Sins of the House of Borgia (13 page)

It was beautifully made, ornamented with climbing roses chased in gilt, every petal and leaf and thorn in minutest detail, but looked, nevertheless, as though it had been made for a knight who suffered some deformity. The pieces were very small, as though made for a boy rather than a grown man, and the upper breastplate ballooned curiously before the plackart cinched into a tiny waist.

Don Ferrante caught my line of vision. “Very fine, isn’t it?” He placed his hand lightly in the small of his companion’s back. “We have been admiring it.”

Still the woman made no move to acknowledge me, nor did Don Ferrante offer to introduce me to her, leaving me no option but to carry on as though she did not exist, which was difficult as long as Don Ferrante’s hand rested with such familiarity on her narrow waist. I concentrated on the armour.

“Very,” I admitted, “but such an odd shape. For whom was it made? Do you know?”

To my surprise, Ferrante laughed. “Of course I do. It is La Sforza’s. She wore it at the siege of Forli. You see the little hooks there, around the upper lame?” He pointed to a strip of steel just below the plackart. “Apparently they were designed so she could hook a skirt on to them if she wanted to.”

I had glimpsed Caterina Sforza once when, as Cesare’s prisoner, she rode in his victory parade through Rome in the Jubilee year. I remember how the noise of the crowd had swelled as Cesare himself entered the Porta del Popolo, and how it had died, leaving a puzzled echo of itself, when the people saw the young man, who had left for France eighteen months earlier in a blaze of gold and jewels, now dressed all in black, without an ornament to his name. Caterina Sforza rode close behind her captor, swathed in a long, dark cloak with a hood, and closely flanked by two mounted men who led her horse. Her wrists and ankles were bound with gold chains, like Zenobia. Her image stayed with me, her small, shrouded figure riding in chains behind the serious young general like the embodiment of his conscience or, perhaps, a statement of his intent.

It came into my mind again now, as Ferrante remarked quietly, “She’s the only one ever to have forced him into a fair fight.”

I glanced at him, unsure if I was supposed to have heard his remark, but the lady with him seemed to have no such uncertainty.

“He directed the artillery barrage himself,” she said. I wondered if she was well; her voice had something of a croak in it. “A whole day and night without rest. He refused to retire even when a gun backfired on him and burned his hand. It was a marvellous thing to see. I will never forget him, eyes streaming from the smoke, his shirt stuck to him like a second skin and torn where he’d cut a strip of it to bind his hand. He was like, he was like…Hephaestus.”

“Oh, a lame comparison,” quipped Ferrante.

“I am surprised there were ladies present,” I said, and as soon as I took in Ferrante’s flaming cheeks, and his companion’s wild eyes and Adam’s apple bobbing furiously above his pearl choker as he tried to swallow his words, I wished I could do the same. Ferrante shuffled his feet and cleared his throat.

“Vittorio knows where the kitchen is,” he said. “As you will have gathered, he has been here before.”

Vittorio? Now I recognised the young officer of the guard with whom Ferrante had conferred so closely during our journey, the dark beginnings of his beard thickly coated in white lead powder, his cheeks rouged and lips carmined, his dress, I could now see, ballooning awkwardly from the angles of his boy’s body.

“But you have been paying me so much attention all this time,” I blurted, all restraint shocked out of me by the sight of Vittorio in his gaudy purple, a necklet of something cheap and sparkling bent over his prominent collarbones. “Am I some sort of…” I waved an angry hand at the arms and armour displayed around us, “…diversionary tactic?”

To my astonishment, Ferrante began to laugh. Even Vittorio’s bony features softened in a bashful smile, as he slipped his hand into Ferrante’s.

“I hardly need one,” said Ferrante. “My tastes are common knowledge in Ferrara, and as long as I am discreet, no one is going to report me to the authorities. You will just have to accept that the gossips of Rome don’t know everything, my dear.”

“But why..?”

“Because I like you; I should like to be your friend. Because in many ways we are the same, you a Jew, me a sodomite, both tolerated but not quite accepted. And such convenient scapegoats in the event of poisoned wells or plague or the failure of the harvest. We outsiders should stick together; our lives can be very precarious.”

