The Borgia Mistress: A Novel (21 page)

Cesare had left his valet behind in Viterbo; we were alone. In the middle of the room, he released me.

“Take off your clothes.” When I hesitated, still grappling with the notion that he thought I could have killed so wantonly, he said, “They’re covered with blood. Take them off.”

Reminded of my condition, I moved as quickly as I could to comply, but my hands were shaking too much to be of any use. Cesare made a sound of impatience and took charge. He used the blade he wore at his side to cut through the laces and ties holding my garments in place. As he worked, they fell away. I was left in nothing other than the short chemise I wore against my skin.

“That, too,” he said.

I glanced down to see that the blood had soaked through all the layers of my clothing even to the chemise. Quickly, fearing that I was about to retch, I pulled it off over my head.

Cesare gathered the clothes and dropped them in a far corner of the room. I stood naked and shivering, watching him as he did so. He returned to me holding out a blanket.

“You need to wash.”

Neither of us was of a mind to endure servants trooping in and out to fill the bathtub in the adjacent room. Instead, I made do with the contents of the ewer provided when Cesare returned from hunting and long since cooled to the temperature of the room. That didn’t matter; nothing did except that there was water and soap. With Cesare’s help, I was able to wash the blood from my hair, my face, my body, and most especially from my hands, which were caked with it. He even produced a small brush to help me remove the last traces from around and under my nails. I scrubbed and scrubbed until finally he stopped me.

“Enough. You will injure yourself.”

By then, I was shaking so hard that I could scarcely stand. Cesare led me over to the bed and sat me down. Gripping the blanket around myself, I said, “You taught me to use a knife.”

My intention may have been to remind him that there was an entirely plausible explanation for how I had managed to kill the men. However, he was not persuaded.

“You are too modest. I have trained men who would not have been able to do what you did.”

“What do you think, then? That Herrera is right and I am possessed by the Devil?” Without giving him a chance to answer, I added, “The Spaniard would burn me, you know, if he could. And he is far from alone.”

Cesare sat down on the bed beside me. Quietly, he said, “He cannot. Besides, none of this is really because of you. You just have the bad luck to be involved with me.”

Accustomed as I was to the Borgias’ believing that Creation itself revolved around them, I was surprised all the same. Until I remembered what I had discovered about the Spaniard in the
passetto
.

“You have to understand about Don Miguel,” Cesare continued. “He’s actually an intelligent, well-educated man, not to mention a gifted architect. He’s shown me a design of his for a dome that, assuming his calculations regarding the weight-bearing stones are correct, would be revolutionary.”

I stared at him in bewilderment. Here I had thought that all Cesare and Herrera did together was hunt, whore, and drink. But they had actually been poring over architectural plans and discussing the finer points of dome construction?

“I’m not excusing anything he has done,” Cesare continued. “I’m just saying that Miguel fights a constant battle with his own nature. Not surprisingly, that puts a great strain on him, as it would on anyone. You, above all, should understand that.”

I should understand Herrera? I should … what? Accept that he wanted to consign me to the flames because he was in love with Cesare?

“Oh, yes,” I said. “By all means, let’s make allowances for his wounded heart.”

Cesare shrugged. “Of course, even if my proclivities did run in that direction, I could not allow myself to return his affections.”

“Why not?”

“Because while I remain the object of his unfulfilled desire, he will do everything he possibly can to please me. Such is the nature of all men, regardless of whom they like to climb into bed with.”

He was right, of course. Ruthless and heartless, but definitely right. However, that raised a question. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I need you to help save him from the assassin, no matter how much reason you have to hate and fear him.”

In a way, I was relieved. Cesare’s concern seemed to suggest that he was not playing a deep game against his own father’s wishes. Or perhaps he simply wanted me to believe that.

“Surely,” I said, “neither Herrera nor the alliance is so important now that Il Papa and the Comte have become such great friends.”

“Do not be misled by the false bonhomie of schemers as clever as that pair. The French king’s hunger for land and power is equaled only by my father’s. Inevitably, they will clash, and when they do,
la famiglia
will need the Spanish more than ever.”

Which meant that Cesare would need Herrera, albeit for entirely cold-blooded reasons.

Grudgingly, I said, “So long as he refrains from trying to consign me to the pits of Hell, I have no particular reason to want him dead.”

“Or his servants?”

“Are we not in agreement that I was provoked and acted in self-defense?”

Cesare stood up. He went over to the heap of bloodied clothes that he had dropped in a corner. When he returned, he was holding my pouch. Opening it, he withdrew the knife I had found near the thornbushes.

