The Borgia Betrayal

by Sara Poole

  Crossing the Ponte Sant’Angelo, I resolved to redouble my efforts to find the mad priest. Every tunnel and passage, every church and brothel, anywhere and everywhere he might hide had to be surveilled, but quietly so as not to alert him. At the same time, I could not simply sit back and wait for the results. I had to find a way to draw Morozzi out even if that meant I put my life once again within his reach.

  25

  I did not look forward to telling Cesare what I intended. Fortunately, Portia offered me a small reprieve. Seeing me come in through the loggia, she waved me over to where she stood on her stool, keeping an eye on all the comings and goings through the open half door. Her arm was out of the sling and she appeared fully recovered from the attack the previous month, for which I was grateful.

  “He’s upstairs,” she said without preamble. “Arrived a few minutes ago.”

  I nodded, having seen Cesare’s men-at-arms on duty in the street. Without doubt, they all knew who I was, but none had dared to so much as glance in my direction. I wondered what they made of their master’s dealings with a woman of my dire repute.

  “Servants carried up baskets of provisions, then left,” Portia added. “I smelled chicken.”

  So did I; the aroma of it along with traces of rosemary and olive oil lingered in the loggia. Chicken prepared that way was one of my favorite dishes, as Cesare well knew. I wondered what else he had planned to distract me from asking what business had taken him off for so many hours.

  I thanked Portia for the report but she was not done yet.

  “About that matter you mentioned—”

  I needed a moment to remember that I had asked her to find out whatever she could about Carlotta d’Agnelli. Embarrassed that I had done so, I tried to brush aside my interest but she went on all the same.

  “She’s a paragon, so it seems. Golden hair, skin like cream, a very nice figure. And she’s the soul of virtue, devoted to her family, not a whiff of a rumor of a hint of scandal to her name. She goes to Mass daily, gives alms to the poor, is kind to her servants, and has the voice of an angel.”

  “She sings?” I seized on that particular detail rather than acknowledge the ache exploding in my chest. Rocco’s wife-to-be was lovely, trustworthy, honorable—exactly the sort of woman he would fall in love with. And everything I was not.

  “Exquisitely, so everyone says. Her neighbors try to be at home when she is most likely to sing so as not to miss it.”

  “Such a great talent must have made her vain,” I suggested in desperation.

  Portia sighed and shook her head. “Apparently not. She is unfailingly modest in both dress and manner.” The portatore leaned a little closer, her brow wrinkling. “Which raises the question why a man like that”—she cast her eyes toward the floor above—“would be interested in her.”

  I could hardly blame Portia for misinterpreting the reason behind my curiosity about Carlotta d’Agnelli. She might know that I was acquainted with Rocco but she had no way of suspecting my true feelings for him. I kept those too well hidden, even from myself.

  “Yes, well … there’s no accounting for taste, is there? At any rate, thank you. I’ll just—” I gestured vaguely in the direction of my apartment.

  “Make him forget she exists,” Portia advised. “Leave him so wrung out he’ll barely remember his own name, much less hers.”

  I assured her that I would show no mercy and backed out into the loggia. From there, I quickly took the steps to my apartment. Cesare was stretched out on one of my Roman couches with Minerva perched on his chest. He had removed his boots and wore only breeches and a loose shirt. The ease with which he was making himself at home in my home took me aback even as I could not muster the will to object.

  “I’d begun to wonder where you were,” he said as I entered.

  “I came as quickly as I could.” Rather than give him a chance to ask what had kept me occupied, I went on quickly. “Portia said she smelled chicken.”

  He grinned, bounded to his feet, and with Minerva still tucked under one arm, took mine and maneuvered me toward the pantry.

  “I’m thinking of asking her to come work for me.”

  “Are you? Why?” It actually wasn’t a bad idea for Cesare to begin acquiring an intelligence corps of his own rather than rely on his father’s, but I doubted that Portia would be interested. By all evidence, she liked working for Luigi d’Amico, who valued her skills and paid her correspondingly well.

