by Sara Poole
“What is all this?” I asked. “Why is it locked away?”
Cesare answered me. “For centuries, treasures of all sorts have flowed into the lap of Holy Mother Church. Most she approves of and welcomes but from time to time something may raise questions or worse yet, doubts. When that happens, it comes here.”
Given the fondness for burning people who dare to challenge orthodoxy, I had presumed that the Church destroyed anything that might be a threat to it, but apparently I was wrong. Excitement filled me. I happily could spend hours, days, weeks delving into every shelf and corner of the room. But my personal fascination did not explain why Borgia was there, particularly not given everything else he had to occupy him.
“Have you brought me the head of Morozzi?” Il Papa inquired. “If that’s too much trouble, I would settle for his black heart, assuming you can find it.”
I had seen him in many moods—triumphant, relaxed, drunk, thoughtful, scheming—but I had never seen him as he was then. His hair—newly blackened by an application of oak apple burned in oil and mixed with vinegar—was in disarray. His clothing was rumpled with stains across the chest as though he had eaten, or more likely drunk, without notice. He was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot. But it was his mouth that worried me most, so tightly drawn as it was that I could make out the thin white line surrounding fleshy lips. Christ’s Vicar was not a man to restrain his emotions, particularly not when they were so dark. At the most, I had minutes to convince him not to dispose of me there and then.
“I will do my best, Holiness. As you know, I am as eager as you are to see Morozzi dead, perhaps even more so.”
My voice still rasped painfully but I managed to keep it steady. Cesare frowned and stared at my throat. He looked about to speak but was prevented by his father’s quick rejoinder.
“Yet he lives because of your vanity,” Borgia accused. “You don’t want anyone else to kill him, only you.”
It was true; Morozzi was responsible for my father’s murder, in the name of justice he had to die by my hand. Of course, I was not about to say so.
“I could have taken men-at-arms with me into Santa Maria. But had I done so, Morozzi would never have come anywhere near. He would have been warned off.”
“I told you she had a reason,” Cesare said. “You should have listened to me. And now you don’t even bother to notice that she’s injured.”
He cast me a look at once all too perceptive and boldly intimate. Heat crept over me even as I struggled to give no hint of it.
Borgia brushed that aside with a flick of his hand. “You’d defend her no matter what she did.”
That was both flattering and worrisome. I had hoped that the doubts Borgia had voiced about Cesare’s loyalty, and by extension my own, had been put to rest. Apparently, that was not the case.
“You’re too quick to condemn,” Cesare countered. “We have enough enemies without you manufacturing more.”
Borgia’s face darkened. Instinctively, I glanced over my shoulder, seeking a quick route of escape but finding only the dark corridor fading away into blackness.
“Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do, boy! The day you understand the world half as well as I, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Admit that I’m capable of thoughts and actions entirely my own? And that sometimes I’m right and you’re wrong?”
I sucked in my breath. In the best of circumstances, challenging Borgia the Bull was madness, but to do it now, when he was pushed to his limits and perhaps beyond— I could not begin to think what Cesare hoped to accomplish.
But perhaps he had reached his own limits in trying to deal with his father’s implacable determination to regard his children as nothing more than extensions of himself.
For a horrible moment, I feared the two men—so alike in some ways, yet so different in others—might fall to blows. Any real conflict between them would severely undermine our chances of prevailing against the dangers closing in on la famiglia from all sides. I was certain that they both knew that, but even so, something had to be done quickly before either acted unforgivably.
“Cardinal Giorgio da Costa is titulus of Santa Maria, is he not?”
The vaulted brickwork ceiling and stone walls amplified my voice loudly enough to distract them, or perhaps they welcomed an excuse to step back from the precipice. Whatever the cause, father and son both shifted their attention away from each other and onto me.
“What of it?” Borgia demanded. He looked ill-disposed to hear anything I might say, yet he was listening all the same. I took courage from that.
