by Sarah Bower
We rose and bowed, a somewhat ragged obeisance as those who had already drunk more wine than was good for them stumbled over cushions. La Fiammetta knelt to His Holiness and kissed his ring, and bowed over Donna Lucrezia’s hand, but surveyed the rest of us with imperious disdain. Duke Valentino’s wife and daughter remained at the French court, hostages, some said, for her husband’s good behaviour. La Fiammetta was queen of Rome. The duke handed her into a cushioned space beside Donna Lucrezia; Donna Lucrezia moved readily enough to make room for her, but the air between them seemed jagged and frosty, as though the light and warmth of the perfumed candles could not penetrate there. Clearly they were not friends.
The duke himself went to stand behind his father’s chair and was soon deep in discussion with the Holy Father, their heads bent together, the duke’s arm stretched along the back of his father’s chair while His Holiness’ pet monkey raced up and down it as far as its gold chain would extend. The girl who had somehow insinuated herself into the blessed lap was swatted away like a tiresome insect when she tried to nibble the pope’s ear. Then, with a sudden, loud laugh, the duke knocked the monkey aside, straightened up and, business at an end, began to survey the room as he planned his assault upon his guests. I realised, with a sensation of trapped birds struggling behind my ribs, that his face was set in my direction.
Perhaps he wished only to greet his cousin, who was sitting beside me. But no. He had crossed the room in a few long, light-footed strides, and his body now inclined towards me in a shallow bow. I struggled to my feet and managed a tolerable curtsey despite being entangled in cushions and Angela’s skirts. I bit my lip as my shin struck the low table edge.
“Well, Signorina Donata, you are steadier on your feet than the last time I saw you.”
I felt the flush bloom on my cheeks as though my head had been thrust into a pan of boiling water. Cardinal Ippolito, seated at Angela’s other side, sniggered. I could think of nothing to say, but I had to say something or the duke would think me rude.
“It had been a very emotional day for me, your grace. I regret my…lack of control.”
“Holy Mother Church can have that effect on some people,” he replied, with a savage disdain that made me forget myself and glance up at his face.
I had never seen the duke unmasked before. Angela said he kept his face covered because it was marred by the scars of the French disease and he was absurdly vain. I could not have told you if this was the case or not, could not have told you what he looked like, except that he seemed younger than I had expected. And that I knew, in less than the space of a breath, his face was the prism through which I would see the whole world from now on, the yardstick by which I would measure the beauty of every face. And that he understood my feelings, and that for this moment, if for no other, his beauty was a gift reserved only for me.
Don Cesare took my hand in his and brushed my palm with his lips. He was not wearing gloves and I noticed he had a powder burn on the back of his right hand, a smudged grey tattoo just behind the middle knuckle. Of all the memories of him I carry in my heart, this is one of the tenderest. It showed me he was a man, who could be damaged. Who could be loved.
“Will you dance with me, Donata?”
“If my lady permits it, your grace.”
“Oh, she will permit it. And she will permit you to call me Cesare.”
I was aware of Angela looking at me, her expression blended of amusement, curiosity, and a trace of anxiety. My eyes were drawn to her, but they were held by Cesare as firmly as he now held my hand, with a slight, delicious crush.
Emboldened, I said, “If you wish me to dance, sir…Cesare, you must let me go. I fear the table stands between me and the dance floor.”
“Step up. It’s surely not too high for you.” He smiled, a boy’s smile, showing very white teeth. “Or are you less good at physical gymnastics than spiritual ones?”
Uncertain what he was talking about, I said, “The reverse, I think,” and stepped up on to the table in response to his light tug on my arm. A shout of laughter and a burst of applause came from the direction of the pope’s chair as Cesare placed his hands either side of my waist and lifted me down. A bowl of marzipan roses crashed to the floor, dislodged by the hem of my skirt. Various dogs crept out from beneath the tables and snaffled the sweets, among them the same old blind hound I recognised from my last, humiliating encounter with its master, its scrawny neck now weighed down by a gem-encrusted collar. For a moment, Cesare paused, watching the dogs, then hailed one of the slaves and gave him some instructions I did not hear because just then, seeing the duke step out on to the floor, the musicians struck up a pavane. The French dances were all the fashion since the duke had taken a French wife.
