But not when the woman being alluring was seventeen-year-old Lucrezia Borgia, Countess of Pesaro, and when the object of her allurement wasn’t the Count of Pesaro, but my older brother Alessandro Farnese.
“You must be sure to sit beside me when the singers begin,” Lucrezia was saying, having worked her soft little hand into the crook of Sandro’s elbow as they stood by a blaze of rosebushes in the Vatican gardens. “These musical afternoons are always so dull, Cardinal Farnese. Giulia!” she cried, catching sight of me. “I’d forgotten your brother could be so amusing!”
“Yes, he’s quite the jester.” I crossed the stretch of grass to join them, Leonello trailing behind me as usual. “Sandro, don’t tell me the Holy Father released you already?”
“He’s released a few of us. I believe Cardinal Zeno and one or two others were detained for some additional shouting.”
Whenever my Pope hosted one of these musical afternoons to follow a consistory or a more informal meeting of his cardinals, it was a sure sign there was shouting to be done beforehand. If the order of the day was merely business as usual, Rodrigo would harangue his cardinals and hand out orders to his archbishops, and may the Holy Virgin have mercy on them if they didn’t get immediately to work. But if my Pope had a difficult measure to force down unwilling throats, he was sure to detain his churchmen after the day’s business in the gardens of the Vatican. A dozen furious-faced cardinals and bishops would come stamping down among the grass and the rosebushes, muttering of my Pope’s high-handedness, but before they had the opportunity to stew in their own resentment, they would be met by refreshments and wine. Not to mention a dozen women headed by Lucrezia and myself, all of us ordered to laugh and to charm until the storms passed and all those cross old cardinals and bishops went home mellow with wine and music.
“So why didn’t the Holy Father keep you behind for a little shouting, Sandro?” I took my brother’s other arm. “He should shout at you—you’re the most useless fellow in the whole College!”
“True.” Sandro doffed his scarlet cardinal’s hat modestly. “But I’m the most entertaining. Just this afternoon I made everyone’s sides ache when I trotted out that old joke about the friar and the trout. Well, Cardinal Carafa didn’t laugh. But I did say the trout looked like him . . .”
I smiled at my brother: six years older than I, slender and dark-haired with a smile of demure wickedness like a fallen angel and his cardinal’s cap forever sitting at a rakish angle. I had another brother in my hometown of Capodimonte, and a sister married in Florence as well, but Sandro and I had always been each other’s favorites. We had the same dark eyes and the same sense of fun that danced behind them, and both were traits the rest of la famiglia Farnese sorely lacked.
“Not only amusing, but handsome as well!” Lucrezia certainly seemed to be admiring my brother’s eyes, and her lashes had a quick flutter for the rest of him, too. “Surely the handsomest man in the College! Except for my brother Cesare, of course. A girl must always support her big brother first—Giulia will understand that. Goodness, but it’s hot!”
The Pope’s daughter fluttered her fingers at the base of her throat, a gesture copied from Sancha to draw attention to her breasts, which had been powdered and trussed and laced into the lowest-cut gown I’d ever seen her wear. Orange-red brocade embroidered within an inch of its life, too ornate for a simple summer entertainment, but Lucrezia had been piling it on in these past months: wider skirts, lower necklines, more paint, more embroidery, more jewels; anything to make a splash. I couldn’t help looking at her thoughtfully as she chattered at my brother again.
“—we’ll be hearing more of those dull motets, I suppose. Ugh, but I don’t care if I never hear Josquin again. There’s something new, though; one of the court musicians set the Avernus sonnets to music.” Another sweep of lashes. Someone really should tell her not to overdo the lashes. “Surely you’ve read Avernus’s sonnets to his Aurora? I favor Sonnet II, but Giulia prefers Sonnet VI. Just because it has Aurora as Europa, borne off by Jupiter as a bull—”
“You know my fondness for bulls,” I said lightly, and Sandro gave a brief scowl. He’d never entirely reconciled himself to my status as the Pope’s mistress. It’s not precisely what most men want for their favorite sisters, is it? My little sister, the Pope’s mistress.
