by Kate Quinn
“Juan would have sent word by now.” Rodrigo could not keep still. He flung himself into his carved chair; he rose again to pace across the Sala dei Santi, he paused with a jerk to finger an exquisitely engraved astrolabe in brass and gold sitting on a small table, and then he was pacing again. But over and over his eyes went to Pinturicchio’s fresco on the wall overhead—the disputation of Santa Caterina, where a grandly turbaned figure on a horse oversaw the saint’s pleading with the fixed and arrogant face of Juan Borgia. “He would have returned by now, or he would have sent word! To have him disappear like this, and not one of his men knowing where—”
“It wouldn’t be the first time Juan lost himself sporting all night, and then slept all the next day.” I reached up from my chair to touch Rudrigo’s arm. “Cesare did say Juan was going to some woman after leaving Vannozza’s cena. Isn’t he very taken with that new Milanese girl, Damiata?” I tried to coax a smile. “You should be glad he’s developed enough sense not to be seen leaving a courtesan’s house in the middle of the afternoon! He was just waiting for night to fall, for discretion’s sake.” As though Juan were ever discreet, I thought, but did not say it. My Pope needed soothing, not more causes to worry. I couldn’t really manage to worry about Juan, but this absence was rather strange.
“But his horse—”
“Horses stray, everyone knows that.” Juan’s horse had been found by the papal soldiers Rodrigo had dispatched to search for the Duke of Gandia—just the horse, which would not have been so unsettling if the great stallion had not been found with one stirrup cut away and a splash of blood on its flank. Not horse blood, either, because the horse was uninjured. But I gave my Pope as reassuring a smile as I could muster. “Someone no doubt tried to steal the horse when Juan left it tied for the night, and it got loose. How many horses has Juan managed to lose this year, after all?” Usually by riding them until they dropped, and of course there was the one pretty little mare whose throat he’d cut with his own dagger because she had the temerity to throw him off in front of his soldiers . . . but Juan did have a fair number of horses stolen, since he could rarely be bothered to tie them properly, much less stable them.
“But we were supposed to meet today, to discuss the campaigns I’ve planned in Romagna!” Rodrigo burst out. “Even if he were dallying with some woman, even if he lost his horse and went looking for another, he would not have left me waiting with no explanation!”
Cesare looked up from the elaborate globe in the corner, where he had been fingering the etched coasts of the new land that Genoese sailor had discovered. Much of what we knew of Juan’s latest activities came from Cesare: his brother’s high spirits at Vannozza’s cena, the masked man who had come to deliver a message, the way he split from Cesare on the ride home and rode off toward the Piazza degli Ebrei, leaving his squire behind. “You have never worried overmuch when I kept you waiting, Holy Father,” Cesare murmured.
“Bah, you never forget yourself when dallying with women.” Rodrigo gave a distracted clap of the hand to his eldest son’s shoulder, and Cesare’s immobile face looked more masklike than ever. He had a hard tension running through him like a strand of fire, a tension that made me wonder if he just might have planned a beating or some other unpleasant surprise for his brother. But Cesare had been fully accounted for the rest of the night after Juan rode off, playing cards until dawn with Michelotto and some of his other soldiers. And if Cesare ever came to blows with his brother, I knew he’d do it himself and not hire bravos.
I wondered if my Pope would ever bring himself to think the same thing. If he did, he’d never speak the words aloud. He’ll never admit the thought that la familia could ever turn on each other.
“Perhaps an accident in the slums . . . I swear, I’ll have that rat’s nest by the Piazza degli Ebrei swept clean after this!” Rodrigo swept a hand back through his graying hair, and I found myself wondering if it was grayer than it had been. I was so used to seeing my Pope as invincible, confident as Alexander the Great, from whom he had taken his papal name. Perhaps only when he was worrying so visibly could I see any signs that he was old.
He looked older still when nervous little Burchard burst in. “Your Holiness, something has been found—”
“Juan is hurt?” Rodrigo’s face drained.
“No, he is still—unaccounted for. But his squire has been found. Or to be precise, the man who was acting as his squire.” Burchard addressed his words to the woven carpet. “That man was found stabbed last night.”
“Last night?” Cesare’s voice lashed like a whip crack. “And only now are we hearing of this?”
