Blood & Beauty

by Sarah Dunant

  CHAPTER 28

  Even though he knows his son is dead, when they bring the news Alexander lets out a rolling howl, like an animal snapped in the jaws of a trap. The mutilated corpse is brought by boat to Castel Sant’ Angelo, where it is washed and cleansed and dressed in full finery with a neck high enough to cover the slash, and at dusk a funeral cortège sets off over the bridge towards the Borgia family chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, the bier surrounded by a hundred torchbearers and a sea of nobles, chamberlains and churchmen. Their open prayer rises like a cloud of melancholy into the air, pierced by the Pope’s discordant wails, which sing out from the open Vatican windows even as far as the mourners on the bridge.

  Inside his bedchamber, refusing all sustenance or solace, Alexander is a man pulled halfway into hell. The demons of grief have sunk their claws deep into him. He sits propped in his chair, his body rocking to and fro to the jagged rhythm of his own sobbing. Juan is dead. His pride, his joy, flesh of his flesh, is murdered. His beautiful, beloved son tortured and thrown into the river like a dead dog. Moans pour like vomit from his mouth, his face swells with tears, his eyes and nose clog so that he can barely see or even breathe. Juan is dead. God in heaven, how could anyone deserve this?

  ‘Sweet Mary, Mother of God, help me…’ Stumbling forward from the chair, he falls on to his knees, a broken old man praying like a child. ‘Forgive me my sins and have mercy on me. If I have offended… I will do better, I promise. Just bring him back to me, bring him back, please. Please.’

  But she, his own dear Virgin Mary, who has been with him through triumph and sorrow, understanding and forgiving him all manner of compromise or behaviour, she who knows the agony of a son’s death better than anyone, is no longer there. Her warmth, her sweetness and her boundless comfort have been withdrawn from him. He is indeed forsaken. Juan is dead and he is thrown to the devils.

  He cries long into the night, the pain sliding under doors and out through windows so that everyone who hears him, be they servants lying on their pallets or cardinals tiptoeing down corridors or standing in anxious silent knots, registers the sound with the strange sense of constriction in their own chests. Pity, yes. Certainly there is pity. But also awe, and fear, that such a powerful man could be brought so low.

  He torments himself over and over with the same questions. Why? How? Two nights ago his son was alive. Two nights. So little time. If this is punishment it is also the cruellest trick of Fate. Abandoned by his precious Virgin, he becomes consumed by an image of time as the great rolling wheel of fortune running ever onward. He spreads out his hands blindly in front of him, seeing himself grabbing hold of the spokes of the wheel, wrenching and wrestling it to a slow, grinding standstill, then using all his bulk and heft to force it, inch by inch, backwards; reclaiming the body of his son from the water, back through death into life, back to the bridge where Juan had left his brother, back to the light and laughter of a summer banquet, back as far as their last encounter that same afternoon: a smiling, vibrant young man in slashed silks, standing in front of him, dismissing all concern for his well-being as he kisses him goodbye ready to head off into his fate.

  ‘Don’t go to your mother’s tonight. Stay here with me instead.’ Alexander howls the words into the darkness. ‘I need you. Stay with me.’

  But the wheel is already groaning under the strain of its enforced stillness, and he can hold it no longer, so that it bursts out of his hands, time rushing to catch up, events unfolding, each irrevocable step on the road back and forwards to death. Now, in retribution for his arrogance in trying to play with Fate, he seems to see the worst in most detail. Juan’s horse with its two riders, weaving off from the riverbank into a complex of alleyways. The rush of men emerging from the shadows, dragging him from the saddle on to the ground, the push and pull of him through a dark entrance into a back room or cellar already prepared. He sees the rope lashed around his wrists and then watches as, supported from behind, his body is forced upwards to meet the man whose pleasure it is now to deal out death through an orgy of knife-thrusts. Nine wounds, they say. Each one delivered for a different insult, a litany of grudges. And as the blade thrusts in, Alexander groans as if it were his own flesh being punctured, until at last the man gestures for the head to be yanked back and held so that he can start work on the throat. His final gargling scream collapses into another wave of sobs. Juan is dead.

