The Borgia Betrayal

by Sara Poole

  If it surprises you that a Dominican should have been a member of Lux, let me assure you that Guillaume was an exception to much of what you no doubt have heard about “God’s Hounds,” those baying hunters of the Inquisition. Recall that for every Torquemada and other lover of the stake and the rack, the Dominicans can also claim to have fostered the likes of Saint Albertus Magnus, who argued that science and faith could exist side by side in accord and, supreme above all, the great Saint Thomas Aquinas, upon whose shoulders the Church can fairly be said to stand. How far the order had fallen from such heights of brilliance into the fevered passions of the Grand Inquisitor I will leave you to judge for yourself.

  We lingered a little while longer over the map, which continued to exercise an almost irresistible fascination for us all, before moving on to an early supper. Of necessity, we had to be gone from the house before dark so that we could make our way back to our various homes without undue difficulty.

  The meal was, as always when d’Amico provided it, excellent. The conversation ranged from the map to the latest experiments and inquiries being carried out by various of our members. I was able to report on the results of my efforts regarding the precipitation of nitrate of silver from solution. I will not bore you with the details except to say, in all modesty, that the company found my presentation of considerable interest.

  We were enjoying a dragée of spicy hypocrase accompanied by figs and oranges, intended to close the meal and promote digestion, when the conversation around the table was interrupted by the fierce barking of the mastiffs, followed quickly by the shouts of men.

  Attackers!

  I can see us still as we were at that moment, frozen around the table in the instant before the full import of what was happening shocked us into action. Luigi leaped to his feet and seized the map, rolling it tightly as he ran. Friar Guillaume acted as quickly, hastening to pull aside the tapestry that concealed a door leading from the hall. A few chairs were knocked over in our haste but otherwise there was no sound save for the continued shouts of the men, closer now, and the howls of the dogs. We had all known such a moment might come and had prepared ourselves as much as was possible. That, as well as Luigi’s sensible precautions, no doubt explained our seeming calm.

  Even so, my heart beat frantically as we crowded into the passage that slanted downward, running between walls until it reached the villa’s basement. From there a second concealed door gave access to a low, dank tunnel. Luigi struck a flint, giving us just enough light to see where we were going.

  Sofia was right behind me; I took comfort from her presence even as the knowledge of our shared peril propelled me forward. I imagined the men crashing into the hall, finding evidence that we had only just gone, and redoubling their efforts to capture us. If we were caught, a quick death would be the best for which any one of us could hope. Far better that than the torture cells of the Inquisition.

  “Hold,” Friar Guillaume directed, raising his hand. We were near the end of the tunnel. Up ahead, I could see a glimmer of fading daylight behind a screen of bushes. Sweat trickled down my back. I reached behind and grasped Sofia’s hand. If the attackers knew about the tunnel … if they had posted men at this end of it …

  The friar edged forward cautiously until he came to the grille blocking the entrance. He peered out in all directions before finally stepping back and motioning us forward.

  “The way is clear,” he said with a smile. I exhaled in relief as around me, I heard the others do the same. Guillaume eased the grille open and stepped aside. “Go swiftly and with God.”

  We went in pairs, Sofia and I together, parting from the others with quick words of reassurance and hasty embraces. As the attackers were likely to have come by the river, we avoided that and struck out across the fields ripe with summer wheat. The setting sun gave us our direction but we went quickly all the same, mindful that it would soon be night.

  We had gone some little distance when Sofia glanced over her shoulder. She stopped and touched my arm.

  “Look,” she said.

  I turned and saw black smoke rising against the darkening sky. Having failed to find us, the attackers had fired the villa. By morning, it would be nothing more than a charred ruin. But our bones would not lie within it, like the poor cracked remains I had seen on the funeral pyres of the condemned. For that, I struggled to be grateful.

  We could not afford to tarry. By then, the concealed door in the hall surely would have been discovered, along with the passage behind it. That would lead our pursuers to the basement, where they would have greater difficulty finding the tunnel but would conclude that we were at large. We could expect them to launch a search of the surrounding area without delay.

