“You should be careful, Madonna Sancha,” I said finally. “I’ve known five girls in this city who died bound down. Their arms wide, their legs spread, and their throats cut.”
“Just whores,” Sancha shrugged. “Nothing to do with me. Another died like that two nights ago.”
My voice came out too sharp. “You’re sure?”
“Staked to a table with knives. Juan told me. He heard it from a guard. What does it matter?” Sancha hesitated a moment, and I wondered if she’d made the same connection I had, but she just looked impatient that we weren’t talking about her any longer.
You may be a king’s daughter, lovely lady
, I thought,
but you really aren’t very bright, are you?
“You know, Juan’s been very attentive to me,” she went prattling blithely on. “If Cesare thinks he can keep me waiting, well, he’ll find I can have as many Borgias as I like without pining after him—”
I twined my hand through her hair again, and she broke off her complaining to dandle her hand down toward my breeches. She had a gleam of spite in her half-closed eyes that I’d seen before too, on girls who thought it great fun to wait till a man was half clothed and then snap their legs closed with a stream of spiteful laughter. A dangerous trick to pull on a full-sized man who might use his fists, but what can a dwarf do except slink away in shame?
“Why don’t you tell me more,” I murmured, dropping a string of unhurried kisses down her slender neck as she stroked me. I like being teased no more than any man, but I’d let her do it if it kept her talking. “Tell me everything you know about this woman who died two nights ago. And after that, tell me
all
about Cardinal Borgia and his . . . tastes.”
“Is that the kind of thing you like to hear?” She laughed. “You’re a twisted little man, aren’t you?”
“Oh, you have no idea.” I was smiling as her mouth closed on mine, but not because I had a princess in my arms. Another girl was dead, and that was nothing to smile about . . . but perhaps I’d been right after all. Perhaps the man in the mask wasn’t a product of my imagination.
And perhaps I had not been so wrong to suspect Cesare Borgia.
Giulia
T
here’s no sight like a girl being alluring with all her heart. The flutter of the lashes, the delicate blush of the cheeks, the rapid rise and fall of the bosom—it’s a performance in its own right, just as much an art as the singing of a motet or the execution of a complicated
basse
-
danse
. Having made quite a study of allurement myself, I enjoyed watching another woman do it well.
But not when the woman being alluring was seventeen-year-old Lucrezia Borgia, Countess of Pesaro, and when the object of her allurement wasn’t the Count of Pesaro, but my older brother Alessandro Farnese.
“You must be sure to sit beside me when the singers begin,” Lucrezia was saying, having worked her soft little hand into the crook of Sandro’s elbow as they stood by a blaze of rosebushes in the Vatican gardens. “These musical afternoons are always so dull, Cardinal Farnese. Giulia!” she cried, catching sight of me. “I’d forgotten your brother could be so amusing!”
“Yes, he’s quite the jester.” I crossed the stretch of grass to join them, Leonello trailing behind me as usual. “Sandro, don’t tell me the Holy Father released you already?”
“He’s released a few of us. I believe Cardinal Zeno and one or two others were detained for some additional shouting.”
Whenever my Pope hosted one of these musical afternoons to follow a consistory or a more informal meeting of his cardinals, it was a sure sign there was shouting to be done beforehand. If the order of the day was merely business as usual, Rodrigo would harangue his cardinals and hand out orders to his archbishops, and may the Holy Virgin have mercy on them if they didn’t get immediately to work. But if my Pope had a difficult measure to force down unwilling throats, he was sure to detain his churchmen after the day’s business in the gardens of the Vatican. A dozen furious-faced cardinals and bishops would come stamping down among the grass and the rosebushes, muttering of my Pope’s high-handedness, but before they had the opportunity to stew in their own resentment, they would be met by refreshments and wine. Not to mention a dozen women headed by Lucrezia and myself, all of us ordered to laugh and to charm until the storms passed and all those cross old cardinals and bishops went home mellow with wine and music.
“So why didn’t the Holy Father keep you behind for a little shouting, Sandro?” I took my brother’s other arm. “He should shout at you—you’re the most useless fellow in the whole College!”
“True.” Sandro doffed his scarlet cardinal’s hat modestly. “But I’m the most entertaining. Just this afternoon I made everyone’s sides ache when I trotted out that old joke about the friar and the trout. Well, Cardinal Carafa didn’t laugh. But I did say the trout looked like him . . .”
