“If the storm is past and the men are strong at the oars…”
If. Such a small word. If the last hour had seen them take on more water, if the main mast had shattered rather than splintered under the strain. The sea is a mistress fluent in ifs….Yet they are still here now to count the ways.
“I am sure they will make land safely, Your Holiness.”
But Alexander too is thinking about what is, against what might have been. Such a long journey it has been since he was witness to that shipwreck so many years before. Success, wealth, influence, the papacy, the foundation of a dynasty, and now the Borgia name in charge of a string of city-states with the promise of more. So much achieved. Yet so much still to do. However powerful he is, he cannot do it alone. He has already lost one son to the stupidity of vanity. This is not a time to lose another. He lets his chaplains lead him inside. After the showmanship of the storm he is in need of private prayer.
—
The rowing boat hits the sea with a violent splash, taking in buckets of water as it rights itself. The drop from the bulwark rail is sheer, the hull a moving cliff face on one side. The rope ladder bangs frantically against the wood. Cesare, stripped down to a shirt and jerkin with a rope around his middle, stands stock-still, waiting for the moment, two of the boat’s strongest galley men poised to climb next, Michelotto and his own men behind. All signs of nausea are lost in the flood of excitement. His mind is as sharp as a blade, his senses singing. Death, when it comes, will feel this clear, this sweet and shining. He knows it. What is there to be afraid of?
He pulls himself over to the top and onto the ladder. He is barely three rungs down when the galley lurches wildly, flinging him off and slamming him back against the hull. He rights himself fast, oblivious to the pain in his ribs, then pushes off against the wood with his feet, using the rope as a lever to bounce his way down until he hits the boat beneath, falling among the oars and laughing manically.
“It’s just like breaking horses,” he yells triumphantly, steadying himself against the side as the next wave hits. “Come on.”
On deck the captain watches as the men follow, whooping and yelling to drown out their fear. He has done what he could for the safety of his “cargo,” explaining the risks, exerting what command he had left. But the alternative had been made very clear to him.
“I would see it as a promise rather than a threat.” Michelotto’s smile was so thin it could have been another scar across his face. “The Pope loves his son most dearly and would have no mercy with anyone who tries to oppose him.”
When choice is no choice, a man must pick the one that does least damage—and what captain would want to return to his own galley shackled to the rowing bench?
“Get the duke to shore alive and you will be free men,” he had said as he unshackled his two strongest oarsmen. “Fail and you might as well walk back into the sea.”
As for himself, he knows he will not command another galley. If they succeed, the duke will ruin him for his intransigence, and if they don’t, well, the oarsmen will have a sweeter death than his.
The devil take this Borgia pope and his godless offspring, he thinks as another thrust of lightning rips through the sky above them all.
CHAPTER 2
The devil take this Borgia pope and his godless offspring.
The captain’s thoughts reflect a popular sentiment over much of Italy these days. Though not everywhere and not with everyone.
In years to come as the coral sediment of history builds and calcifies it will be heresy even to suggest it, but there are places here and people now for whom Borgia rule is welcome, even celebrated. In the papal cities of Imola, Forlì, Faenza, Cesena, Pesaro, Rimini, a set of urban jewels strung out along the great Roman road of Via Emilia that mark part of Lucrezia’s journey, war-weary citizens have watched security grow from chaos.
Before the dark prince, no man could move a cart of produce from one village to another without losing part of it—or his own body—to brigands; now it is the robbers who are strung up as fresh food for carrion crows beside the road. The journeys do less damage to the carts and wheels because along the carriageways between the cities’ potholes are being filled, broken bridges repaired and new ones planned and built. And all this without the burden of extra taxes. The cities’ old rulers, having paid a tithe to the Church, had squeezed them for all they could get, but the Pope so loves his son that once he has paid for the war to win them back, he also pays for the peace to make them prosper. In the duke’s chosen capital of Cesena, the cathedral, still unfinished after two hundred years, is soaring toward the sky again and each season sees another festival where the wine and food flow free courtesy of the government. A generation ago an ambitious Spanish cardinal called Rodrigo Borgia had won over the citizens of Rome with his public hospitality and largesse. Now it is his son who spreads those qualities around. Who cares if the family name is foreign, or if behind closed doors the language is Catalan and not Italian? As the people flock out to greet their new duke’s lovely, gracious sister, their cheers are genuine, for they are celebrating not just her good fortune, but their own.
