Sins of the House of Borgia (7 page)

“I know all I need to about the French disease,” she once snapped at Angela, when the rest of us put her up to mention it. “You of all people should know better.”

“Forgive me, madonna,” whispered Angela, and I felt for a moment as though I had thrown my friend to a pack of stag hounds.

We would troop across the garden to the bathhouse in nothing but our Neapolitan wraps, loose, diaphanous garments made fashionable by the Princess Sancia. Every time I put mine on I felt more naked than if I had been wearing nothing at all, and I could see the look of disapproval on Mariam’s face as clearly as though she were watching me from behind the fig tree which shaded the garden door and dropped sticky fruit in splashes of pink on the path. Sometimes I had a fleeting sense of other eyes upon us, of looks that made me blush and feel cold all at once, and tied knots in my stomach.

The bathhouse was fashionably disguised to look like a ruined temple, with broken marble columns and statues of plump Venuses whose noses had been deliberately knocked off, but inside it was absolutely modern. A hypocaust running under the floor kept the water warm in the deep marble tub where we lounged on steps covered by towels. Catherinella and another black slave kept a second, smaller chamber filled with fragrant steam by pouring buckets of water onto a bed of hot charcoal mixed with sandalwood and lavender. Screened from the palace by a trellis of hibiscus, emboldened by the veil of steam, we giggled and gossiped and exchanged confidences.

In this perfumed confessional one might admit that her belly was too prominent or her breasts too flat, while others debated the difficulty of persuading a lover to use his tongue where he would prefer to insert another part. I used to sit close to Angela, who would whisper explanations.

“You can’t get pregnant from a man’s tongue, nor can it pierce the hymen. And besides, it gives much greater pleasure.”

This was not, perhaps, the carnal education my mother would have planned for me, but my mother was long dead and I had grown up in a household of men with only the taciturn Mariam for female companionship, and the uninformed speculations of the girls at Santa Clara. It shames me now to say I felt no shame then, only a hungry curiosity that seemed to lodge as much in my growing breasts and the untouchable place between my legs as in my mind. This was something my new, dear friend seemed to understand, as she drew me through the steam to her own voluptuous, golden-skinned body, stroking my arm or my thigh.

A small mirror hung on the wall of our chamber, an oblong in a plain silver frame just large enough to show us our faces. Angela would command me to take this down from time to time and hold it at the right height for her to trim her private hair with a nail parer. There she would stand, brazen in her nakedness, her skin glowing in the light of a brazier now the weather was growing colder, telling me to move the mirror a little to the right, or up a bit, or could I prop it up on the commode and hold the candle higher so she could see better. For a time, I performed this duty without query, too proud to admit that, to me, it seemed strange and indecent. If Donna Lucrezia’s cousin thought nothing of it, then this was obviously what ladies of fashion did and I would not humiliate myself by revealing my ignorance.

Then, one evening when she had plucked out a stray hair with her tweezers and drawn blood from her groin, and we were already late to help Donna Lucrezia dress for a reception in the Vatican, I asked, “Why do you do this?”

“For my sins?” she retorted with a quick laugh, then became almost serious, except for the telltale dimples in her cheeks, impressions left by her smile the way a head leaves its indent in a pillow. “Ippolito likes it.”

“Ippolito?
Cardinal
Ippolito? You mean you’re...?” She had spent some nights away from her own bed recently, but had told me she was attending Donna Lucrezia, who was unwell. Donna Lucrezia was often unwell, so I had thought nothing of it.

“You did me a favour, getting sick like that.”

“And you let him..? I mean, you’re not married.”

“He is very skilled.” She ran her hands over her unfashionably full breasts, down her flanks, and over the rise of her belly. “Very skilled,” she repeated. “And once his pious father dies, which can’t be long—he’s as old as Methuselah—cousin Lucrezia can find me a compliant husband, just like those men her mother has been married to. Most men are content to be cuckolded for a decent price. I swear old Della Croce used to count it an honour to have his wife poked by Uncle Rodrigo.”

I marvelled. From the moment Angela’s eyes met those of the cardinal over my prostrate form, it seemed, she had begun planning a future for herself.

“Don’t say anything,” said Angela. “Not before we get our feet under the table in Ferrara.”

“I won’t. But Angela?”

“What?”

“Think of Monna Vannozza.”

“I am. Four children with Uncle Rodrigo and she still enjoys his protection, even though she’s old and ugly now. She’s set up for life.”

