Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  “With respect, duchesa,” said Ippolito, “you will find he is of the same mind as I am in this matter. Don Giulio and I have mended our differences. I have apologised for my rash and unfraternal behaviour. Don Giulio is taken care of. And while he may not soldier again, I believe there is nothing to stop him marrying. A man does not need his eyes to get heirs. In some cases, I’ll wager, he is better off without them.”

  Madonna greeted Ippolito’s joke with a faint smile. “If that is your word, cardinal, then I am afraid I can do no more. Ferrante; please tell Giulio I…grieve for him.”

  “And his daughter, madonna? Can he at least see her?”

  “I am afraid that decision must rest with Don Alessandro Pio, brother, for he is now her legal guardian. Donna Angela…Donna Angela might fear the effect of her father’s injuries on the child’s health. I am sorry.”

  Ferrante turned very pale; the freckles scattered over the bridge of his nose seemed almost blue. He looked at us all, so prettily arranged on our dais, with an expression of such contempt it made me blush, then bowed and stalked off.

  “Do not turn your back on me,” Ippolito shouted after him, but he did not appear to hear.

  “What a pity,” Giovanni whispered. “I hoped there was going to be a fight.”

  “There might still,” one of the new girls whispered back. She looked barely out of childhood herself.

  As soon as the doors were closed, Donna Lucrezia turned on Ippolito. “Everything you have said might have been calculated to make things worse. Was that your intention? If so, I doubt Alfonso will be very impressed.”

  “You think not? He knows as well as I do the pair of them are up to something. The sooner they’re flushed out the better.”

  My cheeks burned. I busied myself with Giovanni and hoped Ippolito would not notice.

  “You don’t think, perhaps, the most effective way to win them over would be to do something for Giulio?” said madonna. “What about the archbishopric here? That would be a nice gesture.”

  Ippolito glared at the top of Giovanni’s head. “As long as you are duchess here, I doubt the Holy Father will listen to any entreaties from this family.”

  “Is that a threat, your grace?”

  “Of course not.”

  They eyed one another up for a moment like a couple of prizefighters, then madonna said, “Well, if we have no more business for this morning I shall ride out to the Barco to look at the condition of the race course. My ladies will want to know which way to bet on the Corpus Christi races. And you too eh, Gi’anni?” She patted her brother’s head, smiled at us, then rose, gathered her skirts, and swept past Ippolito to the small door at the back of the dais which gave on to the robing room.

  ***

  As soon as we had returned to the privacy of her apartments, and Giovanni had been sent to his mathematics tutor, she gave vent to her fury. She paced the floor, raking a hand through her hair until I thought we would be more likely to spend the afternoon re-dressing it than riding in the Barco.

  “Why must I be plagued by quarrelling brothers?” She shook her head and sighed and muttered to herself, and finally came to a halt in front of me. Drawing me out of earshot of the rest of her ladies she commanded me to go to Giulio. “Ask him, no, tell him from me that he must leave the city as soon as he can. He should go to Mantua. Donna Isabella will look after him and I will put in a word for him with Don Francesco.”

  “Is that wise, madonna, given the letter I showed you?”

  “I will speak frankly with you, Violante, as there is no point in doing otherwise. I have addressed that business in my correspondence with Don Francesco, and he assures me he has no intention of scheming any further against my husband. He appreciates it puts me in an impossible position and says he was motivated merely by a jealousy which, though flattering to me, is unworthy of him. I have his word as a man of honour.”

  “Will you give me a note for Don Giulio, madonna?”

  “I think not. We must have nothing in writing if we can avoid it. Show him this as a signal of my good intent.” She removed a large pearl from her bodice which had been a wedding gift from Giulio and handed it to me.

  “I will be back within the hour, madonna, before anyone can notice I am gone.”

  ***

  I arrived at Giulio’s palace to be told he was in the Temple of the Graces. This was a summer house he had built at the foot of a stepped water feature that cascaded the length of his garden. A fountain of spewing bronze dolphins screened it from the house, and it stood at the centre of a box knot garden in the English style. Its entrance, pillared and porticoed in pink-veined marble, faced away from the palace over rolling parkland where Giulio kept deer and miniature horses, and a giraffe in a sort of giant aviary made of silver wire. I knew Giulio’s garden well, so I made my way to the temple unaccompanied.

