Blood & Beauty: A Novel of the Borgias

by Sarah Dunant

  My dearest son,

  I write these words so that they stay with you always, to be read whenever you have need. A few final pieces of advice, and with them a pair of new kid gloves to wear constantly to keep your hands from the sun and the salt air, for as you know, the Spanish love above all things fair hands…

  He has said it all before. Still, it takes away some of the ache of missing; the idea that, while his voice will die away, a letter might find its way close to his beloved son’s heart.

  Meanwhile, Lucrezia’s marriage to Giovanni Sforza is not going well.

  It is not for want of effort on her part – or indeed his. Almost every day since the ceremony the Duke of Pesaro has come dutifully from the house where he has taken temporary residence to visit his wife in the palace of Santa Maria in Portico next to the Vatican. Together they have shared meals, played games, even entertained sometimes. Their conversations have been full of topics: his home in Pesaro, his cousin the duke, her family, books, stories, all manner of fashions and fancies. She has smiled and laughed at things he says, most of which are not so funny, and he has complimented her on every new outfit she has worn, of which there are a great many.

  Perhaps within a more traditional courtship, where marriage was yet to take place, all this might have been fruitful: a gradual move from shyness to glimpses of enjoyment, to the promise of something more… well, more physical. Alternatively, had there been enough magnetism between them to make obeying the rules as intoxicating as breaking them…

  But this, alas, has not happened. Whatever the unconventional nature of her childhood, as an only daughter Lucrezia has grown up coddled and cosseted, her innocence a state of grace to be protected for as long as possible. While she has seen enough evidence of a woman’s sexual power, she is still at the stage where trying on clothes is more exciting than taking them off. Alone with a man, she has no idea how to encourage him further, even if she thought such a thing was her role. No. She assumes the very fact of her presence is enough. It is not an assumption based on arrogance. Far from it – she is nervous underneath, but about what exactly she does not know.

  There are men, of course, who would find this level of innocence enticing, its own aphrodisiac. Juan, for instance, has a reputation for coaxing virgin flesh out of fortress clothing. Sadly, Giovanni is not such a man. As the illegitimate child of a father who largely ignored him and relatives who only notice his existence when they want something out of him, he is no more the natural rake than she is the natural coquette. Like many men of breeding he was introduced to such matters by professional women, who knew what they were doing. His marriage had brought an early pregnancy, where his wife had suffered such chronic sickness that it was hard for her to be safely affectionate for more than a few minutes at a time, and after her death, which had affected him more than he would like to admit, he had lost the zest for conquest and more often than not had found solace in his own company.

  Faced with this sweet, exuberant girl, with her hint of double chin, her endless rich frocks and her savagely powerful family, he has found himself almost too… well… tired to rise to the challenge.

  Of course there have been moments – before Rome grew too hot and his debts started to mount (no consummation, no dowry). The accidental brushing of flesh against flesh at table or over a book, a certain hold in a dance, where her softness encountered his strength and her breathless little laugh made him feel suddenly potent, one particular afternoon when over a game of chess she had leaned forward to place her queen, her tongue caught between her teeth in unconscious, charming thought, unaware of the rising moons of her breasts, and he had suddenly been moved to slip out a hand to cup her head and bring it forward to his own. There, his lips had encountered those same sharp little teeth as an automatic portcullis, but not without the possibility of the gates lifting if pushed a little harder.

  Unfortunately, it was this same moment when Adriana had chosen to walk into the room. They had leapt apart as if they had been on fire. It was hardly Adriana’s fault. Her role was to offer them enough privacy to get to know each other while guaranteeing her niece’s vital purity until the Pope himself had agreed it might go further. That afternoon she had not even been spying on them. But the possibility that she might strikes both of them. And no better opportunity presents itself.

