“Then he has strange ways of showing it,” Alexander growls. “I should never have let her go so far away from me. A man is nothing without his family. My dear sweet daughter, how could I…” And he waves the ambassador away, as if this pain is too much to be witnessed by another.
When Burchard enters a little later, he finds the Pope bowed over, sobbing unashamedly.
“Your Holiness, can I be of any assistance?”
“Ah, but we are undone. She is delivered of a dead baby months before time. Sweet Mother of God, at least it was not a boy. And now she lies in the arms of death. What have we done to deserve this? How have we so offended God that He brings such sorrow upon us?” He moans as the sobs engulf him again.
It is not a question that looks for an answer. Burchard watches silently, remembering the period of crazed grief that had followed the death of Juan. The Pope’s cry had been the same then. Why? How? What had he done to deserve this?
The world outside this room is filled with men who would gladly cite chapter and verse on that, laying myriad crimes and corruptions at his door, but he does not see it like that. For Alexander, this thing is only between him and God, always somehow a personal battle between equals.
For Lucrezia now it is simpler.
There had been moments following the birth when the spasms in her belly felt like the start of a second labor and she had known that the fever had returned. But all that has faded. Time and pain are as meaningless as any of the faces that hover in and out of her vision. It is as if this body of hers, which has caused her such distress for so long, belongs now to someone else.
She is dimly aware of consternation around her—hushed voices, the sound of weeping—but it does not bother her. She has fought as hard as she can and there is a relief in knowing that there is no more she can do. It is quiet where she is. There are no companions populating her delirium, no insistent memory loops to remind her of the past, or what she is leaving. Instead the pull is toward sleep, deep and dark, lapping like rising warm water around her; no threat of drowning, just the promise of gentle buoyancy. She has an image of herself floating, her shift lifting her, filled with pockets of air, her hair like plant tendrils waving about her head. Then as the water rises higher, she returns to her body. She can hear a rushing sound in her ears like the sea and the rhythmic pulse of what she knows to be her own heartbeat—thud thump, thud thump, thud thump—as if she is alive inside herself. There is still no fear, only the same sensation of weightlessness, warm and secure. Is this what the baby felt as it rolled and settled itself inside her? Thud thump. Such a close, safe place. Dying in here would be a gentle leaving. God will understand. She will be forgiven. She has done her best. She feels the touch of warm liquid on her forehead and her feet. Curling around the heartbeat she hears the drone of something, in the distance, voices in prayer helping her on her way. It is all so easy…
—
She opens her eyes onto darkness. A single creased face looms over her, and a hand is feeling for hers, running its fingers over the inside of her wrist, probing, searching. She recognizes the features of Torella, her brother’s doctor. How strange that he should be here at such a moment, but then of course he is also a priest.
“Don’t worry. There is no pulse,” she says quite clearly. “I am dead.”
And she falls asleep again.
—
Oh, how they will talk about those words later, moving them through a chain of whispers and letters that will crisscross the country, bringing painful smiles even to those who consider themselves her enemies. Few people come so close to dying twice, and graveyards are full of women buried with their stillborn babies. The Lord is merciful. That is the mantra that travels with the news. Her doctors, who would dearly like to take the credit, for it has been a long thankless summer of risked reputations, are the first to acknowledge it: childbed fever is a killer. The Pope’s physician, the Bishop of Venosa, had made a final plea for bloodletting, but soon enough he and Torella had swapped their physicians’ caps for priests’ robes, leading the prayers of last rites and the ceremony of extreme unction, anointing her forehead, hands and feet with warm oil, as they called for the forgiveness of her sins in preparation for her journey to God’s side.
It is, everyone agrees, a miracle.
In her temporary cell, it is said that the holy sister Lucia lifted off her pallet and floated in the air at the very moment the doctors were saying last prayers, in her own magnificent intercession for God’s grace. Sadly, by the time the duke got there she had already descended back to earth, but the heady smell of sanctity that flowed out through her gap-toothed smile left him in no doubt about Ferrara’s special relationship with the Almighty.