I was speechless. How could Ferrante, always able to find exactly the right phrase or gesture to put people at their ease, to charm them and make them laugh, make so graceless and offensive a comparison? “You forget, my lord, that I am baptised.”

“Yet I have seen how your hand hesitates to make the sign of the Cross at Mass. Why, girl, you mumble your Credo as if you were being made to eat a blood sausage.”

I could not deny it. But that still did not justify his remark. “My people are the Chosen of God, my lord, whereas your sort…”

“Take our example from the Greeks.” It was thrown out as a light challenge, but a defensive note in his voice made me realise I had hurt him, and that I regretted it. At a loss what to say, I dropped my gaze and found myself staring at his great, bear claw hands, the fingers with their scattering of freckles and sandy hairs interlaced with Vittorio’s, bony and not very well manicured.

“What I mean to say,” continued Ferrante more gently, “is that we cannot help the way others see us, and that is what we have in common. A basis for understanding, I hope.”

“Forgive me, Ferrante. The Bible speaks against your…practices. But in speaking against them, at least it acknowledges their existence. I must believe we are all God’s people, I suppose. Your offer of friendship…”

“Would do you more honour if I could help you find the kitchen.” We all laughed.

“Madonna’s temper will certainly not improve if I do not return soon with her eggs,” I admitted.

“This must be very hard for her.”

“For all of us.”

Ferrante nodded. Vittorio explained to me in his hoarse, boy’s voice the whereabouts of the kitchen, and I was relieved he did not offer to accompany me.

I acquired the eggs and the two basins from a thin, dour woman with blood under her fingernails and small feathers sticking to her wrists, and returned to my mistress to finish the hair washing.

***

The following morning we left Cesare’s frontier behind us and moved on to Bologna, then Bentivoglio, from where it was planned to sail to Torre del Fossa, where madonna would be met by Don Alfonso. But in Bentivoglio, our plans changed; now I look back on it, everything changed.

We arrived in the town towards dusk, the bells in all the
campanile
clanging the evening Angelus as rooks cawed their way to roost, black scraps against a sky of sullen, windblown cloud. Ploughing had begun in the
campagna
, and as we rode towards the gates, our route was lined by squat, grimy-faced peasants, pushed aside by our guards to let us pass. I was tired and longed for nothing more than to ease my bruised backside out of the saddle and on to a pallet or cushioned bench. I hoped our accommodation would not be too spartan and that madonna would not keep us too long before she herself retired. The Bentivoglio family had entertained her with a ball in Bologna, and nothing on the same scale was planned for this stop, where the old family castle was much smaller. As for food, I had long since given up hope of ever eating a palatable meal again, and was trying to accustom myself to the bland, stodgy northern fare which lay in the belly like so much lead shot.

We had scarcely helped madonna off with her outdoor clothes, however, when our host, Annibale Bentivoglio himself, burst into her chamber, scattering the little pages who were stationed outside and, with the briefest of apologies for his poor manners, stammered that horses had been seen approaching from the north, and it was believed they belonged to Don Alfonso d’Este.

“Coming here?” What little colour remained in Donna Lucrezia’s face after a long day on the road concentrated itself in two hectic spots on her cheeks and her eyes shone. It would be hard to say if she was angered by Don Alfonso’s importunity, or exhilarated by the challenge, or perhaps just plain feverish from exhaustion. “He can’t,” she said, as though that was an end to it. “Look at me.”

Summoning all the gallantry at his disposal, Don Annibale made a deep bow and said, “I see nothing to displease Don Alfonso or any man, madama.” Little though I knew of men then, I agreed.

