Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  What a blessing it is we cannot see our futures.

  CHAPTER 7

  FERRARA, EASTER 1502

  Love is plain and deep, like the sea when no one is looking at it.

  Madonna fainted during a performance of the Passion in the cathedral on Good Friday, just as Christ was descending into hell through the maw of a papier mache serpent. After that, there could no longer be any doubt about her condition. Naturally, we expected to see less of Don Alfonso once the duke’s physician and madonna’s physician had conferred, and declared a child would be born at Christmas time. He had done his duty and would return to the life of travel and debauchery he had enjoyed before his marriage.

  Yet to my surprise, he took to spending the first hour of the afternoon with his wife, keeping her company as she rested on a daybed set up for her in the Camera Dal Pozzolo, beside the windows overlooking the gardens. Sitting next to her, her plump, impossibly white hand lying in his great paw, he would talk to her, in that jerky, awkward way of his, attempting to interest her in the varying proportions of copper and tin in the gun-metal from which he cast his cannon.

  “Got to be at least nine parts copper, you see, twice as rich as bell metal.”

  And Donna Lucrezia would nod gravely, with a faint smile which said she was interested, nay fascinated, but so tired just now. So he would move on to his other passion, which was pottery making. All the chamber pots, and the majolica plates from which we ate on Fridays and fast days had been made by Don Alfonso, intricately decorated with birds and flowers, tiny hunting scenes, miniature figures engaged in domestic pursuits such as brewing or baking or spreading laundry to dry on bushes beside a river bank. It was one of the Creator’s mysteries how a man with such broad hands, with fingers fat as sausages and gouty joints, could paint such careful, dainty designs.

  Sometimes Don Alfonso’s visits were shared by one or other of his brothers, though never Don Sigismondo, who had the pox on his brain and was too busy preparing a military campaign against the rats which lived in the earth banks of the castle moat and were, he said, planning to stage a coup against the Este. We had the most fun when Ferrante came. Though Duke Ercole despaired of his second son who, he said, was nothing but a damned fop of a courtier, he made us laugh. He was cruelly funny, though his sharp cuts were delivered with such languor they sounded like courtly flattery, a style which reminded us Romans of the society we had left; though Ferrara was a cultivated court, famed especially for its music, it was also formal and cold. Since the death of Don Alfonso’s mother and his first wife, a severe and solitary masculinity had settled upon it.

  Ferrante could do conjuring tricks and vied with La Fertella to produce trinkets from behind ladies’ ears or streams of coloured ribbons from the neck of Don Alfonso’s shirt. Even Perro and Gatto were drawn to him, laughing madly at his jokes even when they could not understand them. Fonsi, who was rapidly growing fat from hours spent lying across Donna Lucrezia’s belly while she fed him marzipan and sugared fruits, would balance on his short legs like a small barrel on a stand and yap in a frenzy of delight when Ferrante visited. Ferrante’s determination to keep his sister-in-law amused in her enforced inactivity endeared him to me especially, for I knew Vittorio had returned to Rome with the rest of Cesare’s men, and understood perfectly how lonely Ferrante must be without him. I would have spoken to him of it, but the opportunity never arose.

  Cardinal Ippolito brought us the gossip from Rome, both secular and ecclesiastical, though it all amounted to much the same thing: who was giving the best dinners, spending most on their collection of art and antiquities, attending the salons of La Fiammetta or her great rival, Imperia, what were the funniest, most scurrilous of the avvisi pinned to the Pasquino. The social season looked set to extend well beyond Easter, he said, darting a look at Donna Lucrezia, as Duke Valentino remained in town, even though the weather was improving all the time and the troops he had encamped outside Rome were growing restless. Spain and France were quarrelling over Naples again, a situation Cesare and his father no doubt intended to exploit one way or another, but how? Even the pope did not know, it seemed, for he complained as much as the next man of the difficulty of communicating with his son, who went to bed at dawn and slept through the day, only venturing out of his apartments after dark and in disguise. The gossips said it was the French disease again, disfiguring his face, but others looked at growing unrest in Florence, and wondered.

