“My dear, dear cardinal, how good of you to come.”
The Pope waddles in in full ceremonial robes, arms open and face wreathed in smiles. The two aging enemies embrace, scarlet encased by shining white.
“I will not insult you with wasted words or pleasantries, Giovanni,” he says as soon as they are settled. “This is as difficult for me as it is for you. Bitterness is a familiar taste in both our mouths, and I freely admit that over these last years I have wished you ill for the wrongs of the past. As you have me.” He is sitting forward now, serious, intent, the gold fisherman’s ring prominent on his clasped fingers. “But whatever our differences, neither of us has anything to gain from unleashing madness. To protect yourself from me you have got into bed with a rabble of thugs, diseased dogs with no respect for authority of any kind who would take down all order if it is in their interests. And when they run riot we will all be the losers. I asked you here today to offer you my hand, as your pope and as a father, to try to find a way to end this discord between us. To talk frankly about what we want from each other, and how we might make amends for the past before this flailing conspiracy brings chaos on both our houses.”
The wine is poured, and Giovanni, hesitating only to watch Alexander take a swig before him, raises his own goblet. In among the egregious lies, there are nuggets of truth that cannot be ignored. He thinks of da Fermo’s uncle butchered like a farm animal, and Baglioni using his own blood for ink. These days a man has scant choice between allies and enemies. He offers up a thin smile and carries on listening.
Such pleasure it brings Alexander as his words flow, warm and soothing as the oil of extreme unction. He may be irritated with his son, but there is still no better politician inside the Church when it comes to the art of dissembling.
In the coming weeks Niccolò is not the only one to notice the change in security arrangements in Imola. The number of guards on the towers that overlook the Via Emilia westward toward Bologna is reduced, and he and other diplomats are given ringside seats in the piazza to welcome the arrival of the duke’s new recruits. The whole city is invited, and men feast on their own fattened pigs bought at generously inflated prices by the duke himself. If the citizens had their choice they would live under Borgia rule forever, for it is sweeter than any they have had before.
There has been no time to put the seven hundred new soldiers in uniform, and they have yet to master the art of walking in step, but their very roughness gives off a sense of threat. Niccolò watches them intently. These are men of the Romagna employed now to protect their own lands, in embryo a citizen militia the like of which he has dreamed of for Florence ever since he entered government. When they are joined by the French infantry and a cohort of Swiss pikemen, both on forced march from Milan, the duke will, as promised, have clear military superiority over his enemies. Enemies who were once his paid friends. Also, and in his mind this is almost as important, though the rebels still hold Urbino, not a single other town has risen up and joined them. The Borgia power base remains firm.
Finally there are the swirling rumors of rapprochement. It is impossible not to be impressed, even admiring. He already has a letter out to Biagio in Florence, requesting a copy of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, comparing the great generals of Greece and Rome. Now he sits down to compose his formal dispatch to the government, struggling to make the language of diplomacy sing.
In my opinion these rebels have taken a dose of slow-acting poison. The duke is a man accustomed to winning, and with the king and the Pope behind him, he has both the means and the will to triumph again. Whatever the reservations about his final intentions, it would be in Florence’s interest to make a formal treaty now.
He uses the days of waiting to pay another visit to Imola’s best brothel, only to find that the arrival of the troops has inflated the prices. His mood is not improved by the delivery of Biagio’s letter.
—
Sorry, Il Macchia. His friend’s cheerful voice slides into the room. There’s not a copy of your Plutarch to be found anywhere in the city. You’ll have to go to Venice for that. It wouldn’t help you anyway. The word from on high is that while you do a fine job supping with the devil, they need less “opinion” and more facts. And I have to tell you frankly you are an asshole if you think they will make a treaty with His Lordship. Getting into bed with your duke is not the way the wind blows here.