“But Lucrezia loathes her, Juan’s dead, and Jofre…”

“Cesare adores her. That has to count for something.”

I wondered what that something might be, though felt it safer to say nothing, even to Angela. Though she was my friend, she was Cesare’s blood.

“Oh, don’t look so po-faced,” Angela went on. “If you purse your lips that way you’ll get wrinkles. You don’t want to end up with a mouth like a dog’s bum like cousin Geronima.”

The image banished my pain and sent me into fits of giggles. Angela started to laugh too, bent double so the little pearl of blood at the edge of her garden smeared her belly.

“Let me clean that,” I gasped, trying to recover myself, “or would your lover like you better for torturing yourself to please him?” I sat up, spat on my kerchief, and leaned towards Angela, but before I could attend to her wound, she gathered me up in her arms and kissed me full on the mouth, the tip of her tongue flickering over my lips.

“You need a lover of your own,” she told me, stepping back, putting her finger to my closed mouth.

“I shall be lucky even to get a husband if we don’t make haste to wait on madonna,” I said, hoping she would not detect the tremor in my voice.

“Come on, then, help me dress,” and she began to whirl about the small room, picking up shift and hose in time to wild dance steps, her small, brown feet stamping down the rug beside the bed and the sprigs of dried rosemary which had fallen from among our bedding. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. I would have died for her then.

C
HAPTER 3

R
OME,
O
CTOBER 1501

I can feel your body as truly as if we were still dancing for Papa, when your waist was tiny and my bones did not ache as they do today in the mountain wind. Listen to me. I sound like an old man getting sentimental over his first sweetheart—which you were, of course, and are.

We lay side by side on Angela’s bed, pressed together for warmth. It was the end of October and, while sunlight rarely found its way into our room, which faced on to an inner courtyard at the old heart of the palace, the autumn winds off the marshes surrounding the city seemed to poke their fingers everywhere. Angela lay on her back, her face smeared with a foul smelling paste of pigeons’ blood and fresh cheese ground with peach stones and pebbles steeped in milk which she swore kept her skin fair. I lay with my head beside her feet and my own feet propped on her pillows in an attempt to reduce the swelling in my ankles brought on by too much dancing in unsuitable shoes the night before.

As the date of our departure drew closer, the celebrations for Donna Lucrezia’s marriage grew more hectic. Every day there were spectacles in the city’s squares, races, tableaux, performances by troupes of clowns and actors, and poets declaiming the virtues of Donna Lucrezia and Don Alfonso and their houses. Remorseless cannonades from the Castel Sant’Angelo shook the air. The Holy Father, who loved to sail, could not be deterred from a river excursion to Ostia, despite warnings from his astrologer and Duke Valentino’s plain observation that it was pouring with rain and looked set to do so all day. Of the musicians who accompanied us, two singers caught chills and had to be replaced and a mandolin player slipped on the wet deck of the papal barge, fell overboard, and drowned. Baby Rodrigo was sick and madonna was beside herself in case he had caught a chill too.

Every evening, after long and elaborate dinners punctuated by theatrical or musical interludes, his indefatigable Beatitude would command the ladies to dance, so dance we did, until our feet were bleeding and the musicians’ heads nodded over their instruments. Then he would order us all outside to watch firework displays from the Belvedere or the ramparts of Sant’Angelo before, with chattering teeth and blinded eyes, we were permitted to retire. I was thankful the pope’s eye never alighted upon me with anything more than his customary, general benevolence. How any of Donna Lucrezia’s ladies found the energy to resist, then graciously submit, to his advances, I cannot imagine. Perhaps it came from contemplating how well the Farnese family had done out of Giulia, or even Donna Lucrezia herself, the bastard daughter of a Spanish upstart and an innkeeper, about to marry into the House of Este.

Tonight, Duke Valentino was to throw a party for his sister in his private apartments. At least, Angela had remarked when the summons came, we were more likely to get a good meal. The duke, unlike his father, was famous for his appreciation of good food and wine. And we were honoured to have been asked; not all Donna Lucrezia’s ladies were to attend, as this would be an intimate function with only about fifty guests.

“How you can think of food with the stench of that paste in your nostrils I don’t know.” It was doubly offensive to me, the mixture of blood and cheese; my senses were proving slow students of Christianity.

