Blood & Beauty: A Novel of the Borgias

by Sarah Dunant

  Forty-five thousand… They are almost halfway there. Ah – but now they are finding a few worn ones. Even – God forbid – some counterfeits. They slacken the pace, stopping as soon as daylight fades, since the flicker of torches makes it hard to study the coins. If any of them are tempted to slip a few up their sleeves or inside their jerkins, they are put off by the search that takes place each time the shift changes. Wealth sticks to wealth. Fifty thousand ducats. Sixty. Still counting.

  The next day, another play and more dancing. Is it possible to have too much pleasure? The day after, everyone rests. The coins however continue to move their restless march across the table.

  On the afternoon of January 5 the Ferrarese envoy and Ferrante, the proxy bridegroom, are called into the room to survey the chests. One hundred thousand ducats. Don Ferrante then visits the Pope. The two men embrace each other and flowery words are shared. It is done. The dowry is exchanged. The bride can leave.

  Lucrezia is ready. In her palace next door, her leaving costume is laid out waiting and in the courtyard the carts are loaded and mules and horses rounded up. In amongst them sits a litter, a present from her father: a wooden room lined with gold and padded upholstery. The road to Ferrara will take her north into Umbria, then over the Apennines through Urbino into the Romagna, and not all the roads will be as straight and well kept as the Via Emilia. The route is carefully designed to take in a dozen or more important cities, where she and her court will be fêted and entertained. She will be on show constantly, for this is as much a victory parade for the Borgias as it is the arrival of a bride. It will demand stamina as well as buckets of grace and charm. She will be smiling for weeks.

  But this final night in Rome she is her own mistress. Of course she cannot sleep and there is a last thing that she must do. She calls for her maidservant and puts on an ordinary overcloak and walking shoes.

  ‘I should call for the guards, my lady.’

  ‘No, we will go alone.’

  The girl’s face shows her uncertainty. ‘But it is dark and—’

  ‘It is barely a few paces from here, as you know, and we will not be gone long. I have arranged it already.’

  Outside, it is much colder that she expects, freezing almost. Perhaps it is because she is tired. She pulls her cloak around her and moves faster. It takes them no time to cross from the back door of the palazzo to the steps of the Basilica of St Peter. In the great piazza at the bottom of the stairs, Cesare had been killing bulls two days ago. But this walk has another kind of violence attached to it. The bloodstains from her husband’s body are no longer there – she looked once in the daylight – but in a city of increasing violence there will be other swords drawn here soon enough.

  The side door to the church pushes open and they walk inside. A watchman is sitting on a small stool with a candle by his side.

  ‘It is the Pope’s daughter,’ she says, slipping off the hood of her cloak. ‘You know me, sir, I think, from times before.’

  He bows his head and she slips a coin into his hand. His fingers close over it and he is murmuring prayers even before she moves on.

  St Peter’s. Old, cold and cavernous, its flagstones worn smooth by a million feet. Inside it feels too big for itself: empty even when it is full. She and her maid move swiftly through the nave, their lamp held high. To either side there are chapels hidden in the shadows, many of them dating from centuries before. The most recent, that of Sixtus IV, stands out because it is grander than the rest and there are candles kept burning throughout the night.

  In the course of Vatican business, she has heard many people talk about the basilica; how in this modern Rome, with so many new palaces and churches, this great barn is no longer a fitting monument for the centre of Christendom. What a triumph it would be if another, greater St Peter’s could be built on this same spot, a church designed with the eyes of our new understanding of the ancients, a building like the Duomo in Florence that is rightly famous throughout the world. A pope who cared for the Church as much as for his family might be thinking of that, she once heard the Spanish ambassador say when he did not know she was within earshot. He dropped his eyes quickly enough when he saw her.

