The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (25 page)

I molded my smile to an expression of sweet blandness. “Oh, Vannozza—may I call you Vannozza? Such venom, and I really don’t see why. I didn’t take His Holiness from you, after all. From what I understand, you were already long finished with each other.”

“Yes, Rodrigo finished with me.” The thin mask of courtesy had stripped from her face. Oh, good. “Just as he will finish someday with you. I wonder, my dear Giulia, if you’ll last as long as I did—ten years and four children?” Her eyes swept me again. “I doubt it. One more baby, and you’ll be stout as a barrel of cider.”

“Better a plump juicy peach,” I said, “than a dried-up old prune.”

“Better a slim swan than a fat little capon.” Vannozza smoothed her own waist, still narrow after four births, and I wondered if I could have Leonello stab her to death. One of those sharp little finger knives of his, planted right between those powdered breasts. Surely I could claim it was self-defense?

“Rodrigo
loves
me plump,” I said instead, with all the innocence I could muster. “You should have seen him when I was carrying Laura. He never had his hands off my stomach.” Or the rest of me—my Pope was not a man who believed in the cessation of nocturnal attentions during a woman’s ripening months. Thank the Holy Virgin, because my pregnant passions for sweets had been thoroughly matched by passions of a different kind.

“Yes, Rodrigo does like a budding woman,” Vannozza said, as though reading my mind. “It makes him feel young again. I suppose even old bulls find they can still kick up their heels when they see a young heifer.”

“Moo,” I said, putting Laura up to my shoulder and patting her small back. “Are you sure you won’t go away and be snide to somebody else? Lucrezia really is very tired from the wedding. A
good
mother would let her sleep.”

Vannozza’s lips thinned. “And all mothers should be allowed to attend their daughter’s wedding. I should have been there. I should have been the one to escort her. Not her father’s whore, who spends the feast dropping cherries down her own bodice and giggling.”

“You seem very well informed, considering you weren’t there. Tell me, did you know I was the one to teach Lucrezia how to manage her train? There’s a trick to it, making it flare without tripping, and that wedding dress was very heavy. We practiced for hours around this garden, so she would be ready on her wedding day.” I lifted my chin. “Lucrezia visits you often enough. Do you spend all her visits dripping poison about her father and complaining? Why was I the one to teach her how to walk in a train, and not her mother?”

Vannozza’s eyes dropped at that, down to the fountain in the center of the garden. My pet goat had wandered over to nibble at the moss growing along the lip, and she watched him as she turned a ring around and around one finger. A fine sapphire ring, I saw, in a heavy gold setting of carved acanthus leaves. I wondered if it had been a present from Rodrigo. “The Pope will tire of you,” she said evenly, still looking at the ring. “Make sure you get something out of it besides jewelry. I got a house and three prosperous inns, a series of respectable husbands, and a steady income. That lasts longer than love. Or at least Rodrigo’s love.”

I felt a pang of reluctant pity for her. It could have been Laura’s wedding, after all—someday it
would
be Laura’s wedding. What if I’d been the one forbidden to see my own daughter married? I hesitated, but then Vannozza dei Cattanei looked up at me again, and I saw the spite in her gaze had redoubled.

“At least he won’t take your daughter like he did mine,” she said. “It’s all about the Borgia blood for Rodrigo, you know. And that one you’re holding isn’t a Borgia.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tossed my head, any pity for her evaporating on the spot. “All Rome knows who Laura’s father is.”

“Yes, Rome does love to gossip.” She smiled. “But if that child were a Borgia, she’d never have been christened Laura Orsini. I take it back, what I said before—Rodrigo’s next concubine won’t be walking
your
daughter up the aisle at her wedding after all. Because your little Orsini will never be worth a Borgia alliance.”

“Well, naturally she was
christened
Orsini. The law, you know.” Rodrigo had explained it to me when I was pregnant—existing bastards were one thing, but no sitting pope could officially sire a newborn child. That hadn’t precisely pleased me, but it was the
law
.

“You think Rodrigo Borgia would be stopped by a law?” Vannozza looked amused.

“The scandal—”

“He doesn’t care about scandal, and never has. If he’d really sired that child, he’d have found a way around the law. He’d have been proud to do it.” Vannozza smiled. “Rodrigo loves his children, you see. But he doesn’t love that one. She’s just a cuckoo in the nest.”