Lucrezia was still chattering on about poetry, which had the usual effect of making Leonello, at my back, put his thumbs in his ears, when an undulation of purple satin swished up. “My dear Lucrezia,” Sancha of Aragon purred, looking at Sandro through half-closed lids. “And Cardinal Farnese, of course. You look nothing like your sister, do you know that? Fortunately. Golden hair is all very well, but I do prefer dark suitors.” She reached up to twine a strand of his hair about her finger, and Sandro looked faintly startled . “Lucrezia, I won’t allow you to keep this luscious fellow all to yourself!” Sancha went on. “Cardinal Farnese, perhaps you will take a turn about the gardens with me?”
“I fear I must steal him,” I said firmly, and led my brother away. “Sandro, come see these roses over here, don’t they look just like those little yellow ramblers our mother used to grow in Capodimonte . . . ?”
As soon as I had my brother out of earshot, I plucked one of those little yellow roses off its bush and pointed it at him thorns first. “The Tart of Aragon is fair game, Sandro, but don’t flirt with Lucrezia. I know you’ve never been happy with the idea of the Holy Father and me, but don’t think to even the score by seducing his daughter!”
“What do you take me for, sorellina?” Sandro gave a great show of mock outrage. “Besides, please note who was flirting with whom.” He peered over my shoulder at Sancha and Lucrezia, giggling softly with their heads together. My brother had been away these past months, on business for the College of Cardinals, and as usual he had managed to find time to dally in the country with his little mistress. He hadn’t seen much of either Lucrezia or the Tart of Aragon this summer, not the way I had. “Are they always like that?”
“Sancha’s always been a cat in heat.” I plucked another pair of roses, making a little nosegay. “I do wish Lucrezia wouldn’t imitate her so much.”
“Better than having them at each other’s throats, surely.” Sandro tugged me companionably against his side, leading me through the clipped hedges away from the crowd gathering rapidly round Lucrezia and Sancha like bees round their queens. “You thought the fur was going to fly when they first clapped eyes on each other!”
There had been a certain period of scrutiny between the Pope’s daughter and daughter-in-law when they first met this spring. A certain covert amount of measuring dark hair against blond, a fuller bosom against a slimmer waist, a collection of Roman gowns against a chest full of Neapolitan dresses. Now they had nothing but giggles and gossip for each other, and that disquieted me sometimes as I saw Lucrezia drinking every salacious whisper from her new sister-in-law.
“I heard Cardinal Michiel say it’s all to be expected, Sancha acting like a tart, because she’s bastard-born!” I gave an indignant sniff of my sweet-scented little roses, watching Sancha wind her arm through a young bishop’s. “‘Born in lust means lust in the blood’—have you ever heard such rubbish? Lucrezia’s bastard-born too, and she’s always been such a sweet little thing.” At least, she had been. “And if anyone ever said my Laura had lust in the blood—”
“Or my Costanza!” Sandro clapped an outraged hand to the place he would have been wearing a sword if he’d been a condottiere rather than a cardinal, with a flourish because even when he was being outraged he had more flourishes in him than a pantomime actor. Really, he should have been a pantomime actor rather than a cardinal. “Did you know Costanza’s learning to move about already? Not crawling, exactly; more like rotating herself across the floor like a little rolling pin—”
I listened for a while to my brother’s recitations of Costanza’s latest achievements—his first child from his much-adored mistress, so naturally she was perfection
embodied. She really was a little dear, if not quite the miracle that was my Laura, but proud fathers must be allowed to gush. I did wish sometimes that Rodrigo would gush a little more about Laura . . .
My Pope made his appearance then, followed by a flock of bad-tempered cardinals. They must be fuming over the notion of Juan leading the papal armies as Gonfalonier, not that I blamed them. Cardinal Zeno stamped off without even the pretense of a courteous exit, and Ascanio Sforza would have too if I had not accosted him. “Cardinal Sforza, I will need you desperately once the music begins, for it’s all in French and you know how wretched my French is. Perhaps you will translate for me?” I smiled and charmed until he thawed, and then I nodded sympathetically as he muttered veiled complaints about these consistories where one’s opinions weren’t even consulted, and had anyone listened to his proposal that one of the Sforza clan be considered as Gonfalonier? Perhaps even the absent Count of Pesaro; he was the Pope’s son-in-law, after all, yet had anyone even pretended to consider his name when Cardinal Sforza suggested it?
