A Borgia Daughter Dies

by Maryann Philip

  “Never mind, Nicola!” Maria giggled. “Did you hear about their masks?” she asked Simonetta. She whispered in Simonetta’s ear, while gesturing wildly in front of her face. Both laughed uproariously.

  “The cross-dressers wore masks with long, dangling noses?” Nicola guessed, from the gesture.

  “Long, dangling somethings!” Maria responded. Both girls laughed again. Then Maria strummed an imaginary lute and sang, “I am La Fiammetta, I sing and dance and recite Po-etry!”

  “Silencio!” roared Cook.

  “Who is ‘Little Flame?’” whispered Nicola to Maria, as they shaped loaves.

  “The courtesan who is Lord Valentino's current favorite. I saw her at the bullfight. She is very beautiful!”

  “I thought he married a French princess,” whispered Nicola.

  “He did. You should have seen the fireworks the pope sent up, to celebrate the wedding! But he left her pregnant in France!” replied Maria, rolling her eyes.

  “Enough of this!” said a voice from behind them. It was Sister Bernina, who had arrived with supplies. “Nicola, come and help me! A young woman of breeding does not belong in the kitchen, consorting with the help!”

  Nicola scurried after Sister Bernina. Together, they sorted the supplies that were intended for the infermeria. Sister Bernina made a notation in her books, and asked Nicola to wait while she prepared a receipt.

  Sister Bernina was tall, bony, and homely, with a limping gait and a crooked spine. Rumor was that she hadn’t wanted to become a nun, but no one would marry her because of her looks. Her abrupt, somewhat angry manner was intimidating, but her competence as convent procuratrice was undeniable.

  “Suora? What is this extra column in your books?” asked Nicola, who was peeking at them. “This is not how Sister Amelia has showed us to keep accounts.”

  “As bursar, Sister Amelia tracks the convent's income--and she insists on recording it the old-fashioned way,” said Bernina disapprovingly. “The girls should learn the new way. It is called 'double-entry bookkeeping.'”

  Nicola signed the receipt, then looked more closely. Separate “debit” and “credit” columns seem so obvious. She only realized the utility of this new invention when Sister Bernina showed her different ways the numbers could be manipulated.

  “How did you learn this, Suora?” she asked. “Are you from a merchant family?”

  “Certainly not!” sniffed Sister Bernina, plainly offended. “San Sisto does not take the daughters of merchants, at least not yet! I learned these skills when I demanded to see the books of a merchant I thought was cheating us. He was able to show how his expenses had increased, and why his price was a fair one.”

  “Mi scusa, Suora. I did not mean to offend,” said Nicola.

  “I am not offended. You are a great help to Sister Beatrice. It is good for you to understand bookkeeping.”

  “Why are we buying belladonna, Suora?” asked Nicola suddenly, pointing to an entry.

  Sister Bernina started visibly. “Your friends Pia and Angelica wanted it, to make their eyes beautiful. Why do you suppose it is called 'belladonna'? A tiny bit in the eyes does no harm. They also asked me to buy arsenico for them, but I refused.”

  “But even the belladonna was purchased with convent money!” protested Nicola, thinking to herself, arsenico? Dio Mio!

  “Si,” the sister shrugged. “I do such favors for students occasionally. But they have reimbursed me. If you wait a moment, I will show you where it is listed under 'Credits.'”

  No, no, Suora!” said Nicola, “I should not have questioned you. It is not my place. I was only curious. Please excuse me now. I must get to class.”

  “My books are open to anyone who wants to question me, at any time. There is no privacy in a convent,” Sister Bernina announced as she watched Nicola leave. “Even from nosy little bastards like you,” she muttered quietly as the door closed.

  Chapter 17—Beauty Secrets

  Convent of San Sisto

  July, 1500

  “You aren’t putting poison in it, are you?” Nicola asked Pia, who was applying something disgusting-looking to her newly-washed hair.

  “No. Sister Beatrice confiscated all my poisons, and the priora has forbidden my mother from sending more,” said Pia, who clearly felt put-upon. “This is lemon juice and chamomile. It doesn’t lighten nearly as well.”

