Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  Of course I was privy to none of this, but piecing it together later, this is what I think happened. When he heard of Giulio’s flight to Mantua, the duke became more convinced than ever his brother was plotting against him, so cut short his travels using the incident with the sea captains as an excuse. He also wrote to Giulio, summoning him home, but Giulio refused. According to Niccolo da Correggio, Giulio believed he had as good cause to fear returning to Ferrara as he had for leaving in the first place. More arrests were made of men close to Ferrante and Giulio. Ferrante went to the duke to intercede for them, but instead told his brother everything, about Giulio’s experiments with poisons and their plans to take over the duchy. I waited, feeling sick to my stomach, for him to confess the proposal he had made to me. No one would believe I had rejected it, not if it had meant getting my son back, not once they found out I had witnessed the goings on in Giulio’s Temple of the Graces and had said nothing.

  There were many who said Ferrante was a coward, but I have never believed it. In his own way, Ferrante was the bravest of men. He was no longer prepared to be dishonest, to pursue justice for Giulio by unjust means. Like me, I expect he saw the white bones of Catherinella in his dreams. Unlike me, he would also have been able to recall the expression on her face when he opened her cage and dropped in the rope.

  Ferrante was confined in a room below madonna’s apartments in the Torre Marchesana, on the same floor as her kitchens. When one of her chefs reported seeing him looking out of the window, across the moat and on to the piazza where there had been a popular hanging that day, of a man accused of having sexual relations with a donkey, the duke ordered the window to be bricked up. We heard the singer, Gian Cantore, had been arrested in Rome and was giving the performance of his life for the pope’s interrogators in the Castel Sant’Angelo. His Holiness, it was said, looked forward to each new development in the saga of the Este Coniurga with the eagerness of a child waiting for the next episode of a bedtime story. For myself, each new revelation seemed to come with searching looks in my direction, expressions and tones of voice laden with insinuation. I wore a grave face, made noises of shock and sympathy in the right places, and seemed to feel the fine edge of the axe grazing the hairs on the back of my neck.

  In one, irrational sense, I was content to suffer this way because it gave me common cause with Cesare, himself at the whim of powers beyond his control. It put us in the same skin.

  At the beginning of August, a trial of the conspirators began in Sigismondo’s palace. Schifanoia, it was called, the palace of forgetfulness. I think the name had been Giulio’s idea. Giulio himself remained in Mantua. Don Francesco and Donna Isabella had agreed he should be confined to his room, but they would not send him back to Ferrara, even when the duke sent a posse of crossbowmen to fetch him.

  The trial opened with a grim parody of the pageantry which marked the year’s progress from one festival to the next. One of the conspirators, a man called Gherardo from Carpi, was paraded through the piazza seated backwards on his horse and shackled by his wrists and ankles. He was preceded by priests as well as soldiers, and prominent among them was Fra Raffaello, whom the people cheered as enthusiastically as they booed Gherardo. We watched from the balcony over the main gate to the Corte, flanked by the duke’s ancestors, Borso, and Niccolo, the man who had executed Ugo and Parisina.

  Gherardo glanced up at us as he was led past, and I found myself looking straight into his eyes. Did he know my son? I wondered. Would it be possible to see, behind the glaze of terror, the blinking bewilderment, an image of my little red-haired boy as he was now, riding his pony, forming his letters, wielding his wooden sword against straw men in Don Alberto’s tilting yard? Womanly foolishness, I know, but as the cathedral bell tolled what might have been a death knell for the House of Este, each of us needed something to cling to. When we had dressed Donna Lucrezia that morning, she had chosen to wear, among her jewels, Cesare’s cameo ring. It was too big, of course, and fastened to her finger with a bent gold hairpin.

