Blood & Beauty (41 page)

‘How it is possible for something that does not kill to hurt so much, Torella? I’ve had bull-horn injuries that have been easier to bear.’

‘My lord, it is one of the mysteries of the disease. How it seems to enter into the bone itself.’

‘And to come so suddenly? One day I am in perfect health, then— And don’t dare to tell me it is a mystery. You are a man of medicine. If I wanted to hear about mysteries I would employ a magus.’

‘If I may speak, my lord?’

‘Haaaa!’ Cesare is on the bed, his legs stretched out at strange angles as if bent iron bars are running through them. The agony is almost continuous, as it has been for the last two days, and his face is grey with pain.

‘I would say that its arrival is not so sudden. Since our return to Rome you have suffered certain…’ he feels for the right words, ‘certain changes of mood.’ He glances towards Michelotto, who sits assiduously studying the floor tiles. When the news of Ludovico’s retaking of Milan had come through a week ago, Cesare’s tantrum had broken two chairs, one of them narrowly missing the messenger’s head. It had been then that Michelotto had noticed the blotches starting to rise on his master’s face and called for the doctor.

‘What – my temper is also the disease now!’

‘It seems there may be some relation between the two, yes.’

On Torella’s desk sit letters from the city of Ferrara, where it appears half the court is infected: descriptions of smitten men chased by the dogs of depression or in thrall to such moods and furies that at times they have had to be restrained. Like the blotches and the pains, the devil comes and goes.

‘So do something. What about the ointment that the doctor gave that old cardinal?’

‘My lord, he was a Portuguese quack! Cardinal Bertomeu died of it! And for every moment of relief, he suffered tenfold as it wore off. I stake my reputation that is not the way to treat it.’

‘Then what is?’

Torella sighs. ‘I do believe…’

‘All right, all right. I will try your damn steam barrel. But it had better work, Torella. I am a man with wars to fight and I cannot – aaaghh!’ He breaks off as the next spasm thrusts a sword through his body.

It is Torella’s great experiment and he is set to make a small fortune on it. He had perfected the design during the stay in France and had the whole thing built, then dismantled and carried home in the baggage carts. It is housed inside an old oak wine barrel, with a door for the patient to enter and leave, a bench seat and a small fire grate where the coals are kept red-hot, liberally doused with drops of his special compound: quicksilver, myrrh and secret herbs mixed in secret quantities. The naked patient sits inside for two to three hours, working up a ferocious sweat, which allows the worst of the humours to be expelled at the same time as the infused steam enters through the pores and the airways. In this way the bad humours of the disease are chased out and the remedy flows in. As long as the patient can stand the heat, after three or four sessions the skewering within the bones subsides and the blotches start to fade.

Cesare, who must always be the best at everything, even suffering, emerges parboiled after a second gruellingly long session and, with Torella’s help, sits gasping in a chair, nodding grimly.

‘The stabbing is less. Definitely. It is a good cure, Torella.’

From outside the door there are raised voices; a man’s followed by another lighter tone, plus the sound of screeching.

‘Well?’ Cesare says as Michelotto puts his head around the door. ‘What? What are you staring at?’

‘Nothing. Except that it is a wonder to see you upright again.’

But that is not what Michelotto is thinking. He is thinking, ‘beetroot’: the doctor has boiled the duke to the colour of beetroot.

‘Who is it? I said I would see no one.’

‘It is… it is the Duchess of Bisceglie. She has been here for some time.’

Cesare looks at Torella. The doctor shrugs. ‘If you have the energy.’

‘How do I look?’

‘Like a man who is no longer in pain,’ the doctor says mildly, judging this rebirth of vanity as a healthy sign in itself.

Cesare lifts himself a little higher in the chair. ‘Get me a towel.’

In the antechamber, Lucrezia keeps her distance from Michelotto. Over the years nothing has happened to make his face any more attractive to her, but there is no doubt that he, like her, cares greatly for her brother.

