the market. And yet, her hair was one of the few things that belonged only to her. Even during those hellish hours that she spent at the bodega each Sabbath, the covering on her hair was never removed. Her hair had not changed as her body was beginning to, growing and budding and rounding until…

  She reached up, meaning to unknot the band tucked out of sight at the top when his hand stopped her. "Never mind, child. It is dark, yes, without a curl or wave?"

  She nodded, eager, and looked down at the curling tongs in his hand. "Would those..."

  He interrupted her with a violent motion of his hand. "No, it will never curl, nor should you try. It is oil, child, a river of night, as beautiful in its way as the golden curls that the lady tries so hard to emulate. It has been many years since I have held such unspoiled beauty, and so it should remain. Only a decoction of walnut hulls when it begins to gray."

  She thought of his words the next time he knocked at the gate. The golden curls she tried so hard to emulate. The young Madonna had arrived for a visit from the Palazzo as the messer was beginning his work. Beautiful golden curls. Each time the Madonna visited her mother, the kisses exchanged between them were less warm, the leave-taking gaining an air of relief rather than sadness.

  Beautiful golden curls. The openly spoken words breathed life into the emotion that hovered during each of Lucrezia's visits; Betta tasted them in the air, sticky with the tang of envy. The young Madonna, for all of her languages and social graces, did not see it. Vannozza was a woman of the lower orders who garbed herself each day in the most splendid gowns her purse could provide. But Lucrezia Borgia, beloved daughter of the vice-chancellor, was a noble in all but name, and far surpassed her in rank.

  Part of Betta wished to warn her about it, to point out the harshness in Vannozza's face when Lucrezia returned the next week and babbled on about the beauty of her trousseau, the preparations for her marriage to Don Gaspar de Procida, Querubi de Centelles deemed too insignificant a noble for the cardinal's daughter. Caution stayed her hand. For all the pretenses of friendship, the young Madonna was a Borgia. Rumors of the family flowed through the city like rats fleeing a sinking ship: the cardinal, who kept his young mistress housed with his daughter in a palazzo whose beauty was the envy of Rome, the young bishop of Valencia, heaped with honors and benefices though he had yet to reach seventeen years, and the Duke of Gandia, who raged through Rome like a mad wolf.

  Despite the heat of the day, the shuttered windows remained latched, dozens of candles providing the only illumination. They played off of the mirror edged in elaborate gilt that adorned the table. Lucrezia sat at the table, tilting the mirror forward and back, examining her reflection. Bright pink cheeks and sweaty temples adorned the faces of the two maids that assisted Messer Francesco as he worked.

  Vannozza sat in imperial splendor, the glory of her yellow and black striped gown muffled beneath a layer of linen. Hair was swept back from her brow, golden and heavy except for the band of dark at the scalp. A white concoction had been carefully applied to the dark, rendering it muddy brown. The smell of it, rancid and powerful, was overwhelming.

  The messer's hands flew, grasping and pulling along the Signora's forehead with the tweezers. Vanozza's face did not alter- it remained smooth and impassive, though Betta noticed that her hands, adorned as they always were with costly rings, gripped the arms of the chair with white-knuckled fingers.

  Lucrezia ignored her mother's discomfort and continued the stream of chatter she had begun as soon as she had disembarked the litter.

  "Papa begins to look elsewhere for a husband for me. He says that… "

  Vannozza stirred in her chair. "Have you bled yet, child?" her voice was slurred. Lately that Signora had begun to take her wine even during the day, cups of chilled wine to relieve the heat of the midafternoon.

  Lucrezia cast her eyes around, and color touched her cheeks for the first time. She seldom felt the heat, the hot blood of Valencia coursing through her veins inuring her to the effects of the sun.

  "No."

  "Then your father will be in no hurry to marry you off and will make the match best suited to his interest when the time is ripe."

  "Only his interests? But what of love, Mother? I thought that Don Gaspar was to be my husband, and he wrote such beautiful letters that I thought we would live together in perfect bliss."

  A strange sound emerged from Vannozza's throat, rippling the muscles there, half a laugh and half a sigh, though her face remained as still as polished silver. "What of it?" she asked, opening her mouth only a sliver.

  "Can you teach me the art of making my future husband love me? That is what you did, as a courtesan. Made men love you." Settled at her feet, Lucrezia examined her face in a mirror. Attention caught as it was, Lucrezia missed the subtle shift
in her mother's expression, pain visible for a moment.

  "There is no art in that. Love comes as it will, and you will wish to avoid it, in any case."

  "Why?" A note of sly humor entered the girl's face, the arching of her eyebrow visible only as she looked in the mirror. "Did you not love Papa?"

  Deep laugher rumbled through the Signora’s stomach, shaking the velvet. "No, praises be, which left me free to tolerate him."

  "Papa says that he loves his Bella Giulia, and he gives her the most wonderful presents, gold and jewels and her portrait painted twice in the last season alone. Perhaps if you had loved him, he would not have left."

  Silence hung shivering in the room, as heavy as a lead collar. Behind the Signora's tresses, the hairdresser's mouth hung open in shock. The whites of Clarita's eyes shone all around; she drew away from her mistress, body hunched as though expecting a blow. Betta slunk back, disappearing into the shadows.

  "Leave us."

  The hairdresser scuttled from the rooms, blue robes flapping around his skinny legs. Signora Vannozza reached down and yanked the mirror from her daughter's hand. Lucrezia shrank from her mother's anger even as the woman placed her fingers around Lucrezia's pointed chin and lifted, not allowing her gaze to escape.

  "You listen to me, girl, and you listen well. Do you think that love is sweet kisses and being showered with flower petals and jewels that appear like raindrops out of a clear blue sky? It’s not." The light hazel eyes Vannozza had passed on to her daughter were flashing, brimming with anger. "Love is giving your heart to a brilliant boy, a sweet, gentle boy with a soul full of poetry. Love was meeting him in gardens and on terraces and dreaming of running away together only to have him reject it all after he had taken the only prize a woman truly owns for herself. And love is the sweetness of watching his anger as you take his rival to bed and bear him beautiful children, one after the other, children you would gladly have given him if he had not spurned you in favor of advancing his career. Love is pain, child, and heartache, and best you learn it."