The Princess of Nowhere

by Lorenzo Borghese

  There was an indented line on the skin of her left shoulder from the seams of the dress. He traced it down to her breast, touched the nipple, ran his finger back up.

  “Oh,” she sighed, collapsing sideways to lie next to him. “You have the most wonderful hands.” She pulled his other hand from underneath his head and brought it to her mouth, sucking on one finger after another.

  Each finger brought him new, cascading shivers of delight.

  Then she hooked one of her legs over his hip and wriggled a bit lower on the bed.

  He looked down. She was right there, wide open; he was poised for entry. One little shift—

  She put her other hand on his hip and tugged.

  He had meant to take it slow; he had been thinking, all the way up the stairs, of her hands and her mouth and all the things she had taught him. But that little tug drove everything else out of his head. He slid into her in one firm push and felt her heel settle into place in the center of his lower back.

  She felt so good. It wasn’t just that her face was a classic oval, or her hair like silk, or her body perfectly proportioned. She felt different from other women: tantalizing and pliable and moist. She fitted him like that dress had fitted her.

  “Don’t move,” he gasped.

  She wriggled, perverse as always.

  He pinned her down with his free arm. “Stop.” It came out as a growl. Then he inched back and forth, just a little. A little more.

  She took a shuddering breath.

  With tiny, tiny incremental thrusts, he brought them both to the point where they were gasping and clutching at each other. Then he stopped. He lay there, holding her still when she wanted to begin again.

  How many months had it been? He wanted to savor this. But he felt her impatience and yielded. There would be tomorrow, after all. And the day after. Or even later tonight, although it was almost dawn. He shifted his grip, rolled her up on top of him, and thrust up into her, suddenly fast and powerful where he had been slow and delicate.

  She came at once, arching her chest above him, and he pulled her hips closer as he pumped frantically into his own release. The lamplight and candles at the edge of his vision suddenly exploded into sparkling little pinwheels. He had made his own personal fireworks display.

  As usual, Pauline jumped out of bed within a few minutes. She was always restless after sex. He lay half-dozing, hearing her humming a local folk song. She didn’t know the tune beyond the first few bars, so she would start the song, then stop, then start over.

  “Damn!” She was hopping again, holding one toe. He could see something on the floor; she must have stepped on it. Poor Pauline, he thought sleepily, drifting off again. She was very fond of her feet and would sometimes display them to shocked visitors by peeling off her shoes and stockings in public. Now she had bruised her toes twice in twenty minutes.

  Behind his closed eyes, the obstacle on the floor suddenly took on a very distinctive size and shape.

  He opened his eyes. It wasn’t his imagination. There, on the floor, just visible in the lamplight, was a small octavo volume. Leather-bound. He knew what it was. It was a text of Livy.

  My God, he thought. A moment before, he had been sweating; now he suddenly felt very cold. What a fool you are, Camillo, he told himself savagely.

  He sat up, pushed his legs over the side of the bed, and nudged the book closer with one foot. Then he bent over and picked it up. Pauline was still humming, dabbing her face and breasts with water over by the washstand. He opened the book. Any faint hope he had entertained that some other book, identical in appearance, had found its way into the bedroom of a woman who never read books, died at once. It was Livy, and on the flyleaf was an inscription in Latin: “To my dear Gian Andrea, from his most affectionate godfather, Pietro Verri.”

  He thought again about Pauline’s story to the captain. About the maid, cleaning the sitting room at two in the morning. About the first, still unexplained, injury to her foot. The lamp was right next to him; he picked it up and walked methodically around the room, shining the light onto the floor. There, in the corner by the door to the sitting room, was a tiny triangular piece of red-and-gold china.

  “What are you doing? I can’t see if you take the lamp that far away.”

  He held up the lamp in one hand, the book in the other.

  Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She looked stunned.

  “I don’t know why I should be so surprised,” he said. His face felt stiff and old; the words sounded like someone else talking.

