by Sarah Bower
The dish was one of a set Don Alfonso had made for Donna Lucrezia’s use during her ill-fated pregnancy of the summer before. It made me remember the shrivelled bundle of flesh and bones Cesare had cast into the moat, the grim cast of his mouth, and the way he dropped his eyelids so nothing could be read in his face of grief, or frustration, or anything else. I feared these thoughts would harm my child, but I could say nothing. It was a sign of madonna’s special favour that she was allowing me to use the dishes, and of Don Alfonso’s indulgence of her generosity towards me in my predicament. So I ate, but madonna must have read some reluctance in my face, spotted some hesitation so minute even I was unaware of it, as I put the spoon to my lips. Drawing her chair close to mine, so we would not be overheard, she murmured, “You see, if I had not been so ill, he would not have come when he did. Your baby was made from the loss of mine. Perhaps her soul may enter your child and live.”
***
Once Easter had passed, I moved out of the room I shared with Angela, into an inner chamber on the floor below madonna’s apartments where there was no risk of draughts from windows. There I would have to stay until my churching, six weeks after the birth of my child. Even sitting among the braziers in the orange garden was no longer advised by Donna Lucrezia’s doctors and the midwife she had engaged to attend me, if we were to be sure of the baby’s sex. I wondered, briefly, how madonna proposed to pursue her correspondence with Bembo, but I had not the energy to care much as my body swelled and my heart grew indolent.
To make absolutely certain I would not be exposed to cold, for it was a chilly spring, with damp, salt winds blowing off the Adriatic, madonna had the walls of my room hung with several layers of rugs and tapestries and the bottom of the door padded with a sort of fabric salami, a linen tube stuffed with wool and fastened at either end with a drawstring. Red brocade curtains surrounded my bed, which was piled with soft blankets made only from the wool of young rams. The fire was lit day and night, fed and stoked by the Dalmatian slave, whom madonna had lent me with misgiving because her sallow complexion indicated an excess of cold yellow bile in her nature. A male slave would have been better, but males could not enter a lying-in chamber.
I was glad of her silence, and Cesare’s arms stamped on her collar. It made me feel a part of him was there with me, muffled in my woollen gowns and choking in the fragrant smoke of the fire, in which handfuls of coriander seeds popped and spat to ensure a quick and easy delivery.
I was never alone. Madonna herself spent as much time in the lying-in chamber as her duties permitted, almost as though pregnancy were a contagion she hoped to catch from me. We women played at biribissi and cards, read to one another, or sang to pass the time. Fidelma read passages from the De regimine praegnantium of Michele Savonarola, the grandfather of Fra Girolamo, whose example had inspired her beloved Fra Raffaello. To my surprise, madonna tolerated the readings, and even praised the soundness of Ser Michele’s advice; the Savonaroli were a respected family in Ferrara, doctors and teachers at the university. Madonna’s Ferrarese women, many of whom were already married, told tales of their own confinements, tales which became darker and more lurid whenever madonna was absent. I knew they resented being obliged to attend the upstart Valentino’s concubine, and that they wanted to frighten me, perhaps even precipitate an early birth. But I was beyond their reach, inviolably content to sit and do nothing, to watch my companions sewing baby clothes or gambling their jewellery on a hand at cacho, to listen to Angela singing Giulio’s songs, her voice cracked as a broken heart in the smoky atmosphere.
One morning, after she had heard Mass, Donna Lucrezia came to my chamber in the company of a couple I had never seen before, country people from their dress, which was plain, though of good quality, clean and not patched. In her arms the woman held a baby, pink cheeked and solemn eyed beneath a coarse lace bonnet. My mind filled with the image of my child, curled in my womb, coiled like a spring, awaiting the signal to begin his life in the world. Was this what he would look like, this swaddled doll with its oddly expressionless face? I put my hand over my belly and felt him kick, sharp and angry.
