The Lion and the Rose (40 page)

I dredged a dreary little meal together for Madonna Lucrezia, and when dashing young Perotto swaggered away to his horse and went trotting out of the convent gates, Pantisilea and I carried everything up on trays. Lucrezia was admiring her new embroidered shawl, sitting up in bed trying various effects of draping, her cheeks pink with pleasure as they always were after a good dose of masculine admiration. “More of those blood-orange pastry things?” she said, looking up. “You can’t imagine how I’ve been craving them—”

“Yes, and pork jelly for
cena
.” I was really rather proud of that jelly. A very substandard pig, but I’d gotten a good flavorful jelly out of boiling the ears and snout and hooves in an even more substandard wine. “Plenty of honey and nutmeg, Madonna Lucrezia; you’ve been liking everything sweet lately, haven’t you? I could only find dandelion greens for a salad, but look how pretty I’ve made them look with these bugloss flowers . . .”

She looked down at the jelly, which I’d arranged so nicely on the plate: quivering and cold, ringed by bay leaves and slivered almonds. “The smell,” she said faintly, pink draining out of her cheeks, and then my jelly went
smash
all over the floor as the little Countess of Pesaro lunged out of bed, stumbled across her chamber, and vomited just in time into the silver basin she normally saved for washing her hands.

“Madonna Lucrezia—” I began to move across the room but then I froze, shards of broken majolica plate and splats of pork jelly all about my feet. I could feel Pantisilea gaping at my side, still gripping the wine decanter, both of us staring at our mistress and realizing just why she had not left her bed in a month and why she bathed herself alone.

She heaved again into the basin and then straightened, pushing her loose hair out of her face and wiping her mouth. She saw us staring at the rise of her belly beneath her shift and heaved an impatient, dramatic sigh. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I’m to have a child.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

—MACHIAVELLI

Giulia

M
y young friends!” Vittorio Capece of Bozzuto approached with open arms as Orsino and I were ushered into his ornate little
sala
. A sanguine and sophisticated Neapolitan of perhaps fifty, leanly elegant in a sable-furred robe; cheerful, graying, rosy-cheeked. “Your journey was not too tiring?”

“I am too dusty to be allowed in your beautiful home,” I informed him, shaking out my limp skirts. “Evict me at once.”

“Nonsense, m’dear, you’re an ornament to any household. I’m delighted you’ve chosen to adorn mine.” He came to kiss me on both cheeks. “My
palazzo
is yours, as long as you choose to stay in Rome.”

“Not long,” Orsino hastened to say. His eyes traveled over the coffered ceiling picked out in gilt, the discus thrower carved in exquisite rosy marble beside the doors, the French tapestries of knights and unicorns and maidens skipping through fields of pinks. Fair-haired blue-eyed pages with blue-and-gold livery to match their looks were already taking our dusty cloaks, offering silver basins and rosewater for us to dip our hands, bringing pale sweetened wine in frail-stemmed goblets. “We will be returning to Carbognano soon,” Orsino ventured, looking rather swamped in all the luxurious bustle. “Very soon.”

“Such a pity,” Vittorio Capece said in his Neapolitan drawl. I didn’t think I would ever like any Neapolitans; the Tart of Aragon had spoiled the whole nation for me. But no one could help but be fond of convivial Vittorio, who insisted that even the handles of his doors be works of art. “Haven’t you brought that dwarf bodyguard of yours?” he continued, glancing behind me. “Such a clever little fellow; he admired my red marble and ebony chess pieces so much I didn’t even mind when he beat me three games in a row. I was looking forward to another match . . .”

“I’m afraid Leonello is no longer in my service,” I said briefly, and heard Orsino shift beside me in unstated relief. Even if Leonello hadn’t left of his own accord, Orsino wouldn’t have wanted to keep him on. My husband would never have been comfortable around my bodyguard’s sharp eyes and even sharper tongue, and it wouldn’t have been any use asking Leonello to keep his sarcasm to himself, either. Leonello regarded men like my husband as lions regard lambs—fit only for the sharpening of claws. If Orsino had ever addressed me as “my little rose” in Leonello’s hearing, my bodyguard would have let out a hoot, struck a lovelorn pose, and composed an extemporaneous sonnet on the spot: “Giulia Farnese, the Milk Thistle of Carbognano.” And then he would have followed me about for days saying, “Yes, my little milk thistle?” until I threatened to smack him, and then he’d have grinned his mocking tilted grin and demanded, “Why do women always prefer the trite to the witty? ‘My little rose?’
Dio!
”

Oh, but I missed him.