  The entire convent knew that Sister Beatrice had confiscated both belladonna and arsenic from Pia, who insisted that the first substance was for her eyes and the second for her hair. Pia's mother had confirmed this: Madonna Gaetani had provided her daughter with red arsenic, something she insisted that the ladies of ancient Rome used to make their hair blond. The priora had reacted by prohibiting poisons in the convent, and instructing Sister Bernina to purchase no more cosmetic items for its students.

  Usually, Nicola left Pia alone on the days--entire days--Pia devoted to her hair. Today, however, Nicola had sought out Pia to reassure herself that Pia was not a poisoner. Naturally, Pia had responded guardedly to questions from Sister Beatrice and the priora. Nicola believed that Pia would be more trusting with her.

  They were sitting on the grass in the orchard outside of Girl’s House, Nicola in the shade of a fig tree, and Pia in a patch of sun. Nicola watched as Pia threaded her still-soapy hair through the top of a crownless, wide-brimmed straw hat, then combed it in a circle radiating from the crown of her head, the ends dangling over the hat brim. She looked a bit like a mushroom, Nicola reflected. Indeed, Pia’s hair had turned an odd, mushroomy brown. Nicola stifled a laugh.

  “Are you sure this is going to work, Pia? Your hair—it doesn’t—it’s not like Lucrezia Borgia’s, exactly.”

  “I know. I wrote to ask for her secret—said I was getting married and wanted golden curls like hers for my wedding. I just signed it ‘Pia.’ You don’t think she will remember I am a Gaetani, do you? The vendetta between our families has nothing to do with us.”

  She suddenly massaged her scalp, as if beset by fleas. “The bleaching dries it out, but I treat it with Caterina Sforza’s recipe for dry hair—eggs, pig fat, oil and vinegar.”

  “I know,” Nicola responded quietly. Pia’s hair always smelled like uncooked food, though she rinsed it in rosewater and slept in a turban stuffed with rose petals. The rose petals sometimes gave it pink spots. Pia’s veil hid everything from the nuns, fortunately.

  “How do you suppose Rosetta got her hair to be so blond?” Nicola asked, nodding toward the group of newly-admitted students who were sprawled under a nearby olive tree, singing to a badly-played lute.

  Pia laughed. “I’m not using what Rosetta did. Besides, you will tell Father Malallatesta.”

  “I will not. . . tell Father Testa,” Nicola replied. It was no good chiding Pia for calling the priest “Father Headache.” It would only prompt her to use worse nicknames, like Father Pazzatesta (“crazyhead”) or even Father Cazzotesta (“dickhead”). Nicola liked Father Testa, who had been uniformly kind to her. Pia, however, had despised him since her first miserable weeks at San Sisto, when the priest had scolded her for kissing her brothers’ tutor, the sin that had sent her to the convent. She also repeatedly accused “Father Malallatesta” of making eyes at the nuns, which Nicola found ridiculous.

  “Pia, why do the new girls lie around like that, with their skirts all. . .”

  Pia peered through her hair as she threaded a needle. “Their mothers are courtesans, and it shows. I wish I could walk the way they walk. You walk like a nun, Nicola. I don’t, do I? Tell me I don’t.”

  “You don’t walk like a nun, Pia. But you certainly don’t walk like them.”

  “Good thing the nuns are all in the church! Vivos would go all to pieces if she heard what they are singing. Don’t you like it, though?”

  Nicola didn’t know what to say. “It’s like nothing I ever heard before,” she finally ventured.

  Pia was her best friend, but they were growing apart, she reflected sadly. How
could she like the dirty songs the courtesans' daughters were singing? And Pia now talked of nothing but camorras, headdresses, jewels and recipes for beauty secrets--subjects which did not interest Nicola at all.

  Nicola blamed Pia's new friend Angelica for Pia’s new obsessions. A distant cousin of the King of Naples, Angelica had been placed at San Sisto when her family fled from the pope's invasion. Already betrothed, she shared Pia’s obsessions with fashion, weddings and life after marriage.

  The two of them were determined to be as beautiful as artifice could make them. They waxed their eyebrows and hairlines, reddened their cheeks and lips with a mixture of wine, alum and mashed rice, and lightened their skin with a mixture of white wine and lemon juice.

