The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (34 page)

“Yes,
signorina
.”

“Ottaviano, supervise the pot-boys; I want those skillets clean and dry
now
. Tommaso, the peacock bones and scraps, get them into the pots and boiling for broth. Bruno, Ugo, the floors—” Scullions dived to and fro under my clapping hands like a general’s aides, and I fell in beside Marco, fingers flying as we put together the plates of sugared
biscotti
, the candied nuts, the sliced and honeyed fruits.

“—we all know why the man’s really here!” my cousin was arguing with three of his servers as they brought more majolica plates and cups for the trays. “Lord Sforza hasn’t dropped in just to check on his papal contract; he means to bed his wife! Four to one he slips into her chamber tonight—”

“I’ll lay down twenty
scudi
on those odds,” one of the servers replied promptly. “Madonna Adriana’s squatting on the pair of them upstairs like a guardian dragon!”

“Dragons can be slain.” Marco crushed a handful of candied pine nuts, slapping the fragments into a soft spiced peach. “Love will out, it always does. Bid your twenty
scudi
good-bye.”

I’d have to drop a word in Marco’s ear later tonight to retract his bet, if I didn’t want to see him even more out of purse than usual.
Pazzo
, I thought as I popped a slice of sweet peach into my mouth.
My cousin is a fool.
But I couldn’t help my eyes lingering on his broad shoulders, muscles moving under the shirt as he hoisted the first of the heavy trays. And my maids thought I never looked at men.

“Signorina?”
Bartolomeo called plaintively from the cold room. “Is the cream frothed enough now?” His arm hung dead at his side now, limp as a loose entrail just yanked from a pig.

“Skim the froth off the top, add more fine sugar and rosewater, and beat for the length of time it takes to say a rosary.” I dipped a finger into the earthenware pot. Sweet, savory, creamy, but not quite light enough yet in the texture. “Then heap on a plate with sprigs of rosemary. Don’t you wilt on me now, boy! You want to be just as strong as Maestro Santini someday?”

Bartolomeo eyed Marco’s shoulders too, and began beating at that cream like it was his worst enemy on earth. I smiled, though it occurred to me that milk-snow wasn’t such a good idea to serve the guests either. Another dish for lovers—the last time I’d sent milk-snow up to Madonna Giulia and her Pope, most of it had ended up dotted all over the sheets as if the Holy Father had used it to paint his mistress like a canvas. If I saved a bowl, maybe Marco would paint me like a canvas . . .

Never mind. I knew what I was supposed to do here, and it did not involve idle dreams about bed sport.

“Where’s Lord Sforza’s cup?” I asked Marco, and gave a last tweak to my arrangement of Corinthian raisins and sweet chestnut
frittelle
.

“There.” He nodded to the silver goblet set out for the guest of honor. “Have the singers started yet?”

“If they can even be heard over all the giggling and flirting. Half the guests are planning trysts and the other half are drunk.”

“Well, let the apprentices bolt off to hear the singers too,” Marco said tolerantly as the rest of the sweets were carried out. “If they can find a crack in the doors to listen through.”

The apprentices trooped upstairs with cheerful whoops, hushing quickly as they tiptoed past the kitchen doors up the marble steps of the
palazzo
in search of a vantage point for the music. The pot-boys had already finished sweeping up the inevitable scrapings of sugar and drippings of fat that always adorned the floor after a long busy night; the spit-boys were banking the fires; and Marco had disappeared to lock up the wine cellars. No one was paying attention to me, so I reached for the silver cup.

“Carmelina?”

I turned toward the door of the kitchens. Giulia Farnese stood with the train of her apricot silk dress thrown over one arm, tilting her golden head at me. I felt rather than heard the pot-boys behind me staring at her, the spit-boys gaping too at this fabulous golden phoenix so out of place among the mess of pans and bowls and dirty ladles.

“Lord Sforza’s cup,” the Pope’s concubine said to me softly. “I’ll take it now.”

“Yes,
madonna
.” I curtsied, offering the little vial of dill oil I’d been about to empty into the wine. “I know what you’re going to say—I saw the mood he’s in; I know what I’m supposed to do—”

“Never mind that.” She took the heavy silver cup in both hands, smiling. “I think Lucrezia can entertain her husband however she pleases this evening, don’t you?”

“But Madonna Adriana,” I managed to say. “Won’t she . . .”

Giulia looked over the array of goblets. “Which one is hers?”

I pointed. “I saw her upstairs—she’ll be watching everyone like a hawk. Especially Lord Sforza.”

