Blood & Beauty (12 page)

‘What did I do wrong?’ she says at last to Giulia, some weeks after he has gone, when the day is particularly hot and they are sitting under the loggia in search of a hint of breeze.

‘Oh, it is not you, Lucrezia. He is pleasant enough, but he is frightened of his own shadow. No woman can make a man love her unless he has an appetite for it.’

‘What do you mean?’

Giulia sighs. ‘It is… it is like a fire inside. You can see it in their eyes. In some men it burns so hot that it seems as if it must be constantly fed. I sometimes think it almost doesn’t matter who the woman is. In others… well, in others the flame takes a certain fanning.’

Lucrezia stares at her. She thinks of Cesare, then Juan, and the energy, or is it the heat, that glows out of them. And then she thinks of her father. Which kind of man is he? Only at the same time she does not want to know the answer.

‘And Giovanni? What kind of fire did you see in his eyes?’

Giulia pauses, struggling with the formation of the thought. ‘I think Giovanni may be the kind of man who is more worried about burning himself. But these are silly notions. And you are not to worry. In none of it are you to blame.’

‘What will happen to us then?’ While there are only a few years between them, Giulia is so very much older. Will she herself ever be so wise?

Giulia shrugs. ‘Either he will become braver or you will meet someone else.’

But we are married, Lucrezia thinks. How can there be someone else? ‘Is that how it was between you and Orsino?’ she asks, because when it had all unfolded she had been too young and now, as a married woman herself, she feels she has the right.

‘No, not exactly.’ Giulia laughs a little uncomfortably. ‘Your father… Your father, well, your whole family, they have a certain way of making the world behave as they would want it to, rather than how it is.’ And she laughs again.

‘How strange. Cesare always says that we Borgias have more enemies than we have friends.’

‘Among men perhaps. Not among women.’

‘I see,’ she says. Though really she does not. ‘Did you like him? Your husband, I mean. It is an age since you visited him.’

‘He is, he was—’ She stops, as if she needs to reassess the question. ‘We have not been granted much time together.’

‘You sound sad about it.’

‘Oh, there is no point to being sad about what one cannot have,’ she says quietly.

But the confusion in her face shows that it is not so much an answer as a reflection of the trouble that the question causes her. Lucrezia watches for a moment, then leans over and embraces her. Maybe Giulia is not so wise after all.

Alexander has his hands too full with other concerns to immediately notice his daughter’s distress. With Juan safely dispatched he must now turn his attention to Cesare. Managing his oldest son’s future is a delicate business, constrained as it is by facts that contradict each other. The Sacred College of Cardinals is the mainstay of support or rebellion against a pope. To be effective the pope needs to control it through his own appointments. If his son is to go higher in the Church, he must join its ranks. But Church law is Church law. No bastard can become a cardinal. And Cesare Borgia, as everyone knows, is quite clearly a bastard.

Alexander has had Church lawyers on the case for months, scrutinising the dark alleyways of canon law, looking at the problem every which way. The solution, when it finally comes, does the job but pleases no one, particularly not Cesare himself.

‘Domenigo da Rignano! I hardly remember him. What place did he ever hold in the world?’

‘His place, as you know well, was to be married to your mother at the time you were born. I don’t find it any more satisfying than you do. But if you are ever to become Pope you must first become a cardinal, and to become a cardinal you must be legitimate. It has all been approved. The papal bull we will issue states that Domenigo da Rignano is your legitimate father and therefore you, Cesare da Rignano, are eligible to be elevated to the Sacred College.’

‘But at the same time demoted from a Borgia to the laughing stock of Rome.’

‘You are still my son. Everybody knows that. It is only for the letter of Church law. The purpose of the second bull, which will be dated the day afterwards in order to override the official one, makes clear your true parentage.’

‘But that one remains unpublished. No one will read it.’

‘Of course. For the first to work, the second must remain secret. Cesare, I have weathered enough storms of petulance and temper from your brother these last months. I need – no, I expect – better from you.’

