by Kate Quinn
“She has fallen on the stairs.” I trotted out the lie Cesare Borgia had prepared for us all. “It seems her arm is broken. We sent Messer Perotto for a wise-woman to tend her.”
“Our infirmarian here could have seen to her—”
“Cardinal Borgia will have none but the best physicians tend his sister.” A little head bob of apology. “It seems this woman is versed in the setting of bones. I imagine it will be painful, however—please do not be disturbed if you should hear our mistress cry out.”
“Of course,” the prioress said smoothly, and I could see not a ripple on her face. Well, if she suspected anything, who was to say otherwise? And where would a nun even take her suspicions? Besides, I would have laid good odds that these walls had seen babies born before. Nuns break their vows too, after all, and erring wives retire behind convent walls in sudden fits of piety when they need to wait out inconveniently swollen bellies in private. I didn’t think this elegant prioress would blink at one single thing that was going on in Madonna Lucrezia’s chamber right now.
“If you will excuse me, I am to fetch cloths for my mistress—” I took myself down to the kitchens in my ugly black habit that was too short, and flew back up with the wetted cloths. I was back and forth for hours with possets, reels of thread, more cloths, until the sun began its fall and a cold blue twilight fell over the convent.
That was when the gatehouse heard the angry cry of a newborn child.
“Put the little mite to the breast quickly, if you wish to stop those wails.” The midwife was already packing the soiled linens, the vials of herbal potions, the tools she had brought with her in her capacious basket. “I’ve administered a sleeping draught,” she told me. “Your mistress will sleep for a time. It’s best if she feeds the child herself the first few days, but do try to arrange a wet nurse out in the country as soon as the babe can travel. City air isn’t good for infants.”
I realized that after all these long hours the midwife had not asked any of our names or volunteered her own. She did not seem curious about the exhausted Lucrezia lying half swooned in the bed, or the tiny collection of swaddled, reddened limbs in the basket of linens that had been padded and prepared as a makeshift cradle. The midwife merely bestowed a twinkling smile on us all, collected a purse from Perotto, and disappeared as swiftly as she had come. A midwife who can be discreet will make herself a good living. There are always women who find a child inconvenient, usually silly girls who have managed to lose their virtue to a poet when they were supposed to be saving it for a husband. A speedy birth in a convent and a quiet payment to a midwife who can keep her mouth shut, no names of course, and everything restored to normal afterward with no one’s reputation the worse—I should not have been surprised Cesare Borgia would know how to arrange such a thing.
“What was it?” I asked Pantisilea as we trailed exhaustedly down the steps toward the convent courtyard. Lucrezia was sleeping sound under the midwife’s draught, and the baby appeared to be sleeping too in her arm. At least for the moment, and both of us lunged to get out of the chamber’s stuffy confines.
“What was what?” Pantisilea yawned.
“The child. Boy or girl?”
“You know, I don’t know. I didn’t even look.”
Whichever it was, Lord Sforza had an heir. Not that he’d ever know it, drinking bitterly in Pesaro with his manhood publicly in shreds. I took a moment to wonder what would happen to the child, if it would be sent away soon into the countryside with a wet-nurse as the midwife had suggested, or perhaps passed off as some minor sprig on another branch of the voluminous Borgia tree. I knew better than to ask.
The moon was just starting to rise, white as frost against a twilight sky. We lingered in the emptying courtyard, watching the nuns in their black and white hurry inside at the sound of the Vespers bell. I took another gulp of the fresh air, savoring the cold after the stifling chamber with its smells of blood and birth. I had a new letter from Bartolomeo, and it had the usual news about how he had packed a hamper yesterday for Madonna Giulia when she took her daughter to see a snake charmer in the Piazza Navona, and how he had really begun work upon his recipe compendium now, beginning with a section on meatless dishes since it would be Lent soon. The same sort of letter he usually wrote, but he had begun it simply Carmelina and not the formal Signorina, and I wanted to think about that, think about it and study my name as it looked in his neat back-slanting hand—but the last of the nuns disappeared inside to their prayers and soon it would be dark, and Madonna Lucrezia would be needing us.