When the duchess is well enough for the news to be made public, the whole city erupts: the musical thunder of church bells as people flock to mass and take to the streets to give thanks for their duchess’s survival. It is only nine months since they were celebrating her wedding, and memories of her energy and good humor are fresh in people’s minds. Her recovery secures Ferrara’s safety from the Borgia menace and marks the end of the worst of the summer fever; the angel of death is moving on for another year. As for the baby: well, where there has been one, there will be another. If the world wailed over every loss of a child, no one would ever stop crying.
—
“Oh, madam, you should have seen Torella’s face when he came out of the room!”
“He said he found your pulse only after you told him there wasn’t one.”
As soon as she is well enough to sit with her ladies, their joy at her return is spiced with the stories they can weave from it.
“He went straight to the chapel and stayed there for hours. We think he was asking God to help him in his doctoring skills.”
Lucrezia watches them talking, so chirrupy and sunny.
I am dead. The words are the saddest she has ever heard.
“Do you remember it, my lady?” Camilla asks gently.
“No,” she says, “not at all.”
All she remembers is the sensation of floating, warm and weightless, no body, no pain, no fear. How close was she before she was pulled back? Sitting here now in the sunshine, she feels as if she has yet to fully return.
Everyone agrees it will take time: before she returns to court there must be a prolonged period of convalescence. A convent would be ideal. Ercole is delighted; she can live close to his beloved holy Lucia. Her first sign of recovery comes in her refusal. Bone-thin women and bad breath are not what she needs now. Instead she chooses the gentler Clarissan convent of Corpus Domini, tucked away in the heart of the old town, intimate shady cloisters, the perfumes of flowers and herbs and nuns who like to laugh as well as pray.
She is not the only one absenting herself from court. Alfonso d’Este now reveals that when he had feared she was dying, he had made a secret vow that he would make a pilgrimage on foot to the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto if she was saved.
“You on pilgrimage? On foot?”
When he announces it to his father, things do not go well.
“You amaze me! Well, I suppose it will do you no harm. Though Loreto is a long way away. You should go by horse or you’ll be gone for half a year, and we need another pregnancy sooner rather than later. Or are you planning to use the trip to study cannons and fortresses along the way?”
Alfonso, who had been toying with the same thoughts—both the horses and the cannons—feels the fury rising. These last weeks have seen his dislike of his father turn to something more fiery.
“And, Father?” he says bluntly. “What will you do to show your appreciation for my wife’s recovery?”
“Me? I shall press ahead with the building of Sister Lucia’s convent. It is her we thank for this intervention. You know that she actually levitat——”
“That’s not enough,” Alfonso cuts in.
“What?”
“It’s not enough. The Duchess of Ferrara deserves more.”
; “What do you mean?”
“You should pay her what you owe her. Honor the dowry agreement that was made with the Pope and give her her full allowance.”
“I really don’t—” The duke hesitates. For years he has despaired of his surly uncommunicative son. But this is not what he was looking for. “I don’t see what this has to do with anything, Alfonso.”
“The Borgias are too powerful for us to hold our noses in the air any longer. Lucrezia brought a fortune with her, and you have treated her badly for long enough.”
“Ha! Now I understand. This is that bastard brother of hers talking. What did he say?”
“I don’t need anyone to say anything to me. This is what I think.”
“Then how dare you!” Ercole croaks, puffing himself up like an offended toad. “Questions of state are my business and I will do as I see fit.”
“No, Father, you won’t.”
Alfonso takes a step forward. Such a powerful man he is grown into, those ham-hock hands on arms strong as a wrestler’s, and tall now, at least head and shoulders above the shrinking old man in front of him. He could knock him down with one blow. “If you want the House of Este to survive, you will treat my wife with the status she deserves.”