“The Holy Father hears all suggestions,” I soothed, and made my usual discreet promise that I would carry Cardinal Sforza’s concerns directly to the papal ear when it was next close to mine. He bustled off looking mollified. This was my own part of Rodrigo’s seemingly idle social gatherings: to listen, to promise, and to decant all for my Pope’s dissection later. In truth, I had no idea why anyone tried to bribe or wheedle me into using my influence with Rodrigo, because he kept his own counsel when it came to the business of Christendom. He was not a man to be swayed just because a soft voice whispered in his ear across a pillow, nor did I believe it my place to sway him. God’s chosen Vicar on earth had far more exalted sources than me to consult for advice—namely, God Himself. No one had elected me Pope, after all, so I kept well out of papal business, merely giving Rodrigo a dutiful recitation of what others so hopefully whispered into my ear. He drank it all in, chuckling at their efforts to recruit me.
By the time the music began, I’d soothed another pair of cardinals and smiled at the Neapolitan ambassador’s attempt to find out if Gonsalvo de Cordoba, or any of the other Spanish generals, or possibly a mule, would be aiding Juan in leading the papal armies. A little array of choir boys were paraded out into the gardens, looking unnaturally solemn, and the cardinals and the ladies took their places on padded stools as the first pure treble launched the melody. Normally I’d sit at my Pope’s side, but he was weaving some scheme with a pair of sour-looking ambassadors from Queen Isabella of Castile. Lucrezia had abandoned flirting with my brother and was now eyeing one of her father’s papal envoys.
Impulsively, I caught at her brocade sleeve. “Come sit with me, Lucrezia.”
“I can’t,” she said flippantly. “Our dresses will clash.” She twitched her bright scarlet skirts against my ice-blue gauze. “These pale colors of yours—I’m determined to set the style for something bolder. You’d better look to your laurels if you want to keep leading the fashions in Rome, Giulia! You know, Sancha told me her robe makers had a dozen orders for caps with peacock plumes the instant I was seen wearing one to Mass? And Perotto over there—Father’s new envoy, you know the one? Pedro Calderon, but everyone calls him Perotto—says I’m an absolute vision in bright red like this!”
“You’re making talk, you know.” I tried to say it lightly. “All this flirting with my brother, and with Sancha’s pages, and now with papal envoys. Don’t you think—”
“You sound like my mother, Giulia Farnese. Are you getting old and prim?” And off rushed the Pope’s daughter—“My dear Perotto, you must sit beside me!”
Taking a deep breath, I claimed a seat of my own beside the last woman in the world who wanted me at her side. Claimed my seat and smiled, and gestured for the earnest little choir of boys to continue their singing, and said low-voiced, “Vannozza, perhaps we should talk about your daughter.”
She looked at me down the long, high-bridged nose that she’d also passed on to Cesare Borgia. Vannozza dei Cattanei: my well-preserved auburn-haired predecessor, still handsome in her russet velvets and many rings. Vannozza, who had stayed at Rodrigo’s side a full decade and given him four children. “La Bella,” she said, and smiled in that special way that both indicated her innate superiority and concealed those horse teeth. “What has my daughter to do with you?”
“I love her,” I said bluntly. “As much as my own daughter. But Lucrezia needs reining in.”
That surprised Vannozza; I could see from the peevish fold that suddenly appeared at the corner of her eyes. Because blunt wasn’t how we ever began things, Vannozza and me. Most of the time we managed to ignore each other altogether. If forced into conversation, there would first be polite noncommittals, then a few exchanges of edged courtesy punctuated by an oversweet bout of cooing, and then perhaps one of us would unsheathe claws. Usually Vannozza, because I could outcoo absolutely anyone, much less my spiteful, wasp-waisted, wasp-tongued predecessor.
This time, however, I had sidestepped all the pleasantries.
“Lucrezia is being talked about,” I went on under cover of the music, before Vannozza’s bright eyes could narrow any further. “It’s Sancha’s example—remember the incident at Pentecost? People whispered for weeks.”