“Leave us,” madonna ordered my companions. “All of you,” she added as Angela made as if to stay. Then, smiling first at the woman with the baby, then at me, she said, “This is Giuseffa. She is from Medelana.” The Este had a summer house at Medelana, not far from Ostellato, where Pietro Bembo was a frequent guest at the Strozzi villa. Giuseffa bobbed a curtsey. Her husband, who was less tall than her, snatched his cap from his sparse hair and made me a bow.
“I have seen several women,” madonna went on, “and I believe Giuseffa is the most suitable. She has raised four children as healthy as this one. I have inspected them all, and they have straight limbs, clear eyes, and sound wind. The eldest can even read a little, I believe.”
Giuseffa’s husband smiled and nodded his confirmation. His upper front teeth were missing.
“Suitable for what, madonna?” I asked.
“A wet nurse, child.” She spoke as though it were obvious. Yet I knew she had suckled Rodrigo herself. The Roman gossips had made much of it, so unusual was it for a lady of madonna’s rank. Did she do it out of love for the Duke of Bisceglie and his child, or to keep him from her bed a few months longer?
Forgetting my manners I stared at her, then recollected myself and stared instead at Giuseffa, at her chapped cheeks and rough, red hands and the placid, vacuous baby in her arms. “But…”
“Yes?” She gave me a look hard enough to cut diamonds, but this was my child we were talking about, not a torn gown or a misplaced glove.
“I’m sure I have no need of a wet nurse, madonna. My milk is coming in well already.”
“You are very young, Violante. Giuseffa tells me she is thirty years old. At that age her milk will have gained in richness.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could say anything madonna added, “My own mother was in her thirties when she nursed me.”
And when she nursed Cesare, so weak he was not expected to live beyond infancy. “Like your respected mother,” I began cautiously, “I am not of noble birth and am unaccustomed to the ways of those who are. Giuseffa, how old is your eldest child?”
“She is coming up fifteen, your grace. She is to be married as soon as…that is…” Her gaze wandered doubtfully in madonna’s direction.
“I have agreed to provide a dowry for the girl.”
And a wet nurse for her first child? I wondered. “So you were sixteen when your daughter was born?”
“If you say so, ladyship.”
“And she thrived on your milk?”
“Oh yes, she’s been a bonny lass all her life.” Giuseffa beamed at me. I beamed back.
“The cases are not comparable, Violante,” said madonna, “and well you know it. There is the matter of your health for a start.”
“My health, madonna?”
“Yes, girl.” She drew me aside and spoke in a whisper. “I know my brother left you with more than just a child in your belly, and Torella counsels that the pox may be passed through mother’s milk.”
“But I am cured, madonna. I have been perfectly well for months. I am more afraid I might become ill if I don’t feed my baby. The wife of one of my father’s friends went mad because her child died and her milk soaked her brain.”
“You do not think, perhaps, it was the death of her child that sent her mad? I believe the loss of a child must be the hardest blow God in His mercy can inflict on a woman.” Her eyes did not fill with tears; her lips did not tremble. She merely fixed me with a gaze from which I could not look away. “Be warned,” she went on, “be prepared. Even a Jew is a woman.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” It was not my youth, not even my health, but my Jewishness that would make my milk unpalatable to her beloved brother’s child. That was the contagion his son might suck from my breasts. I laughed, though my laughter sounded mirthless in my ears. Giuseffa stared at me in alarm and clutched her
own child tighter. “How little you must value yourself as my godmother, then, if you are afraid I am still a Hebrew in the blood.”
Donna Lucrezia turned to Giuseffa and her husband. “Go,” she said. “Wait for me outside, and make sure the door is well shut behind you.” They bowed and shuffled out. A sense of triumph kindled inside me, but was snuffed out as soon as I turned from the door to look at Donna Lucrezia. Shoulders bowed, face creased with misery, she looked suddenly ten years older. With a deep sigh she sank on to a stool and leaned her head on one hand.
“Sit down,” she ordered me.
I perched myself on the edge of my high bed. “Are you well, madonna?”