Ercole’s mouth has fallen open. As he struggles to find the right words, Alfonso is already walking out of the room.
—
Whoring, warring, blasting guns and defying his own father. These are momentous times in Italy, and men of hot young blood have to stick together.
AUTUMN–WINTER
1502
The Lord [Duke Valentine] is very secretive and I do not believe that what he is going to do is known to anyone but himself….Hence I beg Your Lordships not to impute it to negligence if I do not satisfy you with more information, because most of the time I do not even satisfy myself.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, dispatch to Florence from the city of Imola November 1502
CHAPTER 21
“Every one of you in this room knows why we are here.”
Vitellozzo Vitelli sits hunched in his chair, his face shiny with sweat. A pox on this pox. Each new attack digs deeper into his bones. He’d started out that morning on horseback, but within a few miles it had felt as if his legs were breaking and he’d done the rest of the journey to the Orsini castle propped up in a blanket slung between two poles, swearing at every pothole. But his pride wouldn’t let him be carried into their presence, and so he has crawled, crablike, up the low-tread stairs into the gloomy chamber. The company of men around the table have waited on his arrival. Of course. For there is no one in Italy who has more to say about this pus-filled treacherous monster of a papal bastard.
“We are staring at our own destruction. Valentine’s attack on Urbino, his treachery toward his own men and this new deal he’s made with the French are a declaration of war. King Louis will not lift a finger as he chews and spits out each and every one of us. The only chance we have is to hit him before he hits us.”
He pauses—turning to look each man in the eye. Some he already knows well: his fellow condottieri, Gian Paolo Baglioni from Perugia, the two Orsini cousins Paolo and Francesco, and Oliverotto da Fermo, who less than a year ago knifed his way to power in a room not unlike the one in which he sits now. Then there are the newcomers: an envoy from the deposed Duke of Urbino, a representative from Siena, and another from Bologna. The latest rumor is that the Pope has signed a bill of excommunication for the ruling family in anticipation of an invasion. If Bologna is to be next, there can be no clearer signal of what is to come.
And finally there is Cardinal Giovanni Battista Orsini, the head of one of Rome’s oldest families. He is not wearing his scarlet robes today, but then he is not about God’s business here. If indeed he ever was, Vitelli thinks sourly. The carving of the family’s crest stands sharp on the fireplace behind the old man’s seat. The castle had been a gift from the Pope in return for the cardinal’s support in the conclave that had elected him ten years before. But the two families had always been more enemies than allies, and two years later, during the first French invasion, the Orsini had spectacularly changed sides, stilling the guns on fortresses north of Rome and giving the invaders safe passage into the city. The scale of the treachery had taken even Vitelli by surprise. In retaliation the Pope had had the head of the family. Four months later, he’d been fishing his own son Juan out of the Tiber, his body riddled with stab wounds.
Vitelli can still remember the fury and panic rolling out of Rome in the days that followed. Juan had been an arrogant little prick, and the Orsini weren’t the only ones with cause to rip his guts out, but their names came top of the list. It was always only a question of time till the Borgias meted out suitable punishment. Vengeance. He is not alone in being sustained on its promise; it runs like a blood-colored thread through centuries of Roman history. Nevertheless, if the Orsini are going to make the first move, they will need to be convinced they can win.
“Everything you say is correct, Signor Vitelli. We all know the threat.” He has a thin whiny voice, the cardinal, as if his nostrils don’t take in enough air to fill his lungs. Certainly there have been tougher, more charismatic heads of the family, but his political instincts, honed on decades of Vatican backbiting, are sharp as ever. “However, as long as the Pope and his bastard son have France behind them, it would be better if we had others on our side.”
“There are no others, Cardinal,” Vitelli answers firmly. “If there were they would be here already. Ferrara and Mantua are tied up by blood and Florence is a state of craven fools.”
