Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  ***

  A ball was to be held in Donna Lucrezia’s honour but I looked forward to it with mixed emotions. Perhaps Cesare would attend. None of us knew where he was; he might have been in Naples or Milan, or conferring with Duke Guidobaldo in his convent only yards from the city walls. On the other hand, I had been sleeping badly in our various makeshift accommodations. My bones ached from hard floors, lumpy pallets, and long hours on horseback. My monthly course had begun the previous day; I felt pot-bellied and foul tempered, and had a spot on my chin which pulsed like a drum. There was no doubting my power to curdle milk or tarnish mirrors. If Cesare did turn up, I would just have to be laced an inch tighter and keep my mask on my face all night, even if it suffocated me.

  My head ringing with the hen-house clamour of women getting ready for a party in a confined space, I took myself off out of doors. I was bound for a telling-off if Donna Lucrezia discovered I had been roaming about without a chaperone, but in the mood I was in, she was likely to get as good as she gave. Besides, I doubted she would notice I was missing until the time came for her to dress, which would not be for hours yet. Madonna made a fine art of being late for everything.

  Duchess Elisabetta had a sunken rose garden, a circle sliced into five segments symbolising the five parts of the madrigal. They converged at the centre on a dainty, pillared rotunda, a trysting place deliberately hidden from the eyes of the house. I walked for a while, listening to the crunch of my footsteps on the gravel paths between the beds and the song of a solitary robin perched among the gnarled knuckles of the pruned rose bushes. Then I sat in the rotunda, simply enjoying my solitude and the cold air seeping through my clothes to calm the rash of fleabites I had acquired during our travels, resting my aching back against the cool marble bench.

  Time passed, and I became aware of the sky darkening, the pillars of the rotunda and the rich, red earth of the rose beds taking on an ethereal glow as though they had captured and held the last of the day’s light. I must have been outside longer than I thought. I had better go in now, before madonna started asking for me. But I could not rise. A sensation that began like the feeling of hands on my shoulders sank through me to rest in the bowl of my pelvis, a hot stone weighing me down on the bench. The sweetness of jasmine stung my nostrils and made me dizzy. He was close, I knew it. At any moment I would hear his brisk footfall on the gravel, and walk into his arms here, in this secret place at the heart of a madrigal.

  “Look at the great lady.”

  “How pretty her face ith.”

  “How exthellently she danceth.”

  “No, no, no, you pig’s arth. Exthellently’th my line. You thay, how well she dances and I thay…”

  “Rawly but elephantly.”

  “Rarely but exthellently.”

  The trumpet of a loud fart. “Ath rare and exthellent athat? I think not. Oopth…thorry, milady, we thought no one wath here.”

  “No one is,” I said as the light cleared. “Just me.”

  Gatto and Perro, madonna’s Spanish dwarves.

  “We were rehearthing,” explained Perro who was, confusingly, with his yellow eyes and a certain sinuous grace despite his stunted form, the more feline of the two.

  “For madonna’th danth at the ball,” added Gatto, still speaking Italian with a Castilian lisp. “We are to follow her and praith her danthing.”

  “Is madonna ready to dress, do you know,” I asked, stepping out of the rotunda, “or is Don Cesare still with her?”

  “Don Cesar? He wouldn’t dare show his face here.”

  “Not after the incident with Dorotea Caracciolo.” The jesters had reverted to Spanish.

  “Speak slowly. What incident?”

  “Donna Dorotea was a lady of Duchess Elisabetta’s. A stunner by all accounts. Don Cesar was supposed to give her a safe conduct through the Romagna on her way to join her husband in Venice, but he kidnapped her instead.”

  Perro snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  “Spirited her away.” Gatto bent to pick a stone from the path, placed it on the flat of his right palm, and passed his left hand over it. The stone vanished.

  “Never been seen since,” added Perro.

  Gatto scooped the stone from his left ear. “Probably f…”

  Perro dug his partner in the ribs.

  “To death,” finished Gatto lamely.

