It happened all at once, a movement so fast that her eyes, clouded by tears, could not follow it. Cesare urged the mare forward into a headlong gallop, striking hooves turning to silver as they raced across the sand. He bent low across the horse’s neck. The spear drove forward, inexorably aiming for the spot deep within the bull’s massive ribcage, but with a final surge of strength, the animal tossed its head, raking the horns into the underbelly of the horse and then lifting, sending it and Cesare whirling through the air.
Lucrezia was on her feet in an instant, screaming as Cesare collapsed under a flailing mass of horns and hooves and spear. The world grayed, sight narrowing until all she could see was his body, rolling again and again as he sought to avoid the dangerous hoofs of the horse and the bull as they fought to damage one another. Blood was everywhere, spots of it like raindrops on the sand, wet streaks staining the brown and silver coat, and deep crimson pools emerging from the rib cage and sides of the two downed animals.
Cesare had rolled away from the striking legs and raised himself up on one shoulder. Though his face was etched with pain, seeing that he was safe, that the worst thing had not occurred, allowed her lips to cease screaming and draw in a breath. The doors opened, and men began running inside, Micheletto, sword already in his hand, the rough men who had waited outside, brandishing spears and ropes.
They fell on the horse and bull, pulling them apart, but it was already too late. The mare’s front leg was bent at an impossible angle; the sand beneath her belly was a wet sea of blood. She was dying, her misery shortened by Micheletto’s sword. The bull had already gone still, its final pained moments sufficient to kill the horse which had carried its tormentor. The men were lashing ropes to its legs and discussing among themselves how to carve the animal before sending it to the butcher.
Like a sleepwalker, Lucrezia floated across the arena, seeing nothing but Cesare’s face as he sat up, flexing his leg back and forth, unable yet to stand. Her eyes devoured him, looking for injuries, trying to reassure herself that he was alive, that this was not a dream and he was not lying next to the horse, lifeblood spilling out like a fountain
Micheletto became a blur of motion, signaling to the men to drag the remains of the bull outside and then directing the disposal of the horse. Minutes passed, or perhaps they were hours; she watched with numb shock as the two animals, each magnificent in their own way, were carted off, destined for the market. From outside the arena, she could hear Micheletto shouting. Only she and Cesare were left. He had brushed off the men’s offers of assistance, only allowing himself to be hauled upright and helped to one of the seats. Lucrezia drifted beside him, her mind able to encompass nothing save his face at the moment that the horse had fallen.
His hand brushed against her cheek, becoming wet with the remnant of her tears. “Not the spectacle I wished for you to see,” he murmured. There was pain on his face though no bones had been broken. The leg which had been trapped beneath the horse was propped up on the velvet pillow, the swelling already visible.
“You could have died,” she said, astonished at how calm her voice remained. It was as though they were discussing the warmth of the day, or which doublet he planned to wear to the feast that evening.
He cocked his chin to the side, a charming smile rising to his lips that did not deceive her. “But I did not. The Almighty has greater plans for me, I fear.”
Her hand itched with the urge to slap him. It was too much, the silence of the arena where only minutes before there had been blood and death, the ruination of all that she believed in, all of her hopes for the future and all the secret things that she desired. It was nothing without him.
Instead of striking out, she caught his hand, bringing it to her lips and tasting the dust there. “You do not understand. You could have died.”
“I did not.”
“But if you died, I would have died with you, for I cannot live in a world where you do not.”
His hand reached up and tucked a curl behind her ear. “Someday you must.” The hint of a sad smile curved his mouth. “Even clerics such as myself seldom find themselves old men.”
She shook her head and moved her fingertips over his mouth, the line of his cheekbones, the pulse thundering at his temples. “No, it cannot be, for if you die, another woman will come and take my place, and your Lucrezia would no longer be.”
Bending across, she kissed away the tears had fallen upon his hand. The tears had sweetened him, and she let her lips continue onward, moving until she found his cheeks, dusty from the ground, the stubble on his chin. Finally, his lips, which she had kissed a thousand times or more, kisses of love and laughter, only these were different, blood racing hot from battle with the bull, the hint of movement in the way that his lips clung and followed, the shiver of emotion that passed through her into him, fear and love and something else, something warm and aching and vibrantly alive.
It could not last; she knew it, even as her heart began to ache. Already she could hear the low murmuring of the men as they returned, the jingle of the litter they had summoned to bring him home where his leg could be tended to. It could not last, and yet it would never be finished, this dark thing that had sprung to life between them and crouched, a monster waiting to be fed.
It was he that pulled back, burying his face in her hair; dimly, she was aware that he had shielded them from the men, keeping them safe. As she must shield them, too, hiding what had occurred. Straightening her spine, she stood and uttered a short laugh, the sound carrying to each of the rounded edges of the arena.
“I forbid you to fight the bulls again. A funeral would be poor sport to follow the celebration of my wedding.”
Grimacing with pain, Cesare stood and immediately began to wobble. “And allow them to best me? I think not.”
“Then I pray that the occasion of my wedding will be months or even years from now, that we may continue as we are.” His arm draped across her shoulders. Lucrezia stumbled under the weight, then righted herself; she could bear him.