  As I approached the entrance I thought I could hear the murmur of voices, but Giulio’s majordomo had not mentioned other visitors so I thought it must be a trick of the water splashing from the fountain. Stepping under the portico, I called out to him. There was no reply, but I could definitely hear voices now, and as I followed the sound across the atrium where Giulio kept his collection of classical sculpture, an eerie, guttural growling joined them, as though someone were strangling a dog. I hesitated, then quickened my pace.

  I found Giulio in the long, bright room which would have been the sanctuary had his temple been a real one. He was stooped intently over the “altar.” A rough-looking mongrel lay there on its side, surrounded by an array of jars and basins and a large stone pestle and mortar such as you might find in an apothecary’s shop. The dog’s head rested in a pool of drying vomit; its eyes were fixed open and had the dull glaze of those glass pebbles you sometimes find on beaches, scratched by the salt of the sea. Giulio did not notice me immediately, for he was engrossed in conversation with Gideon d’Arzenta.

  I walked forward slowly, taking in the details of my surroundings. As well as the dead dog, there were several other mangy animals, dogs, cats, pigeons, and a large lizard, in cages scattered about the floor. The room stank of animal fear and puddles of urine and faeces stained its marble floor. Blank-eyed nymphs and satyrs surveyed the scene from their plinths. Bonny, bucolic Graces, all with features like Angela’s, revelled in woods and meadows and beside the banks of streams all over the walls and ceiling. I looked at Gideon, levelling a spoonful of some whiteish powder with a little wooden spatula before tipping it into an alabaster basin, and at Giulio with his seamed and puckered face, his right eye patched with black velvet, and felt sick.

  I should have left then, but I had Donna Lucrezia’s mission to discharge. And besides, the light falling over Gideon’s shoulders picked out an attractive, raven-blue glint in his hair.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” I said, raising my voice to ensure it could be heard above the various mewings and cooings and flappings of wings. They both looked up, quickly and guiltily as small boys caught out in some prank.

  “Violante,” said Giulio, his tone apprehensive.

  “Madonna.” Gideon bowed with a formality I thought ironical.

  “To what do we owe the pleasure?” asked Giulio.

  Taking my cue from his abruptness, I wasted no time on the niceties. “Can we speak alone?”

  “I have nothing to hide from Ser d’Arzenta,” he replied, as though he very well knew that I had.

  “My mistress charged me with bringing you a message.”

  “Go on.”

  “She says you should leave Ferrara. She suggests you go to your sister in Mantua.”

  “Why? Does she think a change of air might restore my eyes?”

  “Giulio, can I speak frankly?” I glanced at Gideon, who busied himself with his powders as though he was not listening to a word we said.

  “I have said so.”

  “Very well. Ferrante came to madonna’s audience this morning. Ippolito was there as usual. Ferrante came to ask for more to be done for
you. Ippolito was having none of it. He said...well, he said he believed you and Ferrante were plotting something and it needed flushing out.”

  Gideon dropped a jar, which set one of the caged dogs to a frenzied barking. A viscous purple liquid fizzed among the shards of blue glass as though the marble floor were dissolving in it like salts. Giulio laughed. “If she is so concerned for me, why not come herself?”

  “You know she cannot be seen to act against her husband.”

  “Other than by sleeping with his brother-in-law, you mean?”

  “I’m certain I do not know what you mean.”

  “Oh Violante, get off your moral high horse; it doesn’t suit you. You’ve been her go-between all along.”

  I could almost hear Angela’s voice, her tinkling, insinuating laughter as she gossiped about me, her head beside his on the pillow, or chatting over her shoulder as her maid laced her corset and he lounged in the doorway. If he could, he showed no sign of it. A man’s face is difficult to read if his eyes hold no expression.

  “The letters I carry are all to do with madonna’s campaign to secure Duke Valentino’s release. Don Francesco is supporting her.”

  “Don Francesco is as anxious as the rest of us that the former duke should never darken Italy’s shores again. Dear girl, your old lover is for the hangman’s noose; resign yourself to it.”

