The Borgia Mistress: A Novel (5 page)

5

The servant led me down corridors and around corners, past guardsmen who scrupulously averted their eyes as we went by and scurrying servants who did the same, until we arrived at the wing of the palazzo that housed Cesare and his father. Beyond the cordon of guards put in place by Vittoro, we approached the wide bronze doors of Cesare’s apartment, passed through the antechamber where the new young cardinal met with petitioners and counselors, and came at last to his private quarters tucked away in a corner overlooking the gardens.

Lamps had been lit, casting long shadows over the century-old murals depicting the martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist. Treacherous Salome came off particularly well in the artist’s rendering. His Eminence, as Cesare was now known, lay on a vast bed shrouded in curtains and roofed by a tapestry canopy. Herrera hovered over him. The Spanish grandee had the look of a man queasy with the shock of sudden sobriety.

Cesare, by contrast, appeared pale but otherwise entirely himself, except for the long red gash down his left arm. He was bare-chested and absent his boots.

“It’s not that bad,” he assured me in response to my scowl. To the Spaniard, he said,
“Gracias, Don Miguel. Déjame con la señora, si se quiere.”

I was unsure exactly what Cesare had said, as he had spoken in the Castilian of the Spanish court. Among themselves, the Borgias spoke the Catalan of their forbearers. Those of us who served them found it useful to learn something of that language, similar to yet sufficiently distinct from Castilian to make understanding what he had just said difficult. Even so, I realized that he had thanked Don Miguel and asked to be left alone with me.

The Spaniard rattled off a rapid-fire response of which I caught precisely nothing and took his leave, but not without a contemptuous glance in my direction. The servant who had fetched me departed with him. Cesare and I were left alone. I made haste to examine his injury. The gash extended from below his left shoulder down the length of his arm to the elbow. A little deeper and it would have done serious damage to the muscles and tendons.

“Just clean this up for me, if you would,” he said. “I’d rather no one else knows about it.”

A basin of bloody water, evidence of his own efforts to deal with the wound, was on a table beside his bed, along with a needle and thread. There was no sign of his valet, who I gathered had been banished.

All too aware of my own limitations, I hesitated. “You do understand that my … expertise lies in a different direction?”

“I don’t care about that. How’s your sewing?”

“Appalling. I can barely thread a needle.”

I was not exaggerating; the needlework expected of every properly reared young woman had ever been my bane. But given the circumstances, I would have to gird myself to do better.

“How did it happen?” I asked as I refilled the basin with clean water from an ewer near the bed. I tried to sound at ease although inwardly I was trembling. I cope well enough with the monthly results of being female, but otherwise I have a particular horror of blood and avoid it whenever possible. Except, of course, for those times when the darkness comes upon me. Then I have killed bloodily and wallowed in the results.

I am a contrary creature, to be sure.

“Herrera mistook an officer’s wife for a woman of the town,” Cesare said. He sounded weary and more than a little exasperated. “The officer took offense, there was a fight, I intervened.”

“You took the blow meant for a drunken lout because he happens to be a nephew of the Spanish monarchs?”

The notion angered me more than I would have expected. Cesare was no child and had not been one for many years. Yet just then I felt an odd sort of protectiveness toward him, which I told myself came solely from my responsibilities for the welfare of
la famiglia
.

Cesare shrugged. “Something like that. It doesn’t matter. What is important is that this go no further. Herrera is already screaming that he was insulted and wants the officer’s head. Can you imagine the reaction of the garrison to that?”

The garrison of the town Il Papa was counting on to protect the route an enemy army would have to take into Rome.

Stabbing thread through a needle, I said, “Has there been trouble before this?”

Cesare glanced at what I had in my hand and looked away. “The charms of Viterbo have paled quickly. The Spaniards are bored. For that matter, so am I.”

“Not to worry. The usual hangers-on came in your father’s wake. There’s a fresh supply of whores, touts, entertainers, and thieves to keep everyone occupied.”