“He was found stabbed, unconscious but still alive . . . he had been dragged to the nearest house, but the household was too frightened to make any report to the constables until day had risen. By then, the man was dead.” Burchard cleared his throat; the sound fell like a stone into the room. “It appears he died without saying a word—about the Duke of Gandia, or who attacked him. Them, I mean. Attacked them.” A sigh. “Gott im Himmel.”
Rodrigo went so gray that I ran to his side, but Cesare got there first. “We will keep searching, Father,” he said, gripping his father’s arm in steel fingers. “I’ll have my own men out, down to the last page boy. We will find my brother, but you should rest.”
My Pope hardly seemed to hear him. Cesare looked over at me, command in his eyes as though he addressed one of the papal guards. “Take my father to bed and keep him there,” he ordered me. “Allow no one to disturb him, for any reason—not until I send word, and I won’t unless we find my brother.”
I found myself nodding tersely.
“Sweet Christ—” Cesare made the same gesture his father had, rubbing a hand over his hair, only his hair was still auburn and vigorous. “My idiot brother. As many enemies as he’s made, and he goes haring off alone into the night with a man in a mask? What possible temptation could have made him act such a fool?”
A cool little voice suddenly echoed through my head. I am looking for a man, it said. I have found him, and now I am baiting a trap for him.
My palms began to sweat. But I pushed the voice away, leading my stunned and frantic Pope back to his private chamber, where I disrobed him, soothed him, whispered hopeful nothings, listened to him fret, and finally coaxed him off to sleep with his head on my breast. Where I lay all through the night, as Cesare’s men and the papal guards tore the city apart looking for Juan, and I stared into the dark thinking unimaginable things.
It was afternoon the following day before we heard more.
“Your Holiness,” the man whispered, crashing to his knees the moment he laid eyes on my Pope. A common man in a dirty linen shirt and sturdy breeches, deeply tanned from a life spent under the sun, rough-voiced and rough-handed and plainly terrified. His wide eyes darted from the rich mosaics to the Moorish designs about the frescoes, the exquisite ornaments of silver and gilt and fragile glass to the papal guards standing huge and immobile at the doors. Cesare stood just as silent in his cardinal’s robes, impassive of face, glittering of eye, one long finger tapping his own elbow. Joffre and Sancha had arrived and stood pressed together in unaccustomed accord, Joffre frightened and trying not to show it, the Tart of Aragon looking almost tearful for her brother-in-law and sometime lover. I stood by my Pope, his hand closed in both of mine—and to a common man like the one staring up at us, the Pope with his magnificent robes and sunken-eyed fear would have been most terrifying of all.
Rodrigo’s voice was only a whisper. “Rise.”
The man rose, visibly trembling. “I’m Giorgio Schiavi, I am—I didn’t do no wrong—”
“Occupation?” Burchard interrupted, pen poised. Johann Burchard always looked relieved when the world slowed enough so he could take proper notes. I was glad to see someone here was soothed.
Giorgio Schiavi twisted his cloth cap between his hands. “Timber merchant.”
Wood seller, in other words. “You are safe here, poveruomo,” I said softly, a
nd he threw me a startled grateful glance as he spoke again.
“I get my wood unloaded from boats in the Tiber,” he began, eyes flicking about the sala again. “By the hospital of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni. I keep watch over my wood at night—terrible rough it can be down there, thieves everywhere looking to rob an honest man. At midnight two nights back, I see two men come to the riverbank—checking to see that everything was clear, that nobody was watching. They didn’t see me, did they? I know how to get out of the way . . .”
My Pope looked on steadily, but his profile looked somehow shrunken to me. Gaunt.
“Two more men, they do another sweep—and then a man on a horse comes along. Big white horse, it was, and it’s got a body draped across the saddle. Feet on one side, the head dragging along the other.”
Rodrigo’s hand jerked in mine.
“They pull the horse up, right near where I’m hiding, and I’m hiding by now, Your Holiness. Hiding and praying. There’s a spot where the sewers come into the water, it’s full of rubbish . . . they drag the body off the horse, and they give a great heave and into the river it goes.” Giorgio Schiavi licked his dry lips. “The man in the saddle, he asks if the body’s been sunk. They all say ‘Yes, my lord’—he sounds like a lord, you know. I didn’t get a look at his face, but he speaks good. Even though he’s a small man in that saddle compared to them, they look at him like he’s the one giving the orders.”
