Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  The hunting scenes on the wall hangings seemed alive in the light from the fire and the ranks of candles in brass stands, hounds baying after fleeing stags, huntsmen’s spears plunged into the flanks of spotted boar. The Este and Donna Lucrezia were seated around a deep fireplace, Ferrante and Don Alfonso side by side on a settle, Giulio on the floor with the spaniel in his lap, Donna Lucrezia on a low faldstool. Sigismondo was not there. The duke leaned forward in his high-backed chair as I walked towards the family group, his thin lips compressed to nothing, eyes as blank as a snake’s. He held a small silver hammer in his right hand, the sort used for cracking nuts, and tapped it steadily against the palm of his left. He favoured me, I kept reminding myself as I approached; he had often shown it.

  “You have something you wish to say to the duchess?” he asked, his tone dangerously quiet. As Donna Lucrezia turned towards me I noticed the patches of hectic colour on her cheeks that told me how angry she was beneath her calm exterior. I hesitated.

  “Whatever you have to say you may say in front of my family,” she said, shifting almost imperceptibly closer to Don Alfonso. I looked from her faint and inscrutable smile around the faces of the Este turned expectantly towards me, from Don Alfonso’s small, hard eyes, blue and bloodshot, to Don Giulio, his gaze open and violet as a summer evening sky. How could I speak in front of them, every one still outraged, however discreetly, by Cesare’s treatment of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino? Yet what excuse could I make for my intrusion? My mind whirled; I could no longer think.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, feeling my cheeks begin to flame, the sound of the duke’s hammer cracking a nut going off like a shot inside my head. I turned and fled, aware at the edge of consciousness of Ferrante rising from the settle and taking a step towards me.

  I ran back to the Torre Marchesana, heedless of the snow now turning to ice beneath my feet, shut myself in Angela’s and my room and waited for the world to fall in on me. Madonna’s summons was not long in coming. Angela was her messenger, her face white as a goose egg as she peered around our door and told me I was wanted.

  I went immediately; though delay could not make matters any worse, I decided it was best to confront my fate head on, before I had time to think about it. As I entered the room I dropped madonna a deep curtsey. With a swish of velvet, the thud of her small feet pounding the floor, she was close enough to grasp me by the ear and pull me to my feet. Then she slapped my face so hard I felt the bones of my jaw jar together and saw a heaven of exploding stars before my eyes.

  “God’s blood and balls, girl, what did you mean by such behaviour?” she yelled, inches from my face, her breath, smelling of cloves, in my nostrils. “As if it were not enough that my brother, ‘who loves me as himself,’” she quoted with a sneer, “seems set on jeopardising everything we…I…Do you imagine playing mares and stallions with him gives you the right to meddle in matters of state? If that were the case half the women in Italy would be queuing up to advise me. You believed I didn’t know?” she went on, pausing only long enough to read the question that must have formed itself on my face. “You think when I ask Michelotto where my brother is and he says the duke is not to be found we don’t both know perfectly well what he means? Oh, grow up, Violante.”

  Not knowing my true compulsion to tell her what I knew, or thought I knew, or had conjured out of a few words, half understood, she meant to humiliate me. Instead, she made me angry. My eyes felt hot and dry; a tiny muscle began to tick in my bruised cheek; my belly clenched with rage until I feared the baby might be crushed.

  “I have every right,” I shouted back, rushing on before Donna Lucrezia could recover from her astonishment. “My only misjudgement was in thinking I could say what I had to say in front of the duke and Don Alfonso.”

  “What are you talking about, girl?”

  “I am pregnant, madonna. With Cesare’s child. I think that gives me at least as much right to be concerned for his welfare as you.”

  Silence. A log settled in the fire with a soft crackle. I heard the foolish, monotonous cooing of a wood pigeon from beyond the casement. Donna Lucrezia stared at me, fists clenched at her sides, breast heaving beneath the lace fichu she had put on to appear modest in front of her father-in-law. A smile forced its way on to her lips, though her eyes seemed magnified by unshed tears. “Of course,” she said. Her face assumed an inward expression, brows drawn together in a slight frown, as though she were searching for something. “The eating.”

  “Eating?”

  “Yes. Surely you have noticed how Cesare eats? He is always ravenous.”

