by Kate Quinn
“Perhaps a change is what you need.” I looped up a wet lock of her hair and pinned it back out of her eyes. “Someplace quiet, peaceful. Someplace you can think.”
“That would be lovely.” Lucrezia scrubbed at her cheeks. “Was Rome always so noisy and hectic, or was I just too young to notice?”
I thought Rome was the same as it had always been; it was the Borgias who were worse. But what did I know? “The Convent of San Sisto,” I said instead. “You’ve often spoken of it, how much you enjoyed taking your lessons from the sisters there when you were a little girl, how many friends you made among the sisters. Perhaps you could go back for a short visit. Pray, rest, see your friends. Get away from all the noise here in the city.”
“You think so?” Lucrezia brightened. “Would the Holy Father allow it?”
“I’ll make sure he does,” I promised. “A retreat for you—I’m sure you could use the time to reflect in peace and quiet, if it’s really true the Holy Father wishes to annul your marriage.” I half-hoped she’d made that up, but she just gave a little shrug.
“He doesn’t need the Sforzas anymore,” she said, and sounded remarkably offhand about it all. “It’s the Neapolitan alliance he needs to reinforce now, in case the French get restive again.”
“I see,” I said, and wondered why Rodrigo had said nothing of it to me. He doesn’t tell you everything, I heard Vannozza dei Cattanei whisper in my mind, from that warm afternoon in the gardens of the Vatican when I had first spoken of my doubts about her daughter’s behavior.
Just how long had my Pope been planning to rid himself of Lucrezia’s husband?
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the sisters at San Sisto.” Lucrezia’s little face had brightened again. “I can tell the Holy Father it will keep me safe out of reach from my husband, in case he decides to return from Pesaro for me. Even my Giovanni isn’t so crude he’d storm a convent!”
She giggled at that, good humor apparently restored now that the tears had been cried out. “I’ll go to see poor old Adriana now,” she said, rising. “And I shall be absolutely abject, I promise. I really didn’t mean to hurt her. She knows that.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Then I shall apologize to you all over again,” Lucrezia added. “I get stormy when I cry, you know—I don’t hate you, not at all. I just said that. You’ll forgive me, won’t you? Of course you will. Then we shall go sit in the garden and sun our hair together; I have to dry mine all over again now that you’ve gotten me soaked, and maybe Laura can sun her hair too! It’s never too early to begin caring for your looks, you know.” Lucrezia strolled over to pick up her hand glass, pinching her cheeks to make them pinker, admiring her fine white teeth in a dazzling smile. “I don’t think Laura’s going to be as pretty as me, so she’ll have to work with what she’s been given . . .”
Carmelina
You’d never think a whole household could be thrown into such an uproar by a visit to a nunnery. Hours after cena it was, but the Pope’s daughter was keeping every servant under this roof at a trot, packing and unpacking and repacking for her forthcoming sojourn to the Convent of San Sisto. I flattened myself against a wall to let a manservant bent double under a loaded chest stagger past, followed by a maid with an armload of little slippers and another maid with a basket of shifts for mending, and crept back through the dark kitchens toward the wine cellars.
I cast my usual critical eye over my domain, but the fires glowed softly, banked for the night, and the floors were immaculately swept. Much quieter than usual. A fishwife from the docks had been sentenced to hang tonight for strangling her husband with his own fishing line; my carvers and undercooks were all wild to go see the execution. I gave my permission after their work was done, and most of my people tripped out just before the sun was beginning to set, already taking odds on how long it would take the murderess to strangle and planning where they would take celebratory drinks afterward. I had already sent up a plateful of honeyed figs and a plate of toasted salted almonds for Madonna Lucrezia to nibble as she packed—now, I had a rare evening to myself.
“Marco had better not take up much of my time,” I grumbled under my breath to Santa Marta, who rode in her usual pouch at my waist. I’d seen my cousin only once since the masquerade, when he’d appeared in the Duke of Gandia’s train among the guardsmen during a visit to the palazzo. “And what is a cook doing nobbing with guardsmen instead of tending his kitchens?” I’d asked.