Cesare drops his eyes and stares at the ground. He stands so still that he appears frozen to the spot. The air around him however is alive with tension. Even his father knows better than to interrupt.

‘You are right,’ he says finally, looking up. ‘There is no other way.’ He picks up the list of names on the table. ‘The cardinals will fight you over this, you know. They’ll see it as an attempt to pack the College with foreigners and supporters.’

‘Of course. You think it’s never happened before? Every pope does it. The only difference is that not every pope is foreign. But I have not chosen lightly. The Spaniards on the list are all good men and every other name has a pedigree.’

‘Giulia’s brother, Alessandro Farnese?’

‘Is a fine churchman.’

‘You know what they will call him?’

‘Yes, yes, I know, the insult is there already: the petticoat cardinal. But those who coined it are fools. Farnese is no puppet, regardless of Giulia, my… of his sister.’

‘And fifteen-year-old Ippolito d’Este from Ferrara?’

Alexander lifts his hands in mock-surrender. What else could I do? the gesture says. Sometimes one must take what one can get.

‘You are sure you can make this work, Father?’

But if his sons favour their fists, there is nothing Rodrigo Borgia likes better than a high-class political brawl.

In the lead-up to the first meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals, there is an unseemly rush of apologies from those unable to attend. While a few have legitimate reasons – the young Medici cardinal, for instance, is called to Florence, where his brother’s position is growing more precarious – so many others are struck down by the summer fever that it seems as if God has chosen to infect only cardinals this year. ‘Illness’, however, does not stop Cardinal della Rovere from hurling out a barrage of barbed remarks about corruption before keeling over into his bed.

Alexander, in contrast, remains incandescent with health. And fury. Over the intervening weeks between the two meetings he makes clear his feelings to any churchman or diplomat who comes near him. ‘There are men on this list who have given their lives for the well-being and godliness of the Church. There are reformers, holy men and great theologians from all over Europe. I will have them approved – every single one of them – or by God, by Christmas there will be another list even longer. We are surrounded by enemies. Not just inside Italy, but elsewhere. If we are not united, we are nothing. I am the Pope and until someone else sits on this throne, my voice will be listened to.’

When the College meets again, the room is considerably fuller than before. Twenty-one cardinals now attend. The atmosphere is strained as the vote is counted. The result could not be closer. Eleven to ten. In favour. It is hardly the glorious victory that Alexander might have wished, but it is enough. With another thirteen of his own cardinals now injected into the mix, he has taken control of the Sacred College. And most particularly, the new young Cardinal of Valencia will be his eyes, ears and voice.

That night he and Cesare dine together in the splendour of the new apartments. His prayer of grace gives thanks to God for what they are about to receive. The toast celebrates what he has already got: a daughter married into Milan, a son betrothed to Naples, a foothold in Spain through a bona fide royal wife and, sitting in front of him, a nineteen-year-old cardinal with a dazzling Church future in front of him.

Later, as he lowers his knees on to the cushioned stool near his bed in order to offer further thanks to Mary, Holy Mother of God, he finds he cannot stop smiling. Ah, the sin of pride. There are times when it is a challenge even to ask forgiveness for it. But she, whose love and care he has never doubted even in the bleakest of times, surely she will understand.

Like the best politicians, even when matters are going well Alexander has eyes in the back of his head, alert for anything that he is not meant to see. In the final days leading up to the second vote of the Sacred College, Rome has been awash with gossip, with foreign diplomats moving to and fro constantly, realigning their cardinals with the interests of their states. In particular, della Rovere, while too ill to attend, has been well enough to take a number of high-profile visits from the French ambassador.

No one, certainly not Alexander, is under any illusion as to what they are talking about. Della Rovere, who has favoured Naples as long as Milan favoured the Pope, is starting to smell considerable advantage in changing sides. The forces of opposition are shifting, making allies of former enemies and enemies of former friends. And the phrase ‘foreign invasion’ is starting to move across people’s lips.

Alexander sits ready for whatever is to come.

He does not have to wait long.

In the great castle of Naples that looks out from the harbour over to the Mediterranean, King Ferrante of the House of Aragon picks the coldest day of the year to die.

