Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  “What happened?” called Jofre.

  “Damned if I know.”

  “Well I do,” called a voice from the floor. “The rabbit exploded. I’ve got half-cooked meat all over me and…silver rain drops?”

  “Mercury,” said Cesare. “You put mercury in the belly of the rabbit, then cook it, and it leaps as if it’s still alive. I wanted to see if it worked before trying it out on my guests.”

  “Oh really,” said Monna Vannozza, turning to leave, the throng parting before her. I looked at my baby’s tear-stained face and wondered how long it would be before he was contriving jokes and I was failing to see the humour of them because all I could see was the danger, the awful fragility of his life.

  “Is he all right? I’m sorry if he was frightened.” Cesare’s voice, close now. I looked down from my vantage point at his upturned face, both remorseful and amused. He held out his hand and steadied me as I jumped down. “I had no idea mercury did that when it got hot. I’ve only come across it warmed before, in the baths Torella prescribed for me.” He cleared his throat. “The pills…? They are working?”

  “I am quite well, thank you.”

  “Good. Yes, I remember Sandro Farnese, you know, Giulia’s brother, telling me he’d seen this trick done with chickens and I’d always fancied trying it.” He grinned his boy’s grin, and kept hold of my hand so I had no option but to go with him as he left the dining hall. I felt the eyes of the household on my back, jostling me with their speculations, and wrestled against the temptation to whirl around and shout at them. This means nothing, I would say. I am no different from any of you. Leave me alone. Stop giving me hope.

  But I said nothing. I loved the warmth of his hand and its firm grip, and the whisper of my shoulder brushing his upper arm, and how I matched my steps to his as we walked. At the foot of the stairs leading up to his private apartments he paused and said, “I have work to do now, but I was wondering. After the party, will you have supper with me? Privately?” He nodded in the direction of the upstairs rooms. My throat squeezed shut with excitement. Unable to speak, I tried to smile, uncertain if my body would obey me even that far.

  Cesare gave me a quizzical look, eyebrows raised. “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes,” I managed, in a strangled squawk, and fled before I would be obliged to say anything else.

  ***

  There were to be no women guests at Cesare’s party, in deference to the cardinals he had invited he said, wearing his new piety on his sleeve like a lady’s favour. Because there is hard business to be done, was what he meant. Because Pius is old and feeble and Della Rovere still prowls around my house like a hungry wolf. My own preparations, however, were as intense and frenetic as though I were to be the guest of honour.

  A suitable gown was my most pressing requirement. The skirt and bodice I had taken from Donna Lucrezia’s discarded wardrobe at Nepi were showing signs of wear, the skirt hem frayed and dusty, the bodice milk-stained. But I had neither time nor money to acquire anything new. The memory of all the dresses and jewels I had left in Ferrara nagged at me, made me ache for a while with impotent frustration before I shook myself free of my inertia and set about begging and borrowing what I could from the other women in the household. I pretended it was simply a matter of needing a change of clothes while I cleaned and mended those I had brought from Nepi, but no one was fooled; they had all seen Cesare holding my hand; they had all seen us talking at the foot of his private stairs.

  Some sulked and refused to help; others caught my excitement and together we set to work with needle and thread and what we could scrounge from our own resources, barter for in the markets, or steal from owners sunk in self-pity. Since the death of Tiresias, Cesare had ordered his leopards confined to their cages once more, so on fine days a group of us would sit in the garden, with Camilla and Girolamo, and sometimes Giovanni, playing on a rug in the centre of our circle as we stitched and gossiped. A taut, singing thread of possibility bound us. It was easy to tell what the others were thinking from the fever in their eyes and the flights of fancy in their conversation. I might have my turn this time, but what about the next, and the time after that? Their sultan had signified his intent to visit the harem, and they had begun jostling for position like pigeons in an overcrowded loft.

  I did not mind. I could afford to be generous. One afternoon, Fatima offered to read my fortune from the tarocchi. As everyone else then began to clamour for their own reading, she kept it simple, using only the Major Arcana in a three-card spread. She turned up first The High Priestess, with her Torah in her lap, second The Lovers, and finally The Emperor; you did not need to be an expert to see what was signified. So I scarcely listened to her interpretation; I refused to see the look in her eyes as she spoke of choices and dualities and the fine line between wisdom and madness, and how power cannot always be controlled.

