Inside, the city is reduced to one of the circles of hell. There is smoke and screaming everywhere, rioting, howling soldiers—some as big as giants—careering up and down streets. Piles of furniture and chests are being hauled into carts while bodies dangle from first-story window frames or lie half trampled in the gutters. It is not the Borgia way to encourage such behavior, but the smell of revenge is in the air, and who can blame soldiers who have camped out through freezing nights if they choose a little violence to warm their blood? It is his first experience of the madness of looting, and it leaves him shaken.
Once barricaded inside the safe house, he finds a laid grate, with wine on the table. When he has coaxed a fire into life, he pours himself a drink and from his saddlebag pulls out paper, ink and quill. What else can a diplomat do as a city burns?
There is little chance I will dispatch this tonight for want of finding anyone in Sinigaglia to carry it, he writes hurriedly, as the screams curl up from the streets below. The rebels are taken, along with the city, and it is my “opinion”—he pauses for that last word gives him a certain pleasure—that the prisoners will not be alive tomorrow.
It would take even the fastest dispatch rider two and a half days to move such news from one side of Italy to the other.
Toward evening on the first of January in Rome, Cardinal Orsini is enjoying the attention of his barber, who, having shaved him perfume smooth, is now trimming his tonsure when the mad banging comes at the doors of his palace. Any churchman of worth who has spent his life in the sewer of Roman politics knows the tremor of fear that comes with unexpected guests announcing themselves so roughly at his private house. He dismisses the barber and pulls on his robes: newly cleaned for the occasion, bright scarlet against the white trim. As a uniform it can be too warm in summer, but it makes perfect evening dress for a January night in the Vatican.
He takes his stick with its finely carved bone handle and makes his way to the landing, which affords him a fine view of the curling stone staircase and the open courtyard down below. The hammering has got worse. Eventually the wood will splinter against the force of pikes and axes. He wonders how many men he might meet outside were he to try to reach the back door.
He sees again the room in his castle at La Magione, all those faces around the table distorted with fury and revenge. Once released, it is a plague that leaves no one untouched.
Well, a supper with the Pope has never been something to look forward to. Better to start thinking about the bribes that will be needed to have his own cook deliver food to his new home in Castel Sant’Angelo.
WINTER–SPRING
1503
Inside the Vatican it is believed that the Pope has grown afraid of his own son.
—Venetian ambassador 1503
Were I an angel I would be consumed with pity for any man who loved as much as I do.
—An unsigned letter addressed to FF (nom de plume for Lucrezia Borgia), Ferrara 1503
CHAPTER 30
The events of Sinigaglia reverberate through the country like the aftershocks of an earthquake. For months Italy has been in thrall to the drama of this conspiracy, and its denouement could not have unfolded better: plots and counterplots, layer upon layer of deception, lurid tales of traitors hewn in half or tied back-to-back to chairs, blaming each other and sobbing for mercy as the garrote tightens around their throats. No one feels sorry for them. Treachery is a disease of the age, and there is not a ruler who doesn’t dream of taking vengeance on those who have shafted him in the past. He may be a Borgia bastard, but he is a cunning, brilliant one, and his charmed destiny is capturing everyone’s imagination.
Within days of his coup the dark prince and his army are halfway across Italy, the dead rebels’ towns throwing open their gates to him. Fermo, Anghiari, Monterchi, Città di Castello, they are all Borgia lands now. The Baglioni brothers have fled Perugia and even the Duke of Siena (“I never agreed to their plan. My representative had no right to sign on my behalf!”) is fighting for his political life. While in Rome, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Orsini, head of one of the Church’s most powerful families, sits in a dank cell in Castel Sant’Angelo. The Borgias are now the most powerful family in Italy.