“Don’t be so serious, Donata. And don’t make me talk any more; it’s all cracking round my mouth.” We lay for a while in silence, nothing but the soft hiss of tallow from our candles and, once, a crash followed by raised voices from across the courtyard in the direction of the palace kitchens. Then Angela suddenly said, “Donata. It’s such a pompous name, so...pious. You need a nickname.”

“And Angela isn’t? Pious, I mean.”

“Not at all. Angels simply are; gifts must be given and received and thanks made and all that. It’s too complicated. Besides, Lucifer was an angel. Angels have some side to them.”

“So what are you going to call me? Lucifer?”

“I don’t know. It will come to me. Now, help me wash this off. We had better not be late for cousin Cesare. I’m dying to see what La Fiammetta is wearing.”

I tried to focus my mind on the notorious Fiammetta, the flame-haired Florentine courtesan who was the duke’s current mistress, as I helped Angela wipe the beauty treatment from her face. Yet I found myself wondering what our rabbi would think if he could see me now, irredeemably unclean of body and mind. Then realised I didn’t care; outcast I might be, but with Angela’s newly clean skin beneath my fingers, I felt a sense of belonging I believed I had left behind in Toledo.

***

I should have known; I should have realised what the duke must think of me, that his invitation was not a compliment, nor even an insult. He had simply selected those he thought suitable to participate in the entertainment he had in mind, and of course, given the circumstances of our first encounter, he would think me suitable.

Insofar as he lived anywhere, the duke lived, not in his palace of San Clemente in the old Borgo which, for as long as I knew it, was in a continuous state of reconstruction, but in a suite of rooms directly above his father’s in the Vatican. These rooms had once belonged to Prince Djem and, despite the Holy Father’s ironic gift to Elisabetta Senese, retained much of the oriental opulence with which the prince of the Turks had surrounded himself. We dined at low tables, reclining on cushions like the ancients. Candles scented with vanilla and sandalwood sparkled in ornate brass stands, and the drowsy, sensual air was trapped by heavy curtains in some dark velvet.

Men and women dined together, young gentlemen of the duke’s household, some of whom I recognised, a handful of the younger cardinals, solid blocks of scarlet among the shifting, shimmering silks and brocades of the ladies, a great many of whom, though they seemed perfectly at home here, I had never seen before. Donna Lucrezia lounged beside her father who, in consideration of his age and exalted status, sat in an ornately carved chair with one foot resting on a cushion and the other, in which he had the gout, propped on the shoulder of a small black boy who knelt before him.

But the duke himself was nowhere to be seen. All through dinner he failed to appear until, just as the servants were clearing the fruit course and the musicians were shuffling the music on their stands to find the dances, the great double doors to the room swung open and he entered, preceded by two men in his red and gold livery, a tall, red-haired woman on his arm whom I took to be La Fiammetta. Beside her, the duke, clad as always in plain black and wearing very little jewellery, seemed almost to disappear among the shadows beyond the light of the scented candles. She was magnificent, with creamy skin and an erect bearing that made me think of the classical marble statues decorating the new facades of the great palaces such as our own Santa Maria. Except for the depth of her décolleté and the boldness of her makeup, you might easily mistake her for a great lady rather than a courtesan. She was, apparently, a skilled musician and could recite most of Ovid from memory, though some said that was because she put so many of the recommendations of the
Ars Amatoria
into practice with her lovers.

We rose and bowed, a somewhat ragged obeisance as those who had already drunk more wine than was good for them stumbled over cushions. La Fiammetta knelt to His Holiness and kissed his ring, and bowed over Donna Lucrezia’s hand, but surveyed the rest of us with imperious disdain. Duke Valentino’s wife and daughter remained at the French court, hostages, some said, for her husband’s good behaviour. La Fiammetta was queen of Rome. The duke handed her into a cushioned space beside Donna Lucrezia; Donna Lucrezia moved readily enough to make room for her, but the air between them seemed jagged and frosty, as though the light and warmth of the perfumed candles could not penetrate there. Clearly they were not friends.

The duke himself went to stand behind his father’s chair and was soon deep in discussion with the Holy Father, their heads bent together, the duke’s arm stretched along the back of his father’s chair while His Holiness’ pet monkey raced up and down it as far as its gold chain would extend. The girl who had somehow insinuated herself into the blessed lap was swatted away like a tiresome insect when she tried to nibble the pope’s ear. Then, with a sudden, loud laugh, the duke knocked the monkey aside, straightened up and, business at an end, began to survey the room as he planned his assault upon his guests. I realised, with a sensation of trapped birds struggling behind my ribs, that his face was set in my direction.

