The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (24 page)

That was out of the question, but I would tell her what she needed to know.

“Da Haro and your father are at odds. There is doubt that they can come to any sort of agreement.”

“They must! The Sforzas will never yield Milan to the King of Naples, no matter that he has the better claim. The Spanish must use their influence to make him see that. Otherwise, my soon-to-be family will look north for help and we will have the French on our doorstep.”

With della Rovere’s encouragement and possibly that of other cardinals as well. But I did not say as much. Lucrezia grasped the situation well enough as it was.

“Have you placed your bet yet?” she asked.

I knew she was referring to the heavy load of wagering going on all over the city as to whether or not the marriage would take place. The last I had heard, odds were running seven to five against it.

“Certainly not. I never bet on such things. Besides, I did very well when your father signed the bull. It doesn’t do to be greedy.”

She squeezed water out of a sponge and let it dribble over her head before she said, “You are so fortunate to control your own life.”

“Hardly that, but I am glad of what independence I have.” Even if there were days when it seemed little more than a sham.

She lifted her pale shoulders and let them fall. “I will never know what that is like. My life is my father’s to do with as he wills. I fear that even once I am married, that will continue to be so.”

It would have been the rankest hypocrisy—more even than I was capable of—to try to persuade her otherwise. Borgia was determined to control the lives of all his children now and forever. He intended them to at once further his goals and assure his immortality.

But first he would have to wiggle out of the morass of conflicting ambitions, rampant greed, and venal corruption in which he had enmeshed himself.

“If you continue to worry so much,” I said, “your bridegroom will think you are a poor, dour thing. He will flee all the celebrations meant to welcome him and ride hell-bent back to Pesaro as fast as his horse will go.”

A girl less confident of her own charms might have been taken aback by that. Not so Lucrezia. She merely smiled.

“No, he won’t. He will think me winsome and delightful. He will sprinkle rose petals at my feet and call me his beloved.”

We were laughing over the antics of besotted males when the servant returned bearing a fresh box of soap. She set it down on a nearby table and faded back into the wall.

Lucrezia had no actual need for the soap; it had merely been a ruse. We resumed chatting about the wedding gifts, her clothes, all innocuous matters. My eye drifted to the wooden box. I recognized it readily enough for it was the same sort I had been examining for months. The box came from Venice and bore the seal of the manufacturer on its lid. It was large enough to hold a dozen hand-shaped soaps made with olive oil and various perfumes. The soaps were a favorite of both Lucrezia and La Bella. Between them they went through an astounding quantity.

I leaned forward a little and lifted the top of the box, in the process breaking the maker’s seal. The same one that surely would have been broken had I inspected the soaps, as I inspected everything meant for any member of
la famiglia,
before replacing it with my own. The interior was separated into compartments, each holding a scented soap wrapped in different hues of silk to represent the various fragrances. I sniffed hibiscus, jasmine, rose, lavender, lemon, and thyme. There were two bars of each type of soap; every compartment in the box was filled.

“Is something wrong?” Lucrezia asked.

I let the lid drop back and smiled. “No, of course not, I was just admiring the soaps.”

“You’re welcome to them, if you like.”

“That is very kind of you.”

Still smiling, I turned to the attendant and asked, “Where did you get these?”

Deliberately, I kept my voice gentle and my tone light. It would not do to frighten her.

Even so, she paled and for a moment, I feared she would not be able to speak. Clearly, she knew who I was.

“Donna Lydia gave them to me,” she managed to gasp finally. “She is in charge of Madonna’s toilette.”

“Would you ask her to step in here?”

As the attendant fled to do my bidding, Lucrezia leaned her head back against the tub and looked at me silently. She said nothing, nor did I. We waited, but not for very long.

Donna Lydia bustled in. She was about my age, pretty enough, with creamy skin and well dressed in the manner of a wealthy merchant’s daughter not shy about showing off her fortune. Indeed, I marveled that she could move so gracefully, stuffed as she was into a confection of silk, velvet, and lace with a tightly boned bodice square cut above the breasts to reveal the transparent chemise beneath. All this was topped with a
templette,
fitted to the back of the head and coming forward at the sides, the whole edged with rosettas, the glass beads made in Murano that had become all the rage among those who could afford them.

