Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  Gideon lay his rod aside and climbed the bank towards me. He had removed his doublet. His shirt was so worn I could clearly see the dark circles of his nipples and a smudge of chest hair through the fabric. A gold ornament on a chain swung free of his loosened collar as he climbed. I thought of covering myself but my arms seemed too heavy to lift in the sultry heat. As he knelt in front of me, his face in its frame of dark curls was that of a slightly battered angel, but men’s bodies are not subtle, and the humanity of his intent was obvious. Reaching forward, he brushed the inside of my knee with the tips of his fingers, then took hold of the hem of my skirt and pulled it down to my ankles.

  “You never know,” he said, “who might be passing.”

  I felt dirty and ashamed, and seemed to catch a glimpse of Cesare laughing at me from his castle in Spain. You made me, my heart snapped back, knowing in the same instant that he would have said we make ourselves.

  “It’s so hot.”

  Gideon had the grace to ignore my lame apology. “Let’s eat,” he said, “before it gets any hotter.” He knelt on the rug, rolled up his sleeves, and handed me a hunk of bread piled with cheese and olives. “Not as elegant as the duke’s dinner table, I’m afraid.” His hand was trembling.

  ***

  When the meal was over, we lay side by side on the crumb-strewn blanket, eyes closed, listening to the murmur of the river and the occasional splash of the fish in Gideon’s keepnet. The birds had stopped singing in the noon heat, and the docks downstream had fallen silent. The broken glitter of sunlight through the willow branches flickered red through my closed eyelids. Except for Gideon’s breathing beside me, I might have been alone in the universe. After a little while, I felt the back of Gideon’s hand brush my own, a cautious pressure more of air than muscle and bone.

  “Violante?”

  “Mmm?”

  “What is your given name?”

  Cocooned in my sense of solitude, I had no objection to telling him because, somehow, it would only feel like telling myself. But as I brought my old name to consciousness, I suddenly doubted my ability to say it.

  “I’d like to know,” he persisted, sensing my hesitation.

  “Why?”

  “Because Violante is a cruel nickname. It pains me to use it.”

  “It’s just an irony, Gideon.” But it was not; it had been true then, and my inconsequential investment, my flirtatious failure to reply to an invitation to the races, had paid me interest many times over. I was not going to break any more promises. “It’s Esther,” I said. “My name is Esther Sarfati.”

  “You see?” He curled his fingers around my palm. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

  A sudden dimming of the light made me open my eyes. Gideon had turned on to his side and lay facing me, his cheek propped against his left fist. The dappled light spilled around him, making it hard for me to see his face clearly. “Will you marry me, Esther Sarfati?” he asked.

  I laughed at the absurdity of his question. “You do not want to marry me, Gideon.” I could not even go through the motions of thanking him or telling him he honoured me. “You do not know me.”

  “I know you are clever and beautiful and it gladdens my heart to be in your company.”

  “I have no money, you know, no family.”

  “If I had been concerned about a dowry, I would have gone to the duchess first.” He would too, I thought, squinting up at him against the sun. There could not have been a man in Italy more oblivious to the workings of a court. He probably needed a woman like me to protect him from himself. “I can earn my living, and yours,” he went on. “You are not one of those frivolous girls, are you?”

  I shook my head. “I am not a girl at all.” I was twenty years old then. I might as well have been ninety.

  “At least do me the courtesy of thinking about my proposal.”

  “I must do you the greater courtesy of declining it. Believe me, Gideon, I am not what you want.”

  “You say these things, but you show me no evidence. Without evidence, how am I to believe marriage to you would be such a terrible mistake? We live in a scientific age, Esther. It is knowledge that matters. Tell me something about yourself. Justify your assertion.”

