Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  I dropped to my knees in front of Duke Ercole; I bowed my head to the floor; I would have kissed the toe of his boot had he not hurriedly stepped back out of my reach.

  “My lord duke,” I began, straightening up. The duke gave a strangled cough; his face had turned the colour of melanzana. Perhaps my behaviour had brought on an apoplexy. So much the better. In the chaos that would ensue, I could slip away unnoticed to find the woman on the Via dei Volte. If Don Alfonso were duke, he would not banish Angela; he was too fond of his wife to treat her so cruelly.

  But nothing happened so I was compelled to continue. “You know Violante is not my name, merely a jest whose origins do not matter here. My given name is Esther. I know you to be a devout man, so I do not have to remind you of Esther’s story. I humble myself before you now as Queen Esther did before King Ahasuerus, to beg you to reconsider.”

  I was aware of Donna Lucrezia and Catherinella falling still behind me. The songs of birds, the cries of market traders, and the rattle of cartwheels over cobbles in the street below, all seemed muted by an immeasurable distance. In the silence of the room I could hear the whisper of the blood in my veins, the rasp of Duke Ercole’s nail as he scratched his jaw with one crooked finger.

  “Go on,” said the duke, a note of mild amusement in his voice almost undermining my resolve.

  I tried desperately to remember the instruction of my teacher of rhetoric. No time for dispositio or elocutio or pronuntiatio. I had to proceed straight to actio and hope to carry the day on the sincerity of my feelings. “I cannot offer you a banquet, or any other service a queen might offer her king. All the riches I can place at your feet, my lord, is my love for my mistress which emboldens me to seek her happiness. Donna Angela is her sister in all but birth, her closest kin and confidante. Your grace, you were blessed with so many brothers and sisters it is not possible to count them all. They are as the stars of the heavens and the sand upon the shore.” I hoped he would appreciate the biblical allusion, even though it was from one of our books rather than one of the Christians’. “But my lady had only three brothers, and one of them is already dead, so I beseech you, do not take Donna Angela from her also.”

  I stole a glance at Duke Ercole, to see what impression I was making. He wore an expression of dispassionate tolerance, like an adult forced to sit through the party piece of a child for whom he does not much care. Then I must hope his ambitions for his line in the long term would outweigh his immediate concerns about his sons. “Especially in her present condition. At least wait until she is safely delivered of a son and heir for Don Alfonso.” I was aware of some movement from Donna Lucrezia, a sigh, a rustle of silk as she shifted her position, but I dared not look round and kept my gaze fixed on the toes of Duke Ercole’s black boots and my thoughts on Angela and the life bleeding from between her thighs.

  “I fear Donna Lucrezia is more likely to be upset if Donna Angela stays in Ferrara than if she goes,” said the duke, with a candour I had not expected.

  “Honoured father…” began Donna Lucrezia, but I gestured to her to keep silent. If the duke were sufficiently rattled to disclose his hand, I must press home my advantage before he recovered his composure. Donna Lucrezia might discipline me for my lack of respect, but I doubted my punishment would be very harsh if I succeeded in pleading Angela’s case.

  “I cannot imagine anything calculated to upset madonna more than to be separated from her dear cousin, your grace, but if I cannot persuade you by that argument, consider this. Here before you you see the miracle of not one, but two, Jewesses brought to Christ, exulting in the opportunity to atone for the wickedness of their race. No doubt you have made many gifts to the Church in thanksgiving, but the truest and most valuable gift would be to exercise compassion in your heart for your daughter-in-law to whom you have entrusted the grave responsibility of overseeing Fidelma’s and my journey towards salvation. Remember, my lord, that the Almighty sees beyond altar cloths and reliquaries, right into a man’s soul, and that He values no gift, however rare or beautiful, if it is not given with a true heart.”

  I fell silent. My own heart thudded in my throat; I felt sick and shaky, so when the duke bade me rise, in a voice unsteady with emotion, I feared I was more likely to fall. Slowly, carefully, wobbling like an acrobat on a tightrope, I stood up.

