by Jean Plaidy
Already she was changing. She was a young girl still, but she was a Borgia, and they had determined to stamp her with the mark of the Borgia. In a few years’ time—perhaps less—she would be as they were … that charming innocence lost, her sensuality enlarged so that she, too, would be ready to appease it at no matter what cost; they would tarnish that tenderness in her; they would supplant it with indifference.
He longed to turn back, to storm into the palace, to force her to leave them and come with him back to Pesaro where they would live away from the conflict of politics and the shadow of her scheming and unscrupulous family.
But who was he to dream such dreams? He was a small man; he was a coward who had always been afraid of someone or something, always trying to shake off the memory of humiliation.
No. It was too late. They had taken her from him and already she was estranged; already he had lost her.
Mists of anger danced before his eyes.
Francesco had turned to him.
“It grieves you,” he said, “to leave the Lady Lucrezia.”
Sforza laughed bitterly. “It does not grieve her,” he said. “She is happy enough to settle under the apostolic mantle.”
Francesco was looking at him oddly. Sforza, remembering past slights, could not stop himself from muttering savagely: “His Holiness is eager to be rid of me. He wishes to have the complete care of his daughter … he wishes to be husband as well as father.”
There was silence. Francesco was looking ahead of him; the cavalcade rode on.
On the balcony the Pope was looking fondly at his daughter.
“So Gonzaga rides away,” he said. “Now, my dearest, you must make preparations to greet your brother Goffredo and your sister-in-law Sanchia. It will not be long now before they are with us.”
SANCHIA OF ARAGON
The voluptuous Sanchia lay on her bed nibbling sweetmeats. Sprawling on the bed, helping themselves now and then from the dish were her three favorite ladies-in-waiting: Loysella, Francesca and Bernardina.
Sanchia was telling them about last night’s lover, for she enjoyed recounting details of her various love affairs, declaring that thus she acquired a double pleasure—first in actuality, then in memory.
Sanchia was strikingly beautiful, and one of her greatest attractions was the contrast between her dark hair, dark brows, olive skin and her startling blue eyes. Her features were bold, her nose aquiline and beautifully shaped; her mouth was soft and sensual. To look at Sanchia was to be reminded immediately of erotic pleasures; Sanchia knew this, and the frank sensuality of her smile suggested that she had made discoveries which were unknown to all others but which she would be delighted to impart to those at whom she was smiling, that they and they alone might share this secret.
Sanchia had had lovers for as long as she could remember and she knew that she would go on taking them until she died.
“I do not anticipate the journey with much pleasure,” she was saying now. “But what fun it will be when we arrive in Rome. I am halfway in love with Cesare Borgia already, and I have not even seen him. Oh, what a great passion awaits us!”
“You will make the Pope jealous of his own son,” suggested Francesca.
“I think not. I think not. I shall leave his Holiness to you, Loysella, or perhaps to little Bernardina. Together mayhap you will compensate him for his weariness of Madonna Giulia—she who is known as La Bella.”
Loysella said: “Madonna, you should not talk thus of the Holy Father.”
“He is but a man, my child. And do not look so shocked. It is not as though I suggest you should be bedfellow to that mad monk Savonarola.”
Loysella shivered, but Sanchia’s eyes were speculative. “I have never had a lover who was a monk,” she mused. “Perhaps on our journey we shall pass by some monastery.…”
“Oh, you are wicked, Madonna,” said Francesca with a giggle. “Are you not afraid to talk thus?”
“I am afraid of nothing,” retorted Sanchia. “I confess and I do my penances. When I am old I shall reform my ways and doubtless enter a nunnery.”
“It will have to be a monastery for you, wicked one,” said Loysella.
“Nay, nay, although I would try a monk, it would be but for once. I do not ask for monk night after night … day after day.”
“Hush!” said Francesca. “If our conversation were reported …”
“It matters not. No one attempts to make me change my ways. My father the King knew how I love men, yet what did he do? He said: ‘She is one of us. You cannot grow oranges on pear trees.’ My brother shakes his head and agrees; and even my old grandmother knew it was useless to try to reform me.”
“His Holiness will reform you. It is for this reason that he sends for you.”
Sanchia smiled wickedly. “From what I hear of His Holiness it is not to reform me that he invites me to Rome.”
Loysella pretended to stop her ears because she would not listen to such profanity, but Sanchia merely laughed and bade Francesca bring out the necklace of gold and rubies which her latest lover had brought her.
She leaped up and putting on the necklace paraded before them.
“He said: ‘Only the best is worthy to adorn that perfect body.’ ”
She grimaced and looked at the necklace. “I hope it is of the best,” she said.
“The workmanship is exquisite,” Francesca cried, examining it.
“You may try it on,” said Sanchia. “All of you. Ah,” she went on, “last night was wonderful. To-night perhaps will be as exciting, but perhaps not. It is the voyage of discovery which enchants me. The second night is like crossing a sea which has already been traversed. Not the same surprises … not the same discoveries. How I wish I had been here when the French soldiers were in Naples!”
