by Sarah Bower
But we were not destined to travel the next day.
“The marsh fever,” Giulio pronounced the minute he arrived, with Ser Pandolfo and his case of instruments in tow. His tone was bleak; he seemed to age before my eyes as he slumped against the doorpost and emptied his lungs in a long sigh. “Do what you can,” he said to the doctor, though both of us knew there was little to be done but wait and hope.
“Do you pray for her?” Giulio asked me, on the third or fourth day of our vigil. She had fallen quiet by this time, exhausted almost into unconsciousness by bouts of vomiting and fits of fevered dementia during which her body thrashed, her eyes rolled into her head, and she yowled and shrieked like a cat in heat.
“Who to? I was taught that the God of the Christians is merciful and forgiving. Is this merciful and forgiving of him, what he has done to Angela?”
She had lost control of her bowels and the room stank, however frequently I changed her linen or lit fresh candles scented with ambergris and liquorice root to purge the air. Nobody else attended her but we two and Ser Pandolfo. The servants would not come near her for fear of infection, and many in the castle were sick already.
“You have spent too much time in the company of Valentino.” Giulio gave a strained laugh which did nothing to lighten the atmosphere. “I hope you don’t speak this way in my father’s hearing.”
Wishing I could bite back my words, so glib, so thoughtless, I fussed over Angela’s covers to avoid having to look Giulio in the eye. He caught my hand, curled his fingers under my palm as I smoothed her quilt. “Pray for her,” he pleaded. “The hardest won prayers mean the most to God.”
How could he know that? I wondered. But the gentle directness of his nature made me want to please him, so I promised I would pray. I would not go to madonna’s chapel in the Torre Marchesana, a cramped, claustrophobic little room without outside walls, where the perfume of incense and the gilded leer of the saints overpowered the spirit. I would go to the Lady Chapel in the cathedral, and contemplate the image I called to myself the Madonna of Strangers.
It was Catherinella who had first drawn my attention to her. Donna Lucrezia liked to attend services in the Lady Chapel; she shared with her father a particular devotion to the Virgin. And she liked to surround herself with her little clutch of heathens whom she was bringing to God. Fidelma would make a great show of her piety, word perfect in her prayers, anticipating faultlessly when to stand or kneel. Catherinella would stand behind madonna as always, straight and still as the pillars supporting the roof arches, her eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance, not even seeming to blink. I was generally distracted, watching the other people in the cathedral out of the corner of my eye. I know of no better place for watching people than a big Christian church, whose nave and transept are like a crossroads where men of affairs strike deals, mothers show off their marriageable daughters, and beggars play on the consciences of the rich.
But one morning during Lent, when the cathedral was uncharacter-istically quiet, perhaps on account of the foul weather keeping people at home, their doors and windows shuttered against wind and rain, I had decided to amuse myself by trying to spot Catherinella moving. I made bets with myself, mostly to do with food for we had not yet broken our fast. If I saw her breathing, Donna Lucrezia would weaken and allow us morello preserves with our bread. If she blinked, the bread would be rye and moistened with nothing but a little oil. Thus it was, as I watched the bluish gleam of the whites of Catherinella’s eyes in the weak, dusty light, my own gaze drew a bead along hers to fix on the framed image of the Madonna and Child. The Madonna wore an ornate crown and mantle of beaten gold, and her face, as well as that of the child in her arms, was black. Only then had I noticed Catherinella’s faint smile, the expression of furtive recognition with which she regarded the black queen in her golden robe.
I do not know what made her black. Some fault in the pigment, perhaps, or smoke staining from the banks of candles which usually burnt before her, though not during Lent, blinding us to her true appearance. Perhaps, in the past, the faithful had been able to touch her and her face had been darkened by palmers’ sweat, coin grime, the rank breath of beggars. For in the sight of our Father, we are all beggars. Her blackness comforted me, though; it made me feel there was a place after all in the house of the Christian God for oddities like Catherinella and me. It reminded me that Mary was a Jewish mother like mine, sometimes beatific in her selflessness and sometimes, no doubt, on preserving days or when the laundry refused to dry, a scold. She might tell me off for having knots in my hair or a hole in my stocking, but I could talk to her.