  “She’s sharp-eyed, has all her wits, and she’s a good judge of character.”

  “You only say all that because she has a soft spot for you. Have you ever met a woman who didn’t?”

  He caught my gaze and smiled, a little ruefully. “Perhaps one.”

  Before I could reply, Cesare tucked Minerva into my arms and turned his attention to the chicken. The vast staff of servants who tended to his every whim would have been surprised to know that he could carve quite credibly. He even went so far as to drop a pretty garnish of parsley on each of our plates.

  We ate at the pedestal table, seated in the curved chairs, and washed the chicken down with a rich Tuscan red very lightly chilled in a stone ewer filled with ice water. Minerva nibbled delicately on morsels we fed to her, then fell asleep nearby.

  We were licking our fingers when I said, “Do you want to tell me what you did this afternoon?”

  Cesare was no more inclined to do so than was I. Later, perhaps, I would tell him what Morozzi had done, but just then I did not want to undermine his confidence in Vittoro or, for that matter, remind him of anything to do with Rocco.

  “Not yet and perhaps not ever,” he said. “But if you’re worried, I didn’t go after Morozzi, not directly anyway. We need a plan.”

  I already had one. When I told him of it, he scowled. “I don’t like the idea. It’s all well and good to want to flush him out, but he could take you unawares again.”

  “No,” I insisted, “he could not. Besides, you will be there … or at least somewhere nearby.”

  That was the compromise I was willing to offer, that Cesare be on hand with however many men he thought necessary but that I still have the opportunity to kill Morozzi myself. I thought it both fair and sensible.

  Cesare was of a different mind. “All this rests on getting a message to Morozzi telling him that you want to parlay. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether he will believe you and allow himself to be drawn out, how do you intend to contact him?”

  “I don’t know … yet. But my guess is that your father has a spy in Il Frateschi, someone not deep enough in to have knowledge of Morozzi’s whereabouts himself but still able to get information passed along. That’s the likeliest explanation for how Morozzi learned that I would be at the villa.”

  “Wouldn’t Papa have told us already if there was such a person?”

  How to put my answer in a way that would give the least offense? “Your father keeps a tighter hold on what he knows than Saint Agnes of Rome kept on her virginity.”

  Cesare gave a shout of laughter and reached over to refill both our glasses.

  “It’s true, gold pours through his hands, but try to get a straight answer from him and you’ll find yourself wound tighter than the Gordian knot. If he has a single failing, that is it.”

  Privately, I feared that Borgia had a good many failings, chief among them his obsession with the advancement of la famiglia at all costs, but wild horses could not drag that from me. For my own part, I was singularly inept at the time-honored practice of flattery, shockingly so for a Roman. I took a try at it nonetheless.

  “Your father trusts you above all others. Surely, if you approach him on this matter, he will reveal what we need to know?”

  A look of such yearning passed across his face that I had to avert my eyes.

  “You think he trusts me?”

  I could have thought so provided that I overlooked His Holiness’s wild ramblings about Cesare plotting against him. Borgia had come as close to apolo
gizing to me for that as he had ever done for anything but it was impossible to be certain of what he really believed. Sometimes I wondered if even he knew.

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation, “of course he does. You are his eldest son, the one he has chosen to follow in his footsteps. Clearly, he trusts you above all others.”

  Cesare twirled the stem of his goblet between his fingers and sighed. “He has been spending a great deal of time with Juan.”

  “Isn’t he arranging a grand marriage for him? He may be trying to steady him for that.” As volatile as Juan was, he could easily disrupt the delicately balanced negotiations needed for the sort of marriage Borgia no doubt contemplated, a union at the highest levels designed to serve his own interests above any other.

  “That’s possible,” Cesare allowed. “Perhaps there is some princess in the Indies or wherever it was the great Colombo returned from who wants him for a husband.”