Likely an assortment of spies, intriguers, and troublemakers as well, but I said nothing of that.

Cesare started to laugh, caught his breath as I took the first stitch, and remained resolutely silent as I finished the job. The hours I had spent in Sofia’s company had taught me more than I had realized.

“You underrate yourself,” Cesare said when I was done. He examined my work closely before I bandaged the wound and appeared satisfied. “I’m going to tell Lucrezia how good you are with needlework. She can put you to work on that altar cloth she’s making.”

“I know at least a hundred ways to poison you, each more agonizing than the last.”

He did laugh then and, wrapping an arm around my waist, drew me down to him. “Stay with me,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”

I was tempted, but I hesitated all the same. “You should not exert yourself.”

Blue shadows were deepening beneath his eyes. He tried to stifle a yawn and failed. “I honestly don’t think I could.”

A frank admission for one of his age and temperament. I laid my hand against his brow and was relieved to find no sign of fever. Even so, his condition could worsen during the night. It was best that he not be alone.

So did I justify my natural yearnings. Intimacy—not of the sexual kind but borne of the true communion of minds—was exceedingly rare in my life. I told myself that was just as well, yet there were still times when I longed for it.

“As you wish,” I said and settled into the bed beside him, drawing a light cover over us both.

He turned on his side, fitting me into the curve of his body. Scant moments passed before his breathing grew deep and regular. I lay snug against him as my mind drifted back to the problems posed by the cantharidin and how they might be solved. I had gotten to the point of considering whether the time had come to test what I had accomplished so far when I became aware that Cesare was no longer asleep.

Ah, the resiliency of youth! Still on my side, gazing away from him into the darkness of the bed hangings, I made no demure when he raised the hem of my gown to bare my thighs, nor when his hand slipped between them. I needed only to shift a little to accommodate him. We moved as one, urgency coupled with familiarity. I knew his rhythms; he knew mine. Yet still I was surprised by how quickly pleasure mounted. Whether from unmet need or the strange eroticism of the largely silent encounter, release overtook us both between one breath and the next.

A normal woman, so well sated, would have slipped unfettered into sleep and dreamed only of her lover. Not I. Scarcely had slumber overtaken me than the nightmare came.

The same dream had tormented me for as long as I can remember. I am in a very small space behind a wall. There is a tiny hole through which I can see into a room filled with shadows, some of them moving. The darkness is broken by shards of light that flashes again and again. Blood pours from it—a giant wave of blood lapping against the walls of the room and threatening to drown me. I can hear a woman screaming. A few months before, waking suddenly, I heard myself call out her name: “Mamma.” But that was absurd. My mother died when I was born. She could not possibly be the woman in the blood-soaked room.

I woke as usual in the clammy grip of terror, but from long practice lay unmoving, forcing myself to breathe slowly and deeply. I was determined not to disturb Cesare, who surely needed his rest at least as much as I did. Besides, I did not want to have to explain to him yet again about the nightmare. We shared a bed often enough that he needed no reminding of it.

For the rest of the night, I dozed lightly, waking while Cesare still slept soundly, one arm thrown across my hip. Carefully, I slipped out of the bed and made my way back to my quarters on the other side of the palazzo. The guards were changing posts as I went, giving me some hope that I would not be seen. Not that it mattered. Borgia’s agents were everywhere, their reports flowing to him as a river fed by many streams before being swallowed by the ocean itself. For certain, he would know of the altercation in the town, but I suspected he would also approve of what his son had done, though he would not tell him so. At all costs, the Spaniards had to be kept sweet, until the pendulum swung as it always does. Then who knew what price Borgia would exact for having to endure them?

In my own rooms, I bathed quickly, not bothering to wait for a servant to bring hot water. Simply dressed with my hair secured in a braid around my head, I hastened down to the kitchens; but did not linger there. Before long, I was on my way again with a roll stuffed with hazelnut cream in one hand and a sturdy market basket in the other.

