Blood & Beauty (48 page)

They had not let Lucrezia hold Alfonso’s body long. The room had been a madhouse of screaming and shouting, with no time for contemplation, no proper grief. But here, in front of Christ’s cradled body, she has drunk deep of sorrow and managed to find some peace. Here she can pray and feel that she is heard. Here she has been able to let go of the past in the knowledge that God gives and God takes away and that whatever it is, it must be accepted.

She stands for a while longer, trying to memorise each fold of the marble drapery, every line of that dear, dear body. It cannot be done, but it doesn’t matter; when she closes her eyes, enough remains. She nods to her servant and they move out as quickly as they can through the darkness of the nave to the door, bracing themselves for an even greater darkness outside.

It is not there. When they come out into the night, it is light. The sky is filled with soft white specks. It is snow! Snow is falling. Snow! In all her life in Rome she has never seen such a thing.

The two women stand, entranced. Her servant puts up her hands in spontaneous wonder and Lucrezia joins her. They smile at each other, laugh even, like children, before wrapping their cloaks tighter and running across to the door, their footsteps leaving wet marks in the thin carpet of white. Snow. What a way to leave!

The palace is already awake. In the courtyard, the servants are securing the last bundles on to the mules, their shoulders already caped in white, heads down to keep the sticky flakes out of their eyes. Her wardrobe mistress is moving among them, in search of the right chest that she needs now to unpack. The chosen outfit will not be warm enough. They must find the furs and overcoats put away ready for the road across the Apennines. She catches sight of her mistress on the stairs. ‘My lady, go back to bed. You will freeze here.’

‘How can I sleep? We are leaving,’ she says, looking up into the silent poetry of a white night sky. ‘Look! It is wonderful.’

But not for those working through it. They blow on their raw fingers and stamp their feet; their future will be chilblains and mottled skin. She orders hot wine to be served to them. It will be her last act as head of her Roman household.

‘Anything, my daughter, anything you want. Just tell me.’

An hour later she takes her leave of the Pope. He sits propped in his chair, where he spends much of his life these days, she on the silken cushion at his feet, their hands clasped together. She is leaving but it is her job to comfort him. His tears splash on to their joined hands. Once he has started crying, everyone knows the Pope finds it hard to stop.

‘You will write to me every day, in your own hand. Do you hear? The horses will fly between us, so that it will feel as if we are talking to each other over the land. Your new father-in-law has a reputation for – well, for miserliness. Don’t let him short-change you on your dowry. Anything you need you tell me, you understand. Oh, how can I let you go?’

And he pulls her up from the cushion and crushes her to him.

‘I will be fine, Father. We have borne separation before and we will bear this one.’ She extricates herself gently. ‘It is almost dawn. I must go soon.’

‘You must make sure that your husband comes to you every night. They will want an heir fast. So – every night…’ He speaks with sudden passion, as if he has just remembered a mass of vital things he must tell her. ‘Open your arms to him. Make him welcome, but never complain when he leaves you… Men – well, men are often like that. You are a Borgia and deserve to be worshipped, but you may have to put up with a—’

‘Papà, it is fine. I have been married twice before. I know what my duties are. But… now… the weather is most inclement. If we don’t leave soon…’

He looks up towards the window and its ghostly light. ‘No, oh no – look at it… it is dreadful out there.’

She starts to rise as the door opens: Cesare, sleek and black as a panther, a man halfway through his day, pulsating with energy.

‘Ah, Cesare! Tell your sister she must not leave. Look at the sky. Tell her she must stay another day.’

‘I am afraid it cannot be done.’ He moves to the throne and gives her his hand to help her rise, as if he were inviting her to dance. ‘It is a long journey and the whole of Ferrara is waiting to see its new duchess. Isn’t that right, sister?’

‘Yes,’ she says smiling, because nothing can dampen the excitement. These final days have been mad with public celebration and with no time for intimacy brother and sister have moved around rather than towards each other. So here it is: the last goodbye. ‘Yes, that is right.’

‘Have you told her, Papà?’ He keeps her hand tight inside his own.

‘Told me what?’

‘About what is to come.’

‘You mean my husband and my father-in-law? You need not worry on that score. I have had some experience of living with difficult men.’