  I smiled and raised my glass to him. “That’s a splendid idea. I think you should propose it.”

  “Alas, it seems the fortunate lady is King Ferdinand’s cousin, Maria Enriquez de Luna.”

  It was to be a Spanish union then, sensible enough given Borgia’s need for the support of Their Most Catholic Majesties but no help at all in reconciling matters with the French. I considered asking Portia to put a little money down for me. Of late, I was becoming too well recognized in the city to place my own bets.

  “He has another meeting with de Haro this evening,” Cesare said. “I’ll speak to him after that, but in the meantime—”

  He set his glass on the table, rose, and came round to stand behind me. I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck. His hands slid across my shoulders and along my arms. He bent and with disturbing ease lifted me from the chair. I was reminded, in the last moments while I was still capable of coherent thought, that for all his ability to play the courtier, Cesare was a man trained to war, honed in muscle and sinew, and implacable in will.

  Unlike our hasty coupling in Borgia’s office, this time my dark lover seemed intent on going slowly, much to my frustration. I wanted to lose myself—and all thoughts of what Portia had told me—in heedless passion, but Cesare was having none of it. When he was in such a mood as he was then, he was a connoisseur of passion, displaying skill many an older man would have envied. We made it as far as the bed, if only just. Once there, he removed my clothing piece by piece, lingering over each revealed expanse of flesh. For a young man, his control truly was remarkable but, as I have said, he had set himself to cultivate patience. Much as I resented being used as a tool to that end, I could hardly quarrel with the results. How else would I have learned that the arch of my foot is particularly sensitive to deep stimulation or that the stroking of fingertips along my ribs makes me tremble? Or that there is a particular very small area to the right and left of my pubis that is so exquisitely responsive that the mere flutter of his breath there sends me reeling?

  Never mind how I reacted to the strength and power of him above me, the heat of his manhood against my thigh, the smoothness of his skin under my touch. The thick murmur of my name on his tongue was enough to almost push me over the edge as I clung to the sweetly strange need to hold him safe within my arms. Even, dare I say, within my body. Is it the conceit of every woman that she can provide such a haven? Is it the dream of every man to find it?

  My back arched. I cried out, hearing my own helplessness, and rebelled. Without thought, being far beyond any such thing, I tightened my thighs around his torso, dug my elbows into the mattress and, using all my strength, flipped him onto his back. I had a moment to savor his surprise before I mounted him smoothly, smothering any objection he might have made with the swift clasp and release of inner muscles.

  He laughed—the devil!—and succumbed with grace. I rode him hard but he won in the end. Release shattered me so wildly that I could not resist when he turned me, holding me fast with an arm around my waist, and drove into me with power that eclipsed the very world.

  * * *

  Some time later, when I had caught my breath, I turned my head to look from the bed toward the tall windows through which I could make out the slanting light of early evening over the nearby tiled roofs, glowing gold and red in the dying sun. Flocks of starlings were arcing in long, undulating curves toward their roosts. Here and there, an owl called tentatively from nests high up beneath the roofs of churches. The air smelled of wood smoke and the river, with just a lingering hint of the olive and lemon groves beyond the city.

  I thought Cesare was asleep and was startled when he propped himself up suddenly on one elbow to look at me. Twisting a link of my hair between his fingers, he said, “You still haven’t told me what troubles you so.”

  “You know the situation as well as I—”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean why you wake sometimes with tears on your cheeks or why I find you sometimes huddled in a chair looking like monsters from Hell have been chasing you.”

  Such is the trap of intimacy, exposing as it does that which we wish to keep most deeply buried.

  I was about to lie—again—to assure him that he was imagining things, when I remembered Vittoro’s embarrassment in speaking of his dream, and his determination to do so anyway for my sake.

  I turned on my side, looking again toward the windows and the slowly gathering dark. Cesare tucked himself around me so that we lay like spoons. I slipped his hand beneath my cheek and said, “I have nightmares … really just one but it comes again and again.”