He has been in decline for a while. His gut has grown fat with a protuberance that isn’t food and which presses so heavily on his bowels that he spends more time than any ruler can afford in the privy trying to push it out. The less he expels, the more blood comes with it. His doctors who examine the small black, matted lumps reassure him that, whatever it is, it is breaking down and evacuating thanks to their potions. When the pains start to rack his lower body, they dither and argue and prevaricate. Had he more energy he might have them strung up for treachery – for he sees it everywhere, even in simple mistakes – but by now he is too busy looking death in the face. It is not the first time. As a young ruler he survived an assassin’s knife and has kept his throne through turmoil and rebellion. He has gambled his whole life on stern government. Those who rebelled against him have died agonising deaths, those who remain loyal have been subject to suspicion and capricious cruelty. If his court is grown harsh and louche, it is because of his own moral equivocation feeding into the attitudes of those who dance attendance. Those who come to write the history might say that the House of Aragon, Spanish by descent, has given in to Italian decadence and so deserves all that might follow such a man’s death.

Burchard, when he hears the news, sums it up with unexpected poetry. ‘The King of Naples died without light, without the cross, without God.’

Alexander is at dinner with guests in his private apartments when the messenger arrives. He gets rid of them fast. It is too late for him to address the state of King Ferrante’s soul, but the crisis which his death unleashes is very much papal business. Within the week the Vatican will be a madhouse of diplomats and spies, but now, for a few hours he can keep his own counsel. It is one of the greatest luxuries a pope can afford himself.

‘I want no disturbance unless I ask for it, do you understand?’

The young servant moves silently around the bedchamber, filling the wine jug, loading the fire with wood and covering his master’s shoulders with his winter cape lined with sable to keep out the night draughts, then kneeling to kiss the Pontiff’s feet before he moves backwards out of the room. As the Pope’s personal shadow it is his job to be invisible, and by the time he leaves his master is already deep in thought.

Though Alexander’s job tonight is to rise to the challenge of the future, he can draw strength from the way he has handled the past. His policy of balancing Milan and Naples against each other has, up until now, worked brilliantly. These two lumbering states have been playing a power game since long before his papacy, with the most efficient chess pieces coming from their own families. Why risk using an army when a daughter or son will do? So five years ago, when Ferrante married his granddaughter off to the young Sforza heir, he had had every reason to think she would eventually become Duchess of Milan. He had bargained without the thug Ludovico Sforza, the boy’s guardian uncle, who had usurped the power and then encouraged the French claim on Naples as his way of keeping Ferrante off his back. It was an unscrupulous, cunning and quite brilliant move, but only as long as it stayed threat rather than reality.

Alexander himself has milked it for everything he could get. On the one hand, by resisting the claim, he can set himself up as the saviour of Italy, while at the same time using the fear of French invasion to bring Naples to heel. As in many things, the secret – instinct rather than ideology – is pragmatism, working with what is rather than what might be. And with the betrothal of young Jofré to Ferrante’s granddaughter the rewards are starting to flow.

But with the news of the King’s death the game changes completely. Because while there is an heir in waiting (a son who has wasted his life in anticipation of his father’s death), there is also, temporarily, an empty throne.

He opens his mouth in a huge yawn, stretching his arms up inside his voluminous sleeves to counteract the growing numbness of sitting in the same position. An empty throne. Fortuna. The goddess of chance. The wheel of fortune. The throw of the dice that no one can predict. If the French King really wants to take Naples, now would be the time for him to go for it. With a big enough army no one, not even the Pope, could stop him.

Except… He stretches again and now registers the satisfying sound of a small crack somewhere inside his shoulder. Ah, the pleasure of release.

Except for one thing. Fortuna. One man’s fall is another’s man rise. Because Ferrante’s death hands him, Alexander, an unexpected bargaining card. Naples, in every other way an independent state, is, by historical accident, a suzerainty of the papacy. Which means that for its ruler to be recognised by Christendom each and every king must be formally invested by the Pope. In other words, the blessing of Alexander VI is up for sale. What may be a risk for Italy is also, for the Borgias, an opportunity.

