by Kate Quinn
“Thank you,” I whispered, and kissed the cat on the nose and then Bartolomeo on his.
“There are other ways to thank me.” My former apprentice looked meditative. “Do you still have that giraffe costume?”
“I take all credit for that,” Giulia said. “Now, let’s see this hamper you keep talking about. I’m starving!”
Bartolomeo dragged another basket out from under the seats, and my former mistress dove right in. “Sicilian olives, oh, I adore Sicilian olives—almond biscotti, they’re a little crumbly, so we might as well eat them right now—grapes, sugared violet blossoms, candied orange peel, oh, and marzipan tourtes! Bartolomeo, you’re marvelous.” Giulia popped a little tourte whole into her mouth. “I always eat when I defraud convents.”
“For myself, I feel the need of a drink,” Leonello announced, and managed to decant the flask of French wine into the four cups Bartolomeo had also packed into the hamper. The four of us grinned at each other over the jolting rims: Bartolomeo with his lean-muscled legs hopelessly too long for the cramped space; me curled up against his shoulder while the cat purred against mine, Leonello with his boots swinging above the floor and his hazel eyes sparkling, and Giulia as beautiful and glowing as ever with her velvet skirts filling half the coach. I felt a pang, looking at her. “Madonna Giulia, your hair—”
“Wasn’t that clever of me?” She stripped off her pearled headdress, showing us a still-considerable coil of plaits. “I’ve been wanting to cut it for ever so long, so I just lopped off the bottom arm’s length this morning. Can I tell you what absolute heaven it is to have short hair? Only down to my hips! And speaking of hair—” She pressed a little vial firmly into my palm. “Use daily.”
“Thank you,” I said, and not for the vial of hair rinse. It was a beautiful summer morning, blue and gold and cloudless overhead, and the dusty outlying villages around Rome were beginning to give way to dry yellow plains dotted with grazing sheep. There was color and warmth and noise in the world again, not bells and grilles and cold. I wanted to stretch, I wanted to dance, I wanted to sing, and I wanted to cry.
Suora Serafina was dead and buried. Most officially.
“It was all Leonello’s plan.” Giulia dropped a kiss on her bodyguard’s brow, looking so very wifely that I had to wonder one or two things. “But thank me if you like, Carmelina. I hope you feel grateful enough to come be my cook in Carbognano forever?”
Bartolomeo and I looked at each other. He’d been buttering bread and laying out little slices of marbled prosciutto and whisking napkins into impromptu baskets for the grapes; he had a smear of butter in his hair already and he had been muttering under his breath about the lack of a proper credenza. We grinned at each other, and looked back to our former mistress.
“We’ll stay in Carbognano for a little while, Madonna Giulia,” I agreed. “But we want to move on soon to Milan.”
“The court of Il Moro,” Bartolomeo said, nudging the cat’s curious nose away from the prosciutto. “What do those Milanese know about proper food? We’ll take it by storm.”
“We?” Leonello looked between us, and sharp-eyed Giulia clapped her hands and squealed.
“A ring!” Seizing my left hand to look at the band of delicate filigreed gold. “Let me see—”
“Dio,” Leonello said. “Women!”
It wasn’t a true ring, not the kind passed between husbands and wives when they recited their vows. “I still can’t marry you,” I’d said to Bartolomeo last night in the convent storeroom, pressed so tight between barrels of bad flour that my only option was to lie along the hard freckled length of him with my nose up against his. It was exquisitely uncomfortable, and I wouldn’t have moved for the world. “Even if we manage to get me pronounced dead, I’ve still given vows. Any vows we said afterward would be invalid.”
“In a new city where no one knows you, who’s to know about the vows?” Bartolomeo pointed out. “Either the ones you took to God, or the ones we didn’t say to each other?”
“God will know.” I couldn’t help crossing myself. “Don’t pretend that doesn’t trouble you.”
