Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  He said nothing, however, so we remained where we were.

  “What the devil have you done to your face, wife?” he demanded. “Looks as though you’ve been in a tavern brawl. Or got at by Sigismondo’s rats.” He gave an uncertain laugh. Donna Lucrezia smiled a holy virgin’s smile, but said nothing.

  “Well?” said Don Alfonso. Madonna’s gaze flicked nervously towards Fidelma. Whatever they had planned was clearly not equal to the occasion. There was nothing for it, I thought, stepping forward, but to rely on my status as Angela’s saviour and Cesare’s inamorata, and erect a truth on this foundation of lies and wishful thinking.

  “My lady was so mortified by the Duke of Romagna’s actions towards your family in Urbino, she inflicted these wounds on herself out of grief.” Let him draw his own conclusions as to her reasons for that grief; the grief itself was genuine enough.

  “I did not give you leave to speak, Violante. But what she says is true, husband.” She knelt, leaning on Fidelma for support. “Forgive me. I should have thought of your displeasure at seeing me so.”

  “Get up, woman.” It relieved me to hear how his gruff tone wavered towards sentimental tearfulness, and warmed my heart to see how he batted away Fidelma’s hand to help madonna to her feet himself. We can keep her feet hidden, I thought, my mind racing ahead, for he will not be bedding her again until the child is born. Though the low bawdy houses he preferred were bound to be full of the sickness so we would have to ensure the right kinds of girls, plump and on the coarse side, capable of gutting a capon or tickling the master’s cock with the same cheerful competence, were put in his way as a line of defence for our lady.

  Husband and wife dined together that evening, but then Don Alfonso went straight into conference with his father, Ferrante, and Giulio to plan their campaign against the fever. The city was placed under siege. No one was allowed in for fear of bringing in further contagion, nor were the able-bodied permitted to leave for they were needed to bake the bread and butcher the meat, and drive the dead carts to the sulphur pits where the corpses were burned. Although Jews were usually allowed to live and work freely among the Christian population of Ferrara, now the duke ordered them into the old quarter surrounding the synagogue. For their safety and the security of their property, he said, because the Jews might be blamed for the outbreak and attacked.

  “That’s what Queen Isabella said,” I remarked to Fidelma, as the voice of the duke’s officer, hoarse and punctuated by phlegmy coughs, rose from the square to the loggia of the Corte Vecchio where we had gone to hear the announcement, “in the Edict of Expulsion.” Or so my father used to say, in the same tough, ironical tone I now found myself using with Fidelma, a tone at odds with his words, as though there was something else he was trying to tell me.

  “It’s a sensible precaution,” she said. “And compassionate not to expose Christian souls to temptation when they are in danger of dying unshriven.” The priests were refusing to enter the houses of the sick for fear of infection; Ippolito had been quick to offer to travel to Rome to request a papal dispensation for the granting of absolution by lay people, and doubtless it would be granted, but it had not yet arrived.

  “Why are you here? In service with Donna Lucrezia, I mean? If you are so sincere in your conversion, would not convent life have suited you better?”

  “I struck a bargain with my father. He is a goldsmith. He said, if I wanted to be a Christian, I might at least be some use to him. He has done some work for Donna Isabella Gonzaga in Mantua, and she recommended him to Donna Lucrezia, but because those two dislike each other, he thought to increase his chances by sending me to Ferrara. We cannot choose our destiny. Look at Saint Paul, or Christ himself. We must do God’s work where we find it.”

  ***

  Night and day the city squatted under a pall of dirty yellow smoke that reeked of rotten eggs; it was hard to believe this was intended to purify the air. It clung to our hair, caught in our throats and lurked in the folds of our clothes, coated the bright buildings in soot and turned our skin the colour of butter. The crop of red crosses which bloomed on street doors was no respecter of rank, fresh paint dripping like blood from the carved bronze gates of the nobility, the stout iron bound doors of the city’s merchants, and the ragged hides covering the entrances to the lowest hovels alike. The taverns were full morning, noon, and night of the sick, the dying and the grief stricken, seeking oblivion. The duke ordered them closed, but that only led to trouble in the streets, when gangs of drunks encountered processions of hymn-singing flagellants, so they were re-opened. The carcasses of animals which had starved to death when there was no one left to feed them littered the streets and were scavenged by packs of dogs run wild as their masters sweated out their lives on straw pallets or feather beds. At least the smoke kept the flies away.