She raised her head; the pressure of her fingertips had left three white coins on her forehead. “Sometimes,” she said, “the heart will speak what the mind will not acknowledge. Perhaps I have not acted as conscientiously as I should towards you. I dare say, in the circumstances, many people would say I had not, letting you become…ensnared by my brother in such a way.”
“But that was not your fault, madonna. You were ill and he was anxious for you and I…”
She held up a hand to stop me before I went any further. “Yes, yes, I know Cesare’s ways. There is no need to spell it out for me.”
Yet for me, every need to relive it, as I did a thousand times a day. “Sorry, madonna.”
“No, it is I who am sorry. I spoke like a coward and a bigot. I showed you discourtesy and betrayed my faith.” She rose and stood in front of me, taking my hands in her own, squeezing them so her rings dug into my flesh. “My only excuse is that…this baby matters a great deal to me, do you see?”
Once again I had the feeling she was trying to tell me something more than she was saying, the same feeling I had had on the morning of our departure from Rome when Cesare had ordered me to take the children to their nurse, and he and she had turned the same gaze on me, like a pair of hawks fixed on the same prey.
“Then I am grateful, madonna, and I regret I have given you cause to doubt me.”
***
Though our conversation had seemed inconclusive, the matter of the wet nurse was quietly dropped. New dishes began to appear on my menu, barley broths and wine warmed with fennel seeds to promote lactation. Every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, madonna sent one of her chaplains to my room to give me communion, and from Duke Ercole’s library she brought a Life of Saint Margaret of Antioch who, having been safely delivered by God from the belly of a serpent, became the patron of Christian women in labour.
And she decided I should have Fidelma for my most constant companion, day and night. She ordered a featherbed to be brought into my already crowded chamber and placed on the floor beside my own bed so I could neither climb into bed nor step out of it during the night without stubbing my toes on Fidelma’s bony form.
“The Dalmatian is not reliable,” madonna said. “We must have someone we can understand, if anything happens during the night.”
We must have a guard dog, I thought, for my Christian morals, and what better than a sincerely reformed Jew? There is none more pious than the convert, though madonna would have been horrified if she had known the course Fidelma’s and my conversations began to take.
I took a small, mean pleasure in the fact that Fidelma was obliged to sleep on the floor like a servant, and to be kept awake at night by my growing insomnia. Unable to make myself comfortable, no matter how many pillows Fidelma dutifully piled at my back, or beneath the sag of my belly if I lay on my side, I would frequently get up, light all the candles and, by their crackling light, read and re-read Cesare’s letters. I kept them under my pillows now, because I could no longer bend to retrieve my travelling chest from beneath the bed.
“He has written to you again, then?” Fidelma sat up, rubbing her eyes, pushing stray hanks of hair back under her sleeping cap. I always pretended they were new letters, imagining I could pass off their worn appearance as travel staining. But in truth I had heard nothing from Cesare, not even a reply to the letter I had sent with Bembo’s poem in it. Perhaps Donna Lucrezia had intercepted it. I believed I had taken every precaution to keep it secret, choosing a messenger who was trusted by Angela and Giulio, and whom I had never seen speaking to Vittorio, so I thought it unlikely he was in Cesare’s pay. And I had placed Bembo’s letter to madonna in the false bottomed jewel case as was customary. But it was impossible to know for certain.
“What does he say?” asked Fidelma.
…there was a German at the university in Bologna… If we are not at the centre of God’s universe, then what are we here for? What indeed did he say? What was this world into which I was about to bring a child?
“Oh, he tells me his little brother Giovanni has just been invested with the Duchy of Camerino and that he is very pleased with the coronet and staff of office he was given because he can play hoopla with them.” This much I had learned from Donna Lucrezia.
“You know it cannot go on, this abuse of office by the popes.”
“What are you talking about?” Wrenching my gaze from Cesare’s handwriting, my mind from its interrogation of his thoughts, I looked down at her, hugging her sharp knees through the featherbed, her expression keen and glowing with something more than the candlelight. It was an intelligent face, but still ugly, so ugly.
