by Kate Quinn
“Yes. I’m leaving.” In the middle of the bustle she sat still, a plump figure in violet velvet slumped on a footstool. Her hands were still too, and that was something different—she was never without a piece of embroidery or a list of plans for the next banquet, or more likely the palazzo’s account books with their figures lovingly totted and checked down to the last scudo. “Yes, I’m leaving, Giulia. I’m going to my niece in Liguria, and I don’t think I shall be back soon.”
“Is your niece ill?” I came into the chamber, moving a pile of embroidered linen shifts and taking a seat. “You said she’d had a baby not long ago. I can accompany you—”
“No, I’m going to stay with her. I’m not needed here anymore, you see.” Adriana looked up at me, tried to smile. “Little Joffre and Lucrezia grown and married with households of their own; they don’t need me to supervise them. And you don’t need a chaperone either, Giulia. You’ve long since proved yourself a good faithful girl.”
“But why now?” Because I could see pain in her eyes, bewildered pain like a puppy who has just been kicked, and it was a strange image to pair with that of my sleek and self-assured mother-in-law. “What’s happened?”
“Oh, just Lucrezia.” Another attempt at a smile. “Goodness, but girls of her age can be tiresome! Be on your guard when Laura turns seventeen—”
“Adriana.”
“It’s nothing, my dear. Really nothing. Lucrezia sitting with Sancha, down in the garden just now, sunning their hair. I came out to sit with them. It’s a nice thing about being an old woman, you know; sitting in the sun without a hat because you don’t have to worry anymore about ruining your skin—”
“You’re not so old as that.” I motioned the maids back out of earshot. “Go on.”
“Well, that Sancha. She made one of her little jokes—oh, what a nasty piece she is, Joffre deserved better! She joked about lending me that expensive cream she rubs into her face. Not that it would do me any good, she said, because I had wrinkled old skin like a lizard.” Adriana’s hand crept up to touch her own cheek.
“Sancha’s a tart,” I comforted. “A thoughtless little tart who probably has the French disease by now. We’ll see how much she pokes fun at other people’s looks when she starts coming out in pustules.”
“But Lucrezia laughed!” Adriana’s eyes flew up to mine, and I saw her chin quiver. “She laughed too, and there was a plate of biscotti they were sharing, and she said I wasn’t to have any because I was getting too plump.” Adriana plucked at the generous lacing over the bodice of her violet velvet gown. “That sweet girl I helped raise, mocking me. Not for the first time, either. A week back, she was twitting me about my hair; said I was too old to be using curling tongs . . .”
I could feel my teeth grit. “You know she didn’t mean it. Not really.”
“Oh, I know.” A gusty sigh. “But Lucrezia’s changed, you know—they’ve all changed. Rodrigo, well, you didn’t know him as a boy like I did, but the boy I knew wouldn’t have hanged a guest at a party for a few insults!”
My thoughts froze on that. A corpse at a masquerade, hanging from a railing like a dead chicken on the walls of Carmelina’s kitchens, and Rodrigo had treated it like nothing. As though the man were no more important than a dead chicken. “Bah!” he finally snapped when I’d railed at him too long. “Leave it, Giulia! People can say what they like of Us; We are God’s Vicar. But they will keep their tongues off Our family! We would have strung the man up for making any insult to you as well!”
Not five years ago, you wouldn’t have, I couldn’t help thinking.
Adriana was still talking, that quiver running through her voice. “They’re all different, you know. Juan brawling like a mad dog; he’s always been a wild boy, but the things I hear about his army outside Bracciano . . . not to mention his goings-on in Spain. Joffre getting sulky and bad-tempered, hitting the servants and kicking the dogs out of the way when he used to be so good-natured. And Cesare, well, what to say about him.”
“But you don’t have to leave.” Once I’d have been delighted to get rid of my mother-in-law’s watchful eye, but not like this. “They need you.”
“No, they don’t.” Her eyes met mine, tired and watery. “And whom they don’t need, they discard. I just never thought it would be me, after all I’ve—well, never mind.”
