The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (31 page)

Cesare gave a shout of laughter and reached over to refill both our glasses.

“It’s true, gold pours through his hands, but try to get a straight answer from him and you’ll find yourself wound tighter than the Gordian knot. If he has a single failing, that is it.”

Privately, I feared that Borgia had a good many failings, chief among them his obsession with the advancement of
la famiglia
at all costs, but wild horses could not drag that from me. For my own part, I was singularly inept at the time-honored practice of flattery, shockingly so for a Roman. I took a try at it nonetheless.

“Your father trusts you above all others. Surely, if you approach him on this matter, he will reveal what we need to know?”

A look of such yearning passed across his face that I had to avert my eyes.

“You think he trusts me?”

I could have thought so provided that I overlooked His Holiness’s wild ramblings about Cesare plotting against him. Borgia had come as close to apologizing to me for that as he had ever done for anything but it was impossible to be certain of what he really believed. Sometimes I wondered if even he knew.

“Yes,” I said without hesitation, “of course he does. You are his eldest son, the one he has chosen to follow in his footsteps. Clearly, he trusts you above all others.”

Cesare twirled the stem of his goblet between his fingers and sighed. “He has been spending a great deal of time with Juan.”

“Isn’t he arranging a grand marriage for him? He may be trying to steady him for that.” As volatile as Juan was, he could easily disrupt the delicately balanced negotiations needed for the sort of marriage Borgia no doubt contemplated, a union at the highest levels designed to serve his own interests above any other.

“That’s possible,” Cesare allowed. “Perhaps there is some princess in the Indies or wherever it was the great Colombo returned from who wants him for a husband.”

I smiled and raised my glass to him. “That’s a splendid idea. I think you should propose it.”

“Alas, it seems the fortunate lady is King Ferdinand’s cousin, Maria Enriquez de Luna.”

It was to be a Spanish union then, sensible enough given Borgia’s need for the support of Their Most Catholic Majesties but no help at all in reconciling matters with the French. I considered asking Portia to put a little money down for me. Of late, I was becoming too well recognized in the city to place my own bets.

“He has another meeting with de Haro this evening,” Cesare said. “I’ll speak to him after that, but in the meantime—”

He set his glass on the table, rose, and came round to stand behind me. I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck. His hands slid across my shoulders and along my arms. He bent and with disturbing ease lifted me from the chair. I was reminded, in the last moments while I was still capable of coherent thought, that for all his ability to play the courtier, Cesare was a man trained to war, honed in muscle and sinew, and implacable in will.

Unlike our hasty coupling in Borgia’s office, this time my dark lover seemed intent on going slowly, much to my frustration. I wanted to lose myself—and all thoughts of what Portia had told me—in heedless passion, but Cesare was having none of it. When he was in such a mood as he was then, he was a connoisseur of passion, displaying skill many an older man would have envied. We made it as far as the bed, if only just. Once there, he removed my clothing piece by piece, lingering over each revealed expanse of flesh. For a young man, his control truly was remarkable but, as I have said, he had set himself to cultivate patience. Much as I resented being used as a tool to that end, I could hardly quarrel with the results. How else would I have learned that the arch of my foot is particularly sensitive to deep stimulation or that the stroking of fingertips along my ribs makes me tremble? Or that there is a particular very small area to the right and left of my pubis that is so exquisitely responsive that the mere flutter of his breath there sends me reeling?

Never mind how I reacted to the strength and power of him above me, the heat of his manhood against my thigh, the smoothness of his skin under my touch. The thick murmur of my name on his tongue was enough to almost push me over the edge as I clung to the sweetly strange need to hold him safe within my arms. Even, dare I say, within my body. Is it the conceit of every woman that she can provide such a haven? Is it the dream of every man to find it?

My back arched. I cried out, hearing my own helplessness, and rebelled. Without thought, being far beyond any such thing, I tightened my thighs around his torso, dug my elbows into the mattress and, using all my strength, flipped him onto his back. I had a moment to savor his surprise before I mounted him smoothly, smothering any objection he might have made with the swift clasp and release of inner muscles.

