Madonna of the Seven Hills: A Novel of the Borgias

by Jean Plaidy

  “I shall refuse to obey the Pope’s commands,” he said. “Does he think I do not see what they mean?”

  “Oh, Giovanni,” said Lucrezia, “you would be ill-advised to disobey my father.”

  “You would advise me to obey, would you not! You would say ‘Go to the Neapolitans. Accept this command with them. You are a Sforza and sworn enemy of the Neapolitans, but go, go … because my father wishes you out of the way, so that I may return to him … and that I may live close to him, and the rumors may grow and grow … and grow.…’ ”

  He began to laugh, but his face was twitching with fear.

  She sought to calm him; but he only shouted: “I shall not go—do you hear me? I shall not go.”

  There was further trouble. News came from Capodimonte, Giulia’s native town, that her brother Angelo was very ill and the family believed that he could not live.

  Giulia was distraught. She was very fond of her family, particularly her brothers Angelo and Alessandro.

  She came to Lucrezia, and never in the course of their friendship had Lucrezia seen Giulia so distressed.

  “It is news from my home,” Giulia explained.

  “My dearest Giulia, how sorry I am!” cried Lucrezia. “We must pray that all will be well.”

  “I must do more than pray,” Giulia told her. “I shall go to him. I cannot let him die without seeing him again.”

  “You remember my father’s orders … We were not to leave Pesaro without his consent.”

  “My brother is dying, do you understand? What if Cesare or Giovanni were dying? Would you not go to them?”

  “But it is not Cesare, nor Giovanni,” said Lucrezia calmly. “It is only Angelo.”

  “He is as much my brother as Cesare and Giovanni are yours.”

  But Lucrezia could not concede that. Giulia did not understand the bonds which bound the Borgia family. And the Pope would be angry if Giulia left Pesaro to go to her family.

  “Why,” pointed out Lucrezia, “Orsino is at Bassanello, and that is not very far from Capodimonte. You know how my father dislikes you to be anywhere near your husband.”

  “I need not see Orsino.”

  “But he might come to you. Oh, Giulia, if you value my father’s love, do not go to Capodimonte.”

  Giulia was silent. She was torn between her desire to see her brother and her wish to please the Pope.

  Giovanni left for Naples. Lucrezia said farewell to him without any great regret. During the last days she had seen what a weak man she had married, and she longed for the strength which she had always admired in her father and brothers.

  Giovanni, furious and humiliated, had decided that as he could not serve the enemies of his family he would pretend to do so and send information to his family as to the moves made by the Neapolitan army. He would be doing dangerous work, and if he were discovered, as a spy he would be in acute danger. But what could he do? How else could he reconcile himself with his family? He was a small ruler of a small community; he was a provincial lord who could not live without the support of his family and the Pope.

  Gloom descended on the palace after Giovanni had left. There were no more entertainments; the girls had no inclination for them. They would sit in the apartment, Lucrezia amusing Laura while Giulia watched at the window for a messenger from Capodimonte.

  There came a day when that messenger arrived, and the news he brought was grave. Angelo Farnese was on his death-bed; there was no doubt of that; he had expressed a desire to see his beloved sister Giulia who had brought so many honors to the family. That decided Giulia.

  She turned to Lucrezia. “I am leaving at once for Capodimonte,” she said. “I am determined to see my brother before he dies.”

  “You must not go,” insisted Lucrezia. “My father will be displeased.”

  But Giulia was firm, and that day she, with Laura and Adriana, set out for Capodimonte.

  Giovanni, Giulia, Laura and Adriana had gone.

  What changes, pondered Lucrezia, as she was left in loneliness at Pesaro, were taking place all around her.

  In the Orsini castle at Bassanello, Orsino Orsini was brooding.

  Like Giovanni Sforza, he was a weak man. Giovanni could never forget that he belonged to a small branch of the Sforza family and was despised by his wealthier relations; Orsino could not forget that he was small in stature, that he squinted, and that not even humble serving girls were eager for his attentions.

