“I assure you, Holy Father, as Master of Ceremonies I will take personal charge of everything.”
“Of course you will. I have asked you that already, yes?” he says, shaking his head. “Well, my, my—it is hot here, and we have been at the desk for hours. Let us take a rest. The daily dispatches must be arriving now. And I am eager to hear from Ferrara. I would not want Lucrezia exposed to any summer contagion. The ambassador assures me she is safe in one of the duke’s villas, but I would prefer to hear it from her own lips.”
CHAPTER 16
When did this pregnancy turn from natural sickness into something darker? She can no longer quite remember.
After the capture of Urbino she had set out to embrace gaiety, holding soirees and unpacking the latest trunks from Venice, including the loveliest—and most expensive—engraved silver crib by a master craftsman from the city. She has commissioned a piece from Tromboncino for the festival of the Assumption of Our Lady with her own musicians as core players, and at night, while she does not have energy for the dance floor (her famous twirls make her nauseous now), she dances with her hands and the tap of her feet as she sits watching others.
The dowry standoff between her and the duke continues. Still, the promise of an heir has softened him a little. He sends presents—prayer books and bolts of the best Ferrarese cloth—and before he leaves for Milan to see the French king, he asks her to accompany him on a visit to his visionary, Sister Lucia.
“I take no journey without her blessing, and with Alfonso away, her prayers will intercede to keep you safe,” he tells his daughter-in-law.
Lucrezia accepts gladly. She has sweet memories of time spent as a child in a convent: the abbess and her teachers all kind women, motherly in their way. But she’s never been in the presence of a truly visionary nun. How wonderful if Sister Lucia’s intercession would protect the baby, perhaps help put an end to this stage of retching bile on an empty stomach. A pregnant woman growing thinner is not a happy sight. And, oh, how she longs to blossom.
Until her own new building is finished, Sister Lucia is housed in one of the city’s older convents. It already has its own saint, the corpse of a nun that leaks miraculous liquid on the anniversary of her death, and while the abbess entertains them royally, it’s clear to Lucrezia that she is less gracious when it comes to her “guest.” Sister Lucia is of such humble origins that she can neither read nor write, and her “condition” is such that she cannot work nor go to chapel without sometimes being carried, so that she is always served rather than serving. As for the visions, well, the abbess herself has not witnessed any. The duke, oblivious to all the sarcasm, gobbles down the cakes and best convent wine. Lucrezia has never seen him so excited.
They are guided to a cell in the corner of the cloister where a young nun stands guard. She bows her head and opens the door for them.
Long before the sight of her there is the smell. How to describe it? Rich, heady, sickly sweet, like fresh flowers mixed with rotting lilies, overwhelming despite the generous bunches of hanging herbs. Lucrezia feels her stomach rising, but the duke is gulping down lungfuls.
“You smell it, yes?” he whispers noisily. “It is the odor of sanctity, proof of God’s grace. There is nothing like it in the world.”
As the gloom recedes Lucrezia sees a pallet raised on wood to the height of a bed, with a figure lying in a shift, a threadbare blanket over her, the shape barely registering under the cover. Her first thought is it is a child, for no woman could be so small and thin. But the face is not childlike at all; instead it is almost shrunken, closed eyes deep in their sockets, chin and cheekbones pushing against stretched skin the pallor of overrolled dough.
“How old is she?” Lucrezia asks softly, trying not to stare.
“She was born in Narni in 1476,” the duke replies, instantly becoming a Church historian.
Which would make her what? Twenty-six. Only four years older than herself. Impossible. She looks more like sixty.
“She no longer needs earthly food. I told you that, yes? God sustains her through the host alone. That is how holy she is. Sister Lucia? It is Duke Ercole here.”
The eyes flick open, huge in the semidarkness, and it seems her lips are moving too, maybe they always are—for there is no sound, just a silent stream of rapid prayer. Does she really exist on nothing but the body of Christ? Is that why she looks both alive and dead at the same time?