That silenced me. Adriana’s loyalty had always been to my Pope—something to do with the way he had protected her and the young Orsino when her husband died and the wolves began circling for Orsino’s inheritance. She’d been loyal to Rodrigo ever since, and that had been another thing that had once made me resentful, because who wants a mother-in-law who tattles to the Pope himself whenever she gets wind of misbehavior in the family?
And now she was to be tossed aside, after all that loyalty, with a few casual insults.
“Lucrezia will apologize,” I said. If I had to break every bone in her body, she’d apologize. “Surely then—”
“No, I’m done.” Adriana dabbed briskly at her eyes, the efficient housewife again even though her chin still wobbled. “I’m going to my niece. She’s always been like a daughter to me, and she’s worried that her first baby isn’t thriving as he should. She’d welcome a helping hand, and I’d rather go where I’m needed.”
Not mocked. We didn’t say it, but we both thought it.
“I’ll miss you, Adriana,” I said, and I meant it. Because my mother-in-law’s loyalty might lie with the Pope on most things, but she’d sealed her lips tight on one secret just for me: the little matter of the French general and that night we’d been captured, when I was invited to dine with the French officers. I’d come back with cheeks a dull red and blotches on my neck, but I’d come back with a surgeon for Leonello and a store of blankets and supplies for all the maids too. Adriana had wordlessly helped me adjust my gown and never said a word to my Pope afterward. Just parroted my bland assertions that the French general had been a perfect gentleman. I must admit I was grateful to her for that.
She patted my cheek, giving a watery little sigh. “You’re a dear girl, Giulia Farnese.”
I spent an hour helping my mother-in-law pack, folding linens beside the maids and tucking little sprigs of her favorite dried lavender between the sleeves so they would smell fragrant in their chest. I called a few of the household’s sweet-voiced page boys to give us some music, poured her wine, and got her smiling again when I bemoaned how the palazzo’s finances would surely fall down in ruins with a flighty girl like me holding the purse strings. I persuaded her to lie down for an afternoon doze, and when I had ordered a cold cloth for her head and another cup of wine, I stormed out to find my lover’s clever, lovely, newly cruel daughter.
“Lucrezia!” I yelled, not caring who in the palazzo heard me. She had gone in from sunning her hair, leaving her sun hat and her fan and her missal on the grass for the maids to retrieve, and evidently she had decided on a cool bath after the heat of the afternoon sun because I found the Countess of Pesaro lounging in the huge marble bath with its mosaic mermaids and trays of fragrant oils, her newly sunned and dried hair pinned very carefully on top of her head. The Tart of Aragon had evidently flitted off to her latest lover or had perhaps just gone to find a dockside tavern to hawk her wares. All in all that was a good thing because I had a quarrel to pick with Lucrezia, but Sancha I only wanted to murder. If I murdered her, then there went the alliance with Naples and my Pope would not have been pleased.
“Giulia?” Lucrezia looked up as I stormed into the bagno. “Whatever are you shouting about?”
I seized the water jug one of the maids had left after filling the bath and upended it over Lucrezia’s head.
“You look like a drowned rat,” I told her as she spluttered and coughed and tried to rescue her drenched hair. “Your eyes are all red and squinchy, and your hair is getting overbleached and nasty, and that horrid lip rouge you wear has smeared all around your mouth so you look like you’ve been drinking blood. And now that I’
ve been as thoroughly horrid to you as you just were to poor Adriana, perhaps you will feel moved to creep up to her chamber like the nasty little rat you’ve become, and make your apologies for being so cruel.”
“Giulia!” Lucrezia gasped.
I folded my arms across my breasts, scowling down at her. The maids had all fled, though they were probably eavesdropping just outside the door, and I had no mind to lower my voice and spare the Pope’s daughter her dignity. “How could you?” I demanded. “Adriana da Mila raised you.”
“She is not my mother,” Lucrezia muttered. “And neither are you!”
“No, the mother who birthed you was only too happy to give you up, and don’t pretend any fondness there because I see the sighs of relief you always heave as soon as her visits are done.” Vannozza dei Cattanei did not visit often, thank the Holy Virgin, and when she did we spoke with icy courtesy. I was too angry to summon ice now with her daughter. “Madonna Adriana raised you in her household, and you owe her the respect of any daughter. Just as I owe her the respect of a daughter-in-law.” I thought of Lucrezia’s little envies this past year whenever she compared our gowns, our jewels, our hair. Our anything, really. “Adriana and I both deserve better from you.”