“I thought this felt unusually heavy,” he said as he tossed the pouch aside. Turning the knife over in his hands, he said, “The shape, even when concealed, is quite distinctive. This is the type of knife carried by Herrera’s servants.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, despising the weakness of my voice. I had meant to tell him about the knife, I really had. But the opportunity had never presented itself, and besides, with him entertaining the notion that I had killed the servant in the alley, how could I be expected to tell him anyway?

“I only thought it had been used to kill the man,” I added.

“You thought that, did you? When?”

“When I discovered it on the slope of the hill near where you found me the other night.”

“The night when you can’t remember where you went or what you did?”

I nodded, fully realizing how damning that sounded. “That night. But surely I don’t have to point out the obvious? When you found me, there was blood on my feet but nowhere else.” I gestured toward the pile of clothes that I could only think would have to be burned. “If I had killed that man, everything I was wearing would have been covered with blood just as it is now.”

I could think of few benefits to killing two men as I had done, apart from the obvious one of preserving my own life. But being forcefully reminded of just how messy a business killing is, especially when done with a knife, removed from me all fear that I could have killed the Spanish servant while in the frenzy of terror caused by the nightmare. Among all my many sins, that was not one of them.

“Yes,” Cesare said, “I know.”

“You do?” I had feared that my possession of the knife would convince him that I was responsible for the man’s death, but apparently it had done exactly the opposite.

“Where did you say you found this?”

“On the slope beyond the arena. The ground there is covered with thornbushes, which I think are the reason why my feet were cut. A narrow path leads through them and around the side of the palazzo toward the piazza. I believe I came that way.”

“I know the place. How did you happen to see the knife?”

“I didn’t, not at first. But I noticed a depression where it looked as though someone might have lain for a time. The knife was there.”

“And you didn’t tell me because you feared that I would think you dropped the knife, having taken it from the man and used it to kill him?”

Reluctantly, I nodded. “We both know that I haven’t been … entirely myself lately.”

He sighed and put an arm around me, drawing me close. More exhausted than I could ever remember being and aching in every bone, I accepted the comfort he offered without hesitation. Stroking my hair, he said mildly, “You don’t do well away from Rome.”

The notion that my distress was caused by a sojourn in the countryside was so absurd that I could not help but laugh. As, of course, Cesare intended.

“Perhaps you found the knife somewhere and carried it to the slope,” he suggested after a moment.

“If I did, I have no memory of doing so.”

“Then perhaps someone else left it there.”

Dimly, I recalled the shadowy figure I had glimpsed. A robed being no less terrifying than Death itself. But surely only a product of my disordered mind?

“In the place where I happened to be? What is the chance of that?”

“I don’t know,” Cesare admitted. Or at least I think he did. No matter how any of us tries to hold off Morpheus, the capricious god always wins in the end.

“I am missing something,” I murmured, but my voice was slurred and I could barely understand my own words. Likely Cesare did not hear me, for I don’t think that he replied. I knew when he laid me down on the bed and covered me, and then I knew nothing at all.

21

Herrera and the other Spaniards left the villa at first light. David went with them, which I hoped meant that he was still in their good graces despite his instinctive move to help me. Comte de Rochanaud departed shortly thereafter, setting off with many expressions of mutual amicability between himself and Borgia. Scarcely had the boat carrying the French emissary disappeared around a bend of the river than His Holiness was off to spend a few hours with La Bella.

The sun was high when we finally departed. During the ride back to Viterbo, I had no opportunity to speak with Il Papa, nor did he address me. While I was certain that he knew full well what I had done, apparently there was no reason for us to discuss it.

I did, however, have ample time to reflect on what had occurred. Borgia’s suggestion that I needed to kill was not without merit. Yet whatever relief I gained from doing so was transitory. Although I did not have any doubts about the moral rightness of defending one’s own life, I was gripped by a hollow sadness that not even Cesare’s understanding could ease. Moreover, I was all too vividly aware that I was, yet again, the target of fearful and condemning stares from even the hard-bitten men-at-arms in His Holiness’s escort. I have observed that there are advantages to having a dark reputation, but riding along the Via Cassia that afternoon, I could not remember any of them.

Coming into Viterbo, it was clear to me that word of events at the villa had already spread, as no doubt Borgia had intended when he sent the Spaniards back so early. With thoughts of peace with the French uppermost in every mind, Il Papa was greeted far more enthusiastically than usual as he entered the town and made his way through the winding streets up to the palazzo. He seemed to enjoy the novel reception, for he waved and offered blessings enthusiastically. As for me, I kept my eyes straight ahead and did my best to ignore the whispers that followed in my wake.

