“I think you’ve had enough surprises for one day,” he said gently. “Let me worry about the future. Besides, you’ll be busy in the coming days, for you, Giulia, and Adriana are moving to Cardinal Zeto’s palazzo of Santa Maria in Portico.” He grinned, as he always did when he gave me a present. “I’ve ordered the entire palace refurbished; only the most splendid residence in Rome will suffice for my farfallina. You’ll have your own set of apartments, with an entourage to attend you.” He winked, leaning close. “One of the advantages of being pope is I can do as I see fit, within reason. In addition to your new palazzo, I shall build apartments in the Vatican, so there will be enough room for all my children.”
Giulia had made it sound as if the new palazzo was entirely for her, but if I was to have my own apartments, then Papa must intend to honor me, as well.
“Can I bring Arancino, little Murilla, and Pantalisea with me?” I asked.
“Your cat, your maid, and whatever else your heart desires. Just say the word and it shall be yours. You can even bring all those books Adriana tells me you hide in your room and Vannozza chides her for letting you read.”
I laughed in delight, until I suddenly remembered my other brother, far away in Pisa. Sensing my hesitation, Papa asked, “Is anything else troubling you?”
“You said all your children. Does that mean you’ll now summon Cesare home?”
His smile faded. “Eventually. But for now he must complete his studies for the priesthood. He will find joy in service to our Holy Church, as I have, but first he must resign himself to the sacrifices it entails.” He glared at me in mock severity. “That means no secret letters relaying the news or messages sent by pigeon to his seminary. I well know how close you two are; since childhood, you’ve been like twin souls. But Cesare must devote himself to his studies without any distractions.”
“It’s just that I miss him so much. It’s been over two years since I’ve seen him, Papa.”
“Yes, but he still sends you those books, doesn’t he?” Papa elbowed me, causing me to giggle. “Forbidden books of poetry that outrage Vannozza.” He eyed me. “Books and sisterly devotion are fine things, but you must trust in me to do what is right—for him and for you.” He caressed my cheek. “Do I have your promise, farfallina?”
I nodded. He kissed my brow. “Good. And will you be kind to Giulia?”
“Yes, Papa,” I whispered, and he tweaked the tip of my nose.
“And no more quarreling with Vannozza. No one knows better than me how much of a taskmistress she can be; not for nothing has she turned those inns of hers into gold mines. But she only wants what’s best for you. I’ll not have it said you failed to show her proper respect.”
Dio mio, did he have eyes and ears everywhere?
“Yes, Papa.”
“Bien.” He brought us to our feet, looking at the torchlit palazzo, from which laughter and music wafted toward us. “I’m surprised they’ve left me alone this long. I vow I haven’t had a moment to myself, even to empty my bladder.” He held out his arms. “Now give your old papa a kiss. It’s late and you must rest. We’ll see each other very soon.”
I held him close, drawing in his unique smell. With his whisper of “I love you, Lucrezia,” like a balm in my ears, I left him to go up to my chamber.
Perhaps being the pope’s daughter might not be such a bad thing, after all.
The next weeks passed in a whirlwind as we dismantled our house, filling chests and coffers for the move. Adriana oversaw everything, directing the servants in the proper way to roll up the tapestries and the use of hay to cushion our multitude of fragile plates and statuary.
Giulia and I could not avoid each other; we shared possessions strewn all over our rooms. As we sorted through them, deciding whether to retain this faded sleeve or those tattered slippers, we were barely able to utter more than required niceties—until Adriana burst in unannounced and passed her critical eye over us.
“Did you add lavender to your linen chests? If not, everything will arrive smelly and foul and—” She flung open the first coffer lid. A streak of fur leapt out, making her shriek.
“Arancino, you naughty thing!” I cried, as my cat scrabbled under my bed, spitting fury. I turned apologetically to Adriana. “He must have been trapped inside. I had no idea.”
Behind me, Giulia choked back a giggle. All of a sudden I had to bite my lip.
“You had no idea?” Adriana pressed a hand to her chest. “Dio mio, imagine if we had arrived in Santa Maria to find that creature smothered to death among your linens.”