“Oh, the faithful daughter-in-law!” Lucrezia cried out. “As if you’ve made Adriana’s son such a marvelous wife!”
“I admit I’m no one to lecture you on wifely behavior,” I said crisply. “But that’s a lecture you need as well, because Lord Sforza deserves better, too. Your brother threatened him at the masquerade, and you said nothing. You didn’t even go with him when he fled back to Pesaro the next day. Fled in utter terror with his tail between his legs!”
“I was the one who warned him he should go,” Lucrezia protested. “I said it would be wise to put a little distance between himself and Cesare. You know my brother when he decides he dislikes someone.”
“Then you should have gone with Lord Sforza. Sided with your husband, Lucrezia, and not your snake of a brother.”
Lucrezia started to rise, but I jabbed two fingers into her breastbone and sank her back into the water. No woman is really at an advantage sitting naked in a tub full of water with wet hair straggling into her eyes, and Lucrezia at a disadvantage was exactly how I wanted her.
“You were always a good, sweet girl, Lucrezia.” I shook my head. “What’s changed you? I don’t think we can blame it all on the Tart of Aragon.”
“You will not call her—”
“She is a tart, and you’re well on your way to becoming one. Traipsing around Rome with those Neapolitan harlots she calls ladies-in-waiting, painting your eyes and flirting with Juan’s bravos—Lucrezia, do you know what they say of you, outside Rome?” Fra Savonarola’s rantings, that foul pamphlet that had made my fingertips burn. Leonello’s cool voice: They believe such things because they are true.
“I don’t see how you have any right to call me a poor wife!” Lucrezia lashed out. “My father’s whore—”
“And do you want to be a whore?” I demanded. “I don’t recommend it, even if the jewels are marvelous. It’s not a path I’d ever want for my own daughter.”
“Well, I don’t have a daughter, do I?” Lucrezia’s little face was bitter. “Just a husband nobody wants anymore—Father says I’m to use any excuse I like to keep from sharing a bed with my Lord Sforza; a baby will inconvenience everything now—”
“What do you mean, inconvenience? Inconvenience whom?”
Lucrezia hesitated, pushing at the wet bundle of her hair. “The Holy Father wishes to annul my marriage to Lord Sforza.”
My mouth dropped. “You cannot be serious!”
Lucrezia tossed her head. “He doesn’t tell you everything, you know.”
“Annul your marriage? The legality alone—”
“Cesare says I deserve better than a Sforza lordling. He says a duke is none too good for me, and our father thinks the same.”
“But Lord Sforza—” My thoughts whirled. “You loved him. I saw your face, in this palazzo just three years ago. I let you sneak him into your chamber to consummate your marriage, and you looked so happy—”
Lucrezia shrugged. “And he used to write me poetry, but he doesn’t bother anymore. Too busy droning on about his soldiers and his horses. Besides, Pesaro is so dull. I’d rot away if I had to live there forever.”
“All excellent reasons to cast off a husband, I’m sure,” I snapped. “The law will require something a trifle more substantial than your boredom.”
“Cesare says something can be managed. An annulment—we’ll find some pretext. Consanguinity, maybe. People are always getting marriages annulled for consanguinity, aren’t they?”
“He’s not your brother, Lucrezia, he’s not even a distant cousin! There isn’t any shared blood between you, much less enough for a legal pretext. There’s no pretext at all to annul your marriage, not one that anyone would believe!”
“You don’t understand, Giulia.” Lucrezia sounded patronizing now. “It’s not what people believe. It’s what we tell them to believe.”
I stared at her.
“Cesare says I’ll be a duchess by this time next year.” Lucrezia rose from her bath, and this time I didn’t push her back down. “Or even a princess. Then I’ll be the first woman in Rome, Giulia Farnese—not you. I’ll be the one setting the fashion and heading every parade. Sancha says—”
“Sancha says, Cesare says.” I cut her off as she reached for her robe. “What do you say?”