  The connecting walk between the Corte and the castle remained closed. The kitchen door through which food and drink were brought on to the premises was washed every day, and the staff handling grain sacks and wine barrels, jars of olives and boxes of salt fish were ordered to wear gauze masks over their mouths and noses. We were forbidden fresh meat or fruit and vegetables ripened in the contaminated air; even milk and eggs were denied us, so we learned to subsist on little more than the same polenta the peasants ate. No one was allowed in or out of the ducal residences; even letters were burned. Yet the fever was cunning, and beat us at every end and turn, and, at the end of July, one of madonna’s ladies, Giuliana Cecharella, a demure girl with a talent for close work, was found dead in her bed, her back arched and her private parts fully displayed where she had kicked away her bedding and her night-clothes in her final paroxysms. As both madonna’s physicians were also sick, she had died unattended.

  In the evening, madonna complained of pains in her abdomen.

  “Where my waist used to be,” she said ruefully, attempting to dismiss her symptoms as nothing more than wind brought on by the enforced diet of grain porridge. But I feared for her. I could see the humours at war in her, her depression at the death of Giuliana, alone and unshriven, her body tossed into the sulphur pits with every kind of labourer and street urchin, and at the same time the deep joy of a woman close to her term. Whenever the child in her belly moved, the dull absence was banished from her eyes and her whole face was animated by delight and excitement. There seemed to be some imbalance between the elements of her own blood and that of her child’s. I thought the child must be born to save her, yet the child was not due until the beginning of Advent.

  I said I would stay in madonna’s room that night, seeing that her doctors were themselves laid up in their sickbeds, and she did not protest. Though I settled comfortably enough on my makeshift bed of quilts piled on madonna’s floor, I slept little. Night was the best time during the fever, when the air cooled and the fires died down and it became possible to breathe properly again. I was content to lie awake, cocooned among feathers, listening to the purr of nightjars and the mewing of owls, and the rustle of mice under the floorboards. It comforted me to think of the wild creatures continuing their lives oblivious of us and our sufferings. I felt secure in my insignificance; if I mattered so little, perhaps the pain in my heart mattered even less and would, given time, become bearable.

  Or disappear completely. That thought jolted me out of my drowse. I could no more live without that pain than without air to breathe or water to quench my thirst. If I succumbed to contentment, the love that lodged inside me would soften and dim and I would be ordinary again, just one more young woman of good birth and little fortune to be deployed by my mistress in building the web of influence that would fasten her securely in her new life. Loving Cesare was my distinction; it singled me out. My family, my faith, even my language, had all been taken from me, and I had filled the spaces they left with this love. If I allowed it to seep away, who knew what might take its place and make me unrecognisable to myself?

  With my will bent to nurturing my necessary pain, I was fully awake when the
sound of Donna Lucrezia retching banished Cesare from my thoughts. Disentangling my limbs from the pile of quilts, I hurried to her side, whisking back the bed curtain and crouching to hold her head until the fit of vomiting had passed. The moonlight filtered through the window shutters catching the sheen on her black skin, Catherinella detached herself silently from the darkness and squatted beside me, cradling a basin in her arms. When Donna Lucrezia recovered from her spasm, I lit the candle at her bedside and together the three of us examined the contents of the basin for the black blood of the fever.

  “The light is poor,” I said.

  “There was blood pudding at dinner,” said madonna, the memory making her retch again. Only Catherinella remained silent; perhaps, despite the fever, she was incapable of seeing a threat in the colour black.

  Donna Lucrezia lay back against her pillows; wisps of damp hair escaped from her lace nightcap plastered to her forehead.

  “I will send Catherinella to find a doctor,” I said. “They are not all sick surely.”