“We should go in,” I said to Pantisilea. “As soon as that child wakes crying she’ll wake too, and she’ll be wanting warm wine and cold compresses and Santa Marta knows what else.”
“My mother birthed six children, and she never howled as much as Madonna Lucrezia did squeezing out the one,” Pantisilea groaned, and we were both laughing when hoofbeats sounded.
“My sister,” Cesare Borgia rapped out from the back of his horse, almost before it had pulled up in a clatter of hooves. Pantisilea squeaked a little at the sight of the tall dark horse and its tall dark rider, but I stepped forward.
“She is well,” I said, and no more than that. He nodded approval; this was a public place after all, even if the nuns had all gone to Vespers.
“I will remove my sister at once. She will rest tonight at the Vatican, with all the comfort she needs.”
“She’s too weak to be moved,” I began, but the young Cardinal cut me off with a twitch of one black-gloved finger.
“I have a horse-drawn litter prepared for her.” I could see it trundling into the courtyard with the rest of his men, a great cushioned thing as wide and soft as a bed. “The distance is short, and the Holy Father is eager to see her.”
And perhaps his grandchild, I thought. Not to mention that once out of the convent, that grandchild could be hidden safely away. Anyone’s child at all, certainly not the child of the Pope’s daughter with her reborn virginity.
I nodded. “We will see her things packed.”
“We shall send for them later. I want my sister away tonight.” Cesare Borgia had brought a small entourage; just the horse-drawn litter and a few guardsmen behind on horseback. His most trusted men, no doubt. “You two prepare to leave as well,” he added. “You may ride with my men.”
I felt my heart leap at that. I had Santa Marta in her usual pouch at my waist, and Bartolomeo’s letters—anything else in the convent, I did not care if I ever saw again. A pair of dresses too worn for decency, a few shifts, and a kitchen whose inadequate ovens I would never need to curse again.
“Where is Perotto?” Cardinal Borgia asked, glancing about.
Pantisilea was already accepting a hand up onto the horse of one of the guardsmen. “Scampered as soon as the noise began. Men always do, at a birth.” She swung her leg over the saddle in front of the guard, looking over her shoulder to twinkle a smile at him. “Well now, how are you?”
“Pity about Perotto. Well, I shall catch him later.” Cesare made a gesture, and the guardsman sitting behind Pantisilea calmly drew a dagger and stabbed her. I saw the blade only as a needle-flash of weak moonlight, but it found its way between two of Pantisilea’s bony ribs and she gave a noiseless gasp. Her body jerked, but the guard had his arm hard about her waist and he stabbed her again. Once. Twice. Three times.
There was very little blood. Just the desperate stiffness of her body draining away. She slumped over the saddle, silly Pantisilea who had kept me up so many nights this past year with her prattle about all her lovers. Silly Pantisilea slumped dead over the pommel, and the guardsman pulled her back against him, methodically arranging her head until she looked like a woman who had fallen asleep in the saddle.
“Put her in the river, Michelotto,” Cesare Borgia said disinterestedly. “Find the midwife too, and arrange an accident. Something innocuous. That trick with the falling roof tiles, perhaps.”
He was swinging out of his saddle now, moving toward
me. I backed away, feeling panic freeze in my throat—another Borgia coming toward me, this one much harder to kill than Juan, and Leonello wasn’t here this time to save me with his knives and his wit. Or even Bartolomeo with his skillet. Oh, Bartolomeo—
I tripped over a loose stone in the courtyard and fell with a gasp that was half shriek, but Cesare Borgia was already moving past me, toward the stairs that would take him to his sister. “Silence that one too,” he said over his shoulder at me, and was gone.
Gone. Pantisilea gone, the midwife gone, Perotto gone. No one left to know that the Pope’s daughter had given birth tonight.
The other guardsman swung off his horse, and I felt a squeeze of relief so violent that my heart almost burst from my chest. “Leonello, you’re here, I—”
But his eyes were cold this time, cold under the moon, cold, cold. And the knife in his hand was not for my attackers, but for me.
Giulia
Mamma, Mamma!” My daughter looked up at me in glee as I entered the kitchens, her little nose smudged with flour. “I can make frittelle!”