“It’s only across the river,” said Giulia. “He’d hardly have smothered, though he might have urinated on everything, lavender or not.” She gave me a wry look; without warning, we both burst into laughter. As Adriana watched us in bewilderment, I thought of how Papa had asked me to show kindness to Giulia, and I whispered, “Forgive me.”
“Oh, no. I’m the one who must beg forgiveness,” she said. “After that terrible incident with Juan, it was insensitive of me.”
Adriana harrumphed. “Friends again, are we?”
“Yes,” Giulia declared, clasping my hand.
I nodded in agreement, though I was still not so sure I could trust her.
Adriana ordered us to air out the coffer at once, “and repack those linens with lavender—and no cat!” Then she marched out, closing the door on our mirth.
—
ON AUGUST 26, the feast day of St. Alexander, the servants loaded the last of our furnishings onto carts for transport to Santa Maria, while we donned our brocade and veils to go into the city to witness Papa’s coronation as Pope Alexander VI.
We were not allowed to attend the ceremony itself, as women were prohibited from witnessing the sacred consecration in the basilica, during which Papa had to sit in his shift on a special stool, “with a hole in the seat,” Giulia told me, “so his manhood can be verified.”
“Verified?” I said. “Whatever for? Surely everyone can see he is a man.”
“You would think so. But, remember la papisa: Everyone thought Pope Joan was a man, and look at how that turned out. Now every pope since must prove he is…well, you know,” she added hastily, as Adriana shot us a censorious look.
“Are you going to chatter like fishwives all day?” asked Adriana. “Or will you deign to pay attention to this most important event in our family history?”
I turned my gaze to the street below. We sat on a specially appointed balcony in a palazzo overlooking Papa’s processional route down the Via Papale to the Lateran Palace, where he’d be enthroned as Bishop of Rome and supreme ruler of the papal states.
The view was breathtaking, as were the smells. Animal ordure and spilled wine from leather flagons turned rank in the heat as cheering multitudes crammed the road; the procession wound its way to the Coliseum, with the rat-catchers leading straining dogs on leashes, which ran ahead to clear the swampy grasses of vermin. Shopkeepers who kept stalls in the ruin’s lower levels unfurled colored banners; suddenly the ravaged hulk of an arena, long-since stripped of its marble and travertine to decorate noble palazzos, was resurrected to evanescent life, its cavernous archways returned to a fleeting glory not seen since ancient times. Bronzed plaster angels sprouted from enormous plaster archways straddling the road. The sky could barely be seen among fluttering pennons sporting our colors—an immense sea of mulberry and yellow.
Everywhere I looked, I saw my family name exalted.
Giulia pointed out the most important personages in the procession. “There’s Cardinal Ascanio Sforza,” she said, indicating a small trim man with protuberant eyes, dressed in ermine-trimmed robes and riding a mule among twelve pages clad in crimson and purple. “Rumor has it, Rodrigo gave him six chests filled with silver after the conclave, but it’s a lie. Your father’s palazzo on the Corso and the vice-chancellorship are reward enough for any man, even one as greedy as he.”
As Cardinal Sforza rode past, along with the other scarlet-clad cardinal
s and their respective retainers and family members, I recalled what Giulia had told me about him casting the decisive vote in my father’s election. “I thought the mob looted Papa’s palazzo,” I said, thinking Sforza must have inherited quite a mess to clean up.
Giulia chuckled. “The mob never touched it. As soon as he heard the palazzo was his, Sforza sent his own retainers to protect it. He wasn’t about to let a single plate escape him. He’s become the most powerful man in the Curia, not to mention the richest. And through him, your father has allied with the Sforza of Milan, which means that—”
“Hush your mouth,” said Adriana irritably. “You’re always filling her head with nonsense.”
Giulia scowled. I was about to question her further when a roar from the crowd announced the arrival of Rome’s most distinguished families, who had set aside their ancestral hostilities for today to promulgate their shared splendor.
