Blood & Beauty: A Novel of the Borgias

by Sarah Dunant

‘Good. It is only… well, Boccacio, it seems that rumours persist about how we Borgias lean towards Spain and are besieged by those who demand our favours. Some even say that “ten papacies would not satisfy this horde of relatives”.’ And he plays with the last phrase to show off its quotation marks.

  ‘Oh! That is perfidious gossip indeed!’

  Ambassadors, of course, do not blush. It is a requisite of the job that they can sustain any manner of insult without any visible change at all to their face.

  ‘I shall personally do my best to make sure it is not repeated.’ He gives a smart little bow. ‘It is, as always, Your Excellency, a pleasure to spend time in your company.’

  Which, refreshingly, is meant exactly as it is said. To his credit, Alessandro Boccacio is good enough at his job to know when he has failed in the doing of it. As he drifts away, he is already sifting through the chain of command for the weak link in his postal service. Or how, perhaps, he might exploit it. Either way he has been proved right in his assessment that the Pope’s eldest son is a man to be reckoned with.

  Cesare watches him go. He is thinking about Pedro and his own informant network, first started to keep lines open between Rome and Pisa, and now sewn up as tight as a nun’s vagina. No man in his service would ever open his mouth or his pouch. The rewards are too great. And the punishments too awful. People know what Michelotto can do when he is angry. Anger. He thinks of Lucrezia’s description of that face. Except anger is not the right word. No, Cesare knows very well that Michelotto’s power springs from a darker, colder well. Even as a young boy – one of a group of Spanish children brought in to act as a buffer between the young Borgia and the rest of the world – it had been there: this mix of unquestioning loyalty, bred in his Spanish bone, and the more personal satisfaction of violence. It had started with brawling, a bloody nose for the casual insult (strange how when Italians look at Spaniards so many of them see ex-Jews). But with the family’s advancement the fights had quickly grown more serious. Sometimes Cesare joined him. More often he left him alone. He had only known him once bettered: a man in Perugia had taken a dagger to his teenage face in a revenge ambush outside their house, when he was returning home alone one night. The wounds, for which he would accept no salves, had taken months to heal. Cesare had been present when he thanked the man later, as he lifted him up and skewered him on his sword. ‘People will remember me better now before they die, don’t you think, sir?’

  It remains Michelotto’s only sin of pride: too much pleasure in a job well done. But whether it is a matter of justice or revenge, once it starts, mercy shatters like faulty glass. However loyal or favoured you might think yourself to be, it is never entirely a comfortable feeling, turning your back on Michelotto. And since he is so often in the presence of his master, part of that aura has been transmitted to Cesare himself.

  Today, however, Cesare has kept his promise to Lucrezia and his henchman’s rearranged face is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the honour of guarding him has gone to Pedro Calderón, who is lucky that his enthusiasm for riding has not yet bowed his legs, so that he makes a fine young courtier, waiting in the courtyard or the back rooms to escort his master home.

  This duty marks Calderón’s first public engagement in Cesare Borgia’s service since the household moved to Rome, and during that time his master has done nothing but grow in his estimation. He is amazed by the way he seems to change personality with his clothes: the hunter, the cleric, the athlete, the courtier, with barely a breath in between. Already Calderón knows he would do anything for him. He lies in bed at night imagining the time when Michelotto, for some reason, is absent from his side and there might be an attack so that he could be the one to drive the dagger into an assassin’s heart, even if it meant his own death in the process.

  The wedding dinner that follows the public ceremony is an intimate affair, family and special guests only, no personal servants allowed. The retainers are put in a modest undecorated room nearby where they are fed and watered as they wait. The high spirits of the party are impossible to miss. The chamber echoes with gales of laughter, followed by bursts of exclaimed pleasure when the favoured invitees deliver their presents to the bride and groom. Then come music and dancing, and finally waves of such obvious hilarity that everyone hearing it wonders what is taking place.