  “What’s in your bag, Nicola?” Pia asked, as she gathered her own needlework, before retreating again behind her hair.

  Nicola held it out for her to see. “This is the camorra my Zia Caterina sent me to wear at your wedding. Can you show me how to take in the seams?”

  Pia grabbed the bag, pulling it beneath the waterfall of her hair so she could look at it. “Oh, Nicola, che bella! Your zia has excellent taste. But it’s too big, definitely. You have such a tiny waist. Yes, I can show you. First, you must take out this seam here, do you see?”

  Pia was an excellent seamstress. For weeks, she had been working on a set of detachable sleeves to go with her wedding camorra, which was already being sewn by a Roman tailor. She had decided against the puffed ones that looked like unwieldy caterpillars. Hers would be shaped like trumpet flowers, the cuffs so large they would come close to touching the ground when her arms were at her sides. She had proudly showed Nicola the gold braid, featuring real gold thread, which would be used to ornament the sleeves’ cuffs.

  Nicola reclaimed her camorra and began following Pia’s instructions. “Pia, did you really put belladonna in your eyes? It is such a dangerous thing,” Nicola began.

  “Si. I didn’t know it was poisonous until Sister Beatrice told me. I only tried it once. I couldn’t see very well, so I don't know if I was more beautiful, or not.” Pia replied.

  “And the arsenico--you really put it in your hair?” Nicola persisted.

  “Of course, Nicola,” Pia responded, her tone of voice suggesting that the question was stupid. “Do you think I would swallow it? It can’t get into my body, from being on my hair,” she concluded matter-of-factly.

  “I am not so sure of that,” said Nicola. “It is very dangerous. Were you careful with it? Did you keep it where no one could get into it accidentally?”

  “You sound like my mother,” sniffed Pia. “Yes, I was very careful with it. It was in a locked box.”

  “I am relieved to hear that. Did you share it with anyone?”

  “Only Angelica. Nicola, why are you asking me these questions?” Pia said suspiciously, peering at Nicola through her hair.

  “Because I care about you,” Nicola responded. Which was true, after all, she reflected.

  “I am fine,” Pia assured her. “I have not poisoned myself. Even if I wanted to, I could not poison myself, because I have no more poison.”

  “Good,” responded Nicola, wondering what Angelica d’Aragona--who was not bleaching her hair--had done with the arsenic she received from Pia.

  Chapter 18—The Abortionist

  A week later

  Sister Sophia, the sacristan, smoothed the altar cloth, then inspected the rest of the church with experienced eyes. All was ready for Mass. She genuflected to the bleeding figure of Christ, who gazed sadly toward the back of the church from above the altar. Ducking through a nearby door, Sister Sophia entered the sacristy.

  Like the church, the sacristy was heavily frescoed, this time with figures of monks and priests conversing, praying, and blessing the poor. Father Testa stood in front of this tableau, preparing bread and wine for communion on a low table covered with a damask cloth. Beside him, priestly garments spilled from an open wardrobe.

  She shut the door behind her. “Are you not finished dressing yet?”

  After pouring wine into the silver chalice, he took a sip. “Would you like some?” he asked, smiling.

  “No, gràzie. You had best finish dressing.”

  He put down the chalice, and walked over to her. “Why the hurry?” With his palms, he gently stroked the tips of her breasts.

  As her nipples hardened against her thin linen habit, she felt both irritation and renewed desire. “Again? There’s no time.”

  “There’s just time. Come.” He kissed her, then abruptly lifted her onto the heavy table that held the communion wine flask, and began fumbling with her skirts.

  She jumped to her feet as the bell began to ring for Mass. “I’m sorry.”

  He looked irritated, so she kissed his cheek. Smiling apologetically, she helped him with his vestments. Then she returned to the church, to kneel in the front pew and contemplate her relationship with the convent priest.

  He had seduced her when she was a novice nun, after she confessed to lustful thoughts of her dead husband. As she knelt to do penance, he stood behind her and cupped his hands over her breasts. After several frantic embraces, they had locked themselves in the sacristy. There, he had pleasured her beyond anything she had ever experienced.

