Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  “Lucia? Lucia, where are you? Someone find her for me, I can’t…”

  I did not wait to hear what he could not, but darted through the half open door before the guards could bar my way. “It is me he wants,” I said, making straight for the bed, scattering a flock of priests and doctors and another little maid who was struggling all alone to pull a clean sheet beneath the writhing, thrashing patient.

  “Get that woman out of here. She means him harm.”

  I heard the rasp of swords being drawn behind me, but I did not care. If I had to die, then at least it would be because I had tried to help him. As my flesh cooled, it would quench the fever in his. For he was almost too hot to touch; he radiated heat like a devil in Gehenna. I gripped his shoulders and tried to push him back against his pillows. He screamed again, and the old dog crouched at the end of the bed growled. I sprang back, my hands clammy with Cesare’s sweat. And blood. His nightshirt was soaked through, his back and chest oozing patches of pale, brownish blood and yellow pus. Sweat pooled above his naked upper lip and sparkled in his cropped hair. His eyes had a blind stare, the pupils dilated, nothing in them but tiny reflections of my own face, of this Lucia, whoever she was.

  “Vamos,” said Michelotto, somewhere behind me. I was not sure whether he was speaking to the guards, or Monna Vannozza, or any of the rest of the people crowded around the bed. I did not care.

  “He needs air to cool his fever,” I said, willing myself not to retch. “All of you, step back. Look, he is calmer already.” He had stopped fighting me and lay still, his eyes half closed, hands plucking at the bedclothes in small, futile convulsions. I saw now that his skin, where it was visible, was covered in blisters and open sores where other blisters had burst. His wrists and knuckles were swollen like those of a rheumatic. His breaths came short and harsh and foul through his open mouth. He would have stopped thrashing about soon enough anyway, I thought, for he was utterly exhausted, but the priests crossed themselves, the doctors hawed and harrumphed and rubbed the backs of their necks, and the little maid exclaimed, “It’s a miracle.”

  Monna Vannozza gathered up her entourage and swept out of the room with her chin in the air and a vengeful expression on her face. Soon we were alone, except for Michelotto.

  “What do you need?” he asked, and I could hear him asking the same of Cesare, in different circumstances.

  “Water and some clean cloths. And a sponge if you can find one, and watered wine, sweet if there is any.” What might Cesare have answered? A spy, a sword, a man’s head on a plate, a clean whore?

  When Michelotto had gone, snapping some order at the guards in his barbarous Navarrese, I stretched out beside Cesare on the bed. His hound shuffled sideways in response to the toe of my shoe, leaving a smudge of white hairs on the purple silk coverlet embroidered with the arms of Bisceglie. The bed curtains were the same, all made, I supposed, for Donna Lucrezia’s mourning, shrouds for her broken heart. Stroking his head, I told him tomorrow I would find merrier bed furniture to aid his recovery. I was careful to keep my voice cheerful, though I wasn’t sure if he could hear me. Feeling the frail bones of his skull under my palm, I wondered if he was already beyond the realm of human hearing. For what the little maid had called a miracle seemed to me to be more like dying.

  Then suddenly the rhythm of his breathing changed, deepened, and he turned his head towards me and nuzzled my waist.

  “The gown is very pretty,” he said, though his eyes remained closed. He spoke softly, intimately. Obviously it was not my gown he was remarking on, for I was still wearing the old day dress Mariam had found for me, plain, high-necked, too short in the skirt, and far too tight at the breast. “You will make a beautiful bride, but you know I cannot be there.”

  “Why not?” I thought it wisest to humour him.

  “You know why not.” Now he sounded impatient and I immediately regretted my decision. I began stroking his head again and tried to shush him but this time my “magic” failed me. Shaking me off, he sat up, his eyes once more blank and staring, his mouth twisted in agitation. A crack opened in his bottom lip and began to bleed. “Give me your shoes.”

  “What?” He was speaking in Catalan; perhaps I had misunderstood.

  “Your shoes. The ones you will be wearing. Come on, come on, quickly. We haven’t got all day.”