‘Ha! Well said!’ The Pope laughs. ‘My God, I would like to see the old miser’s face when he meets you. The rest she doesn’t need to know, Cesare.’

‘What rest?’ she says, glancing at them both.

Alexander waves an arm. ‘Just plans. Plans!’

‘I still say it is better if she is prepared.’ And his voice is curt: more like father to son than the other way around. Alexander makes a small, dismissive gesture as if it is not worth the argument. As Cesare’s star rises ever higher, the Pope seems to be growing almost afraid of his own son.

‘In the year to come great things will happen for us, Lucrezia: events that will change the face of Italy. But it will also make us more enemies.’

‘In which case, Papà is surely right,’ Lucrezia says, uneasily. ‘It is better if I do not know.’

‘Nevertheless, it will affect you. This is family business and as a Borgia they will see you as part of it.’

Family business. She stares at him. ‘But you forget, Cesare, you have married me to Ferrara. I am only half Borgia now. The other half of me is Este.’ And she smiles brightly, as if it is, after all, simply a joke. She glances to the window, where the snow is falling relentlessly now. ‘I must go.’

‘Yes, if you must, you must. Oh, come, come, kiss me again.’ The Pope opens his arms wide and she feels for a last time that bear hug of love. ‘How will I live without you?’ She hears his voice catching as the tears come again and now it is all she can do not to join in.

On the other side of the room, Cesare watches, dry-eyed.

She smooths down her skirts and lifts her head high as she walks towards him. Such a handsome man, Cesare Borgia, so full of ice and fire. Except recently, close to, she has noticed that his complexion is sometimes a little flushed, with blemishes here and there where the purple flowers have left gentle stains. No longer flawless then.

‘Goodbye, my dear, dear Duke Valentino,’ she says as she embraces him. ‘Promise me you will take good care of yourself as you fight all those battles.’

‘And you also take care.’ He lets her go, but only enough to hold her at arm’s length. ‘So?’ He lowers his voice until it is a whisper. ‘So, my beloved sister, do I hear it now?’

‘Hear what?’ she says, the smile still hovering on her lips.

‘The words that say you love me and that I am forgiven.’

‘Oh, Cesare, I… of course I love you. You are my brother.’

But he is still waiting.

‘You are my brother,’ she repeats, and the catch is in her own voice now as she slips her hands away from his.

Outside the Sala dei Papi, Johannes Burchard stands so close to the door that one cannot help but think that his ear must have been at the keyhole. After all these years, he has still not mastered the rapid flow of Catalán, but the emotion behind the words he knows only too well.

‘Madam,’ he says, stiffening up immediately. ‘I…They – they are asking for you in your courtyard.’

‘Yes, yes, I am coming now,’ she says as she collects herself.

‘I wish you a most safe journey.’ He bows. ‘And I pray that the city of Ferrara will look after you as well as you deserve.’

‘Goodbye.’ She takes his hand. ‘And thank you, thank you for your good wishes.’

There is an awkward little silence, then impetuously she adds, ‘Johannes, I know… I know that sometimes we are… well, as a family we have many enemies. But my father needs you so much. And I know that you do care for him. For which I thank you,’ she says again and leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

His look of astonishment will stay with her for miles down the road.

In her own palace, her ladies fuss around her, wrapping her further in woollen capes, fur hats and gloves. Surely she should use the litter. That would keep her dry. But she is too eager to be seeing it all. She climbs on to her mule, with its special saddle to hold her better in place, and the cavalcade begins its journey, out of the courtyard and across the front of the Vatican towards the Via Alessandrina, the snow thicker now, the flakes whirling like confused dancers as they fall.

She looks up to the first-floor windows because she knows she will see him there, his large face pressed against the thick glass, his hands in the air, waving, waving. She waves back, then turns her attention to her mule, which, left to its own devices, would be going nowhere in such weather. As she moves, so does he, to the next window in the room. Then the next. And the next. He will be changing rooms now, puffing his way down the long Vatican corridor to keep pace with her, desperate for a last glimpse before, finally, she turns the corner and so slips out of his sight.

The procession crosses Ponte Sant’ Angelo, then makes its way slowly towards the Piazza del Popolo. The eerie silence of snow is everywhere, the flakes so dense that it feels as if a wet fog is wrapping itself around them. Fog. She is going to a city of fog. It rolls off the river unfolding like a blanket, so that sometimes they say you cannot see your hand in front of your face. She holds up her glove. She can just make out the embroidered leather, but nothing beyond.

