by Kate Quinn
That odd gleam in Juan’s eyes kept coming back to me throughout the day. The bright gaze, and that enjoyment as he gripped me so tight and watched me struggle. What had he been thinking? Juan had always liked to ogle, but to kiss me in front of his soldiers, the maids, the guards, anyone in the palazzo who might talk—was he utterly mad? Did he really think his father would laugh it away as he did all of Juan’s other antics?
I scrubbed at my lips again. I didn’t really think Rodrigo would believe I’d encouraged his son in any kind of familiarity. Still, I decided I’d tell my Pope about this the very next time I saw him. I’d have to make light of it—“Oh, Rodrigo, that son of yours was tipsy again, you’ll never believe what he did!” But I’d make sure—very sure—he heard my version first, heard it and believed it, just in case Juan decided to make trouble . . .
I had very little patience for my Laura when she put up a fuss that afternoon about her lessons. Maybe because she looked startlingly like Juan when she pushed her lip out and sulked.
“I don’t want to learn letters! I want to sit in the garden and sun my hair—”
“You are too young to be sun-bleaching your hair,” I said shortly, marching my daughter along the loggia. “And today is not the day for sitting in the garden. Today you are to practice your letters. And I will have you start on French soon, too, because everyone says you will learn it faster if you learn it young.”
“Don’t like French,” Laura muttered. “Leonello says they’re poxy horses.”
“Horses?”
“I believe I said ‘whoresons,’” Leonello volunteered, swinging along behind us.
“Thank you for teaching my daughter foul language,” I said tartly. “Laura, you are going to learn French. And Latin and Greek too someday, just like ’Crezia. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“No.” Another glower beneath the cloud of blond curls. “’Crezia wouldn’t make me learn letters. ’Crezia lets me do whatever I like!”
“I’ve noticed. But today you will practice your letters.” My daughter might only be four, but it was already time to consider her future education, and I found myself wanting more for her than the usual subjects that had been laid out for me at her age. All I had ever learned was dancing and prayers and embroidery stitches; how to keep a household’s books and twang very badly on a lute. I wanted more for my daughter.
Not that she appreciated it. Laura whined, and then she wailed, and then when I administered a brisk smack to her bottom through her skirts, she roared. But I marched her along to the pleasant sunny chamber where the balding tutor I’d engaged waited with some apprehension at the sound of his pupil’s yelling. “You will sit up straight for Signore Angelotti,” I said, cutting off her indignant howls with a little shake. “You will be courteous, and you will be obedient. Yes, Lauretta mia?”
Her lip still pushed out, but she gave a sulky bump of a curtsy for me. “Yes, Mamma.”
“Good girl.”
“You don’t speak Latin, Madonna Giulia,” Leonello pointed out as I shut the door on my daughter’s rebellious mumbling and set off down the loggia toward my own chamber again. “Or French, and you can’t translate Plato, either. So why do you want Laura to be a little scholar?”
“Because she’s getting spoiled, and the discipline will do her good. I don’t want her growing into some pouting featherbrain who thinks she can never do wrong.” Like Juan. I really did not like it at all, that petulant push of the lower lip Laura shared with my Pope’s favorite son. “Laura’s going to have every advantage to turn her into a fine woman,” I said, and it was a vow I intended to keep if it killed me. Or her. “She’ll learn dancing and music and embroidery, but she’ll have languages and philosophy too, and I’ll teach her to give to beggars and feed stray dogs and—and everything else I can think of. Everything that will make her thoughtful and kind—”
“The other Borgia children grew up with much the same advantages,” Leonello said. “And none of them are particularly thoughtful or kind, are they? I believe it takes more than a few tutors to instill good character, Madonna Giulia.”
I shied away from that thought. “It can’t hurt, can it?” Lessons, discipline, a little quiet. Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing, having Laura to myself for a while without Lucrezia forever breezing in to flatter her and dress her up and urge her to bleach her hair. I already missed Lucrezia, but there were times I wanted to tell her that if she wished for a daughter to spoil and play with like a trained monkey, she should have one of her own.