I would go now and talk to her about Angela. Except that I did not. With Giulio’s remark still fresh in my mind, I stood before the little icon in its deep frame and thought about Cesare. So perhaps everything that happened next was my fault, because I prayed the wrong prayers and the black Madonna heard them and chose to answer them.
***
Angela grew weaker. When he could no longer find a vein to bleed, Ser Pandolfo applied his cups to her back. When the cup burns began to fester, Giulio threw him out. Angela slipped in and out of lucidity, her fevered brain careering along a switchback we struggled to follow. She would ask for water then accuse us of feeding her scorpions which stung her lips. She saw prison bars in the sunlight which seeped through the shutters and striped her bed, the ghosts of her long dead parents in the shadows which danced up the walls when we lit candles. She had drunk her mother’s perfume, she said, she could smell it in her throat, and now her mother was angry, was reaching skeleton fingers down into her daughter’s belly to get the perfume back. Her mother was screaming as the baby in Angela’s belly bit off her finger end.
“She is dying,” whispered Giulio, tears glazing his cheeks.
“We should send word to Donna Lucrezia,” I said.
***
The torchbearer pushed open the door and stood aside with his head turned away from the room and his expression puckered in distaste. Donna Lucrezia marched past him without even slowing her pace, bringing into our stinking darkness the smells of fresh air and horses and warm dust. I noticed with alarm that she was dressed in Venetian breeches, with spurs buckled to her stout boots and a short whip still in her gloved hand. Surely she was mad to ride, with her child due in less than five months, and so fast. It was less than twenty-four hours since Giulio’s messenger had left for Belriguardo. At least Don Alfonso was still abroad and need not hear of it.
“Thank God you came so quickly.” Giulio jumped to his feet to greet her so his face was immediately plunged into shadow and only his hands reaching out to grasp Donna Lucrezia’s, the nails bitten to the quick, showed in the jaundiced glow of the lantern on Angela’s nightstand.
“How long has she been like this?” Donna Lucrezia made a brave attempt to sound calm, but a tremor in her voice made it plain how badly she was shaken, and how angry that she had not been called back sooner.
“She has had the best care we could give her. But many of the household are sick, the doctors too.”
“Of course you have been wonderful,” said Donna Lucrezia more gently, as though soothing a fretful child. She sat down beside Giulio on Angela’s bed and stroked her cousin’s matted hair back from her forehead. “But now you must rest, so she can see your smiling face as soon as she comes round. Violante and I will take care of her for you.” Ladies-in-waiting are only servants in fancy gowns, after all; they do not need sleep.
Giulio rose, but looked at a loss as to what to do next. He started for the door, then hesitated. “I love her, Lucrezia. If she pulls through this, I would like very much your permission to marry her.”
“Even though..?”
“She lost the child.”
“Was it yours?”
He shook his head miserably. “I never wanted her for my mistress. But I would have cared for it. Everything that is Angela is precious to me. Everything.” The love in his eyes as he looked down at the bed filled me w
ith affection for him, yet sharpened by jealousy the way vinegar can bring out the sweetness of strawberries.
Was this how my lover would think and speak of me? When he came to Ferrara. As he surely must. And for a brief moment, in the tired, uncertain light, I saw his eyes, guarded and black, in place of Giulio’s, the spare angles of his face superimposed on Giulio’s cherubic oval, that dense, red river of hair flooding Giulio’s soft, fair curls. I blinked, and there was Giulio, his hand resting on the door catch as he shouted for a link boy.
We had scarcely finished changing the sheets when we heard footsteps in the passage. Thinking it might be Giulio returning, I opened the door. Pushing me aside with such force I fell to my knees, Duke Ercole strode into the room. Donna Lucrezia had already begun to blow out the candles as the sky brightened from grey to aquamarine and the first birdsong wound its way into our hearing, and in the flat, ashy light the duke’s face looked ancient, his cheeks yellow and sagging, his tortoise neck above the fur collar of his dressing robe crazed with lines and folds.