  Almost as an afterthought, Ippolito told me he had seen my father in the Vatican several times, and that he sent me his respects.

  To all this, Donna Lucrezia listened intently, with her little dog in her lap and her husband at her side. “How unfair of you to make me worry about my brother’s health when I am so weak myself,” she complained when Ippolito finished. “He wrote me nothing of this in his letters, which are all cheerful and full of praise for my dear husband.” She turned a doting smile on Don Alfonso, who responded by scratching the dog behind its ears. Paying close attention to this talk of Cesare, I did not miss the quick look which flashed between him and Ippolito. As if to say, whatever she knows we shan’t get it out of her this way.

  When Don Giulio visited, Don Alfonso always brought his viola. All the brothers were fine musicians, but Giulio was best of all; he could play any instrument and sang like an angel. If he had been unable to hide behind the screen of music, I do not think he would have come. Whenever he and Angela were in a room together they behaved like a pair of moonstruck calves, alternately blushing and pale, staring at one another for long, enraptured minutes only to look away almost in panic if their eyes should happen to meet. Donna Lucrezia was teaching Don Giulio some Spanish songs, and liked to accompany him on her guitar, her stockinged feet tapping out dance steps against the raised end of her daybed. When she grew tired, she would hand the guitar to Angela, who was a competent player herself, though you would never know it from the way her fingers fumbled over the strings while Don Giulio’s pure tenor voice soared ahead. He sang with his eyes closed; perhaps that was his secret, though I doubted it; not being able to see your lover does not make your heart beat any slower or your mind pay any closer attention to reason.

  I watched this pantomime intently, not only because Angela was my friend and I feared for her caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the two brothers, but because it gave me something to think about other than the music. Even now, the sound of a Spanish guitar can carry me all the way back to Toledo. Now I can simply close my eyes and enjoy it, the memory of sitting on my father’s shoulders as we watched a comedy performed by street players in the square near our house, the evening sky deep indigo beyond the light of torches flickering across the players’ painted faces and setting the shadows of the shade trees dancing. I let my thoughts linger on the smell of sweet dough balls frying in oil until my saliva begins to run. I feel the strength of my father’s shoulders under my skinny child’s legs with a love at last freed from regret. But then, such memories would have made me cry, and my tears would have been a betrayal of my father’s concern for my future, and of Donna Lucrezia’s generosity towards me, so I shut the music out of my heart and concentrated instead on my friend and her new admirer.

  One afternoon towards the end of April, Duke Ercole himself paid a visit and said he would speak with madonna privately. She might keep the black slave in attendance to see to her comfort, but he would have the rest of us dismissed. I went straight to Angela’s and my chamber, where Angela lay curled on her bed, her knees drawn up almost to her chin, shivering despite the close warmth of the day. The air in the room smelled fetid and sung with the high whine of mosquitoes.

  She had begun to complain the previous day of stomach cramps and feverishness. I had made little of it, thinking it was probably something she had eaten; a shellfish sauce had been served the evening before which smelled off to me, though my Jewish nose tended to be oversensitive to foods I had been brought up to believe forbidden. I had made her up an emetic of wine mixed with an
timony powder begged from Don Alfonso’s founding master then, once she had vomited, we accompanied Donna Lucrezia to watch the Saint George’s Day races in the Barco. Angela remained uncharacteristically quiet, her face pale and pinched, taking no part in the betting of pennies and hairpins which madonna allowed because she could not see how betting with tokens of little value could be sinful. Even when a fight broke out between the winning jockey, in Donna Lucrezia’s colours, of course, and the man whose horse had finished first, but riderless, she remained miserable and withdrawn, rocking back and forth where she sat, with her hands crossed over her belly. By evening, she could no longer conceal her distress and was excused by an anxious Donna Lucrezia.

  “Go with her, Violante,” she ordered me. “You have some knowledge of physick, I’m sure. It is customary in the education of your people, I think?” I had learned a little practical wisdom from Mariam, though probably no more than Donna Lucrezia herself, but the Gentiles tend to believe all Jews are doctors because doctors are usually the only Jews they will allow into their houses.

