by Kate Quinn
No, Giulia Farnese was a far cry from most noble mistresses who might confide in their maids but certainly wanted to hear no confessions in return—but I’d gotten used to her hilarity and her mad schemes, and now it seemed her latest mad scheme was to sneak all her maidservants into the Menagerie Ball. Robe makers descended on me with knotted measuring cords even as I protested, marking the length of my arms and the circumference of my wrists, while Giulia stood back with a critical eye. “The question is,” she continued, “what animal will suit you best? Pantisilea over there is going to make a splendid cat—”
“A cat in heat?” I couldn’t help saying, but Pantisilea just made a face at me as she folded a pair of our mistress’s sleeves. I’d never known a greater slut than Pantisilea, except maybe Sancha of Aragon. But everyone hated the Tart of Aragon with a passion, the spiteful bitch, and skinny cheerful Pantisilea was everybody’s favorite.
“We’ve got a gray beaded mask for her with whiskers and pointed ears,” Giulia continued, unruffled. “Pia, now, she’s going be a dear little blackbird; I’ve got a mask for her with a jet-beaded beak and a glorious crest of shiny black feathers . . .”
Over by the mirror, Pia bobbed a curtsy at her mistress and traded a shy little smile of her own.
“So,” Giulia concluded. “What shall we dress you as?”
I imagined my father’s roar of outrage. “Servants don’t mix with their masters.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, servants and masters mix constantly. How many maids in this house have Cesare and Juan slept with?”
“Me, for one,” Pantisilea volunteered. “You wouldn’t have time to wring out a shirt in the time it took the Duke of Gandia to finish, but Cardinal Borgia—well, let’s say he likes some very odd things!”
I coughed, remembering. Let’s just say Cesare Borgia happened on me once when he was bored, as well. He’d spread me out on a table, pinned my arms out and taken his time, and I’d been willing enough because he was beautiful, as beautiful as his brother Juan and far less of a lout. But I wouldn’t say I thought about it much when it was over, or yearned for it to happen again. Lying with Cesare Borgia had been a bit like watching an eclipse of the sun: strange and frightening and dark, if also rather exciting, and once is enough.
“Ugh, don’t tell me.” Giulia dismissed Cesare and whatever odd tastes he might have, looking at me. “Carmelina, don’t argue; you must come to the masquerade. How many banquets have you served in your life? Wouldn’t you like to eat the food for once, instead of just cooking it?”
I felt a smile tug at my lips despite myself. I could slip away easily once the dishes were prepared—any cook worth her mettle had her kitchens well trained enough to run smoothly without her. “Why not?” I heard myself saying, and Giulia applauded. I gave a little curtsy of thanks. Why not, indeed? A chance to get away from the tense atmosphere that was my kitchens these days; Bartolomeo’s expressionless stares and icy silences were infecting the scullions and the undercooks, who seemed to know something was wrong even if they weren’t sure what. I tried to address him briskly, nudge him back into his old enthusiasm for what he was cooking—really, a cook was worth nothing if he couldn’t keep his own feelings out of the kitchens! But I couldn’t quite seem to meet his gaze when I gave him orders now; I had to fix on the wall over his shoulder and ignore the sick swoop in my stomach whenever I thought how easily he could ruin me.
And maybe some of that sick swoop was shame, for the way I’d kissed him and cried out under him and then stamped all over him. I’m sorry, I wanted to say. Of course, it wasn’t really my fault that he had a whole palazzo of pretty maidservants to choose from and he’d decided to fix on the runaway nun, but still . . . I’m sorry.
Maybe I deserved to be ruined.
In any case, a chance to get out of my kitchens sounded like a far more appealing prospect than it usually did.
“Just don’t dress me up as a heron,” I warned Madonna Giulia. “My sister called me Heron all through childhood because I was so tall.”
“No, no, not a heron.” My mistress gave another up-and-down analysis of my lanky frame. “Something very exotic, I think. No common sparrows or kitchen cats for you. What do you say, girls?” she called to her maids. “What animal is tall, exotic, and very long-legged?”
“A stag . . .”
“A mare . . .”
“A gazelle . . .”