Those who have called Donna Lucrezia beautiful have generally been poets, or ambassadors with masters to impress, or petitioners grateful for her fair-mindedness. And, of course, the one man who truly loved her blindly. But she was charming and quick-witted; she had a way of smiling at a man and looking at him from beneath lowered lids that could make him believe she could rival Helen of Troy. She was naturally very graceful, walking as if she glided and dancing as though stepping on clouds. Of course she dressed exquisitely, with the same innate sense of style she shared with all her family, though her figure and bearing were such that she could impress even in the bleakest mourning. Even now, with mud on the hem of her gown, with damp hair plastered to her forehead and circles like bruises under her eyes, I felt Don Alfonso would find little to complain of.

“If he is coming, he is coming,” said Angela, whose relationship to Donna Lucrezia gave her more freedom to speak plainly than the rest of us. “He is your husband. We had better make the best of it.”

Donna Lucrezia took a deep breath. “Of course,” she said, stooping to lift a hand mirror from its travelling case on the floor. “Where is it best that I receive him, do you think, Don Annibale?” She began to pat her hair, which tended to frizziness in damp weather.

Don Annibale shrugged. “My house is a small one, madama. There is only the hall.”

“Very well. You may tell Don Alfonso I will attend him directly, in the hall.”

Don Annibale bowed and retreated, and the small tower chamber became a flurry of activity as boxes were torn open, gowns,
camorre,
shifts, caps, and veils tossed on to the bed, jewels and cosmetics spilled on to the dressing stand. Eventually, Donna Lucrezia dismissed all her ladies except Angela and me, and the slave, Catherinella. Why she kept me I had no idea; I was one of the least experienced of her waiting women, and the challenge before us was great. Donna Lucrezia thought she could probably keep Don Alfonso waiting an hour, which seemed an alarmingly short time in which to dress her for her first meeting with her new husband.

Mercifully, she chose a simple gown in the deep, mulberry brown she favoured, with plain laced sleeves. Under it she wore a clean shift of white linen, fastened high at the neck with a pearl brooch from among the Este wedding gifts presented to her by Ippolito at the proxy marriage, when Ferrante, of all people, had stood in for his eldest brother. With her hair combed loose, rippling over her shoulders and down her back in tight waves caused by the plaits in which she had been wearing it since we left Imola, she looked every inch the demure, virgin bride. Don Annibale sent a page to escort us, but before she would leave her chamber, Donna Lucrezia asked for Sister Osanna to be sent for. No one knew whether she had been lodged in the castle or the town, but when she did eventually appear, madonna banished us to the passage and spent a few minutes alone with the nun.

Finally, we made our way to the hall, Catherinella following close behind and holding her mistress’s skirt clear of the dusty floor. No one here was under orders from Cesare to make ready for us as they had been in the Romagna, and a veneer of neglect covered the surfaces of the house; a faint smell of mildew hung in its air. In the hall, though, an effort had been belatedly made in honour of the Duke of Ferrara’s heir. Lamps and candles were lit, platters of bread and cheese, cured hams and fruit set out on the long, tallow-spattered table for the travellers’ refreshment. They themselves were clustered around the fire at the far end of the long room, a gaggle of large men in rough clothes, with dogs at their feet and pages weaving among them bearing wine jugs.

Our page announced us, and one man detached himself from the group around the fire, crossing the hall towards us with long, heavy strides and a couple of brindle hounds at his heels. His right hand lay across his heart in a romantic gesture ill-suited to his burly form and plain dress.

“May I present Don Alfonso d’Este,” said Don Annibale, hurrying towards us. Don Alfonso bowed. I noticed that his short, tightly waved hair was thinning at the crown. Donna Lucrezia, whose eyes remained dutifully cast down, made a deep curtsey.

“Donna Lucrezia Borgia,” said Don Annibale as Donna Lucrezia offered her hand for her husband to kiss.

For what seemed like an eternity, Don Alfonso did not move but remained as he was, frowning at the top of Donna Lucrezia’s head. The smells of tallow and wet hound stuck in the back of my throat, making me hold my breath until I felt dizzy. For some reason she did not please him. We would be sent back to Rome, all that way in the winter weather, retracing our steps weighed down by humiliation as well as our baggage. I would see Cesare at last. He would not want to see me. I tried to imagine his anger but could not, felt relieved, then mortified that he could already have faded so much in my memory.