‘I heard a rumour,’ I said, more quietly. ‘About the death of Rodrigo’s brother, who surely would have been elected pope…’
He held my gaze as he answered slowly, ‘It is no rumour,’
‘How can you bear it?’ I whispered. My own father had been a tyrant—but even he would never have considered assassinating a member of his own family. Surely he never would have laid his hands on me, then threatened Alfonso with death if my brother tried to intervene.
Cesare shrugged; hardness crept into his eyes. ‘Such is the price of being a Borgia.’
I was not of a mood to make love to Cesare that night; he understood, and we parted with grim reluctance. I could not help wondering how my brother would react to such shocking decadence—but I dared not relay this information to him, as it would upset him too greatly to know the truth about my life in Rome.
Afterwards, in my bed, I dreamed of the card the strega had drawn for me: The heart pierced by two swords—by evil, and by good. Rodrigo Borgia stood before me, smiling, and opened the breast of his white satin robe to reveal a red heart beating therein, skewered by two swords in the shape of a silver X.
One of the swords was much larger than its mate; I stepped forward and pulled it out. It came forth bloodied, but beneath the crimson stain I could easily read the legend inscribed on the blade.
EVIL.
Autumn 1496–Early Spring 1497
XVII
My trysts with Cesare continued uninterrupted for the next few months. Save for that troubling night in the garden when I spoke of Lucrezia and Alexander, Cesare behaved as he always had—speaking more and more of how he could no longer bear life as a cardinal. He dreamed of marriage to me, he said, and a house full of our children. I listened with unbearable yearning—and at the same time, enormous guilt. My husband apparently knew nothing of my affair with his brother, and his happy innocence tugged at my dishonest heart.
I could only assume that Cesare’s fight with his brother Juan had discouraged the latter, for Juan did not trouble me again during the hot months of August and September.
And then, as the heat broke with the month of October, I received a letter from my brother which bore on its pages much grief.
My dearest sister,
It is with the most unspeakable sorrow that I must announce the passing of our half-brother, His Majesty, King Ferrante II. He died of a severe infection of the bowels—and his wife, Queen Giovanna, is prostrate with grief, as are we all. He has already been laid to rest in a temporary tomb in Santa Chiara, while construction begins on his permanent crypt.
It is a difficult thing for me to have to write you with such sad news. Even so, both Mother and I have great hope that we might see you again in the coming months, at the coronation of His Majesty, our beloved uncle, Federico.
I could bear to read no more, but let the pages drop to the floor. Fate seemed capricious and brutal to let young Ferrandino fight so long and hard to claim his throne, only to steal it from him so quickly. Even worse, he and Giovanna had produced no heirs, so the crown was forced to revert a generation backwards, to Federico.
I now had an excuse to return to Naples, my home. Normally, I would have seized the chance—but I could not bear the thought of returning under the pall of Ferrandino’s death; nor was I eager to leave Cesare, even for an instant. So I remained in Rome, and sent my condolences to the family from afar.
The same month I learned of Ferrandino’s death, Juan Borgia was sent to war. With his jewel-encrusted sword and the title of Captain-General of the Church, he rode out of Rome accompanied by the papal army and a goodly dose of fanfare.
Success came early to him—much to Cesare’s bitter annoyance. (‘God mocks me, letting my witless brother win through accident, not skill!’) In rapid succession, the papal army seized ten rebel castles, all of them flying French colours. The Pope was giddy with delight; at dinner, he read Juan’s dispatches—all of them brimming with self-congratulatory details. Lucrezia gave her demure little smile, and nodded encouragement to her father when he grew most excited; Cesare’s lips grew tauter, thinner, until they entirely disappeared.