Francesca pretended to shiver. “There have been such tales. You would not have escaped. They would have seized on you.”
“That would have been exciting. And they say the French are good lovers, and so chivalrous, so gallant. To think that while we were cowering on that dull, dull island of Ischia, such exciting things were going on in Naples.”
“You might have hated it,” suggested Bernardina. “There was one woman who, pursued by soldiers, killed herself by leaping from the roof of her house.”
“I can think of better resting places than the courtyard stones,” said Sanchia. “Oh yes, I wish I had been here to meet the gallant French. I was angry … quite angry when we were hustled away to live in exile. That is why I must take so many lovers now. There is much time to be made up. You understand?”
“Our lady makes up for lost time very creditably,” Loysella murmured.
“At least,” said Sanchia, “the rumors have not lied. His Holiness writes to my father that accounts of my conduct, which have reached him in Rome, have most seriously disturbed him.”
“Madonna … Sanchia, take care … take care when you reach Rome.”
“Take care! Nay, I’ll take Cesare instead.”
“I have heard much talk of Cesare,” said Loysella.
“Strange talk,” put in Francesca.
“It is said,” went on Loysella, “that when he casts his eyes on a woman and says ‘Come hither,’ she dare not disobey. If she does, she is taken by force and punished for having dared delay in obeying the lord Cardinal.”
“I have heard,” added Bernardina, “that he roams the streets looking for suitable virgins to fill his harem. I have heard that any who stand in his way die mysteriously; none knows how.”
Sanchia clasped her hands at the back of her neck, threw back her rippling black hair and laughed. “He sounds more exciting than any man I have ever met. I long to see him face to face.”
“Take care, Sanchia,” begged Bernardina. “Take care when you come face to face with Cesare Borgia.”
“I would have you take care,” said Sanchia with a laugh. “I pray you keep my little Goffredo busy this evening. I do not want him strolling into my bedchamber when I am
entertaining visitors. It is bad for the dear little creature’s morals.”
The girls laughed.
“Dear Goffredo. He’s a darling, and so pretty. I long to pet him,” declared Francesca.
“You may pet him all you wish,” Sanchia promised her. “But I pray you keep him from my bedchamber. Where is he now? Let us have him come to us and tell us about his brother. After all, he knows more of Cesare Borgia than any one of us.”
They helped Sanchia into her gown, and she was lying back on her pillows when Goffredo came in.
He was very pretty and looked younger than his years, for he was nearly fourteen.
He ran to the bed and threw himself down beside his wife. She put out an arm and held him against her while she stroked his beautiful hair, which was touched with tints of copper. His long-lashed eyes looked at his wife with admiration. He knew that he had married a woman who was said to be the most lovely in all Italy. He had heard her beauty compared with that of his sister, Lucrezia, and his father’s mistress, Giulia; and most of those who had seen the three beauties declared that Sanchia had beauty to equal the others and something more—there was a witchery about Sanchia, something which made her unique. She was insatiably sensual; she scattered promises of undreamed-of delight on all those of the opposite sex who came near her. Thus, although the golden beauty of Lucrezia and Giulia was admired, the dark beauty of Sanchia was more than admired; it was never forgotten.
“And what has my little husband been doing this day?” asked Sanchia.
He put up his face to kiss the firm white chin. “I have been riding,” he said. “What a pretty necklace!”
“It was given me last night.”
“I did not see you last night. Loysella said I must not disturb you.”
“Wicked Loysella,” said Sanchia lightly.
“You had a lover with you,” stated Goffredo. “Was he pleasing?”
She kissed his head absently, thinking of last night’s lover.
“I have known worse, and I have known better,” she pronounced judgment.
Goffredo laughed and lifted his shoulder slightly, as a child does in pleasure. He turned to Loysella and said: “My wife has had more lovers than any other woman in Naples—except courtesans of course. You cannot include courtesans, you will agree.”
“Agreed,” said Francesca.
“Now,” demanded Sanchia, “tell us about your brother. Tell us about the famous Cesare Borgia.”
“You will never have known a man like my brother Cesare.”
“All that we have heard leads us to believe it,” Sanchia answered.
“My father loves him dearly,” boasted Goffredo, “and no woman has ever said no to him.”
“We have heard that women are punished for saying no to him,” said Loysella. “How can that be, if none ever do?”
“Because they know he would punish them if they said no. They would be afraid to say it. Therefore they do not say no, but yes … yes … yes.”
“It’s logic,” said Sanchia, “So must we all prepare ourselves to say yes … yes … yes.”
She popped a sweetmeat into Goffredo’s mouth; he lay back against her, sucking contentedly.
“Francesca,” commanded Sanchia, “comb my little husband’s hair. It is such pretty hair. When it is brushed it glows like copper.”
Francesca obeyed; the other two girls stretched themselves out at the foot of the bed. Sanchia lay back sleepily, her arm about Goffredo. Occasionally she would reach for a sweetmeat and nibble a piece before putting it into Goffredo’s mouth.
Goffredo, well contented, began to boast.
He boasted about Cesare—Cesare’s prowess, Cesare’s cruelty.