  Eventually the house starts to feel like enemy territory to Giovanni. It is, after all, also the home of the most lusted-after woman in Rome, who just happens to belong to his wife’s father. However kind or courteous she herself is, Giulia’s presence is a reminder of the potency, in all manner of ways, of his new father-in-law. On days after Alexander visits her, or she has been called to him, her room remains closed until far into the afternoon, after which she emerges, flowing languidly down the stairs into the salon, radiating an aura of deep satisfaction, but also giving off a clear message of noli me tangere. Adriana is at her beck and call, as are all the servants, not to mention the wet-nurses, who, giggling and shouting, follow little Laura as she crawls around the house, conquering the world around her with all the cloying sweetness of an adored first child. Santa Maria in Portico is a palace of skirts and there are times when Giovanni feels almost smothered by the weight of rustling silk or the smell of breast milk.

  The only respite to this is the occasional visit by Cesare, when, as if by magic, everyone’s behaviour changes: Adriana becomes unctuous, Giulia subdued, almost angry, and Lucrezia lights up like an oil lamp under his wit and attention. Giovanni – bar the repeated mention of the splendour of his wedding jewellery – is ignored.

  In late August things reach a quiet crisis. In the suffocating heat Lucrezia is finding it tedious, spending so many hours at her toilet for what seems like so little impact, and Giovanni is wrestling with the outstanding debt of his wedding expenses, alongside the mounting costs of keeping a second home in Rome with no sign of respite. His audience with the Pope, where he asks for five thousand ducats to tide him over, does nothing to boost his confidence. Alexander, busy dispatching Juan with a fleet of ships loaded with riches, has long since forgotten what it is like to run out of money, and finds it faintly distressing to discuss such matters. It is left hanging in the air. Finally, when the inevitable summer fever starts to bite and Giovanni announces that he is returning home to care for his own people, no one does much to stop him.

  Once outside the city walls he finds the air much easier to breathe.

  Lucrezia spends a few days moping, only to discover that her life is more engaging with the women gathered back together again. She plays with her enchanting baby half-sister, and starts entertaining ambassadors and suitors to the Pope again, men whose blandishments feel as fresh as if they have been minted that very morning by a clever court poet. But though she laughs and feels more alive again, she is plagued by a sense of discomfort, as if she has been tested and found wanting. She spends time in chapel, asking for help from Our Lady and also Saints Bridget and Perpetua, who as married women would understand the tribulations of earthly love. The advice she receives back is the same as she has given herself: that now she is no longer a child she must be ready to embrace the duties of womanhood. And so perhaps it is her fault that her husband does not seem to find her attractive.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’ she says at last to Giulia, some weeks after he has gone, when the day is particularly hot and they are sitting under the loggia in search of a hint of breeze.

  ‘Oh, it is not you, Lucrezia. He is pleasant enough, but he is frightened of his own shadow. No woman can make a man love her unless he has an appetite for it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Giulia sighs. ‘It is… it is like a fire inside. You can see it in their eyes. In some men it burns so hot that it seems as if it must be constantly fed. I sometimes think it almost doesn’t matter who the woman is. In others… well, in others the flame takes a certain fanning.’

  Lucrezia stares at her. She thinks of Cesare, then Juan, and the energy, or is it the
heat, that glows out of them. And then she thinks of her father. Which kind of man is he? Only at the same time she does not want to know the answer.

  ‘And Giovanni? What kind of fire did you see in his eyes?’

  Giulia pauses, struggling with the formation of the thought. ‘I think Giovanni may be the kind of man who is more worried about burning himself. But these are silly notions. And you are not to worry. In none of it are you to blame.’

  ‘What will happen to us then?’ While there are only a few years between them, Giulia is so very much older. Will she herself ever be so wise?

  Giulia shrugs. ‘Either he will become braver or you will meet someone else.’

  But we are married, Lucrezia thinks. How can there be someone else? ‘Is that how it was between you and Orsino?’ she asks, because when it had all unfolded she had been too young and now, as a married woman herself, she feels she has the right.

  ‘No, not exactly.’ Giulia laughs a little uncomfortably. ‘Your father… Your father, well, your whole family, they have a certain way of making the world behave as they would want it to, rather than how it is.’ And she laughs again.