I was the one to start trembling then. Oh, sweet Holy Virgin—but I firmly shut away all thoughts of the utterly impossible.
“The body’s gone down,” the wretched wood seller yammered on, “but his cloak’s still floating. So they throw stones at it till it’s gone too, and then they leave.” Sancha of Aragon gave a great sob, clutching Joffre’s arm, and our witness came to a halt. “That’s all,” he mumbled. “Your Holiness.”
“Why did you not report this?” Cesare said in his velvety voice.
For the first time, Giorgio Schiavi looked too startled to be afraid. “I’ve seen a hundred bodies dumped there,” he said. “Until today, when guards came about asking for any information on murders done that night—that’s the first time anyone’s made inquiries about any of them.”
“Dumped,” Rodrigo echoed. His eyes stared at the carpet, seeing nothing. “They dumped him there, with the rest of the sewage. Like my son was trash—”
“We don’t know that.” I folded my poor Pope in my arms, not caring when I heard Burchard’s click of the tongue for Rodrigo’s papal dignity. “We don’t know it was Juan, you heard Messer Schiavi, a hundred bodies have been put into that river—”
“We’ll have the Tiber dragged at once.” Cesare was snapping orders to the guards. “Summon every fisherman and boatman who can be found. Ten ducats to the man who brings up the body—you’ll see, Father, surely it won’t be Juan—”
Sancha was crying noisily now. Joffre tried to comfort her and she struck at him. My Pope was shaking in my arms, shoulders heaving under his cope, and silly Burchard was still taking notes as though that would put everything right. Poor Giorgio Schiavi looked about him with open mouth. When a wood seller imagines the glories of the Vatican, the illustrious dignity of God’s Vicar on earth, I doubt he imagines anything like this. “Thank you, Messer Schiavi,” I said, disentangling myself from Rodrigo for a moment and ushering the poor wood seller out through the chaos. “Your loyalty and honesty will not be forgotten.” I pressed all the coins I had into his hands and flew back into the sala. “We will all pray,” I said, and no one could hear me over Sancha’s wailing so I gave her a good slap. Why not, she’d already hit Joffre and he wasn’t making any noise to speak of. That shut her up, and I clapped my hands.
“We shall all pray,” I repeated, taking out the rosary beads in black amber and gold that my Pope had given me at Easter, and slowly other voices joined mine in saying the Rosary. “Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipoténtem, factorem cæli et terræ—” I gulped out the words, suppressing the tears that wanted to follow them, because I loathed Juan Borgia but I wanted him to live. I could not bear the terrible, frozen grief on his father’s face, so I bowed my head over my rosary and prayed to the Mother of Mercy that my Pope’s most beloved son was alive.
But the Mother of Mercy was not merciful that day. Because as the bells for Vespers were ringing over the city a few hours later, tolling so sweetly they caught at the heart, the Tiber gave up her dead and Juan Borgia was dragged from the water.
They took him to the fortress of the Castel Sant’Angelo, to be washed and dressed in his military finery. “We should wait,” Cesare said, stone-faced as ever. “We should wait until he is tended, Your Holiness.” But my Pope just gave one great cry, a cry that split me like a sword, and rushed from his private apartments.
“Sweet Christ,” Cesare said viciously. “I didn’t want him to see Juan this way—stabbed nine times—”
“Nine?” I whispered, but my feet were moving, everyone’s feet moved, and papal guards closed about the whole party of us as we followed the Holy Father to the Castel Sant’Angelo. I had been inside that gloomy papal fortress before, looking down from its great crenellated walls over the lake of surcoats and pike points and lily-strewn flags that had been the French army—but my Pope had been laughing then, making nothing of the trials ahead of him and scheming with great good cheer how he would make this army melt away, bend to his bidding, wish they had never crossed him. Now there was no laughter—only the Holy Father’s piercing cry again, followed by hoarse, wailing sobs as I crossed into the chapel where the servants had laid out the corpse of the Duke of Gandia. I could not see Juan’s face, or his terrible mutilated body—only one limp white arm, trailing loose from its bier as my weeping Pope gathered his son up into his arms and rocked him like a child.