‘The duke will be pleased to see you now.’

She nods at him haughtily as she passes.

‘Duchess Bisceglie, if I may…?’ She stops, but still does not look at him directly. ‘If he asks you how he looks… don’t tell him.’

At least she is prepared. ‘Oh, my sweet brother!’ It is hard to know what is strangest – the flayed colour of his body or the wooden contraption that sits in the middle of the room, steaming gently.

‘It is Torella’s health machine. Men go in ill and come out well. Though they roast a little on the way.’

She comes straight up to him, sitting close and laying a hand on his forehead. ‘You are so hot, but—’

‘It is the fire, not the fever.’

She glances at Torella, who looks on appreciatively as this pretty young woman becomes the instant nurse, soaking a sponge in the bowl of water and using it to dab and soothe the patient’s face.

‘You can leave us now, Torella,’ Cesare mutters.

‘Indeed. And if I may, madam? He must also drink.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Lucrezia lifts up the glass of water and helps hold it to his lips. ‘Come,’ she says sternly as the door closes behind her. ‘Do not make that face. You must do as you are told for once.’

Cesare, a stranger to being weak in female hands, sits back, unexpectedly calm. ‘How did you know I was ill?’

‘Ah, there are no secrets in this palace. You should know that. Thank the Lord you are safe now.’

As the high colour in his skin begins to fade his semi-nakedness becomes more powerful: there is an old duelling scar, a pale ridge running halfway across his chest, and his upper arms are knotted with muscles.

‘I was never in any danger,’ he says gruffly. ‘What? Are those tears? You are not crying for me. I am strong as a bull.’

‘But… but you might not have been. There has been so much fighting, Cesare. What if you had been wounded? Or even killed.’

‘How sad would you have been then?

‘How can you ask that?’ she says angrily. ‘You are my brother.’

‘How can I ask it? Perhaps because it has been a while since I have seen you show any love for me.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ she shoots back, almost too fast. The fact is that, though she is crying for him, she is also crying for other things. ‘I have missed you sorely and sent invitations by the barrelful for you to join us since your return. But you have ignored them.’

‘Us,’ he repeats. ‘To join “us”.’

‘Yes, us. Because though it seems to cause you nothing but anger these days, as well as your sister I am also a married woman.’

When she set out from the palace hours ago she had not felt so brave. What had she come for? In fear of his health? Or to try and placate his aggression against the House of Aragon? The news from Milan has the French army and Ludovico Sforza ready to meet in battle, each side rich with Swiss troops, men who, it seems, will kill even their own brothers if someone pays them enough. What a foul thing is war. Whoever wins, someone loses. And in this battle she, Lucrezia, who does not fight anyone, stands to lose more than most.

‘Cesare, I am your loving sister and I would ask you to listen to me.’ She lifts up the sponge to mop his face again so that he cannot but look at her. ‘We both know this marriage to Naples was not of my choosing. The decision was yours and Papà’s. I did as I was told. Just as when I married Giovanni Sforza. Then, when it was Papà’s wish, for the good of the family, I allowed – no, no, I helped – to have him put aside. But Giovanni was a traitor. You said so yourself. He betrayed us. Alfonso is not like him. He is a man of honour and the father of my son, a Borgia child.’

‘He is from the House of Aragon and they are our enemy,’ he says flatly.

‘Only because you have made it so. If Federico had given you his daughter as you wished—’

‘It has nothing to do with his hideous daughter,’ Cesare yells: even more than his father, he does not like to be reminded of failures.

‘I agree.’ She realises her mistake fast. ‘Oh, I agree. You have a much better wife now and another alliance to bring the family even more greatness. You are Duke of half of the Romagna already and will surely take the rest. Naples is not important.’

‘Is this what you are come for?’ he says sourly, pulling away from her ministrations. ‘To plead for your husband?’