Couples formed behind us as we led the dance. The pavane, my dancing master taught me, should be performed with a stately grace, the couples always two arms’ lengths apart and no more than palms touching. Clearly, Cesare and I had not shared the same dancing master; the pavane as he performed it had grace, certainly, but little in the way of stateliness. When I offered my palm, he interlaced my fingers with his own; when I attempted to walk through a turn, he seized me by my waist, whispering to me how he marvelled at its smallness, and whirled me around, holding me so close I could smell wine and cloves on his breath and feel his heartbeat, the flex of the muscles in his thighs, his arousal which thrilled me then made me feel ashamed of myself. All the time we danced his dark gaze held mine, and though I could not mistake the desire in his eyes, I was unnerved by a sense that this was just what he wanted me to see, that he could control those vital spirits that originate in the heart and show themselves in the eyes with the same easy competence that made him disdain the proper rules of the dance.
“You perform the pavane most…originally, my lord,” I said, trying to restore our communion to a proper level of decency.
“You have a quarrel with my style?” He paused for the space of a heartbeat, his brows arched in surprise. No one else could possibly have noticed, so quickly did he rediscover his rhythm.
“If we do not dance according to the rules, surely we disrespect the music, and music is the voice given us by the Almighty with which to worship Him, is it not? Ficino says…”
“Ficino, is it? So you are an educated girl.” He pinched my waist. “Good. My illustrious sister should have intelligent women about her, or she is as a princess clothed in rags.”
“In which her beauty would shine all the brighter by contrast.”
“And now will you quote me your drawing master? Much more of this sparring and I shall lose my footing utterly and,” lowering his voice to a whisper so I felt the words rather than heard them, a hot breath against my ear, “fall helpless into your arms. Did anyone ever tell you your earlobes are just the colour of lokum? I am very good at making lokum, you know, one day I will show you.” He grazed one of my rose candy lobes with his even teeth.
It dawned on me now that those women whom I had not recognised were other honest prostitutes, courtesans like La Fiammetta who pursued their trade discreetly, in houses set up for them by their wealthy lovers. Perhaps I was no better, but I did not care. Dizzy from the dance, ecstatic with longing, I thought no further than the next moment he would put his arms around me and press his body to mine. La Fiammetta could go and count her gold. Cesare was mine. Surely he must love me more than her. I, after all, was a virgin, and had he not once rounded up all the virgins in Capua and had them locked in a tower for his pleasure?
And then I was alone. The music ended and, though the world was still spinning about me, I stood still in the middle of it, abandoned, the impression of Cesare fading from my flesh as it cooled. As quickly as he had sought me out, he had left me, back across the room to sit between his mistress and Donna Lucrezia, one hand on La Fiammetta’s knee, his head resting against his sister’s shoulder. Servants were removing the candelabra from the tables and placing them at intervals around the floor. Angela was beckoning me back to my seat,
as some of the prostitutes formed up, somewhat raggedly among the lamp stands, for another dance, chattering parrots in a forest of lights. I made my way back to her side as the band struck up a sarabande. Turning her back momentarily on Ippolito, she gripped my hand and looked at me with concern, but I felt only Cesare’s fingers pressed into my flesh. Though I was close enough to her to feel the race of her heart as Ippolito stroked her thigh, I was already, fatally, beyond her.
On the dance floor, as the women came together in formation, they were not so much pressing hands as fondling one another, unlacing bodices and unhooking skirts, shrugging and stepping out of their clothes in time to the music. This was like no sarabande I had ever seen, and I averted my eyes. I looked, or so I told myself, to Donna Lucrezia for guidance. Surely she could not consider such a display suitable for mixed company, especially for a lady about to marry, even if it was for the third time. The gaze that met mine, however, was not Donna Lucrezia’s but her brother’s. Of course. What else had I intended?