  “Look at me, girl.” I lifted my eyes to his, pale and prominent, the whites yellowed and thickened with age. What had those eyes not seen? What thoughts and calculations, plans and dreams had they concealed or revealed over the long years of his life? For more than half of it he had lived abroad, passed over by his father, watching and waiting for his opportunity. Though no one spoke of it, everyone knew the exact spot in the cortile of the old Castello where he had had the block set up and his nephew, Niccolo, the chosen heir, beheaded. He might despatch a mere Jewess, a money lender’s daughter, with no more care than he would slap away a mosquito. Thinking the worst calmed me; I waited with a dignity which would not have shamed a Christian martyr for my sentence to be pronounced.

  “You have spoken well,” he said, “and wisely. You are right. I have allowed matters which are immediate, and probably frivolous, to distract me from what is most important. Donna Angela may stay in Ferrara and in the meantime, I will entrust Fidelma to your particular care, for I think there is much you can teach her about being a Christian, and,” he added, with a twist of his thin lips I took for a smile, “a courtier.” Then he bowed to madonna and left the room, his page scurrying in front of him to open the door.

  “Brava, brava,” exclaimed Donna Lucrezia, clapping her hands, as soon as the door had closed behind him. “Oh, Violante, come here and let me kiss you.” Bending over the daybed, I submitted to her embrace. I thought of Cesare as her lips brushed my cheek and her arms encircled my shoulders, about how often she must have kissed his cheek this way, how her lips carried the imprint of his skin, his beard, the fine bones beneath, and now her mouth carried the memory of my face to plant on his, and if she ever kissed me again, the whole cycle would start over.

  “I hoped you would win him over,” she said as she released me. “He is not such an ogre as he likes to think he is. Remember how thoughtful he was when my horse threw me during the welcome procession when we first arrived? And he had a mule brought straight away? He is a considerate old soul at bottom.”

  Oh yes, the duke was certainly considerate; once he had beheaded his nephew, he had ordered the head stitched back on and the corpse dressed for burial in gold brocade. “I am glad I managed to appeal to his soft side, madonna. I think we would both miss Donna Angela very much.”

  “Fidelma, stand a little way off. I would have some private words with Monna Violante.”

  Fidelma took a step back, trod on the hem of her skirt, and almost overbalanced. Madonna and I exchanged a look, then madonna rolled her eyes heavenward. “We shall have our work cut out with that one,” she whispered. “Now, dear, tell me how Angela does?” After a short hesitation, she added, “Is she pregnant?”

  “Madonna, I…”

  “Come, girl, do you think I know nothing? She was lying with Ippolito long before we left Rome and I suppose it has started up again since he arrived in Ferrara. Or is it the other one? The beautiful bastard. I wouldn’t blame her. He really is quite exquisite. I could be tempted myself if he weren’t my brother-in-law. What about you, Violante? Could Don Giulio lead you astray, or do you still hold a candle for my brother?”

  “You know I do, madonna,” I confessed. She had never before spoken to me with such candour, and surely I owed it to her to be equally frank.

  “His letter…encouraged you?”

  “It did not discourage me.”

  “Well, that is…” She seemed to be casting about in her mind for the right word. “Good,” she said eventually, though with a doubtful expression about her mouth and eyes. “But we were talking about Angela,” she went on, with a little movement of her head as though to shake off rain. “Am I right about t
he cause of her indisposition?”

  “Yes, madonna and, if you please...”

  “And the father?”

  “Cardinal Ippolito, she says.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Not that it matters. Either way, it is all a mess.”

  “I think it likely she will miscarry, madonna. I suppose that would make matters a little less messy.”

  Donna Lucrezia considered me with her grave, grey eyes. “You have an odd turn of phrase sometimes,” she said, “for a young girl.”

  “I should return to her, madonna; she is really very unwell.”

  Again, she hesitated, her gaze raking my face as though she might find the solution to the problem of Angela there. “This is what will happen,” she said finally. “Shortly I am to travel to Duke Ercole’s country estate at Belriguardo. The air will be healthier there, now it is getting so warm. Don Giulio is to escort us, on his way to visit Donna Isabella in Mantua. Angela will not be fit to travel so I shall leave her behind, in your care. Do I make myself clear? My husband is going away on an embassy to the court of France. Ippolito will accompany him. That leaves only Ferrante, and Sigismondo, of course, in Ferrara. You have some influence with Ferrante, I think; he is fond of you. By the time we return, let us hope Angela’s situation will look a little rosier.”