“When I woke and asked what the disturbance was, I hoped my servant had got it wrong,” he said, his pale eyes fixed on Donna Lucrezia, absorbing every detail of her stained clothes, her dishevelled hair and delicate features pinched with exhaustion. He had spoken quietly, but now his voice became louder, harsh with indignation. “How could you act so irresponsibly? You are not a stupid woman. You must know there is one reason and one reason only why we tolerate you in this house and that is because you have proven your ability to bear healthy sons.”
I saw madonna wince, stabbed, no doubt, by the memory of her beloved Rodrigo, hundreds of miles away in Naples, in the house of his aunt, the Princess Sancia. But all she said was, “I had thought there was another.” She spoke softly.
“Eh?” said the duke, pulling at his ear.
“I had thought,” madonna repeated, raising her voice, “that my father’s son was as much a factor in my marriage as any possible sons of my own.”
I felt my heart lurch and looked away. It was like being forced to witness some ritual of torture, where victim and torturer kept changing places in a kind of macabre dance. My eye was caught by a silver mirror hanging on the wall, in whose uneven surface I glimpsed, not my own reflection, but that of Donna Lucrezia, though so pared down to patterns of light and shade that it seemed more like a preliminary sketch of her face than the face itself, a silverpoint scribble dominated by cavernous eyes and a jaw set rigid with defiance. Her face? Or Cesare’s? A scent of jasmine threaded its way through the stench of sickness, drawing me back to the palace garden in Urbino.
“You think we need protection from some hobbyhorse general like your brother, madam? We, the Este, who have been soldiers for two hundred years?”
Donna Lucrezia shrugged. “There are women of nobler birth than I who might have given Don Alfonso sons, though few as wealthy, I admit. Yet you were gracious enough to agree to my father’s suit. And though I have tried my best to be a good wife to him and a good daughter to you, you have made it very clear to me you were not moved by any affection for my person.” A lesser woman might have tried tears at this point, or spelled out the threat from Cesare more clearly, but Donna Lucrezia did neither. She merely left her words in the air, for the duke to make of them what he would. Released from the spell of the mirror, I watched him twisting this way and that, caught between greed and fear and his grudging admiration for his daughter-in-law. Then he seemed to spot a way out of the trap she had set him.
“If you would only be a little more yielding in certain matters.” His tone was wheedling now, his anger suppressed. “Your household, for example, the suitability of your companions.” His gaze slid lizard-like towards Angela, whose teeth had begun to chatter convulsively despite the warmth of the morning and the bedclothes piled over her. I climbed cautiously to my feet, hoping the duke would not notice me. I needed to fetch warming pans, and more quilts, to sweat out the fever. But with a backward cutting motion of his flattened palm he commanded me to stay where I was.
Donna Lucrezia lifted her chin and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “She was carrying your grandchild too, your grace.”
I closed my eyes. Perhaps if I could not see what was happening, it would not happen. Madonna’s disembodied voice, ringing like skates on ice, cut through Angela’s moans and the silly cooing of doves in the gardens. “I had as much thought for the Este as for my dear cousin in wishing to help her.”
Opening my eyes again, I watched Duke Ercole’s fist, opening and closing as though he were trying to strangle a snake.
“Do you remember when you first came here?”
“It is not so long ago, your grace.”
“I showed you the place where the Duchess Parisina was executed for her infidelity with her stepson. That was not for your entertainment, madam, but your edification and that of your…ladies.” He spat the word, heavily seasoned with sarcasm, at Angela. Her half-open eyes rolled back in her head, though I am certain she had not heard a word he said.
“And with whom, exactly, is my cousin supposed to have been unfaithful? Neither Don Giulio nor his reverence the cardinal is married, though the cardinal, I grant you, should know better.”
The duke snorted. “That’s rich, coming from the pope’s daughter.”
I hoped she would say nothing of Giulio’s honourable intentions or Angela’s true feelings for him. Something told me the duke’s humour would not be improved by the prospect of a second Borgia daughter-in-law. I need not have worried.
