Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  It was a morning of driving rain and bitter wind, so Cardinal Vera, who was to preside over the service, was content for the ceremony to be held inside the church door rather than outside as laid down. Perhaps that is why the Holy Spirit decided to stay away. Once the Cardinal had pronounced the exorcism and placed the veil on my head, all I knew as I approached the altar, Donna Lucrezia and the nameless bishop each holding me by the hand, was that the salt on my tongue was making my stomach cry out for its breakfast. Water dripped from the ends of my loose hair, soaking through my clothes on to the backs of my thighs. I shivered. Donna Lucrezia squeezed my hand and smiled in the direction of the altar; perhaps she thought my shivering was a sign of divine intervention, the wings of the dove fluttering across my skin.

  I knelt, on a white silk cushion. I recited the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, then Cardinal Vera himself, the cords in his weathered neck reminding me of well-hung venison, administered the Sacrament. Bread and wine I told myself, just bread and wine, and neither of them very good at that, as I swallowed the little disc which tasted like paper and the wine which left a fiery aftertaste in my throat. How did Donna Lucrezia manage this every morning on an empty stomach? I wondered. I glanced at her, kneeling beside me, head bowed, lips moving in silent and seemingly impassioned prayer, then took my cue from her to rise and process back towards the door as the clergy pronounced various blessings and graces.

  I noticed Battista Farignola and Isotta de Mantova among the congregation, but they were too busy trying to catch the eye of a group of fashionably dressed young men lounging against a pillar and chatting in loud whispers to return my smile. This seemed to me to be thrillingly wicked. At synagogue, girls and boys only met after the services, under the watchful, calculating eyes of parents and matchmakers. The Christians, however, appeared to think nothing of the sexes mingling in church, so whole courtships of looks and gestures, of fans fluttered and kisses blown, could take place over the bowed heads of devout patriarchs and their pious spouses. If they thought Eve was the mother of all sin, they had only themselves to blame.

  I also could not help but notice Giulia Farnese. She was the loveliest woman I had ever seen, with her eyes as warm as roast sugar and her honey coloured hair twisted with ropes of huge pearls beneath a veil of gold tissue. She held the hand of a plump little boy about four years of age whom I presumed to be her son, Giovanni, known as the Child of Rome though less grandly presumed by most people to be the child of Pope Alexander. He was as plain as his mother was beautiful and his imposing title seemed to sit ill on his round little shoulders. La Bella Giulia inclined her head to me, which caused a flurry among a group of ladies standing behind her, mostly young, with watchful eyes. Only one of them seemed unconcerned with the social adjustments which needed to be made to admit me to the favour of the pope’s mistress. Covering her mouth with a sable muff, she yawned then winked at me. I thought I must be imagining it, but I soon found out I wasn’t.

  A reception was to be held for me at the palace. This makes me sound very important but, of course, I was not. That household needed little excuse to throw a party, and it was only a small party, a day meal followed by dancing, to introduce me to the rest of Donna Lucrezia’s ladies, with Giulia Farnese as guest of honour. On my arrival at the palace, the slave, Catherinella, whisked me away through a maze of corridors and showed me into a small room on one of the upper floors.

  “You change clothes,” she said, in her slow, precisely enunciated Italian, “I help you.”

  My travelling trunk stood at the foot of the bed which, along with a nightstand and a simple wooden chair, constituted all the furniture in the room. I saw that it had been opened and my best gown, of dark blue velvet, had been laid out on the bed. Next to it were a camorra of a bright, emerald green brocade, lined in silver silk, and a necklace of pearls with a sapphire pendant.

  “From my lady,” said Catherinella.

  I was as puffed up with pride as a courting dove that Madonna Lucrezia should give me such presents. Surely it was a sign of special favour. I did not realise, then, that among people whose wealth is as fabulous and careless as that of the Borgia family in those years, it is the small presents which count, not the lavish ones. A bracelet of plaited hair, an empty casket which once contained a poem. I was certain that, the moment I entered the salon where the meal was laid, every head would turn and all conversation cease as Donna Lucrezia’s ladies struggled to contain their envy of the new favourite, the rising star, Donata Spagnola arising like the phoenix from the ashes of Esther Sarfati. Oh how thoroughly she was erased, that girl from Toledo on the remote edges of the Christian world, and how thoroughly Roman was Donata in her velvet and pearls.

