“I’m glad you’ve seen sense, Giulia.” My mother-in-law smiled. “I’ve already spoken with your sister downstairs; she’s planning to leave tomorrow as well. We’ll accompany her at first light, and strike out for Rome. Back and forth across the papal states at my age; goodness, but I feel like a message case sometimes—”
“Not to Rome.” I turned and faced my husband and my mother-in-law. “Orsino was just inviting to take me to Carbognano.”
“Was he?” Adriana looked at her son, who stood gazing at me with eyes suddenly alight. “Dear boy,” she clucked. “You know that will never happen.”
“Why not?” I challenged. “Even the Pope cannot excommunicate a man for taking back his lawful wife—”
“Excommunicate?” Orsino stammered.
“He’s always threatening to excommunicate me.” I brushed that aside. “It’s not important.”
“Some people would think it important,” Adriana murmured.
“Stay out of this!” I felt anger rising in my throat, all the hot words I’d ever choked back at my mother-in-law, at my husband, at my family—at the whole lot of them who had connived to put me in the Pope’s bed. Rodrigo’s motive for wanting me there had at least been passion, straightforward as the sunlight. What was their excuse? Even if I had enjoyed my time in Rodrigo’s bed, it did not excuse their greed.
Adriana ignored me, looking at her son. “I do hope you haven’t bedded her during this unwise little visit, Orsino. The Holy Father took it very hard before—it was all I could do to keep him from taking Carbognano and Bassanello away from you in punishment. You aren’t supposed to lay a finger on her; that’s the arrangement, and you know it.”
Orsino blushed. “I—that is, she’s my wife, there’s no wrong done if we—” He broke off, red as a sunset. “What I mean to say—”
“Oh good.” She patted her son’s arm. “You didn’t.”
“Either way, it is none of your business,” I said crisply. Of course I’d wondered, when Orsino first arrived in Capodimonte, if he meant to demand his right to sleep in my bed. My family had stuck him firmly in the farthest possible chamber from mine, but he could have crept along the passage to my bed any night he liked. I thought of creeping along to his chamber myself, but I didn’t think he’d like that—far too bold and unmannerly for a proper wife. I set myself to wait for him instead, and I couldn’t help but remember another set of darkened stairs, another flickering taper, as Lucrezia sneaked her husband up into her chamber for the first time. Most women could bed openly with their husbands; Lucrezia and I had to visit ours in utter stealth . . .
But at least Lucrezia’s husband had summoned the nerve to sneak into his wife’s chamber. My husband hadn’t. No more than he seemed able to summon the nerve now, to tell his mother what she could do with her meddling.
“Orsino,” I said. “Look at me. Not at her, at me.”
His blue eyes flickered as they met mine.
“Do you want me to come with you to Carbognano?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Jesu, yes.”
“Dear boy,” Adriana began.
“Be a dear, Adriana, and shut up,” I told her without taking my eyes from Orsino. “This is a matter between husband and wife.”
She pursed her lips tight, looking back to her wine. I reached for Orsino’s hands, and I felt his pulse thrumming right through me. “I’ll go with you,” I said, and felt my own pulse speeding too. “We’ll ride to Carbognano tomorrow, and I’ll be your wife and keep your castello and bear you sons. But the question stands: When the Pope comes for me, what will you do?”
Another long silence. My husband bit his lip.
Say you’ll bar the gates before you’ll let him take me, Orsino, I found myself thinking. Say you’d rather be excommunicated before you gave up your wife, Orsino. Say anything.
I could face down my Pope—I knew that now. I could face him down, and I would. But not if my husband was not firmly allied behind me.
“If we sent him the child,” Orsino blurted out. “If he had his own flesh and blood back, maybe he’d allow you to—”
“What?” I dropped his hands. Whatever I’d hoped he would say, it was not that. “I am not going to give away my daughter!”
“Giulia—” Orsino’s eyes begged me. “I have to know. Is she his child? Or mine?”
