Blood & Beauty: A Novel of the Borgias

by Sarah Dunant

  ‘Come, embrace me. It was a brutal act, but you have made confession. And you will do so again to God. I give you my forgiveness. But you must make it right with your sister. For she is the one who has lost most.’

  It is possible that if Cesare could have repeated his side of events to others with the same fire in his eyes, he might have found more people willing to swallow it. But with his father convinced, there is too much work to be done on his future to dwell on the past. As he goes about his business raising the next army, the details of his story – the crossbow at the window, the garden, the attempted murder – all leak out, as they must. But rather than offering a defence, they simply show the lengths to which the Duke Valentino will go to get what he wants. People begin to remember that earlier death within the family: another young man cruelly cut down in his prime, and how much Cesare Borgia had gained from that also. What had once been unsubstantiated gossip now becomes fact. His reputation slips from dark to black, condemnation colliding with fear. It is not something that will keep him awake at night.

  But Lucrezia. Lucrezia is another matter.

  He visits her the day after the murder. The Vatican and Santa Maria in Portico are still in uproar and he arrives – as he goes everywhere in the days following – surrounded by armed guards, players in his manufactured scenario of the plot against himself.

  He and his guards are admitted to the receiving-room, where they stand awkwardly, grown men listening to the wailing of women, a wailing that has not stopped since the duke’s death over twenty-four hours ago. It is even possible to make out the angry sound of baby Rodrigo, whose pampered life has been torn apart by a house of mayhem.

  The crying – his and theirs – grows louder until the door opens and Lucrezia enters flanked by her women, seven, maybe eight of them, every one dishevelled and weeping. In her arms she holds the wriggling, bawling baby. The level of noise is quite remarkable. The soldiers, who have withstood cannon fire in their time, fidget awkwardly.

  ‘Hush, hush, sweet one.’ Lucrezia, busy with the child, does not even look at her brother. ‘Hush, such pain cannot be cried away.’

  But it is clear Rodrigo will not be soothed. She turns and hands him to a nurse, who wraps him tighter and takes him out. Now at last she turns to face Cesare. She is still wearing yesterday’s bloodstained clothes and her face is flushed, eyes raw and swollen with tears.

  ‘My dearest sister. I am come… I am come’ – and his voice struggles to rise above the women, who are the filling the air with a keening dirge. Surely the great Duke Valentino is not intimidated by the emotions of women – ‘to offer my condolences for the loss of your husband.’

  ‘Do you think you have enough soldiers to protect you?’

  ‘The House of Borgia has been threatened by gross conspiracy,’ he ploughs on. ‘The worst is thwarted, thank God. But we shall leave no stone unturned until we find who was behind it.’

  ‘Shall we indeed?’ Her sarcasm is icy. It would seem she can stop crying when she chooses, though she is trembling as she speaks. ‘And what will you find hidden beneath them?’

  They stand, brother and sister, their respective armies behind them and a bloody death in between. The encounter, so painfully absurd, must be played out to its end.

  ‘This is not the time for us to talk in depth, sister. There are still issues of security to address – but if you would like—’

  ‘Oh no. I would not like,’ she says abruptly. ‘Are you come for anything else?’

  ‘Only to make sure that you are safe here.’

  ‘Safe! Here?’ And having done so well, she is struggling now to keep the ice from breaking up. ‘After what has happened I will never be safe in Rome again.’

  Behind her one of the women lets out a harsh, strangled cry, and now the others join in, like a chorus that has been practising. ‘If you will excuse us, brother. We have a house to put into mourning.’

  And they sweep out, the rising wails leaving Cesare and his men, armed to the teeth yet strangely vulnerable.

  CHAPTER 55

  When does her sorrow become strategy? Not for a while. No. For those first endless days and nights she envelops herself in suffering as a means of survival. As long as she is crying it is not over. The rest of the world may walk around as if his death has not changed anything, but she will never let that happen; as she weeps, her body in spasm, her head glue-sticky with tears, he is still alive inside her.