Giulia took the little vial of oil from my hand and emptied it rather dreamily into the cup. “Maybe not.”

I felt a ripple of laughter rising in me like a bubble. Maybe I’d put too much rose-tinted wine in that sauce of truffles and roe, but I couldn’t suppress the giggle that burst out of me.

“What did you
feed
them?” my mistress whispered.

“Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“Because by the time the oysters were done, Lucrezia and Lord Sforza were trying to hold hands under the table. Which by that point was the most innocent thing going on under that table!”

I couldn’t answer, just spluttered with laughter as she picked up the two cups of wine and tiptoed away again.

“What are you laughing at?” Marco cocked his head at me.

“Nothing. Try this.” I popped the very last leftover oyster into his mouth, pressing my fingers to his lips to be sure he got the last tangy drop of sauce, and his eyebrows flew upward as he looked down at me.

“That’s . . . good,” he said, swallowing.

“I know.”

The news soon drifted down that Madonna Adriana was feeling unwell and had retired early for the evening, and after that the rest of the guests seemed disinclined to linger. In fact the party in the
sala
broke up at once in stifled laughter and whispered asides and rustling skirts, and when I put my head around the turn of the stairs again I saw the lady in pale blue already entwined with the man who’d replaced her slipper for her, kissing and fumbling their way upstairs as another couple twined themselves together in the wide doors to the
sala
. Of Lord Sforza and Lucrezia Borgia, I saw no sign at all.

“Good,” I said aloud, and went downstairs blithely to shove the last dirty pot into its tub and give an airy wave to the rest of the maids and pot-boys. “Carry on,” I bubbled, and went skipping along the back passage. Was that bony Pantisilea entwined with not one but
two
guardsmen in the stairwell?! I sailed into my quiet little chamber that smelled of olive oil and was glad to see that Santa Marta’s hand had not come out of its box to chide. In fact, I rather thought she was pleased with me. I gave her a pat and then reached for something else on the shelf behind her box. A lime.

“Maestro Santini?” A harried-looking scullion paused in his sweeping to answer my question. “He went out for a breath of air and a piss, he said.” A snort. “Which is why he stopped by his chamber first for his cloak, his purse,
and
his set of dice.”

“Oh.” My voice came out rather flat. The scullion looked at me, puzzled, and I made a little motion to keep sweeping. He was one of the last in the kitchens; most of the others were flitting off in giggling pairs to any dark corner they could find. I heard an ecstatic
miaow
from under the trestle table and saw the ragged-eared tomcat ecstatically pumping over the sleek little mouser from the wine cellars. “You too?” I hissed. I’d cooked the whole household into a frenzy of passion, even the damned
cat
, and none of it was for me?

I had some vague thought of going up to the roof for a good sulk and a gulp of night air, something to cool my blood, but I was just trudging up the stairs at the east side of the
palazzo
when I saw the flicker of a taper at the other end of the loggia. “
Shhh
,” came a girl’s soft giggle. “Not so loud, they’ll hear us!” and the taper guttered and nearly went out as a taller darker shape pressed against her, lowering its head to hers. I held my breath, folding back into the shadows, and in another flash the Pope’s daughter dashed past in a rustle of silk skirts, her rosy face alight, tugging her husband along behind her by the hand. The Count of Pesaro: twenty-seven years old, tall, dark-haired, sporting a trimmed beard and a fashionable mustache. He had a half-smile of eagerness on his face as he raced after his bride like a boy. They disappeared into Madonna Lucrezia’s chamber with another spate of soft laughter, and I heard the door click closed.

My sourness couldn’t help but abate a little, and I found myself smiling in the dark. Perhaps I’d creep back down to the kitchens instead of the roof, and make up a posset of hot spiced wine for the newlyweds. Only one cup, because lovers only ever need one cup.

“Are you spying on my sister, girl?”

I yelped, whirling around. Despite the words, I half expected to see Leonello, because he had a way of sliding up noiselessly behind me with his rakish grin just because he knew how much it unsettled me. But the eyes that glittered at me from the deeper shadows were on a level with my own, and Cesare Borgia looked at me with his face like a knife.

“Your Eminence.” I curtsied hastily, heart still jumping. He had that frightening guardsman behind him, that Michelotto who had no color and hardly any voice either, and I didn’t know which of them scared me more as they appeared from the shadows. “I beg your pardon, Eminence, I did not mean to intrude. Please excuse me—”

“I don’t excuse you. Were you spying on my sister?”

