Light on Lucrezia

by Виктория Холт

  Conversation was general for the first minutes of the visit. Masino del Forno asked to see the heir and young Ercole was brought in. He was a very healthy baby, and Lucrezia was delighted with him.

  When Ercole had been taken away, Masino said quietly: “What a pity it is that relations between Ferrara and Mantua are not more cordial.”

  “The Marchesa is devoted to her brothers,” said Lucrezia cautiously.

  “I was not thinking of the Marchesa. After all it is the Marquis himself who is the ruler of Mantua. We must not forget that.”

  “I do not forget,” said Lucrezia lightly.

  “It is a grievous thing in these times that there should be misunderstandings. I firmly believe that a visit from Francesco Gonzaga would do a great deal to improve relations between the two states.”

  Lucrezia felt her heart leap. She longed to see Francesco again, but something within her warned her. She knew Masino del Forno to be an intimate of Ippolito and since the terrible fate of Giulio and Ferrante she had been afraid of Ippolito.

  Del Forno went on: “I believe that if an emissary went from Ferrara to Mantua to persuade the Marquis to come here, he would do so. I myself would travel to Mantua with the greatest delight. Should I go with your blessing?”

  Lucrezia was tempted, but it was as though the grotesque face of Giulio rose before her to warn her of the perfidy of Ippolito.

  She said coolly: “In my husband’s absence my brother Ippolito is co-regent with me. I pray you discuss this matter with him; and if he agrees that you should travel to Mantua with an invitation for the Marquis, then I should put no obstacle in the way.”

  The Modenese went away; Lucrezia sensed that he felt disappointed.

  * * *

  In Mantua Francesco, waiting impatiently for the letters which brought him news of Lucrezia, was suddenly aware of a change in Isabella. She was less haughty, less arrogant, less fiery-tempered. When he asserted his rights she would press her lips firmly together as though she were holding back words which she longed to utter; and all the time there was a look of expectancy on her face as though she were urging herself to have patience … for a while.

  Isabella was plotting. Against whom? wondered Francesco. Against Lucrezia? Then that would be against him.

  What was the meaning of that air of looking forward? She was like a cat at a mousehole. Why? There was her attitude to their son, Federico. It was indulgent yet firm. It was as though she was determined to win the boy’s respect and affection while she kept a restraining hand on him.

  A visitor arrived at Mantua. He came quietly—almost in secret—and he came from Ferrara. He sought an early opportunity to be alone with the Marquis.

  This man Masino del Forno, the Modenese, was not entirely unknown to Francesco. He knew him to be an intimate of Ippolito, and he believed that on more than one occasion he had performed a shady deed for his master.

  Francesco had been walking in the gardens when del Forno sidled up to him; del Forno looked over his shoulder and back at the castle windows apprehensively.

  “I come, my lord,” he whispered, “on a secret mission, a mission from the Duchessa.”

  Francesco was immediately alert. This was strange. Why should Lucrezia send a message by this man, when already there was the excellent means of corresponding which Strozzi had arranged for them.

  “A secret mission? You surprise me.”

  “The Duchessa longs to see your lordship. She would have you know that the Duke will be away for many months. It would give her great delight if you could slip into Ferrara … unheralded … a secret mission, you understand.”

  Francesco turned to the man, who could not know that he had received a letter which must have been written at the very time del Forno had set out from Ferrara. This was a very suspicious method of procedure, and Francesco did not trust it. He thought of Isabella’s demeanor of the last weeks and his suspicions increased.

  “I doubt not,” he said, “that if my brother of Ferrara feels I should visit his dominion he will ask me to do so. As for going in secret, I see no virtue in that.”

  “I have been entrusted,” pursued del Forno, “to give you this.”

  He held out a miniature, tiny but exquisite. There was no mistaking the face portrayed there. It was Lucrezia’s. Francesco looked at it and longed to take it, but by now he was sure that his enemies were aware of his love affair with Lucrezia, and he believed he understood the meaning of his wife’s expression of late.

  She wished him to be lured to Ferrara. The man who stood before him, he believed to be a hired assassin of Ippolito’s and possibly Alfonso’s.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but I have no wish for this trinket, and I cannot understand why it should have been sent to me.”

  With that he turned away from the man. He immediately went to his private apartments and wrote a letter to Zilio (Strozzi) which was meant for Lucrezia, explaining all that had happened and giving a strong warning that he believed them all to be in acute danger.

  * * *

  Isabella faced the Modenese and listened to his account of what had happened. She was angry. Francesco was not such a fool then. He might be in love with Lucrezia but he was not going to risk his life.

  “You have been clumsy,” she snapped.

  “Marchesa, I was tact itself. Depend upon it, they suspect us.”

  “They would never suspect us, those two. They are besottedly in love like a shepherd and his lass. It is that man Strozzi who is managing their affairs. It seems to me that he is cleverer than my brothers. Go now. There is nothing else you can do. I think it would be well for you if you set out at once for Ferrara. If the Marquis suspects you, you yourself may be in danger. Go at once.”