  “Nice,” said Perro, who liked boys. “Now look, you naughty cat, you’ve upset Violante.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said, trying to stop my voice shaking, keeping my eyes fixed open so the tears would not spill over and give me away. “I’d better go. You won’t tell you found me on my own, will you? Or…”

  “Or what?” Gatto jammed his hands on to his hips and stuck out his protuberant belly in a gesture of defiance. The sight was funny enough to ease my heart.

  “Or I’ll tell madonna you think she dances like an elephant.” I hoisted up my skirts and ran, the two jesters in mock pursuit, though they stopped short at the foot of the staircase leading up to Donna Lucrezia’s rooms, and bowed to Angela, who was waiting for me there.

  “I was just about to come looking for you. Where have you been? She can’t find the necklace Don Ferrante gave her and she’s on the war path.”

  “I think it’s in the black jewel case. You know, the one her father gave her.” Gripping her upper arms I turned her to face me. “Angela, has Cesare been here?”

  Angela sighed. “No, dear. As far as I know, he’s still in Rome trying to raise an army for his next campaign. Borrowing money from your father probably. The wedding must have cleaned out Uncle Rodrigo until he can sell a few more cardinals’ hats. Why?” Angela demanded, twisting out of my grasp and rubbing her arms.

  “Because I’m sure he was in the rose garden.”

  “When?” Angela looked doubtful. Cesare kept relays of the fastest horses in stables all over the Romagna so he could travel more quickly than most; and he loved surprises, from impromptu parties to military coups.

  “Just now.” We stared at each other, then Angela shook her head.

  “I have been with Lucrezia all afternoon, rubbing her temples. She has one of her headaches. He would not have come here without seeing her. You’re bleeding, aren’t you? That must be it. It sometimes causes visions.”

  “But…” Everything which had seemed so clear a moment before was crumbling into confusion. What had I seen? Just a shadow, a cloud across the sun. Yet the scent of jasmine was still in my nostrils, still lingering on my skin.

  “You’re tired, dear, we all are. You must try to stop thinking about him. Has he given you any sign of favour? Has he even written to you since we left Rome? No. There isn’t a woman born who could hold him, except Dame Fortune, if that’s any consolation.” Poor Angela. She spoke plain sense, but where Cesare was concerned, I had no use for sense. Every time couriers found us, bearing letters under his seal, I hoped, and every time those letters proved to be for Donna Lucrezia, or Don Ferrante, or the gentlemen of his household who were escorting us, I would console myself with the two notes I had received from him in Rome, not so much reading them as caressing the lines and loops of his handwriting with my fingers and eyes.

  “Has Ippolito written to you?” I snapped, and immediately regretted it as a brief, pained frown passed across her face.

  “I told him not to. You know I don’t want anything to upset the apple cart before we’re settled in Ferrara.”

  I started up the stairs ahead of her. “The trouble is, you don’t know what it’s like to really be in love. If you did, you’d understand we don’t need letters. We…he…he’s just here, that’s all.”

  “Oh, so that’s why you keep that note he sent you tucked into your corset. Wait a minute. Let me brush your skirt. There are petals all over it.” She breathed in deeply and made a little hum of appreciation in the back of her throat. “I love winter jasmine, the way it puts out all its perfume just as the sun goes down. It’s such a hopeful flower.”
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  ***

  From Urbino, we headed east towards Pesaro, in Cesare’s territory, and from then on, until we came to Bologna, his presence was everywhere. All the roads had been levelled and repaired, and in every one of his cities we visited, we were extravagantly greeted by crowds of children in his livery, waving olive branches and shouting “Duca, Duca, Lucrezia, Lucrezia!” The palaces in which we stayed had had their artillery damage plastered over and the smoke stains scrubbed from their walls. New tapestries hung in their halls, many depicting the triumphs of Caesar, and new duckdown mattresses graced the beds in which Cesare had slept off the exhaustion of battle and where his sister would now lie awake, staring up at the brocade canopies or painted alcove, speculating about Don Alfonso.