A smile starts to play around his lips. Across the lintel of the fireplace, his papal name is picked out in perfectly chiselled stone. Inside the grate, the lower layer of wood collapses noisily in on itself, sending out a firestorm of sparks. He watches as the flames move in on the new thick logs, searching for splits and holes to get their burning tongues inside. Once they catch hold there will be no stopping them.

‘Your Holiness, I am here to tell you that your daughter is unhappy. She wanders around the palace and can barely find the energy to sit at her needlework for more than half an hour at a time. It is as if everything is too much effort.’

Alexander’s face creases with concern. From high politics to family drama: sometimes there is so little time for prayer. ‘What is it? What ails her?’

‘Oh, my!’ Adriana allows herself a little roll of the eyes. Though she worships him as Pope and family, he is also a man. ‘I may speak freely, yes?’

‘I would be astonished if you did not, Adriana,’ he says mildly.

‘She is married, but without a husband. From being the centre of attention, admired and loved by everyone at the wedding, she now sits alone in the house waiting for a man who, as far as I – as she – can see, has no intention of coming back.’

‘Ah, I understand. In which case you will be pleased to know that we are in contact with the Duke of Pesaro and, as we speak, he is ordered back to Rome to join his family and take his bride as his wife.’

‘Oh!’ Adriana, who has come prepared to say much more, is taken aback. ‘I am… delighted. I… I did not think you had noticed.’

‘Well.’ He waves his hand carelessly, as if the credit is not worth the taking. In a perfect world he would let the pouting duke stew a little longer – Lucrezia is not yet fifteen, and he has taken against his son-in-law’s spinelessness. But in this new political climate Milan and the Sforzas have to be kept sweet, at least until things turn sour, and to delay the consummation of the marriage any further would, as Cardinal Sforza himself has made clear, be taken as a gross insult.

Under the flowery language of courtesy, Alexander’s letter to his son-in-law is crystal clear. You want the dowry? You had better come and get it.

‘Tell me, child, how would you feel if your husband was to return?’ He is gentler when it comes to Lucrezia.

‘Giovanni? I… I don’t know.’

‘What? You do not like him?’

‘… No, I like him well enough. Well, the little that I know.’ She hesitates. Her father is even busier these days, and this visit is both unannounced and unexpected. ‘I think more he does not like me.’

‘Nonsense. I am sure he misses you terribly.’

‘Papà. You do not need to make me feel better. The fact is he could not wait to get away.’

‘Oh, his leaving was not to do with you. The burdens of finance weigh heavy on a prince and he had business to attend to at home. But he is eager now to return.’

‘Is this his decision or yours?’

He opens his mouth to lie, but the simple honesty of the question confounds him. ‘Ah… my dear Lucrezia, we are all bound by forces stronger than ourselves.’

She nods, as if this is as much as she needs to know. ‘And when he comes back, where will he live?’

‘If it is amenable to you, he will live here with you in the palace.’ He pauses. He had been intending to leave this to Adriana, for these things are women’s business, but… ‘You understand what I am saying, child. You will be husband and wife.’

‘Yes, of course. I understand.’ She feels a flush in her face and drops her eyes. ‘So,’ she says after a little silence. ‘So, I will truly be the Duchess of Pesaro. Does that mean that I will go there?’

‘To Pesaro? That may happen, yes. Would you like that?’

‘I don’t know. I have never been anywhere but here. Perhaps. Yes… I think perhaps I would.’

Little Lucrezia, so young still. He has not bargained on losing her so soon. ‘Then I am sure it can be arranged.’ He takes her cheek in his thumb and forefinger and squeezes gently. With so much politicking there has been less time for the pleasures of family. Well, once this is over… ‘For now though you will set up house here, and you will be a wife that any man on earth would be proud of.’

‘Better than Juan has been a husband, you mean,’ she says, with sudden mischief.

‘Ah, your brother!’ He snorts. ‘If my hair had not been white already he would have turned it so overnight.’

