by Kate Quinn
“Yes,” I answered, and a dozen men clamored for my hand before the dance’s last notes finished. I looked over the sea of eager faces, and I took the hand of Vittorio Capece, my erstwhile host who had hardly been able to look me in the face after what had happened to Orsino in his palazzo. “You really must stop avoiding me, Vittorio. How often must I tell you nothing was your fault?”
“Good of you to say so.” He gave me his kindly smile as we moved into the next dance. A livelier tune than the grave passes I’d trod with my brother, but Vittorio was as light on his feet as a young man, and he turned me capably about the waist. “You’re looking very grave, m’dear. Thinking of Orsino?”
“In a way.” I inspected the lord of Bozzuto as he spun me. “Tell me, Vittorio, have you ever thought of marriage?”
“Yes, dreadful prospect.” Vittorio shuddered. “I’ve staved it off gallantly, but it may prove inevitable.”
“Inevitable?” We checked, reversed, joined hands again.
“Our good Pope Alexander VI does not persecute . . . hmm, well, let’s just say, men like me. But who knows about the next pope?” Vittorio arched an elegant brow at Rodrigo, reclining on a chair twined with vines as he tapped a jeweled finger in time to the music. “A wife would provide protection, shall we say, should the winds of change begin to blow. Because our Holy Father will not last forever.”
It had always seemed impossible to me that Rodrigo would ever die. He had too much energy and vitality, too much life for that. But I saw now that his eyes were puffy and pouched, as though the late nights were beginning to tell upon that famous energy, and the food at his table was as terrible as ever but it was fattening him as it hadn’t done even a year or two ago. He was an old man, old as he had never before seemed in my eyes, and I felt one last twinge of pity. Then his gaze passed over me with the same faint smile of malice he had bestowed on me after Orsino’s death, when I had come before him with eyes full of accusation, and my heart hardened like hoarfrost.
The dance was done. Vittorio Capece bowed and released my hand, but I said, “Another dance?” and we trod three more tunes together, my other suitors falling back in disappointment. Vittorio made polite conversation, and I eyed him thoughtfully. Sandro watched us from across the room and raised his goblet to me with a silent, tilted smile.
Vittorio kissed my hand at the end of the music, gracefully begging my leave—“Allow a gray-haired man to regain his breath, m’dear?” He settled me courteously in a cushioned chair beside the fountain full of snakes, and I smiled thanks as he bustled off in pursuit of wine. Or perhaps a handsome page.
More suitors pressed, but I turned them all down, calculating just when I could make my exit. Lucrezia and Alfonso of Aragon were still dancing; they likely wouldn’t be bedded down together until dawn. Sancha must have drunk enough wine to forget that Cesare had given her the French pox because she was dancing with him now, and the dress kept slipping off her shoulder. Caterina Gonzaga was dancing with the little masked lion in his huge furred ruff, and laughing when he stumbled. Surely it had to be long past midnight.
“The lion and the unicorn!” someone shouted, and Cesare broke from Sancha to lower his horn and go charging after Leonello with a cry of challenge. My former bodyguard gave a mock growl, waddling away, and in his chair the Pope convulsed with laughter. The mummer in the stag mask lowered his own horns and pricked Leonello in passing, and Leonello stumbled and fell. I saw his hazel eyes through the mask’s eye holes, and they had a bitter shine.
“Another drink!” he cried, flopping on the floor. “The dwarf will need far more wine if he is going to endure all this!” And they were lifting him up, Cesare and the stag and even handsome Alfonso of Aragon joining in the fun, hoisting Leonello sky-high and carrying him over to the fountain, where they held him under one of the streams of wine and let it run over his face until he spluttered. “That’s better!” Leonello shouted, not even struggling, and why was that? Why, when he had never allowed anyone to laugh at him in his life? They were laughing now, Lucrezia’s eyes streaming as she doubled over, her ladies pink-faced and tittering like peahens.
They set Leonello on his feet and he reeled, trying to straighten his huge ridiculous ruff that made him look more like a mushroom than a lion, and only making it more crooked. “Make the lion dance!” someone called, and Cesare poked at my bodyguard with the sheath of his sword, and Leonello went into a crazy little caper, his eyes mocking himself as they laughed, and one of the ladies leaned down and smeared a kiss on his mouth. I saw him kiss her back, teeth catching at her lip, and she giggled. “The lion bites!”