“It is also, as you know, protected by the king. In name at least,” the cardinal says mildly. “It’s a shame that Venice cannot be persuaded to go openly against them. She would be happy enough to pick up the pieces.”
“God’s blood, there’ll be no pickings for Venice here!” Gian Paolo Baglioni from Perugia is up on his feet, his hands balled into fighter’s fists in front of him. If the Baglioni family had managed to squeeze a pope out of their loins, everyone knows it would be him out there now terrorizing half of Italy. “If you’re not in on the risk, you’re not in on the spoils. That’s what this is about. Once we’ve taken Valentine’s states they’ll be divided up among us all.”
There is a small silence as they all digest the wonder of that prospect, and the infighting that will ensue. “Go on, Vitelli,” Baglioni urges. “Tell them how we do it.”
Vitelli pulls himself up in his chair; the throbbing in his bones could be the drumbeat an army might march to. Since the humiliation of his retreat from Arezzo he has been caught in a depression as black as the devil. The only thing to rouse him is the thought of coming face-to-face with the man who betrayed him, for both of them to die with each other’s daggers buried deep in their guts. “We launch a twofold attack. Use local discontent to stir a rebellion inside one of the fortresses near Urbino, then, while the duke is busy protecting the jewel in his crown, a separate force from Bologna marches to attack him in Imola. With artillery and surprise on our side we can blast our way in.”
He knows, knows that if they move fast enough they can do it.
“What about da Vinci’s fortifications? He’s been on the duke’s payroll for months.” The envoy from Bologna has a growth on his nose the size of a ripe grape. Vitelli imagines himself opening it up with a stiletto.
“Da Vinci’s a clever engineer. But he’s been in Imola only a few weeks. Even he can’t rebuild a fortress in so short a time. Which is all the more reason to move fast.”
“Exactly!” Baglioni jumps in. “The longer we piss into the wind the more time he gains. I tell you, it’s started already. Two days ago my men intercepted a courier from the Pope to Valentine with a message instructing him to invite all his condottieri to a meeting in Imola and seize them all.”
His words have the desired effect, everyone yelling curses and descriptions of what they would likely do to intimate parts of the Borgia body. Vitelli throws him a furious look.
In a league of equals this intelligence should have been shared earlier—if indeed it is true at all. Being in partnership with the Baglioni is like being tied in a sack with scorpions.
“And if he finds out what we’re doing?”
Scorpions and cowards, Vitelli thinks. Lady Paolo, that’s what they call the pudgy young condottiere Paolo Orsini, because he’s always the one in need of a little seduction.
The room falls silent. Spies. How do they feel about everyone else at the table?
“God damn it! Look at you all. Like a sewing circle of women!” Baglioni can barely contain himself. “I know this Borgia bastard better than any of you, remember. My brothers and I wrestled with him in the mud when we were children at school in Perugia. Any chance he got he would bite chunks out of you. He was a bully, a liar and a cheat then and he is the same now. The only thing that stopped him was hitting him hard when he wasn’t looking.”
The idea of a young Cesare and the Baglioni brothers rolling in the mud with their teeth in each other’s flesh is a dish too rich for many imaginations. The cardinal and Vitelli lock eyes. All this is wind and fury, not enough to tip the balance. Something more is needed.
“What if we had someone of our own?” Vitelli says slowly. “Someone working from inside his camp?”
“You have someone in mind?” the cardinal says quietly.
“Valentine’s governor in Cesena, the Spaniard, Ramiro de Lorqua. He’s a vicious fucker, but I hear he’s been creaming off the profits from grain supplies to line his own pockets. If Borgia were to learn about that, he’d cut his legs off. I know the man, I’ve ridden with him. I believe we could use that as leverage to bring him over to us.” He pauses to let the information sink in. He can feel the cardinal’s attention on him. “His nose is out of joint now too because the Duke has him out running all round the Romagna recruiting new troops. I could be at his side within a few days. It won’t be hard to stir up trouble in Urbino. And once that starts…”