  “I have not really had the opportunity, madonna.”

  She looked surprised at this, then said, “No, I suppose you haven’t. When he was born, he was very poorly, you see, not expected to live. He was ill nearly all the time until he was five. He had to spend every afternoon resting. Can you imagine it?”

  I could not. Cesare was notorious for the hours he kept, holding audiences in the middle of the night with bleary-eyed ambassadors, hunting at dawn with companions who frequently nodded off to sleep on horseback while he watched his pet leopards pit their cunning and agility against swift stags and bad-tempered boar. Perhaps he had accumulated a lifetime’s rest in five years of afternoon naps. Perhaps he had been born knowing the time would come when he would be forced to race against his father’s advancing years to build a state strong enough to withstand the old pope’s death when it came.

  “Anyway,” continued madonna, “having spent five years living on little more than bread and goats’ milk, once he grew strong enough he developed an enormous appetite. It seems this little one,” and she nodded towards my belly, “is going to be just the same.”

  I felt lightheaded with relief at the good natured way she seemed to be taking my news, so much so I feared I might faint and had to ask for permission to sit. Madonna herself drew up a stool for me, asked me if I needed water. We sat either side of the fire, madonna in her high-cushioned chair, the tips of her toes scarcely grazing the floor, me on my stool, trying to ignore my aching back. Seeing me reach for a log and the poker, she immediately admonished me and rang for her slave.

  Once the girl had mended the fire and left, she asked me, “Well? What was it you had to tell me?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It’s just that, whatever is going on now seems to have begun with the rebellion of San Leo.”

  Madonna nodded, as though approving my analysis. “Go on.”

  “Well, when Michelotto discovered us, Cesare and me…”

  “Yes, yes, stop your simpering and get on with it.”

  “He said a messenger had come, then something to do with Vitelozzo, and that Leonardo had prepared the plans of San Leo Cesare had asked for. It made me wonder if Cesare organised the rebellion himself. To flush out the Magione conspirators.”

  Donna Lucrezia nodded. “So you think there is nothing to worry about? That he is in control and his plea for our prayers is some kind of double bluff? You are either very naïve, or the only woman I have ever met who thinks as deviously as he does. All we can do now, I suppose, is wait and see which it is, but at least your news gives us something to occupy ourselves.”

  “Yes, madonna.” Though it seemed to me that my pregnancy was also a matter of waiting and seeing.

  “You must be found a husband. And it will be even less easy now than before. You know the duke is still withholding payment of some of my bride money, so I have little enough to endow you with and you, my dear, are a pill that needs a great deal of sweetening. A conversa, and now pregnant. On the other hand,” she mused, seeming to carry on the conversation more with herself than with me, “Cesare will own the child and he will be generous, so if we can find a man prepared to tolerate a well-fledged cuckoo in the nest…Yes, well, leave it with me. And look after yourself. You must rest, and avoid shocks. No dancing, no…well, that is unlikely, I imagine. You must stay out of the wind but not sit too close to the fire…”

  “Ma
donna?”

  “Yes?”

  “May I ask a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where is Senigallia?”

  “It is a little south of Pesaro. Why?” My expression must have given her all the answer she needed. Leaning forward to close her hand over mine where they lay knotted in my lap she said, “I’m sorry, Violante. It doesn’t look as though he will be coming this way again soon, whatever he said to you.”

  “Then I must write and tell him about the baby.” I must look forward, not back.

  “No,” said madonna quickly, “let me do that. It will carry more authority, coming from me. He will not think you are trying to deceive him.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Women do. He is wealthy and powerful, and because he can be gentle and charming when he pleases, they think they can make him believe sentimental lies. They think they know him. Do not make that mistake, Violante. You might make him a lifetime’s study and you would not know him.”

  She had hit near enough the mark to embarrass me. A flush began in my cheeks but seemed to grow and spread until I felt as though a brazier had been lit in my belly. Mindful of Donna Lucrezia’s instructions, I shifted my stool back from the fire. “But you will tell him soon, madonna? I would not wish my condition to become known and my baby’s parentage remain unacknowledged.”

  “When the time is right, I promise. Do not worry. Your child carries my blood too, remember. I will see it properly cared for. On that you have my word.”

