Sins of the House of Borgia

by Sarah Bower

  I went there nearly every day, often at Ferrante’s prompting, to try to persuade her to visit her lover. He asked for her constantly, and her absence made him weep, and the salt in his wounds made his suffering almost unbearable. Ferrante could not understand her heartlessness. I repeated her concern about her baby, in the hope this would blunt Giulio’s pain, but what I knew to be the truth was dark and hopeless, and deeply rooted in Angela’s Borgia blood. She would not see him because she could not bear to look at him. She had loved him for his beauty, for the full, golden plumage of his youth, and there was no compassion in her heart for a scarred, blind wreck of a man. Listening to her increasingly thin excuses for her failure to go to him, I began to understand something about Donna Lucrezia also, about the way in which the murder of Don Alfonso of Bisceglie seemed to have sunk to the bottom of her heart’s ocean. What they loved, these Borgia women, what they clung to for their own survival, was success. By allowing themselves to fall foul of their attackers, both Giulio and the Duke of Bisceglie had failed.

  ***

  Donna Lucrezia had offered my services to the doctors, saying I had knowledge of healing and was unflinching in situations which might defeat a less robust temperament. She did not know the half of it, I thought, as I modestly bowed my head and the doctors in their black robes smiled like jackdaws stealing trinkets. One morning, when I had removed Giulio’s dressings so the doctors could inspect the progress of his wounds, Ser Andrea, the senior of the two physicians from Mantua, said he wanted to try a treatment on the right eye he had once witnessed in Florence, and despatched me to the market by the cathedral to purchase two white doves. Giulio himself, though hazy from the effects of the poppy juice I had given him before taking off his bandages, whispered to me to light a candle for him to Saint Lucy and to ask her to bless the doctors’ endeavours. He gave me a smile full of sweet mischief.

  “If you think she will listen to my entreaties,” I said.

  “Oh, I think she is kindly disposed towards me. I can see you this morning. With this eye.” He pointed at his left eye, keeping his finger well away from the ragged and roughly stitched cut which followed the line of the eye socket but had miraculously missed the eye itself.

  “What can you see?” demanded Ser Andrea, opening the window shutter a fraction.

  “An angel in a halo of light.”

  Ser Andrea crossed himself and Giulio laughed. His laughter blurred my own sight with tears; it was so long since I had heard it. “Fear not, doctor, I’m not dying. The light falling on Monna Violante’s hair is doing something quite extraordinary. As if I were looking at her through a prism. This earth we live on, you know, is full of miracles.”

  I left quickly, before I began to weep in earnest. He was a miracle himself, it seemed to me, with his stoical and forgiving temperament. As my slave and I fought our way through the market, she with her basket and I with my elbows, I grew angry, half on Giulio’s account and half with him, for his failure to rail against Angela or vow vengeance on Ippolito, or even to complain about the cruelty of his fate.

  “He might as well become a monk,” I muttered, shoving my way to the front of the crowd around the best poultry seller. He had a stall right beside the cathedral’s main doors and proudly flaunted the arms of both the Este and the archepiscopate on the little flags that snapped above his rows of plump, trussed fowls.

  “Who should?” A man’s voice, full of laconic amusement, too close to my ear. I was in no mood for familiarity. A thin, greasy rain had begun to fall, which did nothing to improve my humour. Rather than answering the question, I stepped back hard on my inquisitor’s foot. He gave a hiss of pain, and I focused my attention on beating a large woman in a high, turbaned headdress to the last pair of pigeons.