  After that, she could not get enough of him. Once, after confession, they had made love in the tiny wooden chamber where he had been sitting and listening to her. It was a miracle that no one had heard them. So erotic was the experience that she wanted to repeat it, perhaps late at night--but Father Testa refused. He had enough impure thoughts in that space already, he told her.

  She had not intended to fall in love with him. He had never promised her love—how could he? And maybe it was not love that she felt. Maybe it was only lust, and the desire to possess one thing exclusively, in a setting where no one owned anything.

  She had been content enough, when she thought he was hers alone. The violence of her jealousy had surprised her, when she learned otherwise. She discovered his promiscuity not from him, but through her secret role in the convent: she was its abortionist. She had stumbled into this role accidentally after becoming pregnant herself, twice.

  “I will not betray your secret. But I will not help you, either,” Sister Beatrice had told her the first time, when she went to the infermeria with her problem.

  “Can I at least look through your herbals?” she begged.

  Sister Beatrice shrugged. “I cannot stop you. The books belong to the convent, not to me. At least have the decency to consult them when I am out.”

  “Do they tell—do any of them tell how to get rid of a baby?”

  “I said I would not help you,” Sister Beatrice retorted sharply. Then she left.

  Alone in the infermeria, Sister Sophia had grabbed a vellum manuscript titled, The Diseases of Women, written by a female physician from the time of the Norman kings. Trotula recommended a mixture of wormwood, betony and pennyroyal, items easily stolen from Sister Beatrice’s neatly-labeled stores. Trotula’s potion did not work.

  Frantic after missing her menses for the second time in a row, Sister Sophia returned to the infermeria late at night to consult a newly-printed edition of Avicenna’s Canons of Medicine and the row of herbals shelved with Sister Beatrice’s potions. The recommendations varied, but all had one theme: poison. Virtually every abortifacient contained ingredients that were highly toxic in quantity.

  An ambivalent Father Testa had brought Sister Sophia the arsenic and other poisons she requested, which she kept hidden. She concocted her own, powerfully toxic abortifacient. It worked. Losing the first baby had made her very sick. Losing the second nearly killed her. Either the poison or the miscarriages made her sterile, because she never became pregnant again.

  Since then, however, Sister Beatrice had sent her the occasional pregnant nun or student who wanted help. Or someone had, anyway—perhaps Father Testa himself. She never embarrassed any of them with questions, though some confessed without being asked. She
felt no guilt. Father Testa had told her that babies had no souls until they “quickened” and began moving in the mother’s uterus.

  La Greca had come to her twice. The second time, she had demanded and received a supply of Sister Sophia’s abortifacient for future use. By all appearances, the Greek woman had never even taken sick.

  Why had Lucrezia Borgia never sought her help? Isolated in the guesthouse, the pope’s daughter had hidden her pregnancy so carefully that Sister Sophia had not become aware of it until it was far too late. A pity—the world was full of Borgia bastards already, and they were not pleasant people. Sister Sophia would have felt no guilt about curtailing the Borgia family line. None at all.

  “Suora?”

  Sister Sophia opened her eyes, and saw Nicola Machiavelli sitting beside her in the pew. “I came early to pray for Sister Gerolama. Were you there when she died? I have been very sad about it.”

  “Do not be sad, Nicola. She is in heaven. A priest was there, to give her last rites. Many are not so lucky.”

  “Were you with her? Did you see it?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “It matters because. . . when nuns leave this place, they die. Like Sister Annaluisa. I need to know what happened.”

  Sister Sophia stood abruptly. The mention of Sister Annaluisa stabbed her like a knife. She had been violently jealous of Annaluisa; sure that Father Testa was lying to her. When the young nun threatened her, she had reacted with cruelty. She regretted it, now.

  She looked down at Nicola, swallowing her anger. “We all die. Sister Gerolama died, and that is the end of it. The same with Annaluisa. Now, go back and sit with the students.”

  A frightened look on her face, Nicola jumped to her feet and retreated to the back of the church. Sister Sophia felt the girl’s eyes on her back as she faced the altar and genuflected toward Father Testa, who was about to begin Mass.

  Chapter 19—Threats from Above

  A month later.

  “I think someone is trying to hurt me, Suora. A big stone fell from the campanile, and nearly hit me. It is the second time.”