  For a second that was as long as a lifetime, the scene around me took on the frozen aspect of the wall frescoes. The cages of animals, the dead dog lying in its vomit, Giulio’s sneer like another scar disfiguring his face, Gideon on his knees with a brush, clearing up the broken glass, we were all like figures in a fairy tale, struck by the sudden casting of a spell.

  Then Gideon spoke. “Excuse me,” he said, “I’ll just get rid of this.” And waved the shovel of glass shards, and fled. We watched his back, Giulio and I, until it disappeared around the edge of the door.

  “I’ve done something, haven’t I? What have I done?” said Giulio, sounding stricken, just the way he used to when Angela had quarrelled with him and he would come to me because he could not understand what he had done to upset her.

  His tone softened me. “Since we are speaking frankly, I’ll tell you. He asked me to marry him a few weeks ago. I tried to warn him he knew nothing about me. Well, now he does, I suppose.”

  “Were you considering his proposal?”

  “No, of course not. He’s a Jew and a goldsmith. Hardly a fitting husband for me.”

  “Well then, no harm done.”

  “No. Giulio?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please go to Mantua. Even if Ippolito is wrong, he has already proved he can be dangerous to you.”

  “I’ll think about it. Now, I must go and retrieve Ser d’Arzenta. We still have work to do.”

  “Of course.” I glanced once more at the dead dog and the caged animals, and decided I did not want to know what work they were engaged in.

  I saw Gideon as I left, a blurred silhouette on the far side of the fountain with the lowering sun at his back. I had the impression he saw me, so I took another route back to the palace gates, along the cypress walk and past the little amphitheatre where Giulio had once liked to stage entertainments on summer evenings.

  ***

  Two days later, the first victim was sucked under by the current running beneath our calm sea. A servant of Giulio’s, a man I did not know but whom they said was employed in the kitchens to keep flies away from the food, was arrested on Via San Romano carrying a basket of stray cats. We were puzzled to begin with, as we could think of no reason why catching cats might be considered a crime. Then the news came that, on being shown the strapado, he had confessed Don Giulio wanted the cats for his experiments. Experiments? asked his inquisitor. With poisons, the man replied. They put him in the castle dungeons; at least, I thought, if he had the strength to haul himself up by the window bars, he would have a swan’s eye view of the boat races on the moat at Corpus Christi.

  There were no boat races, however, only the customary horse races in the Barco, and these were a subdued affair, with no one in the ducal box but madonna, Ippolito, and Giovanni. He, at least, seemed to enjoy himself, betting enthusiastically against his riding master with a box of old coins and beads madonna had given him. I had hoped Don Alberto might bring Girolamo to the city for the festival, but madonna had advised against it during the present uncertainties. I told myself her concern was a good thing. I told myself seeing him would only re-open the wound in my heart and thought of Donna Dorotea, and wondered how often she thought of Camilla. Camilla did not come to the races either for she had been given to the nuns at Corpus Domini.

  The only excitement of the festival was occasioned by Sigismondo who, in a rare moment of lucidity, remembered being told that sleeping with a virgin would cure him of the pox. Never one to do things by halves, he was caught trying to break into the Convent of Corpus Domini. He was halfway up a ladder, stark naked, when Mother Abbess saw him and raised the alarm. His doctors came and returned him to his palace, wrapped in a rough blanket and with a sack over his head. Much like one of his rats, I thought, while Angela made predictable jokes about the likelihood of finding a virgin in a nunnery.

  A week after Corpus Christi, Ippolito’s men arrested two of Ferrante’s household in the Romagna. Though they were released without any charge, Ippolito’s action had an effect like that of an earth tremor. No buildings collapsed, no cracks appeared in the roads, but everything shifted slightly, felt darker, less dependable. We stayed in the Corte, walking sometimes in the duke’s garden, though he was making many changes to it at that time, and it seemed to me to be not much more than earthworks and little sticks marking the promise of thyme cushions or box mazes or matted pinks in seasons to come. Fonsi enjoyed himself, digging a great many holes and spattering his white coat with clods.