  Del Forno was only too glad to obey; and when he had gone, Isabella angrily asked herself why Lucrezia should be able to inspire such devotion, not only in Francesco, but in a purely Platonic way as it seemed she had with Strozzi.

  She was more jealous of the girl than ever. One would have thought that, with her father and her brother dead and the name of Borgia no more of importance to the world, she would have been defeated. But no! For always there were some to rally round her.

  Francesco was far away, but she still had Strozzi—Strozzi, the power in Ferrara, the lame poet who had taken Barbara Torelli and made a public heroine of her with his verses about her, who was no doubt after the dowry which the Bentivoglio were determined they would not relinquish.

  Strozzi must have many enemies in Ferrara. There were not only Alfonso, who disliked him because he was a poet, and Ippolito, who objected to his influence over Lucrezia; there were the Bentivoglio who were violent people and very loath to part with money.

  Isabella was thoughtful. Then she wrote to Ippolito.

  “I pray that this letter may be burned, as I burn yours,” she finished. “This I ask for the sake of my honor and benefit.”

  * * *

  On a hot June night that chaplain who had been Cesare’s faithful servant, and therefore especially cherished by Lucrezia, left her apartments for his own quarters in the Convent of San Paolo.

  It was a dark night and, as he came along the narrow streets, two men leaped upon him and one silently seized him while the other, equally silent, lifted his dagger and cut the innocent priest’s throat. Lightly they dropped the body on to the stones and crept away.

  Next morning Lucrezia was heartbroken to discover that she had lost a trusted friend.

  * * *

  Strozzi came to see her that day.

  His happiness in the baby girl Barbara Torelli had just given him was clouded by this tragic happening.

  “What means it?” asked Lucrezia.

  He looked at her obliquely. “Of course it may have been robbery.”

  “Who would murder a poor priest for his money?”

  “There are some who would murder any for the sake of one ducat.”

  “I am afraid,” said Lucrezia. “I believe he has died because my e
nemies know that he is my friend. How I wish Francesco would come, that I might tell him of my fears.”

  Lucrezia began to weep quietly. She had loved the priest, she said; and what harm had he ever done in his life? He had done only good.

  Seeing her in this mood of despair Strozzi said they would write to Francesco and beg him to come to comfort her for, reasoned Strozzi to himself, Francesco would know how to take care of himself, and none would dare harm him. Moreover he feared that if her lover did not come, Lucrezia would lapse into melancholy.

  “Come to see your Barbara (Lucrezia),” wrote Strozzi. “Show her that you love her, for she wants nothing else in the world.”

  The letter was dispatched, and he left Lucrezia to visit Barbara who, in bed with her baby, had not heard the news of the priest’s death. He gave instructions to her woman that she should not be told. Barbara’s clear mind might read something in that death which would make her very uneasy, and a woman after child-birth needed the serene happiness which he had always sought to give her.

  He left Barbara happy, after they had discussed the future of their child; he then shut himself in with his work and wrote a little of the elegy he was composing. Reading it through afterward he thought it sounded melancholy. He had written of death—although he had not intended to—for the memory of the priest’s murder would not be dismissed from his mind.

  Later that day he went again to see Barbara and when he left her apartment he limped back to his own house, the sound of his stick echoing through the quiet streets. It was at the corner of via Praisolo and via Savonarola that the ambush caught him.

  He had half expected it. He had arranged other people’s lives to such an extent that he knew that this was the inevitable end of the drama.

  He was unarmed. Their daggers were raised against him. He faced them almost scornfully. He knew who his enemies were; it was the house of Este who wished him removed. It was Alfonso who saw him as the man who had arranged his wife’s love affairs with Pietro Bembo and Francesco Gonzaga; it was Ippolito who was determined to isolate Lucrezia from all those who might seek to make a political figure of her; it was the Bentivoglio family who feared he would discover some means of wresting Barbara’s dowry from them.

  Then suddenly he did know fear. It was for Barbara. He thought of all the miseries she had endured; he thought of her at this moment, weak from child-birth. Barbara would be alone once more, alone in a cruel world.

  But there was no time for thought. Strozzi sank fainting against the wall of casa Romei, while his enemies, determined that this should be the end, bent over him and thrust their daggers again and again into his dying body.

  * * *

  Lucrezia was bewildered. Cesare, her chaplain and now Strozzi—all lost to her. She was frightened; never before had she felt such a stranger in a strange land.

  There was only one person in the world now to whom she could turn: Francesco.

  Francesco must come to her. No matter what obstacles lay between them, he must come.

  But who would now write those letters for her? Who would make sure that they reached their destination? By striking at Strozzi her enemies had cut her off from Francesco, the only man in the world who would help her.

  She summoned Strozzi’s brothers, Lorenzo and Guido, to her; she wept with them over their brother’s death and she implored them to send a message for her to Francesco. “There is no one else whom I can trust,” she said. “You are his brothers, and you will do this for me.”

  They did so and Francesco’s response was to offer a reward of five hundred ducats to any man or woman who could name the murderer of Ercole Strozzi.