  She looked at me with eyebrows raised, as though awaiting my confirmation that her plan was a good one. Even while Angela lay suffering not more than twenty steps away, Donna Lucrezia was thinking of her own survival.

  “I will do my best for her, madonna.” We understood one another, Donna Lucrezia and I; we were both becoming adept at living cut off from our roots, like roses in bowls of sugar water.

  ***

  The Via dei Volte was so called because many of its tall, stooping houses had their upper floors built out to join one another, forming vaults over the street. Originally the main street of the merchants’ quarter, it used to be kept lit night and day; there were still sconces fastened to many of the house fronts, though most were buckled and rusty. When Duke Ercole razed the old north walls to make room for the new quarter, the wealthier merchants moved out of their cramped, dark houses into modern palazzi bordering the Barco. The Via dei Volte, more a tunnel than a street in places, was now a run-down warren of cutthroats and cut-purses, cheap whores and old witches who helped them stay in business with their aphrodisiacs and abortifacients. It was no place for an unescorted lady, and I wondered at the desperation which had driven Angela there, and at my own foolhardiness.

  I longed for Mariam as, with my hood drawn across my face as if I were one of the veiled women of the Mohametmen, and my torch held aloft like a sword, I hurried towards the church of San Paolo which backed on to the Via dei Volte. I had not put on pattens, because it was impossible to run, or even walk quickly, on the ungainly little stilts, and my shoes quickly became soaked in the foul porridge of piss and turds and rotting vegetables which overflowed the gutters. Squelching past an empty gong cart whose driver seemed to be engaged in placing bets on a couple of scrawny hounds fighting over what I hoped was an animal bone, I was tempted to berate the man for his idleness, but knew I had to avoid drawing attention to myself. Even my oldest cloak was attracting covetous looks.

  Reaching the church, I was forced to slow down, to look for signs that might indicate the house of a cunning woman, though what these might be I could not imagine. Bunches of herbs pinned to the doorpost, perhaps? Arcane carvings on lintels, charmed stones? Mariam’s image came to me as vividly as if one of the witches I was looking for had conjured her. I could hear her voice, prickly with scorn, see the pursing of her lips, the lines deep as scars beneath the dark down over her upper lip, listing remedies for fever. Wormwood, borage, marigold flowers, laburnum leaf. Laburnum leaf. Guaranteed to induce miscarriage, I had once been assured by Isotta de Mantova. So useful to know, she had said, with a world weary air, just in case. I would look for laburnum, or a picture of laburnum, or…what? The situation was hopeless.

  Suddenly overcome with weariness, my wet feet frozen, I leaned against the high, blind wall of the church, heedless of dust from its peeling plaster sticking to my cloak, my hood slipping back as I raised my face towards the narrow strip of light between the buildings. My limbs shook so hard I feared I was coming down with some dreadful sickness breathed in from the fetid air. The stink of death and failure filled my nostrils. Angela had probably bled to death by now, alone, afraid, in terrible pain. After all she had done for me, what sort of friend had I turned out to be to her? What use my pretty speech to Duke Ercole? By the time I returned to the castle, I would probably find her bloody bed sheets had been stripped and burned and Fidelma’s things laid out in place of her Venetian glass perfume bottle, her tortoiseshell hairbrush, the little silver tweezers I had used to pluck out her hair to please Ippolito.

  I plunged my torch upside down into a misshapen sconce beside a rotting doorway. The rusty ironwork came away, leaving the torch to fizz and splutter in the drain, its heat intensifying the stench until it made me retch and spit bile. A rat scurried over my foot. As I straightened up from my bout of retching, what little light filtered down between the deep, dank arches was abruptly blocked out and I felt a hand on my shoulder, heavy and broad, with a firm grip. A man’s hand. And suddenly I was not afraid any more, I was furious. I would be raped, probably murdered. The treasure I had been saving for Cesare, for my lover, would be stolen from me and I might die without ever knowing what it felt like to lie with him.