And then God delivered to Juan justice, in the form of a stout and fearless noblewoman named Bartolommea Orsini. She commanded the allegiance of a most powerful army, which defended her imposing fortress a hard day’s ride northeast of Rome, at Bracciano, overlooking the great lake for which the city was named. The papal army had a special interest in defeating the Orsinis: their treacherous allegiance with the French and their kidnapping of Giulia had allowed Charles to invade Rome, and prompted Alexander to order Ferrandino’s retreat to Naples. It was time, His Holiness had decided, to teach the Francophile Orsinis a lesson. There were other rebellious noble families who held lands within the Papal States—and the Orsinis were intended to be a lesson to them all, of what would happen to those who did not pay homage to the Pope as both their sacred and secular ruler.
Cesare relayed the entire incident to me with great detail and relish. Juan’s initial success at war filled the Duke of Gandia, Captain-General of the Church, with an even more boundless hubris. He wrote a threatening letter to Bartolommea; she laughed aloud and spat on it. He wrote imperious missives to her army, demanding their surrender, promising them safety if they deserted their posts and came to fight on the side of the Papal States.
Bartolommea’s men roared at the notion.
‘Come,’ they said. ‘Come and fight. Come and taste real war, Captain-General.’
Juan studied the massive parapets of the Bracciano castle; he even drew up simplistic battle plans for storming the walls. But in the end, according to Cesare, who had read the letter the great Captain-General sent to His Holiness, Juan realized that the situation here was quite different: there was a chance his army might lose.
And so, entirely without pomp, his army left Bracciano in the night, and instead headed north, to a less imposing castle defended by a less imposing army at Trevignano. Bartolommea, victorious, left the French flag flying.
At Trevignano, Juan’s men waged a fierce battle while he sent directives from the sidelines. It was not easy, but Alexander’s army took the castle and sacked the town.
No time was permitted for rest, for in the meantime, more members of the Orsini clan, led by the patriarch Carlo, had raised money from the French and recruited an army composed of Tuscans and Umbrians. They moved south towards the fortress at Soriano, held by an Orsini cardinal who felt the Pope should limit his powers to the Church, and keep his nose out of the earthly affairs of the nobles in the Papal States.
Juan’s army was obliged to meet their enemies there, several days’ ride due north of Rome. The Orsinis were clever strategists; they quickly lured part of the Captain-General’s troops away from the others, overwhelmed them, and launched a counterattack. This time, Juan was caught in the midst of the fighting and unable to flee to the safety of the sidelines. He took a slight wound to his shoulder, and lost five hundred men.
This was apparently an outcome he had never considered. He retreated at once, and his army had surrendered.
Now, at the dinner table, Alexander fumed; he rose from his chair, paced, and shouted—at Juan for his idiocy, at himself for not having invested in more men, more horses, more swords. He would empty every coffer in Rome, he swore, he would even sell his tiara…
But in the end, His Holiness was a practical man. He struck a deal with the Orsinis, accepting fifty thousand gold ducats and two more fortresses in exchange for the Pope’s promise to make no further war. Alexander also agreed to ask my uncle, King Federico, to release Orsini prisoners who were being held in Naples.
In the meantime, he called Juan home.
In Rome, the autumn days are cool, a promise of the chill winter to come. Many in Italy would call such weather temperate, for snow has only rarely limned the ancient buildings and piazzas. But I was accustomed to winters that varied little from summers, and so I looked ahead to the approaching season with
mild dread.
I spent as much time away from my ladies and to myself as possible: I have never been talented at dissimulation, and my discovery of the true nature of the relationship between Lucrezia and her father left me troubled. I secretly grew angry at Cesare: were I male, I told myself, I would have slain Alexander long ago to protect Lucrezia, and damn the consequences.
In reality I too shared complicity—for I kept the terrible secret in order to save my own skin. I was no better; I was an adulteress, betraying her own husband. So I was as good a friend to Lucrezia as I could be; she came to trust me after a fashion, although I understood now why she could completely trust no one. We danced together at parties, laughed, played chess (Lucrezia was brutally adept and always won) and at times went riding together in the Roman pine forests, attended by guards and our ladies.
Yet our companionship gnawed at me; I could not forget the jealousy she had shown me concerning her father’s affections—nor could I forget the apparently genuine rapture in her voice when I witnessed her coupling with Alexander.
