by Lisa Hilton
It was never love, what happened between us. Even I was not so starved as to mistake the slaking of his hunger for that. It seemed that all my life, since I left my papa’s house in Toledo, I had been waiting and dissembling. First in the kitchens of the Medici palazzo, then in the porch with poor Margherita, in Maestro Ficino’s study, in the farmacia at the Rocca. I had protected myself by becoming what people believed me to be, by performing the role they believed themselves to have chosen for me – and it had brought me to this. This was my fate, this is what I was cursed to become. I did not mourn for myself any longer, instead I felt at last that I knew what I was and I would no longer be ashamed of it. So I set myself to study what Valentino wanted of me, and whilst I made certain to keep fearful and modest before Caterina, I cannot deny that it gave me pleasure.
For he was lovely, Cesare, as beautiful as all the stories had claimed, as purely and cleanly made as that snow statue I had seen once in a Florentine courtyard. The skin of his face and neck was tan from his season’s campaigning, but the flesh beneath his collar was pale as milk. He liked me to bite him, to draw a thin skein of blood down his chest and follow it with my tongue. There could be sweetness in pain, he showed me, even as his flesh tore at mine and I turned my mouth to fill it with the leather of his gauntlet to keep myself from crying out, even as his pleasure flowed into my wounds. He left me a virgin, though that too I kept from Caterina. How could he leave me anything else? Those few days, I was drunk with him, drunk with his scent in my mouth and the echoing throb of his touch on all the secret places of my body, and though I feared him still, it was soothing to make myself his creature, to feel that, at last, I was where I belonged. Under his hands, I no longer felt ugly. The copper smoothness of my slight body and the slenderness of my thighs were no longer a source of shame. He desired me. And as I watched Caterina, the lines in her face, the slackness of her childbearing belly, I felt a stab of ugly jealous pride that it was I and not she who he took to his bed.
When I woke in the mornings, stunned from the black sleep into which I always fell after I left him, I could believe that I was in a labyrinth, a nightmarish harem from some Eastern tale. I had to trick my way out or feel the softness of a silk sack enclose me before I was thrown helpless into the dark waters forever. I knew that I must not lose my head. Caterina had allowed her passion for her low-born husband to drive her to the vengeance and her state had paid the price. I was determined not to do the same. I had only days to turn his caprice for me to account.
I should make a whore of her as she had made of me. It was not difficult to leave a few of her possessions in his rooms for the servants to find and allow kitchen gossip to do the rest. Soon they were saying in the palazzo that the Countess had not defended her virtue so well as her fortress, that it was she, not I, who had succumbed to Cesare’s lust. What else would they believe of a woman who had been so notoriously free with her lovers? I was a nothing, merely her odd-looking slave. No one would suspect that the soon-to-be Duke of the Romagna might indulge himself with a freak when he had one of the most famous beauties of Italy in his power. I thought that the French might not be so gallant in their protection of her if they thought her shamed, and I was right.
And then, I had to make Cesare believe in me, to need me. I needed to find what it was that made him afraid. For all of his splendour and magnificence, for all that glory seemed to follow him like stardust in a comet’s tail, for all that men believed he moved so swift and silent as to be invisible, for all that his cruelty made him beloved for his mercy, I knew that Cesare was fearful. His Spanish blood ran hot with superstition, with distrust at the magnitude of his fortune. I of all people knew well enough that Spaniards answered to older gods than the one who ruled in Rome. He was careless with his papers, for why should he think an esclava could read? He received letters from the astrologers his father kept at the Vatican in defiance of his state, filled with the kinds of occult signs and predictions I had not seen since my days with Maestro Ficino. If his sleep was fretful, he reported his dreams; he was as suspicious of omens as an old peasant woman. They had played so high, he and his holy father, they believed that they could tame chance to their will, yet Cesare was shackled by the incomprehensibility of his future. Somewhere, he believed that he would die alone, as poor and hunted as he had rendered so many others. Fate tormented him like a courtesan, and he followed her with all the desperate expectation of an apprentice boy clutching at the robe of his first whore in a Trastevere bagnio. I had to make myself strong where he was weak, to convert chance to certainty, to convince him that I could conjure Fortune as clear as a Venetian balance sheet. I could comfort him, I saw, when he woke sweating and shaking from the nightmares that plagued him, his handsome face turned to me drawn with pleading, desperate to know if I could make his lady kind. But how? My sight was gone, if it had ever existed, and I could not risk a mistake. But in the way of the powerful, he was incurious. I existed to serve his pleasure and that was all.