His duke? Less opinion more facts! What? They send him to get close to a man and then accuse him of not being able to tell seduction from substance! And yes, he has opinions! They have barely scratched the surface. He thinks again of the soldiers in the square and how much stronger Florence would be if she had her own militia, rather than paying through the nose for professionals who shaft as easily as they support. My God, there will be much to talk about when he returns; he and Biagio will need to take rooms in the tavern…
In Imola, however, satisfying conversation is becoming increasingly hard to find.
—
By the time Florence’s formal rejection arrives, the duke has no need of a treaty anyway, for the conspiracy is collapsing on itself. Cardinal Orsini is publicly received back into the arms of the Pope, and the head of the Bentivoglio family from Bologna comes in person to Imola to be welcomed by the duke. It seems there is no quarrel between them now at all, and Bologna’s freedom is guaranteed. To his chagrin, Niccolò hears about this visit only thirdhand.
On his way to deliver Florence’s answer, he can barely gain passage along the street for the press of soldiers. Outside the chamber he is kept waiting for the first time. Cesare Borgia clearly has more important people to see. After a while the doors open and a grubbily clad Paolo Orsini comes skulking out. Paolo Orsini! One of his own condottieri! Is he really so feeble of mind—or so desperate—that he thinks the duke will ever forgive his betrayal? Niccolò remembers the words of his own dispatch: A dose of slow-acting poison. It is just a question of where and when the bodies fall. What would he give now for an invitation to dinner at the Borgia table?
But when he is finally admitted, the duke remains busy at his desk, not even looking up to acknowledge his arrival, so that he must stand in the entrance like the supplicant he has again become.
“Good morning, Signor Smile,” Cesare says at last, his eyes still on the page. “What can I do for you?”
“I have come to offer congratulations. Your commanders take back fortresses using underground passages, but here you welcome your enemies in through the main gate.”
“What? Bologna and the simpering lady Paolo Orsini, you mean?” Cesare says with studied casualness as he looks up. “Yes, they have been pestering me for weeks. You see how they govern themselves, the whole cowardly bunch: write friendly letters, negotiate agreements behind each other’s back, even pay me courteous visits. It falls out, I think, exactly as I told you.”
Niccolò shifts on his feet. There is no offer of a chair this time. “And you believe their goodwill after so much treachery?”
Cesare looks at him sharply. “What I ‘believe’ is that men play games with each other. Such is the business of diplomacy, is it not?” And just for a moment it seems as if he might be tempted to talk further. But instead he smiles coldly as he pulls some papers toward him.
“As you see I have much to do and we have unfinished business between us. The last time we spoke you were waiting on a dispatch from the dozen committees that run your wondrous republic. I hear that you entertained a rider from Florence yesterday evening. So, tell me: has your command of history finally convinced them or have they grown used to the feeling of spokes up their arse from so long spent sitting on the fence?”
CHAPTER 26
In Corpus Domini, Lucrezia has reinstated the hand mirror hidden at the bottom of her chest.
“Welcome back, Duchess of Ferrara.” She tries out her smile. The face that stares back at her is that of a healthy young woman with full cheeks and a glow to her skin. It is time to think of going home. She is ready. Co
nvent life, for so long a balm, has begun to feel tedious in its repetition. Winter light is draining the warmth from the brickwork, and as the nights grow longer, the mornings bring in fog, rolling through the cloisters, swallowing huddled figures of nuns inside a sea of gray. There are days when it barely lifts at all, as if the whole convent is going into hibernation, while she is in the full bloom of spring.
Over these long weeks messengers had kept her abreast of news at home and abroad, following the tightrope journey of the Borgia fortunes. Cesare’s letters are short, loving but guarded, while her father, as ever, lets his feelings flow, careening among misery, fury and triumph as the worst of the threat drains away. Meanwhile, her husband’s brief bulletins from his pilgrimage down the eastern coast of Italy (the shrine at Loreto seems to have played only a minor part in the journey) now report that his travels will soon be drawing to a close. He should be back before Christmas. And she must be there to welcome him.