“More than I could ever do.” I smiled at the sight of her: sitting on the trestle table swaddled in an oversized apron, assiduously rolling out misshapen little balls of dough. “How did you get down here, Lauretta mia?”
“Il Signore was turning white every time the little one here went careening past his precious statues.” Bartolomeo deftly whisked something in a bowl with one hand and pushed a lump of butter around a hot skillet with the other, but he still managed a bow. “The nursemaids had the bright idea of bringing her down here.”
“I hope she is not keeping you from your work.” I rescued a bowl of flour before it could tumble out of Laura’s hands.
“Work was never lost to a more worthy cause, Madonna Giulia.” Bartolomeo reeled off a few orders to the pair of pot-boys scrubbing pans under the cistern, more orders to the boy eternally cranking at the spit of hot-roasted pigeons rotating over the fires. “I want to see mouths shut and hands moving,” he warned, and turned back to me. “Only a few of us are needed in the kitchens here if il Signore isn’t entertaining. Most of the others have gone off to see a miracle play in the Piazza San Pietro. The martyrdom of Santo Bartolomeo, and they say he’s flayed on the stage so realistically, they had to bring the player back out to show the audience he was still alive. I didn’t care to watch my patron saint get killed horribly, so I’ve enough time to give all the frittelle lessons anyone could want.” Bartolomeo smiled down at Laura, and she dimpled at him through her lashes. Nearly five years old, and my daughter was already a flirt! Though Bartolomeo had certainly turned into a lad with whom girls of any age would long to flirt. I still remembered Carmelina’s favorite apprentice as the scrawny boy who had loped along the wagons on the journey back from France, but this lean young man with the broad shoulders and the shock of fiery hair could have made a nun’s heart flutter.
Laura held her breath as her very first batch of frittelle went into the skillet, and Bartolomeo handed her the spoon so she could push them around in the butter. “Watch them carefully, little mistress, you don’t want them to burn—”
“Carmelina tried to teach me to make elderflower frittelle once.” I smiled, remembering. “I nearly burned her kitchens down.”
Bartolomeo’s freckled face lost its smile. “Pardon me, Madonna Giulia—but have you had any news of—”
“No, not yet.”
“My last letter came back unopened. The messenger said there was no one of her name within the convent walls.” He scowled. “She can’t have left the convent already, not without coming to see me! Months I’ve been waiting and writing; does she think I’m made of iron?”
I tilted my head at him, giving a grin. “So you’re her sweetheart!”
“She clearly doesn’t think so,” he grumbled.
“Well, I shall ask Madonna Lucrezia about her tonight.” Orsino and I were invited to see His Holiness again this evening; another of his small gatherings in the papal apartments. Surely Lucrezia would be there. Now that her marriage to Lord Sforza had been annulled and a few months passed for the talk to die down, she had left the Convent of San Sisto for the Vatican. I knew Lucrezia was cross with me; I’d had a few letters arrive in Carbognano, accusing me of breaking her father’s heart—but she never held a grudge for long. Leonello would have said it was because she had the attention capacity of a flea.
“My sister is ill,” Cesare informed me as I inquired after Lucrezia that night, making my entrance with Orsino. “She broke her arm at the convent, and she is resting quietly while the bone heals. I know she will wish to see you in a week or two, when the pain passes.”
“We had planned to return to Carbognano in another week,” I began. Holy Virgin save me, how long was this visit going to drag on? We had originally intended to stay in the city only a fortnight or so, but Rodrigo had said we must wait until he decided upon a match for Laura. And then he ruled that that would have to wait until Lucrezia’s next marriage was settled first, and then he decreed that both betrothals must be postponed until after the Christmas festivities. And now Christmas was come and gone; the year had turned and we were nearing Lent, and nothing at all was settled. I missed my square castello in Carbognano with a fierceness that surprised me.
And these past few weeks, it wasn’t just the Pope who delayed our return home. Orsino was making excuses too, and that surprised me even more.
“Don’t you want to see how the garden is faring?” I’d cajoled him just last week. “I want to see the beautiful roses you had planted for me. And we could attend Easter Mass in our own church. The new stained-glass window is bound to be in place by now.” All of us together at the altar, my daughter kneeling between us—and pray God, no betrothal for her yet. Not for years, if I got my way.
