Blood & Beauty: A Novel of the Borgias

by Sarah Dunant

  Burchard, when he hears the news, sums it up with unexpected poetry. ‘The King of Naples died without light, without the cross, without God.’

  Alexander is at dinner with guests in his private apartments when the messenger arrives. He gets rid of them fast. It is too late for him to address the state of King Ferrante’s soul, but the crisis which his death unleashes is very much papal business. Within the week the Vatican will be a madhouse of diplomats and spies, but now, for a few hours he can keep his own counsel. It is one of the greatest luxuries a pope can afford himself.

  ‘I want no disturbance unless I ask for it, do you understand?’

  The young servant moves silently around the bedchamber, filling the wine jug, loading the fire with wood and covering his master’s shoulders with his winter cape lined with sable to keep out the night draughts, then kneeling to kiss the Pontiff’s feet before he moves backwards out of the room. As the Pope’s personal shadow it is his job to be invisible, and by the time he leaves his master is already deep in thought.

  Though Alexander’s job tonight is to rise to the challenge of the future, he can draw strength from the way he has handled the past. His policy of balancing Milan and Naples against each other has, up until now, worked brilliantly. These two lumbering states have been playing a power game since long before his papacy, with the most efficient chess pieces coming from their own families. Why risk using an army when a daughter or son will do? So five years ago, when Ferrante married his granddaughter off to the young Sforza heir, he had had every reason to think she would eventually become Duchess of Milan. He had bargained without the thug Ludovico Sforza, the boy’s guardian uncle, who had usurped the power and then encouraged the French claim on Naples as his way of keeping Ferrante off his back. It was an unscrupulous, cunning and quite brilliant move, but only as long as it stayed threat rather than reality.

  Alexander himself has milked it for everything he could get. On the one hand, by resisting the claim, he can set himself up as the saviour of Italy, while at the same time using the fear of French invasion to bring Naples to heel. As in many things, the secret – instinct rather than ideology – is pragmatism, working with what is rather than what might be. And with the betrothal of young Jofré to Ferrante’s granddaughter the rewards are starting to flow.

  But with the news of the King’s death the game changes completely. Because while there is an heir in waiting (a son who has wasted his life in anticipation of his father’s death), there is also, temporarily, an empty throne.

  He opens his mouth in a huge yawn, stretching his arms up inside his voluminous sleeves to counteract the growing numbness of sitting in the same position. An empty throne. Fortuna. The goddess of chance. The wheel of fortune. The throw of the dice that no one can predict. If the French King really wants to take Naples, now would be the time for him to go for it. With a big enough army no one, not even the Pope, could stop him.

  Except… He stretches again and now registers the satisfying sound of a small crack somewhere inside his shoulder. Ah, the pleasure of release.

  Except for one thing. Fortuna. One man’s fall is another’s man rise. Because Ferrante’s death hands him, Alexander, an unexpected bargaining card. Naples, in every other way an independent state, is, by historical accident, a suzerainty of the papacy. Which means that for its ruler to be recognised by Christendom each and every king must be formally invested by the Pope. In other words, the blessing of Alexander VI is up for sale. What may be a risk for Italy is also, for the Borgias, an opportunity.

  A smile starts to play around his lips. Across the lintel of the fireplace, his papal name is picked out in perfectly chiselled stone. Inside the grate, the lower layer of wood collapses noisily in on itself, sending out a firestorm of sparks. He watches as the flames move in on the new thick logs, searching for splits and holes to get their burning tongues inside. Once they catch hold there will be no stopping them.

  ‘Your Holiness, I am here to tell you that your daughter is unhappy. She wanders around the palace and can barely find the energy to sit at her needlework for more than half an hour at a time. It is as if everything is too much effort.’

  Alexander’s face creases with concern. From high politics to family drama: sometimes there is so little time for prayer. ‘What is it? What ails her?’

  ‘Oh, my!’ Adriana allows herself a little roll of the eyes. Though she worships him as Pope and family, he is also a man. ‘I may speak freely, yes?’

  ‘I would be astonished if you did not, Adriana,’ he says mildly.

  ‘She is married, but without a husband. From being the centre of attention, admired and loved by everyone at the wedding, she now sits alone in the house waiting for a man who, as far as I – as she – can see, has no intention of coming back.’

  ‘Ah, I understand. In which case you will be pleased to know that we are in contact with the Duke of Pesaro and, as we speak, he is ordered back to Rome to join his family and take his bride as his wife.’

  ‘Oh!’ Adriana, who has come prepared to say much more, is taken aback. ‘I am… delighted. I… I did not think you had noticed.’

  ‘Well.’ He waves his hand carelessly, as if the credit is not worth the taking. In a perfect world he would let the pouting duke stew a little longer – Lucrezia is not yet fifteen, and he has taken against his son-in-law’s spinelessness. But in this new political climate Milan and the Sforzas have to be kept sweet, at least until things turn sour, and to delay the consummation of the marriage any further would, as Cardinal Sforza himself has made clear, be taken as a gross insult.

  Under the flowery language of courtesy, Alexander’s letter to his son-in-law is crystal clear. You want the dowry? You had better come and get it.

