by Sarah Dunant
What is panic for some will be profit for others. It is a fortunate vicar of God who presides over such a windfall of revenue, and Alexander is already busy rebuilding. In the cauldron of heat, the work goes on: men ripping down the barnacle growth of houses and shops that have sprung up along the long route of pilgrimage between the great churches of Rome. From Castel Sant’ Angelo to the steps of the echoing old Basilica of St Peter, an elegant new thoroughfare is emerging: Via Alessandrina. In his mind it is already teeming with faithful souls, filled with God’s love and the majesty of His church on earth. The papal coffers will be full, Rome will be seen to be a great city again and they will travel back to towns and hamlets all over Christendom with the name of the holy father who presided over it all on their lips: Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI, a Spaniard by birth, but a pope with history on his shoulders. Of that he is now sure.
In her palace next to the Vatican, Lucrezia starts to feel the child move inside her. She sleeps sometimes in the afternoon now, heavy deep sleep, like a drug sucking her down underwater, while the baby flips and rolls like a fat fish. When she wakes, her mind is sometimes so glued that it takes her a while to remember what is happening. The movement comes again and she claps her hands over her belly. ‘Hush, hush, it will be all right. You are safe.’
At the beginning she had prayed constantly: ‘Let it be a boy, dear God, if I am worthy of being granted anything in Your mercy let it be a boy.’ She said the words so many times that she began to feel it was a fact already. Then, fearing that her certainty was arrogance for which she would be punished, she asked forgiveness. In the last weeks she has rearranged her bedchamber so that everywhere she looks there is a devotional painting. Rome is filled with great artists who celebrate the beauty of man, but not all of them capture the spirit as well as they do the flesh. She searches for the images of the crucified Christ where his suffering has the most pity in it. When faced with half a dozen Virgins-and-child she picks the one where the serenity is as great as the joy; this way when she wakes she can move her gaze between the two. In the midst of the growing chaos it helps to be reminded.
With the first troops flooding over the passes, news comes from the court of Milan. Ludovico Sforza, a man who poured scorn on those who ran their life by astrologers, has looked into his own future and is seizing everything that is not nailed down in readiness for running away. The fear is contagious. Two days later, Lucrezia wakes to find her husband has made the same decision. The letter he leaves tells her he loves her and that he will write when he reaches Naples. She does not know whether to laugh or cry.
‘This is King Federico’s work,’ Alexander roars when he finds out. ‘If he is so keen to have his family reunited, let us make a clean sweep of it. Tell my daughter-in-law to pack her bags. He can have her back as well.’
When Sancia refuses to go, he threatens to have her expelled by force. The whole court is thrown into disarray with his temper. After tears and pleading from both Jofré and Lucrezia, Sancia goes on her miserable way.
A few days later the Pope’s spy service intercepts a letter from Alfonso to Lucrezia, urging her to leave Rome and join him.
Lucrezia is reading it – badly resealed – when Alexander arrives unannounced. ‘I have come to see how you are,’ he opens in blustering fashion.
‘I am six months gone with child and my husband has left me.’ She has prayed and cried and prayed some more. And now, to her surprise, she feels almost calm. She folds the letter and hands it to him. ‘In case you have not read it already.’
He is taken aback by her self-possession. ‘He should not have gone in such a manner,’ he mutters. ‘Without permission.’
‘He was frightened for his safety.’
‘There was no need. As your husband he is under our protection.’
‘What, like Giovanni Sforza?’
‘That is different.’ He sighs, as if he is the wounded party and the world is conspiring against him. ‘I am not here to fight with you, Lucrezia. On the contrary, I have come because I need your help.’
‘My help? In what?’
‘I am in need of a governor for the cities of Spoleto and Foligno; someone who can do the job with strength and fairness.’
She stares at him. ‘Me? But it is a post for a cardinal, surely.’