For her part, Lucrezia is cheerful enough; it would be churlish to be otherwise and when she is not skewered by memory she enjoys being the center of attention. She has lost count of the number of garlanded arches and choirs of young angels, hitching up their wings to keep them straight, which have welcomed her along the road.
Last night a group of children—boys as young as five or six—sang at my table. But suddenly one of them burst into tears and had to be taken away. They told me later the tailors had left a pin in his tunic and it was poking him like a little sword. Imagine that, Rodrigo!
She puts down her pen and reads back the words. She writes to him every other day, but what can you say to a child who cannot yet read? What words will he possibly understand? Be good and listen to your nurses and your teachers, my sweetest son. This comes from your loving mother, who prays for you every day.
But prayers will be no better at keeping her alive for him. Her son is barely two years old. What age was she when her father took her and her brothers from her mother’s house? Six? Seven? Does she really remember the sound of a woman crying or did Cesare tell her that later? Just as she can’t be sure, when she encounters a certain mix of frangipani perfume, if it is her mother that she smells again or some wet nurse or servant who cared for her.
Within a few years little Rodrigo will have no memory of her at all. In the end it will be better that way. She knows that. He is in the care of a family cardinal and will grow into privileged life wanting for nothing. You’re not the first nor will you be the last widow to leave a child behind in favor of a new husband, she says to herself angrily, even though the very words themselves seem unbearable. This is how the world works and no railing and shedding of your tears will change it. What would it benefit any son to learn that his mother had died of sorrow? No, she must look to the future.
Ferrara and the wedding are only days away. Yesterday they crossed the border from her brother’s cities and tomorrow they board the barge to travel through the lowland canals into the river Po. She thinks of the stories she’s been told about her new home: how the land around is so rich that while others starve, the citizens of Ferrara feast on broad beans and salt cheese, and that if they have a yearning for fish all they need do is put a hand into the river and wait for the eels to slither up round their arms into the net. A living bracelet of eels! Whoever heard of such a thing?
Today they are guests of the ruling family of Bologna, who have offered their country villa to house her entourage. Last night the whole clan descended upon them, father, sons, sisters, cousins, all falling over themselves to pay tribute to the “most esteemed pope that Christendom has ever seen” and “the wondrous beauty and goodness of his daughter.”
“Ha! They would like nothing better than to dance on our graves.” Her father’s advice before she left Rome had, as ever, been realistica
lly sanguine. A separate briefing for every city. “Don’t believe a word they say and count the rings on your fingers after they’ve kissed your hand. They are a tribe of lying, thieving monkeys, the lot of them.”
Monkeys perhaps, though sitting at dinner watching her ladies furtively tucking their skirts under their seats to avoid the attentions of so many wandering hands, she had thought that slimy squids would be more accurate.
She pulls a new blank sheet of paper toward her. How her father will savor such a description!
Every day, my sweet child…he had said to her as she left. I will have a letter from you every day with at least a few words written in your own hand to prove to me that you are well. And when that husband of yours stands in front of you for the first time, if he does not swoon with pleasure at the sight, I will send out an army straight forth to bring you back.
And if that happens, Papà, should I ask for the monies to be returned as well?
She had kissed him sweetly on the forehead and pulled herself away from yet another last embrace, for by then there were just too many tears.
The Pope. Her father. Lucrezia is not so coddled that she does not know how others see him: this monster churchman ripe with corruption, favoring his children above God and spending his nights with a young mistress. But all she has ever known is a man so fond that his letters carry tear marks on them. Fortune may have dealt her some cruel blows, but it has also rewarded her; from birth she has been loved, no—adored—by her father and her brothers. With such a bedrock of confidence, no man can easily undermine her.
