Sins of the House of Borgia (28 page)

I am suddenly rigid with anticipation and uncertainty. I feel my palms begin to sweat and pray he will not notice. But he does.

“What is it?” he asks.

My cheeks burn in the fire of his eyes. “I…I am not La Fiammetta, or the Princess Sancia…”

He presses two fingers to my lips. I smell the camphor used to preserve the cushions from moth. “You are more precious to me than either. You know that, don’t you?”

I nod. I do know it, though I do not understand why, when I have no city, no land, no name or titles nor any amatory skills other than what Angela has taught me. Knowledge without understanding is not enough to make me relax. With a wry little smile he scoops me up, one arm under my shoulders, the other beneath the backs of my knees, and lays me gently down on the cushions.

“Then what are you afraid of?” he asks, pulling his shirt over his head. His chest hair makes a pattern the shape of a goblet, the bowl narrowing to a stem just under his ribs. “What are you thinking?” he tries, when I do not reply. I tell him. He laughs and sits beside me. “Show me.”

I raise my hand to a point next to his left nipple, dark as a mulberry. I watch my hand as though it belongs to somebody else; it is stained violet by the light filtering through the canopy. As I trace the outline of the goblet with the tip of one finger, following the ridges of his ribs to the muscular flat of his belly, Cesare flinches and laughs. He is ticklish, I realise, and my heart somersaults. But he is deadly serious again as my finger comes to a halt where the stem of the goblet extends below his navel.

“Don’t stop,” he says, loosening his breeches. Freed from constraint, his sex seems to yearn towards my hand. “You see, you are the lodestone of desire,” he murmurs, but my hand is paralysed, as though it has its own sense of modesty quite apart from anything my brain might try to impose upon it, and my whole body trembles in the grip of this war between them.

And Cesare, who understands war, sits back, tugs off his boots, then stretches himself out beside me on the cushions and begins, with slow, assured fingers, to unlace my bodice. Dressed in haste for nursing, I am not wearing a corset. I lie with my arms stiff at my sides, fists clenched, nails dug into my palms, aware of nothing but his sex pressed into the dip between my belly and my Venus’ mound. He loosens the neck of my shift and kisses my breasts, one after the other, making a circle around each nipple with the point of his tongue. I think of Angela.

“Did you know,” he murmurs, “that Don Cristobal Colon, the governor of the Indies, once wrote to Queen Isabella that the earth is the shape of a woman’s breast and the Garden of Eden is on the very nipple of it.”

I do not ask myself how he knows this. Desire washes from my throat to the parts of me that have been secret until now, waiting for my conquistador with his wise hands and his smile that dares the devil. Shifting his position slightly, he slides one hand beneath my skirts, pressing my thighs apart, seeking out this new world.

“You don’t believe in the Garden of Eden,” I remind him.

“Oh but I do,” he assures me, and I think of Don Cristobal, and of how I am the whole earth cupped in my lover’s hand.

His fingers stroke and probe, but they do not find their mark, and I want to tell him, to reach down and guide his touch, but I do not know how. I want to make him happy; I want him to love me, so I pretend, squirming and sighing, and I believe he is deceived. Abruptly, he twists free of me and rises to his feet. Removing the rest of his clothes, he stands over me, and I am suddenly seized by a desire to laugh.

He looks so foolish, foolish and vulnerable with his sex stuck out in front of him, thick and coarse, the dark flesh ridged with gristle. It seems not to belong to the rest of his fine-boned, long-sinewed body, his skin unblemished except for a small, red scar the shape of a sunburst just above the line of his private hair. Nothing is written on his body; even in his nakedness he is an enigma. I bite my lips and hunt for something serious to think about. Kneeling between my legs, he bundles my skirts around my waist, opens me with two fingers, and pushes himself inside.