  I took off my shoes and handed them to him. Placing one in his lap and holding on to the other, he began to rummage under the bedclothes with his free hand. “Knife,” he said, “where’s my knife? Lend me yours, sweetheart.”

  I had misgivings, but untied my eating knife from the plaited leather thong which fastened it to my girdle and offered it to him. It was not very sharp; I might do less harm in giving it to him than by withholding it. I watched in astonishment as he set to work on the soles of my shoes, carefully scoring the leather diagonally from heel to toe one way, then the other, the way boar are prepared for roasting.

  “There,” he said, passing the shoes back to me, “now you will not slip when the oaf dances with you. For they’ve been polishing the floors for days, and he can’t be trusted to hold you properly.” As I was putting the shoes back on, for though the soles were ruined, they were better than nothing on the old castle’s cold stone floors, he grabbed my shoulders, his fingers grinding against my bones with unexpected strength. “I am always with you, you see, always watching over you. Never forget.”

  And then he kissed me, a harsh, hungry, furious kiss, his teeth jarring against mine, his tongue scouring my mouth, his heartbeat shuddering against my breastbone. “I’m going now. But don’t worry. We are not like the calf at Caprarola. We won’t die.” He released me, lay down again, turned on his side away from me, and seemed to fall asleep, leaving the taste of his blood on my lips. I was still shaking when Michelotto returned.

  “Here you are.” He put down a jug and basin and a small pile of folded napkins on top of the linen chest at the foot of the bed. “Is everything all right? You look a bit feverish yourself.”

  I told him what had happened. “What can it mean?” I asked.

  Michelotto shrugged. “No idea.” I was sure he was lying, but he was so confident in his lie I knew there was nothing to be gained by challenging it. Later, in the dungeons of the Castel Sant’Angelo, even under torture he never said a word; you might almost have believed, they said, that he had never heard of Cesare Borgia. “He looks peaceful now at any rate.”

  “Yes. I think he’s asleep. Perhaps the fever has broken.” I touched the back of my hand to his forehead. It felt cooler, less clammy. “Will you stay with him? I have to feed Girolamo.” I would not risk the wet nurse taking my place, not after witnessing the way Dorotea Carracciolo had been separated from her daughter. That was not going to happen to me.

  “I will.” He smiled at me, the weathered skin crinkling around his currant eyes. What did this Lucia matter anyway? She was not here, I was.

  “You’ve done well, girl.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  ***

  As it turned out, I did not return that day, or the next, for Girolamo developed a fever and I dared not leave him. On the third day, Monna Vannozza came in person to enquire after him and to ask if there was anything I needed.

  “How is the duke, madama?” I asked, ignoring her request. I was the woman with the healing hands, was I not? What could I possibly need to treat my son? Besides, I was certain Girolamo’s hot cheeks and grizzling discontent were no more than his teeth coming through. Camilla’s nurse, who had brought up five children of her own and nursed three more, had given him a little bone ring to chew, which seemed to soothe him.

  “He is sitting in a chair receiving a deputation from Cardinal Carafa,” she admitted. “I imagine they are discussing the election.” She looked about the packed room for somewhere to sit. The young priest who was attending her finally took the hint and carried a low, three-legged stool across the room, stumbling over bundles of clothing and tangles of bed
ding. She brushed at it vigorously with her hand before lowering herself and smoothing her skirts over her knees. It crossed my mind she must keep the inns she had bought in Rome with Pope Alexander’s money to a very high standard, and woe betide any maid who left a corner undusted or a bed unmade.

  Girolamo turned his head towards his grandmother and levelled his dark, unblinking gaze on her. Did I imagine she shivered a little? A sharp breeze was banging the shutters and billowing among petticoats hanging from a wall hook near one of the slit windows.

  “He ate two bowls of chicken broth with almond milk at breakfast, and tried to demand ham. Ser Torella said he feared it would be unwise,” she continued. “Violante, let me tell you something.” She leaned towards me, elbows resting on her knees, and spoke in a low voice so as not to be overheard by the priest. “I wish he had died in his infancy, as God surely intended. I wish he had not lived to disappoint all my hopes for him.”