Goffredo did not know for whom his admiration was the greater: for his brother at whose name everyone in Rome trembled, or for his wife who had taken more lovers than any woman in Naples, except of course courtesans—which was an unfair comparison.
The cavalcade which made its way toward Rome was a merry one, for in its center rode the lovely Sanchia with her little husband and her three devoted ladies-in-waiting. Sanchia had the bearing of a queen; it might have been because she was the illegitimate daughter of the King of Naples that in public she assumed an air of royalty; this enhanced her startling attractiveness because, underlying the air of royalty, was that look of promise which was directed toward any personable young men she encountered, no matter if they were no more than grooms.
Her ladies-in-waiting laughed at her promiscuity; they themselves were far from prudish; lighthearted in their love affairs as butterflies on a sunny day, they flitted from lover to lover: but they lacked the stamina of Sanchia.
Sanchia had ceased to regret that she had not stayed behind in Naples during the French invasion. She had ceased to care because she had not been allowed to meet the French King. Cesare Borgia, she felt sure, would be a more amusing and exciting lover than poor little Charles.
In any case Sanchia was not one to repine. Life was too full of pleasure for such as she was; her kingdom was within her reach. Sad and terrible things might happen to those about her. Her father had been driven to exile and to madness. Poor Father! He had been heartbroken when the French took his kingdom.
Knowing of his anguish, Sanchia was determined not to set store on such treasures as those which delighted her father.
When she had heard that they were to marry her to a little boy—a Pope’s bastard and not even a favorite bastard at that—she had at first been piqued. That was because the proposed marriage had shown her clearly that she was not of the same importance as her half-sister who was the legitimate daughter of King Alfonso.
Goffredo Borgia, the son of Vannozza Catanei and possibly the Borgia Pope—and possibly not! She knew that there had been suspicions as to her little husband’s birth and that at times even the Pope had declared the boy to be no son of his. Should Sanchia, daughter of the King of Naples—illegitimate though she might be—be given in marriage to such as Goffredo?
But they had explained to her: Whether or not he is the Pope’s bastard, the Pope accepts him, and that is all that matters.
They were right. The Pope sought alliance with Naples and it was for this reason that the marriage was arranged. But suppose there should be a time when the Pope fell out with Naples and no longer considered the marriage could bring him good?
She had heard how Giovanni Sforza had fallen out of favor with the Pope, and how shabbily he was treated in Vatican circles.
But that was different. Sforza was a man, not very attractive, not prepossessing, and of a nature which could not be called charming. Sanchia would know how to take care of herself, as poor Giovanni Sforza had not.
So she had become reconciled to her marriage, and she had grown fond of the little boy they had brought to her; she had joined in the sly jokes about the marriage and there had been many, for the whole Court knew that she had her lovers, and they could not hide their amusement at the thought of their experienced and accomplished Princess with this young boy.
Such a pretty little boy he had been when they had brought him to her. And, when they had been put to bed and he had been a little frightened by those who had crowded about them with their crude jokes and lewd gestures, she had answered them with dignity; and when she was alone with her husband she had taken him in her arms, wiped away his tears and told him not to fret. There was nothing he need worry about.
Being Sanchia she had been glad of such a husband. It was so simple to leave him in the care of those devoted ladies of hers while she entertained her lovers.
Thus it was with Sanchia. Life would always be merry. Lovers came into her life and passed out of it; her reputation was known throughout Italy; and she believed there were few men who would not have been delighted to become the lover of Madonna Sanchia.
And so to Rome to become a member of that strange family regarding whom there were so many rumors.
In her baggage were the gowns she would wear when she visited the Pop
e in the Vatican; there was the gown in which she would make her entry. She must be beautiful for that because, if accounts could be relied upon, she had a rival in her sister-in-law, Lucrezia.
Rome was in a fever of excitement. All through the night the citizens had been congregating to line the streets. It would be a brilliant procession; the people were sure of that, for the Pope’s youngest son was bringing his bride to Rome, and one of the greatest accomplishments of the Borgias was their ability to organize brilliant pageants.
In the Vatican the Pope waited with obvious eagerness. It was noted that he was absentminded concerning his duties, but that he was deeply interested in the preparations which were being made for the reception of his daughter-in-law.
Cesare was also eagerly awaiting the arrival, although he did not express his joy as openly as did his father.
In the Palace of Santa Maria in Portico, Lucrezia was more anxious than any, as she was a little afraid of all she had heard concerning her sister-in-law.
Sanchia was beautiful. How beautiful? Lucrezia studied herself anxiously in her mirrors. Was her hair as golden as it had been? It was a pity Giulia was scarcely seen nowadays; being no longer in favor she was a rare visitor at the Vatican and at Santa Maria. Giulia would have offered comfort at a time like this. Lucrezia was aware of a slight feeling of anger, which was alien to her nature, when she thought of how Cesare and her father talked constantly of Madonna Sanchia.
“The most beautiful woman in Italy!” She had heard that again and again. “She has but to look at a man and he is her slave. It is witchcraft, so they say.”