  For the first few days she returns to the room itself, sitting where she sat with his body, Sancia and a few women with her. The Pope, never at his best with women’s tears, allows it, hoping it will provide a catharsis. But it soon becomes apparent that, far from abating, the emotional storm is growing in power.

  ‘Is she still crying?’ he says one morning, though the question is surely rhetorical.

  ‘Either the duchess or some of her ladies.’ His chamberlain is anxious. He has seen the Pope buried under a ton of rubble, but never have his master’s nerves been quite so frayed. A house of men besieged by women’s tears: it is a novel form of warfare.

  ‘Don’t they ever sleep?

  ‘I think not all at the same time, Your Holiness.’

  What is a man to do? One cannot gag two duchesses. Alexander tries to be kind. When he visits her she rises and throws herself into his arms, sobbing. He dismisses the women and sits with her on the bed, stroking her hair, murmuring. ‘Yes, yes, it is dreadful. I pray constantly to Our Lady, who understands better than all of us the death of a beloved, to intercede to bring you rest. Like her, you must find peace in God’s greater plan. You are young; you will find another life, this will not be your only love.’

  But she does not want peace, or another life. Most of all she does not want another love.

  ‘What? You will marry me again and I will kill someone else. Because I will. I am like that – that spider of death, which once it has mated destroys its own husband.’

  The Pope is quite struck by the image. He himself has little time for poetry, but it is known that Lucrezia likes to gather men of culture around her. Do they encourage such fancy hyperbole? Too much romance can be unhealthy for febrile female minds.

  When sympathy does not work he tries other strategies.

  ‘It is painful, yes, but we are surrounded by enemies. This plot that your brother uncovered – what would have happened if he himself had been killed?’

  ‘Oh! How can you believe such nonsense! Alfonso was weak as a baby. He could barely pick up a spoon to feed himself.’

  ‘You would be surprised by the strength of a desperate man.’

  But he, in turn, is surprised by the naked contempt in her eyes. How could you be so fooled? it says.

  No. It is clear enough that his daughter does not want to be comforted.

  He has the room sealed off with guards outside. ‘It is not good for you to be so reminded.’

  They transfer their grief next door. With all the Vatican doors and windows closed it might be possible to block it off, but it is summer and the rooms are unbearable without a breeze. The ululating continues, poisoning the very air, so that all who hear it feel out of sorts.

  The Pope grows fractious. Not only does it personally upset him, but this excess of grief is fast becoming public gossip. While he is talking treaties and crusades, the diplomats are hearing it too. ‘Such remarkable sorrow, Your Holiness.’ ‘It must be hard to bear.’ ‘A dreadful tragedy, to be sure,’ they say, thus drawing further attention to a scandal that it would be best for everyone to pass on from.

  How can I run Christendom when I cannot even hear myself think? Alexander says to himself after a while. Sorrow is one thing. Madness is another. No one sees fit to remind him of those days when he too could barely breathe from the stranglehold of grief.

  ‘Enough now, daughter.’

  It is twelve days since the murder and when he visits he orders her women upstairs to a room where they must close the door. ‘I want this to stop. It can only be of
harm to you now. What about the care of your son?’

  ‘My son is left fatherless,’ she says in a dead voice.

  He sighs. The fact is, he is growing less fond of this stricken young woman with eyes that are either cold or overflowing. She must have stopped eating, for her face is gaunt, her skin blotchy and tired. His pretty, charming daughter is turning into a harrowed widow in front of his eyes. And worse, this death is splitting the family. It cannot be allowed to continue. Not when they are close to such spectacular success.

  ‘I order you to stop this mad grief, Lucrezia. If not – if not, I shall send you away! Such madness can only harm us all.’

  ‘How can I stop? It is a wife’s duty to mourn her husband.’

  ‘And it is a daughter’s duty to obey her father,’ he says, raising his voice in just the way he promised himself he would not do. ‘I will not have it. Do you hear?’

  She stares at him. Then, after an exquisitely timed pause, her eyes fill up and the wailing starts again.

  ‘Aaah.’ He leaves in frustration.