“Da Costa is no friend to you. On the contrary, he is well known to be della Rovere’s ally.”
“You think he is supporting Morozzi?” Cesare asked. “Are you saying that madman is actually sheltered within Santa Maria?”
“Da Costa is too wily for anything so obvious. But priests in service to the Cardinal could be pardoned for thinking that they would win his favor by offering at least some degree of aid to one opposed to His Holiness.”
“She has a point,” Cesare said.
“She may have a point,” Borgia corrected. He looked at me more closely as though deciding whether I might merit some small degree of trust. “How did you intend to kill Morozzi?”
“My knife was coated with a contact poison. When he realized that, he ran away.”
“But you killed someone?”
I nodded. “One of the Brotherhood who I mistook for Morozzi. Next time, I will be certain before I strike.”
Borgia considered that. I awaited his judgment, certain that I had made my case as well as I could but in no way confident of its persuasiveness.
After what seemed like a very long time, my master said, “See that you do.”
I let my breath out slowly but my curiosity did not evaporate with it. Despite my better sense I asked, “May I know what interests you here?”
“A book of prophecy,” Cesare said, ignoring his father’s quelling look. “It describes the visions of a hermit monk living five centuries ago in a monastery in Carpathia. The book has been kept here under seal because its contents are disturbing in their detail … and in their seeming accuracy.”
I am of two minds regarding the nature of prophecy. All good Christians are required to believe in it, as the coming of Our Savior was no less than the fulfillment of prophecy. Yet most of it seems to fall somewhere between outright fraud and the ravings of lunatics.
I kept my skepticism to myself, knowing as I did that Borgia sought glimpses of the future that he believed would give him an advantage against his foes. He even went so far as to claim that I was capable of such visions. Thus far, I had failed to disabuse him of the notion. To be fair, I had not managed to disabuse myself of it entirely either.
“In what way are they accurate?” I asked.
“Do you want a list?” Borgia demanded. Without waiting for a response, he proceeded to give me one.
“It warns, among other things, that the followers of the king of the world will perish at the hands of the innocent; that the son of France will destroy the sons of the temple; and that the mother will be rent twice over, bathing the world in tears.”
By which I assumed he was referring to the massacre of the Cathars, followers of the one they called Rex Mundi, by Pope Innocent III in 1210; the destruction of the Templars by the French King Philip IV a century later; and the two schisms that had torn the Church apart and unleashed so much suffering throughout Christendom.
I will admit, all that gave me pause.
“Does it say anything about the present circumstances?” I asked.
Cesare nodded. “It warns that in the time of resurrection, the red bull will perish at the bidding of the unborn killer.”
Were we in the time of resurrection? I supposed that a case could be made that with the ending of the most recent schism, the Church was experiencing a rebirth. Certainly, Borgia could be seen as the red bull. But who was the unborn killer, and if he
hadn’t been born yet, why would anyone be concerned about him?
“Our people in Ferrara have been making discreet inquiries regarding a certain friar,” Borgia said. “I sent Cesare there to confirm what I was hearing.”
It took me a moment to realize what he meant. Savonarola, scourge of the Medicis and lately of such concern to Borgia, had been born into an affluent family in the duchy of Ferrara.
“Reliable sources have informed us that Savonarola had a twin,” Cesare said. “The other child, also a boy, was born first but emerged dead from their mother’s womb. The dead baby bore marks indicating that he had been stabbed.”
“Stabbed in the womb?” I tried to imagine how such a thing could have happened. Women sometimes resort to desperate measures to end an unwanted pregnancy, but if that had been the case, how could Savonarola have survived? For that matter, how could his mother?
“You think he stabbed his twin?” I asked. “Before they were born?”
“So it appears,” Cesare said. He seemed to accept the possibility without question. “The family hushed it up, of course, but my men found an old nurse who revealed the truth.”