‘In the past perhaps, yes. But the coming months will see our fortunes change dramatically and I need people around me that I can trust. There is already unrest through many of the papal states in anticipation of what may come. Spoleto remains loyal, and her loyalty must be honoured by a good governor. You have an aptitude with people and with politics, Lucrezia. I have watched it grow.’
‘But… What about Jofré?’
‘Jofré! We both know Jofré is not capable of peeling his own fruit. Though I will send him with you, for companionship.’
‘And my husband? Will you bring him back to me?’
‘It is the King’s decision, not mine.’
She waits.
The art of bargaining: whatever his motives for the offer, his admiration for his daughter’s growing acumen is not false. He sighs.
‘Very well. I will try.’
She refuses the silk-lined palanquin the Pope has arranged for her to ride in, and does much of the journey on horseback. She knows the road; it is the one she once took to Pesaro and she loves the way the landscape, at first wooded and dense, gives way to a long fertile plain with spectacular hill-towns poking up their stone-clad heads in the distance on either side. Wherever they stop people flood out to greet her. The sins of the Pope’s daughter are ripe gossip and those who meet her are amazed to find her such a gracious, modest figure. Her belly is big now, catching the light on the silk of her gowns, and women in particular press to get close to her, many in the hope that her fertility may pass to them. Others bring flowers or amulets to have her hold and bless. On the road into Narni, with its sculpted Roman bridge and rippling river water, a bent old woman shouts from the front of the crowd.
‘A boy, the duchess is carrying a boy! I can see him, my lady, swimming in your waters.’
‘She should know,’ someone else yells. ‘She’s delivered hundreds and never got it wrong.’
The crowd roars its appreciation and the baby rolls and slides inside her as if in answer.
The castle of Spoleto sits perched like an eagle above the hill-town, the great viaduct below a memory of ancient splendour. Once inside the fortress, the gates are bolted behind them. As she is helped off her horse, she can feel her heart beating hard against her chest. She has no illusions about the velvet trap her father has set for her. A pope’s daughter governing a city cannot be a wife running off to join her husband in exile. But Alfonso is safe and she is in that blessed stage of pregnancy when many healthy young women find themselves filled with unexpected energy and well-being. While the post may be a prison as much as a privilege, she is exhilarated by the challenge.
The household is still unpacking, flinging open windows and doors to ventilate the stifling chambers, when Lucrezia welcomes the dignitaries of the town and starts taking petitions and hearing complaints. She can do this. She is a Borgia.
PART VIII
Women at War
The Pope plans to make him no less than the King of Italy.
GIAN LUCIDO CATTANEO, MANTUAN ENVOY, 1499
CHAPTER 42
The archer’s upper arm trembles with the stretch of the bow. The arrow, a high whine of wind, hits the great horse’s left ear full on, shattering it on impact. The shot is greeted with a howl of approval, then one of derision as the next narrowly misses the other ear. A dozen others follow, slamming into the animal’s neck and flanks, and sending chunks of clay flying, crashing, smashing everywhere.
‘Ssssforza, Ssssforza,’ the archers chant and cheer as they load and reload until the air grows dark under the onslaught.
‘Poor old da Vinci. Ludovico should have employed him to design weapons rather than statues.’ From a window high in the
Sforza palace, Cesare stands watching the carnage. Before long the horse’s tail is severed from its body. ‘Look at them. Even pissed stupid they shoot better than most Italians. Well, they had to sack something.’
Beneath the plinth, servants run head-down around the hooves and under the belly, dodging the falling debris to gather up the used arrows and return them to the archers. Three months on the road and when the army finally reached Milan, itching for a fight, they had found the gates of the city open, waiting for them to march in, Ludovico Sforza having fled with his tail between his legs and a cartload of treasures behind him.
Another cry goes up as the stallion’s head takes a series of direct hits, the sculpted nostrils splintering and crumbling. Cesare leans out of the window and shouts something in French. The captain looks up and yells back. A few of the archers raise their hands in salute: Cesare is now the darling of the troops as well as of the King.