  Lucrezia, though she would probably deny it if it was suggested to her, is discovering disobedience. She, who has been brought up to honour her family and to do everything she is told. She, who has asked only for two things directly in her life: that the two men for whom she felt affection should be spared, only to see both of them slaughtered. She, who has been so good for so long, is being good no longer. And though her rebellion will not bring back her husband, it is keeping the blood flowing in her veins.

  A few days after their encounter, she asks for an audience with her father.

  ‘I seek your permission to leave Rome, Father,’ she says, head high, eyes temporarily dry.

  ‘Leave? To go where?’

  ‘To my fortress in Nepi.’

  ‘I would prefer you here. People will think that—’

  ‘Very well.’ She begins to cry.

  ‘Ah – wait. Why Nepi?’

  ‘Because it is not far. But it is not here,’ she says in a small but determined voice. ‘I believe at Nepi I might stop crying.’

  ‘Well, God be praised for that.’ He fiddles with his fisherman ring. In the last few years it has started to embed itself into his flesh. ‘It has been a difficult summer for all of us. You have my permission. When will you leave?’

  ‘Tomorrow. And if you allow, I will take Sancia with me.’

  When the news of her departure leaks out, rumours fly.

  ‘Donna Lucrezia used to be in the Pope’s good graces,’ says the Venetian ambassador, who is an inveterate gossip but has the Pope’s ear these days, for Alexander needs Venice’s good will in Cesare’s campaigns. ‘But now it seems he does not love her so much.’

  Or perhaps it is the other way round.

  CHAPTER 56

  A sturdy little town, Nepi: older even than Rome and quietly proud of itself. It had been in the Borgia family for decades when Alexander handed it to Ascanio Sforza as reward for his support in the conclave of 1492. But as the French army had approached Milan and the Sforza cardinal had fled Rome, he had taken it back and given it instead to his beloved daughter.

  She has been there only once, barely a year ago, when she came to receive the keys of the city. She had been heavily pregnant – the peasant midwife had already seen the baby boy swimming in her womb – and Alfonso had been with her. They had stayed a few days, and the visit had been full of sunshine. She remembers a waterfall gushing over a rockface, soothing and playful at the same time, and how the old fortress housed a handsome palace within, its rooms heady with the smell of herb sack: rosemary, lavender and cloves sewn on to the back of the tapestries to stop the moths, which over years of packing and repacking had become more plentiful than visitors.

  They arrive on the last day of August, when the worst of the summer heat has passed. She keeps the chamber where they once slept together locked, but opens up other rooms for daily living. After two days in the saddle she is too tired to cry. That first night she sleeps so deeply that when she wakes, to a glow around an unfamiliar shuttered window, she is confused for a moment as to where she is. Then the grief pours back in, blackening the air and weighing on her chest like a squatting incubus until she cannot breathe properly.

  How can I live without you? she thinks. It is too painful.

  In the weeks since the attack she has been sustained by the giddy energy of drama, but now, lying here, there is no reason to fight any more. Her husband is murdered, her brother has blood on his hands and her father does not care. Even if she could stop crying, what future could there be for a woman so wronged? ‘I cannot do it. It would be better to be dead.’

  She traces the shining rectangle of sun around the shutter. How would it be to leave this darkness and open one’s soul to the greater light on the other side? ‘I will stay and die here. Here in this fortress, here in this room, in this bed.’ The thought makes her heart beat faster. ‘God will surely understand. He will take me to Him and reunite me with Alfonso.’

  She lies still, closes her eyes and waits.

  It is not that she doesn’t have the will; women with less strength than her have died of sorrow. No, it is simply that there is so much to be done first. Even as she lies there, searching for the right words of prayer, she is disturbed by the stomp and clatter of feet and whispered voices outside the door.

  ‘We beg forgiveness, duchess,’ her bedchamber ladies flutter and chirrup when she bids them enter. ‘But the chest filled with your mourning day dresses; it seems it has left been left behind in Rome. We can send for it but it will take days there and back and until then we don’t know…’

  It is a story repeated throughout the fortress. Uprooting and moving two duchesses and a ten-month baby is no small work and they had fled Rome in such a dreadful rush – a hundred or more chests packed and loaded and heaved on to carts before proper inventories could be made of their contents – that, of course, much has been forgotten. Medicines, clothing, all manner of supplies… She may be disembowelled with grief, but she is still the head of a great household and she cannot ignore her responsibilities.