Boldly, I smiled. With a peremptory nod in the direction of the dancing prostitutes, he made it plain I should watch them, not him. My smile froze and dropped. That was his pleasure, then, not to make love to me but to humiliate me with this spectacle of naked flesh. Or perhaps his interest did not extend even that far; as I dragged my gaze from him to the dance floor, I saw him turn away, giving all his attention to La Fiammetta as he slipped the hand with the powder burn inside the neck of her gown. Through the shimmer of my tears, I stared at the dancers’ undulating flesh, pink and brown, bare nipples staring back at me as though they were those creatures described in the Letter of Prester John that have no heads but whose faces are located on their torsos with eyes where the nipples should be.
More servants now entered, all in Cesare’s quartered livery with his name emblazoned across the backs of their tunics. They bore wide, flat dishes of roast chestnuts, which they scattered about the floor like farmers casting seed. Dropping to their hands and knees, the prostitutes began to scavenge for these, crawling among the lamp stands so buttocks and thighs and hanging bellies loomed in and out of the candlelight. Some simply picked the nuts up in handfuls and crammed them into their mouths; some scooped them up with lascivious tongues. Yet others, balancing the nuts on the very edges of the tables, managed to clench them in the openings to their women’s parts, then, squatting before the young men of Cesare’s household, invited them to help themselves. This they did, with hands or mouths as the fancy took them, eliciting enthusiastic applause from Cesare and his father.
Though the musicians played imperturbably on, an intense stillness settled on the spectators which felt like silence. Men and women alike watched with faces carefully composed to mask their excitement as Cesare’s gentlemen, replete with chestnuts, began to copulate with the prostitutes on the dance floor, the Holy Father shouting instruction and encouragement the way the owners of prize fighters do from the edges of the piazze on festival days. The watchers began to shift in their seats, hands disappeared beneath folds of linen and silk, conversation dwindled to rustles, low moans, an occasional grunt as a disturbing, intimate musk began to mingle with stale sweat, camphor from disturbed clothing, and the exotic perfume of the candles. Appalled and fascinated by turns, I wondered if I was the only one in the room whose hands still lay in her own lap.
I glanced at Angela, slack-jawed and lazy-eyed, stroking Ippolito’s crotch while his fingers scrabbled in her cleavage. I shifted my gaze cautiously in Donna Lucrezia’s direction, fearful of what I might see, yet hoping she would be too preoccupied to notice if I slipped away. She was sitting bolt upright, her knees still tucked under her but her body as straight as if she had been laced too tight and could not breathe. Next to her, Cesare and his mistress were sunk in a long kiss. As though she sensed me looking at her, she turned her head in my direction and bestowed on me a look of such misery it branded itself there and then in my memory, though it would be a long time before I understood it.
Cesare, disentangling himself from La Fiammetta’s creamy limbs, signed the musicians to cease playing. The couples on the dance floor began to separate, Cesare’s young men straightening their clothes sheepishly, flushed as if they had been caught with a maidservant by the family priest. The prostitutes dressed themselves more languorously, lacing one another and tidying each other’s hair, exchanging secret jokes and low laughter as they did so. I imagined this was how they behaved when the men left and they could relax, and that they were not much different from Angela and me, curled up together for warmth in her bed or mine, gossiping about our fellow ladies-in-waiting, their clothes, their beaux, their courtly accomplishments or lack of them.
A knock came at the doors and Master Burchard, the papal master of ceremonies, sidled into the room, bowed, and said something to Cesare. Seeing him in his sober robes, his grey beard spread over his chest, was like seeing my father. Though we were exempt from the rules about Jewish dress because of my father’s relationship with the Vatican, he always dressed modestly, in long, dark-coloured gowns with, perhaps, a little squirrel trim in winter. A sullen ember gathered in my chest, anger with myself for caving in to my father’s suggestions for my advancement so thoroughly I now yearned more for a look from Cesare’s black eyes than I did for a pure heart or a clear conscience. But anger also against my father’s ambition. For deserting my mother and me to build himself a fortune in Rome. It was his fault. All this.