“What’s a gazelle?”
That costume. Looking back, I think you could fairly say it was all the fault of that thrice-damned costume.
Giulia
I really don’t know why women bother so much with their gowns. We fuss so much over the cut of a headdress, the width of a neckline, the exact degree to which a shift can be pulled through the slits of a sleeve. I suppose we do it for ourselves, for the satisfaction we get looking in the glass and knowing we can sally out into the world looking our best. Or we do it for other women, hoping that there won’t be a single married matron or virgin girl at Mass paying attention to the sermon because they’ll all be taking down every detail of your new sleeves with French puffs. We certainly shouldn’t bother dressing for men. Because if a man approves of how you look in that new gown, the only thing he wants to do is get it off you.
“Rodrigo—” I could feel his mouth making its way down my neck, and I bumped him in reproof with the gilded unicorn horn of my mask. “We’ll be late!”
“Men are always willing to wait for beauty, and they are taught from the cradle to wait for God.” The white brocade gown with its sleeves and ribbons of rosy gauze slid from my shoulders under his hands. “You are Beauty and I am God, so they can damned well wait all night.”
“Blasphemer,” I accused, but smiled. My papal bull smiled back at me, a bull in truth tonight with a mulberry red doublet molding his heavy shoulders instead of his papal robes, a red bull mask with curving gilt horns crowning his head. He should have been worn to the bone after the panoply of ceremony and splendor that had consumed his days during Holy Week. There is nothing on earth more exhausting than Easter. I was so tired by the end of a week’s array of relics and parades and sermons that I dozed off in the Sistine Chapel during Tenebrae, right at the place in the Mass where my soul was supposed to be harrowed.
But my Pope had sailed through it all: Parading some truly disgusting relics through the city (the severed heads of various apostles! Really, no one would ever want to be an apostle if they knew how their poor bodies would be hacked apart after death!). Washing the feet of twelve beggars all overcome at the honor they were receiving. Bestowing charity dowries on eighteen girls who should have been overcome at the honor they were receiving but were instead giggling at Rodrigo’s roguish winks. Nothing had assailed my Pope’s poise that week, not running out of palm branches on Palm Sunday, not Burchard’s horror when Rodrigo was too busy blowing a kiss at me to come in properly with the Alleluia on Holy Saturday, not even the tense moment when one of the Spanish generals refused to take a palm from the Pope’s hand because he was still furious that Juan Borgia had received all the credit for the recent battles. No, my Pope had sailed through it all, and from the gleam in his eye I could see he was now ready to celebrate. His hands on my bare shoulders were warmer than firelight.
I stood on tiptoe, reaching behind his head for the mask’s ties, but he caught my wrists. “Leave the masks,” he whispered, and the bull and the unicorn slid entwined to the floor of my chamber. The familiar heat burned between us, our bodies moving with long ease, our mouths drinking and clashing below the masks. That at least had not changed.
We even managed not to get our horns tangled up. How I hate it when that happens!
Rodrigo gave a bull’s growl as he helped me dress afterward, lacing up my gown. “You women! How do you manage all these fiddly little ties?” I straightened his horns for him, then sat before my glass to refasten the diamond roses that had come loose from my piled hair.
“I thought you might care to wear this.” He
sounded faintly anxious, and I felt something cold drop between my breasts. Looking down, I saw a brooch in the shape of a massive diamond rose, matching the ones in my hair. “Pretty, eh? I knew it would suit you.”
I met his eyes in the glass, through the eye holes of my mask. Quite a confection, that mask; all white velvet and gold embroidery and tiny winking beads of rose quartz, and perhaps hiding my face made me blunt. “It’s beautiful, truly—but I don’t need jewels, Your Holiness.”
“But I want to give them to you.” His lips touched the back of my neck as he pinned the diamond rose at my bosom. “Weigh my unicorn down with diamonds and perhaps she won’t go dashing away again.”
There was anxiety under his amusement. My Pope had been just a little tentative with me, ever since the debacle of my painting as Persephone. My long, angry silence from Florence, and then his relief at having me back—I think he was half convinced Fra Savonarola would toss me on the bonfire. Really, one brush of danger with a French army or a few religious fanatics, and a fond lover sees disaster lurking around every corner! Rodrigo had excommunicated Savonarola, as much for the way his Angels had treated me as for his semiheretical rantings, and showered me with presents ever since my return.