I tried to justify it in my mind, as Alfonso might: Perhaps, after living so many years in a corrupt household, she had found the boundaries between good and evil blurred. Or perhaps her ecstatic moans had been contrived, an effort to protect herself from Alexander’s wrath.
I ate little, lost weight, and wandered the vast, labyrinthine gardens behind the Palazzo Santa Maria like a wraith during the day—and a black ghost on the appointed nights I met Cesare there.
On the 24th January 1497, Juan, glorious Duke of Gandia, celebrated Captain-General of the Church, came riding back into Rome—this time, with even more fanfare and celebration, as if he had come bringing victory and not defeat.
His Holiness had only words of praise for his inept son; all the curses Alexander had hurled at him during the war were now forgotten. At dinner, we listened to the Pope tell Juan how he was the papacy’s great hope: how he would bring glory to the House of Borgia when he was well enough to return to battle. Juan, in turn, answered with his insolent little smile. (When, precisely, Juan might ‘recover’ was never mentioned; and I never saw evidence of the wound that had sent him running from the enemy.)
I knew Cesare to be a man of fierce will—yet his jealousy towards his brother so vexed him, he could not entirely hide it. In his bedchamber one night, after we had made love, Cesare explained in great detail how Bartolommea could easily have been defeated; he went on to describe how the territory of the Papal States could be expanded, as we lay on our backs and stared up at the gilded, domed ceiling.
‘If we could get the backing of a much stronger army,’ Cesare proclaimed, ‘the Romagna could be ours. Here.’ With his forefinger, he traced the outline of a crooked boot—Italy—upon the ceiling, then pointed to its uppermost left corner. ‘There is the western border with France,’ he said, ‘and just to the right, Milan. Almost due east lies Venice’—he lowered his finger diagonally—‘then down to Florence. North of her is the area called the Romagna, far-northwest of Rome, in the very centre.
‘It is a simple matter of forcing loyalty from the barons in the Papal States—but Juan hasn’t the hardness, the cunning, to do it—I do.’ He sat up suddenly, enthused, eyes still focused overhead on imaginary lands to conquer. ‘Once the Papal States are firmly united—and if we got support from Spain, and perhaps’—he shot me a sly sidewise glance—‘Naples, we could take the entire Romagna.’ He spread out his hand, gesturing at the broad area stretching northwest from Rome to the coast. ‘Imola, Faenza, Forli, Cesena…The strongholds would fall before us, all in a row.’
‘What of the D’Estes?’ I interrupted casually. They were an extremely powerful family who had held a duchy in the Romagna for generations. The scion, Ercole, was a pious man, strongly loyal to the Church.
Cesare pondered this. ‘The D’Estes’ army is too powerful to conquer; I would far prefer to ally myself with them, and have them fight on our side.’
I gave a small nod, satisfied. The D’Estes were my cousins on Madonna Trusia’s side.
Cesare continued. ‘Then we take Florence. It has never recovered from the loss of Lorenzo Medici; politically, they are still in chaos. So long as our army is strong enough to defeat the French…’
‘And Venice?’ I asked, amused and curious. I had never seen such fire in him outside of lovemaking, and was surprised by the depth of his ambition. ‘There, you have no family to defeat, no barons. The citizens are used to a great deal of freedom; they will not easily surrender their appointed Council and accept a single ruler.’
‘It will be difficult,’ he admitted, his manner quite serious, ‘but possible, with enough men. Once they see our other successes, they might as well open their gates to us.’
I laughed, not to mock him, but in amazement at his determination. He had clearly given these things much thought; he spoke as if they were already accomplished. ‘I suppose you intend to walk up to France’s back gate and snatch Milan away from the Sforzas,’ I said. ‘You are a supremely confident man.’
He looked down at me and smiled broadly. ‘Madonna, you have no idea.’
‘If you are busy fighting wars,’ I asked—only half in jest, for I had never forgotten Cesare’s words that had so touched my heart, ‘when shall you find the time to take me to Naples, and give me children?’
The fierceness in his eyes and expression softened; his tone grew tender. ‘For you, Sancha, I would find the time.’