  Ferrante took to keeping us company, like a man who wears his coat open to show the world he has no weapon concealed in it. Giulio did, at last, depart for Mantua, and Fidelma happened to remark that her brother had gone with him. I decided I was relieved about that.

  Others were arrested or disappeared, leaving behind them the echoes of rumours. One had planned to poison the duke in Venice, another to stab him while off his guard in a favourite brothel. Don Giulio, it was said, plotted to make Don Ferrante duke for Don Ferrante had promised to double his pension and knew of doctors in the east who could mend Don Giulio’s eyes and make him even better looking than before. Ippolito and Donna Lucrezia laughed at all this in public as though it was just another of Ser Niccolo da Correggio’s comedies, but the slightest creak of a floorboard or the banging of a shutter in the night would startle madonna awake, and Angela said Ippolito had the humour of a chained and hungry bear.

  One night, hearing madonna cry out, I went to her chamber to find her sitting up in bed, her candle lit and Cesare’s ring clutched in her hand. Hardly thinking what I was doing, I made a lunge for it. With a look full of shock and disapproval, she clutched it to her breast.

  “Madonna, you mustn’t…”

  “Mustn’t what, girl?”

  “The ring...nothing can be that bad. Think of the duke. Think of…your son.” I had often asked myself if her attachment to Giovanni had something to do with her separation from Rodrigo and her continuing failure to produce an heir for Duke Alfonso.

  She looked momentarily puzzled then burst into laughter. Looking at her, her face bare of makeup, her hair escaping from her sleeping cap, I realised I had forgotten how young she still was.

  “Did you think it had poison in it?” she asked. “I am surprised you have never looked inside it.”

  “I couldn’t find out how to open it,” I confessed with miserable honesty.

  “It is one of my brother’s more ingenious devices, true,” she admitted, “but I promise you there is nothing dangerous in it. Just…” By some sleight of hand I could not see properly in the poor light of our candles she flipped open the top of the ring
and held it out to me. “…this.”

  Holding my light close, I peered into the compartment, which was lined with mother-of-pearl. Coiled at its heart was a little, untidy plait of hair, much faded, though with still enough of its original colour for me to see that the strands were mixed, a silvery blond and dark red.

  “I made it years ago, on a summer afternoon in a secret place we had among my mother’s soft fruit bushes. Cesare was supposed to be studying Greek but he and Juan had dosed their tutor’s midday wine with fig syrup and escaped while the poor man dealt with the consequences. Would you believe it used to fit around his wrist?” She continued to gaze at it, as though seeing again the boy’s wrist, thin and brown, with its knobs of bones and the delta of veins under the skin. “So strong, human hair, and very elastic.”

  “Do you think that is why he sent it to you?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Perhaps, on one level.” She smiled. “I shall ask him as soon as I see him again. I shall say Violante wants to know.”

  “I doubt that would sway him, madonna.” But I felt myself flush with pleasure nonetheless.

  “I have not said this to you before because…well anyway. He is grateful for your care and friendship at a difficult time.”

  Emboldened by the intimacy of the small circle of light which bound us, I said, “So that is why he took my child from me and sent me back here like...like some horse he had tried out and found wanting?”

  “Oh Violante, if you do not yet understand his actions, I cannot help you.” She replaced the ring on her nightstand. “Leave me. I shall sleep now, and so must you.” She blew out her candle and I returned to bed, though I did not sleep much. My mind boiled with shame and the sense that something important lay just beyond my reach, that one more candle would illuminate the clue I sought, yet I had no flint with which to strike the light. Everything would be clearer in the morning, I told myself, it was just a matter of waiting.

  ***

  The morning brought a posthaste messenger from Duke Alfonso, saying he was returning to Ferrara. The Venetians had had his sea captain friends arrested as spies and had refused to hear the duke’s entreaties on their behalf, so he was coming home to consider how best to respond to La Serenissima’s arrogance. This, at least, was what madonna told Ippolito and Ferrante. Later, it became clear he had other reasons as well. By the time Ippolito and Ferrante had returned from Monastirolo, where they had gone expecting to meet him, he had already arrived in Ferrara and was deep in private discussions with madonna, and a man called Capilupo who often carried letters between the courts of Mantua and Ferrara.