For proper payment, I assumed. Wave enough gold in front of people—sometimes it takes surprisingly little—and they will say anything.
“How would a babe in the womb manage to stab another?” I asked.
Borgia shrugged, as though the details were of no importance. “Who knows what demonic means he used. What matters is that we have confirmed where the greater threat to me will come from.”
Not from Spain with all its might, nor Naples, nor della Rovere and his ally, the French king? Borgia truly believed that the greatest danger he faced was from a fanatical monk railing against the decadence and corruption of the church? Now that I thought of it, that made a strange kind of sense. All the rest—Spain, Naples, France—was politics, a game Borgia had long since mastered. But the call to purification on the lips of a man who truly believed that he was guided by God … that was an entirely different matter.
“Savonarola would never dare to strike at my father directly,” Cesare said, “not even through Il Frateschi. But he wouldn’t hesitate to make use of someone who could not be linked directly to him. It is vital that Morozzi be dealt with at once.”
Since I desired nothing on this earth so much as the mad priest’s death, I could hardly disagree.
Even so, I was unprepared when Borgia said, “Cesare has convinced me that the two of you should join forces to dispose of Morozzi.”
I stared at my dark lover. He returned my look with all the youthful sincerity of a devoted son wanting nothing more than to serve his father. Cesare and I had known each other most of our lives. I had few illusions about his character and I doubted that he had many about mine, yet I liked to believe that we were allies, perhaps even friends.
Why then the unease that stole over me as a dank mist from the river will, bringing hints of buried secrets and dangers as yet ungrasped?
23
While I was still mulling over my doubts, Cesare did not hesitate. He took a lamp in one hand and seized mine in the other.
“We will begin at once, Papa. Have no fear, Morozzi is not long for this world.”
Borgia’s only response was a grunt as he settled heavily into his chair. He appeared in no hurry to return to the world above. I could hardly blame him but neither could I deny Cesare’s urgency. We were through the corridor and back in the papal office before I caught my breath.
Once there, he set the lamp on a table, grabbed me around the waist, and pressed me down onto the vast expanse of the desk. His dark eyes gleamed and his arousal, pressed against me, left no doubt as to his intent.
“I am going to kill him,” he said as he drew the bodice of my gown down to further expose the welts around my throat. I felt his breath hot and strong against my abused flesh. A long tremor ran through me.
“Slowly and with enormous pain,” he went on, sliding a hand down my thigh to grasp hold of my skirt and drag it upward. “Perhaps I will flay the skin from him and display it somewhere appropriate. What do you think?”
What did I think? Of Rocco standing in the sun in Saint Peter’s Square, refusing to meet my eyes as he told me of Carlotta d’Agnelli? Of Sofia holding me in her arms as I wept in terror of the unknown? Of Morozzi, calling me strega and gloating as he contemplated my suffering in the flames? Of my father, bloody fragments of his smashed skull washing away in the filthy water running down the gully of a Roman street.
“You can do that after I’ve killed him,” I replied, and tugged at his lacings.
You will think me mad or damned, although both would be the fairer guess. Borgia could change his mind and return to his office at any moment. Anyone might peer through the spioncino; Rome would drown under the wave of gossip that set off. Worse yet, we were in the inner sanctum of Christ’s Vicar on Earth, surely a place that called for a modicum of decorum, although I had heard stories about Borgia and La Bella frolicking there.
I could claim that we were helpless victims of passion swept away by the moment. I could swear that we would never have engaged in such sacrilege had we been in our right minds. But the truth is that the sense of danger and sinfulness spurred our lust to even greater heights. Had we not been naturally shameless, we would have become so.
Even so, do not think for a moment that I am proud of what we did. The great men of the Church have no respect for Her but we lesser mortals, even those plagued by doubts, still honor our Mother. Eve, Isis, Aphrodite, Venus, she had many names before she was transformed into the Eternal Virgin, her purity insisted upon after countless years unmissed. Perhaps she understands and forgives us.