“Oh, Holy Virgin!” I exploded, and found myself shouting. What a great relief it was, too. “We’ll never know, Orsino, we’ll never know and I’m sorry for that, but why does it matter by now? She’s Laura, that’s who she is. She’s the loveliest girl any man could ever hope to have as a daughter, so what is it with you men? Why do you and Rodrigo refuse to have anything to do with her unless you can prove she has your blood? Why is any of that her fault? You don’t either deserve to have fathered her!”
“I’m—I’m sorry—” Orsino stammered.
“You should be,” Adriana commented. “Really, Orsino. Laura’s a little love. And it’s not as though she’s your firstborn son and heir! There’s plenty of time for that later.”
I rounded on my mother-in-law. “So your plan is that I go back to the Pope until he’s tired of me, and then I settle down with your son and start birthing plenty of legitimate little heirs?”
Adriana’s voice was placid. “That seems entirely reasonable to me.”
I nearly heaved the altar cloth at her head. “What kind of mother are you?”
“The practical kind.” Her eyes met Orsino’s, and I might as well not have been in the room at all. “My dear boy, I only want what’s best for you. You’re like your father—sweet as clover honey, but he had no notion at all how to forge a path in this world, and neither do you.” Adriana looked momentarily sad, and Orsino reddened to the color of a pomegranate. “You’ll need assistance in your career, Orsino, assistance and patronage, and how are you to get that if you anger the Holy Father?”
“So you’ll just pack me off to the man who put horns on your son’s head,” I shouted, “and it’s all for his own good?”
“A mother does what she must to make sure her children succeed.”
“I’m sure you feel very proud of yourself!”
“Not very.” She shook her graying head. “But the world is not a place of blacks and whites, Giulia Farnese. As I think you know by now.”
I rounded away from her, toward Orsino, and took his hands in mine again. “You don’t have to listen to her. She’s wrong about you, she is. Tell her!”
His fingers were limp and cold in mine. He looked at me once, and then he stared at his boots. “Maybe she’s right.”
“What?”
A tentative voice sounded through the door just then. “Madonna Giulia?”
I whirled, tearing my hands away from Orsino’s. “What?” I yelled all over again.
Carmelina Mangano’s long face appeared cautiously around the door frame. “I’m sorry to interrupt, madonna—but do you wish me to postpone cena? The dishes have been ready an hour, if you wish to eat . . .”
“Thank you, Carmelina. We’ll eat shortly.” I smoothed the front of my loose Neapolitan overgown, trying to unclench my fingers, and motioned her in. “You might as well know,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “I set off in the morning.” I looked at Orsino. “For Rome.”
“We do?” My cook blinked at that.
“Yes. Dawn if we can manage—” I broke off in surprise as Carmelina straightened, turning her face toward me full-on. “Holy Virgin,” I said, distracted despite myself. “What’s happened to you?” Her right cheek was one massive livid bruise.
She hesitated. Her eyes flickered as though she were thumbing through various stories, and she finally mumbled something about one of the travelers from Venice whom I had welcomed when they begged a night’s hospitality. I didn’t know whether to believe her, but she cut me off when I asked for the man’s name. “Just one of the cooks, madonna. It doesn’t matter if we’re leaving tomorrow anyway.” Carmelina hesitated, eye
s flickering again. “Though if it’s not too much to ask—could we leave by the Montefiascone road? The Venetians, they’re setting out tomorrow too, and one of their guardsmen told me they meant to take the other road. If we were to leave by way of Montefiascone, we wouldn’t have to travel with their party . . .”
“Of course.”
She was gone with a swift bob of a curtsy, relief in every line of her body. I turned back to Orsino and Adriana, both still regarding me. “Enjoy cena, both of you,” I said. “I have a great deal of packing to do.”
Adriana’s face had turned looked thoughtful. “You have gotten quite independent, haven’t you, Giulia Farnese?”
“Perhaps,” I said, and looked at Orsino. “I am twenty years old, after all—no longer quite such an ignorant little goose as I used to be.”