  As it was, only one person detached herself from the peacock throng milling about the room, the girl with the sable muff, a little older than me, I now saw, and unmistakably a Borgia, with the same high-bridged nose and large eyes, slightly too close together, as Donna Lucrezia.

  “I’m Angela,” she said, holding out her hand. She had a firm, dry grip and a candid stare. “Lucrezia’s cousin. Well, one of them. There’s Geronima too, but she’s terribly…Spanish. Wears black, always in church, you know the sort. Oh lord, I mean, I’m sorry, you’re Spanish. But then, Jews are Jews, aren’t they? So you’re not really Spanish.”

  Not really Jewish either, I thought, trying to feel insulted but disarmed by Angela’s frankness and the warmth of her smile. “Are Catalans really Spanish?” I asked.

  “Oh God.”

  I winced. How carelessly these Christians invoked the Holy Name.

  “We Borgias are something and nothing, really,” Angela went on, and I found myself wondering if Duke Valentino had ever heard her talk this way, and how long her tongue might stay in her head if he did. “The Romans say we’re marrano and they’re probably right.”

  “Then we’re the same.”

  Angela was still holding my hand. Now she pumped it merrily up and down. “And we shall be friends. I’ve arranged for us to share a room. I hope you don’t mind.” I could not say I minded, but it gave me pause. Having no close female relatives, I was unused to sharing a bed. What if Angela snored, or ground her teeth, or kicked out in her sleep? What if I were guilty of any of these?

  If Angela noticed my reservations, she certainly did not let them bother her. “Now,” she prattled on, “who is that tall creature admiring her reflection in the silver? One of your friends? Can you perform a moresca? My cousin Cesare likes to see ladies dance it rather than gentlemen.” Tucking my hand beneath her arm, she kept up her bombardment of questions except when she interrupted herself to introduce me to somebody or pass comment on a hairstyle, or the width of a sleeve, or the heaviness of someone’s makeup. If Angela said we would be friends, I thought, then there seemed to be little point in arguing with her.

  Donna Lucrezia sat at the head of the table, with Giulia Farnese to her right and Angela to her left. I sat next to Angela, though the honour of sitting only one place removed from Donna Lucrezia was lost on me now, and I longed to be as far from the high table as possible, with my friends from Santa Clara, where nobody was watching me. No one could eat until we at high table had taken our first mouthful of each dish. There were crayfish; there was veal in a cream sauce and suckling pig stuffed with figs. Repeatedly I reminded myself that it was no longer a sin for me to eat these dishes, but it was as though my body and mind had become disjointed from one another; my brain commanded my body to eat, but my gullet squeezed shut and forbade me to swallow. With the aid of copious swigs of wine, I managed to force down a few mouthfuls, then, glancing down the length of the salon to where Isotta and Battista were seated, saw everything double and realised I must be drunk. I remembered Simeon listing double vision as one of the symptoms.

  I longed for water but dare not ask. The liveried pages who stood behind each of us were as stiff and solemn as the effigies on tombs; I could not believe they would deign to hear me even if I could summon the courage to sp
eak. So I drank more wine and, when the meats were cleared and bowls of fruit brought in, accompanied by dishes of sweetened curd cheese, found myself suddenly ravenous. My plate was indecently heaped with pomegranate skins and stones from bottled peaches in pools of syrup when Donna Lucrezia clapped her hands and announced that we should remove to a larger room on the ground floor where the musicians awaited us.

  I tried to stand, but felt as though I were once again at sea, in a squall, the deck rolling and slipping beneath my feet. Sugar water filled my mouth and nose with its sickly sweetness. Certain now I was about to vomit, I stumbled over the bench, pushing one of the solemn little pages out of my way, and fled the salon with Angela’s “Donata? Are you all right?” cutting through the buzz in my ears.