Caterina’s condition was not officially that of a prisoner, but a guest of the French king. She was permitted to read and write letters, to walk abroad, discreetly guarded, if she chose, though the foul winter weather and the wreck of her city dissuaded her from that. I knew that she was afraid of being sent to France, that once Valentino had installed his Spanish garrison and their governors in Forli he would move on to his planned conquests in the remainder of the Romagna. Her presence would be a hindrance in the field, she could too easily become the focus of rebellion. Better send her north, to stitch away the rest of her life in a French castle, for the King of France would never release a Sforza while he planned to hold Milan.
So one morning, Caterina asked for a candle and held it to a letter.
‘It’s good to be a woman, Mora,’ she remarked as the heat of the flame brought out the characters crammed beneath the dispatch, which Valentino’s spies would already have seen. Lemon juice, I thought rather contemptuously. Not sophisticated.
‘They think us such fools, you see. Incapable. It’s coming now, look.’
She read the message and turned to me, her eyes bright.
‘Oh, it is too cruel, and too wonderful. A month ago and my standard would still be flying over Ravaldino. My uncle has an army, twenty-five thousand men, and he will move on Milan.’
I feigned to share her delight, my mind working desperately.
‘Is this known, yet, Madonna? Could Valentino know of it?’
‘My man writes from Chiavenna. They will not learn of it for several days.’
‘My lady, you wish to remain in Italy? To see your children and fight for your state?’
‘Of course. But there will be no need for fighting. My uncle will take Milan and Valentino will be forced north.’
‘Then it is wonderful indeed.’
She was so happy then that she embraced me, and I endured her touch with more disgust than I had ever felt at Cesare’s vicious caresses. She had trusted me, as once I had trusted her. Now, though, I saw that she had given me all that I needed.
*
‘Monsieur le Duc will have peaches to his supper this evening.’
‘Peaches!’ screeched the cook. ‘And where am I to get peaches this season?’
‘I know not nor care not,’ I answered pertly, ‘bottled peaches is what he wishes. Find some.’
I left him, muttering about what you expected from the manners of a whore’s maid, and took a turn in the city. In the ravaged cathedral of San Mercuriale I found something that would serve me and I buried it at the threshold of the palazzo, breaking my fingernails as I prised up a flag. Caterina was tense, pacing her room, sitting down occasionally to scribble at a letter, then up and pacing again, looking to the window, alert for the prospect of news. The coded message from Chiavenna she would not find, since I had taken the trouble to burn it. Slaves had no use for reading, after all.
‘Please, Madonna, be patient. You will exhaust yourself. All will be well, you’ll see.’
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br /> ‘Of course. I should rest.’
‘I will have the bed warmed, and send for your supper, Madonna.’
I kept my voice as quiet and soothing as I could, moving softly about her, making as if to tidy her things so that she did not see me filching a gown and hiding it under a pile of linens, sliding a ribbon into my pocket. When she was settled, I put on my boy’s clothes, looking at her submissively as I did so.
‘Poor Mora.’
‘I do not think I suffer worse than you, Madonna.’
The knock came and I went meekly into the passage where I told the attendant to turn his back and wait. It seemed to take forever to fasten the gown and arrange my hair as I had planned, I could not allow Valentino’s impatience to spoil his temper. If the guard was surprised at my metamorphosis he said nothing, I supposed he had seen stranger things. I dismissed him as we reached the door.
‘My, but we are fine, this evening, Mora. I am flattered.’
‘I am not Mora. I am a lady, a Roman lady.’