But my anger with him hadn’t truly abated until I pointed a finger at my lover some few days after my return from Florence and said quietly, “You will never put me on display like that again.”
“I was proud of you! So proud, I wanted them all to see—”
“I don’t care what your reasons are.” I’d cut him off as I never dared do before. “I am your mistress, Rodrigo. No one else’s. And in the future, you would do well to remember that!”
A glint of anger had showed in his eye for a moment, but I held his gaze unblinking and then I saw the anger fade, replaced by a faint chagrin. “Never again,” he agreed reluctantly, and there was no more talk of having me sit for another painter without my clothes on. “Maestro Botticelli’s painting?” he ventured, and when I gave a cold “It’s burned up, and a good thing, too,” nothing more was said about that either.
My anger had faded since then (well, mostly), but Rodrigo still seemed anxious with me sometimes.
“A whole chain of diamond roses couldn’t keep this unicorn from escaping,” I said lightly after I thanked him, rising from my mirror. “Don’t you know the stories, Your Holiness? Only a fair young virgin may bind a unicorn. Usually with a golden bridle.”
I called for my maids, and Rodrigo broke into a laugh as Laura ran into my chamber. She wore her best gown, pink velvet sewn with seed pearls, and she waved a length of gold ribbon. “A fair maiden to bind me,” I explained as Laura clamored to tie the ribbon about my wrist for a leash. It was the best way I could find to leash her, really. “She so begged to see the spectacle, I promised her she could come. For a short time only,” I added to Laura. “Then it’s to bed with you. Masquerades go on far too late for little girls.” Not to mention the fact that people in masks seem to get up to all kinds of behavior they’d never dream of indulging in bare-faced. The kind of behavior no little girl should see.
“Yes, Mamma.” She added a deeper curtsy for Rodrigo. “Your Holiness,” she piped, “you match Mamma. You have horns!”
“Indeed,” he said, looking fond through the eye slits of his mask. “And I do believe you have my nose, little one.”
“Are you the Devil?” Laura said interestedly, still looking at the horns.
I laid my hand on Rodrigo’s arm as he roared with laughter. “Shall we?”
The guests made a great roar as the Bull and the Unicorn descended the steps into the throng. The spring nights had grown warm and so the Menagerie Ball had been cast outside, in the Palazzo Santa Maria’s largest garden. An Eden for the night: all green moss and starry flowers underfoot, tiny twinkling candles scattered below to echo the scatter of stars above. Small tables and sideboards brought outside and draped with mosses and garlands; food laid out on broad vine leaves rather than silver trays; wine circulated not by servants but flowing freely from the fountain where anyone might dip a cup—or simply lap it up on hands and knees, as I saw one young fellow in a hawk mask doing. Eden, but an Eden peopled with beasts rather than Adam and his Eve. I saw bird masks with huge cockades of feathers; panthers and cheetahs with fanged masks; fantastical masks in the shapes of griffons and manticores and dragons. I saw Sancha in red satin trimmed with fox fur, avid-eyed behind a vixen mask with pointed ears and laughing muzzle. Juan as a tiger, all orange and black stripes across his tight doublet with ivory fangs framing his own mouth, whispering in Sancha’s vixen ear.
“Too many of Juan’s soldiers here tonight,” I whispered to Rodrigo as he led me down into the throng of beasts.
“How can you tell?” The Holy Father lifted his goblet in greeting to someone in a maned horse’s mask across the garden.
“Juan’s men are the ones who are drunk already.” Juan had brought far too many soldiers back from his supposed victory at Ostia. They’d swarmed all over Rome, drinking and whoring and smashing windows—“celebrating their victory,” people said at first, but then it had been “celebrating Carnivale.” And then it had been “celebrating Lent,” even though you weren’t supposed to celebrate Lent with anything more showy than a fish bake, and now Lent was done and people were inclined to mutter and hasten across the piazza if they saw any of Juan’s men approaching. Or anyone in the Borgia colors either, for that matter, but Rodrigo only laughed. As he was laughing now, behind his bull mask.