  The reward brought no murderer to light and, since little effort was made in Ferrara (where the police were famous for their successful work) to bring the murderer to justice, it became clear to Lucrezia that, whoever had committed the murder, it had been done with the connivance of Alfonso and his brother.

  The desolate weeks passed. She would sit by the baby’s cradle, brooding. Only in him could she find comfort, yet she longed for a strong arm to lean on, and she realized that never before had she lacked that support. She saw herself clearly, saw that she lacked the self-reliance of a woman such as Isabella, that she had been dominated by her father and her brothers to such an extent that she felt limp and bewildered when forced to stand alone. She needed Francesco, yet he did not come.

  Again she wrote to him, pleading, begging him not to forsake her. She would go to Reggio, and the journey from Borgoforte to Reggio was not a long one. She must see him, if it were only a brief meeting. She needed him as she never had before.

  She set out for Reggio, and there she waited in feverish impatience.

  * * *

  Isabella watched Francesco with malicious lights in her eyes.

  “Why do you not take a little holiday?” she asked. “You are looking strained, husband.”

  He tried to read the thoughts behind her eyes. Was it true that she wished him to go to Lucrezia, that he might be murdered as Strozzi and the chaplain had been?

  Isabella … Regent of Mantua. It was what she wanted, and if the life of her husband stood between her and that goal, she was ready to sacrifice him.

  Francesco was torn between his desire to see Lucrezia and his need to preserve his life, between his wish to comfort his mistress and the triumph of outwitting his wife.

  Just a short visit, he promised himself. A little trip to Reggio. It could be a walk into a death-trap. They have killed Strozzi so that we can no longer arrange our communications; they have stripped her of her friends, left her desolate so that I shall go needlessly into the trap they have prepared for me. They know she will implore me to go to her, because without Strozzi to warn her, how can she understand that this is a gigantic plot either to kill or to ruin us both?

  He replied to her, that he longed to be with her but he was unwell and was in fact too ill to travel at this time.

  * * *

  When at Reggio Lucrezia received his letter she was filled with anxiety. Francesco ill; then she must go to him. She would not lose a moment. She called to her attendants and told them that they were leaving next day for Mantua.

  She could scarcely sleep that night, so eager was she for the journey. She lay restlessly waiting for the dawn.

  Daylight brought visitors to the castle—important visitors, she knew, for there was a great commotion below and, as Lucrezia started up from her bed, Alfonso himself strode into the room.

  He stood, legs wide apart, laughing at her.

  “What’s this I hear?” he said. “You plan to travel to Mantua?”

  “Our brother is sick,” she answered him, although her voice shook with fear. “As I am not far distant I thought it but courteous …”

  Alfonso’s laugh was louder. “You thought it courteous! The reason for your intended courtesy is well known. You are not going to Mantua to visit your lover.”

  “I have made my arrangements.”

  “Then we will unmake them.”

  “Alfonso, what can it matter to you?”

  “It matters this,” he said. He came to the bed and taking her by the shoulders shook her angrily. “You are my wife and Duchess of Ferrara. We have an heir, but we should have many children. Ercole needs brothers.”

  “That … that he may … bury them alive?” she cried with a show of spirit.

  He swung his heavy hand across her face. “That is for your insolence,” he said. And he repeated the action. “And that is for thinking to cuckold me and bring flat-nosed bastards into my house.”

  She cowered back in the bed. Alfonso’s sudden burst of anger had passed. “No nonsense,” he said. “Daylight is here. You will dress, and we shall return to Ferrara without delay.”

  “I have sent word that I am visiting our brother’s sick-bed.”

  “Sick-bed! He’s in no sick-bed. He tells you so, hoping to excuse himself for not coming to you now. There is nothing wrong with Francesco Gonzaga. He is a m
an of good sense. He knows when it is unwise to continue a flirtation.” He put his face close to hers. “And that time has now come,” he added.

  She leaped out of her bed. “Alfonso,” she cried, “I will not be treated thus. I am not one of your tavern women. I am not the bonnet-maker’s daughter.”

  “Nay,” he said, “you lack their freedom. You are the Duchess of Ferrara, and in future you shall never forget it. Prepare yourself. I am in a hurry and impatient to return.”

  “You forget that I am Lucrezia Borgia, and when I married you …”

  “I forget nothing. Yours was a name which carried some weight in Italy. It was no credit to you. Your glory came from your father. Now he is dead, and your brother is dead, and the power of the Borgias is broken forever. So subdue that pride which cries ‘I am a Borgia!’ Be wise, woman. Cultivate modesty. Bear me children and I shall then have nothing of which to complain.”

  * * *

  So she came to Ferrara; and as she rode beside her husband she seemed to hear his words echoing in her ears. Alexander is dead, and with him died the power of the Borgias; Cesare is dead, and with him died all hope.

  As they came near to the castle she looked up at the highest tower and she thought of the two young men who were prisoners and would remain there for the rest of their lives.

  She rode with Alfonso into the castle, and she felt as the walls closed about her that she too was a prisoner, sharing their fate.

  There was a pain in her heart and a longing to see a loved face again; and the cry which rose up within her was not Francesco, but Cesare.

  EPILOGUE