She visits the abbess, who feigns more sadness than she feels at the news of the duchess’s departure. If the honor has been unprecedented, so has the length of the visit, and it has had its effect on convent behavior, especially that of the novices living in proximity to a group of women who pay more attention to preening than to prayer.
It isn’t their fault. Ladies-in-waiting are singled out early as the daughters who will not be nuns, and the novelty of playacting has long ago worn thin. It has been hard for women so creative with color to be dressed in black mourning a baby they never knew, or to wake to a day that is the same as every yesterday; no male flirtation to lighten the mood, no spice of intrigue of any kind save the most petty sort that breaks out among cooped-up women whose menstrual flows have fused together into the cycle of the moon. Young Angela, in particular, missing the excitement of her illicit courtship with the duke’s bastard son, has become most unhappy, picking fault with others, who in turn have started bickering among themselves.
“Oh, but we are all turning into nuns!” Angela shrieked one morning, eyes wide with horror at the thought, hanging her head in apology when she turned to see Lucrezia in the doorway.
—
Their leaving date is set by a message from the duke himself.
“Who would believe it?” Lucrezia looks up from the letter delivered that morning from the ducal palace.
“My father-in-law Ercole—in his own hand—tells me he remains in deepest purgatory without my smile and begs us—begs no less!—to return to court in time for a performance of a new translation of a Plautus comedy he has planned for the end of December.”
There is, of course, an ulterior motive.
The wind from Imola brings daily news of Cesare’s diplomatic triumph over the conspiracy. Whatever comes next, it seems certain now that the Borgia flag will be flying ever higher, and it is in Ferrara’s interest for Ercole to show how much he values his beloved daughter-in-law.
Yet it isn’t simply politics. Surrounded once again by the same old courtiers, he has missed the sparkle that she and her ladies brought to his gatherings. What is the point of another spectacle with no sense of occasion, no discerning audience to show it off to? He has also missed her dancing. An old man cannot pray all the time, and recently he has found himself growing misty-eyed at the thought of a pretty woman who dances with the same vibrancy as his own dear Eleonora. Strange how the longer she is dead, the more fond of her he becomes.
“And!—Oh—” Lucrezia breaks off from the letter, as if she can’t quite believe the words.
“What? What?” Her ladies urge her on. This is more excitement than they have had for weeks.
“After thought and guidance from God, it is his pleasure to offer me my full annual dowry income. I shall be paid half in cash—five thousand ducats—and for the rest, all of my household allowances will be absorbed into his. Well, who would believe it?”
And the ladies are on their feet, whooping, dancing for joy, already seeing the bolts of silks and damasks unfurling their colorful way from Venice to Ferrara.
“He must have been humbled by how nearly he lost you,” Camilla says when they get their breaths back.
“More likely he is in ‘purgatory’ because that was where his levitating nun told him old misers go,” Angela chips in. “What?” she says as the others hush her. “I am simply saying what we feel. Anyway, ten thousand is only fair payment for having to sit through another of his excruciating plays.”
But Lucrezia is laughing too. “You must ask God for a little more patience, Angela. Or do what I do sometimes in chapel here. Close your eyes as if you are praying and think of something else.”
Their laughter has a tingle of shock to it. “You, my lady! Pretending to pray!”
“Why not? We are not become nuns yet.”
Oh yes, the Duchess of Ferrara is recovered.
—
The trunks are packed, and a final farewell service is being planned for Vespers, when Lucrezia uses the excuse of work hour to seek out the infirmary mistress in her dispensary.
It is the first time she has visited Sister Bonaventura’s workplace. The small room is made smaller by walls of shelves, on which sit dozens of bottles and jars, identified in a minuscule script as if a trail of methodical ants had walked through ink onto the labels. How many years’ work is there here? How much knowledge?
She finds the nun crouched over a desk, making notes.