If Lucrezia had any daughters, though, they wouldn’t be coming from Lord Sforza. My Pope was quite open about it now—a way was to be found to annul Lucrezia’s marriage to the Count of Pesaro, and he wasn’t fussy about what way, either. “If consanguinity won’t do the trick,” Rodrigo had mused, “perhaps we can pretend Lucrezia’s previous betrothals weren’t properly reversed?”
“Really, Rodrigo,” I’d said. “You’d make your own daughter a bigamist?”
“So she can someday be a duchess rather than a countess? Of course.”
Poor Giovanni Sforza had stamped all the way up to Milan to beg assistance from his more illustrious cousins, but I did not think much of his chances. My Pope was utterly unfazed by the sight of the French King on his doorstep with an entire army; he didn’t bat an eye when the Orsini threatened to overrun the papal states; and he laughed openly when the College of Cardinals threatened revolt over Juan’s newly acquired territories and titles. What chance did Lucrezia’s poor nervous husband have of standing down the Holy Father?
Juan’s overbright eyes and wet mouth; Lucrezia’s convent retreat; poor Lord Sforza’s fuming. Really, was the whole world going mad? I felt too weary to think about any of it anymore, and I couldn’t help another little sigh as I entered my chamber and sank down on the cushioned wall bench. Two of my maids sat in the corner gossiping and sewing, and Leonello took the opposite corner and picked up his latest book. It was the romance of Tristan and Iseult, which I’d begged him to read out loud while I sewed or practiced my music—he had such a fine deep voice for reading. Not to mention the added pleasure it gave me to watch his ears turn red with irritation during the more overwritten love scenes. Just by looking at those earlobes, I could calculate how long it would take him to groan and heave the book across the room. But he seemed too distracted to read now; his voice kept trailing off, and a description of Iseult’s glistening sapphire-hued orbs didn’t even move him to a snicker, much less his usual humorous tirade on dim-witted maidens and their even dimmer romantic escapades.
“Never mind Iseult,” I said at last, picking up my ivory-fretted lute and giving it a twang. “There’s no point if you’re not going to joke and grumble about her. Talk to me instead, if you’re not going to tease me about my terrible taste in books. I’m thinking of another visit to the country—will you promise not to get homesick for the city this time, if I promise to make it a short visit?”
“Where in the country?” Leonello eyed me. “Perhaps Carbognano? I noticed one of those short, dull letters just arrived from your husband again. No doubt praising the summertime beauties of Carbognano in his execrable spelling.”
“Don’t be rude,” I chided. “And why shouldn’t I go to Carbognano? A stint in the country would do Laura good.” And I wouldn’t mind being away from Juan for a while, either.
“If you go within spitting distance of Orsino Orsini,” Leonello pointed out, “the Holy Father will explode.”
“The Holy Father may do as he pleases. As long as Laura is not a Borgia, then she should have a chance to see the father whose name she does carry. We will live with him again someday, after all.”
“Oh, you will, will you?”
“You know he has always wanted me back.” Not that he ever really had me to begin with. It wasn’t precisely the passionate declaration I might once have hoped for from my husband—an earnest promise that he would consent to take me back once Rodrigo was done with me. But it was a practi
cal consideration for the future, Laura’s as well as my own, because I knew that the day would come when Rodrigo was no longer part of my world—when he died, or when his passion for me did. I hated to think of his love ever failing, and certainly it had not waned at all in more than four years—but, well, mistresses were discarded. My sister was forever reminding me of that, usually as she nagged for some papal favor that I must obtain for her now, while the getting was easy.
Much as I shrank from the thought of being discarded, even worse was the thought that my vital, virile, cheerful Rodrigo would ever be laid beneath the earth.
Oh, Holy Virgin, what a prospect! Could I not have any cheerful thoughts today? I crossed myself, heaving another sigh. Even Leonello seemed gloomy, fingering the book’s spine and looking thoughtful. “What is it?” I said, and picked up my lute again. “Don’t tell me I’ve dragged down your mood, too.”