“Such a funny little man,” one of my new suitors snickered in my ear, and I smacked his hand as it tried to make its way under my bottom. The Tart of Aragon’s dress had fallen off both shoulders now, and Caterina Gonzaga was sitting in the Pope’s lap with her skirts bunched to her knees to show off her little ankles. Alfonso of Aragon had returned to his wife’s side and they were lolling half reclined on the velvet cushions, Lucrezia’s mouth loose and red as she nibbled at his ear. Blank-eyed Michelotto had grabbed one of the gauze-draped nymphs and yanked her behind the fountain of snakes. I could see the girl’s head bobbing over his groin.
“Eden,” Leonello said clearly, and slapped another of Lucrezia’s giggling ladies across her rump. “This is Eden, fair people, but not for men. For beasts. Kiss me.”
“Strip him!” Sancha called slurrily. “Show off your cock, little man—” And there was still no protest from Leonello as guffawing men held him spread-eagled, and laughing ladies fumbled at the ties of his hose. Caterina Gonzaga came wriggling down from the dais, her Pope choking with laughter as she tugged at the dwarf’s doublet. Leonello just gave a howl of laughter at the ceiling like a baying dog, a howl of bitter self-loathing that ended in splutters when one of Alfonso of Aragon’s laughing noblemen upended a cup of wine over his head, and I didn’t realize I was moving until my fingers locked around Leonello’s wrist. “Get away from him,” I hissed at the crowd, and yanked my bodyguard to his feet.
“Do you want a look at his cock too, Giulia?” Caterina Gonzaga giggled, and I slapped the bitch so hard she sat down on her proud rump in the middle of the carpet. The Neapolitan nobleman who had emptied his wine over Leonello’s head gave a hiccup and tried to kiss me, and I slapped him too. My hand stung, and so did my eyes. “Giulia, you’re spoiling our fun,” Lucrezia protested, but I ignored her. Leonello’s wrist was boneless in my hand, and his head lolled on his shoulders, but he was not nearly as drunk as he was pretending to be. His eyes glittered at me, and his feet were perfectly steady as I hauled him behind me for the doors. Cesare Borgia blocked my path with arms folded across his chest. “Where are you taking my dwarf?” he drawled.
“Do you think any of them will be afraid of your pet assassin if they see him like this?” My teeth gritted on hatred as I clenched them together, but coming fast behind me I heard my brother’s charming voice. “Cardinal Borgia, if I might question you a moment about some consistory business?” Cesare shrugged, willing to be distracted, and opened his hand to gesture me past. Behind him I saw Rodrigo tugging Caterina Gonzaga back onto his lap with a bull’s roar, Lucrezia clapping her hands for the masked elephant and the masked stag who were now wrestling about the room in mock combat, Joffre and Sancha quarreling drunkenly. One last image of them all, and I dragged my little lion away on a stream of drunken laughter.
I never saw Rodrigo Borgia or any of his children again.
Leonello
You’re a meddling bitch,” I told my former mistress as she hauled me through the private passage from the Vatican to the Palazzo Santa Maria, the passage the Pope had taken so often to visit her bed. “Go away and leave me in peace.” But Giulia ignored me utterly, dragging me along like a sack of laundry to the chamber that she had been lent for the wedding festivities, and barking orders at the sleepy maids in such thunderous tones that they went fleeing before her like frightened birds.
“Get undressed,” she ordered, rounding on me, and when I stood swaying and blinking mutinously, she stripped the doublet off me with her own hands as the maids brought water, towels, refreshments. In the past I might have conjured up a few idle daydreams in which she undressed me, but with tenderness rather than this brusque angry efficiency. Who would have guessed that the former Bride of Christ was such a bully? “Burn these,” she ordered, dropping the lion mask and the huge furred ruff into the nearest maid’s hands. “Burn them at once.”
“I liked that mask,” I said.
“Shut up!” She whipped around on me with a ferocious scowl as the maids hastily scampered out. “What in the name of the Holy Virgin were you thinking, Leonello? You’ve been hard sometimes, and you’ve been sharp-tongued, but you’ve never played the fool! Not for anyone!”
“I missed my calling. Don’t I make a splendid fool?”
“You certainly do. Hold out your arms.”
Her brow was stormy but her hands were gentle as she sponged away the wine that had soaked through my doublet to the skin. I should have been humiliated, standing half naked before my former mistress with a sheet clutched about my waist, but I was far beyond humiliation. My head rang from the sudden silence of the little chamber after all the raucous noise of the wedding festivities, and I closed my stinging eyes. For all my splashing about in the wine this evening, I was not drunk. I wished I were. Fool. Buffoon. Demon dwarf. The words rang nonsensical in my ears. Show off your cock, little man.
