“It’s all right. There is nothing wrong. I am not hurt. It is normal for there to be leftover liquid. Praise be to God it is all in a good cause. We are man and wife. Come, help bathe me.”
Standing and slipping off her shift, she feels a prickling heat inside her in the place where he has been. Three times. Women can bruise on the inside as well as out. But there is no pain. The truth is her husband had been as courteous as the process allowed. Three times. She can still hear the thick warble of his voice as he reached for the edge of the cliff. There had been moments during the last ascent when he had felt to be almost in pain getting there. Still, it had not been terrible. She would have liked to have helped, but with his body on top of hers there had been nothing she could do but wait. As he fell back on the pillows he had seemed to be laughing. Perhaps he had felt relief as much as satisfaction. Three times. No, not so terrible at all.
They work together, Catrinella tender with the sponge, then patting her dry with a perfumed cloth before helping her slip into a new nightshift.
“What are you looking at now?”
“There are marks on your neck, my lady. Redness. And on your cheeks.”
“Ah! The rubbing of skins.” She thinks of those meat-slab hands, their scabby surfaces moving in rough caress over her. Sometimes it is useful to fear something too much, for it makes the real thing quite bearable. “I shall not need a pumice bath for a while,” she says gaily, but Catrinella is clicking her tongue angrily. At the grand age of fourteen and a half she has already made the decision that she will remain a virgin forever, convinced that all Italian men are as hairy as monkeys and even less courteous.
“If you are finished you may leave me now. The night is not over and my husband may come back.”
The young girl drops her eyes, busy with the basin of water.
“What? What is it? Come, you have no secrets from me.”
“He has left the palace, my lady,” she says quickly. “Angela and the other ladies saw him from the windows. He had his men waiting on horses in the back courtyard and after…well, after, they rode out together.”
Oh! Such sharp eyes they have, my ladies, she thinks. How could she ever want for a better spy system?
Make him welcome every night but never complain when he leaves you….Men are like that. She remembers her father’s stumbling words as they made their last goodbyes in Rome. Men are like that. Of course they are.
Triumph and sadness. At times there is little to tell between them.
“Well…If that is so then…then you can bring me some hot wine and something to eat. Yes, yes, some cake or milk pudding for, now I think of it, I am quite hungry. And do not look so glum. Your mistress is the Duchess of Ferrara and there is much to celebrate.”
Three times. The next day, word of the duke elect’s performance is already halfway to Rome, and in the court of Ferrara there is no one who does not know it. Lucrezia sleeps late and, with conscious mischief, keeps everyone waiting awhile before she emerges into public gaze.
In her rooms across the courtyard, Isabella picks up her quill and writes to her husband in Mantua.
Last night Lord Don Alfonso slept with Lady Lucrezia, and from what we have heard he walked three miles, though I have not spoken with either of them about it. Nor did we visit them to perform the morning after songs, as is called for, because to tell you the truth, this is a most frosty wedding. Today we stayed in our rooms forever because the lady herself took such a long time to rise and get ready….
To my credit, I am always the first person up and dressed, and my appearance and that of my company, I believe, has compared most favorably among all others.
SPRING
1502
The duke Valentine is truly magnificent. In war there is no enterprise so great that it does not appear small and in the pursuit of glory and lands he never rests, nor recognizes fatigue or danger.
—Letter from Machiavelli, envoy to the Council of Ten in Florence June 1502
If the couple make love, then that is enough.
—Cardinal of Capua and Modena, after a visit to the court of Ferrara April 1502
CHAPTER 8
“So, members of the council, it is agreed, yes? As long as Florence is under the protection of the French king we stand firm against any hint of Borgia aggression or pressured overture of friendship. The Pope is an old man. At his death the money and influence will disappear and Duke Valentine will fail. When that happens Florence’s stalwart position will give her status in the world to come.”
In his seat in the corner of the council chamber, Secretary Niccolò Machiavelli notes down the general murmur of approval. Piero Soderini, the elected leader of the republic, is an honorable and principled man, and it is impossible not to respect him. In another era, one of honor and principle, Niccolò thinks, he would make a most successful politician.
“Secretary, if you would stay behind for a moment.”
High on the frescoed wall of the council chamber, St. Zenobius, the first bishop of Florence, stands with open arms, giving his blessing to good government, with a mischievous glimpse of the cathedral’s famed dome peeking out from a pillar behind. It pains Niccolò every time he sees it, for this city that he so loves has changed dramatically in the years since the great Domenico Ghirlandaio stood with his brushes on the scaffold. Once respected everywhere for her wealth and stability, she now spends her diplomatic life looking nervously over her shoulder, like a young virgin on the street at night. For her to survive with her name, if not her purity intact, what is needed is a government that can temper republican honor with a more pliant pragmatism. But these are not the thoughts that he is paid to deliver. Unless directly asked.
“Do I gather you have some issue with the decision of the council, Niccolò?”
“I am its secretary, not an elected member, Gonfaloniere. It is my job to advise, not conclude.”