“I’ve been wishing to ask you for a favor, Madonna Giulia.”
“Of course. Is it about Carmelina?” I missed my sharp-tongued cook with her sweet hands. I thought Leonello missed her too—he had saved her from that oaf Juan quite romantically, after all. Who says a small man can’t act the hero?
“It’s not a favor for our Signorina Cuoca.” My bodyguard sounded uncharacteristically somber. “It’s something for me.”
“Then I’ll gladly help.” I looked down at the lute, dubious. “I think I’ll save this for Laura when she’s older. Surely she’ll be more musical than I am. Of course, a turnip would be more musical than I am . . .”
“I need a letter. A letter in your writing, Madonna Giulia, just a few lines. I’ll tell you what to write.”
“A letter to whom?”
“No name.” Leonello did not look at me as he recited, in a toneless voice, the words he wanted me to write. I’d laid aside the lute to go fetch the fine scented paper on which I wrote all my letters, but his flat emotionless words arrested me before I had a chance to rise.
“Leonello—what is this? You know I can’t write that!”
“You don’t have to sign it.”
“What does that matter? His Holiness knows my writing. If he saw this, he really would explode!”
“I know.” My bodyguard looked at me. “But I am asking anyway.”
“What for?” I didn’t know whether to be more puzzled or horrified. “What can you possibly need this for?”
“You want the truth?” Leonello’s hazel eyes were unblinking, pinning mine. “I am looking for a man, Madonna Giulia. I have been looking for him since long before I came to this household. I have found him, and now I am baiting a trap for him. I need only a few words to do it, but they must be words in your hand.”
“Then this person is someone I know?” Puzzlement was definitely giving way to horror now.
“He knows of you.”
“Everyone in Rome knows of me!”
“You will be in no danger—”
“I’m in danger just by writing those words down!” You have no right to ask this of me, I nearly said—but I remembered the way my bodyguard had stepped between me and a French army, the way he had bled and screamed and nearly died for it. He has the right to ask anything of me, I thought, but this made me shiver. “If the wrong person saw this letter—”
“No one will. You have my word I will destroy your letter when it has served its purpose.”
“And what purpose is that?” I stared at him helplessly. “Holy Virgin, Leonello—”
“Madonna Giulia.” His voice cut me off, and his eyes were straight as a sword. “I have not asked for anything in all our acquaintance, and I would not ask this now if it were not . . .” He trailed off. I had never seen my bodyguard look so fierce, not even when he stepped between me and the French pike-men.
I hesitated. “If you could only tell me—”
“I can’t.” He massaged the stub of his missing finger, the finger that had had to be amputated after those same French pike-men stamped it into a broken mass of blood and bone shards. “Madonna Giulia . . . please?”
I’d never heard him say please before in my life.
He looked square into my eyes. “Do you trust me?”
The words came unthinking. “With my life.”
“I assure you that if you put your honor in my hands, it will be equally safe.”
I held his gaze a moment longer, and then I fetched my scented paper and sharpened a pen. I wrote the few brief sentences for him in my looping sprawl that had never managed to conform itself to the elegant formal hand that girls of rank were supposed to master, no matter how much I practiced. I folded the note and sealed it with the fragrant wax and personal seal that anyone close would know for mine.
“I do trust you, Leonello.” I passed my bodyguard the note. “With my life and my honor. So I hope you know what you are doing.”
He was utterly silent as he took the note from my hand.
Leonello
Night came swiftly over me in the Piazza degli Ebrei. A night darker than murder, and murder was common here where the streets sloped sharply away from the decent houses toward the foul, narrow quarters that were grudgingly given over to house the Jews. Ill deeds happened every night here, because the darkness pressed the eyes like black velvet and once dawn swept it away and revealed the bodies left behind, well, they could always be blamed on the Jews.
I stood in an inky pool of shadows, looking out over the piazza with a knife in each hand already drawn, to ward away any drunks or footpads who might decide I looked like an easy mark. But the drunks and footpads passed me by, staggering or slinking to their next drink or victim. It would be hours yet before I needed to draw blood. The trap had been laid and baited, and tonight the strings would begin to tug.