  With that uppermost in mind, Sofia and I stumbled onward. She fell once, tripping over an exposed root, but quickly regained her feet with my help.

  “I am fine,” she insisted when I expressed concern. “It takes more than a little tumble to rattle these bones.”

  In the face of her courage, I could offer no less. We hurried on, helped by the light of the quartered moon, and came finally to a stream where, out of breath and exhausted, we knelt to drink. The villa was miles behind us and we heard no sound of pursuit. For the moment at least, we seemed to be safe.

  With that realization, the shock of what had happened crashed down on me, worsened by the implications that lay behind it. I sagged to the ground. Beside me, Sofia did the same but she, at least, still had the strength to put an arm around me.

  Softly, she said, “We are alive, Francesca. Later, we will deal with what has happened, but for this moment, let us give thanks that we have survived.”

  She was right, of course, and I knew it, but dread weighed me down. Against her shoulder, I said, “Guillaume and the others…”

  She patted my back gently, like a mother soothing a fretful child. I had never known my own mother’s touch, for she died giving me life. Yet there were times when I imagined that I heard her voice singing to me softly, and glimpsed a face lost to me forever.

  How foolish the fanciful longings of our hearts.

  “They have gotten away safely, I am sure,” Sofia said, “and Luigi is far too clever to let the villa be traced to him. Lux will endure, have no doubt of that.”

  I prayed that she was right but I also understood, as I lay there in the gathering night, that we had been betrayed. Someone who knew Lux well enough to be aware of the carefully hidden time and place of our meeting had acted to destroy us.

  Someone who would act again unless I, Francesca Giordano, the Pope’s poisoner, stopped him.

  3

  Sofia and I remained in hiding outside the city until just after dawn. A light rain was falling as we joined the stream of merchants, travelers, traders, and gawkers flowing along the Via Flaminia toward the city gate. The rain did not keep down the dust churned up by the passing of so many horses, carts, and boots. It lingered as a reddish mist several feet above the ground, thickening as we drew nearer to the city.

  The road ran straight and true, as the old Roman roads do, between slender poplars and tangled hedgerows giving way to fields of ripening grain and vines laden with grapes that would be ready for pressing in a few weeks. Crows cawed over the creak of wagon wheels, the jangle of harnesses, and—rising sweetly on the air—the strum of a lute accompanying a troubadour not shy about sharing his skill. He was singing a tale of love, of course, something involving the doomed Troilus and Cressida, when I smelled the city.

  How to describe the aroma of Rome? I have heard it spoken of slightingly by those intent on displaying their refinement but who succeed only in making themselves out to be asses. For myself, it is a perfume like no other, comprised of equal parts wood smoke, tidal flats, manure, sweat, and a tantalizing high note I cannot identify but know in my dreams. On those occasions when I have been required to leave the city—usually mercifully brief—I can ease the inevitable homesickness by holding up some item of my own clothing that, even when w
ashed, still retains the olfactic memory that is uniquely Roma.

  Since the healing of the Great Schism a few decades before, the city had been restored as the rightful center of the Christian world. The place old men and women remembered as a tumbled ruin of hovels and shanties was being rebuilt at dizzying speed into the greatest city in Europe. The results were marvelous, of course, with magnificent palazzi of travertine marble springing up seemingly overnight, transforming the drab palette of wattle and daub into a glorious array of rose, purple, and gold. That the air was choked with dirt and grime, the streets all but impassable, and the cacophony virtually deafening was of no matter in the larger scheme of things.

  Sofia and I parted near the Ponte Sant’Angelo. “Go safely,” she said as she embraced me. Despite our travails, she looked strong and resolute, but I could see the worry in her eyes. We both knew that our reprieve was no more than temporary. The new spirit of learning and inquiry to which we of Lux had dedicated ourselves was fiercely opposed, then as now, by forces determined to keep the world shrouded in ignorance and superstition. It was only a matter of time before they struck again.