  “Yes, madonna,” I replied, and hurried to Angela’s side.

  We had a disturbed night, with Angela often groaning and writhing in pain, getting up frequently to relieve herself, saying she believed that would make her better, though it never did. Daylight brought no change; the little serving girl who brought our wine and biscuits and washing water looked shocked by Angela’s grey, drawn face against the sweat-soaked pillow and carried out the chamberpot at arm’s length as though it were contaminated. I was certain some poison was to blame, either from bad food or some more sinister source. Had Ippolito realised her feelings for Giulio? I wondered. But she insisted the pain felt more like that which heralded the onset of her monthlies, though worse, and the time was wrong.

  “Could you be pregnant?” I asked, sitting on the edge of her bed in my wrapper, trying to coax her to take a little wine. If possible, her cheeks turned a shade paler.

  She nodded miserably. “I’ve tried to be careful but mistakes happen.”

  “Angela, you haven’t done something reckless, have you?” She screwed up her face to protest but I held up my hand to silence her. “I’m not going to give you a lecture. It’s just that if you’ve taken something, you need to tell me so I can find an antidote.”

  “I’m such a fool. What am I going to do, Violante?” Wracked by another cramp, she curled up on her side and bit into her pillow.

  “You must tell me what you’ve taken.”

  “I don’t know. I got it from a woman in the Via dei Volte. Some dried leaves.”

  “Do you still have the packet? Is there any left?”

  Angela shook her head, drawing her knees into her chest and squeezing her eyes shut in pain. “I burnt it. No one must know.”

  “That you’re pregnant, or that you’ve tried to make yourself miscarry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I was puzzled. “You used to say you wouldn’t mind a child, once we were settled in Ferrara.”

  “But it’s different now.”

  “Because of Giulio.”

  She nodded. “I love him, Violante; I want to marry him. When he looks at me he makes me feel…clean, pure, at the beginning of things. How could he look at me that way if I were lumbering around with Ippolito’s child in my belly?”

  “He must know. The feeling is all yours, Angela, not his. It’s just what you imagine.”

  “Yes, well, you’d know plenty about love and imagination,” she snapped back, her pain forgotten for the moment. “For you it exists entirely in the world of make believe.”

  I thought of Cesare’s letter in the bottom of my trunk and drew strength from remembering his words. My pity for Angela helped me to answer calmly. “We aren’t talking about me. The difficulty is yours. Have you and Giulio spoken? Have you a plan to extricate yourself from this affair with Ippolito?”

  Again she shook her head. “I have told Lucrezia how I feel. It’s impossible to speak privately to Giulio because he’s so concerned to treat me honourably.” At this she gave a wry laugh, before another wave of pain screwed her features into a frown. “And Ippolito is jealous. I am afraid of him, to tell the truth, and of the influence he has with Don Alfonso. They are the closest of all the brothers.”

  “And what does Lucrezia say?”

  “That I should aim higher than the bastard and marry Ferrante.”

  “But Ferrante has no interest in the duties of a husband.”

  “Quite. Marry Ferrante and be Giulio’s mistress, she says. That way Giulio’s bastards become Ferrante’s rightful heirs and everyone’s happy.”

  “But she has no view about Ippolito?”

  “I have never spoken to her about him, so she chooses to pretend she doesn’t know about us.”

  “Perhaps you should take her advice and let her arrange a marriage with Ferrante. He would protect you from Ippolito, if it came to that.”

  “But it’s not what I want. I want to start again. Giulio…he’s like an angel, with those great violet eyes of his, and his voice. How could I think of dragging him into such a murky compromise?”

  Before I could reply, Angela groaned and her face turned, if possible, even paler. When the pain eased, she pushed a hand between her thighs then held it out to me. Her fingers were smeared with blood. She gave a weak smile. “At least it’s working.”

  Just then a soft knock came at our door; opening it, I found Catherinella standing outside, slightly breathless.