  Outside the barred door, a small coterie of his supporting cardinals wait in relays, alert for a break in the terrible music of suffering. They are joined by Burchard, who stands tall and still as a stork, his grim face set even grimmer. Eventually there comes a moment of silence and someone knocks tentatively, calling through the wood, begging for His Holiness to take some nourishment, at least some water, for the summer air is thick and hot and he will do himself damage. But they are answered by a low wail of resistance. ‘Leave me. Leave me be.’

  It does not even sound like the Pope’s voice any more. No one would wish such pain on any man. Even Burchard’s granite face crumbles with compassion.

  It is close to dawn when the Master of Ceremonies climbs the stairs to the apartments of the Cardinal of Valencia above the papal suite. The receiving-room is dark and empty, a further door shut. As he knocks he hears movement, then Cesare’s voice demanding who it is before calling him in.

  ‘Your Most Reverend Lord Cardinal.’ He finds him sat at his desk, fully dressed, a piece of paper in front of him. ‘His Holiness the Pope…’ He hesitates. ‘…Your father… is in the deepest of distress.’

  ‘I can hear each cry as clearly as you.’ Cesare’s face in the glow of the oil lamp is strained, almost ghostly, another man who has not seen his bed for nights.

  ‘The fear among the cardinals is that he will make himself ill.’ He stops again. ‘I… I thought perhaps… if you could talk to him—’

  ‘Me? No, I don’t think he would want to see me,’ he says flatly. ‘I am not the right son.’

  For the first time Burchard feels something akin to pity for this arrogant young man who he has never liked, nor ever will. ‘I am sorry for your brother’s death, Reverend Lord Cardinal – it is a terrible crime.’

  Cesare nods, his face creased in a strange half-smile. ‘In which case you are in select company, Signor Burchard, since we both know that half of Rome is celebrating behind closed doors. Tell me, when you come to write your account of this affair, what will you say?’

  ‘My… account?’

  ‘What? You keep a diary, don’t you? That is what people say.’

  ‘A diary? No. No… I… sometimes I record details, the protocol of papal affairs, that is all.’ And Burchard is seeing the hiding place in his study, slipped between the heavy volumes of Church law, and already thinking about finding a more secure place.

  ‘Protocol? That’s all? No thoughts? No opinions?’

  ‘I don’t quite…’

  ‘I am wondering whose names might you put on to your pages as being responsible for my brother’s death.’

  ‘Oh no.’ He shakes his head. ‘I am a servant of the Church, Your Excellency. It is not my job to speculate about such things. Only to record facts.’

  ‘Of course. Well, then I hope you will record this: that whatever his faults or failings, the Pope is a man with a great heart who feels his loss most deeply, and takes us with him into his grief.’

  ‘No one would doubt it.’ Burchard is already turning, eager to leave.

  From below, Alexander’s voice lifts again, breaking on the wave of a sob. They both listen in silence.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Cesare softly. ‘He will not cry for ever.’

  With the Master of Ceremonies gone, Cesare sits for a while staring into space. From the darkness outside the throw of the lamp come two sharp knocks. He gets up and opens a door at the back, its edges lost in the decoration of the surrounding wall, then turns back into the room as Michelotto follows him.

  He is fresh from the streets, his clothes crumpled
and stained, face streaked with sweat. He carries an unbuckled sword and a light cloak, both of which he throws down on the chest. The scabbard bounces off the wood on to the floor beneath, the metal clanging on the tiles.

  Cesare hands him a goblet of wine and he downs the liquid in one. He pushes the jug towards him and watches as he refills.

  ‘So?’

  ‘A fat sack of nothing. The city is closed as tight as a Jew’s purse. There are so many boarded houses you’d think the plague had come.’

  ‘What about the families?’