  The chapel she is looking for is that of Santa Petronilla, the daughter of St Peter, in the left transept. It too has been rebuilt, the last time barely two years ago. Now it houses the tomb of the French Cardinal Bilhères. His funeral statue had been finished, but not yet in place, when he died of summer fever. The monument had been the talk of Rome for a while: how this brilliant young sculptor from Florence – barely twenty when he arrived – had done something most unusual, taking an image that was more common in the north of Europe and using it to express his own representation of the dead Christ with his mother.

  She had visited it first soon after she got back from Nepi, when her own grief was still huge and undigested inside her, and whenever she has felt overwhelmed by life since then, she has returned. There is a comfort here that is sorely lacking in the church where Alfonso is buried. It had been such a mean, hurried affair and the marble slab with its bland lettering is only a reminder of the pain: her husband lies neglected in a neglected place; such was the insult of his death.

  But this monument is extraordinary. She has seen paintings of the Virgin, with the dead Christ being taken down from the cross, but they have always been crowded affairs: disciples and ladies all helping her to bear His weight, because Mary’s ageing body, destroyed by grief, is as stricken as His. But this is an altogether new way of seeing that moment. Because in this sculpture the Virgin is alone with Him. Here, she is neither stricken nor ageing. Instead she is a sublimely graceful young woman, sitting firm, her head slightly bowed, her legs parted under voluminous robes the better to support the unbearable weight of her dead son. But though the moment it represents is filled with pain, there is nothing painful about it. On the contrary. Her face is free from suffering. There is sadness, oh yes, but also serenity. Whatever sorrow has been given to her, she has accepted it, has known it somehow from the moment when the angel first appeared to her. Mary, Mother of God, full of grace.

  In the night, the lamp throwing its glow up into her face shows all this clearly. In daylight it is there too, but the arrangement of light falls differently then, slicing in from a window above, so that it moves past her face and draws attention to the precious cargo in her lap: the body of her son. And He – well, He is just so beautiful. The ravages of the cross are muted here. There are no gory holes in hands and feet, no leaking wound in His side and His head is not battered and bloodied after the crown of thorns. There is nothing, in fact, to take away from the appreciation of God’s greatest work: His only son made into perfect human flesh. That flesh brought alive again in marble by the hand of man. The circle is complete.

  They had not let Lucrezia hold Alfonso’s body long. The room had been a madhouse of screaming and shouting, with no time for contemplation, no proper grief. But here, in front of Christ’s cradled body, she has drunk deep of sorrow and managed to find some peace. Here she can pray and feel that she is heard. Here she has been able to let go of the past in the knowledge that God gives and God takes away and that whatever it is, it must be accepted.

  She stands for a while longer, trying to memorise each fold of the marble drapery, every line of that dear, dear body. It cannot be done, but it doesn’t matter; when she closes her eyes, enough remains. She nods to her servant and they move out as quickly as they can through the darkness of the nave to the door, bracing themselves for an even greater darkness outside.

  It is not there. When they come out into the night, it is light. The sky is filled with soft white specks. It is snow! Snow is falling. Snow! In all her life in Rome she has never seen such a thing.

  The two women stand, entranced. Her servant puts up her hands in spontaneous wonder and Lucrezia joins her. They smile at each other, laugh even, like children, before wrapping their cloaks tighter and running across to the door, their footsteps leaving wet
marks in the thin carpet of white. Snow. What a way to leave!

  The palace is already awake. In the courtyard, the servants are securing the last bundles on to the mules, their shoulders already caped in white, heads down to keep the sticky flakes out of their eyes. Her wardrobe mistress is moving among them, in search of the right chest that she needs now to unpack. The chosen outfit will not be warm enough. They must find the furs and overcoats put away ready for the road across the Apennines. She catches sight of her mistress on the stairs. ‘My lady, go back to bed. You will freeze here.’

  ‘How can I sleep? We are leaving,’ she says, looking up into the silent poetry of a white night sky. ‘Look! It is wonderful.’

