Whether, as you inquire, there is any truth in the persistent rumor that a missive from the Orsini was delivered to the Duke in the anal passage of a donkey bearing the emblem proclaiming it to be an ambassador for the Duke of Gandia, I can not say, not having been a witness to those events…
Cesare pinched his lips together, fighting the urge to laugh. A copy of the note had been delivered to His Holiness, its contents detailing every scurrilous rumor circulating about their family, from its Jewish origins to the bacchanalian feasts celebrated in the halls where their incestuous trysts were conducted in full view of Holy Relics. It had taken the Holy Father a full hour to recover his speech, so enraged was he by the contents of the letter.
Forced by the incipient arrival of Carlo Orsini with an additional force that would have left the Papal Armies enveloped, the Gonfalonier lifted the siege only to encounter the armies of the Orsini at the town of Soriano, where the Duke, despite his personal bravery and a wound that he sustained, was overcome by superior forces and the Duke of Urbino was captured. It was only with the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ and his personal protection that our brother was spared a similar fate.
A truce between Spain and France in their recent war allowed the control of the armies to pass to the Spaniard Gonsalvo de Cordoba, and with his aid, the campaign against the Orsini was brought to a successful conclusion. Emboldened by their victories and the late arrival of the troops commanded by the Count of Pesaro, the husband of our dear sister, the armies of the Papacy continued their campaign and were able to capture the last stronghold of the French within our borders, the harbor of Ostia.
Even now, the triumphant armies journey back from their victory, and the Holy Father plans a grand celebration whereby they may be honored according to their merit.
Tension flowed from Cesare’s shoulders as he finished the recounting of Juan’s recent failures, softening their import with half-truths, lies, and evasions. Duty completed, he moved onto pleasanter matters, news from their family.
Through the envoys that the Holy Father maintains in his homeland, word has reached us that the son of your gracious sister, Don Bernaldino Serranda, a man lately known to us as a captain of great skill, though he chose to maintain a position of lesser honor than might have been warranted so that he could more easily see to the needs of our family, has returned to Valencia to take up the title that lately belonged to his father. He left with the gratitude and felicitations of his Holiness and myself for seeing to the safety of that sweet lady, the Countess of Pesaro during the time apart from our family.
Another smile formed at the thought of Lucrezia, and this time, he allowed the motion to form on his lips instead of hiding it safe within. Lent had come, a time for fasting and abstinence, the repenting of sins, a task that was proving difficult this year. The night before, he had escaped his duties and even his name for a few hours and danced with her in the square, a thousand candles forming trails of fire in the dim light.
Blonde hair surrounding him, love in her eyes. The ecstasy of it, finding a home, the place that he belonged when he had seemed a stranger to all the world. Her mouth against his ear, a frantic whisper. “Cesare.”
No, he must not remember the desire which rose upon her face, blooming like a rose. Dancing, whirling through the throngs of revelers, the jingle of bells and the sweet melody of the pipes, feeling her body close up against him as they moved through to the strains of the music. They had been alone and hidden from view in their masks and cloaks, and the lust had ridden up on him in a great rush. A house was nearby, a small dwelling for one of his mistresses, now long discarded. They had spent an hour there, frantic for another touch, another memory to keep the darkness at bay. If his plans went awry, his life would be forfeit. He knew it and accepted the risk. But Lucrezia could take no part in what was to come. She would be kept safe.
A cough signaled another entering his study.
“Yes?” he barked, knowing that he was angry, aroused, desirous of being anywhere but here, cleaning up his brother’s mistakes.
Cesare placed his quill to the side as Burchard shuttled in. The cleric was a tiny man with a way of tilting his head that made it appear as though he listened to all conversations so that he could relay their contents later.
The cleric fidgeted, digging beneath the nails of his left hand with the right, shifting back and forth on his heels.
“What?”
“Your Eminence…”
Cesare took a moment to draw a breath, controlling his temper. “What is it you wish?”