  Air. I needed air. I had to find a way out, but we were on the first floor and I had no idea where the stairs were. A window. Anything. I ran, turned, ran in another direction, tripped over the edges of rugs, caught my sleeve on a wall sconce. My mouth flooded with bile. Too late. Retching till I believed my throat would tear, I fell to my knees and threw up my dinner all over a rather fine silk runner laid down the centre of the marble floor. Without the strength to rise, I crawled away from the stinking mess I had made and lay on the floor, my forehead pressed to the cool marble. All I wanted was to sleep, but I had no idea how to find my bed, in that small room buried at the old heart of the sprawling palazzo. Besides, if I closed my eyes, my head began to spin and I feared I would be sick again.

  How long I had lain this way when I heard footsteps approaching, I have no idea. At first I hoped it might be Angela, or one of Donna Lucrezia’s slaves sent to find me. I would be disgraced, of course. Perhaps I might even be sent back home. The prospect made me feel slightly better, then I heard men’s voices, a murmured exchange followed by a sudden bark of laughter. A shuffling of soft shoes accompanied by the smart clank of spurred boots. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, my drunken brain convincing me that, if I could not see them, they would not see me.

  Silence. Torchlight illuminating the filigree of veins in my eyelids. Winy breath on my cheek, a faint perfume of jasmine oil. The toe of one of those boots in my ribs, but gently, cautiously, levering me on to my side. Then the fear I would vomit again as a blast of foul breath hit my face followed by the warm slick of a tongue licking my nose.

  “Drunk,” pronounced the voice of the boot wearer, rich with suppressed mirth. “Let her alone, Tiresias. If she tastes as good as a truffle, she’s mine, you damned dog.”

  “Can’t see a mark on her,” said the other, his voice softer, almost whispering in my ear. His accent was not Roman. “Stinks like an inn parlour, though.”

  “Must be one of Lucrezia’s girls,” said the boot wearer. “Page, go to the Hall of the Zodiac and inform Donna Lucrezia one of her lambs has gone astray.”

  “My lord.” A boy’s treble, followed by scurrying footsteps and darkness, no, a shift in the light. The boy must have taken the torch, but lit one of the wall lamps before he did so. I opened my eyes.

  Kneeling beside me was a young man in cardinal’s robes, one arm draped companionably around the shoulders of a battered hound whose albino eyes were milky blue with cataracts. The cardinal seemed to me all red and black, with his dark beard and his red gown and full, glistening lips.

  “She’s woken up,” he said, smiling at me. The hound grinned too, tongue lolling over brown stubs of teeth.

  Shadows shifted as the boot wearer squatted down behind his dog to take a closer look at me. This man was masked, and dressed entirely in black; even his hands, resting loosely on his knees, were gloved in black velvet and a black cap covered his hair. The light from the wall sconce haloed him, making it difficult to discern the details of his dress or mask.

  “Well,” he said, “I hope all my sister’s women are not in the same state as you. Cardinal Ippolito and I were on our way to watch the dancing and it will be a pretty muddle if you’re all falling down drunk.”

  Duke Valentino. I thought of the hand and the tongue. I closed my eyes again and clenched my teeth, and hoped so skilful a killer would be able to dispatch me without pain, the way the kosher butchers do.

  Nothing happened. I opened my eyes again, wishing it would. For by now my befuddled mind had registered that, not only had the duke found me lying drunk on the floor, but also Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, the man appointed to be my godfather.

  “Try to sit,” the cardinal was saying. “You’ll feel dizzy at first, but it’s best to be upright then all that wine running in your veins can drain from the head.”

  “I’m so sorry, forgive me, I…”

  “Never mind all that. Cesare, take her other arm and let’s get her to her feet. She needs some air.”

  Each man placed a hand beneath my elbow, the cardinal’s a well-manicured paw, the duke’s fingers hard and lean under his glove. While he was briefly preoccupied with extricating his spur from the hem of my camorra, I stole a look at his face. The handsomest man in Italy, the girls at Santa Clara used to say, though I do not know if any of them had actually seen him close to, yet because of his mask only his neatly trimmed, auburn beard was visible, and pale lips which had a certain muscular mobility about them. It struck me that he wore his mask, a winged confection of black velvet, gold braid and pearls, because in him, even beauty was dangerous. Did he, perhaps, fear to look at his own face?