  If I told him about Cesare and Girolamo, that would be sure to put an end to his interest in me. I opened my eyes and looked at him, as if I might read in his face the kind of knowledge that would satisfy him. A cloud drifted past the back of his head. Its shape reminded me of a woman’s breast. “All right,” I said, “here is something I know. Don Cristoforo Colon once wrote to Isabella the Catholic that his travels had led him to conclude that the earth is shaped like a woman’s breast.”

  Gideon was not impressed. “That is either no secret at all, or not yours to tell.”

  “I assure you it is a secret. I do not think the Inquisition would like such a thing to be widely known or believed. And I had it from a source who is very good at finding out secrets. As the source was mine, then the secret is mine.”

  “An argument, I grant you, though perhaps not irrefutable.”

  “Is any argument? Now it’s your turn. What will you tell me about yourself?”

  He sat up, removed the gold chain from his neck and placed it in my hand, the ornament warm as a living thing in my cupped palm. It was made of three concentric circles with a triangle at their centre and linked by figures I recognised as Hebrew characters. “That is my secret,” he said, in a tone which made it clear he was showing me something of great importance to him.

  “What is it?” I felt stupid, and somewhat guilty at having palmed him off with Cesare’s pretty, and probably untrue, seduction.

  “It is a symbol of knowledge. Special knowledge, vouchsafed only to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.”

  A lock was unfastening, a door sliding open in my memory, of serious men who used to visit my father in our house in Toledo in the months before he left for Rome. I fancied I had seen some of them again there. My father never kept a very strict house, but when these men visited, I was always banished from the public rooms. One of them, I seemed to recall, came from Cordoba.

  “Is it something to do with the Cordoban?”

  “Shhh.” He replaced the chain around his neck. “Do not mention him. Perhaps it would be best if you forgot altogether that I had shown you the symbol.”

  “Then why did you show it to me?”

  “Because I thought…wondered if it might be familiar to you.”

  I shook my head. “The characters are Hebrew, aren’t they? How many women do you know who can read Hebrew? My father was an enlightened man, but there are limits.”

  “The characters themselves matter less than how they are placed, what they represent. They show the universe. The letters at the centre name the Unnameable, that’s why I keep the ornament hidden.”

  “Yet you would uncover it for me?”

  “I want you to understand. That I’m not just who I appear to be.”

  That was something I understood very well.

  “Because you aren’t either, I don’t think,” he went on. “But what this does,” he lifted the ornament clear of his throat and held it towards me, “is teach us that a time is coming when we can be ourselves. When we’ll no longer have to disguise ourselves to realise our true potential.”

  I sat up, suddenly alarmed. “Gideon, are you talking about rebellion? Because if you are I must warn you I can’t hear of it. Whatever you think of my position, Donna Lucrezia has been good to me. Besides, I do not know how things are in Mantua, but in Ferrara the Jews are treated well. Why upset the apple cart?”

  “Well, Esther? You think the Jews are treated well? Even in our own land of Israel we are outcasts. We have to bow the knee to the Christian pope on one hand and the Sultan on the other. We are harried from pillar to post, crammed into the oldest and worst housing, excluded from public office, blamed for everything from the plague to crop failures.” And malformed calves, I thought, though I kept
silent and let him exhaust his theme. “You call that being well treated? I tell you, when we are ready in the Lord’s sight and the Messiah comes, you’ll see some changes.”

  “Oh, I shall probably go up in flames with the Christians and the Musselmen.”

  “Don’t be flippant,” he said gently. “I haven’t expressed myself well. Of course I know messianic talk is ridiculous. The Messiah is not a man, not even a god dressed in a man’s clothes. Messiah is a state of mind, a readiness, an openness. What the Cordoban teaches us is to look for opportunities and take them when and where we find them. That’s what I’m offering you, Esther, an opportunity.”

  “For what? To marry you and be a good Jewish wife with two sets of cooking pots and a mezuzah on every doorpost? Or to turn against my duchess? For all her sins, she is my mother in Christ, Gideon, and she and her family have given me more than my own ever did.” I rose to my knees and began cramming the remains of our picnic into the basket, squashing cheeses and bruising fruit instead of hitting Gideon, which was what I felt like doing. “Now I should like to go home.”