  “Will you tell me of it?”

  “There isn’t much to tell. I am behind a wall, there is a hole, I can see shards of light and blood, an extraordinary amount of blood. I am drowning in it.”

  “Nothing else?”

  Oh, yes, something else. “A woman … screaming.”

  “Who is the woman?”

  “Mamma.” The answer came from me without hesitation or thought. Yet it made no sense whatsoever. “But that cannot be. My mother died when I was born.”

  His arm tightened, drawing me closer against the warmth of his body. “Then perhaps it is about something that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “No, that cannot be, either. In the nightmare, I am very small and powerless to save myself or anyone else.”

  “That is not who you are.”

  I blinked back tears and shook my head. “No, damn it, it is not.”

  To the contrary, I was a woman capable of provoking the greatest fear and dread. People averted their eyes from me and went in terror of my enmity. I knew a thousand ways to kill and would deploy any of them without mercy or hesitation, or so I wanted people to believe.

  I was Francesca Giordano, the Pope’s poisoner, and my very life depended on making sure that no one ever forgot it. Least of all myself.

  “Where are you going?” Cesare asked as I rose from the sea of rumpled sheets.

  I answered over my shoulder. “To find out how to reach Morozzi.”

  He sighed dramatically but a moment later I heard the bed creak as he rose and came after me. Catching my arm, he said, “This is not a good time to approach my father.”

  I was honestly puzzled. Granted, the hour was late but His Holiness was notorious for working—or otherwise occupying himself—far into the night. He seemed to thrive on no more than a few hours’ sleep augmented by short sieste.

  “You did not hesitate to go to him at once when I told you that Morozzi was in the city.”

  “That was different. After yet another encounter with the Spanish emissary, Papa will not be in the best of moods. We have to wait.”

  “For how long and for what? I am doing my best, as is Vittoro, but even with all the effort in the world, Morozzi could still get past both of us. Every day, every hour increases the odds that he will succeed.”

  I did not overstate the danger, as I believed Cesare well knew. But after the briefest hesitation, he said, “I am … making inquiries. It is important to have all the facts. When I do, then I will�
��”

  “What are you talking about? What facts?” Frustration overwhelmed me. Morozzi’s escape and my own brush with death at his hands had affected me far more than I wanted to admit. Without thought, I lashed out at Cesare.

  “You Borgias are all the same! Everything is intrigue, conspiracy, plotting. Nothing can ever be straightforward. But this is! We must act now!”

  “You forget to whom you speak!”

  A woman with the smallest degree of sense would have stopped then and there; indeed, she would have gone further and asked his pardon. No matter how long we had known each other or the intimacies we shared—my bed had not yet cooled from our latest excesses—Cesare had been raised as a prince by a father who saw himself as the equal or better of kings and emperors. He would not tolerate being spoken to in such a fashion other than by Borgia himself, and only possibly by God.

  It was not too late. I could still soothe him with soft words and a touch. But anger hardened me, that and the sense that something lay beneath his otherwise inexplicable behavior. Something he refused to tell me.

  And for that he caught the sharp edge of my tongue. “I am speaking to a boy who needs to be a man! Stop fearing your father and be the leader you claim to be!”

  Before he could respond, I yanked fresh clothes from a chest and strode in all my naked glory to the pantry, where I steeled myself to bathe in cold water, being unwilling to wait long enough for it to heat. I washed as best I could and dressed, all the while expecting to hear the slam of the door as Cesare departed in a rage.

  The possibility that there could be an irreparable breach between us made me feel hollow inside but I could not dwell on it. Whatever deep game Cesare was playing, the stakes were simply too high to indulge him. Finally, having no conceivable reason to linger in the pantry, I stepped out into the salon. To my surprise my dark lover was waiting for me. He had dressed and was pacing back and forth impatiently. Seeing me, he scowled.