  Often he brooded on the way he was treated. It seemed that they had mocked him even more than was necessary by marrying him to one of the most beautiful women in Italy, one who had already become the Pope’s mistress before she was his wife.

  It was as though they said: “Oh, but it is only Orsino, and Orsino is of no account.”

  His mother even had played a prominent part in his humiliation. “Don’t be silly, Orsino,” she had reproved him. “Think what favors Giulia can make the Pope bestow on you. Riches! Land! They are more profitable than a wife. In any case if it’s women you want there will be many at your disposal.”

  La Bella Giulia! She was notorious throughout Italy. The Pope’s mistress! Mother of the Pope’s child! And she was married to Orsino who was never allowed to go near her for fear of offending the Pope!

  Orsino swore an oath.

  “This is an end to my humiliation. She has left the Pope. She is at Capodimonte and, by all the saints, I swear she shall be my wife in truth. I swear to take her from her lover.”

  From his castle he looked out on the little village clustered about the old church with its campanile, six stories high; he gazed at the quiet valley through which the Tiber flowed. About him, all seemed at peace. But if he did what they expected of him he would not long enjoy peace. His family were firm allies of the Neapolitans and he was in command of a brigade. Soon he would have to leave this place and join the Neapolitan camp. Then he would be far away from Giulia and, if the Pope heard she had come to Capodimonte to visit her dying brother, he would not be so disturbed as he would be if he knew that Orsino Orsini was in the neighborhood.

  But why should one placate the Pope? Why was it so necessary now? The French were on the way with a mighty army, and it was said that one of their objects would be to depose Alexander. Well then, was there the same need to placate the Pope?

  “By the saints, I will have what is mine!” vowed Orsino.

  He sent for one of his captains, and when the man came to him he said: “You will take the troops to Umbria. I have orders that they are to proceed there.”

  The man acknowledged the order but Orsino saw the astonished look which came into his eyes.

  “I am feeling unwell,” Orsino explained. “I feel a fever creeping upon me. I cannot accompany you. I must remain behind for a while.”

  He was smiling slyly as he dismissed the captain.

  Now he had taken the first step.

  The Holy Father was about to lose a mistress, and he, Orsino Orsini, was about to gain a wife.

  When his men had left he set out for Capodimonte where both his mother and Giulia were surprised to see him.

  “But what means this?” cried Adriana. “Should you not be with your men in camp?”

  “I will be where I wish to be,” said Orsino.

  Giulia cried: “But we understood you had orders.”

  Orsino regarded her intently. It was not for nothing that she was known as La Bella throughout Italy. He was suddenly tortured by a hundred images of what her lovemaking with that connoisseur of love, the Holy Father, must have been; and he was maddened by mingled anger and desire.

  He answered her: “The time has come when I have decided to order my own life.”

  “But …” began Giulia.

  “And yours,” said Orsino.

  “This is madness,” retorted Giulia. She looked at her mother-in-law, but Adriana was silent. She was thinking quickly. She did not believe that Milan would stand up against the onslaught of the French. She believed that very soon the foreign
ers would be in Rome. If they reached Rome, then Alexander’s days as Pope were numbered. A woman as shrewd as Adriana did not go on placating a man about to fall. If Italy were invaded it would be families such as the Orsinis and Colonnas who would survive; and Orsino, squint-eyed though he might be, was a powerful Orsini. Let him show a little spirit and his physical deformity would be forgotten.

  Adriana lifted her shoulders. “He is your husband when all is considered,” she answered.

  And she left them together.

  Giulia, startled, faced Orsino.

  “Orsino, do not be foolish,” she said.

  He had approached her, and seized her by the wrist.

  “You know,” she cried, “that the Pope has forbidden you to come near me.”