  ‘All behind bolted doors. The Sforzas are so nervous that they’re shitting themselves – the Vice-Chancellor has moved out of his palace and in with the ambassador of Milan. If there is anyone cheering you can’t hear it from the streets. Everybody’s waiting for the Pope to stop crying.’

  ‘And the boatman?’

  ‘Is back in his boat.’

  ‘Is his purse any bigger?’

  ‘If it is, he doesn’t spend it on himself. He smells worse than the river.’

  ‘What about his story?’

  ‘Exactly what he told the guards. With a few extra stammers when it looked like my knife might slip.’

  ‘You believe him?’

  ‘He’s too stupid to lie. He lives only for his wood and it’s given him sharp eyes for anything and anyone who comes near it.’

  ‘So why didn’t he report it?’

  ‘Because according to him, if he reported every body he’d seen dumped there, he’d never get any sleep at all.’ Michelotto laughs. ‘It’s fair enough. The place is hardly a secret. I’ve been on that bank a few times myself over the years.’

  ‘But you don’t ride a white horse and have four grooms with you.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’ He rubs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as if to clear his sight. His face looks even wilder when he takes them away, the crosswork of scars rising in jagged ridges out of sallow skin. ‘The horse doesn’t get us anywhere. Just like you said, every great family has a white pure-bred in its stables. Virginio’s bastard, Carlo Orsini, rides one, I know that much, but everyone is saying he’s out of town. I dare say you’d find other Orsini mounts, as well as a few inside the Colonna or the Sforza palace.’

  ‘And the masked man…’

  ‘Dissolved into the air. The duke’s manservant says he visited the house six or seven times over the last month. He never heard a voice, nor saw more than the edge of a beard. He could be five hundred men and counting.’

  Cesare waves his hand. ‘What about the woman he was offering?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You tell me. Whichever one my brother couldn’t have.’

  Michelotto snorts. ‘From what I hear there are barely any virgins left in Rome since he got back from Spain.’

  But Cesare is not smiling. Over their years together, Michelotto has grown accustomed to not always knowing what his master is feeling, which, in its own way, is a kind of knowing in itself. Certainly he is not surprised by his apparent lack of grief: there was little love lost between the brothers and the Pope’s greed for sorrow has sucked up all the available tears. What does surprise him is the lack of anger. Perhaps it is buried too deep or blunted by exhaustion; for they have both been awake for as long as Juan has been dead.

  ‘There is talk of one. Filamena della Mirandola, daughter of a count. Ripe and ready. With a father who prized her dearly.’ He pauses. ‘Their house is close to where the body went in the river.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s where it begins and ends. His reputation is spotless. And he owns no white horses.’

  ‘Of course. The woman was always only the bait. The real question is who was doing the hunting.’

  They fall silent. Michelotto pours himself more wine. The tiredness is beginning to prick at him and he moves around the room, massaging his neck to and fro as if to free it from some permanent crick. His eyes fall on the table and the paper sitting there. He looks up at Cesare, as if to ask permission. He is given it.

  He gives a low whistle. ‘This is a rich harvest. Are they in order?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘The Orsini,’ he reads. ‘No one would argue with that. Only question is, which one?’

  ‘Which one would you say?’

  ‘Ah, we’re spoilt for choice. Everyone knows Virginio was poisoned before we hit them in their castles. Carlo, the son… his nephews Paolo and Giulio, they all know how to carve up a body. His brother-in-law, Bartolomeo. Even that loving sister of his; if she didn’t plunge the knife herself she could well have instructed others. If I was in her pay I would have done it for her.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you would. It’s a clever double blow. Kill the son and at the same time torture the father.’

  ‘Number two: the Sforzas?’ He shrugs. ‘Why not? The Duke of Gandia insults the Vice-Chancellor in his own home. That by itself warrants a knife in the belly.’

  ‘You can cross him off. He has already given up the keys of his house for us to search. He’s acting too guilty and terrified to have done it.’

  ‘What about Giovanni? You always said he didn’t have the balls.’

