Blood & Beauty The Borgias

Chapter 31



It might have been easier if Cesare had killed his brother. Then he would have had some plan ready in the wake of the chaos that now surrounds them. As it is, he must make it up as he goes along.

Fate. For him it has always been a more compelling deity than God. When did his allegiance to one overtake the other? If asked, he would probably not be able to remember. Even as a child the passivity of prayer – the humility of the asking and accepting – had felt not so much unhelpful as unnatural, and with adulthood, privately it had fallen easily into disuse. While others gained comfort and guidance by appealing to a force outside themselves, Cesare found everything he needed inside himself, and the shift from thinking to action came so naturally that it fast became who he was: in argument he would use his wits, with women his charm, and in the hunt or the bullring physical agility and strength. What the world sees as confidence, bravery, even arrogance, is, for him, simply being Cesare. God has nothing to do with it.

Given the whirlwind of gossip, it is inevitable that some will ask the same question that he has just put before his father. Did he kill his brother because he stood in his way? Except Cesare knows it is the wrong question. The more accurate one would be, why did he not do anything to stop it?

Over the eleven months since Juan had set foot in back in Rome it had become clear that he would almost certainly kill himself. His dalliances, his violence, his military incompetence were all bound to incite revenge, while his vanity and Alexander’s fawning love had made them both blind to the increasing danger he was in. Why else would Juan have allowed himself to become the willing servant of a masked man? To go with him after dark into Rome’s murky streets with only a single groom for protection? That night by the bridge, as the dinner-party guests had parted company, Cesare had come the closest he could to protecting him when he had offered Michelotto as a bodyguard. But Juan, eager to be seen as wilder and braver than his brother, of course had refused.

To be given so much, only to throw it away. No wonder Fate had turned against him. When the news came through of his horse found with one slashed stirrup it had been anger not grief that Cesare had felt: anger at the stupidity of such a degrading end. As Alexander lay battered by the winds of grief, leaving Cesare to police the city and try to fashion some tactics to go with this new reality, his fury had grown. How dare his brother have so unmanned his father, have brought such humiliation on the family?

By the time Cesare walked into the Pope’s bedroom that morning he had forged a strategy of sorts. He must somehow coax his father back from the quicksands of grief, for nothing can be done without his energy and consent. In time the crime will be avenged, but the first priority must be to address the damage.

With Juan’s death, so die the family’s dynastic and territorial ambitions in Spain. If they are to survive, they must now find a similar foothold in mainland Italy. If Cesare had an army at his back, the papal states would be where he would go. He has studied each and every one of them and most are ripe for the picking, cities ruled by petty tyrants with no allies of any size to protect them. If Juan had been a better commander or been more careful with his wooing. If… well, there is no use in ifs now. They must work with what they have. And what they have is a stake in Naples: a state reeling from invasion and once again dependent on papal support to crown its new king, Federico. Jofré’s marriage has already bought titles and lands there. The faster Lucrezia’s ties with the Sforzas are severed the faster she too can be woven into the dynastic web. In a perfect world he would go one step further. Federico has a daughter, Carlotta, of marriageable age. If she were to become Cesare’s wife, Naples would be closer for the taking. Except, of course, cardinals cannot marry.

One enemy at a time. As for the rest – he will wait for Fortune, which has taken such cruel revenge, to turn her smiling face towards them again. And when she does, he will be ready.

Naples: closer to Rome than many of the great cities of northern Italy, yet more foreign than any of them. Wars of invasion and centuries of sea and sun have turned its dark-skinned population even darker, so that when courtiers take to the streets with their artificially whitened faces, they look bloodless against those they rule over. Inland from the glistening bay, the city is cramped and labyrinthine: teeming alleys populated like anthills, longer streets with running loggias and deep cornices offering shade from the relentless sun. It is not enough. When summer bites, the heat grows so humid that it feels as if flesh is melting. Inside this cauldron, the city is pulled between piety and sin. As many convents as there are brothels, that is what they say about Naples. The balance may tip in favour of God, but with poverty rising like its own stench from the gutters, it is the discordant music of orgasm rather than the mellifluous singing of nuns that most travellers remember. No wonder the French could not resist it.

For the first few weeks, Cesare plays his part as a man of the cloth. The youngest ever papal legate to crown a king, he is regal in his ceremonial robes and cultivates a gravitas alongside his charm, so that even those who would prefer to mock him take him seriously. In the celebrations that precede and follow the coronation, he and the new King Federico, a man of sturdier backbone than his predecessor, spend long hours in conference, bemoaning the parlous state of Italy and laying plans to bind Naples and the papacy closer together, to withstand the appetites of Milan and Venice.

Outside the council chamber, a network of spies help him to build up a picture of a land as troubled as it is corrupt: large swathes of territory run by squabbling baronial families and beset by brigandry, making it so wild that civic government is well nigh impossible. In short, a state ripe for the taking, if one could find a way into the centre of power. By the end of the first week Cesare has secured a marriage proposal for his almost-divorced sister and prepared the ground for an even more audacious suggestion: that should a certain cardinal be able to revoke his clerical vows (with the support of the Pope nothing is impossible) he would be most interested in the hand of the King’s own lovely daughter, at present at the French court being groomed for whatever future her father’s diplomacy might bring her. The King listens and does not disagree. It would be politically impolite to do anything else.

With the diplomacy successfully concluded, Cesare slips off his cardinal’s robes and allows himself some pleasure. His prospective brother-in-law, Alfonso, a natural charmer, proves the most accommodating of guides. The pull of beauty amid languid heat does the rest. He moves between the attractions of the palace and the city. He falls in courtly love with a coquettish young duchess, showering her with attention and presents, until her virginity can barely stand the strain, then leavens the drawn-out challenges of courtship with the thrills of open lust.

The only difficult moment comes a few weeks before his departure, when he wakes to excruciating shooting pains in his legs and shoulders, so that he can hardly breathe or walk, and then his flawless skin breaks out in pustules. For a moment he feels panic. This is not the time for him to succumb to a plague, even one brought on by pleasure. Luckily, he has his own Spanish doctor in his entourage. Gaspare Torella is a medical scholar as well as a priest. He is also a man who makes it his business to study all new ailments, and there is none so new and challenging as the French disease.

‘You are not to worry, Your Lord Cardinal. There are things we can do to address it.’ He diligently notes down the symptoms (which now include a small canker on His Most Reverend Lord Cardinal’s penis) and recommends special unguents and a course of steam baths to open up the pores and led the morbid humours out.

In a few weeks the sores have started to close and a handsome young courtier returns, barely a trace of scarring to mark the adventure. As Cesare mounts his horse and leaves Naples, it feels as if Fate is once again with him. The doctor, riding behind, keeps his thoughts to himself.

Back in Rome, Alexander makes sure that the public welcome he offers his son is one of cool protocol, as befits a pious pope to an appointed papal legate. He even shows his distance by keeping him waiting for an hour.

It is a more pragmatic Alexander, however, who arranged the private meeting the night before, where, if he is to be honest, he found the fruits of Cesare’s diplomacy almost as rewarding as prayer.