  But not for those working through it. They blow on their raw fingers and stamp their feet; their future will be chilblains and mottled skin. She orders hot wine to be served to them. It will be her last act as head of her Roman household.

  ‘Anything, my daughter, anything you want. Just tell me.’

  An hour later she takes her leave of the Pope. He sits propped in his chair, where he spends much of his life these days, she on the silken cushion at his feet, their hands clasped together. She is leaving but it is her job to comfort him. His tears splash on to their joined hands. Once he has started crying, everyone knows the Pope finds it hard to stop.

  ‘You will write to me every day, in your own hand. Do you hear? The horses will fly between us, so that it will feel as if we are talking to each other over the land. Your new father-in-law has a reputation for – well, for miserliness. Don’t let him short-change you on your dowry. Anything you need you tell me, you understand. Oh, how can I let you go?’

  And he pulls her up from the cushion and crushes her to him.

  ‘I will be fine, Father. We have borne separation before and we will bear this one.’ She extricates herself gently. ‘It is almost dawn. I must go soon.’

  ‘You must make sure that your husband comes to you every night. They will want an heir fast. So – every night…’ He speaks with sudden passion, as if he has just remembered a mass of vital things he must tell her. ‘Open your arms to him. Make him welcome, but never complain when he leaves you… Men – well, men are often like that. You are a Borgia and deserve to be worshipped, but you may have to put up with a—’

  ‘Papà, it is fine. I have been married twice before. I know what my duties are. But… now… the weather is most inclement. If we don’t leave soon…’

  He looks up towards the window and its ghostly light. ‘No, oh no – look at it… it is dreadful out there.’

  She starts to rise as the door opens: Cesare, sleek and black as a panther, a man halfway through his day, pulsating with energy.

  ‘Ah, Cesare! Tell your sister she must not leave. Look at the sky. Tell her she must stay another day.’

  ‘I am afraid it cannot be done.’ He moves to the throne and gives her his hand to help her rise, as if he were inviting her to dance. ‘It is a long journey and the whole of Ferrara is waiting to see its new duchess. Isn’t that right, sister?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says smiling, because nothing can dampen the excitement. These final days have been mad with public celebration and with no time for intimacy brother and sister have moved around rather than towards each other. So here it is: the last goodbye. ‘Yes, that is right.’

  ‘Have you told her, Papà?’ He keeps her hand tight inside his own.

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘About what is to come.’

  ‘You mean my husband and my father-in-law? You need not worry on that score. I have had some experience of living with difficult men.’

  ‘Ha! Well said!’ The Pope laughs. ‘My God, I would like to see the old miser’s face when he meets you. The rest she doesn’t need to know, Cesare.’

  ‘What rest?’ she says, glancing at them both.

  Alexander waves an arm. ‘Just plans. Plans!’

  ‘I still say it is better if she is prepared.’ And his voice is curt: more like father to son than the other way around. Alexander makes a small, dismissive gesture as if it is not worth the argument. As Cesare’s star rises ever higher, the Pope seems to be growing almost afraid of his own son.

  ‘In the year to come great things will happen for us, Lucrezia: events that will change the face of Italy. But it will also make us more enemies.’

  ‘In which case, Papà is surely right,’ Lucrezia says, uneasily. ‘It is better if I do not know.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it will affect you. This is family business and as a Borgia they will see you as part of it.’

  Family business. She stares at him. ‘But you forget, Cesare, you have married me to Ferrara. I am only half Borgia now. The other half of me is Este.’ And she smiles brightly, as if it is, after all, simply a joke. She glances to the window, where the snow is falling relentlessly now. ‘I must go.’

  ‘Yes, if you must, you must. Oh, come, come, kiss me again.’ The Pope opens his arms wide and she feels for a last time that bear hug of love. ‘How will I live without you?’ She hears his voice catching as the tears come again and now it is all she can do not to join in.

  On the other side of the room, Cesare watches, dry-eyed.