At the Feast of Pentecost in May, Lucrezia and Sancha had traded jokes and whispers all through the long sermon in the Basilica San Pietro—and had finally abandoned their seats altogether to clamber into the choir stalls with all their ladies, bringing the service to a complete halt as they settled their skirts and called for refreshments. Johann Burchard, the beleaguered little German who had the thankless task of acting as Rodrigo’s master of ceremonies, had run about shrieking and tearing his hair afterward as he bemoaned the horrendous impropriety of it all, and even I had been surprised. Lucrezia was merry by nature, but she’d always been respectful.
“My daughter,” Vannozza stated as though bringing the Eleventh Commandment down from on high, “is merely high-spirited.”
“Rodrigo said that too,” I said, and her eyes flared at my use of her former lover’s name. Oh, Holy Virgin, would she just stop bristling? I hadn’t taken Rodrigo away from her; they’d already been long parted when he swooped me off my feet, but there was no use telling Vannozza that. One of those women who always finds an excuse to feel slighted; aren’t they tiresome? “His Holiness won’t listen to a word about Lucrezia,” I tried again. “You know how he is—‘Bah, Lucrezia’s just in high spirits! I like seeing a pretty young filly kick up her heels—’”
Vannozza gave an unwilling snort through her long nose. I leaned closer, lifting my nosegay of yellow roses to cover our conversation as the choir began a new tune. A good many eyes had flicked avidly in our direction, seeing the Pope’s current and former mistresses bend their heads so close together. “It’s not just about Lucrezia giggling and misbehaving during sermons,” I went on. “She listens far too much to Sancha, and Sancha is not a good influence.”
“That girl is a harlot,” Vannozza deigned to concede. Not the kind of girl a mother wants for any of her sons—and surely she had to know by now that Sancha was sleeping with all them (having recently added Juan to her collection to complete the trifecta of Borgia sons. I ask you). I pressed my advantage.
“Do you want Lucrezia to be a harlot too, Vannozza? She’s fluttering her lashes at that new papal envoy now, and my brother, and any other handsome man at court who crosses her path. And she used to be so in love with her husband; it floated off her like perfume.”
Maybe that was what truly troubled me. You could look about Rome and see any number of young wives who loved to flirt and giggle, and if you saw the fat or sour or graying men they were married to, you usually couldn’t blame them. But Lucrezia had always been different. Something of the maiden in the tower about her, surrounded by protective Spanish father and brothers as she was—and then Giovanni Sforza had come along and swept her away from the walls her family had put up around her, and I?
??d seen her blossom like one of these yellow roses in my hand.
I didn’t like seeing that glow of love turn into common, roving-eyed flirtation.
Vannozza dei Cattanei broke into my speculations. “Maybe it’s just as well my daughter is no longer so starry-eyed for Lord Sforza.”
I looked at Vannozza. My predecessor was looking smug, and that was hardly a good sign. “What have you heard about Lord Sforza?”
A deliberate shrug of those velvet-clad shoulders. “He isn’t the match my daughter could have had, certainly. His ties with the other Sforza in Milan aren’t anywhere near as strong as he made out when he presented himself for Lucrezia’s hand.”
“So?”
“You don’t know, then?” Vannozza gave a faint smile. “I see Rodrigo doesn’t tell you everything, Giulia Farnese.”
The choirboys sang on in piercing sweetness—the Avernus sonnets, starting with the first where Aurora was compared to Ulysses’s Calypso on her sea-washed isle. Leonello was muttering something under his breath that sounded like Oh, Dio, not those damned sonnets again! but I wasn’t listening to him or to that lovely music and its even lovelier words.
“Calypso, smiling nymph of sanded isle—”
Vannozza examined her buffed nails. “Rodrigo still visits me, you know. He so values my advice, he’ll quite often come for a cup of wine or two before cena.”
“Holy Virgin, Vannozza, will you cease trying to make me jealous?” Though she had succeeded, just a little. I knew very well that Rodrigo had an old fondness for his former mistress—he even sometimes referred to her as his wife! And then couldn’t see why it exasperated me . . .
I put that aside, lowering my voice. “I don’t see why it matters, Rodrigo fretting to you about Lord Sforza’s shortcomings. Whether he is the ally that was hoped for or not, he is Lucrezia’s husband now. And he loves her, I have seen that with my own eyes, and he deserves better from her than flirtation when his back is turned. Even if flirtation is as far as it ever goes.” I did not truly believe Lucrezia would stray from her marital bed. She was surely just drunk on admiration and flattery.