“Except with you one cannot always tell the difference. And since you have spent time at the court of King Louis, I would hear your thoughts.”
“Your brother, Bishop Soderini, is as familiar with the French court as I.”
“But he is not here now. And you are. So speak your mind.”
“I think—” He takes a breath. “I think whatever King Louis’s ambassadors may say publicly, privately the king does not give a fig for Florence’s independence.” The hawk comes in so fast the shrew would not even register the wind of its wingbeat. “In his view we are a second-rate power with no army to defend ourselves and no money to pay properly for others to do the job.”
It is a conclusion born of the bone as well as the brain. The French court at Lyon had been Niccolò’s first foreign assignment, and he can still feel the freezing chill of its antechambers, waiting for an audience that never came because there was always someone more important to see than a Florentine diplomat. He’d missed the death of his father and his sister while waiting, had spent so much of his own money that he could no longer afford to eat properly and his one good suit of clothes had grown shabby and behind the fashion, details that were not lost on the king and his cardinal minister, when they finally deigned to see him. As a lesson in international diplomacy the humiliation had been almost exhilarating.
My God, you look scrawny, his drinking companions had joked when he got back. So tell us some dirty French stories and we’ll buy you dinner. They had even urged a wife upon him. Once a man turns thirty he needs proper meals and a soft bed. You can’t live in whorehouses forever.
No, Niccolò Machiavelli has little time for French promises.
“The king needs the Pope and the Borgia army to help him beat the Spanish in Naples and he will do whatever it takes to keep them as allies. If it came to it, he would cut us adrift without a second thought.”
“Anything more to add?” the gonfaloniere says mildly. “Some insight perhaps into when the Pope will die? That would be helpful.”
Niccolò smiles. In Dante’s hell the soothsayers walk round w
ith their heads twisted backward to show that only God has the right to foretell the future.
“His uncle, Pope Calixtus, lived till he was seventy-nine, though he was only interested in fighting the Turks. In my opinion, Gonfaloniere—” Niccolò hesitates. “In my opinion, if the pace keeps up as it is then he will only need a few more years. Eighteen months ago Duke Valentine had to buy in French troops to help him take the cities of the Romagna. Now he could take most of them on his own. He never stops recruiting and has every local lord and mercenary in his service, which gives him the loyalty of the very men who should be most fearing his ambitions. The Borgia state they are helping him build will eat up their territories easily enough. The duke is fortunate that they are too busy weighing their purses and settling their own scores to notice.”
Soderini laughs bitterly. “Indeed. The most powerful of them being Vitellozzo Vitelli and his public obsession with taking revenge on us.”
He sits with his hands intertwined. Absentmindedly, he begins to crack his knuckles. Niccolò starts to count. He had a tutor once who would do the same thing, a most inspiring scholar who had opened his mind to all manner of wonders before he tried to move on to his body. When his father had dismissed him—eagle-eyed in the education of his son—the relief Niccolò felt had been tinged with sadness. Great men, he was already learning, do not always do great things.
“Well, Secretary, as ever I am grateful for the…clarity of your views. We will talk further on all of this tomorrow. I daresay your wife would appreciate you home occasionally to enjoy her company. Tell me, how is marriage suiting you?”
“Well enough, Gonfaloniere,” he says, tasting again the layer of congealed fat on last night’s pigeon stew when he returned from a later debriefing session in the tavern near the bridge. Still, better a woman with some spirit. He had worried how this new state might bore him, but the challenge she offers had kept him keen enough.
“Before you go, Niccolò, one further question. From everything that crosses your desk you still see no sign of when the duke’s next campaign might start?”
Give me money to run a real intelligence service and I will give you the intelligence it finds, he thinks sourly. Oh, for the open purse of the Pope…Outside he hears a trill of birdsong. He no longer bothers with the clay bottle from home. Soon enough it will be too hot in here rather than too cold.
“Valentine’s commanders haven’t been paid since December. I would say something will happen soon enough.”
“How long are we meant to sit around here waiting for his scar-face lieutenant, Michelotto?”
“Oooh, the new ruler of Fermo is feeling the power of his title! How does it feel, Oliverotto, being ‘the duke’? Makes your beard grow faster, does it?”
The young man scowls. He might have known that his fellow mercenaries would be the last to congratulate him. “Valentine should have come himself,” he says, ignoring the sarcasm. “Professional commanders deserve more respect.”
“What? Like the respect of a nephew knifing his loving uncle in the back?”
The story has been all over Italy for weeks: how on the excuse of returning to his home city of Fermo for Christmas Oliverotto had invited his uncle and his advisers to a celebration banquet, then slaughtered them all to snatch the government and the title.
“Fuck off, Baglioni,” he says petulantly. “I looked him straight in the eye and he fought me like a lion.”
“With what? A candlestick?”
The mockery reverberates around the room.
“All right, all right….Save the insults for our enemies.”
The room falls quiet. Even among hired hands there is a hierarchy, and everyone listens when Vitellozzo Vitelli speaks. He was born into the saddle, and without his soldiering they would all be counting more dead men, for his expertise is artillery: lightweight cannons that move as fast as foot soldiers, blasting holes in fortresses and sending a rain of death onto the civilian population inside.