I smiled at my brother: six years older than I, slender and dark-haired with a smile of demure wickedness like a fallen angel and his cardinal’s cap forever sitting at a rakish angle. I had another brother in my hometown of Capodimonte, and a sister married in Florence as well, but Sandro and I had always been each other’s favorites. We had the same dark eyes and the same sense of fun that danced behind them, and both were traits the rest of
la famiglia Farnese
sorely lacked.
“Not only amusing, but handsome as well!” Lucrezia certainly seemed to be admiring my brother’s eyes, and her lashes had a quick flutter for the rest of him, too. “Surely the handsomest man in the College! Except for my brother Cesare, of course. A girl must always support her big brother first—Giulia will understand that. Goodness, but it’s hot!”
The Pope’s daughter fluttered her fingers at the base of her throat, a gesture copied from Sancha to draw attention to her breasts, which had been powdered and trussed and laced into the lowest-cut gown I’d ever seen her wear. Orange-red brocade embroidered within an inch of its life, too ornate for a simple summer entertainment, but Lucrezia had been piling it on in these past months: wider skirts, lower necklines, more paint, more embroidery, more jewels; anything to make a splash. I couldn’t help looking at her thoughtfully as she chattered at my brother again.
“—we’ll be hearing more of those dull motets, I suppose. Ugh, but I don’t care if I never hear Josquin again. There’s something new, though; one of the court musicians set the Avernus sonnets to music.” Another sweep of lashes. Someone really should tell her not to overdo the lashes. “Surely you’ve read Avernus’s sonnets to his Aurora? I favor Sonnet II, but Giulia prefers Sonnet VI. Just because it has Aurora as Europa, borne off by Jupiter as a bull—”
“You know my fondness for bulls,” I said lightly, and Sandro gave a brief scowl. He’d never entirely reconciled himself to my status as the Pope’s mistress. It’s not precisely what most men want for their favorite sisters, is it?
My little sister, the Pope’s mistress.
Lucrezia was still chattering on about poetry, which had the usual effect of making Leonello, at my back, put his thumbs in his ears, when an undulation of purple satin swished up. “My dear Lucrezia,” Sancha of Aragon purred, looking at Sandro through half-closed lids. “And Cardinal Farnese, of course. You look nothing like your sister, do you know that? Fortunately. Golden hair is all very well, but I do prefer dark suitors.” She reached up to twine a strand of his hair about her finger, and Sandro looked faintly startled . “Lucrezia, I won’t allow you to keep this luscious fellow all to yourself!” Sancha went on. “Cardinal Farnese, perhaps you will take a turn about the gardens with me?”
“I fear I must steal him,” I said firmly, and led my brother away. “Sandro, come see these roses over here, don’t they look just like those little yellow ramblers our mother used to grow in Capodimonte . . . ?”
As soon as I had my brother out of earshot, I plucked one of those little yellow roses off its bush and pointed it at him thorns first. “The Tart of Aragon is fair game, Sandro, but
don’t
flirt with Lucrezia. I know you’ve never been happy with the idea of the Holy Father and me, but don’t think to even the score by seducing his daughter!”
“What do you take me for,
sorellina
?” Sandro gave a great show of mock outrage. “Besides, please note who was flirting with whom.” He peered over my shoulder at Sancha and Lucrezia, giggling softly with their heads together. My brother had been away these past months, on business for the College of Cardinals, and as usual he had managed to find time to dally in the country with his little mistress. He hadn’t seen much of either Lucrezia or the Tart of Aragon this summer, not the way I had. “Are they always like that?”
“Sancha’s always been a cat in heat.” I plucked another pair of roses, making a little nosegay. “I do wish Lucrezia wouldn’t imitate her so much.”
“Better than having them at each other’s throats, surely.” Sandro tugged me companionably against his side, leading me through the clipped hedges away from the crowd gathering rapidly round Lucrezia and Sancha like bees round their queens. “You thought the fur was going to fly when they first clapped eyes on each other!”
There had been a certain period of scrutiny between the Pope’s daughter and daughter-in-law when they first met this spring. A certain covert amount of measuring dark hair against blond, a fuller bosom against a slimmer waist, a collection of Roman gowns against a chest full of Neapolitan dresses. Now they had nothing but giggles and gossip for each other, and that disquieted me sometimes as I saw Lucrezia drinking every salacious whisper from her new sister-in-law.
