The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (38 page)

“On the contrary, my dear, I like you very well,” Madonna Adriana answered me with an unexpected smile. “Which is why I want to help you keep my cousin’s attention. To that end, may I offer you some advice?”

I stared at her. Old people always want to offer the young advice, don’t they? Below us, the servants were clearing away the dirtied platters of picked-over bones and crusts of bread and melted fruit ices. The feast hadn’t been half as good as the food I was accustomed to from Carmelina’s talented hands. “Why would you be giving me advice?” I finally asked. “You’re always on Rodrigo’s side, even over your own son’s! Why would you help me, if your precious cousin decided he didn’t want me anymore?”

“Because I
am
on Rodrigo’s side, my dear, and I can see that you’re good for him.” She patted my hand. “The greedy little trollops he’s picked up for mistresses before your day—oh, I shudder at the memory. And I was never exactly fond of Vannozza, either. Jewelry wasn’t enough for that woman; she had to have
property
too. A new villa every year!” A little tut-tut at that. “Whereas you, my dear Giulia, are clever and good-natured and discreet, and you haven’t tried to wheedle every last jewel, favor, and benefice in Rome out of him for yourself and your family. You seem content merely to
be
with him.”

“Of course I am!” I tried to look scornful, but I had to sneeze.

“If you let Rodrigo go now, he’ll fall into the lap of some rapacious harlot like that Lombard slut Caterina Gonzaga,” my mother-in-law continued. “And then she’ll queen it about the Vatican in every jewel she can extract from him, and the Borgia name will be a laughingstock throughout Rome.”

The thought of Caterina Gonzaga on Rodrigo’s arm made me want to scratch and spit. “What do you want me to do about that?”

Adriana tilted her head to one side like an inquisitive mother hen. “I’m sure you’ve heard that absence can make the heart yearn?”

“I’ve heard that,” I said warily, and we bent our heads together. Not that she wanted to get too close to my streaming nose, but . . .

My Pope swung back into the
sala
shortly after in high good humor, his swarthy face amused above the papal robes as he traded a private snicker with the half-drunk King of Naples. “—see that bold-eyed daughter of yours giving us the eye when they stripped her and put her in bed!”

I’ll bet she did
, I thought, but put on a great beam of a smile as I sailed down upon my bull. “Your Holiness!” I purred with what remained of my depleted sparkle. My red nose was hidden temporarily under a layer of powder—it wouldn’t survive the next sneeze, but I didn’t need it to. I just needed a moment’s worth of charm. “Your Holiness, I’ve just
heard
!” I continued as my Pope turned toward me. “Madonna Adriana told me you had decided to allow Lord Sforza to take Lucrezia back to Pesaro to see her new home!”

“I was thinking of it,” he began. “I had not decided—” But I was already nodding.

“Very wise, Your Holiness, very wise. You know there’s always plague in Rome after spring, not to mention the heat. And if the French come, well, better to have her safe in the provinces. Though surely they won’t dare invade with our new allies at our side!” I dimpled at the King of Naples, who looked magnanimous and then looked down my bodice before staggering off to find his own mistress. “Lucrezia will be so pleased to see Pesaro at last, and so will I!” I twined my fingers through Rodrigo’s caressingly. “Though I will miss Your Holiness terribly, of course.”

“Miss me?” He had been looking at goose-necked Caterina again as she came gliding down the stairs from the bridal chamber, giving her arrogant queenly stare all around her—but now he frowned and looked back at me.

“Dear Adriana and I wouldn’t dream of sending your daughter off to her new home without a proper escort.” I reached out, drawing my mother-in-law’s arm through mine with a bit more goodwill than usual. “We’ll see she’s properly settled, never fear. It shouldn’t take more than, oh, a few months?”

I felt a sneeze building and my nose beginning to run again, so I unleashed the last of my dazzle in a final smile, swept a curtsy toward my Pope, and strolled away with my head close to my mother-in-law’s. “Adriana, we must take Carmelina Mangano with us to Pesaro—your assistant cook? I may have to go without my Papal Bull for a few months, but I cannot go without her honeyed
mostaccioli
!”

I could almost hear Rodrigo frown behind us, and that was when I added, in an artless voice designed to carry just far enough, “And of course I know you must be pining to see your son after so many months, Adriana. How
is
dear Orsino faring, anyway?”