  She smooths down her skirts and lifts her head high as she walks towards him. Such a handsome man, Cesare Borgia, so full of ice and fire. Except recently, close to, she has noticed that his complexion is sometimes a little flushed, with blemishes here and there where the purple flowers have left gentle stains. No longer flawless then.

  ‘Goodbye, my dear, dear Duke Valentino,’ she says as she embraces him. ‘Promise me you will take good care of yourself as you fight all those battles.’

  ‘And you also take care.’ He lets her go, but only enough to hold her at arm’s length. ‘So?’ He lowers his voice until it is a whisper. ‘So, my beloved sister, do I hear it now?’

  ‘Hear what?’ she says, the smile still hovering on her lips.

  ‘The words that say you love me and that I am forgiven.’

  ‘Oh, Cesare, I… of course I love you. You are my brother.’

  But he is still waiting.

  ‘You are my brother,’ she repeats, and the catch is in her own voice now as she slips her hands away from his.

  Outside the Sala dei Papi, Johannes Burchard stands so close to the door that one cannot help but think that his ear must have been at the keyhole. After all these years, he has still not mastered the rapid flow of Catalán, but the emotion behind the words he knows only too well.

  ‘Madam,’ he says, stiffening up immediately. ‘I…They – they are asking for you in your courtyard.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I am coming now,’ she says as she collects herself.

  ‘I wish you a most safe journey.’ He bows. ‘And I pray that the city of Ferrara will look after you as well as you deserve.’

  ‘Goodbye.’ She takes his hand. ‘And thank you, thank you for your good wishes.’

  There is an awkward little silence, then impetuously she adds, ‘Johannes, I know… I know that sometimes we are… well, as a family we have many enemies. But my father needs you so much. And I know that you do care for him. For which I thank you,’ she says again and leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

  His look of astonishment will stay with her for miles down the road.

  In her own palace, her ladies fuss around her, wrapping her further in woollen capes, fur hats and gloves. Surely she should use the litter. That would keep her dry. But she is too eager to be seeing it all. She climbs on to her mule, with its special saddle to hold her better in place, and the cavalcade begins its journey, out of the courtyard and across the front of the Vatican towards the Via Alessandrina, the snow thicker now, the flakes whirling like confused dancers as they fall.

  She looks up to the first-floor windows because she knows she will see him there, his large face pressed against the thick glass, his hands in the air, waving, waving. She waves back, then turns her attention to her mule, which, left to its own devices, w
ould be going nowhere in such weather. As she moves, so does he, to the next window in the room. Then the next. And the next. He will be changing rooms now, puffing his way down the long Vatican corridor to keep pace with her, desperate for a last glimpse before, finally, she turns the corner and so slips out of his sight.

  The procession crosses Ponte Sant’ Angelo, then makes its way slowly towards the Piazza del Popolo. The eerie silence of snow is everywhere, the flakes so dense that it feels as if a wet fog is wrapping itself around them. Fog. She is going to a city of fog. It rolls off the river unfolding like a blanket, so that sometimes they say you cannot see your hand in front of your face. She holds up her glove. She can just make out the embroidered leather, but nothing beyond.

  Rome has already disappeared and Ferrara is calling to her. She pushes her heels into the mule’s flanks. There can be no going back now.

  ‘Your Holiness?’ Burchard is calling to him. ‘Are you all right?’

  Alexander is standing crumpled against the wall near the last window, his face convulsed with sobs. ‘She is gone. She is gone, Burchard. I will never see her sweet smiling face again.’

  ‘Of course you will. There is a clause inserted in the marriage contract, you remember? You will lead a gathering of cardinals to Ferrara to visit her next year.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It will never happen. I know it. I feel it. Feel it: here, like a pain,’ he adds, dramatically clutching his heart.

  ‘Would you like me to call the doctors?’

  ‘Ha! Doctors! They can do nothing for such things. It is not illness, it is a premonition. A father’s premonition.’