  The news leaks out fast: how, as the servants delivered the mountains of honey and marzipan delicacies, the guests had started to throw them at one another. Or rather the men started throwing them at the women. Or rather the Pope started throwing his at Giulia Farnese, looping them into her lap or, even cleverer, down the curved front of her bodice. So, of course, everyone else followed suit, until a happy mayhem had taken over. The Pope’s mistress, the servants say, was brimming over with largesse and good humour. Not to mention captured confectionery.

  But Pedro knows whose lap he would have chosen for his sweets.

  Though he has visited their house maybe a dozen times, has smelled her perfume, has heard what he was sure was her laughter once on the stairs, he has not set eyes on her until today. As Cesare’s bodyguard he had been close in the throng as she arrived: a young woman on her wedding day, palest skin against white silk set off by a blush of pearls. He gazed at a perfect heart-shaped face, eyes bright and shining with excitement. And such grace. Head held high, she had glided down the long corridor as if her feet were not touching the ground, a cloud of silk floating behind her. Of course he had been waiting for this moment. Any man in love with Cesare is already half in love with his sister. Now, when he shuts his eyes, he cannot see anything else.

  As night turns to morning, he catches another sight of her as she is escorted out from the great chamber on her brother’s arm, followed by her aunt and two of her ladies-in-waiting. Of her husband there is no sign. She seems smaller now, flushed and tired, with a light cape pulled around her. He stands to attention as they pass. Cesare catches his eye and nods, an instruction to wait until he comes back. She, holding tight to his arm, looks up also. He registers grey-green eyes and a small mouth, puckered, almost like a child’s. She gives a nervous little smile, as if they might know each other but she cannot remember how, then looks away and is gone.

  Later he and another horseman accompany Cesare out of the Vatican, by Castel Sant’ Angelo and across the bridge to the house of Fiammetta. They pass through winding streets strewn with debris – glass, flowers, torn streamers – with men asleep in the gutters or swaying their way home. Rome has enjoyed its own party. Calderón sits, hawk-eyed for trouble, one hand on his reins, the other on his dagger sheath. Perhaps it will happen now: a hotblood from the Orsini or Colonna clan, or one of Fiammetta’s clients denied access to her bed in favour of her new lover. They will come roaring out of the dark and he will spot them first, launching himself between his master and the sword…

  They arrive without incident. It is still dark when they reach the house, with its small courtyard on the outside. A young woman appears at a second-storey window, as if fresh from her mirror, her tumbling red hair caught in the light of the torches, set further on fire by the wild green of her robe. It is her profession to be awake while others sleep and, while this is by no means her only talent, it is one that suits Cesare particularly well. She lifts her hand in a small wave, and he leaps from his saddle in a single graceful jump and strides inside, leaving the others to settle the mounts.

  ‘How was it, pup?’ As Pedro turns, Michelotto steps out of the darkness behind him. ‘See a lot of flesh and finery, did you?’

  ‘It… Ha!… I didn’t expect to find you here. You startled me.’

  ‘Did I? You should have checked when you rode up. I could have been waiting here with a dagger under my cloak. And you, my friend…’ He pulls him to him and punches him softly up under the rib. ‘What use would you have been to your master then?’

  Pedro laughs. He’d like to ask how any villain would have managed to get this close in the first place, unless Fiammetta had invited them. But it is
not worth the energy. The rebuke will fade faster if Michelotto is allowed to win. The change of command has put his nose out of joint enough as it is.

  ‘Look at you. Quite the courtier. Did you get your snout in any ladies’ troughs then?’

  ‘Dozens,’ he says evenly. He has never seen Michelotto with a woman, though stories about girls who like the feel of scars rather than smooth faces abound in the living quarters.

  ‘That would account for the smell of you.’ He lets him go and slaps his head casually. ‘You did an all-right job,’ he says gruffly, the compliment as always undermined by the insults that decorate it. ‘Go on. You can get out of here now.’

  ‘I was told I was to stay and see His Excellency home tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it is already tomorrow and I am here now.’

  They face each other for a second, as if it might be worth making an issue of. Pedro bows his head.

  ‘And watch yourself. The streets out there are dangerous.’