“Do you require something, Madonna Lucrezia?” she asked, flashing a smile that revealed good teeth. She looked vaguely annoyed at being taken from her amusements but showed no concern whatsoever at my presence, thereby revealing her rank ignorance.

“Not at all, but I believe Donna Francesca does.”

“Madonna Lucrezia has very kindly offered me a gift of soap,” I said, indicating the box. “My favorite scents are hibiscus and jasmine. I would like to try both before deciding, but I don’t want to confuse the perfumes. Would you do me the kindness of trying one so that I may smell it, too?”

Admittedly, as ploys went, it was weak. Had Donna Lydia possessed a mind attuned to more than her own pleasures, she might have sensed that. As it was, she merely shrugged, helped herself to a bar of the jasmine, and with an impatient sigh, raised her long sleeves sufficiently to place her hands in a nearby copper brazier filled with cool water. The soap, being of the finest quality, lathered quickly.

I waited, counting under my breath. When I reached ten, Donna Lydia began to scream.

20

“I will have the entire family executed! No! Better yet, I will have them hung in chains in the piazza without food or water while the entire city watches them linger in agony and beg for death!”

So Borgia declared in mid-stride, halfway across his office, where he paced back and forth in a fury looking for something, anything upon which to vent his rage. He was still in the heavy formal garments in which he had come from his meeting with da Haro, their discussion interrupted when I sent word of what had occurred. Best he hear it from me rather than another, was my thinking. His broad face was fiercely red and gleaming with sweat. Nearby, his secretaries quaked, unable to leave without his permission but rightly terrified to be in his presence when he was in such a state.

I had maneuvered myself so that his desk was between us. From that position of relative safety, I said, “By all means do so if it will make you feel better. But they are guilty of nothing worse than having a daughter too stupid and careless to notice that my seal was missing from the box. If Donna Lydia had suspected for a moment that the soaps were poisoned, she would never have tried one so readily.”

“It doesn’t matter! My God, don’t you realize, my only daughter, my precious Lucrezia could have been—”

I resisted pointing out that it was precisely because I had realized what could happen that it had not and said instead, “Donna Lydia has suffered severe burns to both her hands. If that isn’t enough, she managed to touch her face and it is also affected. If I am right about the cause, her condition will continue to worsen for several days. Blisters will form and eventually break, leaving lesions behind. These will continue to be very painful as they crust over. Eventually, they will heal, but it is likely that scars will remain.”

Borgia stopped, caught his breath, and looked at me. “She isn’t going to die?”

I shook my head. “I believe the soaps were tainted with oil from one of several possible plants—oak perhaps, ivy, maybe sumac. People come into contact with these all the time and develop similar symptoms. But in this case, the oil appears to have been concentrated, probably by distillation, with the result that the effect was more severe, but in no case would it have been deadly.”

“Then what is this about?” Borgia demanded. “If the intent wasn’t to kill Lucrezia, what was it?”

I had considered that since the moment I first suspected that all was not right with the soap. There had been an outside chance that Morozzi had acquired—or worse yet created—a contact poison equal to my own but, in all modesty, I considered that unlikely. All the same, with access to Lucrezia’s household, he could have slipped in poisoned food or drink that would have been far more devastating. The thought chilled me. Despite all my efforts, neither Borgia nor anyone else could ever be fully protected while the mad priest yet lived.

“He isn’t interested in her,” I said. “This is about you. Consider, if Lucrezia died suddenly, everyone would suspect poison and simply assume that one of your enemies had killed her. You might even get some sympathy for your loss. However, if she was suddenly overtaken by a dread scourge, seen to be in the state that Donna Lydia is now, wouldn’t people be far more likely to consider that a sign of God’s punishment for some grave transgression? Forgive me, Holiness, but it would be taken as evidence of your sins.”