  On the day before the party, I scrounged a lemon from the kitchens, squeezed its juice into a basin of water, and washed my hair with a sliver of rose-scented soap I had been hoarding because it was of a make favoured by Angela and reminded me of her. I braided my hair while it was still wet to put a little curl into it, then sat before the brazier in the little room Girolamo and I had to ourselves and rubbed the lemon shells over my skin to whiten it while my hair dried. My face and forearms were unacceptably brown from all the riding and walking I had done since leaving Medelana.

  On the afternoon of the party itself, while Cesare’s guests arrived in a chaos of shouting grooms, jangling harness, and the thud of litters banged down on the flagstones, I stripped and washed my body carefully with the remainder of the soap. Its musky perfume made me yearn for Angela. How much more fun this would be if she were here with her outspoken advice on the arts of love, her long, strong fingers whose tips were always slightly calloused from her guitar playing riffling through my jewellery box, her way of whirling around the room with different combinations of skirts and bodices, chemises and fichus held up against her while she decided what looked best. I glanced down at the untidy triangle of dark hair masking my woman’s parts and the down on my calves. It was as bad under my arms. I needed hot wax and scissors, but had neither. Besides, if I waxed myself now I would end up looking like a fresh plucked chicken.

  “He’d probably make me swallow mercury and put a light under me,” I said to my uncomprehending son, who continued to be engrossed in his efforts to push himself up on his arms.

  I managed to tidy my garden a little with the aid of a comb and my meat knife, and consoled myself with the thought that darkness would have fallen by the time he…by the time we… And besides, he would probably be a little drunk. I dressed slowly, to eke out the long afternoon, straightening all the tiny bows on my clean linen, smoothing my silk hose, only slightly worn about at the knees. As I tightened my corset, I paid special attention to the way it pushed up my breasts to show them to their best advantage. Although Girolamo was mostly weaned now, I still fed him myself occasionally at night so my breasts remained full and firm and the nipples nicely defined, carrying in their nerve ends the memory of my lover’s tongue and fingertips and his strange knowledge of the personal letters of Don Cristoforo Colon.

  Finally I stepped into my skirt of primrose satin skimped with gold lace panels, fastened my bodice of apple green brocade, front laced so I could manage it myself, put on the peach silk shoes which pinched my toes only a little, and sat down to wait. For what? What would happen next? Would one of his slaves be sent for me? Did Cesare even know where my room was located in this warren of a palace whose shape seemed to shift day by day? How long would his party last? I tried to estimate the number of courses, and how long each would take, and the entertainments between them, and then how long Cesare would have to spend talking to each of these men, thanking his friends and flattering his enemies. Surely it would all take most of the night and then he would be too exhausted to entertain me to supper. Or he would simply forget he had asked me.

  I wished I had some
distraction, some needlework or a book to read. I had, for once, allowed Girolamo into the care of Camilla’s nurse so I did not even have him to play with or sing to or soothe to sleep as the square of light from my small window dimmed, then flared orange as torches were lit in the courtyard. I got up to light my own candle, pausing by my washing bowl to look at my reflection in the surface of the water as I had no mirror. The water was clouded with a scum of soap so it was like looking at myself through a fog, but even so, even in the flattering glow of my candle and the torchlight from my window, I could see how my features had sharpened and aged in the past few months, how I had come to resemble my mother.

  I reared back as though a fist had emerged from the water and punched me. What would my mother think of me, dressed in my low-cut gown and cheap jewellery like a streetwalker. Eli had been right to bar me entry to his house and keep his wife hidden from me. But then again, if my family had not been so eager to exploit my prettiness, I would be a good Jewish wife by now, observing kashrut, teaching my children their Torah, lighting my candles on Shabbat. And I was not a whore. I had but one lover, had never so much as glanced at another man, and had given him his only son. To all intents and purposes, and despite his French princess, I was Cesare’s wife.

  So there was nothing to stop me making my own way to his apartments. I had no need to wait for a summons as if I were some slave girl he might look to for necessary relief. I would simply make my way to his rooms and wait for him, and if he kept me waiting too long I might even send a slave myself to remind him of his obligation.