  “You as well,” I said, and hugged her back, not for the first time wishing that she was bound elsewhere than to the Jewish Quarter. The influx of refugees expelled from Spain by Their Most Catholic Majesties, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, had overwhelmed the small warren of narrow streets and twisting alleys built on marshlands flooded regularly by the Tiber. The resulting outbreaks of disease and the all-pervasive sense of despair had put me in mind of my beloved Dante’s Divina Commedia.

  With Innocent VIII’s timely death, the Jews had struck a bargain with Borgia. In return for a payment rumored to be as great as four hundred thousand silver ducats, which he used to buy his way to the papacy, he agreed to tolerate their presence in Rome and by extension in Christendom.

  In the months since, conditions in the ghetto had improved somewhat as many of the refugees moved on to other destinations and those left behind allowed themselves to enjoy a fragile sense of security while remaining mindful that it could prove to be all too illusory. I had offered to use what influence I had to find Sofia accommodation in the larger city but she had demurred, pointing out that she was unlikely to be able to run her apothecary business anywhere the Christian guilds held sway.

  Even so, she remained in my thoughts long after she was out of sight, as I made my way to my own apartment on the edge of Trastevere. Upon his ascension to the papacy, Borgia had arranged for me to be housed along with his daughter, Lucrezia, his mistress, Giulia, and their servants within the Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico. That lasted only a few weeks, until I convinced him that while a pope could flaunt his daughter and his mistress to his heart’s content, his poisoner should remain cloaked in a modicum of discretion. I know he agreed, although he never said so directly, because he raised no objection when I moved into the newly constructed building, one of many in the city owned by Luigi d’Amico, who had suggested it to me.

  For the first time in my life, I was living on my own, a condition that I found agreeable. I had an older woman who came in to clean and do the washing. As for the rest, I enjoyed visiting the markets, the sheer number and variety of which make up one of Rome’s greatest treasures. Preparing meals for myself was both pleasant and practical, and not only because I needed to guard against attempts on my own life as vigorously as I protected la famiglia Borgia. The surest path up the ladder of professional success for those of my dark calling is to poison a renowned poisoner. Nothing assures one’s reputation as swiftly. I had taken that same route myself the previous year when I killed the man Borgia had intended to replace my father, claiming that position for myself instead. No doubt there were some in Rome or beyond who would have done the same to me, had they dared.

  I had another reason for wanting solitude. The nightmare that had visited me for as long as I could remember lost none of its terror through repetition. I woke from every encounter in the grip of fear greater than any I can express. It was not uncommon for me to cry out and to be distraught for some time after waking. I preferred that there be no witnesses to that.

  I approached the building with caution, still on the lookout for anyone who might be lying in wait. But activity on the street seemed entirely normal—the usual assortment of harried clerks, high-nosed clergy, liveried retainers, cheeky apprentices, stolid merchant wives, and the occasional enterprising thief all jostling along despite it being Sunday, the supposed day of rest.

  Like many buildings in Rome, the three-story structure roofed in red tile presented an almost blank façade to the street, punctuated only by a scattering of small, barred windows and a low, arched doorway through which I entered. Immediately beyond, everything changed as a spacious loggia gave way to a courtyard that served as both garden and open-air kitchen. It was still early enough that the portatore was not yet on duty. Relieved to be unobserved in my disheveled state, I took the closest steps and reached my apartment quickly.

  It consisted of three rooms on the first floor above street level—a salon where, as I rarely entertained, I had set up the apparatus I used in my work, and my books; a bedchamber with an adjacent space for bathing; and a pantry equipped with storage cabinets lined in sheeted metal to discourage the inevitable vermin, a stone sink with a drain to an outer wall, a small coal stove with its own chimney drawing off smoke to the outside on which I could cook simple meals, and a thick wooden worktable kept clean with vinegar and sand.

  The apartment was graciously designed with high windows that provided excellent ventilation and a balcony that ran the entire length of each floor. My furnishings were more than adequate for my needs. I had the large bed with the acantus-carved posts inherited from my father, as well as his puzzle chest with the lock meant to foil any would-be thief and my mother’s wedding chest carved with scenes of the Sabine Women. These, along with my worktable, apparatus, books, and clothing, were my sole possessions when I moved into the apartment. But as is the way of such things, in the few months I had lived there I had accumulated an ever-expanding assortment of belongings.