He turns from the window. In dark silhouette, with the Milan sky the colour of a dirty sheet behind him, he cuts an impressive figure. It is not just the light. Cesare Borgia, Duke Valentino, now dresses only in black: black cap adorned by dyed-black feathers, black cloak, black hose and black doublet, with just the barest sliver of gold silk ripping down through the sleeve. The man who left Italy in blazing colour has returned dark as the devil. How well it suits him.
‘So, gentlemen,’ he says, moving back into the room. ‘We have a deal?’
A fast murmur of assent goes round the table. There are four of them sitting there, hard weathered faces incongruous above the soft velvet of court robes. They are fighting men all of them, condottieri with mercenary troops at their beck and call. In peacetime, you would not trust them to cut a pack of cards without sliding an ace out of their sleeve, but when it comes to war they are loyal to the highest bidder. And right now, no one is offering more than Cesare Borgia. He has picked carefully. The small wiry Vitellozzo Vitelli is the nearest that Italy comes to having its own artillery expert. Next to him, Oliveretto da Fermo is a hungry thug but a well trained one; while across the table sit two Orsini brothers, Paolo and Francesco. Orsini. Cesare would as happily string them up as employ them, but between them they hold a small army of men and until he is ready to take his revenge it is better to have them fighting with him. And while his father is still on the papal throne, each and every one of them is happy to lick his hand and do his bidding.
‘You have a question, Vitelli?’
‘How many men will you field besides ours?’
‘How many men?’ Cesare repeats, smiling. He knows it is what they have been waiting to hear. On the triumphant entry into Milan King Louis and his Duke Valentino had ridden side by side, and since then they have been publicly joined at the hip, hunting, feasting and entertaining. Anyone in any doubt that the history of Italy is being written between them has only to look at the language of their bodies: bent heads, whispers, shared laughter, more like brothers than ‘dear cousins’.
‘I will lead a force of two thousand French cavalry, three hundred French lancers, twenty-seven artillery guns and four thousand Swiss and Gascon infantry.’ He stops to let the numbers sink in. ‘With the troops that our Holy Father the Pope will send from the Papal Guard, alongside the men you bring, the army will be ten thousand strong.’
Someone lets out a small hissing sound between his teeth. The silence lengthens. The Pope’s son has just become the commander of one of the biggest ever forces to move across Italian soil. Cesare glances towards Michelotto, stationed behind the table like an ugly bulldog, and his henchman pulls a paper from his jacket and spreads it out on the surface in front of them.
‘And this, gentlemen, will be our route of campaign.’
The Via Emilia. Even on the map it stands out: a road as only the ancients built them. Beginning in Piacenza in the north, it moves straight as an arrow south-east through Parma and Bologna, running along the eastern edge of the Apennines and then on as far as the Adriatic coast at Rimini. Exactly when it was first built is conjecture, though it must have been well before the birth of Christ. Its reconstruction under Augustus and Tiberius is better known, for there are dated milestones and a set of the finest bridges in Italy; sweeping arched spans of stone, their surfaces worn and pitted by centuries of feet, hooves and cartwheels, though most of those who walk the stones now couldn’t care less about the history of the ancients or even the name of the great Roman general who crossed the Rubicon river before them. No, like most people they are too busy working to stay alive in the present.
The poets – who work hard in their own way – liken this elegant artery in the body of Italy to a string of pearls laid out on a table of green velvet. It is a fitting simile: the pearls because along its length are threaded a number of city-states, each rich enough to have its own ruling family, greedy, squabbling and committed to lining its pockets at the expense of those it governs; and the green velvet because on its unswerving way to the sea the road runs through one of the most fertile plains in the country. It is said you only have to throw a handful of seeds in the state of Romagna, as it is known now, and within a year you will have enough bread, fruits, vegetables and oil to feed an army.