He laughed—the devil!—and succumbed with grace. I rode him hard but he won in the end. Release shattered me so wildly that I could not resist when he turned me, holding me fast with an arm around my waist, and drove into me with power that eclipsed the very world.

*   *   *

Some time later, when I had caught my breath, I turned my head to look from the bed toward the tall windows through which I could make out the slanting light of early evening over the nearby tiled roofs, glowing gold and red in the dying sun. Flocks of starlings were arcing in long, undulating curves toward their roosts. Here and there, an owl called tentatively from nests high up beneath the roofs of churches. The air smelled of wood smoke and the river, with just a lingering hint of the olive and lemon groves beyond the city.

I thought Cesare was asleep and was startled when he propped himself up suddenly on one elbow to look at me. Twisting a link of my hair between his fingers, he said, “You still haven’t told me what troubles you so.”

“You know the situation as well as I—”

“I don’t mean that. I mean why you wake sometimes with tears on your cheeks or why I find you sometimes huddled in a chair looking like monsters from Hell have been chasing you.”

Such is the trap of intimacy, exposing as it does that which we wish to keep most deeply buried.

I was about to lie—again—to assure him that he was imagining things, when I remembered Vittoro’s embarrassment in speaking of his dream, and his determination to do so anyway for my sake.

I turned on my side, looking again toward the windows and the slowly gathering dark. Cesare tucked himself around me so that we lay like spoons. I slipped his hand beneath my cheek and said, “I have nightmares … really just one but it comes again and again.”

“Will you tell me of it?”

“There isn’t much to tell. I am behind a wall, there is a hole, I can see shards of light and blood, an extraordinary amount of blood. I am drowning in it.”

“Nothing else?”

Oh, yes, something else. “A woman … screaming.”

“Who is the woman?”

“Mamma.” The answer came from me without hesitation or thought. Yet it made no sense whatsoever. “But that cannot be. My mother died when I was born.”

His arm tightened, drawing me closer against the warmth of his body. “Then perhaps it is about something that hasn’t happened yet.”

“No, that cannot be, either. In the nightmare, I am very small and powerless to save myself or anyone else.”

“That is not who you are.”

I blinked back tears and shook my head. “No, damn it, it is not.”

To the contrary, I was a woman capable of provoking the greatest fear and dread. People averted their eyes from me and went in terror of my enmity. I knew a thousand ways to kill and would deploy any of them without mercy or hesitation, or so I wanted people to believe.

I was Francesca Giordano, the Pope’s poisoner, and my very life depended on making sure that no one ever forgot it. Least of all myself.

“Where are you going?” Cesare asked as I rose from the sea of rumpled sheets.

I answered over my shoulder. “To find out how to reach Morozzi.”

He sighed dramatically but a moment later I heard the bed creak as he rose and came after me. Catching my arm, he said, “This is not a good time to approach my father.”

I was honestly puzzled. Granted, the hour was late but His Holiness was notorious for working—or otherwise occupying himself—far into the night. He seemed to thrive on no more than a few hours’ sleep augmented by short
sieste
.

“You did not hesitate to go to him at once when I told you that Morozzi was in the city.”

“That was different. After yet another encounter with the Spanish emissary, Papa will not be in the best of moods. We have to wait.”

“For how long and for what? I am doing my best, as is Vittoro, but even with all the effort in the world, Morozzi could still get past both of us. Every day, every hour increases the odds that he will succeed.”

I did not overstate the danger, as I believed Cesare well knew. But after the briefest hesitation, he said, “I am … making inquiries. It is important to have all the facts. When I do, then I will—”

“What are you talking about? What facts?” Frustration overwhelmed me. Morozzi’s escape and my own brush with death at his hands had affected me far more than I wanted to admit. Without thought, I lashed out at Cesare.

“You Borgias are all the same! Everything is intrigue, conspiracy, plotting. Nothing can ever be straightforward. But this is! We must act now!”

“You forget to whom you speak!”