  “Thank you, madonna.”

  “You may go. I will rest now. We have a long evening ahead of us at the Roverella ball, and I have promised the volta to Ferrante. He tells me Roverella’s musicians have practised nothing else for a week so it will not do if I am too tired to perform it.” I was relieved to hear her say she would dance with Ferrante, for I felt he had been out of favour somewhat since Catherinella’s death, almost as if Don Alfonso knew…

  It was a season of balls. Almost every night, it seemed, we gathered in the castle courtyard after supper to walk or ride to the home of one of Ferrara’s foremost citizens to dance and listen to intermezzi and eat fairy palaces made of spun sugar and almond paste. It was nearly a year, now, since madonna’s marriage to Don Alfonso and the initial coolness of Ferrarese society had been replaced by, if not affection for their new duchess, at least a cautious acceptance of her. The dour Castello Estense had fallen prey to no orgies, there had been no poisonings or bodies found floating in the moat, nothing more sensational, in fact, than some redecoration and re-arrangement of the gardens. Glancing over their shoulders at the plight of the Duke of Urbino, still in exile in Mantua, some of the Ferrarese quietly thanked God for Donna Lucrezia, who stood between them and Duke Valentino a good deal more effectively than their old city walls which would have been no match for his French artillery.

  Some days after Epiphany, Ercole Strozzi gave a ball in Donna Lucrezia’s honour. Though Strozzi’s family, who were successful bankers, moved in the highest society of Ferrara, Ercole himself, being a poet and a man famed for intense and hopeless love affairs, was different. As Donna Lucrezia put it when she received his invitation, “at least in that house we shall be treated as guests rather than entertainers.” Strozzi was attached to madonna more for herself than who she was. They shared a passion for poetry and extravagant clothes, and each carried a colourful past in their wake like the train of a magic cloak; the truth of each was largely invisible to anyone outside the charmed circle they had drawn around themselves.

  I should have been looking forward to the Strozzi ball but I could not rid myself of a nagging discontent. None of my clothes fitted properly any more, yet I must appear corseted as usual as madonna did not yet wish my condition to be known. As far as I knew, she had made no move to tell Cesare and no doubt felt he should know before anybody else. I could understand her delay; we had had no further word from him since his Delphic note about da Lorqua and his march on Senigallia. But I was anxious. If he were in danger, if he were at risk of his life, I wanted him to know about the child in case…before…but I could not put my fears into words. If madonna were serenely concerned with no more than which shoes would look best with her white tabi ballgown, and how soon the yellow velvet would arrive from Venice to make up the tabards she had promised for Cesare’s lutenists, I could only follow her lead and keep my worries to myself.

  I missed him. Whatever the feelings proper to my condition, I wanted him. His seed was growing in my womb, yet he had left an ache of emptiness inside me that the physical changes in my body seemed to make only more acute. Madonna recommended a paste of fig kernels mixed with oil to soothe the tenderness in my breasts, but when I applied it I felt only a longing for the balm of my lover’s tongue circling my nipples. Angela said I should also anoint my women’s parts regularly with oil, for this would make the delivery easier and ensure they did not remain stretched afterwards. Men, she said, might enjoy a moment’s sentimentality about the birth of a baby, but it could quickly turn to resentment if it led to a dulling of their pleasure. I could not apply the oil without succumbing to the ecstasy of my memories of Cesare’s touch, and then I feared the child would be tainted by my lust and arrive in the world already sick with love.

  So, although the night sky was thick with stars and the light from our torches sparkled on a crust of ice over fresh snow as we crunched up the long carriage drive to Strozzi’s house, and ice broke from the frozen fountain with the tinkle of fairy laughter, I felt out of sorts and irritable. My corset dug into the pads of flesh which had developed just below my armpits and chafed the welts already there from the day before and, despite the cold, my feet had swollen so my shoes pinched my toes as much as the frost did. When madonna was pregnant, I thought savagely, she would have had herself carried this distance. She would not have walked as I was obliged to, every step jarring my aching back and sore breasts. It would serve her right if I miscarried and Cesare was angry with her.