  He laughed, and gripping her by the shoulders shook her roughly. “Has it not occurred to you that it might be my place to forbid the Pope to come near you?”

  “Orsino!”

  “La Bella,” he said, “you have brought great profit to your family. You have considered all the demands they have made upon you.” His eyes were on her smooth white neck on which she wore the sparkling diamond necklace which had been a gift from her lover. He pulled the necklace and the clasp snapped. He flung it from him without looking where it fell. And it was as though, as his hands touched her warm flesh, he made a decision. There would be no more prevarication. Not even for a moment.

  “If you touch me,” she cried, “you will have to answer to …”

  “I answer to none,” he said. “I would remind you of something which you seem to have forgotten … now, as when you married me. You are my wife.”

  “Think carefully, Orsino.”

  “This is not the time for thinking.”

  She pressed her hands against his chest; her eyes were imploring; the lovely golden hair escaped from its net.

  “Now!” he said. “This moment.…”

  “No,” she cried. “I will not. Orsino … I hate you. Let me go. At a time like this! My brother dying … and … and …”

  “There should have been other times,” he said. “A hundred times … a thousand times. I’ve been a fool, but I’m a fool no longer. Those times have passed. This shall not.”

  She was breathless, determined on escape. But he was equally determined; and he was the stronger of the two.

  After a while she gave up struggling.

  Angelo was dead. He had embraced his sister for the last time and told her that she must always thank the Virgin for her beauty and remember that through it she was able to lay the foundations of her family’s greatness.

  He did not know what was happening beyond the palace walls. He did not know what was happening within them. She was never free from Orsino. He was full of demands; he insisted on his rights; and he would take no refusal.

  She herself was a sensual woman and as such was beginning to find a certain excitement in her encounters with Orsino.

  Alexander would be furious, but she was powerless. She was a prisoner in Capodimonte at the mercy of a husband who had been kept away from her for years. Alexander was an accomplished lover, Orsino something of a boor, but the boor provided a stimulating change; and it amused her to submit to what was almost rape and yet was legitimate behavior for a married pair.

  She was sorry Lucrezia was not with her, so that she might have confided in her.

  As for the Orsini family, they naturally supported their kinsman. Orsino was within his rights in his demands, they declared. Her lover? They could laugh now at an old man in decline. He would not last long.

  Adriana had changed too. “I must support my son,” she declared. “It is the most natural thing in the world that he should insist on his wife’s living with him.”

  News of what had happened eventually reached Alexander.

  Never had anyone seen him so furiously angry as he was at that time. He paced up and down his apartments, threatening excommunications right and left. He would not leave Giulia in the hands of that boor, that cross-eyed idiot. She must be brought back to Rome at once.

  Why had she been allowed to leave Pesaro? What of his daughter? Was she conniving at this plot against him?

  He wrote to Lucrezia. It was bad enough, he wrote, that a daughter should be so lacking in filial love that she showed no wish to return to her father, but that she should disobey him passed all understanding. He was bitterly disappointed in one whom he had loved beyond everything on Earth. She was deceitful and indifferent to him, and the letters she was writing to her brother Cesare were not written in the same sly way as were those she wrote to him.

  When Lucrezia heard thus from her father she was desperately unhappy.

  There had always been quarrels between Giovanni and Cesare, but never between her and the other members of her family. And that her father should write to her in this way wounded her deeply.

  Desperately lonely, she fell into a mood of melancholy. What had happened to the beloved family? They were all separated now. No wonder there was misunderstanding. Giovanni was in Spain, and Goffredo in Naples. Cesare was in Rome, wrapped up in his bitterness particularly now that war threatened. And most dire tragedy of all, her father loved her so little that he could vent his anger, at Giulia’s betrayal, on her, his daughter Lucrezia.