The prelates, having been denied any role in the discussions with France, were out in force when we arrived. To a man, they demanded His Holiness’s attention. He gave it, if grudgingly. Cesare went along, most likely to mediate, although he had scant patience for his fellow prelates and was far more likely to shout them down than to listen to them. Sorry though I was to miss that, I was free to see to my own needs. Or so I thought.

Before I reached my rooms, Renaldo caught up with me. He had gone ahead in the company of the Spaniards, and I assumed he had something to tell me regarding them. But instead he surprised me. “That nun is back. She is asking to see you.”

I swallowed a groan. Of all the people I wanted to deal with just then, Mother Benedette was not among them. I dreaded the thought of facing her, given what she must surely think of me now that she knew what I was capable of doing.

“She’s quite a charming woman,” Renaldo added. “We had a nice chat.”

“Did you?” I could only imagine about what.

He nodded gently. “She knew your mother.”

My head was throbbing. I had slept, but not enough. I needed a proper bath and a chance to collect my thoughts, but apparently I would not get either.

“They were friends together growing up in Milan,” I said.

“So she told me. I put her in my office. I thought she would be more comfortable there.”

Renaldo’s office, whether in Borgia’s old palazzo on the Corso or at the Vatican or in Viterbo, was at once his inner sanctum and the command post from which he maintained his oversight of all aspects of the papal household. I had been allowed to call upon him there from time to time, but visitors were generally not welcome. For him to have made an exception for Mother Benedette suggested that he was impressed with her indeed. Or perhaps he was simply trying to do me a kindness.

“I’ll just have a quick word with her,” I said. “We won’t be long.”

To my surprise, he replied, “Take as much time as you like. I’m having a new counting table built and I want to see how it’s coming along. If the beads aren’t perfectly smooth or properly balanced…” He shuddered at the havoc that could wreak.

I thanked him and withdrew long enough to freshen myself before following in his wake. Renaldo’s office was down a short corridor from the great hall. When the door to it was open, he had a view from his desk of all comings and goings. Although we had been in Viterbo only a few days, the office was heaped with piles of ledgers, rolled parchments, and stacks of paper. I suspected that Renaldo used them as a kind of fortification against the chaotic world.

In their midst, perched on the edge of a chair facing the desk, I found Mother Benedette. The abbess’s eyes were closed and she was fingering the wooden rosary beads she wore at her waist. She appeared lost in prayer.

I hesitated, reluctant to interrupt her; but she seemed to sense my presence, for she opened her eyes, peered at me, and smiled wanly.

“My dear child. I hope you can forgive me for coming like this?”

Considering that I had brutally killed two men scant hours before, I rather thought that I was the one who should be asking for forgiveness, but so be it. Quickly, I took the seat beside her. “Of course. I am glad to see you.”

“It is kind of you to say so. You could hardly be blamed if you never wished to be in my company again.”

Whatever I had expected, it was not that. Surely any offense she imagined that she had committed paled in comparison to mine. “I don’t understand. Why would you think that?”

“Because I was far too hasty and clumsy in telling you of your mother as I did. I am so sorry for the distress I must have caused. I fear it may have led you to—” She broke off, but her expression made it clear what she thought I had done in response to learning how my mother died.

Distress
was too mild a word by far for what I was still experiencing as I struggled to come to terms with my mother’s fate and my father’s deception, but I would not for the world tell her that. Instead, I replied, “I acted in self-defense. But beyond that, a truth withheld for so many years can never be revealed with too great haste. You only did what was right.”

For a moment, I feared that she might give in to the tears glistening in her eyes, but she blinked them away hastily and nodded.

“Then I thank God for guiding me as He has done, and I tell you truly, your friendship means as much to me as your mother’s ever did.”

In the aftermath of the events at the villa, her kindness all but overwhelmed me. I needed a moment before I could respond. “Be assured that I feel the same way. When you have completed your pilgrimage to Assisi, perhaps we can—”

I was about to voice my hope that she might stop in Viterbo again on the way back to her abbey, or visit me in Rome if we had, please God, returned to the city before then, but Mother Benedette forestalled me. “In that spirit of that friendship, I must speak with you honestly,” she said.

Bracing myself for what I was sure must be her concerns about the state of my soul, I said, “By all means.”

“I fear that you are in great danger, Francesca.”

“I would be the last person to claim that I am without sin, but—”

She looked at me in surprise. “Oh, I don’t mean that. I’m concerned because people are saying that you must also have been responsible for the death of the Spanish servant. And that is not all they are blaming you for.”

“There is more?”

“People want to believe that His Holiness will not take us into war, but they still have grave doubts about him and his intentions. They fear that he cares for nothing but the well-being of his own family and that he will do anything to increase his own power—even if that means that ordinary people are put in great peril.”