‘No.’ And she is surprised by her own firmness. ‘No, I am not here to plead.’

Because why should she? She has done nothing wrong. In all her life she has done nothing but love and obey her family. Except perhaps for once… but she does not like to think of Pedro Calderón; there is too much guilt woven in with the suffering. Is that what she is paying for now? If so, then surely it is God’s business to punish her, not anyone else’s. ‘I am come to see my brother. But as his sister, not a supplicant. I am a Borgia too, married, before God, to a man who has done us no wrong. And I ask you to respect that.’

‘Bravo, sister.’ The battle between displeasure and admiration is over too fast for it to be read in his features. ‘Such spirit suits you very well.’ He leans over and takes her face between his hands, staring at her, studying her approvingly. Ah, but she is lovely indeed. ‘I have missed you too. I did not realise how much until this moment.’

For a second she thinks that he might try to kiss her and she stiffens involuntarily. But instead he releases her, a broad smile on his face. As he does so there is a great commotion next door, a squawking and then a swearing.

‘God’s blood. Michelotto? What is that racket?’

The door opens. ‘My lord. Do you need Torella?’

‘No! My sister has cured me. But I don’t need bloody murder going on outside my door.’

Michelotto throws up his hands. ‘Once its hood is off you can’t stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘The damn bird! The note that came with it called it a messenger with a cherry-red tail.’

‘Ah yes! And what does it say?’

‘Valentwah.’ Through the open door the screech is audible to all. ‘Forlìììì. Forlìì. Valentwah.’

Cesare laughs. ‘I will answer it later.’

But when he turns back to her Lucrezia is still looking at him, waiting for some kind of response.

He takes her hand and kisses it. ‘My beautiful Borgia sister, hurting you would be like hurting myself. What more can I say?’

The power of family. Sforza in Milan. Aragon in Naples. For near on half a century their mutual ambitions have affected the balance between north and south, their dynastic webs spun together with threads of blood through marriage and offspring. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that when one falls the other should be taken down with it.

On the battlefield outside Milan the French army decisively crush the Sforza force. Victory is made sweeter a day later with the capture of a swarthy Swiss soldier, a man with such execrable German and soft, manicured hands that it takes no time for him to be unmasked. Ludovico Sforza, once the scourge of Italy, is put into chains and loaded on to a cart bound for France, where King Louis himself is waiting to welcome him to a royal castle where he will reign undisturbed over a water-soaked dungeon with a court of rats for company.

With one brother taken, the next follows swiftly. Vice-Chancellor Ascanio Sforza, excommunicated as a traitor, is also imprisoned, his palace and his cardinal’s assets forfeited to the Church. Sforza. Who would have that name now? In Pesaro, Giovanni spends his life in the privy, his bowels turned to water in panic, while in Rome, Caterina is escorted by soldiers from the Belvedere Palace to less salubrious rooms in Castel Sant’ Angelo that might concentrate her mind better on the signing away of her birthright.

Cesare, his temper much improved by the news, takes to the bullring with public displays of strength, dispatching seven bulls in a series of bloody fights. Rome falls in love with him all over again.

It is not long before the French ambassadors arrive, smiles on their faces and the word ‘Naples’ on their lips. A few days later a Spanish contingent joins them. In the Pope’s receiving-room old enemies now shake hands and exchange compliments. The conquest of southern Italy is such a great undertaking; surely it would be better for the balance of Europe if it could be shared rather than opposed?

Of course, nothing can be done without the blessing of the Pope. The crown of Naples sits in his hands and his own warrior son will be part of the conquering force. Not quite yet though. First Cesare has his own war to finish, for which the French King will gladly furnish part of his own army to knock down any walls that withstand him.

Political stitch-ups do not come much tidier or more cynical than this.