  I sent the slave back to the castle with my purchases and went into the cathedral to keep my promise to Giulio. I took my candle from the store in the side chapel where my Madonna of Strangers gazed out at the priests and altar boys, the nuns visiting from the country, the shoppers and businessmen, and the girls stealing glances at boys from behind their veils and chaperones. Giulio had given me a gold scudo to pay for my prayers, so I thought I could afford a second candle for Catherinella. I lit my two small lights and added them to the bank of jaunty flames and smoking stubs beside the altar, then leaned against a misericord set into one of the pillars flanking the chapel and let my thoughts carry me where they would. I thought of Giulio, and of Ferrante’s unsung bravery, and Ippolito’s charm and the close, gruff duke and what must be in his mind, having lost his father, his son and the loyalty of his brothers in the space of a single year. Briefly, I remembered my own brothers, before my mind revolted from its last memory of Eli, raging among the tangles of fallen wisteria in our courtyard. And shifted, inevitably, to Donna Lucrezia’s brother, to Cesare, unimaginable in prison, and our son, now more than two years old, whom I probably would not recognise, even if I ever saw him again.

  “Good day, mistress.” Gideon d’Arzenta was straightening up from his bow as I came to myself and realised someone was speaking to me.

  “Ser d’Arzenta. What are you doing here?”

  “Praying for my foot,” he answered with a rueful smile. “Somebody stamped on it at the poultry seller’s. I am afraid it might be broken.”

  My embarrassment made me short with him. “It serves you right for speaking to a lady without making yourself properly known.”

  “You’re right, my manners are appalling. My sister is forever telling me so. Please forgive me.” He dumped down his basket of vegetables and a trussed goose which lay on its back with its tied feet in the air and flapped furious wings.

  “How is your work progressing? I hope you are settled in here and beginning to feel at home.”

  He shrugged. “One thing about the Jews, they belong nowhere so the whole world is their home.”

  The goose honked, drawing a hostile stare from a priest who had begun fussing about the black Madonna’s altar.

  “Perhaps we had better go outside,” said Gideon. “I fear my goose might give me away however well I keep my star hidden.”

  “It looks as though you’re planning quite a party.”

  “It’s Hanukkah. Had you forgotten?”

  Hanukkah, when I was allowed to stay up late to help my mother, and later, Mariam, light the candles. Mariam and I would always have the same conversation. I would watch her dipping sweet cheese in batter for bimuelos and ask her why we always ate cheese at Hanukkah.

  “To remember how Judith tricked Holofernes,” she would reply.

  “Why did she trick him?”

  “Because she was a brave woman who did what she had to.”

  I shook my head, but I could not look at Gideon and I knew he must realise my denial was a lie.

  “Why don’t you join us?” he asked. “Come to the house where I’m staying tonight for the candle lighting. And dinner, of course,” he added, waving the indignant goose at me, “if your husband will permit it.”

  We were standing in the shelter of one of the cathedral’s two west doors, from where I could see the Torre Marchesana, and the walkway leading to the Torre Leone, and Duchess Eleanora’s orange garden, where the rain was making the braziers smoke.

  “I have to attend Don Giulio.”

  “Even at night? Is he so sick? The word in the city is that he will live.”

  “Oh, he will live, in his body at least. Though the light has gone out of his heart as it has from his eyes. He is the best, sweetest man alive and how she can treat him so…well, she doesn’t know how lucky she is, that’s all.”

  “You are clearly very fond of him. I hope you don’t make your husband jealous.”

  “I’m sorry, I spoke out of turn. Forget what I said. These are family matters. And why,” I added after a short pause during which my better judgement should have prevailed, “do you keep talking about my husband? What makes you think I am married?”

  Gideon cleared his throat and suddenly seem
ed absorbed by the vegetables in his basket. “I just assumed…I mean, you seem married.”

  “I am not.”

  “But you wish you were. There is someone, isn’t there?”

  “There is no one, I assure you, Ser d’Arzenta.”

  “Good, that’s settled, then. I will meet you at the San Romano gate at sunset.”

  “I cannot promise,” I said. “I must have leave from Donna Lucrezia.” It was unthinkable that she would permit me to attend a Jewish festival, yet as I hurried across the square, head down against the rain, I was already devising means of escaping from court for the evening.