  At Cesena, Don Ferrante doubled the guard on his new sister-in-law, having heard rumours that Dorotea Caracciolo’s husband was planning a raid to kidnap Donna Lucrezia and hold her to ransom for his wife. Don Ferrante rode close beside her litter, though sometimes he dropped back to inspect the guard, spending long periods in close conference with their officer, who looked to me far too young for the responsibility. We moved as rapidly as he could make us to Forli, Faenza, and finally Imola, where Donna Lucrezia insisted on spending an extra day to wash her hair and give us all a chance to recover before we entered Bologna and finally left behind any semblance of what madonna might call home. She was, I thought, like an athlete pausing to gather her strength for the final push to the finish, focused on her own centre, withdrawn from all that surrounded her. Angela said it was as though she had passed through a veil, the way some people do on the eve of Ognissanti, crossing to the other side and unable to find their way back again.

  Hair washing days were usually like our sessions in the bathhouse in the gardens of Santa Maria in Portico. The steam rising from the great coppers of hot water as we dipped our jugs to wet madonna’s hair created the same confessional atmosphere. Unable to see one another clearly through the mist, we were encouraged to divulge our secrets. Absorbed in the careful task of thoroughly soaking the hair without wetting madonna’s scalp, or of ensuring the lightening paste of saffron pounded with egg white and lemon juice coated every strand evenly, we could avoid looking one another in the eye. We talked to water, or the floating, golden tangle of hair, or our own fingers, pungent, sticky, and orange stained.

  At Imola, however, it was nothing like that. Madonna was mainly silent, except when she was being tetchy, complaining that the water was too hot or too cold, or that someone had pulled her hair, or wet her shift. We went about our task with sullen efficiency, aware of our damp clothes clinging to us and the wet earth smell of the saffron, like a graveyard in the rain. We had completed the shampooing, once with the plain white soap from Venice, once with soap scented with rose oil, and were towelling madonna’s hair before applying the bleach, when madonna jerked up her head and glared at the dish of glutinous orange paste as though it had insulted her.

  “There isn’t enough egg white in that,” she said.

  “But madonna, it is the same number of eggs as usual.” As usual, Elisabetta Senese did not know when to keep her mouth shut. Cousin Geronima, who had been reading aloud from the “Life of Saint Sebastian,” perhaps in the forlorn hope of marshalling his arrows in an assault on madonna’s vanity, fell silent and folded her hands in her lap. Angela rolled her eyes at me, for which I was grateful; things had been strained between us since our conversation about letters in Urbino.

  “Then they must be small eggs,” replied madonna. “Violante.”

  “Yes, madonna.”

  “Go to the kitchens. Fetch more eggs, and two bowls, for the separating.” Donna Lucrezia had her domestic side.

  Why me, I thought, rinsing my hands in the copper and wiping away the scum of suds on the old sheet I had fastened around myself to protect my gown. How should I know where the kitchens were in the rocca of Imola? And were there kitchens attached to the ducal apartments, where we were lodged, or would I have to find the main kitchen block, no doubt at some distance from the keep itself, where arms and gunpowder were kept?

  “Yes, madonna.” As no offer of guidance or directions was forthcoming, I bowed and set out on my quest. Only once I had closed the door to Donna Lucrezia’s chamber behind me did it occur to me that Donna Lucrezia had never been here before either. Somehow, the fact of Imola being her brother’s city made me feel she had.

  I do not know how long I had been wandering along stone passages whose thick, rough-hewn walls had been hastily and imperfectly disguised with carpets and tapestries, when light falling through an open doorway led me into a high room with a tall, arched window at one end. Hearing voices, I went in. I seemed to be in some kind of armoury, though more for display than practical use. Torches were lit against the early dark of a winter’s afternoon, and their flickering reflections bounced off suits of armour ranked on stands around the edges of the room. On the limewashed walls spears, javelins, halberds, and battle axes hung sheaved like corn stoops. Ranged down the centre of the room were open chests full of swords and daggers in ornamented scabbards.