Somewhere in the palace there is the rise of women’s voices, a matter of clear excitement. The babble gets closer. Outside the door she hears Angela’s urgent whispering, a good deal quieter than the hushing that accompanies it. Her rest hour, when the journey allows it, is sacrosanct. Whatever this is, it can only be serious.
“I am not sleeping,” she calls out. “You may come in.”
The door bursts open. “Oh, madam, madam! Such news.” Angela’s face is a plump little heart, her eyes big as ducats. “He is here. Here right now! Standing in the hall.”
“Who? Who is here?”
“Your husband! Alfonso d’Este. He has ridden all the way from Ferrara to meet you!”
“What? But…Why? How did he travel? Is he alone?”
“Just him and three of his men. You should see them. Like knights on a quest—covered in sweat and mud from the road. They must have ridden for hours.”
“But how can I meet him? Look at me! I am not dressed. Why were we not told of this? Where is Stilts?”
“Oh, he is as amazed as we, my lady, running about like a chicken with his head off.” Donna Camilla’s voice thrills with the romance of it all. “It must have been the duke elect’s idea and his alone. Oh, imagine how he must be longing to see you. Such things he will have heard!”
Such things; no doubt about that. But what exactly?
As they fuss over her dress and hair, she sits as calmly as she can, wondering what could possibly make him break the rules of courtship and come now. Perhaps his father has sent him to make sure that, despite an avalanche of money, the House of Este isn’t being sold a pup? She may be feasted and feted across half of Italy, but she knows the viciousness of her marriage negotiations: how the naughts on the dowry had risen with each exchange of letters. At least both my eyes look in the same direction, she thinks wryly, remembering the strangeness of Giulia Farnese’s wedding. The bridegroom’s squint had been so bad that during the ceremony no one could be sure if he was looking at his wife or his cardinal uncle, soon to be Pope Alexander, which was a fitting confusion since everyone knew that the marriage was only a front for Giulia and Rodrigo to carry on their affair.
Lucrezia’s supposed defects, however, are ones that cannot be detected from the outside. The silence as she enters a room speaks of the conversation that has just stopped. She reads the questions in the men’s faces as they greet her: did she really sleep with her brother, or her father? Or poison her rivals? Or carry a child under a high-waisted dress while standing in a Church court swearing on oath that she was still a virgin? The darker the story, the more pleasure there is in imagining it. There’ve been moments in these last few weeks when, for the sheer mischief of it, she has wanted to bend her head and whisper that everything—everything—they suspect is true, just to watch their tongues hanging out. Oh yes, her new husband will have heard things about her.
She takes her seat in the receiving room close to a newly lit fire, her crocus yellow skirts spread and her hair looped inside a golden net with a few carefully careless locks falling free to her shoulders. Above a modestly scalloped bodice, she wears a single strand of milky pearls, a symbol of purity as well as wealth. How prettily their sheen shows off the paleness of her complexion.
“The next time he meets me I will be trussed up like a golden chicken,” she had said as she waved away the casket of jewels. “This way at least he’ll be able to see there is no defect in my neck.”
She folds her hands in her lap over an open book of hours. In the end women are the harshest judges of their own beauty, and Lucrezia’s hands, smooth and white as a dove’s feathers, rival those of the best-painted Madonna. They would be worthy of a sonnet should her betrothed be the kind of man interested in writing one. He has come all this way to meet her. How can she not be excited?
—
She knows his image well enough from the painting, yet as she lifts her eyes to greet him, the difference freezes her smile. Her first thought is how large he is. The second how uncomfortable he looks. His clothes seem to have been made for someone else. No doubt they’ve suffered from the ride: a little straightening of his hose or brushing down the velvet nap would have helped. Such scruffiness speaks of eagerness, at least. Still, she thinks, he might have run a hand through his hair. It sits flattened to his head where the cap has been clamped on it, and while some locks flow richly over his ears, others hang lank and greasy. It’s a while since a courtier has come into her presence looking so—well—so uncourtly.