“We play the occasional game of zara together.” Of course they did. “The Duke of Gandia plays with us too, sometimes—he’s not too proud to have a laugh and a game of primiera with his guards. Or with the cook either, come to that. Not like that brother of his who’s too good for anyone else on this earth. At least the Duke of Gandia always brings good wine.”
“And gold too, I shouldn’t wonder,” I couldn’t help warning. “It may sound very fine to play cards with a pope’s son, Marco, but he can afford to throw a hundred florins down on one bet, and you can’t.”
“Don’t harry me,” Marco snarled, and that had been our last words to each other since the masquerade. But evidently he was sorry for being short with me, for I’d received a hasty note today in the afternoon. I can repay you the money I oh you, my cousin wrote me in his none-too-literate scrawl. Meet me in the palatso wine celler after cena? Its quiet and Im trying to avoyd the others—I stil oh Ugo 10 scudi.
“I doubt he’ll have any coin for me,” I told Santa Marta. “Likely he just wants to borrow more.”
Santa Marta agreed with me, and I hoped again that my cousin wouldn’t take up much of my precious free time this evening. A real cook hardly ever has any free time, and I’d had an idea scratching at the back of my mind for a while now, like that tattered-ear cat tickling my hem with his claws when he wanted another meal he hadn’t earned. I had a notion that I just might follow my father’s example and write up my recipes in a proper collection. Santa Marta had seemed to approve of that idea, too.
“Though you have to wonder why I should bother,” I added as I descended the stone steps toward the barred cellar doors. Leave a wine cellar unlocked, and every cask in it would be empty by morning. “The only point of noting down your recipes is so you can pass them on to someone worthy. And there isn’t anyone in these kitchens worth giving my secrets to.”
Bartolomeo, I thought immediately, but frowned. My red-haired apprentice was gone; he’d cleared out that tiny immaculate cubby in which he slept and taken himself off before the noosed and silent body of the murdered Sforza guest had even been taken down at the masquerade. And perhaps it was no bad thing he was gone: he’d had the temerity to both fall in love with me and tell me my recipes were wrong. I must have threatened to send him packing at least nine times over the past year of stormy shouted arguments . . . but just now, I had to admit as I paused at the cellar doors to light a taper, I missed him. I had a kitchen full of dullards who were happy if they could get the dishes cooked and out to the credenza in time, unambitious undercooks and pinheaded apprentices who looked at me blankly when I required anything more creative of them than boiling water. Bartolomeo might have been an arrogant young jolthead, but I’d somehow gotten used to exchanging a triumphant glance with him when a roast surpassed my expectations, to relying on his finely tuned nose when my own wasn’t sure if a game hen was quite fresh or not. If I stood frowning over a sauce, it was always Bartolomeo who took a taste and suggested a pinch of pepper or a dash of wild thyme. Half the time I scolded him for being presumptuous, of course, and said that if I wanted an apprentice’s opinion I’d damned well ask for it—but as soon as his back was turned, the pepper or the wild thyme usually went in anyway.
I’d missed that silent complicity, during the weeks when he’d been too furious to even look at me. And now he was gone altogether, and he never had told anyone about that frenzied, famished hour we’d spent coiled together on the lumpy pallet. The twinge of shame in my stomach had now quite eclipsed my panic over
losing my position. Shame for thinking he ever would tell and wreck my reputation. I’d not only bedded him and then—what were his words? Kicked him out of his own bed like a stray dog?—I’d done him the insult of thinking he was a common braggart who would ruin me out of spite.
It did not sit at all well.
“Never mind,” I said to Santa Marta, who I think had liked Bartolomeo because she’d had a habit of falling out of her pouch when he was about. “He was too old to keep on as apprentice anyway. Time he made his own way in the world. If he has a grain of sense, he’ll find some cook with a plain daughter, make his way up the ladder, marry the daughter, and take over her father’s position.”
I brushed away a flash of memory—pale shoulders dusted with freckles like cinnamon and smelling like wild thyme, a long hard body stretched over me, and that was a thought that had returned a touch too frequently to my mind for comfort lately. Perhaps it really was well that Bartolomeo had left.
I flicked it out of mind like a dusting of flour off the fingertips and cupped the flame about my taper as I went into the wine cellar. The smell of must and stone, wine and wood; casks in orderly rows with their neat labels in my writing. I kept a far closer eye on the wine stores than Marco ever had—he seemed to think he should leave it all to the palazzo steward. “Marco?” I called. “Marco, are you here yet?”