This is impossible. He is too big. I will tear; everything inside me will be ripped and ragged. The pain is deep and sharp, sudden, focused, but where, I cannot tell. I moan, I shake my head, I squeeze my eyes shut. Again I am misunderstood as he drives further into me. Now something changes. My thighs strain apart, my hips arch up to meet his; I am all greed, nothing but a mouth, sucking and salivating. He shudders, gives a muffled groan which I feel against my neck, and lies still. I feel his skin cooling against mine; I feel like a child who has been offered a sweet, only to have it snatched away as she reaches out to take it. I breathe in deeply, willing my blood to slow, my heart to steady, my legs, which are clasped around Cesare’s waist, to relax their grip, to let him go.

After a while he raises himself on one elbow and gives me a searching look. “What’s wrong?” He waits, but I do not know how to reply so he comes to his own conclusions. “Only now do you think of the consequences, eh?” he teases, tickling my belly.

“It’s not that. Angela says no one ever gets pregnant their first time.”

He looks sceptical at that, but all he says is, “What then?” I see realisation dawn. “I didn’t please you, did I? Well, well. What can I say in my defence? I wanted you so much, you see, have wanted you for so long, and I am overwrought with my sister’s illness…But excuses are not what you want, are they?” He strokes my private hair, prospects again for what it hides.

“It doesn’t matter.” Truly, it doesn’t. Because his need has given me a glimpse of what it is to have power. I gaze up at his face, at the frown which has scored two lines of uneven length between his brows and the air of hesitancy flickering about his mouth and tell myself that, for this moment if no other, we are equals. More than equals.

“Don’t lie to me.” He raises his hand from between my legs and licks his fingers. “Mistress Quim doesn’t.”

I push a tangle of his hair back over his shoulder and, as I touch his damp skin, I have an unearthly, fleeting sense that we are fused, that I can understand. “Really,” I say, “it doesn’t matter.”

Apparently satisfied I am telling the truth, he makes himself comfortable once again on our bed of cushions. Drawing me close, until I am lying with my head on his chest, my ear to his heart, his voice a tremor through the bones of my skull, he says, “I will tell you about Urbino, then. And by the time I have done that, we will be ready to make love again. And I will do better next time, I promise.” I wonder if he can feel me smile.

As he speaks, he strokes my hair, in long sweeping movements down my back, ending just at the rise of my buttocks where he lets his hand rest for a moment before beginning again.

“Do you remember,” he begins, which has almost the same magic power as once upon a time, “when the French occupied Rome in ’94?”

“Only vaguely. I was just a little girl. And the Jews had their own militia. It was quite efficient. The French left us alone mostly, I think.”

“Well I was nineteen. I had just been made a cardinal. I had a doctorate in canon law but no sword. Juan was in Spain, Lucrezia with her Sforza husband in Pesaro, Jofre…oh, I can’t even remember where he was; he was only a child still anyway. So it was just Papa and me and a handful of old churchmen. We had to take refuge in Sant’Angelo. Papa also brought along Giulia Farnese and my mother.” He laughs, and his tone changes to that of the gossip-mongering courtier who charms the visitors to La Fiammetta’s salons. “Can you imagine? Poor Master Burchard, who refused to leave Papa’s side, come what may, was terribly vexed by the order of precedence at dinner. Giulia was the current favourite but Mama, on the other hand, was the mother of the pope’s favourite children.

“But that’s not the point. The point is this. While the women bitched and my father and the other cardinals planned how they would negotiate with Charles, I watched his army. It was the biggest army ever seen in Italy; it took them till long after dark to get through the Porta del Popolo, and I never saw so much as one foot soldier out of step. They had cannon with a bore the size of a man’s head. With an army like that at his back, even that slobbering little cripple could do anything he wanted. You know, Violante, it made my arms and legs tingle, cooped up in those horrible, thick-walled rooms in Sant’Angelo, thinking about what I could do with an army like that. It made me fall over my shiny new cardinal’s robes, so my mother would snap at me for being clumsy.”

Moved by a surge of affection for this awkward, out-of-place boy he is describing, I lift my head from his breast and kiss him.

“What was that for?” he asks, amused.

“Nothing. Go on. You haven’t mentioned Urbino yet.”

“You’re too impatient. There’s no hurry.”

“People will be looking for us soon. What hour do you think it is?”