Leonello’s murmur followed me out.
“Dio.”

Leonello

G
od knows I am a man with sins on his soul. Blasphemy, fornication, theft. Avarice, when it came to things like good wine and engraved books. One or two of the milder forms of heresy. Murder, of course, and unrepentant murder at that. But surely,
surely
, my sins did not warrant the punishment of two days’ close confinement in a rattling carriage with Madonna Adriana, the Countess of Pesaro, the Bride of Christ, and the Bride of Christ’s baby (who cried considerably more than our Lord must have done)—as the three women discussed, for ten hours each on two consecutive days, the relative merits of fur versus velvet linings on Neapolitan overgowns and how the new slippers had a much more pointed toe.

“Blue Spanish brocade with embroidered panels,” Giulia said, jogging her baby against one shoulder. “I saw one of the Moscari girls wearing a gown just like that at Mass last month, and now I want one too. Not with those dagged sleeves, though, I don’t think you can get away with hanging sleeves like that unless you’re
very
tall, else you’re just dragging your cuffs on the ground—”

“No, it was one of the Mocenigo girls who had the dagged sleeves,” Lucrezia disagreed. “Luciana Moscari was wearing rose pink satin with gold embroidery. Rosy girls like that should never wear pink; she looked like a raspberry. But I liked her little marten fur collar—”

“Benedetta Bellonci had the marten fur collar,” Adriana da Mila corrected.

“No, Benedetta Bellonci had a sable hood with green velvet lining. And the most ridiculous stilt clogs you ever saw . . .”

“It’s like the Homeric catalogue of ships,” I said to one of Lord Sforza’s escorting guards when they paused to water the horses. “Only it’s dresses. And even when it’s ships, it’s still the most boring chapter in the Iliad!”

“Better than riding in the rain,” the guard pointed out to me, his livery draggled and dripping. “Safe and dry with the most beautiful women in Rome—don’t ask me to pity you, Messer Leonello! If it were me, I’d burrow into Madonna Giulia’s lap and never come up for air . . .”

Perhaps it was my fervent prayers that made the difference, but the third day of our journey from Rome to Pesaro dawned sunny and fair. I have no love for horses, but I left the carriage in a desperate lunge for the clean fresh air, the clop of hooves in the new June sunshine, and above all, the silence. “We’ll have to put you on a mule with the baggage,” one of the drovers said dubiously. “You can’t be riding, not with those short legs—horse’ll jerk you right over its head.”

“I will ride a goat,” I vowed. “I will ride the Devil Himself, as long as there are no more discussions on netted snoods or dagged sleeves.”

Madonna Adriana stayed in her carriage, but the other ladies took to the saddle: Lucrezia on a little white jennet, which she raced back and forth between the carriage and the head of the procession where her lord Count rode with his soldiers. Madonna Giulia ambled more slowly on her gray mare, stray bits of hair blowing about her face like golden ribbons in the warm breeze. I had my perch on a pack mule, jammed between the beast’s panniers, looking ahead at a line of three more pack mules tied nose to tail and being driven along by a bored guardsman. The mules stank like rancid manure piles and the dust rose off the road to tickle my nose, but the sun was warm on my back, and if I lifted my eyes from the swaying procession of mule arses, I could see the long stretches of countryside rolling golden-green and endless around us.

“Why are you gaping, Leonello?” Giulia asked, slowing her mare from its trot. “It’s just countryside, you know. Sheep and shepherds and shrubs. Surely you’ve been riding in the country before!”

I hesitated, keeping my eyes on the dusty horizon of grass and goats. I had not been entirely easy with La Bella these past few months, ever since the night I’d so stupidly told her the story of my birth and seen the pity in her eyes. I had no desire to be pitied, not by anyone, and I’d been pierced with resentment afterward every time I looked at her. But I felt strangely happy now in the warm June sunshine, my feet swinging freely on either side of the mule. A boy on holiday, even though I’d never been a boy on holiday in all my life. “I’ve never been so far from Rome before,” I confessed, feeling oddly giddy. “This is all very strange to a city lad.”