Before Naples imploded, it had been the news from Spain that had seen him raging about his private chambers: Juan, despite all advice to the contrary, had been found night-crawling around the Spanish streets and brothels while his new wife was tucked up in bed waiting for him. Alexander’s letters had scorched the pouch of the messenger who delivered them. But he has forgiven him everything with the news that not only is his wife bedded, but that her seamstresses are busy letting out the gathering on her skirts. A grandchild already. Ah, the potency of his sons!

Alexander smiles. ‘You will have to hurry to catch up with him now, my dearest.’ And he opens his arms for her to come inside.

This time around there are no parties, no rich dinners, no ambassadors and, perhaps most important, no wedding-night ceremony with the closest relatives accompanying the couple as far as the marital bed. The not-so-newlyweds will be left to consummate their bond in private.

Perhaps because he knows this, Giovanni sets out from Pesaro in more confident mood. He remains largely ignorant of the machinations going on behind the scenes. As far as he is concerned, Milan is riding high, he has stood out for what he wants, and his determination has achieved it. He travels fast and arrives smiling. It makes him almost handsome. He, Giovanni Sforza, will be somebody in Rome now. And a much richer man by the morning. He kisses his wife and gives her a garland of herbs and winterberries picked from the walled garden in his ducal palace. ‘It is too early for flowers,’ he says. ‘But when you come to meet your people you will eclipse all blossom anyway.’

Lucrezia, who is so nervous that she has to curb a desire to laugh, curtsies sweetly. ‘My lord, welcome to your home.’

That night, in lieu of the public bedding, Adriana passes by the closed door a couple of times before she retires to bed. The noises that filter through the door seem promising enough. She is not so cynical or so old that she doesn’t remember her own wedding night. The most important thing is to be prepared. As surrogate mother she had used the plainest of terms. No point in frills and courtly fancies. Lucrezia had thanked her and smiled sweetly; as if she had perhaps known it all along. Well, so be it. Before she left, Adriana had been plagued with the sudden desire to say more; those things she might have liked her own mother to have offered. ‘Don’t worry. It is not so hard, this joining of the flesh. Yes, it is true that you will never be quite the same. And yet you will not be so very changed either. What is strange or distasteful soon becomes familiar. Almost routine.’ She might have added, ‘And though some men seem never able to get enough of it, there are women who never understand what all the fuss is about.’ Because, if she is honest, that is how she had felt. She left the room with it unsaid.

In the morning, after Giovanni has left for a hunting engagement, she visits her niece in her bedroom. Lucrezia is still in bed. She looks almost happy.

‘So, my dear? You are man and wife.’

‘I… yes, yes,’ she says. ‘We are.’

In the silence that follows neither of them can think of anything more to say.

It is true that something has changed between the two of them. Now when they pass in the house they smile at each other. He might put his arm on hers at dinner, or reach out and touch her cheek. She blushes but her eyes are bright, and sitting at games together there is chatter, even laughter. Tailors come to measure him for robes. He talks with the vintner about the order of wines from his home vineyards and is in touch with his ex-brother-in-law in Mantua about the purchase of an Arab stallion. As well as a wife, he now has a substantial purse.

When he goes to pay his respects to the Pope, he stands tall in new clothes. Alexander, who would like to believe that he has done right by his daughter, allows himself to be impressed.

‘Welcome to our family.’

Giovanni sinks to his knee and kisses the papal ring. ‘I am here to serve.’

After that much dowry I should hope so, Alexander thinks despite himself, as he gestures to him to rise.

During all this time, Cesare is nowhere to be seen. He had been on an extended hunting trip in Subiaco at the moment of Giovanni’s arrival, and when he returns he makes it his business to visit his father, but not his sister. When they do finally meet, at a wedding of one of the Roman families, he comes late and sits at another table. When Lucrezia sees him there, she is the one to make the journey across the room to greet him, pulling him up and embracing him.

‘Where have you been all this time?’

He holds her to him tightly, then pushes her away, but keeps hold of her arm. ‘How are you, little sister?’