Light on Lucrezia (39 page)

“It might be more comfortable for us all if you were less interested in the gifts of kitchen girls,” began Lucrezia. “It might be that if you made some pretence of living a life more in keeping with your rank …”

But Alfonso was in bed and no longer interested in conversation.

Under the cover
of music Strozzi talked.

“I make no secret of the fact, my dear Duchessa, that it has been the ambition of my life to possess a Cardinal’s hat.”

“It is a worthy ambition,” Lucrezia told him.

“And knowing of the love your father bears you, I feel that, should you consider me worthy, you would be able to convince His Holiness that I should not disgrace the Sacred College.”

“I am certain that you would grace the Sacred College,” Lucrezia assured him.

Strozzi bent nearer to her. “I would be willing to spend as much as 5,000 ducats to attain my desire.”

“It is a great sum,” said Lucrezia.

“My family is rich, and I feel that I must go out into the world. I have my life to live in places beyond Ferrara.”

“I will write to my father. I believe the friendship that you have shown to me will please him more than 5,000 ducats.”

“I am grateful.” His beautiful eyes were eloquent. She smiled at him. She was realizing that, in spite of her chilly reception in Ferrara, she was at last making her own court, and life was becoming interesting.

“How you must miss Rome!” he said suddenly.

“More than I can say.”

“Ferrara seems dull to you doubtless?”

“It is so different from Rome. In Rome there was so much to do. There were so many shops full of wonderful things.”

“So you think the shops of Rome the best in Italy?”

“Indeed yes. Those of Naples are exquisite, but I think Rome holds the palm.”

“You have not seen the shops of Venice?”

“No.”

“Then I must tell you they have goods therein … jewels … cloth … to outshine anything you ever saw in Rome.”

“Is this really so?”

“Indeed yes. Venice is the traders’ center. They congregate there from the north and the south; and all that is best in their merchandise is bought by the merchants of Venice and displayed in the shops there. I see that you have exquisite taste. May I say that I have never seen gowns of such style? Your velvets and brocades are very beautiful; I have never seen better outside Venice.”

He continued to tell her of the beauties of Venice, of its culture and riches. Strozzi had many friends in that city but there was none other who held the place in his esteem which belonged to Pietro Bembo. Lucrezia knew of Pietro Bembo, of course. He was the greatest humanist in Italy and one of the finest poets. The friendship was treasured by Strozzi, he declared, and he felt himself honored by it.

“I know his work well,” said Lucrezia. “I agree with you that it could only come from a fine mind. Now I envy you your visits to Venice more than ever. There you will be with your poet friend. You will be together in that beautiful city; you will search the merchants’ treasures. Oh yes, I greatly desire to explore Venice.”

“You are a beautiful woman and nothing should be denied you. I could bring Venice to you, in some measure. I shall of course speak of you with my friend Pietro Bembo; I shall tell him of your charm and delicacy. I will make you known to him and him to you. With your permission I will search the shops of Venice for the finest velvets and brocades, and I will bring back the most exquisite, the most delicately embroidered, that they may be made into gowns worthy to be worn by you.”

“You are kind, my friend. But I could not buy these stuffs. Since I have been in Ferrara I am no longer rich.”

“You are the Pope’s daughter. I shall but mention that, and there is not a merchant in Venice who would fail to give you all the credit you desire.”

“You are a very good friend to me,” she told him.

He lifted her hand and kissed it. “To be the best friend you ever had, Madonna, is the greatest ambition of my life.”

“I thought that was to wear a Cardinal’s hat,” she answered.

“No,” he said slowly. “I have suddenly discovered that I no longer desire that hat.”

“You speak seriously?”

“I do indeed. For of what use to me would a place in Rome be when my Duchessa must remain in Ferrara?”

Ercole Strozzi was possessed of an inner excitement. His thoughts were constantly of Lucrezia. Her entirely feminine quality appealed to him in such a way as to present a challenge. Lucrezia seemed to demand to be dominated. He wished to dominate. He did not seek to be her lover; their relationship must be of a more subtle nature. The bucolic Alfonso satisfied Lucrezia’s sexual appetite, and Ercole would have considered a physical relationship between them crude and ordinary; he had been the lover of many women and there was no great excitement to be gleaned from a new love affair.

The lameness of Strozzi had filled him with a desire to be different from others in more important ways. There was in his nature a streak of the feminine which betrayed itself in his love of elegance, in his exquisite taste in clothes and his knowledge of those worn by women. This feminine streak impelled him to show his masculinity. The artist in him wished to create. It was not enough to write poetry; he wished to mold the minds of those about him, to guide their actions, to enjoy, while he suffered his infirmity and was conscious of the feminine side of his nature, the knowledge that those he sought to mold were in some respects his creatures.

Lucrezia, gentle, all feminine, so eager for friendship in this hostile land, seemed to him an ideal subject whose life he could arrange, whose character he could mold to his design.

He could advise her as to her dresses; he could show her the charm of a fashion she had hitherto ignored. He was now going to Venice to choose rich stuffs for her. Her outward covering would be of his creation; as in time the inner Lucrezia should be.

She was sensitive; she was fond of poetry. It was true that they had not educated her in Rome as Isabella d’Este, for instance, had been educated. He would remedy that; he would encourage her to become more intellectual;
he would increase her love of poetry, he wished to be the creator of a new Lucrezia.