“And what are we, dear sister?” There was a wealth of meaning behind the simple words.
“Borgia,” she answered, and it was enough.
Chapter 25
His voice came out of the darkness when Betta hurried past the wine shop, the sound husky and low, like the shadows.
“Little Elizabetta.”
Betta bit back a scream as he came into focus, the flare of a candle from one of the outside tables illuminating his face and shoulders, leaning against the wall. Micheletto Corella, waiting for her. His leathers were a tapestry of black, the colors leeched by night; one hand was tucked into the opening in his doublet.
A weight descended onto Betta’s chest, dropped from a great height. She was going to die. There could be no other errand that would bring him here, to the alley of the wine shop her stepfather frequented on the night she would walk by while returning to the Palazzo. He was going to kill her. What had she seen, she wondered, that she must be silenced? The only news to fly about the Vatican of late was widely known - that Lucrezia Borgia was to be wed to Giovanni Sforza, the Lord of Pesaro.
Her shoulders slumped; her hands fell uselessly to the sides. There was no fear, only a heavy sadness, a lump clamped around her throat that stopped her tears. She would not live to see her sister happy. The thought had been a precious one, the idea that many years from now, she would see her sister grown and honorably wed. There would be no one to see it done now.
“Here?” she asked, ashamed that her voice was a croak. To disguise it, she looked to the ground, the stones littered with fish bones and chunks of wood, still damp from the morning's rain. “Or the alley? I will follow you there.” She would not fight him. She straightened her shoulders. The blood of proud men and women flowed in her veins, and she would not shame them.
He smiled down at her, the expression crinkling the corners of his eyes. They were blue, she saw now, the dark blue of the midnight sky without stars.
“Not
that,” he said, turning at the waist to point at a small table that had been placed outside the wall of the shop. Two stools flanked the table, and a jug of wine waited, tazas to either side. “Have wine with me.”
It could have been an invitation, nothing more to it than another man trying to get beneath her skirts, but the weight in his eyes pressed down on her, a sternness that held her in place and warned her of the continuing danger.
“Do I have a choice?”
His laugh was a deep rumble that rose up from within his stomach. It was rusty; she thought he did not laugh often.
“No,” he replied and winked at her.
Betta counted her steps as she walked to the table, seven, eight, nine, his eyes on her all the while, tracing the lines of her hips, the way her bodice clung to her skin. She sat as he did, and clasped her hands together beneath the apron.
“I don’t wish to fornicate with you.” The words were whispered. She dug her teeth into the flesh of her bottom lip to keep others from escaping. Words were traps; her stepfather had taught her that, to speak as little as possible, but in Micheletto’s presence they escaped, words of challenge or words of daring, it mattered little, only she must learn to be silent if she was to survive this night.
“No?” his eyebrow lifted. “Are you sure?” Beneath the table, a hand curled around her knee.
Betta jumped to her feet, heart pounding.
“It would seem not. A shame. I find you…But no matter. I come to speak to you about another matter.” His hand indicated the chair once more. Betta sat, feeling the pulse of her heart in her chest.
“What matter?”
“Desire.” When she would have started again, his hand shot out, clamping on her wrist. His brow raised again, challenging her. Cold waves of it emanated from him, the readiness to stop her in any way that he could. She nodded, settling back on the stool. “What is it that you desire most, little Betta?”
“To see my sister wed.”
He nodded, taking a long sip of the wine. Hers sat untouched. “Ginevra. That is her name?”
Though the urge to run almost overwhelmed her, Betta nodded.
“Nine is young to be arranging a dowry. Not a wedding for yourself?”
“I do not wish to be wed.”
He nodded again. There was something in his face that might have been understanding, but it faded. “Weddings take gold. Families take gold, or those paltry coppers you bring to this place every week, coppers that your father…”
“He is not my father.”
“Coppers that your mother’s husband drinks away, and more besides. What will happen when the whispers come in the night, offering you gold for what you see at the Palazzo?”
Her lips had gone numb as he spoke. “T...t...three,” she whispered.
“Three what?”
“Three…times. I have been offered gold three times.”
“And you did not accept?”
She shook her head.
“Why not? It would take little to collect the coins you would need to see your sister wed. To have your desire fulfilled.”
Betta coughed, then took a drink of the wine that had remained untouched during their conversation. It was sweeter than the wine her stepfather forced her to drink, and layered with spices. “Many reasons.”
“I wish to hear them.”
She took another sip of the wine, beginning to enjoy the taste. “Colonna or the Baglioni or Sforza are the names that men use to speak about honor. Condottiere…or noblemen, not women, or serving girls. But I have honor. I will not betray my lady when she has been so kind to me. And…it seems that those who deal in betrayal seldom live long enough to enjoy the gold they have earned.”
His head dipped, and he saluted her with the wine before draining the taza dry. “Good a reason as any. My master will be pleased.” As he poured another from the jug, she leaned forward.
“How did you come to serve the Archbishop?”
“Do you desire a story?” His lip lifted in a mocking smile. At her nod, he relaxed back against the stucco wall.