  “Well, no need to ask where you’re going in your finery with your hair all crimped.” Monna Vannozza. She stood at the foot of the private staircase flanked by two of the Swiss guards like a small crow courted by a brace of parrots. As she looked me up and down in contemptuous silence, I could hear the muffled hubbub of conversation from the dining hall and delicate scents of vanilla and beeswax reached my nose, a combination which to this day makes me think of chestnuts. “I dare say he’ll keep you waiting,” she went on. “There is more at stake here than your fluttering heart.”

  “Of course I know that, madama; I am not stupid.”

  “Yet you put on a good pretence of it. Violante, walk with me a moment.” She took my arm, not too firmly but with a demeanour that made it plain she did not expect me to resist, and led me out of earshot of the guards, into an alcove which housed a classical Venus without arms.

  “I have spoken to you of the danger I believe you present to my son,” she began, “and you have chosen to pursue your own selfish course despite me. Perhaps, then, you will listen if I tell you I believe you and your son are at risk from him.” She paused, scratching at the dust caught in the folds of the Venus’ draperies with a slightly yellowed nail. “My son is a passionate man, Violante.”

  I wanted to say, I know, but then I realised. I had seen Cesare angry and wilful; I had known him flirtatious and seductive, and helpless with laughter, but not passionate, never that. He had, it seemed to me now, something cold, detached, and analytical at his core, a kind of personal Dis where all passion would freeze. If he were capable of it, I wanted to find out for myself, not stand beneath a marble Venus and be told by his mother. “I must go,” I said.

  “Wait, let me finish. This…passion of his, there is no other word for it. It is something very particular, and very deep. Hidden, perhaps, where you do not see it. But I do, and I see it sucking you in. You are like a small boat in the vortex of a sinking ship. Take heed of me. Go back to your own room, I beg you.”

  If she had spoken as plainly about Cesare’s passion as it was her custom to speak about most things, perhaps I would have done as she asked. Perhaps not. This pleading without substance merely aroused my spite. “Did you think taking him off to Mass every morning was going to make him change his ways?” I snapped. “Did you imagine he would be asking Pope Pius to restore his red hat rather than the white lance?”

  To my astonishment, she gave a snort of laughter. “I am not a fool, girl, and I understand Cesare a good deal better than you do. He goes to church not to be seen by God but by the men close to our new Holy Father. Pius is as pious does and he surrounds himself with devout servants. I believe Cesare even took Holy Communion with him just before the coronation. I’ll wager there was some merriment in Hades that day. I believe it is a measure of Our Lord’s compassion my son did not choke on the sacrament.”

  A measure more, I thought, of Cesare’s lack of belief, for anyone who paused to reflect on the notion that the bread and wine were miraculously transformed into a man’s flesh and blood when the priest said his words over them was bound to choke. But I was in no mood for theology. “Well, you know how Cesare loves his food. And so I must not keep him waiting for his supper. Excuse me, madama.” I pushed past her out of the alcove. Wrong footed by my rudeness, she let me pass.

  ***

  I need not have worried about keeping Cesare from his supper. Apart from the guard on his door, who recognised what I was there for even if he did not know who I was, and stood aside for me with an unmistakable leer, the private apartments were deserted. A fire burned in the reception room, by whose light I saw a low table spread for two with delicate porcelain and gold cutlery. There were even forks, I noted with some misgivings, for I was not very adept in the use of forks. Don Alfonso had brought some from Venice shortly before I left Ferrara, and though we had all tried them at private dinners in Donna Lucrezia’s apartments, most of us had made a pretty poor fist of it and ended up dropping our food in our laps.

  I took a spill from an alabaster vase standing on the hearth and lit the candles, trimmed and pristine in an ornate silver-gilt stand. The clean, sweet scent of beeswax mingled with pine resin from the smouldering spill and a wraith of jasmine which set up a starved tingling in my women’s parts. I sat down on one of the divans arranged along two sides of the table, my hands squeezed between my thighs to stop them shaking. Desire fluttered in my belly like a trapped moth. Never mind the forks, I thought, for I would have no appetite for food. Wine shimmered honey gold in a crystal jug, but I dared not pour myself a goblet in case I spilled any. I looked around the room in the hope of finding something to distract me.