“Ah! Yes, see—she knows we are here! Sister Lucia,” he says loudly. “I have come to gain your blessing for my journey to Milan.” His eyes are shining. It’s like he has turned into a little boy, Lucrezia thinks, all the belligerence and pomp washed out of him. “And—and I have brought our new duchess to see you.”
Ignoring the chairs put out for them, he moves closer, beckoning Lucrezia to follow, and as she does so, the nun’s face changes, her mouth stretching into a smile that swallows her lips, and the mumbling is now audible, a warbling singsong like water running over rocks. Then, suddenly and with no apparent effort, she sits bolt upright, as if her torso is hinged, her back straight and thin as a plank of wood and her arms shooting out in front of her, as if to welcome them, or something invisible—because her eyes, as yet, have not blinked—in the air in front of her.
“God bless you,” she cries out, a big booming sound coming out of nowhere. “God bless your journey to the north, my lord, and blessed be the fruit of thy womb, my lady.”
Why do the words send such a shiver through her? This pregnancy of hers must be known about inside the convent.
“Ah, ah. Hear that.” The duke is beside himself. “She can see the child inside you. Sweet Jesus and all the saints, say something. Talk to her.”
Say something. But what?
“Dear Sister Lucia.” Lucrezia edges closer until she might even put out a hand and touch the visionary. “How is it with you?”
And at the sound of her voice, the little nun’s face snaps round in her direction, her mouth falling open into a wide grin, exposing a graveyard of rotting teeth and a blast of fetid air.
“Blessed. Blessed, be the fruit.” She repeats the words, nodding furiously. “Blessed…” Then, equally suddenly, her face changes again, the smile collapsing and a series of little gasps and pants coming out of her, like an animal in pain. Her body, under the shift, starts to tremble, and as Lucrezia stands transfixed, a gob of saliva seeps out of her mouth and dribbles down her chin.
“She is being taken by a vision.” The duke’s voice is full of awe. “It happens sometimes while we are here. See how she shakes. God is inside her. We will get little more from her now. Come, come, we must pray.”
But Lucrezia is still staring. Is she in pain? Should they try to help her? Behind them the door opens and the young nun moves quickly up to the pallet, putting her arms around the rigid figure, gently urging, helping her to lie down. There is such tenderness in the young nun’s face. It would seem the two of them have done this many times before. Lucrezia lowers herself onto the cushions provided, the duke, beside her, already in fervent prayer.
Blessed is the fruit…The womb in the prayer is Mary’s, but here surely it is also hers. Oh, holy Sister Lucia, intercede for me. Take this sickness from me and care for this child as he grows inside me. Please, please…How she pours her soul into the words, but in the heat the stench is ever stronger so that soon she is fighting not to be spewing out her own river of saliva onto the flagstones. And when she opens her eyes and sees the thin face and gaping mouth, she cannot stop a shudder of revulsion.
—
“It is to the eternal glory of Ferrara that she has chosen to live here with us.” In the carriage back, Ercole is on fire with civic pride. “There is not a holier nun in the whole of Italy.”
But all Lucrezia can think is that, far from having chosen, this little woman has been abducted, brought here against her will by the duke. She remembers all the grinding, winding roads between Narni and Ferrara; they must have wrapped her in feather pillows t
o withstand the juddering, for those brittle bones would surely have shattered into a hundred pieces otherwise. God must love her a great deal to give her the strength to deal with such suffering.
As her ladies had rushed around her to ask her how it was, she was lost to know whether she should be describing wonder or horror.
Was she very holy?
Did she rise into the air?
Did you see her eat the host?
And the smell? Everyone says there is a smell. Was it the odor of sanctity?
That question alone she can answer. “It was more like decay.”