I did not have to spell out to what I referred; Borgia grasped my meaning for himself. His face darkened yet further, turning an alarming purple, and for a moment I wondered where the nearest foxglove might be found, that being a useful remedy for heart failure, although too much of it …

I digress. To my great relief, he took control of himself, albeit with a visible effort, and spoke almost calmly.

“If he has such reach, why didn’t he just kill me instead and be done with it?”

“Because your servants, unlike Lucrezia’s, are not foolish girls easily duped.”

I left it to him to realize, as I had with the benefit of hindsight, that allowing his daughter to be served by such lack-wits was a serious mistake.

“I want them all gone,” he decreed. “Every last one of them. She is to see no one but my own servants and whoever Vittoro judges absolutely reliable. Is that clear?”

“Completely, but her greatest safety lies in finding Morozzi quickly.” Finding and dispatching him to the Hell he so richly deserved.

“Then damn well do it! The man is flesh and blood. He has to eat, drink, piss, maybe even whore if he has the
coglioni
for it. He is somewhere in this city—
in my city
—and I want him found!”

Vases rattled as this final pronouncement was made. The secretaries were white with fear and I confess that my hands, clasped at my waist and hidden within the long sleeves of my overdress, were more than a little chilled despite the heat of the day. Yet I understood Borgia’s sentiment well enough. The hunt had gone on long enough. It was time for the kill.

Borgia continued to rant but I did not hear him. Thus far, I had dealt with the situation calmly and reasonably, but now fear and anger born of what had almost happened threatened to overwhelm me. Lucrezia scarred, Borgia weakened, perhaps fatally, and my own self shamed, my reputation in tatters while my father’s murderer walked away laughing. And beyond that, Lux snuffed out, the world plunged into darkness, all hope for a world of light and reason extinguished.

Pain stabbed through my head. I closed my eyes against the sudden brightness, an explosion of light that turned the world white. A hot, urgent thrumming rose in my blood. Behind my eyelids, I saw darkness roiled by a red wave that moved before me, engulfing the room, the palace, the city, all of creation. I was drowning in it, unable to breathe. The wall was in front of me and the hole within it, admitting flashes of light that illuminated a landscape of sheerest terror and despair. Dimly, yet as close as a whisper in my ear, I heard a child whimper.

“Francesca.”

A child who was—

“Francesca!”

The crimson wave receded. I opened my eyes. Borgia was staring at me. My chest was so tight that I could not speak. I was leaning back against his desk, a stunning breach of protocol by itself, never mind anything else I had done or said. Had I spoken? Had the darkness? Had he heard it howling deep within me?

“Are you all right?” His Holiness demanded.

I managed a nod that clearly left him unconvinced.

“Get out,” he ordered, waving a hand in the direction of the secretaries. They, too, were staring at me, but scrambled to obey and fled, hardly delaying long enough to shut the doors behind them.

“Sit down,” Borgia said, and pushed me into a chair near his desk. I sat, overwhelmed with numbness, unable to move or speak. When next I was aware of anything, he was pressing a goblet of chilled wine into my hand and insisting that I drink.

I did so without tasting. My hands trembled. I grasped the goblet between them to keep from dropping it and finished the wine. Slowly, my senses returned. I was aware of Borgia’s scent close to me—sweat beneath brocade and velvet, the citrus soap he favored, and something more, some mingling of the man’s raw strength and ambition with an undernote of creeping fear.

“What did you see?” he demanded.

I bit back a sigh. His Holiness was convinced that under certain circumstances I was prone to visions. I had tried to dissuade him to no effect. Suffice to say, he did not seem to care where such visions came from—whether from God or the Devil—only what they could reveal.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“I saw blood,” I said, as much to make him stop as anything else. “A sea of blood, drowning us all.”

He frowned. “All of us, not just my enemies?”

“Drowning the world.”

Clearly, this did not meet with His Holiness’s approval. He was silent for a moment before making his pronouncement.

“It was not a vision. You are overwrought, no doubt because of the danger you almost failed to deflect from my daughter. I forgive you for that. Now go and compose yourself. But don’t take too long. I expect you to deal with Morozzi without further delay.”