  I could not imagine a more terrible and unnatural thing for a mother to say, yet I heard it with something approaching relief because now I knew beyond doubt that she was mad, that whatever she thought of Donna Lucrezia and whatever they used to say about me in the synagogue in Toledo, we were neither of us witches. If Cesare had flattered the fates into doing his will, he had done it alone.

  “I thought he might be pope too, one day, but oh no, he must have other ideas, ideas that were bound to bring him into conflict with his father eventually. And he has always needed Rodrigo’s protection, whatever he thinks.”

  “Surely you cannot believe he was suited to the Church, madama?”

  “He would have been safe there, safe from…her.”

  “Really, Monna Vannozza, I cannot hear more of this. Your illustrious daughter has been kind and generous towards me. She is my godmother and it behoves me to turn my face from what you allege about her. Please…”

  “Very well, I am going, but you are a stupid, naïve girl and you cannot see what is under your nose. The very walls of this place sweat it on wet days. Or perhaps you are merely wilful.” She swept out, almost colliding with Fatima, the swarthy girl who wore earrings made of cascades of tiny gold coins and whose sweat smelled of cumin. The young priest scurried after her, the back of his neck turning red in response to Fatima’s carmined lips and bare arms.

  ***

  Later that day Michelotto sought me out in the scullery where I was washing Girolamo’s clothes. “He’s asking for you,” he told me, propped against the low, arched doorway, a flock of scudding clouds behind his head, steam billowing out where the land fell away in rock and scrub to the stream which fed the castle’s well.

  “I can’t…” I straightened up from the stone sink, pushing damp strands of hair out of my eyes with a hand reddened and pruned as a laundress’s. “I’ll come as soon as I’ve finished here.”

  “Actually, he’s summoned you.” Michelotto sounded almost apologetic. It was a measure of how everything had changed.

  “But…”

  “Well he’s hardly looking his best either.”

  I unwound the sheet I had wrapped around myself to protect my dress and followed him.

  Cesare was seated in a high-backed chair facing the window of his bed chamber. The governor’s apartments had proper windows, partially glazed and overlooking a small garden and the muddle of roofs, terracotta and moss yellow, of the town of Nepi at the foot of the hill. The oblique honey glow of the autumn sun fell on the back of Cesare’s right hand where it rested on the arm of his chair, on the powder burn and a gleam of red gold hair and the sapphire in his wedding ring. The ring was loose and had slipped up towards his knuckle. A small table was drawn up beside the chair, piled with documents whose seals hung from their ribbons like clusters of strange fruit, crimson and purple, yew green and gold, one in Donna Lucrezia’s favourite shade of deep mulberry brown.

  I crossed the room and dropped a curtsey, aware that Michelotto had withdrawn, closing the door behind him.

  “Well, Violante, should I change your name? Should I call you Panaceia, perhaps, or Egeria? They tell me you saved my life.”

  “I think only He who gives life and takes it away could do that, my lord, and I would not presume to say I was His instrument. You are strong, and you have been well cared for.”

  “Oh for God’s sake let’s not have any of this my lording and sparring. Are we not a little beyond that? Did you bring the boy with you? I should like to see him. My mother says he is the very spit of me.”

  Did she indeed? “Now I see you are well enough I will bring him. I was not sure…you never replied to my letter.”

  I felt him willing me to look at him, the way some lepers do when you pass them in the street with your face averted and a kerchief held to your nose and, as with the lepers, I could not.

  “Letter?” He sounded puzzled.

  “I wrote, to tell you I was pregnant. Perhaps it never reached you. I sent…a verse by Pietro Bembo.”

  Silence. I felt utterly foolish. How many girls, I wondered, had written, or paid a scribe to write, or dreamed of writing, such a letter to a man like Cesare? What right had I to think he would remember mine?