“If you please, your eminence, your Holy Father has several…uh, changes he wishes made to the order of precedence during the Palm Sunday mass of thanksgiving.”
Cesare rubbed his head, an ache beginning again behind his eyes.
“What changes?”
“T..the Duke is to receive the palm of victory first, and his ceremonial chair is to o.o.occupy a place that is higher than that of the General.”
Coldness swept through Cesare’s veins. Anger pulsed, turning the colors in the room more vivid, sharpening his hearing until he could faintly make out the whispers in the hall next to them, the distant buzzing of the flies that were enjoying the warming sun as it passed through the mullioned windows.
“Perhaps you were mistaken. Surely the Duke is to be honored equally to that of Cordoba, whose actions alone were responsible for the victory.”
Burchard couldn’t raise his eyes from the tiles; his entire body quivered. “No, your Eminence. His Holiness was very…explicit in his order.”
Cesare allowed his voice to lash out, though he knew that his anger was misplaced.
“Are you mad? Cordoba is the greatest general in all of Spain, and a close confidant of the Queen. To offer them such a slight will be an insult they will never forget.”
Burchard shrugged his shoulders, face pale. Were he as rash as his brother, he would give his fury free reign, striking out with fists or words; swords, if he felt slighted. Cesare checked himself. It would be of no benefit to lash out at the cleric for what had been the decision of another. Softening his tone, he nodded.
“I shall make the necessary arrangements,” he said, noting the relieved look which flowed over Burchard's features before he bowed and left the room. Yes, he would make the necessary arrangements. Letters to their most Catholic Majesties, attempting the salvage the pride of the two most revered monarchs in all of Christendom when their deputy was passed over in honor for one who had publicly scorned them, humiliated their niece, his wife, with his intemperate living and constant whoring. Letters of groveling and explanation to Corboda, who would consider the move a mortal insult.
Chapter 51
Juan Borgia leaned his head against a block and felt the narrow stone passage and arched roof revolve slowly around him. Pressing a hand against his chest, he swallowed and tasted vomit at the back of his throat. Breathing deeply, he filled his lungs with dank prison air. Clammy sweat covered his face; he fought to keep from throwing up again.
Ahead, the guard paused and looked back at him, torchlight glimmering off of his breastplate. “Your Grace…” he began, only to stop when Juan glared at him. He was the Duke of Gandia, and could order the guard to be thrown from the walls of the Castel as easily as other men could purchase a whore. Perhaps he would do so, Juan thought, annoyed that anyone would think him incapable of something so inconsequential as walking. He required no help to answer the mysterious summons that had brought him from a night spent in revelry.
The guard was a fool to think him drunk. The amount he had consumed that night was nothing. He had drunk twice or thrice that much for years. And yet he could not deny the effect that the potent drink was having on him. Below his knees, he could feel nothing, not the thunk of his boots impacting the ancient stones, nor the crunch of the generations of beetles that had lived and died within the ancient mausoleum. His hands… he flexed, gripping the wooden handle of the torch tighter, wanting the splinters to dig into
his flesh, the pain from the wound on his palm to softly pulse. Nothing.
A harsh reek cut through the fog of his thoughts; Juan looked down to see a dark stream emerging from beneath one of the barred doors, followed by a harsh chuckle. Piss, trickling out from under the door.
“Who is here?” he asked.
“One of the Orsini dogs,” the guard answered.
From beneath the door, a high-pitched voice began to whisper in a sing-song voice, drawing out the last word. “I am sent by the Duke of Gannnndddia.”