“I’ve been looking for you, these past few months.” Giulia’s voice was quieter now, though she tugged harder than she needed to as she dragged a wet comb through my wine-damp hair. “Where did you go?”
“My good master sent me to Romagna.” I blinked hard. “The lords there are in disorder—when are they not in disorder? So he intends to wage war on them, and add their lands to the papal territories. I was sent to make quiet observation of the various fortifications.”
“Better than sending you off to kill Borgia enemies, I suppose.”
“Oh, there was some of that too.”
“Sit.” She gestured to the bed behind me, and I sat. She pushed a silver goblet into my hand, and I drank obediently. Lemon water, tart and chilled, cooling my fevered blood. Such a hot summer night; I could hear the insects calling through the shutters. Surely it would be dawn soon, and the wedding festivities broken up. Lucrezia Borgia would be bedding down with her new husband by now, and the Pope pumping and wheezing over his current mistress.
Giulia put away the basin of water, splashing a little on her own face. “I’m tired,” she said.
“Then go to bed. I don’t want you here.”
She ignored me, massaging at her temples as though her head ached. “Do you know what I hate?” she asked me rhetorically as she began stripping the pins out of her coiled plaits. “My ridiculous hair. I’ve come to hate having floor-length hair. It sounds very romantic, but it takes hours to wash and even more hours to dress, and it’s impossible to sleep on because it gets tangled around everything unless you bundle it into a net, and you can’t do that because then you’re sleeping in a hairnet and how romantic is that. I’d have cut my hair years ago, but Rodrigo loved showing me off in it, and then Orsino loved showing me off in it, because it was what I was known for: ‘Giulia La Bella with her floor-length hair.’ Perhaps now that I’m just a simple widow of Carbognano, I’ll chop it all off.”
“Go away,” I said again, but she ignored me utterly, unraveling the last plait and shaking her hair down. It piled around her as she settled on the floor, cross-legged like a sewing maid, and drew my feet into her lap. “What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Your legs will be hurting you by now, after all that capering.” Her fingers were already finding the aches that stabbed my calf muscles like knives. “Why did you let them humiliate you like that, Leonello?”
I closed my eyes again. “Because I deserve it.”
“Do you?”
“You know what I do for Cesare Borgia.”
“Did you know my husband was to be murdered?”
“No.” Opening my eyes. “Cesare must have given that job to Michelotto. You need a tall man if you’re going to pull off that trick with the ceiling, after all. Someone who won’t need to drag a chair over to reach the archway.”
“That’s something, at least.”
“Would you have forgiven me?” My knotted legs were loosening under her hands. “If I had been the one to smash Orsino’s head in?”
“No.” She paused to open a crock of some sweet-smelling balm, cool and astringent, and smooth it into my skin. “But I would have tried.”
“If it’s any consolation, I’d have warned you.” I fumbled the words because I meant them—despite all my bitter self-loathing, I wanted her to believe me when I said there were still some things I would not do. “If I’d known Michelotto was coming for your Orsino, I’d have sent word.” She looked at me, and I gave a shrug. “Even a little monster like me doesn’t want a monster like Michelotto roaming about the same house with Laura.”
“Still looking out for us, I see.” There was the faintest softening of her mouth. “How many times have you saved me by now, Leonello?”
“Two?” I counted. “Savonarola’s Angels. The French.”
“And that fellow who tried to extract my rings from me on my way back from confession two years ago, remember him?”
“Dio. I’d forgotten.” I took another cooling swallow of lemon water, letting the silence lapse. My skin tingled, but not from the balm she was rubbing into my legs—from her touch. Her touch could have undone a saint, much less one wretched, haunted dwarf.
“Now that the wedding is over, I’ll be returning to Carbognano.” Giulia moved from my calf muscles to my stunted feet. They looked like ugly misshapen roots in her small white hands. “Come with me, Leonello.”
I found my tongue again. The rough side of it, anyway, and I let her have it, pulling my shredded pride around me. “You want a bodyguard again, my little rose? You’re not the Pope’s darling anymore, you know; no one will care about harming you. It’s Caterina Gonzaga who needs guarding now, and with that nasty tongue of hers I’m sure someone will manage to kill her no matter how many bodyguards she has. The Pope may do it himself,” I added. “She’s very irritating.”