Thus he reasoned as he came into Venice, as he went through the stocks of the merchants and bought exquisite patterned satins and velvets of varying shades of color.

“They are for Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara, and daughter of the Pope,” he explained; he had come from Ferrara on a visit to Venice, and she had entrusted him with these commissions.

There was not a merchant in Venice who was not prepared to bring out his most treasured stock for the daughter of the Pope.

When Strozzi had made these purchases he visited his friend, the poet Pietro Bembo, who welcomed him with great pleasure. Pietro was handsome and thirty-two years of age; but his attraction did not only lie in his handsome looks. His reputation throughout Italy was high; he was known as one of the foremost poets of his time, and because of this there was always a welcome for him in Ferrara, Urbino or Mantua, should he care to visit these places.

Pietro was a lover of women, and experience was necessary to him. He was in love at this time with a beautiful woman of Venice named Helena, but the love affair was going the way of all his love affairs, and Pietro, finding it difficult to write under the stress, longed for a quiet refuge. He and Strozzi had been fond of each other since they had met some years before in Ferrara; they admired the same poetry; they were passionately devoted to literature in any form; and they shared a detestation of the commonplace.

“I feel angry with Helena,” said Strozzi. “I fancy she is the cause of your long stay in Venice.”

“I am thinking,” said the poet, significantly, “of leaving Venice.” Strozzi was pleased to hear this.

“I have been buying fine materials here in Venice,” he said. “Such silks, such tabbies! You never saw the like.”

“Silks and tabbies? What do you want with such fripperies?”

“I have been buying them on behalf of a lady—the new Duchess of Ferrara.”

“Ah! Lucrezia Borgia. Tell me, is she a monster?”

Strozzi laughed. “She is the daintiest, most sensitive creature I ever set
eyes on. Exquisite. Golden-haired, eyes that are so pale they take their color from her gowns. Delicate. Quite charming. And a lover of poetry.”

“One hears such tales!”

“False. All false. It is an ill fate which has married her to that boor Alfonso.”

“She feels it to be an ill fate?”

Strozzi’s eyes were thoughtful. “I do not entirely understand her. She has learned to mask her thoughts. It would seem that Alfonso perturbs her little; and when I think of him—uncouth, ill-mannered—and her—so sensitive, so delicate—I shudder. Yet there is a strength within her.”

“You are bewitched by your Duchess.”

“As you would be, had you seen her.”

“I admit a certain curiosity as to the Borgia.”

“Perhaps one day you will meet.”

The poet was thoughtful. “A delicate goddess married to Alfonso d’Este! One would say Poor Lucrezia, if one did not know Lucrezia.”

“You do not know Lucrezia. Nor do I. I am not certain that Lucrezia knows herself.”

“You are cryptic.”

“She makes me thus.”

“I see she absorbs you. I have never known you so absentminded before. I declare you are longing to go back to Ferrara with your silks and tabbies.”

Strozzi smiled. “But let us talk of you. You are restless. You weary of Helena. Why do you not go to my Villa at Ostellato?”

“What should I do there?”

“Be at peace to write your poetry.”

“You would come and see me there?”

“I would. Mayhap I would induce Lucrezia to ride that way. It is not far from Ferrara.”

The poet smiled, and Strozzi saw that the exquisitely lovely Duchessa of such evil reputation, whom he had described as sensitive and unformed, was catching at Pietro’s imagination as she had caught at his.

Strozzi was pleased. He wished to mold those two. He wished to put them together in his great villa at Ostellato and watch the effect they had on each other.

When Strozzi returned
to Ferrara he found that the heat of the summer was proving very trying to Lucrezia. She was suffering a great deal of discomfort in her pregnancy, and her relations with Duke Ercole had worsened.

She was delighted with the velvets, silks and tabbies which Strozzi had brought her, and they did lift her spirits for a while. She was interested too in his account of the poet, Pietro Bembo, and she gave a party during which Strozzi read the young man’s newest verses.

But these were isolated incidents, and Strozzi saw that she was suffering too much discomfort to feel really interested in either fine materials or absent poets.

She ordered a handsome cradle to be made in Venice so that she could have it well before the baby was due. “It is a great extravagance,” she said, “and I know full well that the Duke will be shocked when he sees it. But I care not. I have come to think that the only pleasure I have in this heat is from shocking the Duke.”

Alexander had now heard of Duke Ercole’s offer of 10,000 ducats as his daughter’s annual income, and he was incensed.

“My daughter cannot be expected to live on a pittance,” he cried, and reminded that old Duke of the 100,000 ducats he had received as dowry, besides all other benefits.

The Duke retorted that marriage into aristocratic families could not be attained by those of lower status without high costs; this infuriated Alexander, and all benefits from the Papacy immediately ceased.

Alexander wrote that he had heard that Lucrezia had been treated with scant respect at the time of the wedding, and he would like Duke Ercole to know that he was far from pleased.

But from the stronghold of Ferrara the Duke snapped his fingers at the Papacy; Lucrezia declared that she would rather starve than accept the miserly 10,000 ducats a year. She gave a banquet for the Duke in her apartments and at this she used the goblets and silver-ware which were marked with the emblem of the Grazing Bull, the arms of Naples and those of the Sforzas. She wished the Duke to know that she was not dependent upon him. She had the relics of a less penurious past, and the Grazing Bull was much in evidence.