  “Camillo, don’t.” She dropped the washcloth. “It isn’t what you think.”

  “Oh? What is it, then?” He set the lamp down on the floor, bent over, and scooped up the little piece of china. “Is this the vase Sophie broke? Did she find you here with the boy she thought she loved? That part was true, wasn’t it?”

  “Who cares about Sophie!”

  “Who, indeed. Obviously not you.” He stalked over to the heap of clothing he had abandoned—was it only half an hour ago? It felt like a year. In silence, he turned his breeches rightside out, pulled them on, and stuffed his arms into his jacket. His shoes and stockings and shirt and vest he simply picked up in one untidy lump.

  She ran to the door and stood there, blocking his way. “I didn’t sleep with him!”

  “I don’t care,” he said wearily. He pushed her aside and headed for the outer doors. Another piece of china skittered across the floor as he kicked it out of his way.

  “Camillo!” she screamed. “You have to believe me! Nothing happened! All he wanted to do was talk politics!”

  He turned at the door, even though he didn’t want to. Something made him look back at his wife, standing naked in the doorway of the bedroom, fists clenched, with the lamp on the floor sending a beam of light streaming out between her legs.

  “Go to France,” he said. “Get away from me. The farther the better.”

  THIRTEEN

  The day after the banquet, Sophie went to the most neglected, unused, unlikely room in the palace she could find and sat there all afternoon. She didn’t think Pauline would expect her for their daily conversation, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Once she was sure it was dinnertime, she made her way back to her room, reconciled to going to bed early and hungry so long as she didn’t have to see Pauline.

  “I’m sick,” she told Bettina, and climbed into bed wearing her chemise and stockings. “Don’t let anyone in. Especially Donna Paolina.” She wasn’t sure how much Bettina knew about what had happened last night, but she could always count on her to think the worst of Pauline. She decided to be sick tomorrow, too. And the day after that. She burrowed down under the coverlet and brooded in the stuffy darkness, staring into nothingness and scraping her thumbnail back and forth over the sheets. A bit later, she heard Bettina talking to someone at the door to the outer room—it sounded like the prince. Whoever it was, they went away.

  Footsteps. It was Bettina.

  “Do you want anything to eat? Some soup? Some custard?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want your nightgown?”

  “No.”

  Eventually, she fell asleep.

  The next day she had breakfast in bed, lunch in bed, and dinner in bed. Between meals she napped or tried to read, and snapped at Bettina whenever she asked Sophie any questions. That night she kept finding crumbs in the sheets. She tossed and turned until the small hours of the morning, unable to sleep. When she finally did manage to sleep, Bettina woke her two hours later so that the doctor could examine her.

  She snapped at him, too.

  After her second day in bed, she realized that she had succeeded in completely inverting her schedule. She was asleep during the day and awake all night. Perhaps she could just become an owl and flit through the castle when everyone else was asleep. Then she could spend at least some time out of bed.

  On the third day, she woke from a very deep post-luncheon nap to find Pauline shaking her.

&nb
sp; She closed her eyes as hard as she could. “Go away,” she said, trying to sound ill and wan.

  “Stop pretending to be sick, Sophie. It’s childish.”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  “Doctor Vastapani says there is nothing wrong with you.”

  Sophie sat up. “When he says that about you, you always tell me he is an idiot!”

  “He is an idiot.” Pauline sighed. “I miss my dear Doctor Peyre.”

  Sophie was tempted to remind her that Peyre had quit in disgust when Pauline had moved into the house of her chamberlain-lover last summer, but instead she subsided back down onto the pillows and closed her eyes again.

  “I know what you need,” said Pauline briskly. “You need something to take your mind off yourself.”

  Sophie ignored her.

  “Get up.” She pulled the covers away from Sophie and tossed them on the floor. “We’re going to visit some people who are really sick.”

  That made Sophie open her eyes. “What?”

  “You heard me. We’re going to the Hospital of San Maurizio.”