From Mantua, Isabella d’Este blows extravagant kisses in Cesare’s direction, sending him a public gift of a hundred carnival masks, because even the greatest leader must enjoy a little free time. Carnival masks for a man who has many faces but never shows his own! In between the cannon salutes and festivities in Ferrara, Duke Ercole cannot stop talking about it all: his daughter’s wit, his son-in-law’s military brilliance and, of course, most of all, his own precious Borgia daughter, blooming with health and nightly exhausting her dance partners as she skips and smiles her way through yet another celebration.
When she sits to catch her breath, one cannot mistake the power of her beauty: the sheen of her skin, the shine in her eyes. Not only has the Duchess of Ferrara left death behind but she has embraced life with a particular vibrancy. Or perhaps it has embraced her, for there are those who believe that is what love does to a woman. Such a homecoming Lucrezia Borgia has had.
In the first days the calm of the convent sat like an aura around her. In the castle there had been fires in the grates and morning mists swirled like the steam from witches’ brew over the surface of the castle moat. She had sat through court evenings, a spectator at a parade of fashion; two seasons had come and gone since the fever struck, and everywhere she spots signs of sartorial change: a different cut of the neck with stitching to show off the contrast, a new plaiting of the hair around the ears with a pendant of pearls hanging from the center. How strange, she had thought, such innovations do not necessarily make the wearer any prettier; they were striking only because they were new. But she knew even then that this was convent wisdom speaking and of little use to her here. The fact was she and her ladies would need new fabrics for new styles. And at last she had the money to pay for them.
Her chief fashion buyer, Ercole Strozzi, whose dandified ways do not go down well with the duke, had taken himself to Venice but promised to return immediately with everything the duchess could possibly want. He also promised a more particular present for which no payment would be enough, and anyway he will accept none. For it will be your gift to me to allow me to give it. She had had to read the sentence twice. It seemed that even courtly language had changed with the passing of a season.
As good as his word, he was back within a week with loaded mules and an invitation to a supper party at his country villa. The ladies had ransacked their wardrobes for suitable attire. How they were in need of him. The duke’s great performance was scheduled in ten days’ time, and everyone must be at his or her best.
Strozzi had greeted them in the courtyard, his crooked body startling in a suit and cloak of matched apple green velvets. She couldn’t help but stare. Sweet heaven, she thought, if this is the color of Venice this winter, then it certainly doesn’t suit everyone.
The panniers were thrown open in one of the receiving rooms, and the ladies descended like vultures. Strozzi looked on benignly, then took Lucrezia to one side and from a silk covering unwrapped a finely carved and painted wooden bird on a perch, a string hanging beneath. Holding it aloft with one hand, he pulled the string with the other, and the bird’s wings flapped up and down as its beak turned from side to side, opening and closing in silent song.
“Its voice is so exquisite that only the gods can hear it. Though perhaps you caught a little of it yourself. I thought of you immediately. I could see it hanging from one of the trees in your terrace garden.”
“Oh, it is quite lovely.” She had laughed in genuine delight. “This must be the gift you spoke of.”
“Oh no, my lady duchess. No, no, no, the gift I brought you is much more valuable.”
He smiled in a conspiratorial manner, while at the same moment looking over her shoulder, raising his hands in what felt very like mock surprise.
“Ah, ah! Bembo! I spea
k of the devil and here you are in person. Your poet’s ear must have heard the bird’s call. My lady, I offer you Pietro Bembo, the son of one of Venice’s finest families and the city’s foremost poet and scholar of the new learning. He is come to visit your father the duke, who appreciates him dearly, and to pay homage to the sweetest duchess Ferrara has ever had, a woman who lights up the city as the sun does the earth. Thank God for her return, for the world has been a desert without her.”
Caught between his ludicrous hyperbole and the bizarreness of such a “gift,” Lucrezia found herself lost for a reply.
“I must apologize for my reprobate friend.” He was in front of her now, a tall well-dressed figure rising from an elegantly executed bow. “I fear Signor Strozzi has been too long in Venice and grown fevered in his speech. It’s a familiar malady among visitors. We Venetians believe it comes from the smell of too many foreign spices. A few dishes of Ferrarese eels marinated in vinegar should do the trick.”