  Tomorrow then, she thinks. I will do what has to be done today and set about the business of dying tomorrow. Or the day after.

  Things are no easier for Sancia. So fierce and furious in her defence of her brother, the exhaustion hits her even harder and she develops a fever. When Lucrezia visits her, she is propped in bed, her jet-black hair streaked with sweat, and those bright blue eyes shining like wet jewels in the paleness of her face. Sancia, who has always been so ready to fight, is now in need of someone to fight for her.

  ‘If I die, I want to be buried next to him. You will do that for me, won’t you? They will listen to you.’ She grabs her sister-in-law’s hand, squeezing it hard. Such passion, even in illness.

  ‘Sancia, you are not going to die.’

  ‘Why not? I have no one in the world to care for me now.’

  ‘That is not true. You have Jofré.’ She hesitates. Perhaps she must put off her own death a little longer. ‘And you have me.’

  ‘Jofré!’ She shrugs. ‘I swear God does not give me children because he knows I am married to one. And you – oh, you will not be here long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Does her yearning for God show in her eyes?

  ‘You are too valuable. You’ll be back in Rome and married off soon enough.’

  ‘No!’ It is Lucrezia’s turn to be fierce. ‘No, I will not!’

  ‘No, I will not.’ She says it again that night as she curls herself around the bolster pillow, imagining it to be Alfonso’s body. ‘I will never have another husband.’

  Then there is Rodrigo. How can she make him an orphan? He needs her even more now, this poor unfortunate child. Except he doesn’t know that. Though he can cry as loudly as any baby, he is of a naturally sunny disposition, like his father, more himself when laughing than cross or sad. He is also at that tender age where every second day brings a new accomplishment. All ma
nner of sounds are pouring out of his mouth: babas and chuurs and rrrrlls, as if he might at any moment break into an entirely new language. One of his Spanish nursemaids delights in swapping guttural with him, trying to get him to say the word ‘Borja’ with its harsh ring, but he is more consumed by experimentation than learning.

  Nevertheless words are forming. ‘Mamamama,’ he now says as she comes towards him, throwing up his arms towards her. In Rome before Alfonso’s death she was always so occupied that he would lift his arms to his nurse more eagerly than to her. But here, now, there is time to play. She comes out to the garden in the early evening as the heat subsides and slips down on to the blanket under the bay tree next to him.

  He is a large baby, and his placid nature has meant that he has felt little compulsion to be mobile: or maybe he is spoilt – in the weeks since his father’s death even the smallest fuss gets him everything he needs. But now, settled on a blanket with insects and birds all around to catch his attention, he gets the urge to move, so that suddenly Lucrezia finds herself laughing with joy as he pulls himself up on to one fat knee and starts to crawl laboriously across the grass.

  ‘Look! Look! He is moving!’ As if it was God’s greatest miracle, all the ladies laugh and clap until suddenly he plops back down on to his bottom and grins up at them, four teeth shining like little pearls in his mouth. Was a baby ever so clever or so much loved? Even Sancia, who with sleep and good nursing is recovered enough to join them, is warmed by the sight. In the golden light, this raven-haired beauty looks even lovelier, as if grief has given her a new luminescence. Lucrezia, who has turned her mirror to the wall in readiness for death, begins to wonder if something similar might be happening to her own face. There is the time for such thoughts now. The late-summer days are long, and with the first frantic organisation passed, the household falls into a gentle rhythm. The two women sleep in the afternoon and then, as the day ends, sit in the garden or find a spot close to the waterfall which plunges from the edge of the fortress down into a chasm below, its tumbling music mixing with the twilight chorus of starlings. Sometimes darkness falls and they bring out citronella lamps to perfume the night air and keep the mosquitoes at bay. Why not? There are no visitors to entertain, no appearances to keep up. For once, she and Sancia are mistresses of their own lives and despite themselves they start to squeeze a little pleasure from it.