  ‘Tell me, child, how would you feel if your husband was to return?’ He is gentler when it comes to Lucrezia.

  ‘Giovanni? I… I don’t know.’

  ‘What? You do not like him?’

  ‘… No, I like him well enough. Well, the little that I know.’ She hesitates. Her father is even busier these days, and this visit is both unannounced and unexpected. ‘I think more he does not like me.’

  ‘Nonsense. I am sure he misses you terribly.’

  ‘Papà. You do not need to make me feel better. The fact is he could not wait to get away.’

  ‘Oh, his leaving was not to do with you. The burdens of finance weigh heavy on a prince and he had business to attend to at home. But he is eager now to return.’

  ‘Is this his decision or yours?’

  He opens his mouth to lie, but the simple honesty of the question confounds him. ‘Ah… my dear Lucrezia, we are all bound by forces stronger than ourselves.’

  She nods, as if this is as much as she needs to know. ‘And when he comes back, where will he live?’

  ‘If it is amenable to you, he will live here with you in the palace.’ He pauses. He had been intending to leave this to Adriana, for these things are women’s business, but… ‘You understand what I am saying, child. You will be husband and wife.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I understand.’ She feels a flush in her face and drops her eyes. ‘So,’ she says after a little silence. ‘So, I will truly be the Duchess of Pesaro. Does that mean that I will go there?’

  ‘To Pesaro? That may happen, yes. Would you like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have never been anywhere but here. Perhaps. Yes… I think perhaps I would.’

  Little Lucrezia, so young still. He has not bargained on losing her so soon. ‘Then I am sure it can be arranged.’ He takes her cheek in his thumb and forefinger and squeezes gently. With so much politicking there has been less time for the pleasures of family. Well, once this is over… ‘For now though you will set up house here, and you will be a wife that any man on earth would be proud of.’

  ‘Better than Juan has been a husband, you mean,’ she says, with sudden mischief.

  ‘Ah, your brother!’ He snorts. ‘If my hair had not been white already he would
have turned it so overnight.’

  Before Naples imploded, it had been the news from Spain that had seen him raging about his private chambers: Juan, despite all advice to the contrary, had been found night-crawling around the Spanish streets and brothels while his new wife was tucked up in bed waiting for him. Alexander’s letters had scorched the pouch of the messenger who delivered them. But he has forgiven him everything with the news that not only is his wife bedded, but that her seamstresses are busy letting out the gathering on her skirts. A grandchild already. Ah, the potency of his sons!

  Alexander smiles. ‘You will have to hurry to catch up with him now, my dearest.’ And he opens his arms for her to come inside.

  This time around there are no parties, no rich dinners, no ambassadors and, perhaps most important, no wedding-night ceremony with the closest relatives accompanying the couple as far as the marital bed. The not-so-newlyweds will be left to consummate their bond in private.

  Perhaps because he knows this, Giovanni sets out from Pesaro in more confident mood. He remains largely ignorant of the machinations going on behind the scenes. As far as he is concerned, Milan is riding high, he has stood out for what he wants, and his determination has achieved it. He travels fast and arrives smiling. It makes him almost handsome. He, Giovanni Sforza, will be somebody in Rome now. And a much richer man by the morning. He kisses his wife and gives her a garland of herbs and winterberries picked from the walled garden in his ducal palace. ‘It is too early for flowers,’ he says. ‘But when you come to meet your people you will eclipse all blossom anyway.’

  Lucrezia, who is so nervous that she has to curb a desire to laugh, curtsies sweetly. ‘My lord, welcome to your home.’

  That night, in lieu of the public bedding, Adriana passes by the closed door a couple of times before she retires to bed. The noises that filter through the door seem promising enough. She is not so cynical or so old that she doesn’t remember her own wedding night. The most important thing is to be prepared. As surrogate mother she had used the plainest of terms. No point in frills and courtly fancies. Lucrezia had thanked her and smiled sweetly; as if she had perhaps known it all along. Well, so be it. Before she left, Adriana had been plagued with the sudden desire to say more; those things she might have liked her own mother to have offered. ‘Don’t worry. It is not so hard, this joining of the flesh. Yes, it is true that you will never be quite the same. And yet you will not be so very changed either. What is strange or distasteful soon becomes familiar. Almost routine.’ She might have added, ‘And though some men seem never able to get enough of it, there are women who never understand what all the fuss is about.’ Because, if she is honest, that is how she had felt. She left the room with it unsaid.

  In the morning, after Giovanni has left for a hunting engagement, she visits her niece in her bedroom. Lucrezia is still in bed. She looks almost happy.

  ‘So, my dear? You are man and wife.’

  ‘I… yes, yes,’ she says. ‘We are.’

  In the silence that follows neither of them can think of anything more to say.

  It is true that something has changed between the two of them. Now when they pass in the house they smile at each other. He might put his arm on hers at dinner, or reach out and touch her cheek. She blushes but her eyes are bright, and sitting at games together there is chatter, even laughter. Tailors come to measure him for robes. He talks with the vintner about the order of wines from his home vineyards and is in touch with his ex-brother-in-law in Mantua about the purchase of an Arab stallion. As well as a wife, he now has a substantial purse.