“Fra Raffaello says…” I gave a contemptuous snort, but she was not to be deterred. “Fra Raffaello says there is a backlash. It began with Fra Girolamo, but he made the mistake of trying to keep the link between the spiritual and the temporal. The two must be separate. God’s servants must not be corrupted by the owning of property or the wielding of earthly power. The Church must reconnect with the old principles of poverty and chastity and the power of prayer.”
“And so I am sure Cesare believes. Never forget, he chose to quit the Church because he could not keep his vows. At least he is not a hypocrite.”
“Yet he seems to be no better at keeping his marriage vows.”
I flushed. I felt as though someone had lit a brazier in my belly and was fanning the flames. But this was nothing unusual; it happened several times a day, the sweat prickling my skin, stinging the rash which had lately flared up behind my knees and under my arms. All my companions insisted I must endure it with joy, for it surely meant I was carrying a son.
“He does keep his vow to the Church. As captain general of its army. No other has been as successful at bringing the papal states under control.”
“Under whose control? Not the pope’s, I think.”
Though nothing was openly acknowledged, it was accepted now that Cesare had turned his attention beyond the Romagna, to Bologna, even to Florence and Venice. With France and Spain once again bickering over Naples, some murmured, he would make himself king of Italy while their backs were turned.
And, I thought, he would need an heir.
“So he is doing exactly what you and your Fra Raffaello want to see done. He is taking the state from the Church.”
Fidelma’s eyes, which were dark and actually, I decided, rather fine, if a little prominent, shot hunted glances around the room. “It’s as well for you these walls are muffled,” she said. “I cannot think of a single person who would want to hear you say that. I doubt your…paramour would even put it so baldly.”
I felt foolish, I, the favourite from Rome, Valentino’s mistress, duped by this raw-boned provincial girl. “Of course he is doing nothing of the sort. I am tired. You have confused me with such serious talk at this time of night.”
“Then put out the lights and go to sleep.”
I blew out the candles and clambered back into bed, but I could not sleep and nor, it seemed, could Fidelma.
After a short silence broken only by the rustling of bedclothes as I tried to come to an accommodation with my belly and Fidelma to cushion her bones against the floor, she said, “My father says the pope has levied a tax on the Jews in Rome to pay for Cesare’s war games. He says Saint Peter’s coffers can’t keep pace with his de
mands to rebuild his cities and then buy new guns from Burgundy to knock them down again.” Fidelma, unlike me, kept in regular touch with her family.
But I gave no credence to what Fidelma’s father had told her. The pope would do what he had always done. He would borrow from men like my father, fellow Spaniards even before they were Jews, and they would be glad to lend. Elderly cardinals were always dying and leaving their fortunes to the Holy See, and the men appointed to replace them paid handsomely for their scarlet hats. There was always money to pay back loans, and though the pope did not pay interest, he did give generous gifts.
***
As my time drew closer, the waiting itself seemed to absorb all my energy. Even when madonna came to the lying-in chamber one day clutching a pouch of cypress green velvet embroidered in gold with Cesare’s coat of arms, I could not summon more than an idle curiosity. My back ached, my breasts were hot and sore, my feet so swollen I had to lean on Angela to keep my balance while I made my bow to madonna. The rash had spread to the crooks of my elbows and itched unbearably. I longed to bathe in cool water but this was out of the question as the innate coldness of water might affect my chances of giving birth to a boy. By now, to be honest, the memory of Cesare and the brief, interrupted pleasure he had given me, was more likely to make me irritable than sentimental.
“The carpenters have delivered the crib,” said madonna, testing the stuffing in the draft excluder under the door with the toe of her shoe. “I wish you could see it, but it’s too big to get in here comfortably. The door would be open for too long. The posts are all carved with cherubs and the canopy is painted to look like a spring sky with birds and fluffy white clouds. And there is a cunning mechanism so it can be rocked with the foot with hardly any exertion. We tried Fonsi in it. He’s about the weight of a newborn. There is enough swansdown cured now for two quilts so, ladies, there must be less gambling and more embroidery.” Murmurs of assent accompanied the soft slap of cards against the table top.