Stilts and the duke’s own men step backward to leave him the stage.
“Most esteemed Lady Lucrezia. You must forgive the unexpected nature of my visit. But I could wait no longer to be in your luminous presence after so many months of keen anticipation.”
The contrast of frilly words spoken in a bass voice can flatter the man who delivers them as much as the woman who receives them. As long as the sentiment is sincere. Or at least spontaneous. Yet she can’t help thinking that his horse might have heard this greeting before she has.
His walk is purposeful, almost athletic, and as he gets closer she registers a heavy nose and thick lips, a large square jaw, bruised with stubble. The eyes, if she could see them properly under the thicket of brows, would be brown and perhaps a little bloodshot. She knows from Stilts’s enthusiastic commentary that her husband has a reputation for his achievements at the foundry, smelting metals for cannons in fires hotter than hell. Is this the remnants of soot in the pitted surface of his skin? Still her smile does not waver. There are worse-looking men in Italy. She has met a good many of them over this endless journey.
Her ladies, in fan formation behind her, sink low in curtsy. As they rise, Lucrezia motions them to withdraw into the shadows. This meeting will be as private as it is public, with a dozen witnesses who see and hear everything while appearing to note nothing. Chaperoning is a well-practiced art.
His right hand, still encased in its riding glove, is huge as it envelops hers and he bows his head toward her.
Noblewomen are early connoisseurs in the art of the courtly kiss, and over these last weeks Lucrezia has been gobbled and pecked, dribbled on and stubble-scraped, has even felt the nibble of teeth and odd teasing flash of a tongue. But this, this, she thinks, is more like a wet dog flopping down onto a hearth. As he lifts his head she takes in a lungful of sweat and leather. If perfume has been applied, it is long lost in the dust between here and
Ferrara. She can feel her smile growing wider, as if unless controlled it might break into a laugh. Nerves, she thinks. But are they just her own?
“Please, my dear lord, sit and warm yourself. You must have been in the saddle for many hours.”
“Not so many; five, maybe six.” He sniffs a little as he lowers himself into the chair. “We left at first light and made good time.”
“So fast! And they say it will take us two days by boat. How was the weather? Did you battle your way through much fog? I…I mean we hear that in winter—well—”
“Ferrara’s famous fog, you mean,” he says gruffly. “And what of Roman snow? They say it never snows in Rome, but you rode out in a blizzard.”
“Indeed we did.” What? He knows this? Of course, Stilts sends dispatches every day, but still she never dreamed that…It seems he has been following her progress. “It was…most strange,” she says, remembering the ghostly light, as if the moon had become the sun for a day. “It was like riding through wet lace.”
“Wet lace…” He nods. “No. We have no wet lace here. Our fog is more like cold soup. Though once you find your pace, there’s nothing better than flanks of warm horseflesh between your legs.”
Above his shoulder she notices Stilts’s face, set unnaturally rigid as he stands pretending not to hear, and now she has to bite her tongue to stop the laugh. Cold as a monk’s gonads. That had been her brother Juan’s comment once in answer to Aunt Adriana’s innocent question about the weather as he strode into the room, inducing a fit of vapors in her at his vulgarity. Which, of course, had amused him even more, for of course it was all deliberate provocation on his part. But that is surely not the case here.
“And how was my new home when you left?” she says brightly to cover up any embarrassment.
“Ferrara? In a frenzy of decoration for your arrival.”
“Really. Tell me more!”
“I…There’s not much to tell. Stages, garlands and arches everywhere…Anyone who stands still long enough risks being gilded and stuck on a plinth.” From the edges of the room the witnesses twitter their approval at his descriptive powers, though Stilts’s smile remains somewhat pained. “I am not exaggerating,” he plows on, goaded by their appreciation. “There’s more gilt and gold on show than in a who—” He hesitates, spotting too late the trap his enthusiasm has him galloping toward.