The proud Orsini wore sienna velvet trimmed in gold, led by their patriarch, Virginio Orsini, who oversaw the papal guard. At prudent distance, swathed in equal pomp and velvet, were the Colonna, the Orsini family’s tenacious foe. As their servants trod through scrims of dust kicked up by men on horseback, Giulia suddenly leaned precariously over the balustrade to shout, “Alessandro, up here! We’re up here!”
Adriana was mortified. “By all that is holy, cease that wailing at once. One would think you had no better manners than a tanner’s wife, the way you carry on.”
I laughed as I saw Alessandro Farnese looking around in confusion, hearing his name but unsure from whence it came. He finally caught sight of his sister above him, waving; I had met Giulia’s older brother once, when he came to visit us before moving to Pisa to study. I thought him rather ordinary compared to Giulia, though he shared her long-lashed eyes, pointed nose, and— I went still. “When did Alessandro arrive?”
“Three days ago.” Giulia glanced at me. “Didn’t I tell you? I thought I had. Rodrigo—I mean His Holiness—he promised to…” She paused, taking in my expression. “Don’t even think it. He is not here. You know Cesare was forbidden from coming to Rome.”
I was no longer listening, already scanning the crowds for my brother. He must be here. How could I have thought he would miss this, no matter what Papa ordered? It was our finest hour, the pinnacle of years of striving, and Cesare and Alessandro were companions in the same seminary at Pisa. If our father had granted leave for Giulia’s brother to come to Rome, Cesare must have heard of it. He would have sought the same advantage.
“Lucrezia!” Giulia gripped my shoulder. “There’s Juan. Oh, he is a brute, but God save us, there isn’t a man here today who can outshine him.”
I tore my gaze from the anonymous waving hands and shouting faces, peering through a sudden cascade of rose petals that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Under that shower of pink and white, Juan rode past us in a mulberry velvet doublet, his broad yellow-slashed sleeves patterned with our bulls in black thread, the sunlight shattering against the inlaid gems of his collar. He clutched a feathered cap in his fist; as he brandished it, he elicited a roar of “Borgia! Borgia!” from the crowd. Tossing his head, his hair rippling past his shoulders, he made the women at the cordons cry out with abandon. He set his gelding to curveting before them, so precise in his control of the reins that his horse barely roused a puff of dust from the road.
I had to smile. The populace went wild, shoving against the barricades. With a grin, Juan reached into a silk pouch at his waist and flung out fistfuls of coins. Even as the people scrambled for his largesse, he cantered onward, followed by his bravos on foot.
Adriana remarked, “He may be beautiful, but he never could learn a lesson. He was nearly killed at my very gates two weeks ago, and still he’d incite a stampede with his theatrics.”
I thought my brother magnificent, theatrics or not. Juan had flair, which was one of the reasons Papa favored him. No one knew better how to please the fickle rabble when he had a mind to, his glamour and largesse perfectly timed to ease the taint of savagery that his brutal killing of the man outside the palazzo had engendered.
But my breath actually caught in my throat when, directly after Juan, our father appeared astride a white charger caparisoned in white. Escorted by his retinue of papal guards, Papa wore the triple-tiered azure enamel holy tiara with its teardrop pearls, his robust figure swathed in an ivory-gold chasuble that floated about him like a cloud.
The people knelt. Papa raised a white-gloved hand. Feathered clamor filled the air as pages walking beside him released captive doves from cages. Women began to pray, exultation lightening their careworn faces; men removed their caps in reverence; and children craned their heads eagerly to watch the doves scatter, as bells from all the nearby churches began to toll. I didn’t need Giulia to whisper, “He heralds a new age,” to understand my father’s message.
Rodrigo Borgia was our new pope. Everything was about to change.
Other nobles, papal courtiers, and their personnel followed, until the company disappeared in a fugue of dust. As dirt settled in the air, Adriana rose from her stool. “Come, we must go. Tonight we attend the Vatican feast, and we’ve only hours to prepare.”
I stood reluctantly, unhooking my hand from the balustrade. I hadn’t realized I was gripping it; as I felt a sting in my palms from the rough stone, I took another lingering look at the people pushing against the guards, impatient to rush onto the road and scavenge fallen buttons, stray gloves, pieces of ribbon or gilt, anything to take home as a memento.