Amid such satisfying developments, the news from France that the lovely Charlotte d’Albret Borgia has safely given birth is diplomatically underwhelming. The opening words say it all. A baby girl. Alexander dispatches best wishes and presents. Cesare, in contrast, finds himself unexpectedly touched, but nothing either of them can do will shift the fact that his wife is rooted in France, where King Louis seems determined to keep her.

Alas, even a pope as creative as Alexander cannot find a way to put asunder this marriage. It is unfortunate, because Cesare would be a great catch on the Italian marriage market now. And as he keeps telling his father, the new state they are building will need a key Borgia alliance to protect it.

‘Naples will not fall for at least a year. The sooner Lucrezia is free the better, Father. You have always said yourself that Fate favours those who act without waiting for tomorrow. You are almost seventy, and—’

‘Sweet Mother of God, not this again. Look at me! Do you see a man who is about to die? I have never felt better, as everyone but you is telling me.’

It is true: Alexander does have more energy these days. A few months before, when the world was filled with business and strife, he had given Giulia permission to visit her husband in the country, but now success has increased his appetite in many things, so that recently his eye has started wandering over one or two of Lucrezia’s prettier ladies-in-waiting. ‘We will come to it when the time is right, Cesare. Let us at least enjoy a little sunshine before negotiating another storm.’

Cesare, whose faith in Fate grows greater with each passing year, will remember the choice of words for some time to come.

June 29, late afternoon of a blazing hot day. Rome is bursting with pilgrims and the Pope is seated on his throne in the great Sala dei Papi, with his personal chamberlain in conference with a Spanish cardinal, the windows thrown open wide to let in a welcome breeze from across the river.

It is a common enough marvel, the way a summer storm in Rome can arrive out of nowhere: a sudden rising wind shunting in fat-bellied clouds and letting loose such sheets of rain that within the half-hour it might last there can be flash floods in the streets or rivers gushing down chimneys.

Today, the force is furious. First comes rain, then hailstones, big as nails, driven sideways by the gale. The cardinal and the chamberlain rush to the windows, struggling to secure them as the thick circles of glass rattle in their metal frames. As lightning tears a jagged hole in the sky, a thunderclap arrives at exactly the same moment, exploding directly overhead. It is so loud the cardinal cries out at the sound. On the roof, the bolt scores a direct hit on the chimney breast, bringing down the whole stone fireplace in the room above and smashing through the floorboards into the salon below.

As the two men turn from the window, the room is a dust storm. Most of the ceiling has gone. So has the Pope: man and throne engulfed by an avalanche of wood and plaster.

‘Holy Father!’ the chamberlain calls out hoarsely. ‘Holy Father?’

There is no sound. Nothing. No living soul could have withstood such a weight of masonry.

‘The Pope!’ both men scream as the doors open. ‘Help! Help! The Pope is dead.’

The dreaded words fly down the Vatican corridors, even as the papal guards rush in, throwing themselves onto the pile, tearing at the rubble with their bare hands, causing more debris to dislodge and fall, until the captain arrives and shouts for them to halt. ‘Slowly! One piece at a time. More men. Get more men.’

In the open doorway Burchard stands, his thin sculpted face without expression. He turns to a servant behind him and nods, the man disappearing like a rabbit down a hole.

‘The Pope is dead!’

In Santa Maria in Portico next door, Sancia is visiting Lucrezia; they, their women and baby Rodrigo are now gathered in the main salon, driven from the garden by the storm. They hear the shouting but not the words, but it is enough to send them, skirts flying, through the secret corridors into the palace beyond.

‘The Pope is dead!’

Cardinal della Rovere is halfway through a dispatch to France when the messenger arrives. He drops the pen and is out of the door. He will find the inkblot spreading when he returns.

By the time Cesare gets there (how Fate adores this young man: it is one of his rooms, which he had left barely an hour before, that has taken the brunt of the damage) the chamber is filled with soldiers, cardinals and doctors. In the centre, edges of the throne are now visible while men work methodically, lifting chunks of masonry and wood, some of it decorated with the Borgia coat-of-arms. How could God be so cruel? To kill a pope using the weapon of his own name. And every few minutes the captain of the guards shouts for silence, then calls: ‘Holy Father. Your Holiness, can you hear us?’