“I have come to thank you, Sister Bonaventura. I would not be so well without your help.”
The nun raises a hand in a flutter of dismissal. “I am grateful that with God’s grace I have been of some use, Lady Duchess.”
Lucrezia is glancing around at the regiment of cures that stand in line on the shelves. “You have built a world in this room. How long have you been here?”
“Me? Here? Let me see—I came before Duchess Eleonora arrived from Naples to marry the duke. Which would make it…thirty-three, no thirty-four years.”
“I see.” Those eyes, even in the gloom of the room, remain arresting. Had she been pretty when she was young? Of course she had. “Did you choose to be a nun?”
“I was fourteen,” she says evenly in answer.
“Fourteen? Ha! My first marriage had taken place when I was that age.”
Giovanni Sforza. She has not thought of him for so long. A saggy, sad man, terrified of his own shadow. Or rather the shadow of her family. Not such a foolish fear given how the marriage turned out. Fourteen. What could one possibly know?
“I am sure God chose wisely for us both.”
How much she has grown to admire this woman: her plain speaking and her calm demeanor. Lucrezia hesitates. She would not like to discover that the aura of peace disguises too much pain.
“I suspect the difference between us, Sister, is that you must always have been a little wise.”
The elder woman drops her eyes. While she is at ease speaking her mind, she doesn’t spend much time on herself, either in diagnosis or in remedies.
“Still, you have no regrets. I mean, given your life here?”
“Regrets. None at all.” One does not need to be wise to know what little point there would be in that. At the wooden bench a small box is waiting, filled with bottles and jars. “I have prepared some drafts and further ointment for you, my lady. In case you should need them.”
“Have you bottled up some of your peace in one of them?” She laughs slightly. “Court life can be so noisy and distracting.”
The blue eyes hold hers for a moment. When a question is asked more than once, it deserves some answer.
“It is not my business, my lady, but over the years I have nursed a few women who have come as close to death as you. I am not sure if it has brought them peace, but I see in them a kind of resilience, in spirit perhaps even more than in body.”
“Then I shall happily be one of those,” Lucrezia says gaily, fearing suddenly that if she stays any longer she might start to cry.
“Tell me.” She turns at the door. Is this m
ischief or resilience? “I don’t suppose you have the wherewithal to mix up an aphrodisiac.”
For once she has the pleasure of watching those eyes blink slowly in evident surprise.
“No, of course you don’t.” She smiles. “See—it is just as well that I married young, for I would not have made a very good nun.”
After she has gone the dispensary mistress stands for a while in front of her wall of remedies, cataloging their properties and their provenance. Sleep, peace, aphrodisiacs. Such a treasure-house God had locked up in nature. And what havoc a dissatisfied dispensary nun might wreak if she were in the mood.
CHAPTER 27
The conspiracy is dead. From Perugia the Baglioni brothers send fawning greetings while Vitelli and Oliverotto da Fermo negotiate the return of Urbino, claiming they have been grossly misunderstood. They renew their pledge of service to the Borgia cause and await the duke’s instructions. He graciously accepts and guarantees them further employment and the independence of their own cities. Niccolò watches it all as it unfolds, his admiration matched only by his incredulity. How could any of them be telling the truth?
Winter descends on the city, bringing wind and icy rain. But it is the drop in diplomatic temperature that makes his life particularly inhospitable. The duke’s feelings and, more important, any hint of action are now shrouded in cold clouds of secrecy. He has no use for Florence anymore; its clever envoy has failed to bring him the one thing he wanted, and so he is cast adrift. In Cesare’s place, Niccolò knows he would have done the same thing.
But it is not just Florence that is ignored. The duke seems to have turned his back on the diplomatic game altogether. Instead he has returned to his old habit of inverting night and day, so that the only time to see him is when everyone else is in bed. There are rumors of alternating lethargy and tantrums, even a reoccurrence of the agonies of the pox. But all is conjecture.