  ‘How strange. Cesare always says that we Borgias have more enemies than we have friends.’

  ‘Among men perhaps. Not among women.’

  ‘I see,’ she says. Though really she does not. ‘Did you like him? Your husband, I mean. It is an age since you visited him.’

  ‘He is, he was—’ She stops, as if she needs to reassess the question. ‘We have not been granted much time together.’

  ‘You sound sad about it.’

  ‘Oh, there is no point to being sad about what one cannot have,’ she says quietly.

  But the confusion in her face shows that it is not so much an answer as a reflection of the trouble that the question causes her. Lucrezia watches for a moment, then leans over and embraces her. Maybe Giulia is not so wise after all.

  Alexander has his hands too full with other concerns to immediately notice his daughter’s distress. With Juan safely dispatched he must now turn his attention to Cesare. Managing his oldest son’s future is a delicate business, constrained as it is by facts that contradict each other. The Sacred College of Cardinals is the mainstay of support or rebellion against a pope. To be effective the pope needs to control it through his own appointments. If his son is to go higher in the Church, he must join its ranks. But Church law is Church law. No bastard can become a cardinal. And Cesare Borgia, as everyone knows, is quite clearly a bastard.

  Alexander has had Church lawyers on the case for months, scrutinising the dark alleyways of canon law, looking at the problem every which way. The solution, when it finally comes, does the job but pleases no one, particularly not Cesare himself.

  ‘Domenigo da Rignano! I hardly remember him. What place did he ever hold in the world?’

  ‘His place, as you know well, was to be married to your mother at the time you were born. I don’t find it any more satisfying than you do. But if you are ever to become Pope you must first become a cardinal, and to become a cardinal you must be legitimate. It has all been approved. The papal bull we will issue states that Domenigo da Rignano is your legitimate father and therefore you, Cesare da Rignano, are eligible to be elevated to the Sacred College.’

  ‘But at the same time demoted from a Borgia to the laughing stock of Rome.’

  ‘You are still my son. Everybody knows that. It is only for the letter of Church law. The purpose of the second bull, which will be dated the day afterwards in order to override the official one, makes clear your true parentage.’

  ‘But that one remains unpublished. No one will read it.’

  ‘Of course. For the first to work, the second must remain secret. Cesare, I have weathered enough storms of petulance and temper from your brother these last months. I need – no, I expect – better from you.’

  Cesare drops his eyes and stares at the ground. He stands so still that he appears frozen to the spot. The air around him however is alive with tension. Even his father knows better than to interrupt.

  ‘You are right,’ he says finally, looking up. ‘There is no other way.’ He picks up the list of names on the table. ‘The cardinals will fight you over this, you know. They’ll see it as an attempt to pack the College with foreigners and supporters.’

  ‘Of course. You think it’s never happened before? Every pope does it. The only difference is that not every pope is foreign. But I have not chosen lightly. The Spaniards on the list are all good men and every other name has a pedigree.’

  ‘Giulia’s brother, Alessandro Farnese?’

  ‘Is a fine churchman.’

  ‘You know what they will call him?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, the insult is there already: the petticoat cardinal. But those who coined it are fools. Farnese is no puppet, regardless of Giulia, my… of his sister.’

  ‘And fifteen-year-old Ippolito d’Este from Ferrara?’

  Alexander lifts his hands in mock-surrender. What else could I do? the gesture says. Sometimes one must take what one can get.

  ‘You are sure you can make this work, Father?’

  But if his sons favour their fists, there is nothing Rodrigo Borgia likes better than a high-class political brawl.

  In the lead-up to the first meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals, there is an unseemly rush of apologies from those unable to attend. While a few have legitimate reasons – the young Medici cardinal, for instance, is called to Florence, where his brother’s position is growing more precarious – so many others are struck down by the summer fever that it seems as if God has chosen to infect only cardinals this year. ‘Illness’, however, does not stop Cardinal della Rovere from hurling out a barrage of barbed remarks about corruption before keeling over into his bed.

