by Lisa Hilton
‘It was I,’ I yelled at the legate, ‘my lady knew nothing, nothing! Look!’ I pulled the phial of poppy where it had lain safe in my gown all these long days. ‘This is poison, see. I did it all.’
I made my eyes as wide as they could. Maligno, demonio.
‘I did it,’ I hissed, ‘I summoned the plague on the Pope, I made the corpse walk to the Rocca that night that I might drain it of poison. I had the devil to help me, do you hear? Ask your master,’ I yelled, muffled now by the arms that moved to grab me while the legate stared and crossed himself, ‘ask Valentino if I am not a witch!’
I was panting, my hair was undone, I twisted and writhed like a mad thing as they fastened ropes around my wrists and stuffed a rag in my mouth until all I could move was my eyes. I was beyond myself, gulping for air between my screams. I tried for the fear then, I tried to fetch the seid from my blood and ensorcel them with it, but even then my sickness came upon me and I groaned and clutched at my belly, and fainted away.
The rooms in the Vatican were just as I had dreamed them. Painted all over with the double crown of Aragon, its blazing rays streaming over the walls and ceilings, the rampant Borgia bull, a putto astride. It was all here, why Valentino had wanted to believe in my conjuring. These were not Christian rooms, they flamed all over with the power of the old gods. Here the Egyptian Apis, black and virile, there a lunette of spinning planets, all set in multicoloured gemstones that recalled the intricate abstractions of Toledo stonework. Perhaps this was what Maestro Ficino had sought, and failed to understand. Here were the symbols and stories he had pored over all his life, here was the potent, humming heart of the strange power that had beguiled the Holy City, and triumphed. Wisdom and knowledge, the philosopher’s kingdom on earth, all laid out by a painter’s hand, the true reflection of the mysteries the Borgias had summoned and controlled. They were all there, the unholy family, disguised as saints. The Pope himself, on his knees, in a gold mantle worked with signs far less subtle than my papa’s rendition of the Almandal. The Madonna he worshipped was a portrait of his young lover, a cardinal’s sister. Here was black magic, and it was the only proof I had ever seen that it could work.
Valentino waited for us at the end of the long enfilade, the doors so perfectly aligned that they seemed like mirrors, that they would project hundreds of him, black clad, surrounding us in a Borgia labyrinth. Before him were the prisoners, Tommasino of Forli and his servant. A third man, I saw to my horror, was good Signor Moise. The Forlivese were grub-white, blinking dumbly at this sudden and luminous world, the poor old Jew twisting his hands and babbling. His beard was wet with spit, his eyes strayed back again and again to the bound wrists of his fellows. Each of them, I saw, was missing a thumb, though the Forli men had healed stumps on their hands, whilst Signor Moise cradled a sodden red rag. The legate approached Valentino, bowing so low I thought his nose would leave an oily mark upon the floor. The guards were closing the shutters, plunging us into night, there were no clerks waiting with quills to make a record. This was Valentino’s way, to move in secrecy and darkness.
‘Read the charges.’
Caterina had refused a chair. He came close to her, their heights were matched, and he flinched a little at the look of her.
‘I will hear no charges. I am in the keeping of the King of France, I will answer to no one else.’
‘Recall, madam, that you revoked that trust in Forli. You chose to answer to me.’
‘I will not.’
‘Come, madam, we both grow weary of this. Read them.’
‘I will not.’
Slowly, delicately, he removed his glove, drawing each finger from its casing of velvet. The Riario ruby burned on his finger, as quietly, casually as he might swat a fly, he brought the back of his hand abruptly against her cheek. There was no other sound except the sharp tug of her breath. He left a tear of blood on her face.
‘Be silent, madam. Try my patience no further.’