But Alexander had decided: Cesare was to succeed him as pope, while Juan would ensure the House of Borgia’s secular might. No matter that the former had no taste for his father’s choices, and the latter had no aptitude. Alexander’s decision was final.
On a chilly afternoon, I had wandered far into the garden, and found myself in a maze of boxwood hedges and rose thickets.
That day, my mind was once again on children—or rather, my lack of them. When I had first arrived in Rome, Alexander had constantly teased Jofre and me about when we would have children—but, after a time, when none appeared, his comments ceased. It did not seem to trouble Jofre overmuch, but I think we each secretly eyed the other, wondering: Was I barren? Or was the cause Jofre’s left testicle, which had never fully descended?
The truth of the matter was that, for our first two years of marriage, I had not wanted children and so had made constant use of water and lemon juice. Over the past several months, however, it occurred to me that a child would bring me not only status in the eyes of His Holiness, but perhaps also some degree of physical security.
While it was common knowledge amongst those in the House of Borgia that Jofre was not Alexander’s get, he had been acknowledged as an heir in a papal bull—and so his children would be regarded as Rodrigo’s grandchildren, and accorded all rights. Besides, to the Borgias, appearance was more highly regarded than fact.
And I adored Cesare so desperately that the thought of bearing his child was magical; love transformed the notion of motherhood from duty to privilege.
I turned a corner of the maze and found myself in a cul de sac, where a bronze cherub poured water from a great jar into a marble fountain.
I found also that I was not alone. There stood Juan, dressed in a scarlet satin tunic and saffron leggings; for once he was without a cap or turban. He had begun to grow a moustache since the beginning of his dismal campaign but, like Jofre, his facial hair grew in scantily.
He regarded me, arms akimbo, legs spread and planted firmly, wearing his customary smirk. ‘So,’ he said, his tone faintly gloating. ‘A lovely, sunny day. A bit cool…All the better for romance.’
‘Then you had best go elsewhere,’ I answered. My right hand moved instinctively to my hidden stiletto. ‘You won’t find it with me.’
Something in his expression shifted, hardened. ‘I am a determined man,’ he said, in a tone that made me glance about to see whether help was within earshot. ‘Tell me, Donna Sancha’—he took a step closer, which caused me to retreat a step—�
��how is it that you are so attracted to Cesare, yet have nothing but disdain for me?’
‘Cesare is a man.’ I put special emphasis on the last word.
‘And I am not?’ He spread his hands, questioning. ‘Cesare is nothing but a bookworm. He dreams of battle, but all he knows is canon law. Let him speak of strategy all he wants—but he is good for nothing but spouting Latin. He has never been tested in battle as I have.’
‘True,’ I replied. ‘You have been tested, and found wanting. The instant a sword bit into your flesh, you ran squalling like an infant.’
The corners of his mouth turned downward; he moved more swiftly than I expected, and hit my jaw full force with his fist, knocking me backwards into the thicket. ‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach you respect for your betters. What I want, I shall have—and neither you nor Cesare can keep it from me.’
I flailed; the woody thorns cut into my flesh and tore my gown. Before I could regain my balance, Juan was upon me; he seized me by both arms, pulled me from the thicket, and hurled me down onto the gravel path.
In the instant before he could throw himself atop me, I grasped my stiletto, and slashed out in a broad swath, from his left breast upward to his right shoulder. It ripped through the fine satin easily, and I sensed that it caught flesh; a yelp from Juan and a darkening stain on the front of his tunic confirmed it.
I expected him to flee, as he had in war; indeed, he backed away for an instant, wearing an expression of dismay and tender self-concern as he touched fingers to the wound, then examined them for blood. The sight of it—though there was little—ignited a bright hatred in his eyes, and he called a name hoarsely.
‘Giuseppe!’
The boxwood rustled, and a servant emerged. Giuseppe was twice the width and half again the height of Juan. I panicked truly then. I pushed myself to sitting and swung wildly with my dagger. Giuseppe laughed, but his eyes were troubled.
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