“What a pity, what a pity,” said Vittorio, oblivious. “I thought that little lion was your shadow, m’dear! Well, now, you must be tired; I have had rooms prepared if you wish to bathe and change—”

I had thought Leonello my shadow, too. So selfish of me—you can’t suborn
people
to be shadows, can you, as if they have no lives of their own? I reminded myself of that, every time I turned to say something to Leonello and then felt the pang of remembering all over again that he was gone. I offered a brief smile to Vittorio and allowed Orsino to lead me toward the stairs.

“It wasn’t a suggestion, that little hint about bathing and changing,” I whispered to my husband as a matched pair of ebony-skinned slave girls whisked us up flights of shallow marble steps. “Vittorio was being very polite, but I could see his agony mounting every time our dusty clothes touched his beautiful carpets.”

“How did you make his acquaintance?” Orsino sounded suspicious. He sounded suspicious whenever I mentioned any man’s name.

“Vittorio Capece is one of Rome’s great collectors of art,” I said. “He said I was the most decorative woman he’d ever seen, and he begged to have my hands sculpted as an artistic study. They’re here somewhere, my marble hands—he stacks his rings on the fingers when he runs out of room on his own.”

Orsino’s voice sounded flat as we were ushered into a sumptuous little
sala
with an ornate velvet-hung bed and embroidered satin cushions along the wall benches. “He admires you, then.”

“Only as an ornament,” I said lightly, dismissing the little slave girls. “Everyone knows Vittorio will never marry.”

“Why?”

I thought of pointing out the languid, long-legged good looks of every page boy, manservant, and male attendant in this
palazzo
. And the naked marble figures of Apollo and Pan and David, rather outnumbering the statues of Venus and Diana and Salome. In Carbognano, men of Vittorio’s tastes were spoken of only in whispers, but in cosmopolitan Rome such things were far more casually viewed. I had been shocked at first, but Rodrigo didn’t care who went to bed with whom, and I certainly wasn’t going to spurn poor Vittorio just because ranting men like Fra Savonarola said he was hell-bound. I didn’t think Orsino’s view of the world was quite so flexible, however. “Vittorio chases art rather than women,” I said instead, hanging up my cloak on a silver wall peg. My Pope’s letter had offered to house us in the Palazzo Santa Maria when we brought Laura to Rome, but I had taken one look at Orsino’s face and written a tactful refusal. I knew any number of noble families in Rome who might have played host for us, even a few of Orsino’s cousins from the family’s more illustrious branches. But for Orsino’s peace of mind I’d chosen Vittorio Capece, whose appreciation of me would be nothing more than aesthetic.

Orsino flushed. “The way men look at you . . .” he began, and trailed off, standing in the middle of the room with his hands hanging at his sides like a little boy. Really, men. Such delicate flowers with their bruised feelings and hurt pride. And they say women are the oversensitive ones!

“The way men look at me?” I kept my voice teasing. “I’ve seen the way all those wives look at you! Envying me my handsome young husband when they have some dour graybeard!” He brightened at that, as I’d intended, and I kissed his cheek. “Let me settle Laura.”

“Surely the maids can do that?” But I pretended I hadn’t heard him.

My daughter had been whisked up to a chamber of her own before she could break any of our host’s costly knickknacks. She was already careening about the room with her nursemaid chasing behind, another maid with a silver ewer of water and a red-haired manservant with a tray trying their best to keep out of the way. “You must rest before the papal audience, little mistress!” But Laura ignored that blithely, running up to present me with a sticky, sugary fig squashed in each fist. “He brought me my
favorites
!”

“Madonna Giulia.” The red-haired manservant bowed to me, and I found myself recognizing him.

“Bartolomeo!” I greeted him. Holy Virgin, could this really be Carmelina’s favorite apprentice? He
had
grown.

“I’ve never had the opportunity to thank you for helping me find my post here, Madonna Giulia,” he said with another impeccable bow. “I volunteered to bring up the dishes myself as soon as I’d heard you’d arrived. Sugared figs for the little mistress”—handing another down to Laura—“and marzipan
tourtes
for your own chamber.” A grin. “And there will be fried smelt from Lake Bolsena for your plate any day you wish it, regardless of what the
maestro di cucina
has to say.” His grin was infectious.

“What, you aren’t
maestro di cucina
yet, Bartolomeo?”

“I plan to have his post by next year.” Matter-of-factly. “Signore Capece is already a great admirer of my sugar subtleties. ‘Food made art,’ he says. Many thanks again, Madonna Giulia.”

“Don’t thank me, thank Carmelina,” I smiled. “She trained you, after all. I remember her whacking you over the head with a spoon in Capodimonte, when you were mangling her pasta shapes.”

“I’ve not heard from Carmelina lately.” His smile disappeared. “She can’t write often; she says the nuns won’t have letters delivered without a good fat payment. She did say she’d be able to leave when Madonna Lucrezia did . . .”