Pietro Bembo. Of course she had heard of him. But the only poets she has ever met have paid dearly for their talent with their looks. Here, he instead was a singularly handsome man: high forehead, clear gray eyes, patrician nose and sculptured, smooth chin, in contrast to so many men who hide the lack of one under a bush of hair.
The room had grown quiet. Behind her she made out the rustle of skirts as her ladies fanned closer. The very air was growing sticky with female admiration. But not Lucrezia’s. Forced with this peacock male perfection, she had a sudden image of wrinkled old Sister Bonaventura bent low and humble over books and potions, and the contrast made her unexpectedly angry.
“Signor Bembo, you are welcome to Ferrara,” she greeted him coolly. “Duke Ercole will be pleased to see you. You are invited no doubt to see his latest spectacle.”
“I have been awarded that honor, yes. I look forward to it greatly. It is a long time since I have seen a new translation of Plautus.”
“Then you must hope it doesn’t feel even longer when you do.”
Now it was his turn to stare. “You are not fond of Roman comedy, my lady duchess?”
“I would be if I had ever seen one that made me laugh.”
Behind her, Angela let out a loud nervous titter.
Lucrezia turned her head to silence Angela, only to be met with a row of faces, eyes wide with apprehension.
Yes, yes, she thought impatiently, I know, such sourness is uncalled for.
But in front of her, Bembo was smiling broadly. Forget the stories you have heard. Strozzi had done a good job of preparing him. She is pretty as the dawn with a siren smile to warm the coldest heart. Yet here was something even more interesting. A challenge.
“You must forgive me. I have not been well recently,” she added carefully. “It is possible I have lost my appetite for entertainment.”
“Then I will pray for its return as fervently as the whole of Venice prayed for your recovery. And it does seem, my lady duchess”—he hesitated as if he did not yet have the right words—“that you are…splendidly recovered.”
“Thanks to the nuns of Corpus Domini, yes.”
“In which case I shall add them to my prayers this very night. For their care has preserved a radiance and wit without which any city would be bereft.”
The compliment was offered up like a garland of flowers. To her distress she felt a slight blush rising in her face. If this was the resilience that comes from surviving death, then she would be better off without it.
“Ah,” he said quickly. “Now I am the one who must ask forgiveness. It seems even a Venetian can be affected by foreign spices.”
“Ha!” She laughed. “I thought you were just being a poet!”
“Oh no, my lady.” And his tone was sharp. “No. Upon my honor my poetry is a good deal better than that.”
Behind them, Strozzi stood amazed. He had expected this “gift” of his to be a triumph and was at a loss as to how to save the situation. Nevertheless, when the call came for dinner, Bembo offered his arm, and Lucrezia, with barely a second’s hesitation, took it.
“Is it true what they say: that in Venice there are as many printing presses as there are days of the year?” her ladies heard her ask as they gathered behind them.
Venice: lacy stone palaces, sunlight on water, ships covered in gold, any and every luxury from the far-flung corners of the world. How perfect that he had come from there. And how perfect he was! A patrician poet, who could turn a compliment into verse, had little interest in cannons or whores and was surely an expert on the rules of court dalliance with a woman married to someone else. It was just what was needed to restore their mistress to her former radiance and bring some joy to her life. Clever old Strozzi! The ladies flocked around their lame, overdressed green parrot, fussing and complimenting him on his taste in all things. Oh, the joy of men’s company again, how they had missed it. Especially court dandies with an appetite for gossip.
“You know he is considered the best writer of his age,” Strozzi whispered as they moved toward the salon, prettily bathed in candlelight. “Dozens of women in Venice are in love with him. Indeed he is busy composing an epic work on the very nature of that feeling. I tell you it will alter the future of Italian poetry. Ferrara is the ideal place for him to continue writing it. I am sure he would be most happy to let the lady duchess read it.”