“Maestro Santini’s lent you out for the night,” a male voice slurred from the shadows. “I’ll be the one entertaining you this evening, my pretty.”
I turned and saw a handsome young man leaning against the cellar’s stone wall. Very handsome, in fact; lean and well-built in an embroidered doublet and curly-toed shoes like a Turk, auburn hair falling in his eyes. The Duke of Gandia had already broached one of the wine casks stacked all around us. He toasted me with the cup in his hand, dark eyes gleaming.
Marco, I thought frozenly. It had been Marco’s writing on the note he sent; I knew it so well. But I was looking at Juan Borgia, and my heart began to thud like clods dropping on a coffin.
Marco, what did you do?
“You’re not really very pretty at all, my pretty,” the Duke of Gandia continued as genially as though he had not noticed my horrified stare. “Not in a gown, anyway. Put you in hose and boots, though—” He gave a leer and whispered, “Signorina Giraffe. Or was it a giraffa?”
That thrice-damned costume. Why had I ever let Madonna Giulia—and how had he ever recognized—never mind. I pushed both those thoughts aside, giving a wary curtsy with the taper still clutched in my hand. “Gonfalonier,” I said, keeping my eyes on the floor. He liked to be addressed by his military rank now, rather than his ducal title. Oh, the great conquering hero. “I’m sure I do not know what you mean. But if you and your men—man”—yes, just one guard standing impassive against the stone wall beside the cellar door, one of Juan’s uncouth unshaven soldiers—“require refreshment, I will be pleased to see you fed in the kitchens.”
“Why not?” Juan Borgia shrugged, and gave an elaborate bow as I sidled back toward the doors, every hair on my head feeling as though it wanted to stand on end. Get to the kitchens, I thought, get to the kitchens where the lights are. Where people can walk through at any moment. Anything but this very dim, very empty cellar with its insulating stone walls through which you could hear almost nothing. Get to the kitchens where the knives are.
But it didn’t do any good, because Juan’s guard seized hold of me the moment I approached. “Bend her over,” Juan said, and I let out an earsplitting yell and began to flail. I knocked the hat off the guardsman and he staggered a moment. I flung myself against the cellar door and got it open halfway, making a desperate lunge, but the guardsman just grabbed my elbow in a grip that numbed my whole arm and hauled me back, cuffing me across the head. My ears rang from the blow, as my skirts were pushed up for the Duke of Gandia’s inspection.
“That’s the bum I remember!” he crowed behind me, and I heard a crash as another jug of wine was smashed open. “Bar those doors, Paolo, and let’s haul her back here where there’s room to work!”
I lunged for the half-open doors again, feeling the pouch-strings at my waist snap, and Santa Marta’s purse ripped away. But the guardsman spun me and shoved me in one motion so I tripped over my own feet and nearly fell as he dropped the bar on the doors. The cellar was freezing even on this warm June night, and I felt my skin shrink and prickle all over. Or maybe that was the terror, as the guard let me go and I came up painfully hard against the trestle table where the stewards decanted wine for cena. My gaze flew like a panicked bird around the cellar, but there was nothing here but casks and spouts and decanters. The guardsman had brought several branches of candles—oh, everything had been well prepared—and I had enough flickering light to see the Duke of Gandia stagger toward me. I made myself straighten before him.
“Gonfalonier—” Eyes on the floor, shoulders rounded, meek and timid; that’s it. Santa Marta save me, I had no trouble sounding timid. “If you wish me to entertain you this evening, I am pleased to obey.” I forced the words out through dry lips. I’d hoped that if I could just get away, run for the kitchens and disappear into the palazzo, Juan Borgia would slouch off in search of easier prey or maybe just get drunk enough to forget all about me by morning. But if I couldn’t get away, I’d have to endure it. Plenty of the other maids in this household had had to do the same—I’d had to myself, a few years ago when Cesare Borgia had passed a disinterested eye over me and decided to bend me over a table.