  “Your wish is my command, madam,” he said, rocking onto his haunches then springing to his feet and making me a deep bow.

  “Stop it!” I tried to fasten the basket, but I could not push down the lid. Yanking on the toggle, I succeeded only in snapping it off. I shook as though I had an ague, and wondered if I were indeed coming down with a fever. Gideon took the basket from me and, with a few deft twists, managed to re-attach the toggle. He offered me his arm, but I rose unaided and set off towards the city without even waiting for him to gather up his rods or haul in his keep net. We strode in silence towards the deserted docks, past the duke’s jetty, past gulls roosting on bollards and stevedores sleeping away the afternoon in the shade of the warehouses. A series of grunts and squeals drew my attention to a jade entertaining a customer up against a tree trunk, her grey, pitted thighs locked around his waist, his plump buttocks flexing and shuddering. My skin crawled with a thousand emotions, as though I had been flayed in an ice bath like Cesare.

  It was not until we were almost in sight of the Porta Mare I realised Gideon was not carrying any fish, and broke the volcanic silence between us to ask him what had happened to them.

  He shrugged. “I had to leave them. You didn’t leave me time to stun them all and pack them up.”

  “What a waste.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  CHAPTER 4

  FERRARA, CORPUS CHRISTI 1506

  We have never hidden things from one another. That is our unique strength, for we have both had to be adept at hiding truths from others.

  I did not see Gideon again for some months. Our life continued serenely enough in the duke’s apartments in the Corte, but now I look back, I can see our peaceful routine was like the smooth surface of a sea concealing fierce currents.

  Madonna had become inseparable from Ippolito, with whom she shared the governance of the state while the duke was away. A frequent, if improbable, third member of their regency was little Giovanni, who had been allowed to stay in Ferrara. I consoled myself with the thought that the duke must think madonna’s little brother less of a threat than Cesare’s son. Madonna took a close interest in his education and believed he could learn much from witnessing the day-to-day management of the duchy, though he usually looked very bored and often distracted proceedings by dropping his toys or asking how much longer he must sit there. Madonna was all smiling patience with him. Whatever Ippolito thought, he kept it to himself.

  Not only did he and Donna Lucrezia work together, receiving embassies, holding courts, reviewing the city’s defences, but often dined together as well, laughing at the duke’s letters, which recounted in robust detail his adventures in the Adriatic with a couple of Venetian sea captains he had picked up at Lanciano, and planning the entertainments for Corpus Christi. Angela was never far from Ippolito’s side either, with her husband safely in his mother’s house at Sassuolo and her daughter still in the country.

  My own part in court life was a less prominent one, of necessity, since I still carried letters to and from Don Francesco between madonna and Ercole Strozzi. I was still expected to listen, when no one else would, to her schemes for obtaining Cesare’s release, to read over and approve the pathetic appeals she made to King Ferdinand, relying on a kinship which everyone but the Borgias themselves knew to be an invention. She even wrote to Pope Julius, who no doubt prayed daily that imprisonment would take its toll on Valentino and speed him to an early grave. He had been in prison for two years now, and still no date had been set to try him for the crimes with which he was charged. Since the letters brought by Sancho, we had heard nothing of him, or, if madonna had news, she did not share it with me.

  She was punctilious, however, in letting me know how my son progressed at Carpi. He had shown himself precociously intelligent, she said, and could already identify the letters of his name written on a slate. Don Alberto had acquired a pony for him, and had led him over some small jumps without mishap. Don Alberto’s wife and her ladies were enchanted with him though the servants less so.

  “He sounds more like Juan than Cesare,” she remarked, knitting her brows in a brief, troubled frown. Or Little Haim, I thought, who used to drive Mariam to distraction with his disorderliness and the variety of tricks he could devise involving slimy creatures or large insects.