“I heard Cardinal Michiel say it’s all to be expected, Sancha acting like a tart, because she’s bastard-born!” I gave an indignant sniff of my sweet-scented little roses, watching Sancha wind her arm through a young bishop’s. “‘Born in lust means lust in the blood’—have you ever heard such rubbish? Lucrezia’s bastard-born too, and she’s always been such a sweet little thing.” At least, she
had
been. “And if anyone ever said my Laura had lust in the blood—”
“Or my Costanza!” Sandro clapped an outraged hand to the place he would have been wearing a sword if he’d been a
condottiere
rather than a cardinal, with a flourish because even when he was being outraged he had more flourishes in him than a pantomime actor. Really, he should have been a pantomime actor rather than a cardinal. “Did you know Costanza’s learning to move about already? Not crawling, exactly; more like rotating herself across the floor like a little rolling pin—”
I listened for a while to my brother’s recitations of Costanza’s latest achievements—his first child from his much-adored mistress, so naturally she was perfection embodied. She really was a little dear, if not quite the miracle that was my Laura, but proud fathers must be allowed to gush. I did wish sometimes that Rodrigo would gush a little more about Laura . . .
My Pope made his appearance then, followed by a flock of bad-tempered cardinals. They must be fuming over the notion of Juan leading the papal armies as Gonfalonier, not that I blamed them. Cardinal Zeno stamped off without even the pretense of a courteous exit, and Ascanio Sforza would have too if I had not accosted him. “Cardinal Sforza, I will need you desperately once the music begins, for it’s all in French and you know how wretched my French is. Perhaps you will translate for me?” I smiled and charmed until he thawed, and then I nodded sympathetically as he muttered veiled complaints about these consistories where one’s opinions weren’t even consulted, and had anyone listened to his proposal that one of the Sforza clan be considered as Gonfalonier? Perhaps even the absent Count of Pesaro; he was the Pope’s son-in-law, after all, yet had anyone even
pretended
to consider his name when Cardinal Sforza suggested it?
“The Holy Father hears all suggestions,” I soothed, and made my usual discreet promise that I would carry Cardinal Sforza’s concerns directly to the papal ear when it was next close to mine. He bustled off looking mollified. This was my own part of Rodrigo’s seemingly idle social gatherings: to listen, to promise, and to decant all for my Pope’s dissection later. In truth, I had no idea why anyone tried to bribe or wheedle me into using my influence with Rodrigo, because he kept his own counsel when it came to the business of Christendom. He was not a man to be swayed just because a soft voice whispered in his ear across a pillow, nor did I believe it my place to sway him. God’s chosen Vicar on earth had far more exalted sources than me to consult for advice—namely, God Himself. No one had elected
me
Pope, after all, so I kept well out of papal business, merely giving Rodrigo a dutiful recitation of what others so hopefully whispered into my ear. He drank it all in, chuckling at their efforts to recruit me.
By the time the music began, I’d soothed another pair of cardinals and smiled at the Neapolitan ambassador’s attempt to find out if Gonsalvo de Cordoba, or any of the other Spanish generals, or possibly a mule, would be aiding Juan in leading the papal armies. A little array of choir boys were paraded out into the gardens, looking unnaturally solemn, and the cardinals and the ladies took their places on padded stools as the first pure treble launched the melody. Normally I’d sit at my Pope’s side, but he was weaving some scheme with a pair of sour-looking ambassadors from Queen Isabella of Castile. Lucrezia had abandoned flirting with my brother and was now eyeing one of her father’s papal envoys.
Impulsively, I caught at her brocade sleeve. “Come sit with me, Lucrezia.”
“I can’t,” she said flippantly. “Our dresses will clash.” She twitched her bright scarlet skirts against my ice-blue gauze. “These pale colors of yours—I’m determined to set the style for something bolder. You’d better look to your laurels if you want to keep leading the fashions in Rome, Giulia! You know, Sancha told me her robe makers had a dozen orders for caps with peacock plumes the instant I was seen wearing one to Mass? And Perotto over there—Father’s new envoy, you know the one? Pedro Calderon, but everyone calls him Perotto—says I’m an absolute
vision
in bright red like this!”