I felt like I’d been stabbed. Laura began to fuss as she felt the sudden protective clutch of my arms around her little body. But I’d let the Holy Virgin herself take me off to heaven—or hell if my sins demanded it—before I’d let my wrinkled, spiteful cow of a predecessor see me flinch.

The truth was, my daughter had been born nine months after I’d first gone to Rodrigo’s bed—and a week before that, to my husband’s bed, if that awkward coupling against a wall counted as a bedding. Of course Laura’s father had to be Rodrigo—how ridiculous, to think that Orsino’s one clumsy fumble around the stiff barrier of my skirts had borne more fruit than all the languorous hours I’d spent in my Pope’s arms. I’d never had a doubt who Laura’s sire was.

Does Rodrigo . . . ?

“Why don’t you concern yourself with your own daughter rather than mine?” I managed to say. “Lucrezia’s chamber is at the top of the stairs on the east side of the
palazzo
, if you really do insist on waking her.”

“Thank you.” We exchanged a last long measuring look, and I refused to drop my eyes or smooth my hair or fiddle with my rings—refused to give her one solitary indication that she might have pierced my armor. I held her eyes, and finally she gave a flick of her brows that reminded me of Cesare and swept around me toward the stairs.

The click of Vannozza dei Cattanei’s heels and the rustle of her plum and russet velvets retreated behind me. The goat bleated after her. I stared at the fountain, jogging Laura, who was fretting, and felt a small reassuring presence at my side.

“Shall I arrange a fatal accident for her?” Leonello suggested. “A swift blow over the head, perhaps, and then I’ll bash away at the ceiling until a few stones come down and make the whole thing look like a tragic accident. A favorite assassination method, I’ll have you know.”

I hardly heard him, looking down at my beautiful daughter. Rodrigo rarely gave more than a passing smile into her cradle, but men don’t really coo over babies, did they? It wasn’t to be expected. But he did love her; he
did
. She’d have a wedding someday in the papal apartments, just like her sister Lucrezia; a wedding with a jeweled dress and a noble husband and a dowry fit for a pope’s daughter. Because she
was
a pope’s daughter. She had Rodrigo’s
nose
!

But not his name. And I hated Vannozza dei Cattanei with a rush of sudden black bitterness for spoiling my happiness.

“If it’s any consolation”—Leonello wound his small hands through his belt, tilting his head back at me—“you made her look stale, powdered, bitter, and old.”

I rested my cheek against Laura’s downy head. “I’m afraid it’s no consolation at all.”

Carmelina

I
gave a final glance over the row of little corpses. “They’ll do,” I decreed, and turned to my obedient row of aproned apprentices. “Take each bird down, and stuff the cavities with fennel and nettle—”

“Why nettle?” piped a boy’s voice, interrupting.

I turned a glare on a certain redheaded scullion named Bartolomeo, craning his freckled face over his shoulder at me when he should have been tackling the stack of oily pots at the cistern. “Nettle keeps the flies from settling,” I said. “And get back to those pots!”

“Sorry,
signorina
.” He sounded chastened, but he’d soon be asking questions again. He was quicker at his work than any of the other pot-boys, but oh, the questions! Why was chestnut flour sweeter than other flour? Why was there a hole bored in the bottom of the butter crock? Why did the best bacon come from male hogs fed in the woods rather than female hogs fed in farmyards? Questions that a pot-boy had no business asking in the first place. I was all in favor of a little enthusiasm for one’s work, but I had a busy kitchen to run. I couldn’t spend all day satisfying a pot-boy’s idle curiosity. Santa Marta, grant me patience!

“Stuff the cavities with nettle,” I continued in my lecture to the apprentices, whose business it very much was. “Then hang the birds to draw. And if I find you hanging them too close together, I’ll stuff
you
lot with nettle.”

My apprentices scattered, a flock of headless chickens but at least well-organized ones. From the kitchens inside I could hear the undercooks calling out orders as they whipped together a midday
pranzo
—it was Marco’s free afternoon, which meant he had taken himself off for a cool drink and a game of dice at the wine shop at the next
piazza
. A pity, because in this summer heat all the manservants were sweating and shirtless by the kitchen’s fires, and no man looked better with his shirt off than a tall strapping cook.

Of course I knew better than to moon over men the way the maidservants did in this weather—forever ogling and finding excuses to drop into the kitchens. That was all very well for a girl with nothing in her head but marriage, but a woman with a kitchen full of surly apprentices and insolent scullions to manage would have no authority at all if they thought they could get around her with a smile and a bit of a flirt.