  Ferrante came to court irregularly, and was not much company when he did. His Vittorio seemed to have evaporated along with everything else of Cesare’s except his place in his sister’s heart, which had plunged Ferrante into a febrile irritability I recognised only too well. I suppose he had other boys, but they were not Vittorio. He remained quietly mutinous at the way everybody seemed to ignore Giulio, watching Ippolito and Donna Lucrezia with a cynical twist to his mouth which disfigured his broad, pleasant face almost as much as Ippolito’s assassins had disfigured Giulio. Eventually, he tried to talk to her. If Ippolito had not been there, if she had been able to speak freely, many things might have turned out differently.

  Madonna held her daily audiences in the castle, in the Sala Grande. She and Ippolito sat on a dais at the far end of the room, madonna dwarfed by the duke’s high-backed throne, her feet resting on a gilt and crimson footstool because they could not reach the floor. Ippolito’s clerks stood behind him; Giovanni and those of us who were in attendance on madonna sat on cushions before the throne, just as she used to do when she attended her father’s audiences as a girl. Guards were posted on the main doors and the smaller ones behind us which led to the room used by the Savi as a robing room. The times being as uncertain as they were, we also had soldiers stationed at intervals along the walls.

  That morning, Ferrante waited at the back of the hall until all the other petitioners had been heard. Once the room had emptied he walked forward, the thud of his boots against the floorboards echoing from the frescoed walls and vaulted ceiling. Snatching off the voluminous cap which had given him a semblance of anonymity, he made a deep bow. Ippolito shifted in his chair like a man suffering from piles, but madonna bestowed her most charming smile on Ferrante. “Brother,” she said, “we welcome you.”

  Ferrante stepped on to the dais and knelt to kiss her hand, but she stood up, raised him to his feet, and kissed both his cheeks, standing on tiptoe to reach them. He flicked a glance in my direction.

  “How can I help you, Ferrante?” enquired madonna. “It distresses me you feel you must wait your turn among all those people complaining about their stolen goats and the state of the city middens. You know you have my ear at any time. Isn’t that so, cardinal?”

  Ippolito made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat that could have been interpreted as assent. Ferrante did not so much as glance at him.

  “I am here on behalf of Don Giulio,” he began.

  “Could he not come himself? Is he ill again?” Before he left, the duke had made it clear Giulio was free to come and go as he pleased. Duke Alfonso did
not, he had made plain, attach any credence to rumours of plots against him. He trusted his brothers as was proper. The strengthening of the garrison was a natural precaution during his absence.

  “He will not leave his palace, madonna. He prefers to spend his time with his horses or among his plants than at court where he is afraid people will look at him. I fear his pride is slower to heal than his body.”

  “Poor Giulio.”

  “You could do much to alleviate his suffering by visiting him, sister.”

  “Can we go? It’s boring here,” said Giovanni. He was always an insensitive child, lacking the instinct for adult moods most children seem to develop in order to survive. I shushed him and tried to distract him with a little wooden knight on horseback he had with him.

  Madonna’s gaze flicked uncertainly in Ippolito’s direction. “Yes…yes, I must do that soon.”

  “He feels much aggrieved that so little has been done for him. He has, like myself and Sigismondo, only the house and pension left him by our father and now no means of augmenting it with spoils of war or an advantageous marriage.”

  “Neither does Sigismondo,” Ippolito responded.

  “With respect, your grace, his case is somewhat different. He has no obligation to maintain the same standard of household as Giulio. His needs are as simple as he is, if you will. Perhaps…a benefice or two? Our brother feels he might well take holy orders. He is a devout man as you know, and his love of music would stand him in good stead in the Church. With the right level of income he might become a considerable patron of devotional music.”

  “You expect me to share my living with him?”

  “Some might say there is some justice in that. Others might say Christ’s servants on earth have a duty to emulate Him.”

  “You speak wisely, Ferrante,” said madonna. “I will write to my husband on the matter.”