He shifts his position in his chair to try to calm the burning poker stab that is running through his legs. He needs his wits about him now. He glances round the room. There are six of them altogether: soldiers of fortune, condottieri, as they are known. It’s no longer the honorable career it once was, but then times are hard and Italy is full of sons of powerful families for whom there’s no room in the Church or government so instead they have developed their natural talents for brawling into the profession of war. They are chancers, all of them, he thinks. Ambitious young thugs like Oliverotto, the quarrelsome Baglioni brothers from Perugia or hangers-on from the Orsini family, men with insufficient inheritance to finance their lifestyle. There is not a natural ally of the Borgias among them. In the past they’ve all spat snake venom at the sound of their name, calling them dagos and poxy foreigners. But right now, until the tide turns, the Pope and his warrior son are too powerful to be ignored. Especially when there is such good money to be made out of them. “We’ll know what is coming soon enough.”
“Our newly elevated duke is right though,” Gian Paolo Baglioni growls. “Duke Valentine treats everyone like shit. When the wedding circus came through Perugia, we laid out a fortune entertaining his precious sister and her entourage.”
“How were they, all those lovely ladies?” another chimes in.
“Ripe as summer melons,” he replies with a grin. “Especially the bride.”
“Wooah! You weren’t tempted to have a taste?”
“You know me—I don’t do leftovers.”
The room erupts into crude laughter. Everyone knows the rumors about the Borgias: father and daughter, brother and sister. Well, why not? She wouldn’t be the first young woman to keep the family bed warm. There are men here who with a little wine in their bellies would testify to the succulence of sisters with no hint of shame on their faces.
“Still, I’d be careful who you boast to, Baglioni,” Vitelli’s voice comes in quietly. “That ripe melon you talk about is now the Duchess of Ferrara.”
“Ah, don’t deny us our pleasure of a little imagination, Vitelli. Your trouble is you don’t have enough fun off the battlefield.”
It is the first mention anyone has made of it, how during the break a vigorous middle-aged man seems to have turned into a crippled old one. These past months, Vitelli has felt as if death itself has been making a play for him. The pain wakes him most nights and by day sings through every limb. He doesn’t know when or where he caught the French pox—no busy soldier has time to keep a record of his whoring—nor why he has got it so much worse than others. But what he does know is that with each new attack of the pustules and cankers the damage bites deeper inside him.
He has taken the advice of a dozen quacks, slathering himself with ointments and poultices laced with mercury, but the numbing always gives way to even worse burning so that his temper has grown as raw as his skin. His teeth are loose in his gums, and his joints—or is it his very bones?—are so constantly on fire that he finds it easier to be in the saddle than standing on the ground. War will be a relief, and this next campaign may bring him something even sweeter.
“I thank you for your concern, Baglioni. But I’m looking for something more than fun.”
Revenge. For Vitellozzo Vitelli it is, like everything else in Italy, a family affair. He had been apprenticed in the craft of war through his elder brother, Francesco. But a few years before, when Florence still had the money for it, Francesco had gone solo, selling his military services to the city. When the expedition to quell a revolt in Pisa had gone awry, the government had accused him of treachery. A gross insult against the family name. On the day of his brother’s public execution Vitellozzo had sworn undying vengeance on the whole city. He has always known that backing the Borgias would be his best chance of getting it. These days it is what keeps him loyal, as well as what keeps him going.
“You should be praying that it happens, my friend,” he retorts sharply. “As long as the duke is hungry for Florence’s territories he won’t
be interested in Perugia.”
“Ha. He wouldn’t dare!”
“You’re sure about that?”
They fall silent. It is their job to talk big—modest mercenaries don’t get much work these days—but the reality is the Borgia war machine has impressed even those who fight for it: the merciless speed and strategy of a man who has no code but winning and always seems two steps ahead of whoever is in his way. As long as it is directed toward others there is only profit to be had. But who can be sure? Perugia, Città di Castello, Anghiari, Fermo, even Bologna. No one in this room needs to look at a map to know that any of their own cities would fit nicely into the expanding Borgia state.
“Well, for now we are all safe,” Vitelli says evenly. “Every one of us has done better from fighting with him than against him. If and when that changes we can talk again. I for one am still in, for this season at least. Anyone disagree?”
In the silence that gives him his answer, they hear a commotion of men and horses in the courtyard below. It seems their orders have arrived.
—
Michelotto has ridden from Rome stopping only to change horses and with a single servant at his side. Two days’ wind in his face have painted his scars livid, and his pulled left eye is running with cold tears.
He enters the room, shakes each man by the hand and then settles himself without a word. He brings no sealed instructions and he carries no notes. He speaks only for a few moments, and when he has finished he pushes six thick purses across the table.
“Any questions, gentlemen?”
Oliverotto da Fermo glances round at his fellow soldiers. Well, he is a duke himself now and his thoughts deserve to be listened to.