“I think God looks a little more kindly on oath-breakers than we like to believe. Cesare Borgia got released from his vows as a holy cardinal, after all, and the Heavenly Father didn’t smite him for it. And Cesare Borgia does more evil in a day than you have in a lifetime!” Bartolomeo laughed. “God smiles on you every time you so much as break an egg into a bowl, Carmelina.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you didn’t have some kind of divine approval, then how do you keep getting away with everything?” Bartolomeo’s eyes were merry and serene. “How did you end up guardian of your patron saint’s hand? How did you escape unscathed from not one but two convents? How did you not get caught by anyone, over all these years?” Another laugh. “Haven’t you heard our Pope say it to Madonna Giulia? ‘God means as much by his inactions as his actions. If He doesn’t act, He approves.’”
“You’ve turned cynic,” I said accusingly.
“On the contrary.” Bartolomeo kissed my knuckles. “Maybe it’s not the usual way of things, but in every way that counts, you’re my wife.”
My throat felt thick. “I’m also a bride of Christ. After Marco died, well, I kept thinking it was because of me. That any man who beds me is doomed—”
“Ah, but you’re wrong. We have as much heavenly blessing as anyone could want. Here’s proof.” Bartolomeo’s hard chest moved against mine very pleasurably as he squirmed to get hold of something from the tangle of clothes at our feet. “A blessing from our very own patron saint.”
“That’s Santa Marta’s ring!” I looked at the little band of gold, horrified. I knew it as well as I knew my own nose, as long as my patron saint and I had been together. “You can’t steal a ring from a saint!”
“We already stole her whole hand,” Bartolomeo pointed out. “Besides, she wants you to have it. She’s spent the last few weeks dropping it on me every time I opened the pouch.”
I must say, it fit me very well. I put my hand into the sunlight outside the coach’s open window, admiring the gleam of old, old gold, and I thought I felt Santa Marta twitch her approval back in her usual place beneath my skirt. Madonna Giulia had emerald and pearl and sapphire rings, enough of them to sink a ship, but I preferred something plain like this. Something I wouldn’t have to take off to knead bread dough.
“That nun’s habit is absolutely ghastly,” Giulia was saying, looking critically at my convent wool. She had eaten all the marzipan by now and was starting in on the almond biscotti. “We’ll have to be sure you get some new gowns before you go out to Milan—”
“Do you even have the money to support yourselves in Milan?” Leonello was asking Bartolomeo. “Of course Giulia never thinks of money—”
“We’re the best cooks in Rome,” my Bartolomeo said with the arrogance I was glad I hadn’t managed to smack out of him as an apprentice. “We won’t lack work for long.”
“Then here’s something to fund a new career,” Giulia said, and unhooked her huge teardrop pearl from around her neck.
My mouth dropped open like a fish. “Madonna Giulia, I can’t possibly—”
She was already shaking her head, brushing biscotti crumbs off her skirts. “I don’t want it. The rest of my jewels I’m saving for Laura, but that—” She looped it carelessly about the cat’s furry neck when I refused to let her put it into my hand. “That was the Holy Father’s first gift to me. It feels like a noose, now.”
We all looked at each other for a moment. I had half an impulse to put my head out the window of the coach and look back on Rome. The Holy City had been a haven to me once, an escape from all my troubles, and now it seemed more cesspool than salvation: a blood-drenched pit with the Borgia dream of power swelling black and hungry overhead, like some great ravenous snake. Their emblem should have been a serpent. Something poisonous and devious. Not a blunt and straightforward bull.
But
it didn’t matter. I wasn’t ever going to lay eyes on a Borgia again, and I didn’t think anyone else in this coach would either.
“You all look like masks of tragedy.” Giulia looked around at our momentarily grave faces. “Especially you,” she said to Leonello, and I very definitely saw her fingers stroke against his for a moment behind the spread of her skirts. He smiled, which I hardly thought I’d ever seen on his cynical face, and Giulia twinkled back at him before looking to me where I sat with my head leaned against Bartolomeo’s shoulder and the cat purring on my lap in his pearl necklace. “Of course, there is one thing to be sad about,” she added. “Very sad, in fact.”
“What’s that, Madonna Giulia?”
She leaned forward, looking at me very seriously. “We’ve eaten all the marzipan tourtes.”
HISTORICAL NOTE
Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, died five years later without realizing his dream of founding a lasting Borgia dynasty. Despite his lurid reputation, he was in many ways an effective pontiff: energetic, intelligent, hardworking, with great toleration for free speech, homosexuality, and Judaism. But his Achilles heel was his adoration of his children, who in his eyes could do no wrong. In their defense he committed his most shocking acts, such as the impromptu hanging of a party guest who dared offer his favorite son a mild insult.