“But good enough for your son and heir, your grace. Perhaps his moral welfare matters less to you than that of the cardinal. Through the one you will ensure your position on earth, and through the other buy your seat among the saints.” She glanced down at her belly with a resigned smile and spoke as if to the child inside her. “Well, we are all made use of by our fathers. It is the way of things. But sometimes I think we are more like the cards than the money they are played for. We have our own fate, independent of the players. You, little one, have your own fate, separate from mine, even before the cord is cut between us. What do you think, your grace?”
The duke cleared his throat and stared at his feet. Perhaps he even blushed, though it was no more than the natural colour of flesh creeping back into his grey cheeks and might have been more on account of the rising sun than any discomfiture on his part. But Donna Lucrezia had played a trump and she still held the ace in her womb. Who else, after all, could give the duke an heir but Don Alfonso? Ippolito, the bridegroom of the Church? Pox-brained Sigismondo or Ferrante with his harem of boys? Only Giulio, and he was not of the legitimate line.
“What do you need?” he growled, swivelling his head to include me in his question. “I will send help. Someone to watch Donna Angela while you get some rest. You must rest,” he insisted, glaring at Donna Lucrezia.
“You’re right, father, but perhaps later you would consent to accompany me to see Sister Osanna. My astrologer assures me I shall have a boy, but I should like to have the sister’s opinion.” Her smile was as sweet as must on a grape.
Duke Ercole smiled back, and only I saw how Donna Lucrezia’s shoulders sagged as he closed the door behind him.
“Go to your room now,” I said. “I will stay with Angela.”
She yawned and nodded like a child made docile by fatigue. At the door she paused, reaching behind her back for the lacing of her bodice.
“I can’t...”
“Let me loosen the top, madonna, then you can do the rest.”
“Violante?” she asked over her shoulder while I worked at the laces.
“Yes, madonna?”
“What language do you dream in?”
“I…don’t know, madonna. None that I can think of.”
“I dream in Catalan. Strange, isn’t it, considering I was born in Italy? Angela’s the only person still close to me who does the same. Living close to me, I mean.” So I would know there was another.
W
hen she had gone, I closed the shutters against the foul air rising from the marshes with the sun. Pausing to tuck the bedclothes closer around the shivering Angela, I went in search of a servant to fetch the things I needed. I found a boy sleeping late beneath the stair foot at the base of the Torre Marchesana, kicked him awake, and told him I needed incense, and warming pans filled with olive pits from the heap Don Alfonso used to fire his kiln. Olive pits hold their heat longer than wood ash. His blank, sleepy stare inspired me with little confidence that he would fulfil my order. Then I remembered Mariam had packed what she called “a few necessaries” in the bottom of my trunk when I first left home for Santa Maria in Portico. Creams and suspensions in little blue glass jars, dried herbs in linen envelopes, they had remained where she had put them for, though I might look frail with my fine bones and fair complexion, my health was robust and I had never had need of them. There was bound to be something among them for breaking a fever.
But I was so tired my mind was blank, and the deeper into my memory I pursued their uses, the more elusive they became. I could do no more than identify lavender and spread some crushed leaves on Angela’s pillow to aid peaceful sleep. Impatient to pack the rest of Mariam’s mysteries away, so they would not remain in my sight to remind me of my inadequacy, I knocked one of the glass jars over, dislodging the stopper so the contents spilled in the base of my trunk. I lunged for Cesare’s letter, though the jar held some viscous substance which crept only slowly over the red silk lining. Clove oil, I thought, inhaling its woody, spicy vapour as I righted the jar, good for toothache, and wondered, with the letter crushed in my other hand, if Mariam had provided a balm for a sore heart.
Though it was daylight, and the life of the castle in full spate beyond the bedchamber door and shuttered window, my body was telling me it was night and my mind responded with that bare truthfulness which can keep us awake during the hours of darkness. It was nearly half a year now since I had seen Cesare, and then he had ridden past me without a glance as our party waited to ride out of the Porta Pinciana. I should admit to myself I meant nothing to him, no more than any other pretty girl addled by his good looks and high station. I saw maidens like tall grass, and Cesare striding through them with a scythe, cutting some down, crushing others beneath the soles of his high black boots.