  It was richly furnished, the wall panels decorated with scenes from the life of Caesar, the ceiling studded with gilded bosses which featured bulls and lilies and Saint Peter’s keys. A set of ebony chairs inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl stood sentinel around the walls, and the divan where I was seated and its companion were upholstered in Alexandrine velvet. A motto was carved into a marble panel set above the fireplace: Aut Caesar, aut nihil. Caesar or nothing. Nothing, I thought, casting my eyes once more around the elegant, empty room, a stage awaiting its principle actor.

  A log collapsed in the fireplace in a shower of sparks. I raked the embers and tossed in another from the copper log box on the hearth. As the heat intensified and the candles burned down, my eyelids grew heavy, but I had to stay awake. What would Cesare think if he found me asleep? Taking one of the candles from the massive candelabrum I determined to explore. After all, it was only a small set of rooms, and I would easily hear his tread on the stairs, the clatter of arms as his guard came to attention. I would have plenty of time to return to the reception room and arrange myself on the divan as though I had never stirred from it.

  The rooms were linked by doors of walnut, first a small bureau containing a work table set with writing materials. A magnifying lens lay on top of an open book, a Euclid by the looks of it, or perhaps a Vitruvius, for it was filled with annotated diagrams and only sparse lines of Latin text. Vitruvius, Donna Lucrezia used to say, was her brother’s Bible and guns his Holy Apostles preaching their gospel of power and destruction. There was also a locked book case, its contents chained behind ornate brass grilles, their jewelled bindings giving off a sullen glint in the light of my candle. Such valuable texts had perhaps come from the library at Urbino. The thought sent a frisson of unease through m
e as I pushed open the next door and found myself on the threshold of my lover’s bedroom.

  And there I stayed, held fast by an overwhelming sense of intrusion. I felt like a child who has inadvertently stumbled on her parents making love. Why? Was this not where I wanted to be, where Cesare intended me to be? I stared at the bed, its curtains tied back to reveal perfectly plumped pillows, silk sheets and a brocade coverlet turned down at one corner. I longed to lie on it, to lift the sheets and slide under them, to rest my head on the pillows just as he did each night, yet I was barred by its complete impersonality. Not a single crease or indentation betrayed the fact that anyone had ever slept in this bed, dreamed or made love in it, or simply stared into the dark and waited for the night to end. It might almost have been put there along with the gold forks and the new candles, to set the stage for a seduction.

  Yet the jasmine scent was stronger here, drawing me into the room. A fire was lit here too, and by its uncertain, flickering light I saw faces gazing down at me from the walls, mocking, impassive, eyeless. They flashed sudden, toothless grins, made soundless screams, pouted at me enigmatically with ruby lips. Though I knew they were hanging from the walls, they seemed nevertheless to be hovering just in front of them, challenging my sense of the possible and bringing to mind Monna Vannozza and her stories of spells and changelings.

  But Monna Vannozza was as mad as Don Sigismondo and I knew what they were, these glowing faces. They were masks, gold masks. No doubt they were the masks made by Fidelma’s brother and given to Cesare by Donna Isabella. I smiled to imagine her expression if she knew he had used them to decorate his bedroom, that den of mysterious vices. I walked slowly around the walls, holding my candle up to each of them, admiring the wit and delicacy of the worksmanship, the tiny quirks of expression which had made them spring to life in the firelight.

  Hanging right beside his bed, where a pious man might hang a crucifix, was a mask shaped like a skull, the jaw articulated with tiny gold pins and set with mother of pearl teeth. A diamond was mounted in one of the canines, giving the skull’s grin a certain roguish charm. This death’s head had the sort of smile which forced you to smile back. Tomorrow morning, I asked it, reaching up to touch the fine sweep of the cheekbone, will I wake up looking at you? If not tomorrow, one day, you may be sure, the skull replied. The fire popped and spat, the wax in my candle sizzled softly before spilling over on to my hand where it stiffened and dried. The silence left by Cesare’s absence blanketed everything as I made my way back to the reception room, carefully closing each door behind me.