  The blood seemed to rush from my head as I stood, and pool in my feet, weighing them down as I stumbled and swayed, with further profuse apologies, against the cardinal.

  “Please,” he said roguishly, “the pleasure is all mine.” He slipped an arm around my waist as the duke released his grip on my elbow. I thought of my father and his good intentions, and felt tears pricking my eyes.

  “Donata!” Angela. Oh, praise the Holy Name.

  “Donata?” repeated the cardinal.

  “Yes, your eminence.” Was that the right form of address? I hoped so.

  “Forgive me. My lord cardinal, cousin Cesare.” Arresting her flight towards me, Angela dropped into a deep curtsey. The cardinal offered his free hand and she kissed his ring then, though the duke raised her to her feet and brushed her cheek with his lips, she continued to gaze at the cardinal through her eyelashes, with a charming affectation of modesty.

  “Donna Angela,” reproached the cardinal, “I shall require you to take better care of my goddaughter in future.”

  “Perhaps your grace should give me guidance in the matter.”

  Horribly aware of my soiled and crumpled clothes, the wisps of hair matted to my forehead, my foul breath, I felt more inadequate and out of place than ever.

  “Take a cup with me when you have attended to Signorina Donata,” said the cardinal, “and we will make a lesson plan.”

  “Come, Ippolito,” said the duke, “we have done our good deed for today.” Though he said no more, I could feel the deeds he now contemplated hanging in the cold air of the corridor, and a curious thrill ran through me.

  Seeing me shiver, Angela put her arm around me. “Bed for you, young lady. You have partied quite enough for one night.”

  “Will Donna Lucrezia banish me?” I whined, both dreading and longing for her reply.

  She laughed. “Good lord no. At worst, you’ll get a ticking off from Donna Adriana; at best, Lucrezia will just be amused. Elisabetta Senese once mistook the Holy Father for a chair cushion and sat on him. He was delighted. He gave her a great store of silk floor cushions that used to be in Prince Djem’s apartments. Her room looks like a harem now.”

  “Who is Prince Djem?”

  “Oh, he died years ago. He was the Sultan’s brother, but the Sultan paid for him to stay here so he wouldn’t have to murder him. Apparently that’s how the Ottomans secure the succession. They murder their brothers. We all loved Djem, especially Cesare, but Djem loved Juan the best.” She paused. I felt a calculating glance upon me, though we were far from the new, well-lit parts of the palace now, back in the maze of n
arrow, rickety passages where Madonna Lucrezia’s ladies-in-waiting had their rooms. “And I do mean loved. Juan was as pretty as a girl. Here we are.”

  Angela led me into the room, feeling for the edge of the bed and pushing me down on to it while she groped in a little niche in the wall for the flint box she kept there at the foot of the wooden crucifix.

  Emboldened by the fact that I could not see her face, I asked, “What did happen to Don Juan?” Though I was still quite a little girl when he died, all Rome had been abuzz with the gossip when his mutilated corpse was pulled from the Tiber by a fisherman, and the name Valentino was never far from people’s lips. The brothers had argued over the favours of their sister-in-law, the princess Sancia of Aragon, it was said, or over the fact that Juan, though inept as a soldier, had been made gonfalonier of the Church whereas Cesare, then cardinal of Valencia, was destined to follow his father up the steps of Saint Peter’s throne. No one had ever been convicted of the murder of the pope’s favourite son, so the rumours festered like an untreated sore.

  Angela struck her flints and light flared from the candle on the nightstand. Bending towards me, eyes wide and earnest, shadowed by an exhaustion I had not noticed before, she took my hands and pressed them against my knees. “Donata, I want to be your friend. You are pretty and quick-witted and you can do well here. But there are some questions you must not ask, and some things you may see which you must keep to yourself. As for Juan,” she added, straightening up and admitting a lighter note to her voice, as though no mystery at all attached to his murder, “it was the Orsini. They have had it in for us ever since Uncle Rodrigo imprisoned Virginio Orsini for going over to the French in ’93 and then he died in prison. They were sure Uncle Rodrigo had had him killed, so they went after Juan for revenge. Honours are even now, so there’s an end to it.”