The Borgia Mistress

by Sara Poole

  “I have His Holiness’s permission to speak with the prisoner,” I said.

  One of the guards unlocked the door and stood aside for me to enter. I did so with more nervousness than I cared to admit even to myself. Not only had Mother Benedette well and thoroughly duped me, as Borgia had so kindly pointed out, she had also forced me to confront my worst fears and most hellish memories. The scars from that would remain for a very long time to come.

  Yet I was determined to face her calmly. Still dressed in her singed habit with the wooden rosary and cross secured around her waist, she was seated in a tall chair. Her hands were clasped in her lap and she appeared almost asleep, but she stirred as I entered. Seeing me, the woman who had plotted to destroy everything I was sworn to protect smiled as though we were the best of friends.

  “Francesca. I hoped that you would come.”

  Staring at her, I had to wonder how I had ever believed that she was old enough to have known my mother. Without her wimple and veil, she looked only a few years my senior.

  I pushed that thought aside and walked across the room and took the chair opposite her. With pride in the steadiness of my voice, I asked, “Would you care to tell me your real name?”

  The question seemed to amuse her. “Do you imagine that what we are called in this world has any significance at all? Only our soul name matters, and it is not to be uttered here.”

  I had no intention of engaging in a discussion of Cathar beliefs. “Mother Benedette it is, then. His Holiness is determined to find out who sent you. He intends to have you tortured.”

  “Do you intend to watch?”

  Rather than rise to the bait, I said, “We can parry questions until I accept that there is no purpose in my being here and leave. Is that what you want?”

  For a moment, I thought she would not answer, but something flickered behind her eyes, perhaps a realization of just how badly things could go for her. Quietly, she said, “Why should I tell you anything?”

  I took a breath, well aware that what I was about to do would add to the long list of my manifest failings where she was concerned and just might be enough to convince Borgia that he really could do without me.

  Before I could reconsider, I said, “Tell me the truth and I will give you an easy death.”

  She looked surprised. “You would do that, against the wishes of your master?”

  “I would do it for the truth.”

  She nodded as though I had just confirmed a deeply held conviction. “I was right about you. You have a rare spirit.”

  “Which did not prevent you from using me to your own ends before trying to kill me, but never mind about that. Who sent you here?”

  I expected her to refuse to answer at first, to try to play for some advantage, perhaps even her own life. But she did not hesitate. “I don’t know, which if I do end up being tortured is unfortunate. I can try to make up something to satisfy Borgia, but the truth is that I was hired and paid by an intermediary who gave me no indication of whom he was working for. I’m not even certain that he knew. The job could have come through layers of go-betweens.”

  A frustrating answer to be sure, and one Borgia was not likely to accept. Yet I knew that in the world of poisoners, what she was describing was often how such matters were handled. I could believe it was the same for assassins in general.

  “So you are saying that this was not a Cathar conspiracy? That whoever hired you either knew nothing of your beliefs or simply did not care?”

  “I am assuming that they knew nothing. We, the descendants of the survivors who were sent to safety, are raised to live in the world without being detected by it. We accept that we are surrounded by evil and we use it to protect ourselves.”

  “Don’t you mean that you contribute to it by being, for example, assassins?”

  “We can debate that if you like,” she said. “Or you can simply accept that what I am telling you is the truth.”

  “You have no idea who hired you?” I asked her again.

  She looked at me directly and did not waver. “I do not.”

  “But the intent was to kill Herrera and thereby destroy the alliance?”

  “That is my understanding. In addition, you were to be blamed. Borgia would be fatally weakened by the loss of the Spaniards. And you, who had managed to thwart so many attempts on his life, would be gone. The way would be clear to destroy him.”

  Though I was loathe to admit it, the plan could have—even should have—worked. Yet I was far from satisfied with what she had revealed thus far.

  “The gifts of food, the psalter … you were poisoning me?”

  “Drugging you,” she corrected. “The plan was to render you mad so that you would be blamed for Herrera’s death. I would escape safely—always a consideration in such matters, as I am sure you understand. But when I met you, I realized that to merely use you as intended would be a terrible waste.”

  “Because you thought I could show you the path?”

  She nodded. “Which you have done.”

  “I tried to tell you—”

  She held up a hand, forestalling me. “I can accept that you do not fully understand what you saw.”

  Since I was not sure that I understood it at all, I could hardly argue with her. Instead, I turned to my greater purpose in being there. The dead cannot speak for themselves, but I could do so in their place.

  “You killed the kitchen boy, the laundress, and the page?”

  “I did.”

  “Why? What purpose did that serve?” The seemingly random pointlessness of the attacks, lives snatched away for no reason, haunted me. In my worst moments, in the grip of the darkness within, I had never done any such thing.

  She looked surprised. “I did it for your sake, Francesca. Surely you understand that?”