“A trade then. A tale for a tale. I was born in Pisa,” he said, his eyes finding some spot beyond her shoulder to land on as they went hazy with memory. “My father served the condottiere as a pikeman, and he was a bastard who soon met his fate. After I returned from the battle that saw his guts spilling out on the grass, my mother went to serve at one of the taverns and I at the butchers across the street, slaughtering the swine and steer because I’d the trick of it.”
“A sharp knife,” she said, remembering Master Bartolomeo’s lessons. “And a quick hand.”
“I thought you might know the way of it,” he said. “There was a girl that served at the tavern with my mother. Lauret was her name. Brown hair and a smile so sweet that she could charm the birds from the trees. I knew that she went with the men there that took a fancy to her, but it did not trouble me. She never took coin from me, and we were to wed when I’d saved enough.”
“What happened?”
“A man came and took her upstairs. Wanted something different, something more than she was willing to give. She fought back, and the bishop, and I learned he was a bishop later, took a belt and began to beat her. My mother heard it through the walls, and she came and fetched me. I come up to him through the back stairs. And he was there with his white ass in the air, fucking her as she cried. I sent him through the shutters and onto the street before he’d a chance to draw the next breath. And not two days later Lauret was ridden down in the street by a man that wore the bishop’s livery.”
Micheletto placed the now empty jug of wine back on the table and leaned his forearms on the table. “I swore on that day I’d see his blood on my hands, but I found it was no easy thing, to kill a man high in the Pope’s favor. No matter how often I skulked in the alleys, I could not enter his palazzo, and when he went about the streets, guards followed him. But as I stood in the alley, drowning in hatred so black that it was turning my mind to ash, a boy came up to me. A pretty boy in fine clothes, with a way of speaking gentle. He asked me if I would share wine with him. I followed him, and all the while he poured wine down my throat, he asked me questions- who was my family, did I have skill with weapons, what had the bishop done, that I would hate him so for he had seen me waiting in the alley through the window in his chamber across the way. And the wine, it pulled the truth from me. Before the night was over, he promised that he could see to it that the bishop would fall at my hands. “In return for what?” I said, and his Eminence smiled. “That the next man who falls to your knife is at my direction, and the next, and the next.” “You’d have me be your killer?” I asked. And part of me wanted to laugh, that this boy in his fine doublet would have me for his henchman, for what would I know about such matters. I was no more able to kill a bishop than I was likely to grow wings and fly. He nodded, very serious as though he were already a man instead of a boy with no whiskers on his chin.
“I require…someone of my own. Someone that I can trust. That you lack the skills of a condottiere does not displease me, for such things can be acquired readily with coin, and that I will provide. But loyalty, that is harder to come by.”
“And that was how it went. Not three days later, coin greased the palm of the bishop’s steward, and I was taken in as a household guard. First chance I got, I slipped cantarella into his wine and watched as the bastard bled his life out through his eyes. The cries he made were as sweet to me as the music of angels.”
“And the archbishop, he arranged for you to be taught?”
“By every back-alley cutthroat and from here to Perugia.” Micheletto lifted up his sleeves, displaying forearms crisscrossed by a hashing of white scars. “Hard lessons, but I learned them, every one.”
“Could you teach me?” She let go of the wine cup so that he could not see how her hands trembled, wanting it, needing it. The things he learned…
“Someone you want to stick, eh? Why don’t you whisper his name in my ear, and
I’ll see it done.” Beneath the table, his hand caressed her knee again, the skin warm and calloused as it found the way beneath her skirts to stroke up her leg. “Then I could tell you what I desire.”
Betta jerked back, dislodging his hand. “There’s no one,” she lied, praying that the quaver in her voice was audible only to herself. “But I’d wish to know, if there’s ever a need.”
“Liar,” he whispered, rising from his chair. “Run back to your bed, little mouse, and remember what we spoke of this night. And should you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
Chapter 26
"Who is the most handsome man in Rome, Betta?"
"Ludivico, the water drawer," she answered, head still bent to her task. Lady Lucrezia’s giggle surprised her. There had been little laughter of late.
"Tell me of him?" The question was said with a delicate tilt of eyebrows which had been carefully plucked until they formed a thin line over green and gold eyes that seemed to change shade according to her mood. On this day, they were blue, matching the sky overhead, which had greeted the day of Lord Sforza’s arrival with a crystalline sky.
The details of the wedding had engrossed the household for the past months, alliances and dowries and gowns, the nature of the embroidery which would adorn Lucrezia’s bridal giornea. Betta had thought that her mistress seemed sad during the weeks leading up to the nuptials, but as the day approached and with it the bridegroom, her mood lifted, and she seemed determined to invest her betrothed with every virtue.
“It is said that his mother was a Moor,” Betta confided, knowing that her voice was scratchy and wishing fiercely for a drink of water. “His skin is dark all over, not just his arms and face, for he never wears a shirt at the river. His skin is like bronze, and when he leans over to lift his pails…” Betta fanned her cheeks. “His hair curls around his face and his eyes are the same color as the water.”
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