Rome has already disappeared and Ferrara is calling to her. She pushes her heels into the mule’s flanks. There can be no going back now.

‘Your Holiness?’ Burchard is calling to him. ‘Are you all right?’

Alexander is standing crumpled against the wall near the last window, his face convulsed with sobs. ‘She is gone. She is gone, Burchard. I will never see her sweet smiling face again.’

‘Of course you will. There is a clause inserted in the marriage contract, you remember? You will lead a gathering of cardinals to Ferrara to visit her next year.’

He shakes his head. ‘It will never happen. I know it. I feel it. Feel it: here, like a pain,’ he adds, dramatically clutching his heart.

‘Would you like me to call the doctors?’

‘Ha! Doctors! They can do nothing for such things. It is not illness, it is a premonition. A father’s premonition.’

Burchard stares at him. In all his life he has never met a man who feels so much so constantly. They have worked for almost ten years together yoked in an unlikely partnership. And for all that he disapproves… ‘The Pope ran from window to window to see her. Because he misses his daughter so.’ That is what those who saw it will say about this moment, he thinks, and without realising it he brushes his cheek where Lucrezia’s lips have been.

‘We shall take you to your bed, Holy Father.’ He gestures to the Pope’s chamberlain, hovering, as ever, in the background.

‘No. No, not to bed.’ Alexander is rallying now. ‘Bed will do me no good. Not now. The day has begun.’

He turns. At the end of the open doors through which he has come, the figure of Cesare stands waiting, black against the ghostly white light of the snowy morning.

‘I will take some hot wine and a little soup,’ he calls back as he starts padding his way back along the long corridor, the papal robes like rising silk waters around the great bulk of the man. ‘The duke and I have work to do.’

More than many in history, the Borgias have suffered from an excess of bad press. While their behaviour – personal and political – was often brutal and corrupt, they lived in brutal and corrupt times; and the thirst for diplomatic gossip and scandal, along with undoubted prejudice against their Spanish nationality, played its part in embellishing what was already a colourful story. Once the slander was abroad, much of it was incorporated into the historical record without being challenged. Spin, it seems, was a political art long before the modern word was introduced.

While
Blood & Beauty
is unapologetically an act of the imagination, the novel draws heavily on the work of modern historians whose judgement on the Borgias is more scrupulous and discriminating than many in the past. I have listened to their views and where there is contemporary evidence (be it true or false), through letters, reports, speeches or diaries, I have incorporated it into the text. My one liberty has been to do with the life of Pedro Calderón who, while he was a chamberlain in the Pope’s household, never, to my knowledge, worked exclusively for Cesare Borgia.

Apart from that, there remain certain contested incidents within this tangled story.

In particular there is the question of who killed Juan Borgia. While many historians now believe the assassination was the work of the Orsini family, there are still those who think it was Cesare himself (though there is no contemporary suggestion that he is a suspect until almost a year after Juan’s death). Equally, there are a few who speculate that in the early months of 1498, after a liaison with Pedro Calderón, a servant in the papal household, Lucrezia gave birth to a child. Others are of the opinion that the baby was that of the Pope and his mistress Giulia Farnese (Alexander acknowledges the child as his own later); others still, that it was Cesare’s. In these and similar areas where historians have disagreed among themselves (did Caterina Sforza try to kill the Pope or did the Borgias manufacture the plot to justify their aggression? Did Cesare Borgia host an evening of courtesans in the Vatican palace or was this slander becoming fact?) I have taken the liberty of writing what feels to me to be the psychological truth of the personalities as they have emerged from the research. In this I am no more right – or possibly no more wrong – than anyone else. It is one of the most compelling things about history, and this family in particular, that sometimes we simply do not know. Which is, of course, where the pleasure and challenge of fiction comes in.

Should you wish to make up your own mind on such things, and on the Borgias themselves, the reading list below will be a good place to start. I could not have written
Blood & Beauty
without these books, and I am much indebted to their authors, alive and dead.

Fate – a capricious goddess, as we know – permitting, there will be a concluding novel in a few years’ time. It may not surprise you to learn that the story of the Borgias does not get any less exciting.

Sarah Dunant

Florence, June 2012