A woman with the smallest degree of sense would have stopped then and there; indeed, she would have gone further and asked his pardon. No matter how long we had known each other or the intimacies we shared—my bed had not yet cooled from our latest excesses—Cesare had been raised as a prince by a father who saw himself as the equal or better of kings and emperors. He would not tolerate being spoken to in such a fashion other than by Borgia himself, and only possibly by God.

It was not too late. I could still soothe him with soft words and a touch. But anger hardened me, that and the sense that something lay beneath his otherwise inexplicable behavior. Something he refused to tell me.

And for that he caught the sharp edge of my tongue. “I am speaking to a boy who needs to be a man! Stop fearing your father and be the leader you claim to be!”

Before he could respond, I yanked fresh clothes from a chest and strode in all my naked glory to the pantry, where I steeled myself to bathe in cold water, being unwilling to wait long enough for it to heat. I washed as best I could and dressed, all the while expecting to hear the slam of the door as Cesare departed in a rage.

The possibility that there could be an irreparable breach between us made me feel hollow inside but I could not dwell on it. Whatever deep game Cesare was playing, the stakes were simply too high to indulge him. Finally, having no conceivable reason to linger in the pantry, I stepped out into the salon. To my surprise my dark lover was waiting for me. He had dressed and was pacing back and forth impatiently. Seeing me, he scowled.

“For a woman in a hurry, you took long enough.”

I struggled to hide my relief. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

“I almost wasn’t,” he said, striding over to open the door and wave me through it. “But my father expects us to work together. To that end, I suggest you curb your temper in future lest I curb it for you.”

I had to hope that my silence would be taken as contrition sufficient to assuage his pride, for my own demanded that I offer nothing more. Outside on the street, we waited while his men brought up his horse. Cesare mounted and reached a hand down, grasping mine and drawing me up into the saddle behind him. We set off at a trot. Behind us, several of the guard scrambled to mount up and follow us. Men ran alongside bearing torches to light our way. Dogs, alerted to our passing, barked in chorus. Here and there in upper windows where the shutters had been left folded back to admit the torpid air, I caught a glimpse of heads poking out to see who was causing such a commotion at that hour. But mostly, I concentrated on holding tight to Cesare rather than disgrace myself by tumbling from his cursed mount.

Being a city dweller at heart, I am not naturally fond of horses. They smell, they are too big, and they can wreak havoc in a crowded street. Donkeys are useful, as are asses, and the small ponies we see from Brittany seem harmless enough. But whenever I am forced onto the back of a horse, I take refuge in some pleasant thought intended to distract me. As we neared the Ponte Sant’Angelo, I was preoccupied trying to decide where best to lure Morozzi in order to kill him when a shrill shriek pierced the night air.

The horse shied but Cesare stilled him at once. He would have ridden straight on had I not pressed a hand to his arm.

“Wait.” Despite the warmth of the night, my blood chilled. I recognized the sound. A second whistle took up the call, followed by a third, and then too many for me to count, all sending out the same urgent message:

Come running.

26

The fire was sputtering out by the time we reached the Piazza di Santa Maria. Smoke and the peculiarly sweet stench of burned human flesh hung heavy in the air. The body had been pulled from the stake and doused in water that ran in rivulets between the paving stones, reflecting the flames of torches illuminating the grisly scene.

Having dismounted, Cesare and I pushed our way through the gathering crowd. I was not too proud to cling to his arm, being overwhelmed with horror at what lay before us. She was young, so far as I could tell, dressed in a plain white shift, the bottom half of it burned away, along with most of the skin from her limbs. What was left was seared and cracked, still oozing blood and other fluids. From the waist up, she was almost intact save for the stain of black smoke around her nose and mouth where she had breathed in the fumes that had killed her, but not quickly enough to prevent her features from being contorted in agony. Incongruously, her golden hair still fell smoothly over her shoulders as though someone had brushed it before consigning her to the flames.

Alfonso knelt beside her, cradling her body in his arms. Huge, gasping sobs came from him. A guard of young smugglers stood in a circle, all wide-eyed and stunned, several looking as though they were about to vomit. I fought the urge to do the same and pressed closer.