  “Oh yes,” he said slowly, then cleared his throat, pleated folds of the loose brocaded gown he was wearing between his fingers, smoothed its sable cuffs. “The verse is not by Bembo.” As if he knew how I had come by it, as if he had found me out. “You should not have sent it. That is why I did not reply.”

  I stared at his hands, opened my mouth to ask why not, saw his fingers curl suddenly into white-knuckled fists, grasping the fabric of his gown as though he would tear it. The words died on my tongue. “I’m sorry,” I whispered and tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry.

  Then he raised his hands in a gesture of dismissal, palms facing out. Pushing me away. “No matter. It’s all water under the bridge now. I should like to see my son.”

  “Now?”

  “Why? Do you think me too ugly? Are you afraid I’ll frighten him?” He gave a harsh laugh. “I notice you will not look at me when not so long since you couldn’t take your great moonstruck eyes off me.”

  I stared at my ruined shoes. Perhaps I was infected by Monna Vannozza’s strange superstitions, but somehow I felt this shrunken, haggard figure, almost swallowed by the high, dark chair in which he was sitting, was not Cesare at all. And if I looked at his face I would know this; I could no longer pretend otherwise, and all my dreams and memories would flee before his dead man’s stare.

  “So you are a latterday Delilah. I am weak, my head is shaved, and you will run to your Philistines.”

  “And at the moment, my lord, I think you are lame in both feet.” For the joints of his feet and ankles, resting on a footstool, were as swollen as his wrists and hands.

  “I cannot follow you.”

  “Only if I go very slowly.”

  “I am in no mood for punning.” Truth to tell, nor was I.

  “Pardon. In Jewish legend, Samson is lame.”

  “Makes you wonder what she saw in him, doesn’t it?” He turned the joke on himself like a torch.

  Now I looked at him, drawn by the sudden return of his old, wry humour, echoes of a time when I did not know I was happy, caught up in the marriage fever at Santa Maria in Portico. The bones of his face were sharp as knives and sometimes, even now, when I am tired, I close my eyes and feel the scars he left there on the undersides of my eyelids. The look he returned me was that of a brave child, determined, uncertain of the future, scared, and defiant. With each unmasking, each layer of glamour stripped away, I seemed to understand him less.

  “Sit down, Violante,” he said. I found a stool and dragged it into the window embrasure where his chair had been placed. I sat down and waited. He fiddled with his ring, smoothed his cuffs, and said, finally, “The children are important to me.”

  “Of course they are. You must have heirs.”

  “True, but that’s not what I meant.” He paused, as though he was unsure what he meant, then
began again. “When Juan was made gonfalonier, my father commissioned a new setting of the Beatus Vir for the service. After Juan died, and the honour fell to me, he had the same piece performed at my investiture. And now he’s dead and I could never make him love me enough; I was always just Juan’s substitute. Less good looking, less charming, less easy to love. I didn’t matter enough to have new music written for me. The things I was better at—strategy, tactics, politics, government, diplomacy—they only mattered in my father’s mind, not in his heart. He never sent for me when he knew he was dying. All the time I lay sick, just one floor above him, and he never sent to find out how I was. I couldn’t make a place for myself in his heart and now it’s too late. He’s gone. Dust. Do you see?” Stone words, too perfectly sculpted.

  Something inside me clenched, made a hard knot in my belly. “Do you know why I’m here, Cesare?”

  He shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about it, to be honest.”

  “Donna Lucrezia sent me back to my father. Because of Girolamo.”

  “Girolamo? That is the boy’s name?”

  “Girolamo Giulio Cesare. Don Giulio d’Este is his godfather.”

  “Good. Giulio is an honest man. So why are you not at your father’s house?”

  “Because when I arrived there I found my father had died, and my brother would not receive me. Because of you.”

  “Me?”

  “My father suffered a seizure after your men came to…” I paused, breathed, tried to steady my voice, “…collect taxes, as I believe they put it. They even took the menorah we brought from Spain, my mother and I. To pay for your soldiers. I travelled through the Romagna to get to Rome, of course. I saw soldiers, though I tried to keep out of their way. They were not behaving like men who had been well paid, Cesare.”