I turned to survey the newest arrival of fresh-killed ducks and wild cranes, lying in a heap of beaks and limp webbed feet on a scrubbed trestle table. Empty feathered sacks just waiting to be transformed by the magic of spices and skill into plates of tastiness—there was no sight I liked better than a pile of dead birds! Perhaps a
cena
menu this evening of tiny game birds, roasted and gutless just like my apprentices . . .

Bartolomeo’s voice piped up again as he staggered past Ottaviano with a load of clean pans. “Ottaviano—why fennel flowers inside the wild ducks instead of plain fennel like the hens?”

“Don’t know,” Ottaviano grunted, uninterested.

“No chatter!” I called, pulling a menu together for the evening. “All mouths are shut, and all hands are moving!”

“Sorry,
signorina
.” A brief silence, and then I heard a loud whisper. “Ugo, why fennel flowers instead of—”

“No whispering either!” My hands were already flying, pulling ingredients. Spit-roasted pigeons with a salad of cold asparagus (page 22, Chapter: Salads); a dish of anchovies with oil and vinegar and oregano . . .

“Signorina?”
Bartolomeo’s voice came at my shoulder again. “Sorry to disturb you—”

“Not sorry enough, apparently.” I recorked the olive oil with a slam of my palm.

“It’s that last hen on the hook,
signorina
,” he persisted. “It’s not fresh.”

“What is a pot-boy doing sniffing my birds?” I glared. “Besides, I checked every one myself when they arrived. Of course that last one on the hook is fresh.”

He shifted from foot to foot, scrubbing his soapy hands on his grubby shirt. His head ducked, and his face flamed up the same color as his hair. “But it’s not,” he said softly.

I looked at him through narrowed eyes, aware that the apprentices and the other pot-boys had all stopped to gape pleasurably. Mutiny—as dangerous in a kitchen as on any ship.

“Well, let’s see, pot-boy.” I dried my hands on my apron, stalking over to the last hen hanging dead and nettle-stuffed on its hook, and gave a good sniff. “Smells fresh to me. Perhaps you’d care to explain why you think your nose is better than mine?”

He took the bird off the hook and turned it mutely, cavity up. I gave another sniff. Nettle, fennel, pepper, salt; all as it should be—

Or not?

I gave another lingering sniff. Under the spicy mix, like a thread of smoke from a fire just barely kindled: the faintest, faintest hint of rot.

“Hmph.” I took the bird and tossed it to one of the other pot-boys. “Dispose of that. Bartolomeo, come with me.”

“Sorry,
signorina
.” He trotted to keep up with me as I stalked out of the cold room into the main kitchen. “It didn’t smell right.”

“Not too far gone, though. You could have kept quiet.”

He shuffled, running a hand through his unruly hair. “But it didn’t
smell
right.”

“Mmm.” I paused to cast an eagle eye around the heat-shimmering kitchens, but the undercooks were all working as they should be. I found a bowl of mixed spices someone had assembled for a sauce on the roast and thrust it under Bartolomeo’s nose. “What do you smell?”

He gave an obliging whiff, screwing up his nose. “Sweet, mostly.”

“Pick out the individual spices for me.”

“Cinnamon,” he said at once, and sniffed again. “Nutmeg . . . something that smells like nutmeg but a bit woodsier . . .”

“That’s cloves. What else?”

“Ginger, sugar. That yellowy stuff that comes in flowers—saffron. Something else . . .” He gave another sniff, doubtful. “Something sort of peppery? But it’s not pepper.”

“You’re sure?” I said ominously.

He looked scared, but shook his head. “Not pepper.”

“Well, you’re right. It’s called grains of paradise, and it’s a very expensive imported spice.” I set the bowl aside, putting fists on hips. “Where did you come from, Bartolomeo?”

“Dumenza,” the boy mumbled, shuffling. “A little place, up north in Lombardy. My father died last year; I went to live with my uncle in Rome. He’s a tanner.”

“So why aren’t you working in his tanner’s yard? Strong boy like you.”

“Wasn’t any good at it. He had to find me other work.”

“Why?”

“The
smells
,” Bartolomeo burst out. “I kept throwing up all over the tannery. Have you ever smelled a tanner’s yard,
signorina
? Piss and dung and ox hides with bits of rotting flesh still sticking to them—the stench near killed me.”