Juan hammered his fist against the door, and the song cut off. Fool. As though anything could save him now. His knuckles crunched, and a trickle of red painted the skin black in the dim light; still, he could feel nothing, as he could not feel his feet, or his hands or his cock. They were like dead things, cold, lifeless, unfeeling, the sensation growing, creeping up his arms like a worm, slowly devouring him from the inside. Soon, it…
No, he would not think of that. There were other pleasures to occupy his thoughts, other deeds. Revenge against those who had brought him to this sorry state, and his kingdom, yes, the empire that his father was building for him, that was a worthy goal, one that he could pass on to his sons, which he already had in plenty. Two strong sons, more than enough to prove his virility, unlike that fool, Giovanni Sforza.
The thought of his sister’s husband caused his lips to curl. Impotent bastard. No matter the paths that he had taken the fool on, the hints he had dropped, Giovanni had refused to take the bait, had even begun to question his leadership during the campaign to capture Ostia.
“Impotent bastards are we both,” Giovanni had responded to one of Juan’s jibes, the words enough to stun a room full of men into silence. The fool. He would be dealt with soon enough, as would those whores who must have talked despite his threats. The girls should have been drowned in the river, as he had done to those found with copies of the picture that haunted his dreams, an ass wearing a white turban. The French had thrown sheaves of the drawing from the walls of Ostia, singing all the while. “I am the Duke of Ganddddia.”
It was Cesare, he was certain. He had brought about this weakness, as he had brought about the other calamity which had almost claimed his life. The potions that the Jews brought from Spain, they could render a man incapable, even one of his strength, and there was talk of a new contagion that was sweeping out, sickening all in its path. The French Pox. That was what had caused this sudden wasting of his parts, the numbness and stupor that claimed him. Cesare had done this to him. All knew of his familiarity with Jews and cutthroats.
He would find a cure. All he needed was to resolve the matters at hand, the dissolution of his enemies, leaving himself left in the position he craved. Then he could set about discovering a cure for the sickness that plagued him.
Juan stepped back from the door. “Throw him from the walls.”
The guard paused and looked back. “My lord? This is…”
Juan cut in. “Did you not hear my words? Perhaps you wish to join him?”
The guard’s face turned white. The sight pleased Juan, the knowledge that he was feared. He nodded. “I shall see it done, my lord.”
“As soon as we are done. And not towards the river. I want to hear him land.”
There was another nod, and the guard gestured ahead. “Only a little farther, my lord.”
The cell was at the end of the long passage. Placing the torch in the sconce mounted on the wall, the guard unbarred the door. A low groan sounded from the corner as Juan entered, hand on his dagger. The light from the torch provided only the faintest illumination into the cell, enough for him to see a man huddled in the corner on a pile of straw and a bucket overflowing with refuse.
“Leave us,” Juan ordered.
Although he hesitated, the guard bowed low. “I shall wait ten paces back, my lord.”
Juan waited until the man’s footsteps had receded into the distance. “You sent for me?” he asked, mocking. “The guard said you had information.”
The voice in the corner was hardly more than a whisper, raspy with disuse. “It must please you to know that you were correct.”
“Correct?” Juan asked.
“That my king could not hold Naples. That your father was victorious. I had expected you to have me killed before now, knowing what I do. What I could tell.”
Instead of replying, Juan left the cell and retrieved the torch. Light flared in the small chamber. The man in the corner covered his eyes with a skeletal arm shrouded in the remains of a gray doublet. Juan grabbed him by the throat and hauled him forward, bringing the prisoner’s face to within inches of his own. He thought back, placing the face in the sea of prisoners taken at Ostia. Another of his skills, one that he kept silent: the ability to remember faces.
“The harbor,” he said. “The last French ship, you were trying to reach it, but were left behind.”
The man closed his eyes against the light, turning away. The bones of his face showed through pale skin, and wispy gray hair sparsely covered the top of his head. All of the color had been leeched out of his skin by long imprisonment.
“What information would a French dog have that would prove of use to me, especially one whose own men left him behind?”
Despite the hold on his throat, the man looked up at Juan and smiled, speaking his words in Latin. “You know it as well as I. You sold secrets to my king for gold, things that your father would have preferred to keep hidden. We met in taverns all over the city…” his voice trailed off as he looked up Juan, watery gray eyes moving over his face. Confusion settled over his features. “But…you are not so beautiful as you were before.”