The legate read the charges. That Caterina, Countess of Forli had sought by means diabolical to poison the sacred person of His Holiness the Pope. That she had conspired with the enemies of the Holy See. That she had dealt with heretics and made use of magic arts. The Forlivese were questioned as witnesses, and they swore what they had been harried and tormented into swearing in their cracked prison voices. Then they called on Signor Moise to confess that the Countess had bribed him to furnish her with poison. I wriggled and spat the rag from my mouth and called out that it was I who had done it, that I had stolen it from his shop, that he had never set eyes on me, that it was no poison, but merely a tincture of poppy seed such as helped women with their monthly pains. I gasped it out, for the sickness was so strong in me that I almost swooned with it, there were throbbing blows of pain striking through my body.
Signor Moise looked at me sadly. ‘They have the collar,’ he said, and I knew that he was lost.
It was no trial, I knew that. Caterina would not sign and Valentino wanted no trouble in his newly taken lands. The poison plot was a sop to the French that they need concern themselves no more with her. He would lock her up and he would rule the Romagna, and I could not let it happen. I tried again. I wept and raged and confessed with the pain tunnelling through me, and they heard me out, and I was too stupid to see that each one of my stupid brave words was another turn of the key in the cells of Sant’Angelo. They would take her there, Valentino said when I had done. They would take her as a captive where once she had reigned. I could not save any of them. Not my father, not Cecco, not Ser Giovanni, not poor Signor Moise, not my lady the Countess, for she would not save herself. It was quickly done, for that too was Valentino’s way, to move so swift and silent that his enemies barely felt the blade between their shoulders. In moments, it seemed, the testimonies were done and my lady was to be escorted from the room.
‘My slave is not in her wits,’ she said quietly. ‘Look at her. She is unwell. She lost her mind in Forli, poor thing, and I was permitted no better servant. Have a care for her.’
She leaned towards me, and brushed a lock from my brow, as once she had done before.
‘Let me go with you, Madonna,’ I whispered. ‘Let me stay with you. I will go with you anywhere.’
‘No, good Mora,’ she answered very quietly. ‘It is done, now. It is finished. I thank you, for all that you have done for me.’
‘But I—’
‘No. It is finished.’
She leaned forward and I felt the brush of her lips on my cheek. As she straightened, I could see her leaving me, going far away across the years, past the Belvedere and the litter and the road, past the Numai palazzo and the walls of the Rocca, past Ser Giovanni, past her son reaching out his tiny fists in the starlight, past the farmacia and the park and a game we played on All Hallows Eve, until she was back in the courtyard of the Paradiso, the most beautiful lady I had ever seen, and I no more than a gift, unacknowledged amongst so many others. We were strangers again. When she spoke her voice was cold and haughty, and she would not meet my eyes.
‘I will come, now.’ And she walked from the room where once she had danced with her bridegroom, her back as straight as a Sforza sword.
‘And the other one, Your Grace?’ asked the legate cautiously. ‘The witch?’ I could see him salivating at the prospect of a pyre and a screaming, living coal at its centre. I did not care.
‘She is no witch. I have seen her at Forli. As the Countess said, she is out of her wits. Leave us.’
‘Have a care, Your Grace. I will see that the men are without.’
‘Leave us.’
I was glad of the pain, though my legs were all weak and swimmy. The thump of it kept my head up, so I could look into his eyes.
‘Clever girl, Mora,’ he said in Castilian. ‘ A remarkable masquerade. It comes out well for you, I think.’
‘There was no feigning, Your Grace. I loved my lady truly.’
There was something in his hands, streaming between them, green and gold. I saw
the serpents on the clasp.
‘Are you a woman then, to talk to me of love? I thought better of you. Now, shall I give you this, for my pleasure, or shall I burn you? Should you like to burn, little witch? Or would you shift into smoke and fly away from me? As once you did in Toledo, so they say?’
‘Toledo.’
All the time. All the time, over and over. I had thought to seem true and play false and he had been one step ahead of me. I had thought myself so clever with my conjuring trick, I had thought him so easy to deceive.
‘I was a student once, at Pisa. We had a master there, a famous scholar. One Ficino? You reminded me yourself of your good old master.’
‘You knew – what I am?’
‘And greatly enjoyed its confirmation. You have been very useful to me, yet as you know I have a great deal of business. Now, which is it to be? The collar or the fire?’