“Sancha—” Lucrezia stopped herself, looking annoyed.
I looked at her, my middle no longer roiling with rage but with something much colder. My lover’s daughter looked ungraceful and young, lips pushed out in a stubborn pout, hair coiling in wet strings down her neck. Without all the sophistication of paint and powder, you could see she had a red spot on her chin. Seventeen, I thought, she is seventeen. Not much younger than I had been when I went to her father’s bed.
“You didn’t use to hate me, Lucrezia,” I said finally. “In fact, I thought you loved me. I have certainly loved you, ever since I first met you.”
Lucrezia avoided my eyes, slipping into her loose wide-sleeved robe.
“I didn’t think you hated Madonna Adriana, either.” I paused. “So why were you so cruel to her? You’ve been thoughtless sometimes, but I’ve never seen you cruel.”
“I didn’t mean it.” Defensive. “Sancha just made a joke. I thought I would too.”
“A very unkind joke.”
“Oh—” Lucrezia piled her wet hair up again, jabbing pins through the mass of it. “Really, such a fuss. I’ll go apologize to her later.”
“You’ll have to do it quickly, because she’s leaving.”
“What?” Lucrezia turned, still pinning her hair.
“You hurt her, Lucrezia.” I enunciated the words. “Madonna Adriana has decided to go back to her niece in Liguria.”
“All because of a little joke,” Lucrezia muttered, and that was when I slapped her. First with the flat of my palm; I paused to let her look shocked and then slapped her with the back of my hand, as I’d seen her hit clumsy maidservants.
She took a step back, holding her cheek, and I wondered if she’d slap me back. But she stared at me another moment, and then she burst into tears.
“I hate you,” she sobbed, and flung herself down on the marble edge of the bagno. “I hate you, Giulia Farnese—everyone looks at you instead of me, they all do, and Sancha says you’re just jealous I’m the Pope’s daughter so you take all my attention away. Father loves you more than me, and when Laura grows up he’ll love her more than me too, because she’s yours, and anything yours is perfect.”
I didn’t know whether to feel more exasperated or astonished. “Lucrezia, really—”
“Even my husband—I saw how he looked at you when we went to Pesaro three years ago, and all the ladies arranged themselves in tableaux for that contest of beauty. I was Primavera in a special dress, and that proud
slut Caterina Gonzaga came prancing out half naked as Venus, but all you did was cast your lashes down and drop to your knees like a Resurrection saint—you didn’t take a stitch off, and every man in the room was still panting for you. Including my husband.” A great moist sniff. “Not that he’s to be my husband much longer. Who knows whom I’ll marry next, maybe some hideous old man. I’ve been a good wife, I have, I tried to put up with Pesaro, and I put up with all my husband’s stupid unshaven captains putting their boots on my table, and what do I get for it?” she cried. “What do I get for it? I get my marriage annulled, and I don’t even get any babies! You’re not a proper wife at all, and you get everything in the world. You’re beautiful and everyone loves you and you even got a pretty little girl who looks just like you, and why can’t I?”
Lucrezia just sobbed then. “I’m sorry,” I heard indistinctly through the tears. “I’m sorry—” And my surprise and exasperation melted away into pity. I sat down on the edge of the bagno, and she put her head on my shoulder and cried.
“I don’t really have everything in the world, you know,” I said quietly, but she was making too much noise to hear me, and when do girls of seventeen ever hear sense anyway? I’d been little older when Madonna Adriana had to deal with my tantrums and shoutings, and now I could feel some sympathy for her. I put my arm about Lucrezia and stroked her wet hair, and finally she lifted her head.
“Is Adriana really leaving?” Wiping at the reddened slits of her eyes. “I didn’t mean it, what I said. I was just trying to make Sancha laugh—I don’t mean half the things I say when I talk to her.”
“Then go up and make Adriana a good heartfelt apology.” I smoothed the hair out of her eyes. “And I do wish you would stop trying to impress Sancha of Aragon.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Lucrezia sighed, wiping at her eyes again. I felt my way carefully.