The following week, after the duke and his entourage ride out, Lucrezia moves her household to the summer residence of Belfiore, now within the newly extended city walls. Here, for a while, she finds some relief. The building is splendid and spacious, more a palace than a country house, with as many rooms as there are days of the year, and airy loggias and gardens perfect for long summer days, and the history of the Este family singing out from frescoed walls. The duke’s dead wife becomes her silent companion, for her image is everywhere, sitting at concerts, dancing to pipe and drum, glorious and gracious in her wedding procession into the city. In the future perhaps she too will sit staring at a celebration of herself: this miserly duke has a bottomless purse when it comes to glorifying his family.
But Lucrezia is no longer thinking of her allowance. The birth of an heir is of much more importance, and while she is no longer sick daily—praise be to Sister Lucia—there is precious little blooming going on. Stilts, promoted from the post of Ferrarese envoy to head of the duke’s household in his absence, now takes up residence in the palace to watch over her.
“You must not exert yourself, my lady.”
While he has nothing but admiration for her spirit, he is beginning to feel anxious for the flesh.
“And on no account can you receive visitors from the town without telling me. These are dangerous months for the fever.”
She would like to laugh at his worry. She has lived through years of seasonal illness in Rome, dancing and dozing in a dozen country villas while summer fever stalked the city, its febrile fingers occasionally stretching outside the walls as far as farm hovels or servants’ quarters. But, as Stilts reminds her gently, she has never lived in Ferrara, where the network of rivers and waterways seems to delight in trapping fogs in winter and, in the summer, spreading contagion. In the diplomatic circles of Italy, envoys are known to fear a posting to Ferrara when the fever is abroad.
—
Angela is the first to fall: one afternoon she is bright as a songbird, out with the other ladies spearing carp in the fishpond—there are so many fish and they are so well fed that they are too lazy to swim out of the way—the next she is sweating and groaning in her bed. Lucrezia is denied access to her. Messages concerning her welfare pass along a chain of command; she is on fire, thrashing and then babbling like a madwoman. But the delirium is mercifully short, and within a few days, during which she claims she would have taken death over life so wretched did she feel, she is up and dancing again. It is into August now, and half the city is sweating or shivering, but the good news is that what comes fast goes fast and the only deaths so far are old men and sickly children. It has been much worse.
When, as it must, the contagion reaches Lucrezia, its nature seems to change. What starts as a fever disappears within a day. A few nights later, after supper, she is seized by a violent fit of vomiting and on the order of her doctor spends two further days in bed, after which she is better again, light-headed almost with the pleasure of her fast recovery. Her ladies look on anxiously as she sits in the evening breeze, listening to the charming, dazzlingly dressed Strozzi deliver a cycle of poems on the bucolic beauty of summer, “like a woman in high blossom with the carrying of new life.”
She is so determined to be that woman that ten days later, when she falls ill again, she is almost angry with herself for what feels like a failure of character.
Blessed, blessed be the fruit of thy womb, she says to herself, awake and feverish in the night, Catrinella waving a fan over her and mopping her forehead. “I am protected by the holy sister. I cannot be ill. This is simply the heat and I know how to carry a child through summer, I have done it before.” She thinks of those balmy months when she and Alfonso, her first Alfonso, rode out through the territories of Spoleto, where she was governor, and the people flocked to see them, barren women especially eager for her blessing, for they were such a handsome couple and she was indeed radiant with a boy child riding high and healthy in her womb. The joy of the memory is unbearable.
“What is it, my lady? Are you in pain?” Catrinella says softly as she leans over to wipe away the traces of tears.
“No, no, I am in heaven,” she murmurs. Then frowns. “I must get up tomorrow. There is so much to do.”
She puts her hands on her stomach, a noticeable growth now under the soft weave of cotton.
“Do you feel him?” Catrinella asks.
“Yes, yes, though he is a small fish as yet. But they are sly, you know. They often wait till you are trying to sleep. Boys are like that. If you never have a husband, Catrinella, you will never know such things. And that would be a shame, for there is great joy in this.”
But Catrinella sees no joy in the worn, anxious face and swelling body of the woman whom she worships. If she was not so dedicated and if there were convents that took black nuns, she might choose to go now; she does not need to grow any older to know that God is a better bet than any man that she has ever come across.