It is at the tenth time of asking, with a sense of theatre that Burchard himself could not match, that a wavering voice replies.

The whole room erupts in a cheer, and the guards go at it even faster, clearing the surrounding debris until at last the Pope is revealed, bolt-upright in his seat, his right arm caught under a lump of wood, head covered in plaster dust and a slice of blood across one cheek, but palpably alive: a fortuitous collision of two beams meeting over his head and taking the weight of what should have crushed the life out of him.

‘Holy Father. You are saved!’

‘Yes,’ he says, as he takes in the waiting, stunned crowd. ‘Yes. I am.’ And that famed Borgia smile cracks from ear to ear.

Cesare backs out of the door to find Burchard standing outside and, coming swiftly towards them down the corridor that links the public rooms to the papal apartments, the tall, gangling figure of Giuliano della Rovere, his cardinal’s robes like lapping waves around him. Vultures, Cesare thinks. In Rome it is the ear rather than any sense of smell that has them gathering.

He moves to block his path. During their months of enforced cohabitation at the French court the two of them have perfected a tone of sincere insincerity. But since their arrival in Rome they have studiously avoided each other.

‘My lord duke.’ Della Rovere is breathless. ‘I came as soon as I heard. I—’

‘Yes, yes,’ Cesare interrupts loudly. ‘The most terrible accident. The ceiling of the room above has fallen directly on to the throne where he was seated.’

‘Oh, may Jesus Christ Our Lord have mercy on us all. Our beloved Holy Father? He is badly hurt?’

Cesare makes a stiff little gesture, as if he cannot speak.

‘No, oh – no – he is not dead?’

Cesare tastes the honey in the timing. ‘No, he isn’t. That is the wonder of it. He is very much alive.’

Della Rovere, for a second unsure how to proceed, crosses himself and pulls his hands together in prayer. ‘Praise be to all the saints.’

‘And how good of you to come to his aid so fast, cardinal. You must have men of great prescience around you.’

Della Rovere’s smile barely flickers. Behind them, Burchard is already moving back to the Pope’s chamber. Cesare’s voice reaches after him.

‘Is there anyone else we should disinform?’

Alexander, his right arm badly bruised and with various cuts and scratches to his head and face, is carried gently to his bedchamber. The word ‘miracle’ is already starting to whisper its way around the Vatican palace as Cesare walks out into the gardens that adjoin the Borgia apartments. The torrential rain has stopped as fast as it arrived and the sky is already clearing. The gravel and the flowerbeds are soaked and as the sun comes out it picks out trembling diamond drops of water on the leaves of the Seville orange trees that the Pope loves so much because they remind him of the Spanish home that he no longer quite remembers from his childhood. The hailstones have knocked some of the riper oranges to the ground: an early harvest for the Vatican kitchens, their pulp strong, slightly bitter to the taste. Borgia fruit. Della Rovere would no doubt have them all dug up and replanted. How fast it could all come apart, Cesare thinks: coats-of-arms covered up or chipped away, new apartments fashioned for a new papacy. He pushes the nightmare further: what future would there be then for a Borgia son with no army and just a few cities, still half owned by the papacy, in his grasp? No, if the Borgias are to survive, then the rest of Romagna must be secured and buffered by states in order to give it muscle against the belligerence of any new pope. And it must happen fast. Another campaign will take the cities he needs, and the fall of Naples to the French will cushion him in the south. To the north one state has long been the obvious choice. Ferrara. But to persuade the proud house of Este that they need an alliance with the new Duke of the Romagna will take the combined weight of a French king, a Borgia pope and a high-level marriage to formalise the good will.

Once again Fate, this time in the form of a summer storm and a fallen chimney breast, is his mentor.