And then I said something in Castilian that I thought might get me whipped, or worse, something I had practised over and over so as to get the shocking words out smooth. He took a long breath, and then I feared that he might laugh, but he simply took me and turned me, his hands playing in my loose hair as I raised my gown. I could see the dish of peaches set on the table by the fire. He followed my eyes.
‘A pretty touch, the peaches. Elegant, as I would expect from my sister.’
This time, I did not allow either the pain or the pleasure of his touch to send me away into that half-swoon where I knew nothing but the quiver of my hurt and my longing for release. I bit my lip and made the sounds he expected of me, I moved just so in his arms, enough for him to hurry on through my suffering until he collapsed on top of me, his face buried in the silver of my hair. I let him rest a moment, then turned beneath him, shaking out my gown and fetching the plate from the fireside. I poured wine calmly, allowing him time to order himself. When I turned, it seemed he had already forgotten me, would not even hear the sound of the latch that marked my going.
‘Would you take some wine, sir?’
‘Would you poison me again? You may leave me.’
‘Sir, I have discovered something. Something you would wish to know.’
‘Very well. Quickly.’
‘I worked in the scrittoio of Maestro Ficino before I came here from Florence. I saw much of his art, sir. He said I had . . . a gift.’
He was curious now, curious and fearful, I could see it in the change of his face as he looked on me.
‘Ficino, you say?’
‘If you will come with me, sir. We will need a torch, and a guard, if you wish.’
He bridled at the idea that he might fear to be alone with me. I took him down through the sleeping house and as he held the flare with his own hands I prized up the paving slab and reached inside. I thought on my mummings with Margherita’s customers, and when that didn’t work, I thought on my papa, to keep myself from laughing. It was really so very easy.
‘ To speak with angels, sir,’ I whispered, making my voice as quiet and mysterious as I could. ‘My master taught me this. It is from the Kabbalah, sir, from the lands of the East before Our Lord even walked there.’ I sounded just like Margherita, I had to turn a giggle into a cough. ‘To speak with angels, one says a message over the image – thus.’ I held up the icon I had filched from the cathedral to the light. ‘And then it must be buried at the threshold, so, with the name of the person who is to receive it, and a piece of parchment for the angels to leave their answer. And then, if the calculations are correct, the answer will come within a day. And here it is.’
I had made it myself, written in wine which I hoped would look like blood in the flickering light of a torch. It was a poor charm, in truth. Maestro Ficino had never made it work, he said that he had never made the calculations correctly, but then Valentino was not to know that. I held out the paper to him with a puzzled look, appealing to his wisdom to interpret these strange scratchings.
‘I asked the angels, sir, I asked them what would happen to my lady. When I saw the writing, I knew they had answered, so I came to you.’
‘And I am to believe this, this Moorish nonsense?’
But his eyes were scanning the paper. It told him just what the coded letter had told Caterina, of Il Moro and his great army, raised by his relative the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, of how they had massed in the frozen fastness of the Alps and were even now descending on the lake country in their pursuit of Milan. I could see his mind, working quickly, calculating how this would affect his plans, his pact with the French, but also his suspicion, his inability to believe that this could be anything other than another slave’s trick.
‘How can you know this? Have you spoken with the Countess? Seen a letter? You can read?’
‘No, sir, but there are many ways of reading. And there is no letter. My lady knows nothing of this.’
‘Mind to whom you are speaking! Be clear.’
‘As I said, sir, I assisted Maestro Ficino at the Medici palace in Florence. You might send your couriers, sir, to see if I am correct. But perhaps it will be Monsieur d’Allegre who wishes to ride north.’ I made my voice servile, wheedling. ‘I thought you might be glad, sir.’
‘D’Allegre. Yes. I will send at once. Return to your mistress.’
‘I await your pleasure, sir,’ I answered, allowing just a hint of insolence in my voice as I bobbed him a curtsey and skittered out of the range of his hand.
He screwed the scrap of parchment into his palm and turned into the house. In moments I could hear his voice rousing the guard, summoning his horse. I could have run then, if I had wished it, slipped through the streets of Forli before I was missed, yet, meekly, I waited his bidding.