  “You come,” she said.

  I felt cold and sweaty all at once, my bowels griped. What had happened? All this talk of miscarriages with Angela made me fear the worst. “What is it, Catherinella?”

  “Chief summon you.” By “chief,” I assumed she meant the duke.

  “But Donna Angela is unwell. She cannot come.”

  “Just you. The Jewess, he say, then my lady say, Monna Violante. Sound angry.” She shrugged and muttered something in her own tongue.

  “Angela,” I said as I fished my shoes from under my bed. “Tell me where this woman is. Maybe I can get help.”

  “Somewhere near San Paolo.”

  “I’ll go as soon as I can get away from Lucrezia.”

  “Say nothing to her.”

  “Not unless I have to,” I promised. Because if Angela died, I could not let madonna believe her cousin had been poisoned. We were none of us secure until madonna was safely delivered of a son.

  ***

  A young woman I had not seen before was standing beside Duke Ercole when I entered the Camera Dal Pozzolo. As I dropped my curtsey to him, I noticed the uncomfortable shift of her feet beneath her none-too-rich skirt of scarlet wool. She had large feet, so it did not surprise me as I raised my eyes to see that she was tall, almost as tall, indeed, as the duke himself. Duke Ercole, though powerfully built, had short, somewhat bowed legs and all his sons towered over him.

  “This is Fidelma,” said Donna Lucrezia, though she made no attempt to raise herself from the cushions supporting her back, and her tone was peevish and reluctant.

  “She is to replace Donna Angela,” added the duke. “You will take her under your wing, Monna Violante. She is a baptised Jewess like you.”

  How I managed to make sense of anything the duke said I do not know. Replace Angela? What was he thinking of? How could he? Angela was irreplaceable. Had the Este poisoned her after all, and whatever she had been sold by the crone on the Via dei Volte was merely masking the true cause of her sickness? But why? Perhaps Duke Ercole had decided the only way to turn the Borgia parvenue with her doubtful reputation into a wife worthy of his heir was to cut her off completely from her family. Donna Adriana and Cousin Geronima had already left; now it was Angela’s turn.

  Lovely, laughing Angela, who had so easily and generously filled my empty heart when I first joined Donna Lucrezia’s household, who had listened with such patience to my lovelorn rantings about Cesare…Cesare. Would the duke try to keep him from Ferrara also?
Surely his sister’s marriage to Don Alfonso had drawn his teeth as far as the duke was concerned; he was unlikely to invade the duchy as long as his beloved Lucrezia presided over it. For a moment, I breathed easier until, mortified by my heart’s selfishness, I recollected Angela as she had looked when I left her, curled tight around her pain, her belly cramped up with the effort of expelling her unwanted child.

  If she lived, how could she return to Rome, disgraced, cast out from Donna Lucrezia’s protection? If she lost the child, Ippolito would be under no obligation to her; even if she kept it, his father’s hostility to her would make it difficult for him to acknowledge his bastard. As for Giulio, or Ferrante… Suddenly I saw what Duke Ercole was about, and that it had far more to do with the welfare of his sons than with asserting his authority over Donna Lucrezia.

  I turned an appraising gaze on Fidelma. Thin, flat chested, with a pronounced bridge to her nose and a sallow complexion, she was certainly unlikely to replace Angela in the affections of Ippolito or Giulio. Or me. I looked away from her without so much as a smile, and tried to catch Donna Lucrezia’s eye, but she and Catherinella were absorbed in re-arranging her cushions. I knew I must acknowledge the duke’s instructions but I could not bring myself to do so; my head refused to bow, my mouth to form words of obedience.

  All my life I had been obedient to the men who exercised authority over me. Staying behind in Toledo at my father’s insistence, until it was too late to travel safely and I was forced to witness my mother’s lonely, unnecessary death on the beach at Nettuno. Renouncing my own faith and family in favour of these Borgias with their dangerous charm, their plausible lies, and their inhumane religion. Even taking my vicious nickname because it was bestowed on me by a man.

  My name. My real name.