“I shall see what I can find out about Madonna Lucrezia, then,” I promised. “Surely she won’t be staying at the convent much longer.”

He gave me another bow and a round of thanks. I’d meant to hunt down Carmelina anyway, and lure her away from the Borgia employ to my
castello
in Carbognano. I’d have to promise her new stoves and new trestle tables and all the spices she wanted, no doubt, but she was worth it. Perhaps this handsome no-longer-apprentice would wish to accompany her . . . Though it would hardly repay poor Vittorio his hospitality if I stole his cook on departure. On the other hand, given Vittorio’s tastes for strapping young men, perhaps it
was
a good idea at that.

Orsino was still wandering about our new chamber in his dusty doublet, looking a trifle lost among all the luxury, and I devoted myself to fussing over him for a while in the way I knew he liked: unlacing his shirt with my own hands, bathing his temples in lavender water. He put his hands about my waist, and I knew what he wanted so I smiled and cast my eyes down and let him lead me to our borrowed bed. I lay under the rich green satin bedcover, and then I lay under my husband, and he hardly seemed any more substantial than the satin. He was still so hesitant to touch me, so furtive when his fingers stroked my skin or his weight pressed against me—and it pressed against me a great deal, because my husband very badly wanted me pregnant.

His eyes had lit up when I showed him the letter I had first written Rodrigo, saying I could not return to him because I was carrying the child of Orsino Orsini. “You are?” my husband breathed.

“No,” I said, wincing because he looked so crestfallen. “But if I
say
it, he will not want me,” I placated. “And it will be true soon enough, surely!”

We’d managed to delay bringing Laura to Rome until November—and I know Orsino had been hoping to get me with child in that time. It was not just to make my lie a truth, or even because he wanted a son as all men do. Orsino wanted to parade me about Rome with a swollen belly, so that no man would look lustfully at me anymore.

He moved over me, gasping into my shoulder, and I folded my arms about his neck and murmured sweet bits of nonsense. I knew what pleased him by now: soft arms, loving looks, delicate shivers of pleasure. Nothing too bold, because boldness is for harlots, not good and decent wives. I had not always been a good wife to him, but I was now. He deserved that.

I didn’t know what I deserved. Maybe just to do my duty—it was what I’d been born and reared for, after all.

“Husband,” I scolded softly afterward. “We shall be late.”

The Sala del Pappagallo in the Vatican was clustered with ambassadors, envoys, petitioners, flatterers; lords bearing gifts and lords begging favors. How many papal audiences had I witnessed here? The hall of parrots, named for the once-brightly-colored birds painted about the walls in fading splendor. You’d wonder why
parrots
on a wall instead of something a trifle more grand: saints or martyrs, or, if one must follow an animal motif, at least pick a grander animal like the splendid Borgia bull. I think whoever painted those parrots must have had himself quite a chuckle, because a cacophony of cardinals all bickering and backstabbing away in that
sala
could make more noise than any gaggle of birds. And what a great lot of chirping and fluttering went up as Orsino and Laura and I were announced.

I had expected to feel nervous—I had not been so stared at since my arrival in Carbognano, when the villagers looked as though they’d expected their lord’s notorious wife to have demon horns and a forked tongue. But it was Orsino’s arm that trembled, and I gave his elbow a reassuring squeeze as we approached the glittering figure in the sweeping robes. Rodrigo.

I fixed my eyes instead on a parrot on the wall, a faded green parrot with a cross expression, and I had a wild urge to laugh when I remembered the sulky parrot that had once belonged to little Lucrezia, and how I’d privately named it
Vannozza
.

Orsino’s name was given, but the Holy Father had no glance for him. “Madonna Giulia,” Rodrigo said formally, and gave me his hand. I bent my head to brush my lips against his ring, and his dark eyes crinkled at me in their old way, and my heart squeezed. Because my former lover had changed so much in only five months. There were deep new lines about his mouth and eyes, graved there by Juan’s death, I imagined, and the flesh about his neck hung in loose folds. His hair was entirely gray, and the skin had loosened over the knuckles of the hand he had presented me. But he smiled, and his smile had all its old energy. His fingers gave mine a squeeze and he lowered his voice. “You are looking well,
mi perla
.”

I could see him looking for the pearl he had given me, but I had looped a silver crucifix about my neck instead, an ornament belonging to Orsino’s grandmother. I had also made a point to dress my hair low and my neckline high, in just the kind of subdued gray satin gown that a virtuous wife should wear. Voluminous gray satin, too, to hide the belly that was supposed to be showing the first signs of Orsino’s child—I’d seen Rodrigo’s eyes flit to my stomach at once. “Your Holiness,” I said, taking my hand away with great firmness, and cast my eyes down.