  “She would do better to fetch a priest.” Tears began to slide down madonna’s pale, puffy cheeks. “That it should all come to this,” she complained, her voice a frail whine.

  This was Cesare’s fault, I thought furiously, then, anger rising like bile in my throat, wondered why everything must always come back to him. If he had not invaded Urbino, we would still be at Belfiore, out of harm’s way. I did not know, as I removed the basin and offered madonna a sip of water, which she immediately brought back up, if I loved him or hated him, or if there was any difference.

  “Go,” I shouted at Catherinella. “Fetch a doctor.”

  “But madam say…”

  “She has no need of a priest. Not everybody dies.”

  Though when the slave had gone, her bare feet whispering across the polished wood floor, madonna said, “It’s all up with me, isn’t it, Violante?”

  “No, madonna, of course no…” But, confronted by her hard and hopeless stare, my voice trailed to nothing. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “Look under my bed. There’s a chest. Fetch it out.”

  I knew the chest she meant, a small box of scuffed leather bound with brass and locked with a key which madonna wore on a chain around her neck. I drew it out from beneath the bed and placed it gently in madonna’s lap. The key chain became entangled in her hair but she refused my assistance; no one but she ever touched that key. No one but she could go wherever it was she was going. With a small gasp of triumph she released the chain, drew it over her head, and unlocked the box. I hoped the mask of indifference we ladies-in-waiting were obliged to perfect had not slipped, but inside I was seething with indecent curiosity. What was in the case? Love letters? A secret hoard of gold or diamonds? A phial of poison as a last resort?

  At first I thought it was empty, then, as the candlelight found its way under the arched lid, I saw that it contained the little filigree casket I had seen her with that night shortly after our visit to the dungeon of Ugo and Parisina. Quickly, instinctively, I glanced at the ceiling, looking for the false panel, but, if it were truly there, it was closed. Lifting the casket out of the chest, madonna held it for a moment in her cupped hands, smiling at it as though it held in its web of kinked and buckled wires some exquisite memory.

  “Remember what I told you, Violante. If I should die, you are to give it to Cesare with my…” Her voice faltered, she blinked several times, rapidly, then went on, “with my sisterly duty and affection.”

  I tried to think of some excuse to ask why it was so important to her, but nothing came to mind before Catherinella returned with one of Don Alfonso’s physicians, drowsy, dishevelled, and looking terrified. Familiar with nothing but the pox, I thought, hating him for frustrating my curiosity. Hating myself for having it.

  It seemed that Donna Lucrezia, already weakened by her pregnancy and the exigencies of caring for Angela, could not possibly survive this latest blow to her health, but Don Alfonso was determined that every effort should be made to save her. Having acquired a reputation as a healer, and, I imagine, being considered dispensable, a mere conversa, I was commanded to remain with madonna day and night. Don Alfonso himself had a bed made up in her dressing room, from where he could be quickly summoned if her condition changed in the night. During the day, he was with her as much as his duties permitted, and always when she took food; even though I myself prepared her sick dishes of chicken broth and barley porridge over a brazier in the dressing room, and anyway she could keep nothing down other than a little water, Don Alfonso remained suspicious of poison. It was wishful thinking on his part; even poison was preferable to the fever.

  As the news spread through the palace, the vultures began to gather, the ambassadors of other powers with their sharp eyes and enigmatic smiles, the painters and poets and musicians who enjoyed madonna’s patronage and had families to feed, the merchants who overcharged her for satin or soap, the priests and doctors who eyed one another up from opposite sides of the room, each profession secure in its own convictions and contemptuous of the other. Here was Gian Luca Pozzi, who had been Duke Ercole’s envoy to Rome for madonna’s proxy marriage and had been sniffing around her ever since in the hope of gaining her support for a cardinal’s hat in exchange for the positive—or at least, not hostile—reports he had sent of her to his master. And there, in a secluded corner, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark, lurked Francesco Troche, the man known as the pope’s fixer. From time to time he addressed a whispered remark out of the corner of his mouth to his fellow Catalan, Francesc Remolins, who had come from Urbino with news of the fall of Camerino to Cesare’s forces. The lords of Camerino were related to the Este too.