“You’re the one who wanted to come to Rome,” Orsino had pointed out.
“And you’re the one who wanted it to be a short visit,” I said in return. Why in the name of the Holy Virgin had my usually pliable husband changed his mind?
“My lady wife will be delighted to pay a call upon your sister,” Orsino was telling Cesare in the rather grand tones he had been using lately. “Perhaps our Laura will someday be a countess like Madonna Lucrezia. His Holiness will have told you he is now considering a French comte for a betrothal?”
I hid my disquiet at that. It wasn’t just the matter of returning home where Orsino seemed to have changed his mind. Lately he seemed more willing than ever to hear about these various suitors who had been sporadically proposed, one after the other, for Laura’s hand. Perhaps because such gossip granted power at these small private gatherings between powerful men—my husband seemed to have discovered how much he liked moving elbow to elbow among such men, telling them so casually that he just might make his daughter a countess someday. “A countess like Madonna Lucrezia,” he repeated importantly, and Cesare gave a bored blink.
“You forget that my sister is no longer a countess.” The young Cardinal slid off without farewells, toward a dark-haired beauty laughing over a marble chessboard. This was one of the larger halls in the papal apartments; Rodrigo presided at one end in all dignity, but the dignity was somewhat marred by Caterina Gonzaga perching on the arm of his throne—a sight that still gave me a distinct, if small, pang of outrage. The rest of the company lounged merry and at ease about the room, trading soft jests and flirtations. Another of those easy intimate evenings I had once presided over; the ones that sent Burchard into spasms of indignation over the impropriety of having such company in the papal apartments, oh, Gott im Himmel!
But I had other things to worry me now than Burchard’s proprieties.
“What’s this about a French comte for Laura?” I said low-voiced to Orsino. “His Holiness didn’t speak of it to me.” His Holiness had been too preoccupied lately with possible alliances for Lucrezia to talk much about Laura’s future—and I’d begun to breathe easier. “Where did this idea of a French comte come fr
om?”
“He brought it up to me, Giulia. As is fitting.” Orsino’s worry that Rodrigo wanted me back had abated, the more he saw Caterina Gonzaga flaunting herself on the papal arm as though she were an empress and not a concubine. A concubine in too much jewelry, and tasteless two-tone velvet. “A French lord for Laura,” Orsino went on. “We should consider it.”
“Why? France is our enemy!”
“Politics have shifted now. A French alliance could be a great thing for our family.” Orsino accepted a cup of wine from a page with a regal nod. “I’ve had time to consider the idea, and you should consider it too. Laura could get a far better match through the Holy Father than she could from us.” I heard a hint of his mother’s careful coin-counting in his tone. “Daughters are very expensive to marry off, you know. If His Holiness dowers Laura, well, we can save the expense for our own daughters someday.”
“Orsino—” I heard my voice rising and brought it down with an effort. “My lord husband, if the Holy Father dowers her, there won’t be a soul in Rome who doesn’t assume she’s his daughter, even if she has your name. I thought that to be the last thing you wanted.”
“Every soul in Rome assumes she is his daughter, anyway.” Orsino’s voice was stiff. “A French marriage might be the best thing for her; get her away from all this scandal. Anne of Brittany has raised a great many noble wards at her court—the King of Naples sent his own true-born daughter there, Carlotta of Aragon. You know Cesare has an idea of laying aside his red hat and marrying her? Carlotta of Aragon, that is.” Oh, the importance of trading such intimate gossip about the great and powerful of Rome! “Laura could join the French court there; be raised in the French fashion. By the time she grows old enough to marry, any malicious talk about her birth will be forgotten.”
I stared at my husband. In my ears I heard the soft click of marble on marble across the room as Cesare moved a chess piece for his laughing girl; a ripple of laughter from Caterina Gonzaga as she allowed the Venetian envoy to kiss her hand; a page boy muttering an oath as he tripped over his own shoe and nearly dropped his decanter. “I am not sending my daughter away to France to be raised by strangers,” I said at last, levelly.