The key was turned in the lock after me as I entered our chamber, and the door remained locked as two short winter days crawled past. Caterina was mad with anxiety, craving to know what was happening, where Valentino was and why she was being treated as a prisoner again. I said the words she expected to hear, that we must be calm and simply wait, for would not her uncle of Milan send his men south as soon as he had recovered his duchy? So intent was she on her own plight that she missed the mechanical hum in my voice and the dullness in my eyes. For myself, I no longer cared. If I had failed, Valentino would kill me and I should be glad to be quit of my wretched life. I knew, though, that my dreams were not done with me, for had I not seen him there, in the Holy City? I trusted calmly that I should live that long, at least.
On the third day, Valentino returned. We heard the shouts in the cortile, the noise of hooves. Caterina was at the window, she turned as the men entered, but not quickly enough to move before they clapped a pair of iron cuffs on her wrists.
‘What is this? How dare you use me so? You will answer to the King of France for this.’
‘No, madam. There are no Frenchmen left in Forli. You, girl, pack your mistress’s things and look sharp about it. You’re moving.’
Caterina sank on the bed, her hands twitching uselessly in their fastenings.
‘You must do as you are bid, Mora,’ she sneered wearily. ‘It seems once more we are betrayed.’
‘Take courage, Madonna. We will go to the coast, no? To Pesaro? You have your kinsman there.’
‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘If the French are gone against my uncle, Valentino will not continue his campaign in the Romagna without their lances. He will cut his losses. And my cousin of Pesaro has been burned by the Borgia once. Rome. He will take us to Rome.’
PART THREE
ROME
1500
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ON THE FIFTH DAY OF THE SECOND MONTH LUDOVICO Il Moro made himself once more Duke of Milan, while Cesare Borgia was proclaimed Duke of the Romagna. We were long gone from Forli, then, even had he troubled to send his men against Valentino to deliver his troublesome niece. Caterina was placed in a litter, its leather curtains lac
ed tight, concealing, at least, the ignominy of her fastened hands. For three weeks we crawled through the filthy February weather, to Cesena, towards Urbino, cross-country to Spoleto, then Vicovaro. Caterina’s litter was carried on the middle of the train, behind the company of five hundred horse that remained of Valentino’s cavalry; I travelled further back in the baggage train, where I heard my own Spanish tongue and the strange, guttural speech of the Gascon and German mercenaries. We entered no cities, at night we bivouacked wherever we were ordered and I was permitted to attend Caterina and make her what poor toilette I could. We might have been passing through Hades, so thick was the grey mist that surrounded us, so silent the villages we passed. Even their church bells stopped at the approach of Valentino, all the peasants hiding in their huts or run away.
I did not expect to see him until he had use for me again. The news from the north had proved that the little Spanish slave was serviceable in more ways than one. Caterina was kept under the guard of twelve Spaniards at all times, who searched me before I was permitted to enter the litter, mussing my mud-splattered gown and making bawdy remarks, until I silenced them with a few of my own. After that they treated me cautiously and then, as the journey wore on, began to speak a little to me of the news from the couriers who occasionally passed us like spirits, the sweat on their horses discernible in the still, icy air, long before they came in sight, riding for the head of the train. Il Moro was at Novarra, the French were closing in. The Sforza, it seemed, would not hold Milan for long, and Monsieur d’Allegre, it appeared, had forgotten his French gallantry. We were served the same poor rations as the men, hard black bread, thin greasy soup and a few handfuls of dried fruit, no plate or napkins, not even wine. Caterina was permitted to leave the litter only to squat and relieve herself, where I did what I could to shelter her with my skirts. She was weak and grey faced and her unwashed hair dulled to a greasy bronze. Nothing in her treatment indicated what she had been, no courtesy was paid to her rank or her state. When I heard the men talking of the use she had accepted at Valentino’s hands when he had kept her in his rooms at Forli night and day, I did nothing to check them. She was of no more account than a discarded alehouse trull, and though I was sure to keep my countenance about her, I rejoiced inside that she too now knew what it was to be nothing.