Pay attention, now.
Imagine a spacious villa on the Esquiline Hill. One of the fabled seven hills of Rome; Nero built his Golden House here, and another emperor built a bathhouse where the likes of Marcus Aurelius later sat in the steam and quipped in Latin. Today there were churches and shrines instead, and the bathhouses and Roman villas were all in ruins, but the hill was still a pleasant place with enough open spaces to build vineyards and rambling houses for those who didn’t quite wish to leave Rome in order to get a taste of the country. Nothing but the best for Vannozza dei Cattanei, the Pope’s thrifty former mistress, who knew that if she wished to scold her two eldest sons, she must promise to wine and dine them first. One or two other guests came to her pretty little villa near the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, but why bother listing them? They would not be important tonight.
Vannozza’s sons: the swaggering young Duke of Gandia and the even more elegant young Cardinal Borgia, not trading much beyond sharp-edged pleasantries and dark looks, I imagined, but managing enough courtesy to please their mother. Vannozza herself: sleek and self-satisfied, if not as lovely as her successor, and she presided over her guests like one of those Roman matrons must have done in their own villas when Marcus Aurelius ruled this city rather than Rodrigo Borgia. An evening cena eaten outside in the summery green warmth of her little vineyard; elegant low tables and servants with flagons of wine; sweet music and low conversation among the guests; salads of endives and edible flowers, cold ox tongue laid in tissue-thin slices over vine leaves, grapes and melons and ices of the kind Carmelina would describe in loving detail.
Pay attention, now.
A masked man interrupted the evening briefly—a tall figure, broad and silent in black doublet and a cap in the Borgia colors of mulberry and yellow, a black mask below it covering his face. More men in masks; how they had haunted this whole bloody business, but in truth they were not so uncommon in the Holy City. Every lord who sent a gift to another man’s wife or a bribe to an underling put his messenger in a mask; every boy trying to duck his tutors for a little after-hours hilarity did the same. At Carnivale, even the respectable in Rome went masked. My masked messenger made straight for the Duke of Gandia, who turned from the dark-haired beauty he was r
omancing and looked on irritably as a letter was presented. “I await your answer.” The words came muffled behind the mask, and the Duke snorted as he broke the seal. But his irritability faded fast, color rising in his face, as he saw what fell out of the folded paper, and he dismissed without another glance the piqued brunette he had been planning to bed that evening. “At nightfall,” he told the masked man, who whispered some discreet directions and then took himself away. And when the Duke of Gandia seemed in high spirits for the rest of the evening, his mother pinched his cheek fondly and Cesare Borgia just sat back to watch.
“I don’t know what you put in that letter, but it worked.” Bartolomeo’s freckled face appeared ghostlike in the air before me as he took off the mask. It was still not even twilight at that point in the night’s narrative, and my accomplice lowered his voice from the passersby hurrying on their way home before dark. “The Duke of Gandia says he’ll come at nightfall.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said, ‘I always knew she wanted me.’ Who did he mean?”
“Never mind. You know where to wait; be ready when he splits from the others. Do you have the letter?”
Bartolomeo gave it back to me. A good boy, I thought. He looked drawn and nervous, but determined. I hoped he would not lose his resolve for tonight’s work.
Silky purple dusk gave way to black velvet night. I slipped the letter in Giulia’s writing back into my doublet. Now that it had served its purpose I’d destroy it, just as I promised her. I had not really thought she would write it for me—even with no signature and no name, any such note in the Bride of Christ’s hand would have enraged the Holy Father. But she’d written it anyway when I asked—evidently my giddy little mistress really did trust me. I smiled at that thought as Vannozza dei Cattanei’s elegant vineyard cena wound to a close, her guests departing with elaborate compliments to their hostess. The Borgia sons were last to leave, of course, lingering for motherly advice and motherly kisses. They departed together, side by side on a dark horse and a pale horse, a pair of stoutly armed squires behind them for guards.