  Across the city, Lucrezia sits by her bed, her discarded dress across the chest, its pearled arms jutting out like those of a stuffed doll. Her eyes are glazed with tiredness as her maid coaxes the tangles from her hair, then, closing the shutters against the dawning light, helps her into bed. She has already said her prayers, careful to include in them the well-being of her new husband, with whom she has spoken perhaps twenty or thirty words, none of them memorable, and whose face she can barely recall amid a sea of others.

  ‘Such a handsome fellow,’ her aunt’s voice had purred into her ear. Yet when she had looked from him to Juan, or Cesare or a dozen other men around her, he had seemed faintly drawn in comparison. In all her fourteen years she has never been in the company of so many men, nor seen her own bright sweetness reflected back in their eyes. She has been flattered and teased and complimented beyond compare. In return she has smiled and curtsied and laughed and clapped her hands and danced and danced and danced more. Her legs ache, her feet are sore and her head is dizzy. It has been the longest and most exciting day of her life. Yet back in her room, she feels little of it now.

  ‘I look forward to us becoming better acquainted as husband and wife.’ Those had been his last words; polite, inoffensive, more like the settling of an appointment for a business matter. He had taken her hands and kissed her quickly on both cheeks. She can still feel the dry flick of his lips against her flesh. If she was a little older or more experienced she might have been able to understand his nervousness as well as her own. Husband and wife. Did he really look forward to it? Did she? And is she the Lucrezia Borgia who had woken up this morning or the Lucrezia Sforza, Duchess of Pesaro, who is falling asleep tonight? The fact is they are still the same person. Lucrezia Sforza. Her mouth finds it hard to even say the two names together; they collide and trip over each other so. How strange that in the space of one day so much can have changed and yet everything still remain the same.

  Inside the Vatican, Pope Alexander VI is already fast asleep. Having married his beloved daughter, he has dispatched his young mistress back to her bed alone tonight, so that he might end this of all days in communion and thanks with the other most favoured woman in his life. For her part, the Virgin Mother of God watches over him from a glowing portrait over the great bed. If she has an opinion on the day, she is keeping it to herself.

  In his book-lined study on the other side of the Vatican palace, Johannes Burchard, Master of Ceremonies, his face set like rigor mortis, dips his ink in the well on his desk and notes down every detail.

  CHAPTER 12

  ‘This is important, Juan.’

  ‘I know, I know, Papà. I have heard it already. Cesare spent half of yesterday lecturing me – as if he knows anything about marriage and behaviour! He treats me as if I am a… a halfwit.’

  It is early morning; the summer sun slicing through the open windows and painting columns of golden light across the Room of Mysteries. The walls are still half finished, but the floor is vibrant with new tiles, the emblems of the Borgia crest marked out in hot Spanish blues, so cleverly laid in geometric shapes that they seem to move and shift under one’s feet. Any visitor with his eye to the ground and the sound of Spanish dialect ringing in his ears might think he had entered some Moorish or Byzantine palace, rather than the home of the Pontiff of Rome.

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true. He is your brother and you are as dear to him as you are to me. But Spain is not Rome. How you live here is not how you can live there. They do not look lightly on foreigners who take liberties with their culture.’

  ‘But… we are Spanish. That’s what you always tell us.’

  ‘By blood, maybe. But you were born into Italian ways and unless you are vigilant those ways will let you down. The fact is, you go not just as a husband, not just as a Borgia, but as an ambassador for the papacy itself.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll know that fast enough.’ Juan grins. ‘By the time we reach Barcelona for the wedding, the whole country will be talking about us.’

  ‘Yes, but there is talk and there is talk. And what impresses here does not always impress there.’

  ‘What? You want me to live like a pauper?’

  ‘There is little chance of that!’ Alexander retorts, allowing his exasperation to show. ‘We have four ships already loaded to the waterline at Civitavecchia. And I gather you have bought up most of the jewels in Rome.’

  He scowls. ‘This is Cesare’s sour tongue.’

  ‘No. The tongue is everyone’s.’