My father, in his days as poisoner to the House of Borgia, understood the risk of being so focused on what is nearby as to overlook what is on the periphery. He was a great believer in getting out and about, instructing me in the finer points of how to look, listen, even smell a scene so as to understand it and, even more important, how to know early on when something is wrong. He also understood that the right prop could explain one’s presence without calling attention to it. Hence the basket.

I went down the wide stone steps of the palazzo and set off to the southeast in the direction that a stammering serving boy told me led to Viterbo’s central square. The day was pleasantly cool with only thin traces of cloud to mar the otherwise pristine sky. Bright autumnal flowers trailed from window pots, their perfumes mingling with the bite of the lye soap used to scrub the paving stones. Having long been a favorite haunt of popes, the town overflowed with churches, many of them centuries old, constructed mainly of stone that had yellowed softly over the years. In that respect—and only that—it bore the faintest possible resemblance to my beloved Rome. Otherwise, everything appeared small, shrunken, and still far too quiet for my taste.

The old
porta romana
giving entrance to the town through the high stone walls punctuated by watchtowers would have been opened at dawn; already travelers were making their way toward the palazzo in hope of doing business with the papal household. Members of Viterbo’s garrison were in evidence, patrolling in breastplates and plumed helmets with spiked halberds in hand. But I also saw men of the Pope’s own household guard on patrol in the town. I could not help but wonder how much the show of their presence had to do with protecting the Pope and how much was intended to quell the spreading resentment of the Spaniards.

In the central market adjacent to the main piazza decorated with carvings of lions and palm trees, the town’s twin symbols—stalls overflowed with heaps of newly harvested grapes and olives. Vats of virgin olive oil and raw wine were stacked near wicker cages of chickens, ducks, and rabbits. I smelled rounds of tart pecorino and the sweet aroma of pearly ricotta. Salted pink hams hung from rafters beside the stalls. Heaps of thorny artichokes vied with a surprisingly good selection of mushrooms. I bought some of each, filling my basket.

All the while, I listened. The good wives of Viterbo, many in high conical bonnets and rich lace bodices, were serious about their marketing. Like sensible hagglers everywhere, they scoffed at the prices being asked before settling on what all parties could consider fair.

I was eavesdropping on an exchange regarding red borlotti beans when several cooks I recognized as being from Borgia’s household entered the market. These
maestri di cucina,
garbed in their customary white tunics emblazoned with the papal seal and trailed by kitchen boys brought along to carry their purchases, began to pick through the displays. They seemed unaware that the mood among the townspeople had changed abruptly. It was as though a dark cloud had moved across the otherwise sunny sky.

“Damn Romans,” the matron near me muttered. Forgetting her interest in the borlotti beans, she stomped away. Nor was she alone. One by one, the good wives of Viterbo shot scowls at the new arrivals and took their leave.

A loud argument broke out not far from where I stood. A stout butcher draped in a blood-splattered leather apron was refusing to haggle over the price of a haunch of beef, declaring that the red-faced cook could pay him what he demanded or do without.

“Don’t be an idiot,” the maestro protested. “No one will pay what you’re asking.”

“An idiot, am I?” The butcher’s expression darkened as he picked up a cleaver and smacked it down hard into a wooden chopping board. “If you don’t like how we do things here, why don’t you go back to Rome?”

A rumbling of agreement rose from the surrounding stalls. In the midst of it, someone else said, “And take the goddamn Spaniards with you.”

“Better yet,” another shouted, “send them back to Spain. We don’t want their kind here.”

“Or yours!”

“Put that on His Holiness’s plate, why don’t you?”

At the mention of Borgia, I froze. Discontent over the behavior of the Spaniards was reasonable enough, given what Cesare had told me. But when it spilled over to include the Pope himself … A handful of peasants on the route north could make asses of themselves without my worrying unduly. But if the people of the very town Borgia was counting on to block a French advance were emboldened to behave in such a matter, the situation was considerably worse than I had realized.