Juan smiled wider, displaying the teeth which had begun to rot and darken. The meaning of the Frenchman’s words penetrated through the fog, sharpening his wits. He began to laugh at the pieces fell into place, the trap which his brother would have sprung on him. It was diabolical, using their shared looks a tool with which to wound. The delicious irony of it sent a thrill of pleasure through him, sharper than lust, sweeter than the strong Romanescho wine Lucrezia had brought for him from Pesaro.
He released the prisoner’s throat, allowing him to slide to the floor. Still chuckling, he fit the torch into the sconce on the wall and leaned his shoulder against it.
“A man sold you secrets. One who looked as I do?”
The man nodded.
“I think my brother has been playing a little game with you,” Juan said. “Tell me how it came about. Leave nothing a secret, no matter that you may think it unimportant.”
“Do you have any wine?” Berenger de Gany asked. “Two days with nothing but a mouthful of water.”
Juan smiled wider, the ruin of his mouth flashing in the torchlight. He lowered his voice so that the whisper crawled along the weeping stones. “If what you tell me is of use, I will see that you have all the wine you could wish.”
Clearing his throat against the dryness, Berenger began to speak of his meeting with the man he had been told was the Duke of Gandia, the passing of information, of troop movements and the defense of the city.
“He wished for you to betray me.”
The words had swallowed the remaining moisture in Berenger’s throat. Instead of speaking, he cocked his head, looking up from under shaggy brows.
“If I had been branded a French informant by one of your men, my father would have had no choice but to banish me.”
“Why?” the words were a rasp. Berenger hauled himself upright on one arm. “Why would he do this? Or you? One of your own blood?”
“D’Jem explained it to me. Do you recall him? He was passed to your king when you invaded Rome and died soon after. Cesare saw to that, I believe. The coward had no wish for another Crusade. It matters little any longer. D’Jem said that in his country, it is known that only one heir must survive, the rest must be dealt with or else they will always try to usurp the throne. Pedro was easy enough and Joffre is an idiot; he is no danger to me, though the sooner he
dies, the better. Cesare has sought my death for years, and that whore he lusts after, she is no use to anyone. D’Jem wanted her, you see, that is why I have allowed my sweet sister to live this long. A Christian wife to add to his harem after he reclaimed the throne. He used to talk about it, the things that he would do to her. But she is loyal only to our brother, with whom she ruts.”
‘You know this for certain? How?” Beranger’s throat was dry, parched.
“A little mouse whispers it into my ear. Come, my friend, tell me how it all came about, what secrets my brother planted in your ear to try and destroy me. We may be of use to one another. You serve the king, of France, and you have a means to pass information to him?” Berenger nodded, and Juan tapped his fingers against his mouth. “Their most Catholic Majesties no longer esteem my connection with their family. In fact, they would relish my death. It is time to look for new alliances. Charles still longs to claim to Naples, and that kingdom is held by a weak king. My father would support an expedition to topple him if I were to be offered a position of power. Alliances can be formalized with another marriage.”
“What of your wife?”
“She is an encumbrance easily dealt with. Women are so fragile, and my wife has never recovered fully from childbed. Were she to die, no one would question it.”
“And in return?”
“Something his majesty Charles could find of use. A weapon that could be used to control His Holiness.”
“What weapon?”
“One that will exploit my father’s greatest weakness- his overwhelming love for his children.”
Chapter 52
The Lord of Pesaro stormed into his wife’s sala, water sluicing off of his sodden garments and leaving damp marks on the polished floor. Stringy hair plastered against his head, the gray darkened by moisture and mingling with his beard. Despite the early warm rain which had washed Rome, leaving puddles in the street and breaking the moisture from the air, he shivered.
Servant to the Borgia Page 32