‘All along, you waited for me. I dreamed of you.’
‘As your mistress said, it is finished. Choose.’
Those wolf’s eyes moved away from me, toward the shuttered windows. His city was beyond, framed in the blazing Spanish sun.
Awkwardly, my hand on my belly, I sank to my knees. I reached for his hand, the bared hand and its twice-bloodied ruby. He did not resist as I pulled it towards my mouth and set a kiss upon the ring.
‘I will have the collar, sir. And I will be silent.’
A doubly soft touch on my nape, flesh and velvet, the hard weight of the gold.
‘You will find me out, sir, if you have need of me? I shall come to you.’
I was craven, I could not bear to relinquish the last of his touch. His shadow shifted impatiently, he was bored, I was already gone from him.
‘Do not doubt it. Perhaps I shall. Take your payment and go.’
I had walked alone in Toledo, where they had cursed me, and through the streets of Florence in my slave’s motley, through Forli and Trastevere on my lady’s business. No one had thought, or dared perhaps, to take the poppy from me. So before the goggling eyes of the legate and the Spanish guard, the witch of Forli walked free from Valentino’s chamber, paused for a swig of poison in the stairwell and stepped out into the streets of Rome with a Pope’s ransom in emeralds brazen round her throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
VALENTINO WAS RIGHT. IT WAS FINISHED. FINISHED for the man in black, for the Countess, for me. The opiate smoothed away the pain, fractured the sunlight around me, so all I could think of was the tread of my feet, one after the other. It should not be long. I had seen the streets of the Holy City. The drug bound my head in the silken sack, the dark water waited for me. So many others waited in the rolling shroud of the Tiber, it would not be long. I walked and walked. I floated past them all with my white hair and ice eyes and my mermaid’s treasure, the thieves and cutpurses and beggars, the starveling street rats, the poxed and pleading whores, yet not one of them came to do me harm. They stared and whispered, made horns of their fingers to warn me off, shrank from my passing. The poppy was sweet and warm in my veins, my tongue sought the traces of Valentino’s skin. For the first time in all my scrabbling, hiding life, I walked with my head held high, displaying a lifetime of unimaginable wealth for all Rome to see, yet I stayed untouchable.
I walked until the frail spring sunshine died behind the crumbling heap of the basilica. I circled the Castello, thinking of my lady there, so that the pain came on me again, as though my swelling heart needed to burst from my breast. The waning trance of the drug spun me westwards to the rosy glow of the sky, I thought I saw his jewel burning there and reached out for it like a mad thing, that I might bring him back, for I was his creature now, bound like a dog in his gift, fit only for the cruelties and treachery of my master. Maimed, crooked thing that I was, I had often wished that my life would be done, but never had I yearned for it as now. I would see my papa again, he would be waiting for me with my mother, I had only to sink through the black mud of the river and they would be there, swathed in drifts of almond blossom, she would hold me tight against her and her love would be safe, for was she not already dead? Only to the dead could I do no harm. The pain that ailed me so returned then, deep and nauseating within me, I staggered with it and fell to the oozing ground. Something gripped me from behind, pulling me up by the flesh at my nape like a drowned kitten, hands searched at my neck, feeling for the collar. I laughed with pleasure. It was come. I was not afraid. I would forgive him, I would look him in the eyes and forgive my deliverer. I could barely turn my head in his grip but I twisted until I might catch his face, but saw only a knife’s blade, the supple sheen of it alight with the last of the sunset, dazzling me. It was finished. I closed my eyes and waited for the crystal streams of my Toledo river to open their radiant arms.