  She could only try to ease her sorrow by writing to her father. She implored him to believe that she had been unable to prevent Giulia’s leaving Pesaro, and that she had done all in her power to stop her going. Her letters to him were as loving, as tender and as truthful as those she wrote to Cesare. He could always be sure of her love and devotion. “I long to be,” she wrote, “at the feet of Your Beatitude, and I long to be worthy of your esteem, for if I am not I shall never know satisfaction and have no wish to live.”

  When Alexander received this letter, he wept and kissed it tenderly.

  “Why did I doubt my beloved girl?” he asked. “My Lucrezia, my little love. She will always be faithful to me. It is others who disobey and deceive.”

  But what an unhappy man he was! The “demons of sensuality” were gnawing at him, and he could not shut out of his mind pictures of Giulia and the cross-eyed Orsino together.

  The French fleet had a speedy victory over the Neapolitans at Rapallo. The French armies crossed the Alps and the Italians found themselves outmatched from the start. These armies under the white banners of the Valois were advancing through Italy. At Pavia Charles VIII found the poor half-demented Gian Galeazzo, the true Duke of Milan; and when his beautiful young wife Isabella threw herself at the feet of little Charles, the French King was so moved, because she was beautiful and had suffered so much, that he promised that he would do all in his power to restore her husband. However, Ludovico’s friends hastily administered a posset to the young Duke, and within a few days he was dead. Ludovico was then declared Duke of Milan.

  The news was bad for the Italians. Ludovico decided not to fight, and welcomed the French invaders as they swept through his land. The great captain Virginio Orsini also put up no fight, but issued the command that all were to give way to the invaders.

  There was only one who seemed prepared to take a stand against the French: Alexander, the Pope.

  He was contemptuous of the Italians. “They are despicable,” he cried. “Good for nothing but parading in fine uniforms. The only weapons the French need to conquer Italy are pieces of chalk, that they may mark their billets.”

  He was determined that he would stand out alone if necessary against all his enemies.

  Once again, as he had at the time of the death of Calixtus, Alexander showed the world the stuff of which he was made. No one could but admire that calm dignity, that assurance that he could not fail though all the world came against him.

  The French King, Re Petito as the Italians called him, for he was deformed and made a strange sight riding in the midst of his stalwart troops, was a little disturbed about attacking a man who had the courage of Alexander. It seemed to him that there was a touch of divinity
about the Pope after all. He therefore turned aside from the repeated prayers of Alexander’s enemies in Italy to go ahead and depose him.

  Harm must not come to the Pope from him, Charles decided; if it did, he might have the whole of Catholic France and Spain against him.

  Cardinal della Rovere, Alexander’s old enemy, who had allied himself with the French King, riding beside him and declaring that the French had come to deliver Italy from the yoke of Alexander, was dismayed. He saw once again that his plans to step into Alexander’s shoes were to be foiled.

  The French must pass through Rome on their way to the south, but Charles decided that all he would ask for in Rome was the Pope’s permission for transit through the Papal states.

  Meanwhile Alexander remained firm. He would resist the French demands, he said; a tremor of fear ran through all those who had been assuring themselves that Alexander’s days of power were over. Adriana and the Orsinis in Capodimonte were the first to falter.

  Adriana upbraided her son for disobeying the Holy Father, and other members of the Orsini family joined with her and urged Orsino to leave at once for his brigade and not risk infuriating Alexander further.

  Consequently Giulia awoke one morning to find that the masterful manners of her husband had been only temporary, and that he had fled.

  There came a letter for Giulia from the angry Pope.

  “Perfidious and ungrateful Giulia! You tell us you cannot return to Rome without your husband’s permission. Though now we know both the wickedness of your nature and those who advise you, we can only suppose that you wish to remain where you are so that you may continue relations with that stallion of a husband.”

  Giulia read the letter in alarm; the Pope had never written to her in quite the same manner before; her family were beginning to criticize her for having turned against her lover for her husband’s sake, and the husband, who had been so bold, had fled at the first sign that Alexander’s power was unshaken.