The murder of Juan Borgia, the handsome, vicious, and incompetent Duke of Gandia, was never solved. Whoever killed Juan, Pope Alexander was truly devastated and resolved to reform both the church and his own life. If he had stuck to that resolve, history might well remember Alexander VI as a visionary. Many modern scholars attribute Juan’s murder to Cesare, who was certainly ruthless enough to kill his much-hated brother for a chance at the military career Juan had squandered.
Cesare Borgia would go on to a military career of such brilliance and ruthlessness that he would inspire Machiavelli’s political treatise The Prince. The violence lurking under his surface self-control was legendary; he kept a personal assassin on retainer in the form of the much-feared Michelotto, but Cesare was always willing to do his own dirty work, such as the time when he stabbed the papal envoy Perotto literally at his father’s feet in the Vatican. Cesare’s career and power ended with his father’s death; he died at age thirty-two fighting a minor battle in Spain.
Lucrezia Borgia endured a sinister reputation but seems to have been largely a pawn among the powerful men of her family. During her third marriage to the Duke of Ferrara, she outlived her youthful reputation for frivolity and became known for piety and good works. She died at age thirty-eight, the mother of at least seven children, having survived all her brothers.
Joffre Borgia eventually separated from his wife, Sancha of Aragon. She died in her twenties with a lurid reputation, and he went on to an undistinguished adulthood as Prince of Squillace.
The Roman Infante was the title given to an illegitimate Borgia child born in 1498. He was formally claimed by papal bull as Cesare’s son, and by a contradictory papal bull as Pope Alexander’s son. Rumor of the day claimed the baby had been born to Lucrezia during her convent stay, but she always maintained that the Roman Infante was her half brother.
Giovanni Sforza, Count of Pesaro, went on to marry again after the annulment of his marriage to Lucrezia. He fathered a son with his next wife, disproving the farce of the impotence charge leveled by the Borgias. He retaliated for the loss of his reputation by accusing the Borgias of incest, a charge that dogs their reputation to this day.
Alfonso of Aragon, Lucrezia’s second husband, was murdered two years later by Cesare Borgia once the Neapolitan alliance was deemed unnecessary.
Adriana da Mila remained a Borgia intimate even after the death of her son, acting as escort to Lucrezia when she went to Ferrara to join her third husband.
Johann Burchard managed not to crumple under the difficulties of serving as Rodrigo Borgia’s master of papal ceremonies. He kept a meticulous diary throughout his life, and his writings give us firsthand glimpses of the Renaissance’s most notorious family: the French invasion, the details of Lucrezia’s various riotous weddings, and the sequence of events surrounding Juan’s murder.
Laura Orsini may or may not have been the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, but her life lacked the turbulence and tragedy of Lucrezia’s. Laura married a nephew of Pope Julius II and bore him three sons.
Bartolomeo Scappi would become one of the greatest cooks of the Renaissance. He worked as Vatican chef to two popes, and he penned a massive compendium of recipes and career advice to cooks that is still in print today. Most of the recipes from this book have come directly from Scappi’s own words. The details of his personal life are extremely vague: there is no surviving birth date for him (though he was probably born somewhat later than in this story), and it is not known if he ever married or had children. But he enjoyed a long life and a brilliant career, and he must have traveled a great deal since his recipes show familiarity with the regional cuisine and markets of Rome, Venice, and Milan. It is not known who taught Bartolomeo Scappi to cook—Renaissance cooks were trained without the oversight of a formal guild—but whoever trained the young Bartolomeo instilled him with iron discipline, a great love of his craft, and an unshakable belief that preparing and serving good food was honorable work.
Sandro Farnese would later go on to take the Throne of Saint Peter as Pope Paul III. Among his achievements he laid the foundation for the Counter-Reformation, supported Katherine of Aragon in her tumultuous divorce appeals, and excommunicated Henry VIII.
Vittorio Capece of Bozzuto married Giulia Farnese some time after the death of her first husband, Orsino Orsini. Little is known of Giulia’s second husband, who was historically named Giovanni (I renamed him since this story already had too many Giovannis and Juans). He died some years after their marriage without giving Giulia any further children.