She was right, of course. But that did not mean that Borgia was a poor choice for pope. Without doubt, there were far worse.

“There is some truth to that,” I admitted. “But Borgia is a man of vision and daring. He supports the rebirth of classical learning, natural philosophy, the arts, and much more. He decries superstition and hypocrisy. He believes that the Church has become mired in ways that no longer work in the world and he wants to change that.”

“All well and good,” Mother Benedette said. “But people are caught between wanting to put their trust in him and being unable to do so. In that situation, it is very easy for them to convince themselves that his failure to be what they want him to be is proof of a malign influence at work on him. More and more, they suspect you of being that influence.”

“Me?” It was absurd, utterly ridiculous, past all reason. To begin with, I had no particular influence over Borgia, but that he should be absolved of his failings and I held responsible for them … I took a breath, forcing myself to remain calm. After all, there was nothing I could do about what was being said in the streets.

“Words cannot hurt me,” I said with rather more confidence than I felt.

“Dismiss it if you will,” Mother Benedette said, “but I would feel terrible if I went on to Assisi, leaving you in danger.”

Though her concern touched me deeply, it also surprised me. “What happens to me is not your responsibility.”

“In a way, it is. After all, I put myself in your life, taking it upon myself to stir up memories that you might have dealt with better in a calmer time. If you are confused or distracted as a result, and therefore less able to deal with the problems that confront you, I do have some responsibility for that.”

I could not help but think that she was taking too much upon herself, but rather than say so, I replied, “Even so, I don’t see how you could help.”

Mother Benedette sighed. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at me beseechingly.

“Your mother was as stubborn, always believing that she had to handle problems for herself. She had to meet your father and fall in love with him before she realized that we are not meant to face the trials and tribulations of this life alone. If there is anyone else you can trust to stand with you…”

David had stepped forward when Herrera came at me, yet I was still not entirely certain of his motives. Cesare had done the same, but I was no more sure of his intent. Vittoro could be counted on, and Renaldo, too, but they both had their own burdens.

“I cannot ask you—” I began.

“You do not have to. I am offering—nay, I am pleading. Let me be your friend as I was your mother’s. I could not help her, but, God willing, I can help you.”

What could I say? On the one hand, I was not accustomed to trusting anyone outside the very small circle of people in Rome on whom I could rely. However, they were not with me now; I was alone. Mother Benedette seemed to be a woman of sincerity and strength. I could do far worse in an ally.

Besides, being seen in the company of a holy woman would do me no harm. To the contrary, it would make it more difficult for Herrera and others to label me a witch in need of burning. The thought of thwarting the Spaniard settled the matter for me.

“I accept,” I said with a smile, “on the condition that you agree to stay here in the palazzo. If I am to impose on you in such a way, I want to be certain that you have every comfort.”

Mother Benedette laughed and squeezed my hands. “Only remember that I am a simple bride of Christ unaccustomed to the ways of the great and powerful.”

“I am sure you will hold your own.” I had to hope that would prove to be true, but the more I considered it, the better the plan seemed. As soon as Renaldo returned from inspecting his new counting table—he reported that it was coming along nicely—I asked his help in finding suitable accommodations for the abbess.

“She has gone to fetch her things and bid farewell to the other nuns, who are traveling on to Assisi now that the roads are reopening,” I told him.

“Excellent. The apartment opposite yours is free.”

Most likely, I thought, because no one was eager to sleep across the hall from a poisoner.

“She can have that,” Renaldo continued. “I’ll make sure the majordomo knows that she is to be made very comfortable.” He reflected for a moment, then added, “I hope you won’t mind my being so frank, but I am very glad that she is staying. The Spaniards in particular are … getting a bit out of hand.”

“I daresay we can manage them,” I replied.

He went off happily as I hastened to make my usual rounds. By the time I was finished, the abbess had returned. She carried a small bundle bound in a length of homespun cloth, no more elaborate than would be expected of a nun, and was slightly flushed.

“The good sisters tried to persuade me to go on to Assisi with them,” she said. “But I think in the end I convinced them that this is where I am called to be.”

I had to hope she would not have cause to regret that. After I showed her to her quarters—which she described as breathtaking and beyond anything she could have expected—I offered her a tour of the palazzo.

“Finding your way around isn’t as difficult as it may seem at first,” I said. “But I want to make sure that you don’t get lost.”

“If I do, I’m afraid that I will wander for days.”

She did appear a bit overwhelmed, which worried me until we came to the lion fountain at the center of the arched loggia overlooking the town. Just as Mother Benedette was admiring the vista, there was a flurry of movement at a door leading to the opposite wing of the palazzo. Borgia appeared, surrounded by a retinue of his secretaries and various of the prelates.