  Later that day all the court and the nobility of the city attended a solemn Mass in the cathedral. As we processed down the aisle, led by Ippolito and his clergy, and the singers from the duke’s own chapel, with whom Gian Cantore used to sing like an angel, I shifted my gaze from the flagstones in front of my feet just enough to take in, out of the corner of my eye, the black Madonna. As we stood and knelt, bowed our heads in silence or muttered our responses, her face in its frame of beaten gold consoled me with its featureless flatness, the smile that was just paint, the eyes shaped like plump almonds which saw nothing. She had not seen the tense set of Ferrante’s shoulders the day after Catherinella’s death, nor Gideon’s merriment as he invited me to the Hanukkah feast, nor the feathers left by his goose, floating among the dust motes in the dim, cold air. She knew nothing of us, our loves and jealousies, our fears and disappointments. She had no heart to be broken. I wondered how long she had been there, and what else she had not seen, and what she would not see in times to come, and the thought of her not seeing had for me the consolation of prayer.

  Next morning, early to avoid the August heat, Donna Lucrezia’s household rode out to Belriguardo, passing on our way the spot where Ippolito’s men had ambushed Giulio and set the whole sorry mess in train. I played a bleak game with myself. If we were not stopped there, by the duke’s men sent to arrest me, then I would be safe, Ferrante would not have mentioned my name. As the road crossed the meadow where Giulio had been hawking, I kept my eyes fixed on a spot somewhere between my horse’s ears and tried to ignore the sense of my flesh creeping up my spine. But I could not ignore the message of my ears as we neared the edge of the meadow and the drumming of hooves grew louder behind us. My legs began to shake. I clung to the pommel of my saddle to stop myself falling and tried to fix my thoughts on Cesare. How had he conducted himself when Gonsalvo da Cordoba’s men came for him in Naples? Was he gracious, abject, enraged? Did he laugh, or weep, or curse Fortune, or himself for having trusted her? What should I do? Surely the duke must understand, have compassion. I just wanted my son back, that was all. What could be more natural?

  The riders were upon us now, two men, breathing hard, their horses’ coats foam-flecked and dark with sweat.

  “Message for the duchess,” panted one as the other rode up abreast of her litter and spoke briefly with one of the men at arms flanking it. The litter halted. A gloved hand reached out of it to hold back the curtain as the messenger dismounted, knelt, and spoke briefly through the chink.

  “What is it?” I asked the other man. My voice trembled but he did not seem to notice.

  “They’ve brought in a verdict on Don Ferrante,” he said.

  ***

  The duke came out to meet his wife in person when we arrived back. Standing at the foot of the long staircase in the courtyard of the Corte, he looked old and broken. With head bowed and shoulders sloped, he seemed much smaller and frailer than the guards surrounding him. Giovanni, flinging himself off his pony and racing towards madonna as she dropped the duke a curtsey, fixed round, curious eyes on him and said, loud enough for us all to hear, “Have you been crying?”

  “Don Giovanni!” I fetched him a good clout across the ear and handed Fonsi to him. “Here, take him to the garden. He wants to run about after the journey.”

  For a moment he looked as though he was going to complain to his sister about his treatment, but thought better of it and ran off with the dog in his arms. I am afraid I made a great play of arranging madonna’s train so she would not trip climbing the stairs, in order to be able to overhear some of the duke’s conversation with her.

  “Giulio is on his way back. I sent two hundred men this time, including some of those Albanian cavalry. That put the wind up Francesco, I can tell you. After that, I fear it’s just a formality. The evidence is overwhelming. Had some Jew making poisons for him by all accounts.”

  “Has he been caught also?” asked madonna, almost as if she had felt my grip on her
train intensify. How much did she really know, I wondered, about what Giulio had been up to in his Temple of the Graces?

  The duke shook his head. “Francesco has men out looking for him, of course. But he’s a Mantuan apparently and has most likely gone to ground among his own sort. I’m not worried. I dare say it was Giulio’s money he was interested in and now that’s gone he’ll find himself some other master.”

  “You’re right, my lord. You have enough on your plate with your brothers, without going looking for some inconsequential Jew.”

  I finished my work and stepped back with a bow. So Gideon was free and Ferrante had made no mention of our conversation in the piazza. The day was windy, so no doubt it was a trick of the shadows of blowing clothes, or horses’ tails, or pennants snapping on the Corte’s roof, or perhaps madonna had caught some dust in her eye, but I could have sworn she winked at me as she gave her husband her arm and went inside.