  ‘He hasn’t. Except we’re going to force him to admit that fact in public soon enough. If he has heard a whiff of that it would be reason enough for revenge.’

  ‘Gonsalvo de Córdova? You got a Spaniard’s name on here?’

  ‘You didn’t see his face during the ceremony when the Pope gave his war spoils to Juan. The insult was palpable.’

  ‘Except he’s a soldier with a reputation for honour.’

  ‘This is honour we’re talking about.’

  ‘And the Duke of Urbino? What? Because we didn’t pay his ransom?’

  ‘You know how long he rotted in the Orsini jails? Close on nine weeks.’

  From below, the Pope’s keening rises up again, low, broken wails, like a man trying to wake from a never-ending nightmare.

  Michelotto looks down at the rest of the list and his face comes up amazed. ‘You’re not going to show him this?’

  ‘At some point he will stop grieving. When he does he is going to have to decide what comes next. Everyone is waiting. He needs to consider anyone who had a score to settle or something to gain.’

  Michelotto stares at him and a slow smile crosses his face. He lets the paper fall on to the table and yawns. ‘Well, if you don’t need me any more tonight, I have to sleep.’

  Cesare waves him away. He leans back in his chair and stares at the ceiling.

  At the door Michelotto turns. ‘The last name? Is that there because of a score to be settled or a gain to be had?’

  But Cesare already has his eyes closed. Whether he does not hear, or just does not choose to answer, is not entirely clear.

  CHAPTER 29

  In a well-run convent even the most dramatic news takes a while to creep under the doors of the cells, and San Sisto, under the leadership of its abbess, Madonna Girolama Pichi, is very well run indeed. Unlike most city convents, where every other raised voice can jump over the walls, its ancient setting on the Via Appia near the southern gate means that these days it is surrounded by open countryside. It was built close to the spot where great men preached and gave their martyred bodies to God, and their devotion has soaked into its very stones, making silence easier to bear.

  So far away is it that, unless there is an express reason for a nun to be informed of something, it is usually only when the riders gallop out towards Naples that the more sharp-eared have reason to hear the thunder of hooves and wonder what new Roman gossip they might be carrying in their saddlebags.

  In this case, though, they do not have to wait long. Pedro Calderón, who in the past has kicked up enough dust as he rides past the convent’s bolted doors, is dispatched the moment the funeral cortège reaches the church. With the Pope incapable of making decisions, Cesare writes the letter. It is imperative that Lucrezia does not hear it first from any other source.

  Ca
lderón is shown into the abbess’s receiving-room. Though a little sweaty from the road, he is still a most lovely young man. Not that the abbess notices such things. Or if she does it will certainly not affect her behaviour towards him: this is a woman who has already seen off a cohort of the Papal Guard.

  ‘You have entered a place of sanctuary and worship where we have few visitors, and though I am sure your news is as urgent as you claim, I would ask you to respect that.’

  In contrast, he is palpably nervous. But nuns often do that to men, and he has much to be nervous about. ‘It is urgent indeed. I also carry a letter for you, reverend mother. From the Most Reverend Lord Cardinal of Valencia.’

  She takes it, breaks the seal and reads. A short gasp leaves her lips and the horror on her face moves quickly to pity. ‘Oh, how dreadful. This will affect the duchess deeply.’ She looks up. ‘Perhaps I should be the one—’

  ‘No. No,’ he says quickly. ‘Thank you… but my instructions are that the letter must be delivered by my own hand.’

  He had said the very same thing five years ago when standing in a dusty courtyard in the middle of Siena, and from that moment of courage everything else had flowed. Then the words had been true. But Cesare had not issued any such explicit instructions to his messenger. It is the first lie that Pedro has told in this, the great affair of his heart.

  ‘Very well. I will send for her. It would be best for you to meet in the garden. The sisters are at individual evening prayer and you will have privacy there. I will show you there myself. When you are ready to leave, ring the bell at the door and the watch sister will collect you.’ She slips the letter into a drawer. Then says, almost abruptly, ‘Tell me, how is our Holy Father?’