  Bettina had told Sophie repeatedly that it was the duty of those who had been blessed with wealth and good family to console the sick and poor and dying who were in their charge. As Bettina was fond of pointing out, Donna Anna had set an excellent example for her daughter-in-law; the Dowager Princess Borghese went every Tuesday morning to the Hospital of San Giovanni in Rome and dispensed jellies, tonics, and moral advice to the patients. Camillo had assumed that his new princess would accompany his mother on these visits.

  Pauline had absolutely refused to go near the place. She had a horror of hospitals; she was convinced they were cesspits of infection and that the patients were all criminals and prostitutes. She complained to Camillo of her own delicate state of health and hinted that seeing all the invalids would remind her of the tragic illness and death of her first husband. Camillo had backed down, and Pauline had sent a gift of money to the monks instead.

  For the first time, Sophie looked carefully at Pauline. She was dressed soberly in a dark cambric gown. She wore no rouge, and her hair was pulled back with a simple band. And she looked as though she hadn’t slept in three days. At least Sophie had had her daytime naps. The last time Sophie had seen Pauline looking so haggard was after Dermide’s death.

  “Is something wrong?” Sophie sat up again. “Has someone died?” A horrible thought occurred to her. She clutched Pauline’s arm. “Did they arrest Gian Andrea? Did they shoot him?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Pauline, disgusted. “Don’t be such a nitwit. No one has been shot. Now get up and get dressed.”

  They really did go to the hospital. Sophie kept glancing over at Pauline, trying to figure out why she looked so stern and severe and why she was suddenly interested in tending paupers and cripples. The brothers who ran the hospital were overjoyed to receive a royal visit and insisted on showing every ward to Pauline and her attendants (in the end, four other ladies-in-waiting had been dragged along as well). Sophie found the sight of room after room of sick, dirty people disgusting, and the smell even more disgusting, but she said nothing and tried to hang back at the rear of their party as they moved through the wards. Pauline, on the other hand, was full of curiosity. What was wrong with this man? Why did this woman have yellow spots on her face? She stopped and spoke with several patients and even helped one woman sit up and hold her baby. At the end of the visit she had tears in her eyes, and in the carriage on the way back she gave an agitated speech to her ladies-in-waiting about the poor state of the hospitals in Paris. She would write to her brother and commend the model of the Italian institutions.

  Hanging back, once they had returned to the palace, didn’t work. Pauline thanked all the other ladies-in-waiting and dismissed them. But Sophie found herself once more in Pauline’s room, sitting in the chair by the window with a glass of syrupy wine. It was even sweeter and more yellow than she remembered it.

  She kept her eyes obstinately focused on the wine, wondering what Pauline would say. Would she tell Sophie more court gossip? Sophie was three days behind now in Pauline’s running catalogue of who was sleeping with whom. Would she make fun of the men who admired her? She had described one languishing Piedmont landowner as a basset hound because he had mournful eyes and large ears that drooped slightly. A young Frenchman had made the mistake of writing her a poem; she had read it to Sophie, interspersed with merciless comments on the author’s bad posture and unwashed hair. One thing Sophie was certain of: Pauline would not apologize. Apologies were for ordinary mortals.

  “Are you angry with me?” Pauline said finally.

  Sophie didn’t answer.

  Pauline sighed and let her go.

  Within a few days, the afternoon meetings had resumed their normal pattern. It was hard to resist Pauline when she was exerting herself to be charming. Sophie started out determined not to talk; then decided she would talk but not smile; then decided that it was difficult not to smile when Pauline was smiling at you and teasing you to eat little crumbs of galette from her hand like the bird on her shoulder. The bird was a gift from the mayor and looked like him: round and small and bright-eyed. It was while they were feeding the bird two days later that Pauline had finally brought up Gian Andrea.

  “You mustn’t be too disappointed in him, Sophie,” she said. The bird cocked its head to the side and nibbled Pauline’s ear. “He is really still very young.”

  I’m not disappointed in him, thought Sophie. I’m disappointed in you.