Perhaps he wished only to greet his cousin, who was sitting beside me. But no. He had crossed the room in a few long, light-footed strides, and his body now inclined towards me in a shallow bow. I struggled to my feet and managed a tolerable curtsey despite being entangled in cushions and Angela’s skirts. I bit my lip as my shin struck the low table edge.

“Well, Signorina Donata, you are steadier on your feet than the last time I saw you.”

I felt the flush bloom on my cheeks as though my head had been thrust into a pan of boiling water. Cardinal Ippolito, seated at Angela’s other side, sniggered. I could think of nothing to say, but I had to say something or the duke would think me rude.

“It had been a very emotional day for me, your grace. I regret my…lack of control.”

“Holy Mother Church can have that effect on some people,” he replied, with a savage disdain that made me forget myself and glance up at his face.

I had never seen the duke unmasked before. Angela said he kept his face covered because it was marred by the scars of the French disease and he was absurdly vain. I could not have told you if this was the case or not, could not have told you what he looked like, except that he seemed younger than I had expected. And that I knew, in less than the space of a breath, his face was the prism through which I would see the whole world from now on, the yardstick by which I would measure the beauty of every face. And that he understood my feelings, and that for this moment, if for no other, his beauty was a gift reserved only for me.

Don Cesare took my hand in his and brushed my palm with his lips. He was not wearing gloves and I noticed he had a powder burn on the back of his right hand, a smudged grey tattoo just behind the middle knuckle. Of all the memories of him I carry in my heart, this is one of the tenderest. It showed me he was a man, who could be damaged. Who could be loved.

“Will you dance with me, Donata?”

“If my lady permits it, your grace.”

“Oh, she will permit it. And she will permit you to call me Cesare.”

I was aware of Angela looking at me, her expression blended of amusement, curiosity, and a trace of anxiety. My eyes were drawn to her, but they were held by Cesare as firmly as he now held my hand, with a slight, delicious crush.

Emboldened, I said, “If you wish me to dance, sir…Cesare, you must let me go. I fear the table stands between me and the dance floor.”

“Step up. It’s surely not too high for you.” He smiled, a boy’s smile, showing very white teeth. “Or are you less good at physical gymnastics than spiritual ones?”

Uncertain what he was talking about, I said, “The reverse, I think,” and stepped up on to the table in response to his light tug on my arm. A shout of laughter and a burst of applause came from the direction of the pope’s chair as Cesare placed his hands either side of my waist and lifted me down. A bowl of marzipan roses crashed to the floor, dislodged by the hem of my skirt. Various dogs crept out from beneath the tables and snaffled the sweets, among them the same old blind hound I recognised from my last, humiliating encounter with its master, its scrawny neck now weighed down by a gem-encrusted collar. For a moment, Cesare paused, watching the dogs, then hailed one of the slaves and gave him some instructions I did not hear because just then, seeing the duke step out on to the floor, the musicians struck up a pavane. The French dances were all the fashion since the duke had taken a French wife.

Couples formed behind us as we led the dance. The pavane, my dancing master taught me, should be performed with a stately grace, the couples always two arms’ lengths apart and no more than palms touching. Clearly, Cesare and I had not shared the same dancing master; the pavane as he performed it had grace, certainly, but little in the way of stateliness. When I offered my palm, he interlaced my fingers with his own; when I attempted to walk through a turn, he seized me by my waist, whispering to me how he marvelled at its smallness, and whirled me around, holding me so close I could smell wine and cloves on his breath and feel his heartbeat, the flex of the muscles in his thighs, his arousal which thrilled me then made me feel ashamed of myself. All the time we danced his dark gaze held mine, and though I could not mistake the desire in his eyes, I was unnerved by a sense that this was just what he wanted me to see, that he could control those vital spirits that originate in the heart and show themselves in the eyes with the same easy competence that made him disdain the proper rules of the dance.

“You perform the pavane
most…originally, my lord,” I said, trying to restore our communion to a proper level of decency.

“You have a quarrel with my style?” He paused for the space of a heartbeat, his brows arched in surprise. No one else could possibly have noticed, so quickly did he rediscover his rhythm.

“If we do not dance according to the rules, surely we disrespect the music, and music is the voice given us by the Almighty with which to worship Him, is it not? Ficino says…”