  My disbelief must have been evident, for she said, “It is true that it served my ends for people to be frightened by unexplained deaths and looking to you as the possible cause. But there was a higher purpose. I could see that you have been living in a delusion, believing that you can somehow make the world a better place through your own actions and in the process redeem yourself. It was necessary to show you that evil is everywhere. It can strike anywhere, and you are helpless before it precisely because it is the very fabric of existence. In that way, I prepared you to walk the path of light.”

  Bile rose in my throat. I did not doubt for a moment that she believed what she said. Lives were nothing to her, being mere encumbrances of the physical world.

  “I freed them,” she said, as though I would understand. “As I tried to free you.”

  But I had survived to confront her with her crimes. For all the lives I had taken, each and every one still counted with me.

  “You also killed Herrera’s servant.”

  “Someone had to die after I gave you the psalter. I knew how the drug embedded in it would affect you, and when I saw you leave your apartments—”

  “It was you I saw? You followed me?” The shadowy figure I had glimpsed had not been Death itself, as my fevered brain imagined, but an all too real woman bent on murder.

  “I must admit,” the “abbess” said with a frown, “I am puzzled as to what happened to the knife. I left it to be found.”

  “It was. I found it the next day when I began to remember where I had gone.”

  She looked surprised. “You remembered? That should not have been possible. The drug expunges all memory.” She thought for a moment. “Unless you’ve been taking something else that partly counteracted the effect.”

  Sofia’s powder, perhaps? I still hungered for it, but after all the talk of Cathar drugs, I was determined to never take it again. Please God, I would remain strong in that conviction.

  “You killed Magdalene,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Do not tell me that you did not consider doing so yourself. Or that you did not think about killing Herrera. We are more alike than you wish to admit, Francesca.”

  I looked at he
r, a young woman, a hired assassin who, for all of her fanaticism—or perhaps even because of it—I suspected was very good at her job. Had events worked out only slightly differently, she would have bested me. She had been shaped by an act of brutal oppression and violence that cast ripples down through the centuries into the present day and likely would continue to do so far into the future. But she would not see that. Her time was over.

  Mine was not, and for that I was suddenly, overwhelmingly grateful. For all that I was not and likely never would be a normal woman, I saw the beauty of this world and I cherished it. Evil exists, it is real, but so is good. We are not alone in the dark.

  “I have one more question.” To which I already knew the answer, yet I had to hear it. “You made up the stories about my mother, including the manner of her death?”

  She shook her head. “I have no such gift for tale spinning. The intermediary told me what to say.”

  That was not what I expected, yet it changed nothing. “But you have no reason to believe that any of it was true?”

  “None at all.” She did not sound regretful, but then I had not expected her to do so. I had come to the realization while still in Tanners Lane that she had exploited my deepest longings to her own ends. All the same, it was hard to hear. I had to force myself to go on.

  “We are nothing alike,” I said. “You put your faith in a vision that I will never accept. But you have kept your part of our bargain. I will keep mine.”

  I was reaching for the pouch in which I kept the necessities of my profession when she surprised me. Smiling, the woman I knew as Mother Benedette said, “Thanks to you, I die knowing that the path to the world beyond this place of evil does exist. I want you to know that I am truly grateful for that. Now that I have acted to redeem my soul from Satan, I am free to follow that path at last. We will not meet again in this world, but be assured, I will look for you in the light.”

  Before I could reply, she snapped the string holding the wooden beads of her rosary. Most fell to the floor along with the cross, but several remained in her hand.

  Still smiling, looking directly at me, she placed them in her mouth and bit down hard.

  Moments later, the Cathar assassin was dead.

  30

  My efforts to save Mother Benedette were futile, but I made a show of trying all the same for the sake of the guards. The rosary beads, as it turned out, contained ground paternoster peas. Left intact, the peas can pass through the body without causing it distress. But once the outer covering is punctured, they release one of the deadliest toxins known to man. In all likelihood, the “abbess” was dead before she hit the floor.

  I stared at her in shock, trying to understand why she had waited to speak to me before ending her own life when she had the means to do so all along. Had she nurtured some hope of escape? Believing what she did, I could not think that she truly wanted anything so much as to die and be free of this world. But for that to happen, her death had to occur in the right way … an act to redeem her soul. Herrera would live; she had failed there. The Spanish alliance would remain. I would not be blamed for the deaths that had occurred and because of them be consigned to the flames. Borgia would endure.

  Borgia. The answer came to me so suddenly that I cried out. She died believing that she had won and that ultimately I would know it. In her final act, she had sought to convince me of the rightness of her beliefs. And to compel me to follow the same path she had taken. Truly, she intended for us to meet again.

  The full magnitude of my failure almost slammed me to my knees beside her. I only just managed to stay upright and stagger from the room, past the startled guards. I ran the distance back to Borgia’s apartments, my heart pounding and my breath coming in gasps.

  Bursting into his private chamber, I caught him about to raise a goblet to his lips. At once, I cried out, “Do not!”