“Rodrigo—” I did not try to touch him, but he still struck at me as I approached, burying his head in Juan’s torn and waterlogged chest. Juan’s limp hand brushed my skirt, and I stepped back with a cry of my own. The palm had been torn open, pierced through by a dagger, leaving a great jagged wound. The river had washed it clean and bloodless, or else it could have been the hand of Christ upon His cross.
I became dimly aware that Cesare was ordering everyone out in a voice like ice. I cast a look at Rodrigo, but he was still weeping, still cradling his dead son tenderly to his chest, and I felt my eyes sting. I turned to go, but Cesare stopped me on the threshold of the chapel, waving the others on. “Giulia,” he said, “I have a task for you.”
I nodded dumbly, still deaf to anything but those terrible sobs in the chapel.
“I ask you to tend my sister,” Cesare said, and I saw the softening in his face that I always saw when he mentioned Lucrezia. No wonder the nasty-minded gossips of Rome thought the love he bore her was some perverse thing—he had no love for anyone but Lucrezia, and love in a man as cold as Cesare was such a miracle that surely people would think it a profaned miracle. “I won’t have her hearing of our brother’s death from strangers,” Cesare continued. “Will you travel to the Convent of San Sisto, to give her the news?”
“But His Holiness . . .”
“His Holiness will not want you for now,” said Cesare. “He will not want anyone.”
“I can’t leave him in this grief!” The howls from the chapel tore at me like claws. “I’ll wait here outside the doors all night if I must, but surely I should be here when he needs me—”
“I’ll tell him you’ve gone to Lucrezia; he’ll understand that. And besides, better to leave him for a time than to let him realize you are not particularly sorry Juan is gone.”
“I don’t—”
“Speak truth. It’s my father you grieve for, not my brother.”
I looked at Cesare, holding himself as calmly as ever. “I don’t think you’re terribly sorry about Juan either,” I heard myself remarking with a ludicrous numb candor. I felt as though I were floating above the ground, wrapped in wool away from anything that was real. “How lo
ng will it be before you start angling to put away your cardinal’s hat and help yourself to all Juan’s military posts?”
“A month or two,” Cesare returned, unruffled, and I shivered at his calm. “But until then, I can pretend sadness for my father. You aren’t very good at pretending, Giulia, and I don’t want him to remember your lack of any real grief later, and resent you. Better you come rushing back in a few days to console him, once he realizes he needs consolation, and he will welcome you as a balm and not a reminder. I will be counting on you, then, to help put him back together.”
“How clever,” I said. I didn’t like Cesare, but I could see the sense of what he said. Besides, I had no energy to refuse him. “I’ll go to Lucrezia at once.”
“Set off tomorrow at dawn,” Cesare said. “The streets will be too wild to travel tonight. Now, she’ll want to come back with you, but see she stays where she is. If murderers struck down Juan, I want Lucrezia kept safe behind convent walls.”
I turned to take myself home, wincing again as I heard the weeping from behind the chapel door. My poor Pope, I thought, and Cesare was right. Juan’s death grieved me only for the sorrow it gave Rodrigo. And I thought there would be a good many in Rome to echo that sentiment, no matter what pious platitudes were uttered in the days to come.
Though I did almost come to tears that evening when I saw the torchlit procession that took Juan from the Castel Sant’Angelo to the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, where (Joffre had told me, through tears that made him look ten years old again) their weeping mother Vannozza had already made arrangements for Juan’s burial. Juan in his gaudy Gonfalonier’s finery, borne along on a bier surrounded by two hundred torchbearers, his household guards and his military officers, and his crowd of swaggering young Spanish bravos who trailed along now with their fine tail feathers draggled in the dust. I saw one of Juan’s little Spanish dwarves trotting along in the jam of the household that followed the bier. Juan had brought a great many dwarf jesters with him from Spain, liking to dress them in motley and set them beating each other with blunted clubs for the amusement of his soldiers after dinner. But this dwarf was toddling after the bier now, scrubbing at his eyes, and I wondered if he was crying for his master or for the position he’d lost. Somehow I doubted it was Juan. . . . The whole procession was ringed by Spanish guards, staring out murderously into the Roman crowd with their blades drawn, but there was no violence—only wailing, and a great unease.