My husband’s whole body was hunched with misery. “Giulia—”
I looked at him, my husband in the blue doublet that matched his eyes. Eyes all soft with love, and full of tears. I’d been so touched, these days past when he was wooing me. Touched enough to imagine myself at his side, his wife in truth and not just in name.
“Giulia,” he said again. “I’ll take you back—when the Pope doesn’t—I mean, when he’s . . .” Orsino cleared his throat. “Our own life in Carbognano, and our own children—I’ll grow all the roses you want in the garden—”
“I want you to grow a spine,” I said, and slammed the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The French forced their way into houses, driving out the inhabitants and then burning their firewood, eating and drinking all they could find without paying for anything.
—JOHANN BURCHARD, “AT THE COURT OF THE BORGIA”
Carmelina
We’re safe!” Bartolomeo scrambled up into the wagon after me, toting his bundle of clothes and a huge hamper. “He was starting to stir so I gave him another whack with the skillet.”
“Tell me you didn’t kill him!” I whimpered. My eventual berth in hell was already probable; I had no desire to make it inevitable by adding my father’s murder to the weight of my sins.
“Not dead, but he’s down like an ox at the slaughter yard. He won’t stir for hours.” Bartolomeo’s eyes sparkled in the gray of dawn. “He won’t be found either, not with all this bustle of Madonna Giulia leaving. Everyone’s far too busy to notice that some guest’s private cook is missing.” My apprentice gave a flap of his hand at the throng in the courtyard: thirty guardsmen clattering about on their horses, maids carrying out one last bundle of clothing or casket of letters, Madonna Adriana climbing wearily into the carriage that had brought her here only yesterday afternoon. With all the racket my apprentice could have shouted his words and not been overheard, but he kept his voice to a dramatic whisper and leaned his head close to mine in the packed confines of the wagon. “By the time that Venetian whoreson wakes up or gets found, or someone goes looking for him, we’ll be long gone, signorina. And in the opposite direction, too.”
He grinned at me, alight with adventure, and I envied him his high spirits. I just felt ill. “Not a word about any of this,” I warned him for at least the fourth time, settling my small bundle of clothes more firmly between the chests I’d loaded with the skillets, pots, spices, and other cooking essentials I’d brought for what had originally supposed to be a short summer trip away from Rome. “Not a word to Maestro Santini when we get back to Rome, or to Ottaviano or any of the other apprentices. Not to the fishmonger when I send you to the market for sturgeon, or your confessor when you go to Mass. I know it goes against the grain for a good, honest boy like you, not telling your priest something like this—”
“I’m up to my neck in this too, signorina,” he cut me off. “I don’t want trouble any more than you do. I won’t be telling my confessor or anyone else.”
“Swear it,” I insisted.
“On Santa Marta’s head.”
“Swear on her hand.” I produced the little bag from where it hung at my waist again. He peered inside and recoiled.
“That’s what you’ve got in there, signorina? A saint’s hand?”
“Likely it’s a fake,” I lied. “Swear on it anyway. She’ll hear you.”
He put a hand gingerly on the bag and swore.
“Good,” I said, and barely managed to put the withered hand away again before I had to lean over the wagon’s tailboard and void my empty, roiling stomach into the courtyard.
“That withered thing in the bag is enough to make anybody throw up.” My apprentice sounded so cheerful I could have killed him. “A nice soothing meal, that’s what you need, signorina. I packed us a hamper!” My apprentice patted the big basket he’d hauled in along with his clothes. He’d gotten very fond of packing meals for the outdoor repasts by the lake that the Farnese were so fond of here in Capodimonte. Myself, I preferred a good sturdy credenza rather than a picnic basket when it came to laying out food. My stomach churned, and I retched all over again.
“You’re sure you don’t want a little zabaglione?” Bartolomeo sounded hopeful. “I whipped it up this morning: good Milanese almonds through the strainer with some egg yolks and a little sweet white wine—”
“I hope you used the Trebbiano from Pistoia,” I said, wiping my mouth. “That’s the best vintage for zabaglione.”