  He stared at me over the rim. Without waiting for him to act, I closed the distance between us, seized the goblet from him, and threw it to the floor, where it shattered. Panting, hardly able to speak, I said, “You cannot eat or drink anything. No one can. You must send word … warn them all—”

  The room was beginning to spin. I feared that I was about to faint and I might have done so had not Borgia had the presence of mind to lower me into a chair, bend me over, and tuck my head firmly between my knees.

  “Breathe,” he ordered, holding me by the neck so that I had no choice but to obey. When he was finally satisfied that I was no longer about to lose consciousness, he allowed me to straighten up. “Stay where you are,” he directed as he went to the door and had a quick word with one of his secretaries. I saw the man pale before he rushed off to do the pontiff’s bidding.

  “All right,” Borgia said as he returned to his seat facing me. “I have just now declared a general fast in gratitude to God for sparing Herrera’s life. No morsel of food or drop of drink will pass anyone’s lips until I say otherwise. Now tell me what this is about.”

  “The Cathar is dead.” Before he could react, I said, “She took poison that was in her rosary beads. Paternoster peas … extremely deadly.”

  “And?” he prompted.

  “She had that rosary with her all this time, from when we first met. Don’t you see? I brought her into your household, took her around with me into the kitchens, everywhere as I did my work. If I was distracted for a moment, she could have poisoned anything I had inspected and I wouldn’t have realized it. I would have gone ahead and put it under seal without suspecting that anything was wrong. There could be poison lurking anywhere and none of us the wiser.”

  “Do you have reason to believe she actually did that?” Borgia asked.

  Loathe though I was to admit it, I nodded. “It is what I would have done. A final way to destroy you and bring ruin down on the Church, in case everything else went wrong.” And it would have worked if I, who so resisted the notion that the “abbess” and I were alike in any way, had not been able to realize her intent.

  Borgia sat back and regarded me solemnly. “Very well; we will send to the town for such supplies as are available. That, at least, will make us popular with the townspeople. When you have recovered, you can begin re-inspecting anything that hasn’t spoiled in the meantime.”

  “You are being remarkably calm about this,” I said. “We both know that I put my need to learn about myself above my responsibility to protect you.” It was the simple truth. I saw nothing to be gained by trying to evade it, nor did I expect him to allow me to do so even for a moment.

  Truly, it was a night for surprises.

  Borgia smiled faintly. “Yet here I am, alive and well. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Because I—”

  “Told the truth just now, admitted your error. Did not try to save yourself at my expense. You could have, you know. Only you and the ‘abbess’ knew what took place between you. You could have claimed that she died from poison that you gave her.”

  The look His Holiness sent me suggested that he had suspected me of being prepared to do exactly that. He may even have counted on it to further conceal how close he had come to disaster.

  And yet I had to say, “I have failed you in every way. Mother Benedette did not know who hired her. We are no closer to discovering who tried to kill you than we were before.”

  “That is unfortunate,” Borgia said. “But I wonder, what did she tell you about your mother?”

  “That doesn’t matter. It was all lies.”

  “That she spun?”

  “No, she was given a story to tell me.”

  “And that story was…?”

  Seeing that he would not relent, I related it as quickly and succinctly as I could manage. All I wanted was to put it behind me and go on with my confession, but Borgia seemed inclined to do otherwise; he listened with great care. When I finished, he said, “But that is all true. That really is what happened to your mother, and to you.”

  I stared at him in bewilderment. “How could you k
now that?”

  “Did you think that I would hire your father for such a vital position in my household without investigating him thoroughly first? No, I knew what had happened, and after he had been with me for a while, we spoke of it.”

  My hands clasped the arms of the chair in which he had put me. I held on tightly as the world threatened once again to whirl away. “I don’t understand. Who else knew the truth?”

  Borgia looked pleased that I had the wit to ask the question. “Who else indeed?”

  When I continued to stare at him in blank confusion, he said, “Your mother was born and raised in Milan. She died in a small village not far from that city, still well within the lands of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. He would have had no difficulty finding out the truth.”

  “He is behind this? The Sforzas are?”

  “Ironic, isn’t it? All this time, I’ve been blaming della Rovere.” The difficulty of giving up his justification for contriving to murder his great rival weighed heavily on him. He sighed deeply. “No wonder my esteemed son-in-law went out of his way to give such grave offense that I had no choice but to banish him from here. He must have been warned that this was not an opportune time to be in my vicinity.”

  “And now?” I asked. What would happen to Lucrezia and her not-quite husband? What price would Borgia exact in order to protect his papacy and his grand vision of his own immortality?

  “And now,” he said as his good humor returned, “thanks to you, I know who among those who call themselves my friends are in fact my enemies. That will be quite useful.”

  “Even so, I failed—”

  “And I know something that I didn’t even so much as suspect before now. The Cathars really are a threat. We will have to be alert to them in the future.”

  Staring at him, I saw his satisfaction in the present victory but also his avid appetite for the fight ahead. Truly, he was a man who thrived on the struggle for power in this world, no matter that it brought pain and death to others.