  “Get away from me,” I yelled, kicking out at the stranger’s shins, twisting to loosen his grip on my shoulder. “I’m not alone, you know. There are people with me. Beware.” I heard a sharp hiss of pain as my kick found its target. The man removed his hand from my shoulder, though the skin continued to burn where my struggles had chafed it.

  “Violante?”

  I knew that voice. As I pulled up my hood and straightened my cloak, I found myself looking into the incredulous eyes of Don Giulio.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” he asked. He sounded angry, but his gaze was dark with worry. “This is no place for a young lady. I shudder to think what might have happened to you had I not found you. What can your mistress be thinking of to let you go roaming about like this without an escort?”

  “She doesn’t know,” I said miserably.

  “Ah, I see, you have come in search of the purveyors of love charms. Something to try on Duke Valentino perhaps? I can see how you might want to keep that secret from Donna Lucrezia.” He gave me a sympathetic smile as he stepped aside to make way for a donkey laden with firewood. To my astonishment, the urchin driving it saluted Don Giulio with his stick and Don Giulio nodded in return. “I have an interest in the chemical science,” he explained. “That boy’s father, being a woodsman, knows a great deal about the chemic properties of plants. It is for my garden,” he added. “That is why I come here.”

  “And I…for Angela.” There was something about Don Giulio, some air of candour in his broad, open face that made it impossible to lie to him. Perhaps his woodsman could help. Better for Angela to be disgraced in his eyes than dead through my neglect.

  “I need not ask why, I suppose.” A bitter twist briefly disfigured his beautiful mouth.

  “She…she got something from a cunning woman near San Paolo, she said. And now…oh Giulio, she is terribly sick. I’m afraid she will die. I wanted to find the woman, to find out what she had given her and if there was any antidote.”

  “Take me to her.” Turning to the servant who had accompanied him, he said, “Go to my house and tell Ser Pandolfo to come to the castle immediately. He will find me in the Torre Marchesana, in the duchess’s apartments. Ser Pandolfo is my physician,” he explained.

  “You are very kind, my lord.”

  “It’s quite simple, Violante. I love her. Nothing she has done could cause me as much pain as the thought of continuing to live in the world
if she had left it.”

  ***

  I thought she looked a little better when Giulio and I entered the room, and she had enough energy to protest at my bringing Giulio to her unannounced. Catherinella was sitting with her. The bed was made with clean linen, her hair had been brushed and her face washed. Though I realised all this must have been done at Donna Lucrezia’s bidding, I was still somehow left with the impression that the power of Giulio’s devotion had been at work. I could see they had much to say to one another, so dismissed Catherinella and went myself to wait in the courtyard for the arrival of Ser Pandolfo. By the time I returned, accompanied by the doctor and a servant bearing his case of cups and fleams, Angela appeared to be asleep, a faint smile on her lips and her fingers entwined in Giulio’s.

  “I think the worst is over,” Giulio whispered as we entered the room, “but I will not leave her. I have sent word to Ferrante requesting him to take my place on the trip to Belriguardo. I will go to Mantua direct as soon as I can.”

  The following day, she was well enough to sit up and take a little chicken broth while Giulio read to her. In the afternoon, she even joined in when he and I sang part songs to while away the time. Now that Donna Lucrezia had left Ferrara, Giulio decided he would take Angela to his own palace to recuperate, with me to chaperone her. Giulio lived on the Corso degli Angeli, in the heart of the new city, where the roads were wide and a proliferation of parks and gardens sweetened the air. We were trying the life out of one of the household slaves, chopping and changing our minds about what gowns to take with us, when Angela suddenly complained of a headache and begged me to close the window shutters for she found the light unbearable. Brushing her hair back from her face, I felt her forehead, which was burning with a dry heat.

  “I’ll send the slave for water,” I said. Angela had lost so much blood her body was struggling, in the summer heat, to restore itself to the cold, damp humour which Aristotle tells us is natural to women. “And send a messenger to me,” I instructed the slave. “I will write to Giulio and tell him you’re not fit to travel today after all. Perhaps tomorrow.”