  Alexander, in contrast, remains incandescent with health. And fury. Over the intervening weeks between the two meetings he makes clear his feelings to any churchman or diplomat who comes near him. ‘There are men on this list who have given their lives for the well-being and godliness of the Church. There are reformers, holy men and great theologians from all over Europe. I will have them approved – every single one of them – or by God, by Christmas there will be another list even longer. We are surrounded by enemies. Not just inside Italy, but elsewhere. If we are not united, we are nothing. I am the Pope and until someone else sits on this throne, my voice will be listened to.’

  When the College meets again, the room is considerably fuller than before. Twenty-one cardinals now attend. The atmosphere is strained as the vote is counted. The result could not be closer. Eleven to ten. In favour. It is hardly the glorious victory that Alexander might have wished, but it is enough. With another thirteen of his own cardinals now injected into the mix, he has taken control of the Sacred College. And most particularly, the new young Cardinal of Valencia will be his eyes, ears and voice.

  That night he and Cesare dine together in the splendour of the new apartments. His prayer of grace gives thanks to God for what they are about to receive. The toast celebrates what he has already got: a daughter married into Milan, a son betrothed to Naples, a foothold in Spain through a bona fide royal wife and, sitting in front of him, a nineteen-year-old cardinal with a dazzling Church future in front of him.

  Later, as he lowers his knees on to the cushioned stool near his bed in order to offer further thanks to Mary, Holy Mother of God, he finds he cannot stop smiling. Ah, the sin of pride. There are times when it is a challenge even to ask forgiveness for it. But she, whose love and care he has never doubted even in the bleakest of times, surely she will understand.

  Like the best politicians, even when matters are going well Alexander has eyes in the back of his head, alert for anything that he is not meant to see. In the final days leading up to the second vote of the Sacred College, Rome has been awash with gossip, with foreign diplomats moving to and fro constantly, realigning their cardinals with the interests of their states. In particular, della Rovere
, while too ill to attend, has been well enough to take a number of high-profile visits from the French ambassador.

  No one, certainly not Alexander, is under any illusion as to what they are talking about. Della Rovere, who has favoured Naples as long as Milan favoured the Pope, is starting to smell considerable advantage in changing sides. The forces of opposition are shifting, making allies of former enemies and enemies of former friends. And the phrase ‘foreign invasion’ is starting to move across people’s lips.

  Alexander sits ready for whatever is to come.

  He does not have to wait long.

  PART III

  Invasion

  I may not be Italian, but I love Italy and will not see her in any other hands.

  POPE ALEXANDER VI, NOVEMBER 1494

  There is nothing but moaning and weeping. In the memory of man the Church has never been in such evil plight.

  MANTUAN AMBASSADOR TO THE VATICAN, 1495

  CHAPTER 13

  In the great castle of Naples that looks out from the harbour over to the Mediterranean, King Ferrante of the House of Aragon picks the coldest day of the year to die.

  He has been in decline for a while. His gut has grown fat with a protuberance that isn’t food and which presses so heavily on his bowels that he spends more time than any ruler can afford in the privy trying to push it out. The less he expels, the more blood comes with it. His doctors who examine the small black, matted lumps reassure him that, whatever it is, it is breaking down and evacuating thanks to their potions. When the pains start to rack his lower body, they dither and argue and prevaricate. Had he more energy he might have them strung up for treachery – for he sees it everywhere, even in simple mistakes – but by now he is too busy looking death in the face. It is not the first time. As a young ruler he survived an assassin’s knife and has kept his throne through turmoil and rebellion. He has gambled his whole life on stern government. Those who rebelled against him have died agonising deaths, those who remain loyal have been subject to suspicion and capricious cruelty. If his court is grown harsh and louche, it is because of his own moral equivocation feeding into the attitudes of those who dance attendance. Those who come to write the history might say that the House of Aragon, Spanish by descent, has given in to Italian decadence and so deserves all that might follow such a man’s death.