  There were two people in the room, a man and a woman. Though they had their backs to me, it was clear from their easy manner together, the way their heads were bent close and their elbows touched, that they were more to one another than mere acquaintances, and my immediate impulse was to withdraw. But it was too late; my presence had been noted.

  “Monna Violante,” said Don Ferrante, turning towards me. “I am surprised to find you here. Have you an interest in arms?”

  “I am lost, your grace,” I replied miserably. “I am looking for the kitchen.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Can we help? You have been here before, haven’t you?” Though he addressed himself to the woman, she made no reply but continued to gaze in great absorption at a peculiar suit of armour given pride of place directly under the window. I thought her demeanour rude, and her gown was made of some cheap looking stuff, a gaudy purple more fitting for a whore than a lady. I felt awkward, and a little insulted, so I stared at the armour too.

  It was beautifully made, ornamented with climbing roses chased in gilt, every petal and leaf and thorn in minutest detail, but looked, nevertheless, as though it had been made for a knight who suffered some deformity. The pieces were very small, as though made for a boy rather than a grown man, and the upper breastplate ballooned curiously before the plackart cinched into a tiny waist.

  Don Ferrante caught my line of vision. “Very fine, isn’t it?” He placed his hand lightly in the small of his companion’s back. “We have been admiring it.”

  Still the woman made no move to acknowledge me, nor did Don Ferrante offer to introduce me to her, leaving me no option but to carry on as though she did not exist, which was difficult as long as Don Ferrante’s hand rested with such familiarity on her narrow waist. I concentrated on the armour.

  “Very,” I admitted, “but such an odd shape. For whom was it made? Do you know?”

  To my surprise, Ferrante laughed. “Of course I do. It is La Sforza’s. She wore it at the siege of Forli. You see the little hooks there, around the upper lame?” He pointed to a strip of steel just below the plackart. “Apparently they were designed so she could hook a skirt on to them if she wanted to.”

  I had glimpsed Caterina Sforza once when, as Cesare’s prisoner, she rode in his victory parade through Rome in the Jubilee year. I remember how the noise of the crowd had swelled as Cesare himself entered the Porta del Popolo, and how it had died, leaving a puzzled echo of itself, when the people saw the young man, who had left for France eighteen months earlier in a blaze of gold and jewels, now dressed all in black, without an ornament to his name. Caterina Sforza rode close behind her captor, swathed in a long, dark cloak with a hood, and closely flanked by two mounted men who led her horse. Her wrists and ankles were bound with gold chains, like Zenobia. Her image stayed with me, her small, shrouded figure riding in chains behind the serious young general like the embod
iment of his conscience or, perhaps, a statement of his intent.

  It came into my mind again now, as Ferrante remarked quietly, “She’s the only one ever to have forced him into a fair fight.”

  I glanced at him, unsure if I was supposed to have heard his remark, but the lady with him seemed to have no such uncertainty.

  “He directed the artillery barrage himself,” she said. I wondered if she was well; her voice had something of a croak in it. “A whole day and night without rest. He refused to retire even when a gun backfired on him and burned his hand. It was a marvellous thing to see. I will never forget him, eyes streaming from the smoke, his shirt stuck to him like a second skin and torn where he’d cut a strip of it to bind his hand. He was like, he was like…Hephaestus.”

  “Oh, a lame comparison,” quipped Ferrante.

  “I am surprised there were ladies present,” I said, and as soon as I took in Ferrante’s flaming cheeks, and his companion’s wild eyes and Adam’s apple bobbing furiously above his pearl choker as he tried to swallow his words, I wished I could do the same. Ferrante shuffled his feet and cleared his throat.

  “Vittorio knows where the kitchen is,” he said. “As you will have gathered, he has been here before.”

  Vittorio? Now I recognised the young officer of the guard with whom Ferrante had conferred so closely during our journey, the dark beginnings of his beard thickly coated in white lead powder, his cheeks rouged and lips carmined, his dress, I could now see, ballooning awkwardly from the angles of his boy’s body.