But you wanted that, the thought whispered. Cesare Borgia had been frightening, but he had at least been beautiful. Juan made my whole skin crawl across my flesh like it was trying to escape my body altogether.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself. Juan Borgia had recognized me from the ball—Marco’s doing too, no doubt—and if the Pope’s favorite son wanted me, I’d have to grit my teeth through it. Grit my teeth and douse myself afterward with good strong vinegar.
“Did you fuck my brother?” he asked casually, taking another swallow of wine.
“W-what? Gonfalonier, I don’t—”
“Saw him looking at you too, at that ball. You prefer snakes to tigers?” He clapped a hand over his own codpiece. “I can tell you now, a tiger has the bigger cock.”
Sweet Santa Marta, maybe there was a way out of this unholy mess. “Cardinal Borgia has been gracious enough to honor me with his attentions,” I said meekly. “If that means you do not wish to have me—”
But my sliver of hope died, the hope that the Duke of Gandia would spurn his brother’s leavings, because Juan Borgia backhanded me across the face without any change in his expression at all.
“My brother’s attentions aren’t any kind of honor,” Juan spat as I watched a spray of blood fly from my nose across the cellar floor. “I’m the Holy Father’s favorite. I’m Gonfalonier of the papal armies. I defeated the French at Ostia!”
“Yes, Gonfalonier,” I mumbled around my own blood running down from my nose into my mouth.
“—and if I decide I want to poke your smelly kitchen cunt, you should be honored. Honored.”
My eyes hunted behind him for a weapon. More casks, more cups. A spiderweb. I couldn’t attack the Pope’s son, I knew that, I knew it—if I did, I’d be as dead as that guest at the masquerade who had ended up hanging from the loggia. But I wanted my favorite kitchen knife. I wanted it so badly I could feel the weight of the hilt in my hand, almost see the comforting gleam of the sharp edge. Because I didn’t think the Pope’s son would be satisfied with a poke and a fumble, not tonight. There was a strange glassy gleam in his eyes that wasn’t wine, and he padded toward me with a soft-footed prowl utterly unlike his usual posing swagger.
“I’ve never fucked a giraffe,” he remarked, and raised his arm to hit me again. I ducked his fist this time and ran for the doors again, so stupid because the guardsman stood in my way with folded arms, but I couldn’t stop myself from fleeing the Duke of Gandia in a raw surge of panic. I rebo
unded off the guard’s hard shoulder, and then I felt the Duke’s hand in my hair, jerking me back. I staggered into a branch of candles, knocking it flying. It tumbled into Juan Borgia, and I hoped it would set him on fire, but it didn’t; it just doused him in hot wax, and I heard him yell in surprise. A giggle of pure hysteria burst out of me to see the Duke of Gandia, the Gonfalonier of the papal forces, the Pope’s beloved son, covered in hot wax like a message case.
Stupid of me, so stupid of me to laugh.
“Bitch!” he howled, and when he began hitting me again I couldn’t duck this time. The guardsman came forward, stone-faced, holding me in place like a piece of furniture as Juan Borgia rained blows on my head and my ears rang like a kettle. “Down on the table,” I dimly heard him snarl, and I felt myself being lifted, slammed down on a hard surface. Don’t fight, I thought disjointedly, don’t fight him—my head cracked against the trestle boards, and I couldn’t help crying out. “Shut the bitch up,” Juan snarled. I could hardly focus my swimming eyes, but I could see him coming toward me with that terrifying prowl again, and everything in my blood shrieked warning. I didn’t even know I was moving until I got an arm free and lunged.
“You scratched me.” Juan sounded shocked, sincerely shocked, and I felt the strange hysterical urge to giggle again. If I hadn’t been bleeding from the nose and mouth by this time, leaking tears from the eyes, my ears ringing and my skin crawling with more raw wailing terror than I’d ever felt in my life.
“Bitch drew blood,” I heard the Duke of Gandia mutter, pettishly. “Hold her hand out. The one she scratched me with.”
The guard locked my body down this time, forcing out my left arm. I had a sudden flash of Cesare locking my body down on a table, spreading my arms just like this, but he had held me down to keep me from moving as he tasted my skin an inch at a time—
The vision disappeared in a flash of agony as Juan took the dagger from his belt and slammed it in one casual motion through my hand and into the wood below.