And so a poetic affair had begun.
CHAPTER 31
“I would like to ask you to image this: the courtiers are settled in the gardens at twilight by the cool of the fountain. The subject of their discourse is the three aspects of love: its torments, its joys and the greatest love of all, which passeth all human understanding. One man makes the argument for each case, though the ladies are vociferous in their interruptions. The summer air in Asolo is sweet and the talking goes on long into the night…”
Bembo pauses to let his evocation of the scene sink in. Around him, his audience is entranced.
“The courtier Perottino goes first, and delivers a diatribe against human love as the embodiment of all degradation and evil.”
“Wait!” Lucrezia injects eagerly. “His name is Perottino, yes? Which, if one says it very fast, sounds very like Pietrobembo, don’t you think? Certainly more so than—who is it?—Gismondo, to whom you give the defense of love. So, you are putting yourself in your poem, Signor Bembo? In which case you too must have suffered these torments that he talks of.”
The ladies cry out in joyful agreement. They have identified entirely with the women in the poem and are lounging in summer twilight, even as they sit by the well-stacked fire in the villa where Bembo has made his writing retreat. He would be well received at court, but he is serious about his work, and in better weather Strozzi’s house, with its forests and gardens, has been perfect for his poem’s bucolic setting. With winter biting deeply now, he should be thinking of returning home.
“A poet draws on his own life, as of course he must. But I would say—or rather I would hope—that Perottino’s arguments go deeper than that. He links amore—love—with amara—bitterness, with each growing from the other, and he goes on to show how the fires of love destroy and corrupt, fueling hatred, jealousies, feuds and despair.”
“Still, in my opinion he’s at his most passionate when he talks of his personal suffering,” Lucrezia says mischievously. “His words burn us much as they do him. That surely comes from the man as well as the poet.”
“Yes! Yes! She hits you there, Bembo,” Strozzi cries out as the women applaud. “You’d better move your work from Asolo to Ferrara. The name of the place is nowhere near as lovely on the tongue, and hardly anyone knows where it is anyway.”
Everyone laughs. This is the third meeting of the unofficial Ferrara poetry society, and Lucrezia’s ladies, though not natural scholars, are showing a hunger to learn equal to the pleasure it gives them to see their duchess so enjoying herself.
“I have a question now, Signor Bembo.” Nicola waves her hand, eager and smiling. “If love is as ev
il as you say it is, then why did the ancients have a god of love? How can a god be evil?”
“Ladies—but this isn’t fair.” Bembo puts up his hands in mock defeat. “You have read the work already.”
“No, I swear, the pages have been in my hands only,” Lucrezia protests. “I have talked of it, of course, but I never mentioned Cupid. Ah, except I have now!”
His sigh is full of mock drama. “Then I am superseded in all ways. In which case I leave it to the duchess to offer my argument. I am sure she will do it better than I.”
“Very well.” She lifts herself up into a declamatory position. “Our poet—what shall we call him?—Perottino Pietro Bembo—sees Cupid as the perfect symbol for all that is wrong with love. First he is a child, which is what he reduces men to. Then he is shamefully naked, as he strips naked all who fall prey to him. He has wings, just as lovers foolishly feel they can fly, and he carries a bow and arrow, which speaks of the wounds love will inflict.”
“Bravo,” he says quietly. “I can say no more.”
“Indeed you can’t.” Strozzi is already pulling himself off his chair. “Though next time we would all appreciate a little more in love’s favor. Now, I for one would like to stretch my poor crooked legs. Perhaps some of the ladies might like to join me. I have had refreshments laid out in the salon.”
They make such a handsome couple, sitting in the glow of the firelight. In the weeks since they met some courteous letters have been exchanged, along with a sheaf of manuscript paper, which has kept her up late into the night. Poetry. No great court should be without its practitioners, and while she is still waiting for her husband to return, it is good to have things to pass the time. Or so Lucrezia had been telling herself.