He assesses the angle of the shadows fading across the brick patio. “Thirteenth, fourteenth. Sun’s going in, though. Where was I?”

“Being told off by your mother.”

“
Plus ça change
,” he says ruefully. “Yes, well, perhaps you know because it is one of those apocryphal stories they tell about me, that one of the conditions my father negotiated with Charles for his departure was that he could have me and Djem as hostages for everyone’s good behaviour. Considering what his men had already done in Rome, and elsewhere, you might say it was shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted, but anyway, it was done. I escaped almost immediately. Papa and I had hatched a plan…”

“I know. We used to talk about it at my school. We used to talk about you quite a lot at school. The main reason my friends came to my baptism was in the hope of getting a look at you. But you weren’t there.”

“Ah, well, I didn’t know how beautiful you were then. I might have been prepared to enter a church for you.” He lifts my hair between his fingers and puts it to his lips. Then his fist tightens; he begins to pull, only stopping when my hiss of pain makes him realise he is hurting me. “But they killed Djem,” he says, in a voice as flat and dangerous as ill-tempered steel.

“Donna Lucrezia says he died of a fever.”

“He was poisoned, for sure. Charles realised how my father and I had planned my escape when he discovered my baggage train contained nothing but rocks and empty boxes, so he thought to spite Papa by depriving him of the money he received from the Sultan for Djem’s keep. Djem was as strong as an elephant; he would not have succumbed to a fever that easily.”

“You were very fond of him, weren’t you?”

“He let us be ourselves. You have no idea how rare a thing that is for people like us.”

I think of myself, of my fair looks and three names and the language I sometimes dream in but no longer understand, but I keep silent because I want to find out who Cesare is when he is himself.

“Entering his apartments was like walking into a dream. He lived in a sort of tent, with bright silk hangings rigged up like sails from the ceiling, and floors covered with cushions and silver trays on little curly legs, full of sweets.”

I glance up at the canopy above us, feel the textures of silk and velvet against my skin, the tiny, random pricks of loose feathers. Perhaps Djem is watching us, from wherever the Mussulmen go when they die.

“He burned incense because he liked the smell, not to ingratiate himself with some deity that didn’t give a damn about him. He taught us to cook
lokum
in a bronze pot hung over his fire, and encouraged us to drink poppy because he said there were all kinds of secrets locked up in a poppy seed that only the heat of our bellies could release. Lucrezia could never understand why you couldn’t just inhale the perfume of the flowers, but of course, they have none. I will never forgive the French for Djem.”

“But they are your allies. Your wife is French.”

“Why must you keep harping on my wife? She is my wife, and the French are not my allies; they are my tools, them and Spain. I will tell you one thing about my time in France and one thing only.”

My heart begins a heavy, wet thudding, as though someone is pounding laundry inside my chest. I am not sure I want him to tell me anything about France.

“While I was there, I realised something. It was, I suppose, the effect of distance, a kind of mental perspective if you will. I realised that if Italy were ever to be anything more than a playground for the kings of France and Spain, then she must become a state herself, with a king of her own.”

“You?”

He shrugs. “That does not matter. What matters is this.” He turns to face me, burrowing deeper among the cushions, and I know he has nearly reached the end of his story because I can feel he is ready for love again. With my arms around his waist, I draw him against me.

“I took Urbino because I could,” he whispers, “because I wanted it, because I’m never going to be anyone’s prisoner ever again. I’m never going to do anyone’s will but my own.” He is on top of me now, his hair veiling our faces as we kiss, and I am opening to the sweet pressure of his desire…

“Don Cesar?”

In seconds he is on his feet, pulling his shirt over his head, shaking his hair out of his eyes. “Michelotto.”

Time starts to move again.

***

Michelotto stood, legs crossed, leaning against one of the white marble pillars of the arcade with the air of a man who had seen all this before. Cesare’s sword belt was slung over his shoulder, his spurs hanging from it as well as the sword, and the black tabard of the Knights of Saint John, in which Cesare had arrived in Ferrara in another lifetime, folded over his arm.