“Bah,” my bull said. “High spirits!” And I could have mouthed the words right along with him, so often did he trot them out in Juan’s defense. “They’ll liven up the masquerade, mark my words. Ah, is that Cardinal Zeno behind that cockerel mask? Excellent costume for him; I really must have a word about those letters to the Florentines he thinks I don’t know about . . .”
I watched his bull horns forge their confident path through the crowd until the ribbon leash on my wrist tugged. Laura was gazing wide-eyed at the Eden below her, bouncing up and down in her pink velvet. “So pretty,” she breathed, and then gaped as a glittering peacock went to its knees before her in a pool of mottled blue-and-purple velvet skirts.
“May I steal her, Giulia?” a voice laughed, and behind the jeweled mask with its extravagant cockade of peacock feathers I saw Lucrezia’s lined and painted eyes. “I think our Laura can get an even better view by the fountain! And if she’s only to stay a short time, she should see everything. Shouldn’t you, Lauretta mia?”
Laura ducked her head shyly. She always went wide-eyed at the sight of Lucrezia—the young Countess of Pesaro, too glamorous for words as she blew in and out of the palazzo in her whirl of silks and laughter and ladies-in-waiting. Lucrezia used to look at me that way, I thought, and wondered what had gone wrong there. It wasn’t just Lucrezia’s new sophistication or her flirtations—she had an edge now in her sweet voice when she spoke to me these days.
“You think it’s easy for a girl growing up next to you?” Adriana da Mila had said bluntly when I asked her as much.
“But I adore Lucrezia,” I’d protested. “And we’ve always gotten on so well—”
“Yes, but she’s never been able to compete with you. At least until now. And now—” My mother-in-law had shrugged. “You’re the nearest thing to a sister she’s ever had. And sisters always compete with each other.”
Lucrezia’s eyes behind her peacock mask seemed to have more of their old bubbling warmth, and certainly Laura’s eyes were all stars as she took Lucrezia’s hand. “Don’t take her too far,” I said, untying the ribbon that had kept Laura tethered to my wrist. “And keep hold of this; she can disappear in an instant!”
They fluttered off, the peacock and the little girl, and I wondered if it was lack of babies making my Pope’s daughter so hard about the edges. Three years of marriage and she’d never even quickened—and at least in the early days, there had been no lack of trying. My eyes found Lord Sforza, trying to dri
nk wine through the snarling muzzle of his dog’s-head mask and watching Lucrezia whirl Laura about the garden pointing out her favorite costumes. Those two need babies, I decided. Babies, and lots of them.
A fresh array of vine-wrapped dishes streamed out for the table, along with another swirl of guests. A new swarm of beasts: a fish mask, all glittering silver scales, babbling compliments at me—“Behind cover of our masks, my fair unicorn, I may admit how much I have always admired you? Perhaps you’d consider meeting me inside the palazzo later, if the Bull over there seems occupied . . .” Poor young Joffre, wearing a maned stallion mask and swaggering about with a stuffed codpiece, but snickers followed him: “The little gelding!” as eyes tracked his vixen wife who was letting a tight-hosed, heron-masked soldier go fishing for cherries in her bodice with his long bill. I waved at my little maid Pia in her blackbird feathers, keeping to the side and sipping timidly at a cup of the exquisite wine. Juan’s soldiers were lunging for the new influx of food, gobbling down the artful servings of Carmelina’s oil-drizzled olives, her blood-rare curls of beef skewered on rosemary spears, the chilled milk-snow heaped in seashells for bowls. I smiled behind my mask, wondering if my cook had made her entrance yet, and reached back for my little bodyguard who stood in my shadow in his customary black velvet. “By the way,” I murmured to Leonello. “You should keep watch for Carmelina tonight.”
“Our Signorina Cuoca?” His voice was cool as ever behind the gold lion’s mask with its cockade of scarlet feathers—the only concession he would make to a costume. I’d lost the battle over the tawny leonine doublet that was supposed to go with it. “Our prickly cook is to join us? Dressed as what?”