Cesare laid me across the desk with my skirts bunched around my waist, spread my legs, and entered hard and fast. I was more than ready. Breath rushed from me in a gasp of pleasure and fast-approaching release. I had been too long without him. As for my dark lover, I did not fancy that he was chaste when we were apart, far from it, but we shared a physical affinity that drew us together time and again. Our coupling was swift, rough, and eminently satisfying. When, very shortly, he lay sprawled across me, the rasp of his jaw a pleasant torment against my bared breasts, I could not restrain my laughter.
He raised his head and looked down at me, his dark eyes alight with challenge. “I amuse you?”
“Among other things, you do.” I pushed him off—catching him by surprise so that he stumbled a little—and stood, straightening my skirts. Later, I would be glad to bathe, but just then I did not mind the lingering feel and smell of him.
Redoing his laces, he cast me a look that might have given another woman pause. Young as he still was in years, he had a man’s pride and more. By no measure was he to be trifled with.
Nor was I.
“A Carpathian monk?” I asked, trying in vain to coax my hair back into some semblance of order. “Five hundred years ago? However did you conceive of that?”
Imagine Cesare, if you will, all liquid-eyed with a disingenuous smile, disclaiming all knowledge of whatever mischief he had just committed. Or more likely blaming it on younger brother Juan. The tactic must have worked well for he still pulled it out whenever he was otherwise at a loss.
“What are you talking about? Conceive of what?”
“The book of prophecy. That perfect book that spells out events we cannot fail to recognize, all the while encouraging your father to believe what you want him to believe.”
I had come to the conclusion that the book was a fake while we made our way back from the Mysterium; it had taken that little time to realize what had likely happened. For all their differences of opinion, Borgia had long recognized that his eldest son possessed a brilliant mind. He had ensured that Cesare received the finest possible education, perhaps not entirely considering what that might equip him to do, including connive at a highly skilled forgery.
“Honestly, Francesca, such cynicism is not attractive.”
That from the
man who had just drained himself in paroxysms of passion because he couldn’t wait to possess me.
I smirked. “What else is in the book? Something such as ‘The firstborn son shall go forth as he will, following his own star, and reward the bull tenfold with his daring’?”
Cesare could admit defeat with surprising grace. Shrugging, he said, “That’s good. I didn’t put it quite that eloquently but close enough.”
Opening the door a crack, I peered into the antechamber. It was empty. I slipped through and hurried across to the door giving access to the corridor. Cesare followed. Startled clerics moved out of our path, pressing their backs to the walls as they gaped at us. We were barely past when the steady clucking of tongues erupted.
Halfway down the marble steps, Cesare said, “You aren’t going to tell him?”
“Of course not, so long as we agree that Morozzi dies by my hand.”
“It means that much to you?”
The sun had reached its apex while we were below in the Mysterium. The day was warming rapidly; torpid air heavy with the overripe smell of the river barely stirred. Even the pigeons couldn’t be bothered to do much more than hunch in the scant shade, drowsing. The entrance to the Curia was crowded with petitioners, clerks, prelates, and the usual hangers-on of every description, sweat beaded on their foreheads and their heavy black garb hanging like shrouds around them. Heedless of the ado our presence caused, I stopped and looked at Cesare.
“It means everything.”
He met my gaze unflinchingly. “Morozzi must not be allowed to escape again. I’ll give you one more chance but if you can’t take him, he’s mine.”
I won’t say that I liked that but I was honest enough to admit that Cesare was right. I had struck the best bargain I could hope for.
“Fair enough. I have matters to see to in the kitchens but we should meet as soon as possible to decide our course.”
I had to hope that while I inspected the most recently arrived supplies, Cesare would not seize the opportunity to go after Morozzi alone. If he did, I feared he would succeed only in driving the priest ever deeper into the labyrinth beneath Rome and make finding him even more difficult.