All this in itself would be enough to tempt a new young Caesar looking to secure himself a place in history. But there is another accident of history that makes this area ripe for conquest and explains why Cesare has had his eyes on it ever since he was old enough to read a map. Because in law these city-states do not belong to the families that rule them: they are rented rather than owned. The landlord to whom they belong sits in Rome presiding over the Holy Mother Church. And Alexander VI has already made it clear that he is intending to evict a number of tenants in favour of his own son.
The first attack has been a spiritual one: a bull of excommunication against five of the rulers of papal states in the Romagna on the grounds of non-payment of tribute to Rome. Robbed of God’s protection and the support of any bigger allies (no one is willing to fight the Pope when he has the King of France in his pocket), these five named towns sit close enough together to offer the foundation for a larger single state: Imola, Forlì, Rimini, Faenza and Pesaro. Though the choice is as much strategic as malicious, everyone in the room knows that the ousting of his ex-brother-in-law the Duke of Pesaro will bring with it a special satisfaction.
‘We will start here.’ Cesare places his index finger on a point on the map. The stones in his rings glitter even in the half-light. Their captain-general is wearing the price of a small estate on one hand. ‘The city of Imola, and then Forlì. Vitelli?’ He turns to the weasel-faced veteran. ‘You are a man who knows your artillery. How many cannonballs do you think we need to blow holes in Caterina Sforza’s fortresses?’
Vitelli grins. ‘I think that will depend on what the lady is wearing at the time.’
CHAPTER 43
When Lucrezia welcomes back her husband, the child is so large inside her that it comes between them as they embrace.
‘Look at you. It has made you even more beautiful. Naples is full of women dark as roasted chestnuts, while you are lilies and thick cream.’
‘Ha! I smell a man who has been indulging in courtier’s talk.’
‘Untrue. There is not a moment when I was not thinking about you. My God, I have missed you, wife.’
And she knows it is true, because she feels it too. She holds his face in her hands, pushing his cheeks together so that his lips, those full fleshy lips, are squeezed and open. She stands on tiptoe to kiss them.
‘We have done it,’ she says, laughing as they break apart. ‘We have brought you home.’
It has taken almost two months and a crosstrail of envoys and ambassadors, with neither side willing to give in: Rome because it has too much to bargain with and Naples because it has nothing.
King Federico had always known that his stand against the Borgias would sever the alliance with the papacy and open Naples to the French, but he had banked on Spain’s outrage to provide him with prot
ection. He is, alas, an idealist in an age of pragmatism. Their Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella, watching the French walk into Milan and realising that Naples is already lost, are already making secret overtures to King Louis.
Such is Federico’s isolation that he feels chilled even when the day is hot. If he is to stand any chance of survival, he would do better to appeal to the Pope’s Spanish blood and give him what his daughter wants most – her husband’s return in time for the birth of their child. And while he is at it, they might as well have Sancia back as well.
When the decision is made, he is, at least, honest about it. ‘I do not like it, nephew. But I have no option.’ His eyebrows are so used to being knotted together in worry that they seem to have fused, so that now he peers out at the world from under an overhang of hair. Some of his courtiers are beginning to wonder how far it is obscuring his vision.
‘I know that.’
‘The Pope’s bargaining is always the same: he offers you a warm coat, until you put it on and find it has open razors for a lining. I have no power against him. If you go, I must tell you I cannot guarantee your safety.’
‘I know that also.’
The King sighs. In the past he never had much time for his bastard niece and nephew, feeling them to be tainted by the decadence of their father. It had been almost fitting when they had found a place inside an even more corrupt family. But it seems this marriage to the Borgia hussy has given Alfonso unexpected dignity. His own plain daughter is newly married to her Breton nobleman; a man with as little charisma as he has ambition. She will never return to Naples. Well, God grant her a long and happy life. It is more than he has to look forward to.