*
I dream I am in the palazzo. The beautiful boy is gone from the cortile, the walnut intarsia of the benches in the loggia is dusty and scarred. My feet are loud on the cracked marble, I look down and see a pair of clogs beneath the hem of my woollen servant’s dress. The heavy shoes clatter as I mount the staircase. My master’s scrittoio is wrecked, the walls charred, the cabinets smashed and tumbled. I pass on. The huge fireplace in the sala is cold, the yellow silk cushions of the antecamera are hacked and moulding, oozing their down noiselessly to the wine-soaked floor. I am looking for something, what? All the luminous treasures of this house are dulled and vanished, buried beneath Florence like the weapons of some ancient sleeping giant. I turn towards the chapel. The magi stare solemnly still from the walls, familiar, but the chalices and furnishings are gone. A single candle burns on the altar, its light falling on the white headcloth of a woman who kneels before a simple silver crucifix, her plain dress dark against the linen. She turns. My lady, Caterina. Her face is gentle, she smiles.
‘Good Mora. You are come.’
Something heavy lies in my palm. I have been carrying what I sought all along. I step towards her and open my hand. There it lies, the Riario ruby, the crimson flame at its heart streaming over my skin in the glow of the candle, staining it, blood-coloured. I hold out my hand, she reaches for it.
*
‘She stirs.’
‘Mora, Mora. Can you hear us?’
‘Do not be afraid. You are safe.’
‘Mora!’
There was a cloth at my lips, I felt a trickle of warm wine in my cracked mouth. My hands moved to my throat – I had become a Florentine true, it seemed – but there were only my bare bones.
‘It is safe. See, we have it here for you.’ A glitter of green and gold before my eyes. My eyes were open, so I was not dead. I was lying in the wagon, wrapped in something warm, a little brazier of coals glowed at my feet. I sought about for the pain, but found it gone. Annunziata’s face wavered into sight, I tried to smile and lift myself up, but there was something wadded between my legs and I flinched.
‘I am hurt?’
‘No, Mora. We came to find you. There was news – of the lady Caterina and how she was sent to Sant’Angelo to be tried for a witch, and we feared for you, so the men went out to search, and they brought you here, to us.’
‘I’m bleeding.’
Her eyes dipped, I could almost feel the heat from her cheeks.
‘You were ill. When they brought you back you were too sick to walk and we washed you and saw what it was. Forgive us, Mora. We cut you. Immaculata did it. She boiled the knife in wine and she cut you, to let out the blood. But you will be well, now. You will grow accustomed to it.’
The colour deepened in her cheeks. She was plumper, and as she moved in the light of the coals I could see the new mound of her belly shift beneath her gown. I pushed my hand beneath the blanket and felt for the new tender place they had made in me. When I brought my finger to my lips it was bright and streaming.
‘I don’t understand. Thank you for your goodness, but I do not understand.’
‘It happens like that, sometimes. Old Margherita in Florence helped a girl in this way, she told us of it
. The thing, the part that keeps a woman a maid, was grown too strong, that is all. Like a lock. It can be mended, if it is done kindly, but if not the black blood builds, it is very dangerous. We feared to lose you.’
‘It is what I wished.’
If I had found her, that misted day in Florence. Margherita might have made me a woman after all. My poor papa had been wrong, so very wrong, and Maestro Ficino too. It was too much. I lay back and watched the ribs of the wagon, the canvas between them bucking a little in the wind outside.
‘Sleep again now, you will be stronger.’
‘Take it, the collar,’ I asked her. ‘The men will know how to break up the stones. Please to take one of them to Trastevere, and ask for the family of a Jew named Moise. If they can find someone, give them a stone. And take another. Buy meat, wine, anything you wish. We will have a feast.’
Her quiet face was all concern, she thought me raving.
‘We will have a feast, to honour my old master Ficino. A wedding feast, for you and your babe, and we will take a cup of wine and spill it.’ I giggled. ‘To Hymen.’
The girls whispered amongst themselves. There was something delighting them, something more than the prospect of a party.
‘She is still weak,’ I heard.
‘The shock might be too much for her.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘What could shock me?’
Annunziata and Immaculata shrugged, their faces a mixture of anxiety and glee. Then the curtain of the wagon was pulled aside and a face peered in, a face covered by a tumbling mass of bronze hair, the skin as warm and speckled as a new brown egg.
Cecco.