  Yet she had lent me a sapphire diadem, which matched my eyes, she said, to complement my sleeves slashed with blue satin. And she had made me raspberry leaf tea with her own hands after the evening meal. My foul temper was graceless and unjustified. Oh, if only Cesare were here, everything would be all right. He would work his enchantment and I would be floating over the snow instead of trudging through it. But I would be forced to watch him dance with other girls while I sat aside among the matrons and granddams and flat chested little girls. Watch him smile and flirt and juggle their hearts like a masked mountebank. If only he would send word he was safe. That would be enough.

  After the first intermezzo, Strozzi himself passed the flame to madonna to begin the torch dance. Dutifully, she executed the opening steps then carried her light to Don Alfonso.

  “No surprises there then,” remarked our host, easing himself into a chair at my side. He propped his crutch between us and began to massage his stiff knee. “Damn cold. I should go and live in the south. Or Outremer, perhaps. What do you think, Monna Violante?”

  “I think we would all miss you very much if you left Ferrara, Ser Ercole.”

  “Nonsense. Your mistress is the very image of uxoriousness. See now, how she whispers sweet nothings in Don Alfonso’s ear.”

  “I expect she is telling him to be sure and choose Donna Angela next, so she can hold the torch for Don Giulio.”

  “I hope so. Those two make a fine couple on the dance floor, though I doubt the Cardinal would agree with me.” He paused as we both glanced in the direction of Ippolito, conspicuous in his scarlet and the air of isolation surrounding him, even though he was locked deep in a game of dice with the Hungarian ambassador. “But speaking of fine couples,” Strozzi resumed, “are you not dancing? Should I flatter myself you are staying out to keep an old cripple company?” He gave me a questioning look, although I am certain he had already guessed why I was not dancing and sought merely to confirm his suspicion. Strozzi was like that, quick to solve a myste
ry but quite unable to leave it alone if it had potential for creating gossip.

  “I do not know the Spanish steps, sir.”

  “Strange. And you the chosen dancing partner of Valentino by all accounts.”

  “He is a good leader. One does not need to know the steps to follow him.”

  Strozzi laughed, slapped his thigh, and winced as one of his rings struck the weak knee. “I like you, Violante, I like you very much. But I must deprive myself of your company now, for there is someone here who wishes to meet you.”

  My heart rocked on its moorings. For one second I thought, it’s him; they are playing a trick on me. I looked up, expecting a tall figure in black, wearing a mask, feathered and jewelled, wearing a white smile and a beard the colour of blood and sunlight. I saw a man of middle years, powerfully built, with the broad shoulders and squat stature which marked out the men of the Padano. He was prosperously dressed, his knee-length gown of sober blue velvet trimmed with sable and his cap set with a substantial pearl.

  “Monna Violante, allow me to present Ser Taddeo di Occhiobello.”

  I held out my hand. Taddeo di Occhiobello bowed over it. His eyes were not beautiful; they were small and shrewd and coloured the greenish brown of an under-ripe chestnut. He was, perhaps, the age of my father. Without a word being said, I knew exactly why he desired to meet me, and the knowledge seemed to shrivel me. My tongue stuck to the roof of my dry mouth; my lips felt as though they would crack if I smiled. My hand, in Ser Taddeo’s, was a winter leaf. I looked for Strozzi, hoping for some witticism to carry me over this impossible barrier, but he had melted away among the crowd gathered around the dancers and now, to an audible intake of breath from their audience, and even applause from some who had left their inhibitions at the bottom of a wine jug, Giulio and Angela took to the floor.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” I could not help myself. Like everyone else I was swept into the race of their passion. So close they danced that Angela seemed to have stepped right inside the filigree of fire made by Giulio’s swooping, circling torch. She moved like a flame herself, sinuous, effortless, so perfectly in time with the music you could not hear the beat of her footsteps and she seemed to be dancing above the ground, on an invisible cushion of desire. Then their figure ended, and Giulio spun her off into a knot of young women simpering and giggling among their chaperones like a flock of chickens behind a fence. He handed the torch to Fidelma, who held it stiff and straight in front of her as she plodded through the steps on her great, flat feet, and Giulio became like water flowing around a rock. Only then did I realise I had been holding my breath; only when I began to relax did I feel the ache in my shoulders which had been tensed as if for flight.