“Of course I used the Trebbiano from Pistoia! And a little cinnamon, fine sugar, a little rosewater—”
My apprentice was patting my back now as though I were a nervous horse. I should have brushed him away—a cook should never show weakness before underlings—but I felt too worn. My throbbing face was as swollen as a nut that had soaked in cold milk all night, and I’d slept sitting up at the trestle table outside the storeroom, straining my ears in my sleep for some sign my father was stirring. I kept waking up with the dream that he’d somehow unbolted the door from inside and was coming for me again. Coming to take me back to that place.
Even if you get away now, he could still come take you back, a little voice whispered in my head as Bartolomeo nattered on, listing ingredients like a demented auditory shopping list. As soon as he’s discovered in that storeroom, he’ll report you. And he knows who you work for now. You could get back to Rome, and a month or two later you might find guards at the door waiting to arrest you for desecration.
I’d worry about that later. I’d have to worry about that later—I had far too much to worry about right now to even think about adding anything else to the list.
Madonna Giulia appeared in the courtyard then: her breath misting white on the chill dawn air; Pantisilea tramping behind with the bundles; little Laura slumbering in her nurse’s arms wrapped in a spare furred cloak; her sister, Gerolama, following behind in a long stream of complaints. Giulia ignored her, looking as drawn and tired as I did, worn under the eyes as she went to join Madonna Adriana in the carriage. Leonello followed, La Bella’s eternal small shadow in black, and handed her in before scrambling up himself. As she disappeared inside I thought I saw the velvet gleam of the Pope’s huge teardrop pearl about her neck again. She hadn’t worn it all summer, but she wore it now. Somehow I didn’t think Orsino Orsini would be accompanying his wife in that carriage. He was there in the courtyard, bareheaded despite the chill, and Giulia looked at him out the window of the carriage as though asking him a question. He opened his mouth, but just closed it again and looked wretched. Giulia pulled Laura into her lap and didn’t look at her husband again.
The captain of the guards kicked his horse into a trot, spurring out of the courtyard toward the Montefiascone road. From the windows I thought I saw servants watching, and the rest of Madonna Giulia’s family, but I didn’t pay any attention to the faces. All I wanted to see was the road, the road, the road stretching ahead, leading me farther and farther away from the man locked in the storeroom.
By midmorning the roiling in my stomach had subsided almost entirely. The air was dry and cold, the sun shone overhead, and we rolled along briskly enough on the dusty road. Bartol
omeo had grown restless and hopped out of the wagon to go loping alongside the wagons for a while, tossing a pebble up in the air and catching it again. The guards called back and forth to each other on their horses; Madonna Giulia sat gazing out the window of her carriage up ahead with her chin propped in her hand; I could hear the servants in the other wagon chattering. I could have ridden with them, but a good cook always rides with his equipment when traveling.
My father taught me that.
I leaned my head back against the wooden crate of skillets and plates and the good knives without which I never traveled. With every roll of the wheels taking me farther from my father, my fog of blind panic had started to clear. Surely my father wouldn’t pursue me down into Rome? It must have stirred up talk when I ran away in the first place, especially when you considered just what I’d taken with me in the way of stolen goods, but the whispers would have blown over by now. Dragging me back to Venice as a desecrator of altars to be publicly punished before cheering crowds—that scandal would be enormous. What archbishop would keep my father on as cook then?
No. My father’s first instinct when he laid eyes on me might have been to seize me, but when I was far away and no longer quite so easy to lay hold of . . . well, I thought it far more likely he’d swallow his rage and mumble some hasty excuse when he was found trussed in that storeroom. Who wanted to wreck a painstakingly built career as one of Venice’s finest cooks, just to punish one disobedient daughter?
Not Paolo Mangano.
I couldn’t help a smile. At least I’d had the chance to tell my father to his face that I was a better cook than he. Who cared if he’d never believe me? I knew it was true.