“Laura has been asking after you.” A curtain of hair swung forward, blocking Giulia’s face as she kneaded at the arches of my feet. “Orsino wasn’t very good with her—he didn’t really like her, truth be told. He wanted to send her away to be fostered in France, or Milan, or Venice. Anywhere he wouldn’t have to see her and be reminded of Rodrigo. And Rodrigo didn’t want her either, once I said she wasn’t his. You’re the one Laura misses most.”
“Then the little rosebud has no judgment,” I mocked. “Just like her mother.”
“Laura’s cleverer than I am,” Giulia said, undeterred. “Soon she’ll start Latin studies. If you came to Carbognano, you could be the one to teach her.”
“I hate the country.”
“It would be far better for you than this snake pit, Leonello.”
“And why didn’t you flee this snake pit if you hate it so much?” I took another swallow of lemon water, turning the argument back on her. I didn’t need knives; I could fend her off forever with nothing but words. “You could have stayed in Carbognano after your husband’s burial. Why did you come back?”
“Because of you!” Her face lifted out of the curtain of hair, and I saw that her dark eyes were full of tears. “Holy Virgin, Leonello, are you blind? I was waiting for you to come back from Romagna or the ninth ring of hell or wherever it was Cesare Borgia sent you these past months. Lucrezia begged me to come back to Rome for the wedding, but I didn’t come for her, I came for you. And God help me, but I am not going home without you.”
I sat frozen, so small and absurd with my bare feet dangling off the edge of the bed and a sheet clutched about my waist.
/> “I have missed you every day since you left me.” Giulia dashed angrily at her eyes. “There wasn’t one hour I didn’t look around for you and then feel so lonely when I realized you were gone. You’ve been at my side since I was eighteen, Leonello. I hear a joke and I run to tell you before anyone else, just so I can see you grin. I don’t wear sandalwood scent because you hate the smell. I read silly poetry just so I can hear you making fun of it. You were with me when Laura was born and when she took her first steps; you taught her to read and you make her laugh and you’re more her father than either of the men who were supposed to have sired her. You’ve been at my side for so long, and I don’t know how to be without you. I did my best to be a good wife to Orsino these past months, but all the time I was thinking of you. I’d be with him yet if he were alive; he was my husband and I owed him that, and maybe in another year or two I could have persuaded myself that he was still what I wanted. But he’s dead, and God forgive me, I can’t even grieve for him. He was jealous of any man who looked at me, and he tried to send my daughter away, and every time he chucked me under the chin and called me his little rose, I missed you more.” Her eyes met mine. “Orsino gave me a ring and Rodrigo shared my bed, but all this time—all this time, I think I was truly married to you.”
My mouth was dry as tinder. Words; my last weapon; and she had utterly disarmed me. I averted my eyes from hers. Dio, but they burned. The cup in my hands shook, and I folded my fingers around the stem. “I won’t take your pity,” I said tightly.
“You think this is pity?” She looked at me a long moment, and then her face twisted and she averted her eyes. “Then let me tell you something,” she said, and her voice was flat and bitter. “Something that happened when we were taken captive by the French. I saw you settled that first night, and you had so many wounds. So much blood, I could see the life leaking out of you with every heartbeat, but I couldn’t stay with you. I had to go dine with the French general and his officers, and I put on every jewel I had and I flirted with them all. I dazzled them, Leonello, I dazzled them and I got everything I wanted. Extra guards to keep all those lustful soldiers away from the maids, and blankets and wine and a brazier to keep us all warm, and my carriage repaired and my stolen horses returned, and the messenger going to Rome that same night with a ransom demand. I got all of that. But the French general, that smooth bastard, he wouldn’t give me a surgeon for your wounds. He wouldn’t do it, even when I offered him my pearl necklace and all my jewels, and he had a thousand excuses, but what it all came to was that you’d humiliated him. You humiliated his whole army, a dwarf killing three of his precious pike-men without even trying. He wanted to let you die.” She laughed, a tinny sound. “They’d been pawing me all night, all the French officers, kissing my hands, putting their arms about my waist, getting a nibble on my ears, but they didn’t dare anything further. Even General d’Allegre. Until I got on my knees and told him no one would ever know, as long as he did what I wanted. And I did everything he wanted, and after that he gave me the best surgeon in the French camp, and you survived your wounds.”