Giulia Farnese survived all the Borgias, going on to a long, wealthy, and apparently happy life. It is not known exactly when Giulia’s affair with her Pope ended, or whether the break came from her or from Rodrigo Borgia. However it happened, Giulia returned to the country and devoted herself to her daughter. After her second widowhood, she took over governorship of the town of Carbognano, where she is recorded as a lively and capable administrator.
Leonello is a fictional character. Many Renaissance lords kept dwarves as entertainers, jugglers, and companions. They were generally treated like pets: they might be pampered or they might be abused, but they were always looked down upon as lower beings.
Carmelina Mangano is also a fictional character, though many women suffered similar plights in being stuffed into convents against their will. The Renaissance was an era of dowry inflation; even wealthy families found it very expensive to marry off more than one daughter. Spare daughters were usually sent to convents, and the result was a great many unwilling nuns leading very secular lives within convent walls. There are records of nuns who managed to smuggle lovers into their unlocked-at-night cells, and other nuns who donned men’s clothes and escaped over the convent wall in desperate attempts to forge a new life. There is record of a convent in Venice that boasted a religious relic of the hand of Santa Marta, patron saint of cooks, but there is no record of the relic ever being stolen.
I have taken some liberties with the facts in order to serve the story. Orsino Orsini’s exact death date is not known, but records indicate that it happened a year or two later than in this story. There is no indication that his death was murder, but it seems like a convenient mishap, and other notorious assassinations of the Renaissance were covered up by just such rigged “accidents.” And Juan Borgia was not recorded as a serial killer of low-born women, though his wild evenings of drinking, whoring, fighting, and killing stray dogs are well documented.
My supposition that Lucrezia Borgia gave birth to a child while waiting for her marriage to be annulled is based on the widespread rumors of the time. The young papal envoy Perotto is frequently named as the father of Lucrezia�
�s supposed child; not only is his death at Cesare’s hands suspicious, but he was one of the few men with access to the Pope’s daughter during her convent stay, However, there is no proof that Perotto’s relations with Lucrezia were anything other than formal; her pregnancy could well have been legitimate. Lord Sforza officially parted from his wife the Easter before her convent stay, but not all his travelings during that year have been recorded, and a private visit from the Count of Pesaro to his wife is not impossible: he fought hard to keep her, indicating that their marriage had its happy moments even if it ended sourly. If Lucrezia had borne a legitimate child to her husband, their union could not have been annulled and the Borgias would have lost their chance for the longed-for alliance with Naples—a reasonable explanation for the ruthless secrecy with which Cesare Borgia removed both Perotto and Lucrezia’s maid Pantisilea, who would have been the only other people besides the enclosed convent nuns to know about the pregnancy. If Lucrezia did give birth, we have no way of knowing if her child was a boy or a girl, whether it lived or died, or whether it was in fact the mysterious Roman Infante who was born at about the same time.
Rodrigo Borgia’s enemy Fra Savonarola was excommunicated and executed as described, but in Florence rather than in Rome. Savonarola’s famous Bonfire of the Vanities was not attended by Giulia Farnese, nor to our knowledge was she painted by the great artist Botticelli, who is rumored to have tossed a number of his own works onto Savonarola’s bonfire. And while the poetic romances of Dante and his Beatrice and Petrarch and his Laura are well known, there are no sonnets written by an Avernus to his Aurora.
One final bit of fancy on my part is Bartolomeo Scappi’s experimentation with “tubers.” Potatoes were just beginning to make their way into Italian cuisine, but Scappi apparently had few dealings with them. He was in many ways the greatest cook of the Renaissance, but alas, he cannot be credited with the invention of the French fry.
The Borgias were certainly the high—or low—point when it came to scandal in the Vatican. There can be no doubt that the flow of papal power did its damage in corrupting this intelligent and energetic family. Unlimited power turned their virtues into vices: Rodrigo’s affection for his children became blind nepotism, Cesare’s ambition became hubris, Juan’s arrogance became violence, Lucrezia’s love for her brothers became an eagerness to excuse them every crime. Perhaps Giulia Farnese was glad to get away from the Borgia family, before they tainted either her future or her daughter’s.