“I grew up not so far from here.” Giulia pointed west, or what I thought was west. How did an urban sort like me tell direction, except by the nearest church or
piazza
or shrine? I didn’t know how these country people did it. “In Capodimonte, that way. It’s got more trees than here,” she said a little wistfully. “And a huge lake, Lake Bolsena. It’s beautiful.” She wrinkled her nose up at the sky, heedless of the freckles she’d already collected in a scatter of gold flakes across her cheeks. “I didn’t realize it, but I miss the country.”

She already looked far less like a pope’s pampered mistress: hair bundled carelessly into a net, dust across the skirts of her sensible split-layered riding dress, not a pearl in sight. But they still knew who she was, the villagers who came in their dusty smocks to gape at the side of the road as the procession passed. Women pointed and whispered; the men swung their barefoot children up to their shoulders to watch the glittering procession of horses, carriages, pack mules, and guardsmen in Lord Sforza’s colors. “That’s the Count of Pesaro,” the whisper went, but the land was fully of petty lordlings like him and no one gave Lord Sforza a second glance no matter how he pranced his caparisoned horse at the head of the line. “That’s the Pope’s daughter,” a far more excited whisper would follow, and the new Countess of Pesaro waved and bowed from her saddle, gracious but remote, very conscious of her dignity now that she was a wife and a great lady. “
That’s
the Pope’s concubine!” the last whisper would run, and men would crane their necks and gape for a look at the woman who’d tempted God’s own vicar from his vows, and Giulia laughed and blew kisses like a girl at a fair. We would travel another few days before reaching Pesaro, but late that afternoon my mule threw a shoe.

“I can’t stop and reload the other mules now just to make room for you,” the guardsman apologized as I slid stiffly to the ground around the laden panniers. “I’m afraid it’s back into the carriage with you, Messer Leonello.”

“He can ride behind me,” Madonna Giulia offered, halting her mare with a flash of scarlet saddle cloth and silver mane.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “You will start talking poetry again, or dress materials, and then I shall murder you. And my orders from Cardinal Borgia were to keep you safe, not murder you, so all in all I think I should find a cart to ride upon.”

Giulia laughed, gesturing one of the guards to find a cart that could squeeze me in. “I’m surprised Cesare cared enough to give you any orders regarding me. He usually looks right through me, like I’m a decorative glass vase.”

“He doesn’t care.” I massaged my cramped legs, the muscles beginning to unknot. “He cares for nothing outside the family. But he will not get the Holy Father’s full attention on the matter of the French unless you are looked after in all regards. Thus, my orders.”

“The French again!” Madonna Giulia made a face. “You really think they’ll invade?”

“Cleverer people than me seem to think so.”

“There’s no one cleverer than you, Leonello.”

Normally I’d agree with her, but I was starting to think Cesare Borgia might have me beaten there. I had traded a few words with him that day when he came to bid his sister farewell—he had handed her up into the carriage with a great deal more affection than he had Giulia, kissing Lucrezia on both cheeks and whispering fondly in the Catalan they all kept for private moments—but after that he had turned aside to me. He wore a doublet and hose, black like my own, suiting him much better than his red ecclesiastical dress, and the dagger with the sapphire in its hilt rode at his hip as it always did.

“Keep my sister safe,” he ordered me, looping his horse’s reins tight about his fingers. “And my father’s little giggler. He’ll miss them both sorely, but he’ll have time to focus now on more pressing matters.”

“Is it true, Your Eminence?” I couldn’t help asking. Rome was a sea of whispers, but the College of Cardinals had all the real news before any of Rome’s commoners. “That the French are massing?”

“Not only are they massing, they are massing a great army.” Cesare Borgia made it sound of no great importance. “The King of France leads them, and he’s the ugliest man in Christendom, but he is no fool when it comes to war. They say he will bring thirty thousand men to press his claim to Naples.”

I gave a low whistle. We had been standing a little apart in the busy courtyard as Lord Sforza rode back and forth dispensing his soldiers first here and then there and the women hung out the window of their carriage, anxious to be gone. I could hear baby Laura crying and Giulia soothing her with a little fragment of song. “And who do we have to oppose them?”

“The papal forces,” Cesare Borgia said. “Such as they are.”

“And who will lead them, Your Eminence?”

I asked the question only to be polite, and he did not answer it. Not with words—but in his eyes I saw such a fire kindle that it startled me. That spark wasn’t just fire, it was lust; a burning, ravenous hunger.

“Who will lead the command against the French?” I repeated.