  ***

  I used Angela as an excuse. She would lie for me if need be, if only to make herself feel better about Giulio. Choosing a slave for whom I had once successfully recommended a coltsfoot poultice for his piles, I sent him to her with a message and told him not to return until well after the household had retired for the night. The sun had already set by the time I left the castle; madonna had changed her mind several times about her dress for the evening, even though, or perhaps because, she was to dine alone with the duke. Then Fidelma accosted me with a request that I read the sermon Fra Raffaello proposed to give on the last Sunday of Advent; if I found it persuasive, she reasoned, then it would surely move even the least pious of his congregation.

  Shining his light on my face, the officer of the watch recognised me and let me pass. Though the evening was overcast, the clouds seemed to hold the last light of the day just long enough for me to cross to the gate at the corner of the cathedral square which led into the Jewish quarter. It was high and blind, and I had no knowledge, yet every knowledge, of what lay behind it. As Gideon stepped out of the shadow of the wall, holding aloft a torch whose light stuttered over the bumpy, irregular landscape of his face, I was so full of apprehension I almost turned and ran back to the castle. But he had placed his hand under my elbow to guide me, and the guard had pushed open the wicket with an admonition to Gideon not to cut it so fine next time, and it was too late.

  The streets were empty, yet the jumble of tall, old houses seemed to pulse with life, as though their flaking walls and slipshod roofs could scarcely contain the press of humanity within them. All the ground-floor shutters were open and the window spaces filled with little constellations of lights. Snatches of conversation, sudden shouts of laughter, or the shrieks of excited children spilled out into the gloom of the evening, and as we passed one house we heard men singing to the jolly clatter of a zither. The damp air was laden with cooking smells; whenever I breathed in, rich scents of hot oil and caramel, roast goose and fried onions gathered in the back of my throat, making me salivate.

  I almost missed the narrow entrance to the alley where Gideon lived, so as he turned to his right, I attempted to walk straight on and we collided. For a second our bodies brushed together, and it was as though the lights and laughter and music had formed a tight little ball in the pit of my stomach, a bimuelo of joy soaked in a delicate syrup of desire. I broke away and walked ahead of him down the alley, heedless of his warnings to tread carefully because it was muddy and there might be rats and next door had a vicious cockerel which kept odd hours for a chicken. I could not possibly desire him; I was not even sure I liked him. Then, out of the dancing shadows cast by Gideon’s torch, by some magic Cesare’s features appeared to me, the red river of his hair, the dazzle of his smile, the sharp, savage bones of his face. Was that what he had made me into, a woman stricken with lust for any man who accidentally touched her?

  “This is it,” said Gideon, pushing open a street door and standing aside for me to enter.

  The door was warped, and the sound of it scraping on flagstones set a dog barking and brought the family out to greet us. Perhaps it was the fact that the courtyard was tiny, and almost completely filled by a broken fountain whose cracked tiles flashed blue as a summer sea in the torchlight, but there seemed to be at least twenty people jostling and smiling and welcoming me into their home for Zot Hanukkah. Several children pushed to the front of the crowd and stared at me out of round, solemn owl eyes and I remembered, with a pang of guilt, that I should have brought gifts. Yet here I was, empty-handed and with nothing in my heart but the bitter echoes of an aborted love. A man whom I took to be the head of the household scolded the children and they darted away, weaving like fish between the women’s skirts and the long, dark robes of the men.

  They had delayed the lighting of the lamps until our arrival, and now led us into a room which was unlit except for the shamash candle, the menorah behind it like a small tree glowing in the dark. We gathered around it, the adults shuffling politely, pushing the children to the front, passing babies from hand to hand until everyone was settled. I stood at the outer edge of the circle, with my eyes cast down to avoid looking at Gideon, who kept gesturing to me to move closer. At the lighting of the first candle, I flinched, but perhaps it was more a recoil of the soul than the body because no one seemed to notice, not even Gideon whose gaze I could feel upon me, insistent and concerned. So I found myself relaxing a little as the ceremony proceeded. I discovered I could remember all the words of the blessings, could even note the places where the customs of this household varied from those of my father’s house.