  ‘I’m the Duke of Gandia, Father,’ he protests. ‘You’ve told me often enough I have a whole palace to fill in Valencia. The gifts for my wife were your choice.’

  ‘And I am sure she will be delighted to receive every one of them. Just be careful how you deliver them. Your new family will not applaud ostentation in the way that Romans do.’

  ‘Purrh.’ The scowl collapses into a pout. He has never taken criticism well, this pretty young man. But then he has not been used to receiving much of it, especially from his father. ‘I thought Spain was interested in riches now. Everyone says her ships will be using gold as ballast soon.’

  ‘Yes, the country will be rich. But it will take time for that to sink into its soul. Spain has not embraced the rebirth of art and learning in the same way others have. They have no appetite for… well, what they see as frivolities. For them the world is about God and the united monarchy, and both have stricter standards than you are used to. You’ll find the court most pious in its religious observations. You should go to church daily, without fail. You must give up gambling and all such games of chance. And when it comes to your wife, there must be respect and discretion. I cannot say this clearly enough, Juan. There can be no running round the streets, bringing contamination back to the marriage bed.’

  The young man groans, sinking into his chair and picking a piece of fluff off his sleeve. ‘I think I would rather stay at home and marry Jofré’s betrothed. She sounds more fun.’

  And now the Pope laughs. Because, for all his faults, he adores this high-spirited young man, who is so handsome, with such an appetite for life, and for women. And they for him.

  ‘I heard that she had tutored her proxy as to how to behave at the betrothal,’ Juan grins, seizing the advantage to turn the talk away from lecturing.

  The memory has them both laughing. With wedding fever in the air, the King of Naples has made his peace with the Pope and negotiations over Jofré’s marriage have reached the betrothal stage. Such ceremonies are invariably dry affairs, the stand-ins for the participants acting like lawyers rather than lovers. But with Jofré so young – at eleven, it is his first official appearance – this one had an air of mischief from the start. So that when the young noble from Naples, standing in for the bride, fluttering his eyelashes and sending simpering little looks from behind his kerchief, had raised his voice falsetto high for the all-important ‘I do’, the whole company had been reduced to gales of laughter. ‘If he’d been wearing a dress I would have made him an off
er myself.’

  ‘And that, my son, is exactly the kind of talk that will not go down well in Spain,’ Alexander says with severity, though his heart is no longer in it. ‘I don’t say these things just to hear my own voice. Sancia Aragon is an illegitimate daughter of the house of Naples: good enough for a political alliance but not for a royal dynasty. You carry the future of the family on your back, Juan. It is worth a little chivalry when you get into bed. As for the country – if you just open your eyes and feel the sun on your skin, you will understand its beauty soon enough. Come. We have little time left. Let’s not spend it bickering.’

  The Pope and his second son embrace. In the last few months, Juan has grown taller than his father. He is doing his best: he has given up his Turkish robes and his lip is clean-shaven, though his body still has the gangling awkwardness of youth about it. While it will break Alexander’s heart to see him go, even a besotted father can tell when the wine is too young in the barrel. Spain and the dictates of a fiercer court will help him mature and the boy he sends out will return a man.

  When they say their final goodbyes two days later and Juan rides out past the Vatican palace and St Peter’s at the head of his troop, the crowd that gathers is smaller than he might like, but appreciative enough of another Borgia show. His boyish good looks attract as many catcalls from the women as the men, and he plays to the gallery, his pages throwing flowers and hand-kisses as they go. The Pope stands on the balcony watching, tears flowing unashamedly down his face. There is no crime in loving one’s children. Nor in having a favourite son. In all his seventeen years, Juan has never been away from home. Alexander is gripped by a sudden anxiety. The world holds so many dangers. The journey to Spain may not be a voyage to the edge of the world, but it is far enough, and who knows when – or if – he will come back?

  As soon as the procession is out of sight, he returns to his chamber. Looking out over the gardens and the lines of orange trees which offer their own reminder of Spain for a man who has not seen his birthplace for half a lifetime, he writes a letter, dispatching it with a fast rider to intercept them at the port of Civitavecchia.