Servants were carrying silver bound chests into the room, which they placed before Cesare, Donna Lucrezia, and His Holiness, then opened the lids and knelt beside them. Cesare announced that prizes would be given to the men who, in the opinion of himself, his illustrious sister, and the Holy Father, had displayed the greatest prowess with the prostitutes. In the event of disagreement, he added, with something between a smirk and a sneer, La Fiammetta would, with her great experience, be the final arbiter. Applause and whistles greeted the prize winners, who received silken doublets, hats, Spanish leather shoes, and embroidered shirts. We had been busy embroidering shirts lately. We had thought they were for Don Alfonso d’Este, or for the squires and pages who were to accompany Donna Lucrezia to Ferrara. Well, perhaps they were; it was impossible to tell in the smoky light.
After the prize giving, though the party looked set to continue into the daylight hours, Donna Lucrezia rose to leave and we filed out behind her, each dropping our curtsey to the pope and Cesare. He will give me some sign, I thought, he is bound to acknowledge what we shared on the dance floor. But many other couples had shared much more on that dance floor since we performed the pavane together, and Cesare was far more concerned with the setting of tables for cards than with bidding his sister’s waiting women a good night. So engrossed was I in my disappointment, I did not notice Angela slip away until I found myself, once again, alone in our room, struggling with my laces by the light of a single candle, shivering under the covers in my shift to which the perfume of vanilla and sandalwood, and something else, feral and sharp, still clung.
***
The nights were worst. During the hours of daylight, as the date set for our departure grew closer and the wedding celebrations intensified, there was no time for thought or remembering. In the mornings, after Mass, we sat with Donna Lucrezia in her private apartments and did our needlework, taking turns to read, sometimes from the Lives of the Saints or the letters of Saint Catherine, of whom madonna was particularly fond, sometimes poetry or romances teeming with lovelorn knights and cold-hearted ladies. What was wrong with me, I wondered, that I identified more with the knights than the ladies? Then, more often than not, there were engagements for the day meal followed by spectacles and entertainments laid on for the visiting Ferrarese. Cardinal Ippolito had now been joined in Rome by his brother, Don Ferrante. The Holy Father’s desire to impress his new in-laws was unremitting; even Cesare, it was rumoured, had taken to receiving embassies while lying in bed, so exhausted was he by the old man’s pace.
But though we tu
mbled into bed each night worn out from dancing and marvelling at the tableaux, the banquets, the feats of acrobats and castrati, I could not sleep. My throbbing head and aching feet were as nothing to the lust that burned in my belly like the fires I imagined Cesare’s sappers might set below the walls of a fortress. Often it made me cry. I believed I was going mad. How was it possible so to miss something you had never had?
I was frequently alone. Angela would touch my hand in farewell and slip silently away to meet her lover as soon as we had prepared Donna Lucrezia for bed. If I had not been so absorbed in my own longings, I would have noticed that their affair had developed to a dangerous intensity. Angela had become reckless, sometimes going to him even in the middle of the day, should Donna Lucrezia be writing letters or seeing petitioners and have more need of her secretary than of us. If she had not been so wrapped up in Ippolito, she would have noticed sooner than she did what was happening to me.
“What is it?” she demanded crossly, one night when her monthly courses had condemned her to chastity. “Are you still homesick or something?”
I thought of how Cesare had admired my hair. So fair, he had murmured. As a maid, I wore my hair loose, then, with only a narrow silver circlet to keep it off my face. So like…then he broke off, as though he could not think of an appropriate likeness, or wondered if a soldier should pay a lady so personal a compliment, or leave it to the poets. “No,” I said. “Angela, is it true about the virgins of Capua?”