Following my stare, Giulia sighed. “Lucrezia, I told you. He’s not here.”
“He should be,” I said, without looking away. “I don’t understand why Papa insisted that he remain in Pisa when the entire world is here.”
“Because if he had invited him, Cesare might never have returned to Pisa. You know how much he detested going there to begin with.” Giulia fiddled with her pendant. “Besides, Vannozza wasn’t invited, either, and she didn’t make a fuss. She has all her taverns to run; with so many visitors in the city, there’s money to be made.”
“It’s not as if she actually serves the tables,” I replied, although I was glad my mother had been excluded.
“True. But at least she’s not here, devising ways to make us miserable. She was quite beside herself when she realized she’d failed to predict Rodrigo’s election,” said Giulia smugly, clearly still pleased that she’d been the first among us to glean that momentous news.
“Do you think it’s true?” I asked hesitantly, remembering with a shudder how my mother had foretold my own death. “Can she see the future?”
Giulia shrugged. “Evidently not where your father is concerned. Vannozza might look like a strega, but all she can see right now is her fury that our time has come, while no one cares about hers anymore.”
I forced a smile, but I wasn’t so sure. I had lived with my mother; I could recall the winter nights when she sat at the table, laying out her cards. If she couldn’t see the future, she certainly thought she could.
“There, now.” Giulia pouted. “You are upset. Forget Cesare and your mother; let’s go see our new palazzo instead. I hear it’s so beautiful, everyone in Rome envies us.”
—
WHEN WE FINALLY arrived in our carriage, we were drenched in perspiration. It had taken hours to push through the rejoicing hordes. But the moment we entered the gates of Santa Maria in Portico, the clamor outside vanished. Here within fortified walls, everything was serene, the celebration beyond our grilled windows muffled by thick brick and mortar.
The palace was enormous, twice the size of Adriana’s—a pantheon of polished wood and rose-colored marble. From the large cortile, with its decorative fountain and arcade open to an inner garden, we walked into an impressive sala, from which forked a warren of intimate cameras. Our belongings were stacked everywhere, servants working frantically to set everything in place. The scent of still-damp paint from newly applied frescoes tickled my nostrils. I found mys
elf gazing about in awe while Giulia led me up the staircase to the piano nobile, squealing in delight at each discovery.
“Oh, look here, Lucrezia: a privy with cushioned seats and drainage!” She peered into the upholstered commode. “No more stink or emptying of chamber pots. Such luxury.”
“For the rest of us, perhaps,” I said, eyeing her. “You’re with child. Don’t women in your condition have to urinate a lot? It might be quite a walk from wherever your apartments are.”
She pinched my arm—“Insolente!”—and proceeded to haul me up to the third floor. Here we encountered more private appartamenti, each room flowing into the next, separated by carved cedar doors, with painted ceilings and walls, already set up with our beds, dressing tables, and other necessities.
I found Arancino in my gold-and-blue chamber, meowing in his wicker cage. I rushed to release him. Giulia’s voice rang out—“Lucrezia, no. He’ll run off!”—just as I undid the latch. He sprang out, slipping and sliding on the polished floor as he fled under my bed.
I looked at Giulia. “See? He knows where he belongs.”
“Would that the same might be said of your new betrothed,” she retorted.
I slowly rose from my crouch by the cage. “What did you say?”
At that moment, Adriana bustled in. “It’s a disaster. It’ll take weeks alone to sort through our belongings, and the common rooms aren’t even finished yet. There are scaffolds in the anticameras and workmen tromping in and out. Whatever was His Holiness thinking to move us here so precipitously? Surely we could have waited until everything was ready.”
I glanced at Giulia. Her expression turned icy as Adriana went on, “The staircases alone would strain a horse; and all this paint and dust in the air—it’s hardly conducive to a woman in your delicate state.”
“I can judge for myself how delicate my state is,” Giulia replied. “And I find this palazzo to be perfect. But, if you think it such an inconvenience, I can ask His Holiness to give you leave to return to your own house on Monte Giordano.”
The Vatican Princess Page 5