“Except…”
“Except what, my lady?”
“Except, I wonder if that is true. Perhaps he is so quiet because I rest too much? We would not want an Este boy who sleeps all the time. No cannons would get made that way.” And she laughs, fever lacing the humor.
Next morning her ladies meet in conference with Stilts. That night he writes to the duke, who dispatches his own personal physician back to the city to take over her care.
Lucrezia too is busy with her correspondence, dictating jaunty little messages to both of her fathers. If anything could give me swift relief from my present condition it is your welcome letter, she writes sweetly to Ercole. And to Alexander in Rome: It is a passing summer fever. I will be up and well by the time this arrives.
But the word fever sends a blade into Alexander’s heart. And when he summons the Ferrarese ambassador, the man’s face tells him everything he needs to know.
“I tell you plainly, sir, the well-being of our daughter is more important to us than our own and this news shakes us deeply.”
Rome is full of diplomats who have felt the lash of Alexander’s tongue, and everyone knows that his famous rages contain an element of theater. But not this time. This time there is an icy honesty to his delivery.
“The duchess’s distress over her inadequate allowance has been made clear to us more than once, and it would not surprise us if this illness arises partly from melancholy at her bad treatment. We warrant a swift end to this business would help bring her back to health. Because it would not do, no, it would not do at all, for this ‘condition’ of hers to become more serious. The duke should look to his house, for he holds the most precious thing in his kingdom within it. I trust we understand each other. We will have fresh news from you every day.”
He orders masses to be said in his favorite churches and sits in vigil in the little chapel of St. Nicholas, its architecture more conducive to private prayer than the echoing majesty of the Sistine. But even a pope’s voice is not always steady or humble enough for intercession to be guaranteed, and next morning he orders his own physician, the Bishop of Venosa, to pack and leave for Ferrara.
The man rides for three days, his saddle sores soothed by dreams of curing the lovely lady Lucrezia and basking in the Pope’s gratitude. But when he arrives at the villa, he is just one of half a dozen doctors and the house is in crisis. The duchess has suffered a violent nosebleed. She is lying on the
bed, her head pushed backward with a thick distillation of coriander and borage dripping slowly into her nostrils to staunch the blood flow, her ladies gathered round her like a chorus from one of Duke Ercole’s translated ancient plays.
The bleeding stops, she rallies and everyone lets go of the breath they were holding. Next day she is well enough to have her hair dressed and sit up in bed with the windows open so she can hear birdsong. This “illness” is making up its own rules as it goes along, taunting the doctors as much as the patient.
Outside the bedroom, her two fathers conduct a power struggle through their physicians. Having spent years keeping powerful old men aloof from death, both doctors are certain of their own abilities, and though one of them treats a pope, they have both had experience of pregnant women.
After a week of cautious surveillance, during which she gets no worse, but no better, they differ wildly in their judgments. The bishop notes a certain instability in mood as much as body; the lady Lucrezia is not just ill, she is anxious, even distraught; if her humors could be rebalanced then perhaps her body would be soothed. In contrast, Ercole’s man, Francesco Castello, who has survived decades of Ferrarese fevers and considers himself an expert in such things, is not convinced. He studies samples of her urine and lays his ear close to the hillock of her stomach as if to hear any complaint that the baby might have. He prescribes a poultice and foul-tasting drink whose ingredients he refuses to divulge, and they both agree on a small amount of bloodletting.
In a week it will be the Feast of the Assumption, when Our Lady is lifted up by all the angels into heaven. Statues of her will be paraded through the city, and Tromboncino’s composition will be performed with a dinner later to celebrate this, the first musical commission of Lucrezia’s court.
“What do the doctors say when they are with me?” she asks Angela, who sits with her that afternoon. “Will I be better by then?”
“Yes. Yes. They say you will be completely recovered,” she answers with a big smile. But Angela, everyone knows, is a terrible liar, and the greater the deceit the more energy she pours into it.