  When all the candles had been lit and the menorah taken to stand in the open street doorway, the lamps were lighted in the main room and the women began to bring food to the long table which sparkled with silver and bronze and coloured glass. I knew these people, I thought, as an elderly woman in black handed me a wide majolica dish of buttered cabbage and told me to set it on the table. They were the same people I had shared the festivals with as a child in Rome, living unnoticed in small, plain houses with everything they owned of value or beauty packed in boxes, ready to leave. But if you went into their houses at Purim or Hanukkah or Yom Kippur, you would see how they could blossom, as suddenly as flowers in the desert when it rains. The older girls and their mothers would exchange their modest, even drab, clothes for striped silks and slashed velvets, and headscarves tinkling with tiny gold coins. Tableware of wood and horn would be replaced with silver and glass, and there would be dishes coloured with saffron and turmeric, fragrant with cinnamon and nutmeg and the distillation of orange flowers. My father, with his expansive self-confidence and his broad network of roots in the city, kept a very different house. It looked like the country villas of the goyim to whom he lent money to build them, and it was right on the edge of the Jewish quarter so if my brothers and I climbed the tallest of the plum trees in our orchard, we could see right into the upstairs windows of the Christians.

  After the meal, the children were made to clear the table and then Gideon stood up and began to delve theatrically in his pockets. As the children crowded around him, he began to pull out, one by one, beautifully carved and decorated sevivot, one for each child and all unique.

  “He has been making them for weeks,” a young woman told me, in a proud, proprietory tone which made me take particular notice of her. I thought her beautiful, in the same frail, ethereal way as Dorotea Caracciolo. I saw she wore no wedding ring, and watched Gideon to see how often he looked in her direction. But he was wholly absorbed in handing out the little spinning tops and explaining the rules of the game to his over-excited audience, one of whom had now clambered on to the table and was trying to dislodge Gideon’s skull cap. I had a fleeting, uncanny sense that I was looking down some kind of magical telescope into the future, seeing him as he would be in ten or twenty years, a benevolent patriarch presiding over his family. The prospect warmed me for a moment, and then I wished I had never come, because what was his future was my past, and the past is a place you can never go back to.

  I rose abruptly.

  “Are you unwell?” asked the young woman, with perhaps a little more hope than concern.

  “I should leave,” I said, addressing myself to Gideon. “If I stay too late I will not be able to get past the guards at the gate.”

  “Oh, don’t
worry about them. They’re used to me going in and out at strange times.” He grinned. “I tell them the duchess has summoned me to talk about her commission.” A hum of nervous laughter ran around the table, eyes flicked in my direction then dropped away again. The children, sensing tension among the adults, fell silent.

  “Well,” I said, forcing a smile, “it is true we often keep late hours. I suppose you might be believed.”

  “So you will stay a little longer?”

  “No, really, I…you have all been very kind and the meal was delicious but…”

  “I will fetch your cloak,” said the young woman, rising from the table.

  “Then I will escort you home,” said Gideon.

  “You will miss the Cordoban,” warned an older man who wore a full beard and ear curls.

  “I shan’t be long. Go to my room as usual when he arrives. Everything is ready.”

  The night had cleared and grown colder, and a hazy moon silvered the wet roofs. Most of the Hanukkah lights had gone out now, and the old streets harboured nothing but slinking cats and the faint residual odours of roast goose and burnt sugar. And us. Gideon and I, listening awkwardly to the loud crunch of our footsteps.

  “Who is the Cordoban?” I asked, to make conversation. “I am sorry you will miss him on my account.”

  “Best you don’t ask,” he replied, his matter-of-fact tone at odds with his words. The gulf between our worlds yawned and secrets seethed in it.

  “It was kind of you, Gideon,” I said, “but do not ask me here again.”

  “You used my name.” He sounded triumphant. “You used my given name. Of course I shall ask you again. Didn’t you enjoy yourself? Wasn’t the food wonderful? Weren’t you made welcome?”