  Lucrezia had sent a quartet of benches in the newly fashionable Roman style. Each lectus was carved from mahogany inlaid with chestnut, the frame supporting crisscrossed leather straps covered with a feather mattress with pillows at either end, the whole ornamented in the finest deep blue velvet with gold tassels. Had I been inclined to entertain, my guests would have been more than comfortable. Further, several curved chairs with scrolled arms and a table set on a wide pedestal also arrived, the gift of His Holiness himself. Cesare, claiming disappointment that I already possessed a bed, as he would have liked to provide me with one—recall that he was shy of eighteen years at the time and still very taken with his manhood—made do with extravagant rugs in the Moorish design, so glorious that I hesitated to spread them over the floors as they were intended. Only the very rich customarily enjoyed such luxury, but I must admit that every morning and night when my bare feet sank into them I spared a grateful thought for my sometime lover.

  For myself, I found the murals of bucolic gods and goddesses already decorating the walls to be pleasant enough, but that did not prevent me from acquiring several small works by the renowned Pinturicchio—recently hired by Borgia to decorate his new apartments in the Vatican, and by my beloved Botticelli, whose work had fascinated me since I first encountered it adorning the Sistine Chapel. I indulged my passion for books when and where I could, determined as I was to add to the library my father had left me. I even added sparingly to my wardrobe in recognition of my status and because Lucrezia nagged me mercilessly until I did so.

  On the balcony, I planted various flowers useful to my trade. With the coming of spring, the iron railings overflowed with blooming foxglove, oleander, aconite, and more. On occasion, I amused myself wondering if my neighbors ever noticed what I cultivated. Those same neighbors kept their distance from me, although not, I think, solely because of my profession. The bu
ilding tended to attract residents who, for one reason or another, valued their privacy. I asked no questions of them and they posed none to me.

  While I waited for water to heat in a copper basin set over a brazier, I stripped off my clothes. The hem of my overdress was encrusted with mud, and small leaves and twigs bore evidence of the frantic scramble Sofia and I had waged while escaping the villa. Reluctant as I was to encourage gossip, I folded the garments away carefully at the bottom of the wardrobe, intending to see to them myself when I had time.

  Having washed and drunk a restorative tea of willow, chamomile, and nettle, I dressed in a fresh shift and a simple overdress of light blue linen, both cut just fashionably enough to assuage Lucrezia. Despite her best efforts to outfit me more modishly, I clung to sensible clothes that would not impede my work. Not for me the absurdly long sleeves, tight bodices, pointed shoes, and ever more elaborate headdresses that seemed designed to ensure that a woman could not take a step or lift a hand without difficulty.

  As I readied myself, I considered what to do next. I would be expected at the Vatican but it was early yet and unless Borgia asked for me directly, my absence was unlikely to be noticed for at least a few hours. If questioned later, I could always say that I was inspecting the provisions, gifts, offerings, and outright bribes intended for His Holiness that flowed like a river at floodtide into the Vatican every day. In point of fact, a great deal of my time was spent doing exactly that.

  You may wonder why, in the aftermath of the attack on Lux, I did not seek out Borgia at once and entreat his protection. Do not think the omission signified a failure of trust, for I had absolute confidence in my employer; I knew he would always and unfailingly act in his own interest. When that happened to coincide with mine, bene. When it did not, I preferred to rely on myself alone.

  Accordingly, I set off across the river to the Campo dei Fiori, the city’s most important market and the place where it is said everyone in Rome eventually comes, if only for the frequent executions. As always, the narrow, cobblestoned streets of the Campo were crowded with shoppers taking advantage of the Church’s dispensation, effective on all but a handful of holy days, allowing the sale of goods deemed to be “essential.” But in a change from the previous year, there were fewer thieves and correspondingly less evidence of the cudgel-wielding patrols hired by the merchants to discourage them.