  When he goes to pay his respects to the Pope, he stands tall in new clothes. Alexander, who would like to believe that he has done right by his daughter, allows himself to be impressed.

  ‘Welcome to our family.’

  Giovanni sinks to his knee and kisses the papal ring. ‘I am here to serve.’

  After that much dowry I should hope so, Alexander thinks despite himself, as he gestures to him to rise.

  During all this time, Cesare is nowhere to be seen. He had been on an extended hunting trip in Subiaco at the moment of Giovanni’s arrival, and when he returns he makes it his business to visit his father, but not his sister. When they do finally meet, at a wedding of one of the Roman families, he comes late and sits at another table. When Lucrezia sees him there, she is the one to make the journey across the room to greet him, pulling him up and embracing him.

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  He holds her to him tightly, then pushes her away, but keeps hold of her arm. ‘How are you, little sister?’

  ‘I – I am fine,’ she says. Then with mock-sternness: ‘You have been most remiss in not visiting.’

  He shrugs. ‘I have been busy with Church affairs.’ He glances across the room to where Giovanni sits, intent in conversation. ‘So, you are properly married.’

  ‘Yes.’

  His gaze slips back towards her husband. As if feeling it, Giovanni now turns and their eyes meet.

  ‘And… he does nothing to displease you?’ He looks back at her.

  ‘No… no.’ She drops her eyes. His hand stays in place so that she cannot move away.

  ‘Cesare?’ She looks up again. ‘Everything is as it should be. He is my husband. You don’t need to worry.’ She takes his hand off her arm and squeezes it, giving him a bright smile. It is as if she is helping him. ‘Come and sit with us.’

  ‘In a while, perhaps. I have business with some of the men here.’

  At the other end of the room, Adriana has been watching the encounter. For over ten years she has done her best to care for all of her cousin’s children. Cesare, though, she has never understood. Such self-containment in a boy so young made her nervous. It seemed as if he cared for no one and nothing. Except perhaps his sister. With her he had always been different.

  ‘Cesare,’ Adriana says to him later, when their paths cross after dinner. ‘You do not need to be worried on Lucrezia’s account. You know I will always look after her.’

  ‘What? Like you looked after your own son?’

  CHAPTER 14

  Inside the Vatican, the great diplomatic game now unfolds just as Alexander predicted it.

  No sooner is Ferrante’s body under marble than the Neapolitan envoys start to arrive. Alexander sits in his receiving-room, listening with studied concentration. Each one brings a further communication from Alfonso, Ferrante’s son, the heir apparent. He is, as ever, the Pope’s most humble servant. He is also filled with generosity and largesse, eager to unload all manner of titles and lands on his putative son-in-law Jofré and his brothers. All he wants in return is a date for his coronation. After a while the tone grows desperate.

  France, for her part, is equally solicitous. Or some might say duplicitous. The real business is not invasion, no! Perish the thought. Rather it is a crusade against the infidels, with Naples a necessary staging-post on the way east. How could the Pope not support such a godly mission? Alexander has trouble keeping a straight face as they talk. But it is serious enough underneath and there are times when Vatican officials have to police the flow in the antechambers; when states are on the verge of war, it is important for the ambassadors to remain above the fray.

  For the first weeks Alexander is beside himself with the pleasure of it all: to be so courted, so tempted and cajoled. He has waited a long time for such power. But he is not so dazzled that he does not see the deeper significance of what is happening, and by early spring the balancing act can no longer be sustained. His choice is stark. Either he agrees to Alfonso’s coronation and offends Milan, or he cuts off Naples and feeds it to the French. He spends the night in prayer. God’s voice, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, tells him what the politician in him already knows: that whatever he might stand to gain from playing one against the other, the prospect of a foreign army marching through Italy can bring only instability and devastation in its wake for all. He is, it seems, the Church’s shepherd afte
r all.

  He calls for Burchard. After an hour in his company, the long-suffering Master of Ceremonies retires to his book-lined office to start work choreographing another challenging ceremony on the Pope’s behalf: this time the investiture of Alfonso as ruler of Naples, followed swiftly by the official marriage of the new king’s daughter, Sancia, to the Pope’s youngest son. The Neapolitan ambassador is informed that afternoon, but is told to keep his glee to himself for a few days.

  Next morning Alexander dispatches a golden rose to the King of France.

  ‘It has been newly blessed by my own hand this Laetare Sunday,’ he says as he hands the fat golden stalk with its elaborate gold sculpted blossoms to the French ambassador. ‘As a symbol of our dear Lord’s majesty beyond the agony of the cross, it is the greatest gift we can bestow on a ruler whose friendship we so much value, for it speaks of union and love. You will note the wondrous art of construction in the top rose. When His Majesty holds it in his hand he can open the blossom to smell the balm and balsam that was poured in, once again by my own hand.’

  The ambassador, who knows exactly what is going on, takes the rose and flips the lid off the top of the bud. His nose lifts high into the air; but whether this is the impact of the perfume or a show of diplomatic disdain it is hard to tell. Alexander’s smile grows wider at the sight.