  “They get these obsessions at his age,” Pauline continued, lifting the bird down to her lap. “Hunting, or war, or boxing. Something manly. Something that proves they are no longer boys. Sometimes it is even women. But it isn’t any particular woman—it’s just women in general. With him, it is politics. He thinks he is going to singlehandedly save Italy from my brother.”

  She offered the bird another bite of galette. “Nothing else is real to him. You could put him in a room with Helen of Troy, and he wouldn’t have the slightest idea of what to say to her.”

  Perhaps this was Pauline’s roundabout way of reassuring Sophie that the scene in her bedroom had, in fact, been completely innocent. That would almost qualify as an apology. Perhaps Pauline really was sorry.

  “I mean,” Pauline continued, “I stood right in front of the lamp—right in front of it! He should have been able to see everything; that dress is practically transparent if you put a source of light behind it. And do you know what he did? He took out his book and started to read to me in Latin!”

  Then again, perhaps not.

  * * *

  The prince had left for Florence right after the banquet; Sophie was not sure why. He returned five days later to get ready for a state visit. Pauline’s brother Joseph was traveling from Naples to his new kingdom of Spain and would stop in Turin on his way. There was to be another banquet, although without dancing and fireworks, and a ceremonial escort to the border, with the prince leading his personal guard.

  On the first day after Camillo’s return, he came to find Sophie in the garden.

  “I gather that you were ill,” he said awkwardly. “I hope you are recovered.”

  “Yes, thank you.” In fact, her headaches had come back, and she actually felt worse now than she had when she was in bed for three days. But she was certainly not going to admit to Camillo that she had not really been sick.

  He looked a bit ill himself, she thought. And Pauline still had hollows under her eyes. She knew what that meant: they had had another fight.

  “Cousin Pauline has been feeling poorly as well,” she said tentatively. Pauline had taken to her bed a few hours before the prince was due to return. Yes, they must have had a fight. And now Pauline was pretending to be sick. Sophie had learned to feign illness from a master of the art.

  At the mention of Pauline, his face closed. “Yes, so I hear,” he said. He looked so grim that for one moment Sophie was almost afraid of him. She shrank bac
k slightly on the bench where she was sitting. She revised “fight” to “Fight.” Or perhaps outright war.

  He composed himself once more. “May I escort you inside?” he said politely.

  She supposed she should go in. She had been out in the garden for quite some time, and even though she was sitting in the shade, the damp heat combined with her headache was starting to make her feel a little queasy.

  When she wobbled a bit as she stood up, the prince grabbed her elbow. “Are you certain you are not ill?” he said.

  “I’m fine,” Sophie said.

  Then she threw up all over the bench.

  This time Sophie really was sick. And so was Pauline. Vastapani no longer announced that everything looked normal when he examined them, and he hadn’t mentioned calomel once. Pauline was doubled over with cramps; Sophie could barely keep down a glass of water. Both were covered with sweat and shivering.

  “I need to go to Aix-en-Savoie,” Pauline told the doctor. She didn’t have to force herself to cry, either; the tears came easily now. He was worried; she could see it even under his usual courteous professionalism. “Please ask my husband to let me go.” Camillo had not come to see her at all; Vastapani was serving as her go-between.

  He returned with the usual answer: “The prince believes that he has no authority to give you leave to travel outside of the province. He has written your brother urging him to grant your request.”

  “Napoleon?” She coughed. It was a horrible, rasping cough. It even scared her. “He thinks I am shamming. I’ve written him three times already since we arrived here. He insists that Val d’Aosta is just as good as Aix.”

  “I have included a statement of my own in His Excellency’s letter, noting that the sulfur springs of Aix are specifically indicated in your case and that of your cousin.”

  Two weeks. It would take at least a week for the letter to reach Napoleon, and a week for the response to come back. She thought morbidly that she might not survive two weeks of her current symptoms. If she could only see Camillo in person, she could persuade him to ignore Napoleon’s earlier orders.