  The family came, the duke accompanied by Sister Osanna and a bevy of his own pet nuns who wept and tore their clothes and assured His Grace of a miracle to protect his unborn grandson. Ferrante brought gossip and books of verse, and wept briefly on my shoulder. Even Sigismondo came to see his sister-in-law, to assure her the fever was yet another conspiracy of the rats and he had the matter well in hand. He even brought the corpse of one of the offenders which he had embalmed in pickling spice and wound in butter muslin to prove to her that victory was nigh. I shooed him out with his prize, relieved we had our own kitchen at the base of the Torre Marchesana.

  The bishop of Venosa, His Holiness’s favourite doctor, scythed through the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea on his way to and from the bed chamber, assistants bearing covered basins and trays of cups and fleams, scurrying in his wake. Every time he emerged from the bed chamber, and the waiting faces, patient, anxious, curious, speculative, turned towards him, his expression was more solemn and portentous. Every time the door closed once more behind him, the murmured surmisings and conspirings resumed. The sigh of voices was like the whisperings of the daemons who live in the ether.

  Then, one afternoon, when madonna seemed a little better and I had gone to my own room to rest and change my clothes, I returned to her apartments to find the crowd swept away and Michelotto da Corella, in the garb of a knight of Saint John, standing guard at her bedroom door.

  “Well, well,” he said, plastering the nearest expression he had to a smile over his pitted features. “The little Jewess. There’s a nice bonus for my lord.”

  “He is here?” I felt breathless. The floor began to lurch and slide under my feet like the deck of a ship. Michelotto nodded. I was afraid I might kiss him, though he reeked of garlic and rancid butter and had teeth like an old horse.

  “But he is not to be disturbed.” He squared his shoulders and let his right hand hover conspicuously over the hilt of his sword.

  “Donna Lucrezia will be looking for me.” I commanded my heart to remain steady, but it took no notice. “I am her special nurse, you know.”

  “Not right now you’re not,” said Michelotto with a revolting leer. “You’ll wait here till you’re sent for. But I’ll have some wine before you make yourself too comfortable. And food. We were bloody near
ly in Milan before he made up his mind to come here and we never even stopped to change horses.”

  “We have very little. We have been besieged in the city by this fever. You did well to get through the gates.”

  “Ah, but we are Hospitallers, see?” He pointed to the white cross emblazoned across the breast of his tabard. “We come to help the sick.”

  Cesare, I thought, feeling I might explode with joy, could make a joke out of anything. “I will see what I can find in our own kitchen. I will go no further, mind.”

  “Afraid he’s going to light out on you again? You’ll have to get used to that, girl.”

  “Anxious to be close to my lady should she need me.”

  “Fetch Torella, Michelotto. Quickly.” Cesare’s voice, light and strong as sunlight, with its little Spanish inflection. I was not ready; this was not how I had dreamed it. But at least my chemise was clean and my hair combed. I dropped a curtsey and waited, my gaze fixed to the floor, for him to address me.

  “Violante. Thank God. Come with me.” No greeting, no surprise; we might have seen one another only yesterday.

  “My lord.” Now, at last, I could look at him. His face was plaster white and rigid as a mask; even his lips were white, compressed, and his beard grey with the dust of the road. Fear flickered in his eyes, though whether he was afraid of what he had seen in madonna’s room, or that his expression might break and give him away, I could not tell. Turning his back on me he returned to the bedchamber, holding the door open behind him with the flat of his palm. He wore no gloves and crescents of grime edged his fingernails. His hand trembled slightly and I ached to touch it, to feel its human warmth and trace the fan of bones from wrist to fingertips.

  The low, bestial growling and gargling entered my consciousness only gradually through the dizzy distraction of Cesare’s sudden closeness after the months of yearning. I hurried after him, almost collided with him as he stopped short just inside the door, pushed past him to madonna’s bedside, felt my flank and shoulder grazed by every fibre of his Hospitaller’s tabard, burned by the heat of his body as we touched.