  ***

  The last time I saw Giulio was on another morning of bright sunshine and stiff breezes in early October. The previous day had been set aside for the execution of the other conspirators, and it shames me to say I had sat behind madonna and counted my blessings as they went to their deaths. A scaffold had been set up in the piazza, but it proved almost impossible to transport the guilty men the short distance from the castle dungeons as the furious crowd mobbed their waggon, kicking the spokes out of its wheels and terrifying the horses. A second waggon had to be brought, and the horses blindfolded, and while the prisoners waited, two of their guards and several spectators were injured. The mob did not calm down until the first of the conspirators was led up to the scaffold where he received grudging absolution from a priest of Ippolito’s household, was blindfolded, knocked unconscious, beheaded, and quartered. All the rest suffered the same fate, despite the fact the crowd made it plain they would have preferred them to be conscious when they were taken to the executioner’s block. Their heads and quartered bodies were placed on lances above the city gates.

  I slept fitfully that night, and was aware of Angela tossing and turning in the bed beside me, though neither of us said anything; it was easier to pretend to be asleep. Sometimes I thought I was dreaming, sombre nightmares dominated by the dark shape of the scaffold squatting like a monster in the piazza. But they were not dreams, not really, and the scaffold was there, perhaps sheltering a few beggars from the chill of the night, waiting for morning, for Ferrante and Giulio. For me to learn the cost of my blessings.

  We had all expected the duke to commute the sentence. There had been raised voices when Donna Lucrezia had tried to suggest it. Now, as the darkness thinned and gave way to pearl and lemon and pale green over the roofs and towers of the city, and the morning star faded, and the doves began to rustle and coo in Alberti’s bell tower, the buzzards to wheel and screech around the heads and legs and torsos on the gates, I knew there was no longer any hope.

  Angela and I dressed in the same silence, as though we were still pretending to be asleep. In silence we laced one another and dressed one another’s hair and in silence we went to wake Donna Lucrezia with white rolls and oranges from her roof garden. We found her already up and dressed, though her hair had not been done and she wore no makeup or jewellery. She was kneeling at her prie dieu and Fra Raffaello and Fidelma were with her. Perhaps I saw only some reflection of my own state of mind, but it seemed to me her body, straight backed, head bowed, heels neatly together, was a battleground where her inner and outer selves, her past and her future, were tearing each other to pieces.

  When she had finished her prayers, she dismissed Fidelma and the friar. I put her breakfast on a table in front of her window and Angela opened the shutters. She sat, but made no attempt to eat, and we stood in front of her, waiting for her instructions about her hair and jewels while the Dalmation slave went silently about the business of folding her nightclothes and tidying the bed. She had long outgrown the collar Cesare had put on her, but her neck was very long and very white, as though the collar had formed it. Finally madonna pushed the food away and indicated to the slave she might have it. She sidled across and took it with the shy haste of a wild animal, and squatted with it by the fireplace, where she began peeling the oranges with a sound like tearing flesh which seemed to fill the room.

  “Do you remember when Juan died?” Donna Lucrezia asked Angela.

  “Not really. I wasn’t in Rome at the time.”

  “I had never lost anyone close to me before. I wondered how it was possible to bear such pain and still be alive and then…I realised. Pain proves we are alive. God sticks pins in us to keep us awake.” She gave a wan laugh. “Remember that, whatever happens today. God gave you your life. Live it.”

  “I will try,” said Angela gravely, but it was impossible to tell if she felt grave or if she had decided gravity was what the situation called for.