“Erm—no. I was—going to get her a hot posset.” His eyes made my pulse leap nervously. My eyes had adjusted to the dark; I could see his blade-lean figure in its dark velvets that made him just another shadow leaning up against the wall with folded arms and tumbled hair. “Warm spiced wine.”

“I know what a posset is,” Cesare Borgia said.

A little silence fell. I wondered if I should retreat to the kitchens, but he hadn’t dismissed me, and I felt it wise not to move. It was like facing a coiled serpent as opposed to a snorting bull: Juan Borgia was the bull, and on seeing him you dodged out of sight as quickly as possible. But for the serpent you stayed very still and moved only as directed.

“The bride becomes a wife.” He looked at the door where Madonna Lucrezia had tugged her husband. “The Holy Father will not be pleased with me.”

Then why . . . ?
I thought, but was not fool enough to offer the question. I had no idea why young Cardinal Borgia would bother ruminating to a servant girl—perhaps he felt melancholy, seeing his little sister enter her future as a woman grown. But just because an illustrious prince of the Church deigns to muse aloud in your presence, it does not mean you should ever think your response is required.

His eyes found me again, though, as though he had heard my silent question. “I find it difficult to deny my sister anything,” he said. “Sforza is an ass, but if she wants him, she shall have him.” A gleam of teeth as he smiled. “Of course, if I find he did not treat her gently tonight, I shall cut his throat.”

I couldn’t really think of anything to say to that. “The Holy Father will blame Madonna Giulia,” I found myself saying instead. “He charged her with keeping everything proper tonight.”

“You are fond of Madonna Giulia?” His eyes returned to me, idle.

“Yes.”

“She’ll bat her eyes at him. He’ll forgive her.” Cesare clearly had no interest in Giulia Farnese, and I remembered her remarking that he might be handsome, but he was cold as a corpse. “If the Holy Father had tasted the oysters and the peacock tonight, he’d know she didn’t have a chance in the world of keeping anything proper.”

I felt pride expand through me, a warm bubble. “
My
oysters and peacock,” I couldn’t help saying. “Perhaps the Holy Father should blame me, Your Eminence.”

“You are the cook?”

“Yes.” Normally I would have cast my eyes down, given the credit to Marco. But Cesare Borgia’s eyes had a way of hooking the truth out of you.

He stepped forward, still just a shadow. His eyes went over me coolly, and I hoped he could not see the pulse fluttering madly at the base of my throat.

“The cook,” he said, thoughtful. “Well. You’re not ill-looking. And it seems fair that if you rouse blood, you should have the burden of quenching it.”

“Madonna Lucrezia’s posset,” I managed to say, dry-mouthed.

His fingers linked around my wrist, overlapping like a steel cuff. “Forget the posset.”

He did not ask my name when he dismissed that frightening guard of his and took me to the nearest chamber. I doubted he cared to know my name, and in truth I didn’t care if he knew it either. The room had one guttering taper, there was a mahogany table inlaid with gold, and there were two bodies moving together toward it and no need for names.

He swept the table clear with one violent motion and had me up on it before I had even heard the crash of something fragile and costly against the floor. There was no passion in his mouth when he claimed mine, just cool curiosity as he tasted me, and I tasted him back as though he were a new sauce coating a spoon. I could taste the sharp sea tang of oysters, the heady musk of the truffles, the roe and the sparkling wine and the sugared flowers, and his lean body was hard against mine. I spent my days sweating over hot stoves and reaching into hot ovens, and I still felt so cold: the inviolable Madonna of the Kitchens who cared for nothing but work. Even when Marco reached for me, it was the win of a card game or the jingle of a lucky bet that put the fire in his loins, not me.

I was tired of being cold.

Cesare Borgia cupped the smooth skin at the point of my bare shoulder where my sleeve had already slid down, and my blood bubbled through my veins like hot wine. I closed my eyes, burying my nose in the dent at his collarbone, tangling my hands through his hair. His mouth trailed down to my breast and lingered there, teeth grazing my skin as his hand found my bare knee under my hem. He skimmed along the naked length of my thigh as he tossed my skirts out of the way; I pushed the doublet off his lean shoulders, and he seized my wrists, laying me back on the table. He spread my arms out straight, nailing them to the table with his full weight as he loomed over me. “Look at me,” he ordered, but I was already looking at him. Why wouldn’t I? The Pope’s son was a thing of beauty, amber-skinned in the light of the taper, his eyes like pitch.