  ***

  The piazza was already packed with onlookers by the time we took our seats on the balcony above the gate. People were crammed under the colonnades and hanging out of the upstairs windows of houses bordering the square whose owners were no doubt making good money out of their view today. Small boys swarmed over the statues of Borso and Niccolo; overloaded boats bobbed dangerously on the moat. Pie hawkers and miracle sellers jostled with tapsters and bonbonniers to feed the bodies and souls of the crowd. Bare-breasted whores lounged in shadowy doorways. Whole families had come in from the country and were now balanced on their handcarts with their children on their shoulders. The smell of boiled meat and unwashed bodies was trapped under the blue dome of the sky and the glitter of flags and birds’ wings, trumpets and cheap jewels made my eyes ache.

  As word went round that the duke’s party had appeared, all those red-cheeked, open-mouthed faces turned towards us, a many-headed hydra of dumpy Padano peasants. A piece of cheap paper fluttered on to the balcony and landed at my feet. I picked it up and looked at it. It carried a crude, printed woodcut of Don Giulio and a hook-nosed Jew grinning hideously as they pored over a large bottle labelled “POISON.” I screwed it up and pushed it into my sleeve, but it was too late. Madonna had caught sight of it. She spoke quietly to the duke, who flushed, clenched one fist, and banged it several times against his thigh. Madonna put her hand over his, but he shook her off and turned to speak to one of the officers of the guard standing behind us. The next thing I knew there was a brief scuffle in the square and a man with a leather satchel over his shoulder was hustled away in the direction of the castle.

  Then someone detected movement at the castle gate and the crowd turned to watch, their babble giving way to silence as yesterday’s cart, bearing today’s victims, lurched across the drawbridge and out into the piazza. There was no kicking of wheels or jostling of horses this time as the crowd fell back like the Red Sea for the cart to pass. Many of those closest to it clutched their hats off their heads and bowed and the women dropped ungainly curtseys. Their faces expressed shame and embarrassment, as though the wrong done by their rulers somehow put them in the wrong too. A boy too old for tears burst into noisy sobs; I wondered if he had perhaps been one of Ferrante’s lovers.

  I was aware of Angela, seated next to me, drawing in her breath sharply. She had not set eyes on Giulio since Ippolito’s attack on him. Was she shocked, I wondered, or regretful? For Giulio looked magnificent. He was bare headed and his golden hair, which had grown long during his captivity in Mantua, blew across his face so you could not see his scars. Unlike Ferrante, he held his head high, the clean, graceful line of his jaw clearly discernible despite the untidiness of his beard. Whether or not he could see us, he remained steadfastly facing our balcony, keeping his back to the scaffold as the waggon swayed through the crowd.

  When the carter dropped the tailgate, he jumped down unaided, in spite of the shackles fastened round his wrists and ankles, then turned to help Ferrante as best he could. Ferrante looked frail, and moved as though the weight of the chains was almost more than he could bear. I dare say he had not
been as well cared for in the Torre Marchesana as Giulio had been in Mantua. Giulio had almost to push him up the steps to the scaffold, and he staggered when he came face to face with the executioner so I was afraid he would faint.

  We saw the executioner kneel and ask each man’s forgiveness, and Giulio even seemed to share a joke with him. As the brothers knelt in their turn to receive absolution from the priest, Giulio once again doing his best to steady Ferrante, I realised he was doing it as much for himself as for Ferrante. We are the same, Ferrante had once told me, both tolerated but not quite accepted. I thought of madonna and her conversas, of Ferrante himself giving Catherinella back her human dignity, and understood how we all need outsiders to mark the boundaries of ourselves. Then I was distracted by Angela’s fingers creeping into my palm, and curled my fist over them to stop them shaking.

  “How much can he see?” she whispered urgently. “It’s such a beautiful day. I want him to be able to see it.”

  A young deacon with an unsteady hand had just begun to swing his thurible, casting wraiths of incense on the air, when the duke rose to his feet. He tried to command silence but his voice failed him. A quick-witted trumpeter came to his rescue and blew an improvised fanfare. The duke nodded his thanks.

  “Let not the mark of Cain be upon this house,” he said, his voice strengthening as he warmed to his task. “I will not have my brothers’ blood on my hands, even though they would not have hesitated to have mine on theirs. Executioner, put up your axe. There will be no more deaths today.”