Blood & Beauty The Borgias

Chapter 37



Alfonso of Aragon, newly created Duke of Bisceglie for the purpose of his marriage, arrives in Rome in the middle of July. He comes incognito to spend private time getting to know his wife-to-be: which means that everyone knows he is there, but they must pretend that he is not. The first day he spends at the Vatican. The next he visits his bride.

Sancia is beside herself with anticipation. The two women, along with Jofré and Cesare, gather together in the upper loggia as his entourage rides into the courtyard below. He barely has time to dismount before Sancia has broken ranks and is down the steps and flinging himself into his arms. He picks her up and whirls her around, so that Lucrezia, watching from above, can make out only flying silk and infectious laughter. She remembers the pomp and ceremony of her first husband’s arrival and the informality delights her. He deposits Sancia on the ground and puts an arm up in greeting, bowing low to the delegation above, before taking the stairs two at a time.

‘Lady Lucrezia.’ He drops to his knee and his head comes up with a smile so full of play that she cannot help but respond to it. His resemblance to his sister is remarkable: the same mane of black hair, the same intense blue eyes, bright as the Madonna’s dress, so piercing that it seems as if he is looking straight into you.

Oh, thank the heavens, he is as pretty as everyone says, she thinks, at the same time remonstrating with herself for such shallowness.

He puts his hand behind him to welcome Sancia, who has followed him up the stairs, before moving on to embrace his old, young playmate Jofré, who squeals his delight. And then at last there is Cesare.

‘Brother!’ They embrace warmly, shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest, so filled with energy that they seem as capable of play-fighting as greeting. Two more handsome young men it would be impossible to imagine. The last time Lucrezia watched Cesare grasp a man like this it was their own brother and the sight of it makes her heart leap. What a wonder it would be if he could indeed make the family complete again.

Unlike her gaudy first wedding, the ceremony is a quiet affair, with not an ambassador or diplomat in sight. Outside the Vatican, they grind their teeth and open their purses to anyone who can bring them the stories needed to keep their rulers happy. Never let it be said that the Borgias disappoint. The ceremony takes place in the private apartments, and as the guests process into the Room of Mysteries, a row breaks out between Sancia’s and Cesare’s entourage as to who holds precedence of entrance. It is the bad blood that has been waiting to flow for a long time. Moving swiftly from insult into blows, there is suddenly a free-for-all in the antechamber, with two bishops punched to the ground and the Pope himself trying to hold men apart, until they have to bring in guards to separate the fray. Like so many things in this papacy, the like of it has never been seen before and it makes for a glorious story.

There is more to come.

In August, five years after Alexander shamelessly bullied the College of Cardinals into accepting his son, he now bullies them again into letting him go.

The first task is to get enough of them in the room to make the vote worthwhile. In the fever cauldron of a Roman summer they have the perfect excuse to be absent, but Alexander has always shaken his fist at such weakness and he will not accept it now. ‘A matter touching the good of the Church and Christianity’ is how the meeting is trumpeted. One of them actually manages to die en route rather than attend, but finally an acceptable number drag themselves into the Consistory, leaving their consciences outside.

When the Cardinal of Valencia stands for the last time in front of them, he is surprisingly nervous. The papers he holds tremble slightly in his hand. There is a certain irony in the fact that some of what he says comes from his heart.

‘It is a difficult thing that I ask of you today, but I would have you bear in mind that not only is the honour of the Holy Mother Church at stake, but also my soul. I was taken into the Church young. It was not my choice. The vows I said at that time were from my mouth but not from my heart. Though I have tried hard to adapt myself to its demands I have never had a vocation for the religious life and I stand before you now, begging permission to give off my vows and, for the sake of the salvation of my soul, return to the lay estate.

‘Should my request be granted I intend to dedicate my life to the service of the Church by other means. My first act will be to travel to France to intercede with the King so that he should not bring an army into Italy, and in the future I will do everything in my power to protect papal interests.’

In the short silence that follows no thunderbolts crack through the roof, no demons rise out of the floor to hook their pitchforks into his dress. The cardinals vote (their mumbled yeses have never come so fast) to refer the matter to the Pope and an hour later Cesare leaves the Consistory a layman. He walks straight into a meeting with the French envoy, who has arrived that very morning carrying letters of patent to invest the now ex-Cardinal of Valencia with the title of Duke de Valentinois, along with forty thousand gold francs a year and the secret promise of troops – lance and cavalry – whenever and wherever he might need them.

So Valencia becomes Valentinois, the words so similar that they slide together on the Italian tongue. And thus Duke Valentino is born.

There is no time for celebration. Both King Louis and Cesare are men eager to get married. At the French court Carlotta is still holding out, but then she has yet to meet Duke Valentino. On the off-chance that his charisma may not be enough, he invests in a little luxury. Rome hasn’t witnessed such a Borgia shopping spree since his brother Juan set off for Spain. But for Cesare, the best of all is the parade sword he has made for himself. Meticulously engraved with the Borgia coat-of-arms and scenes from Roman history, it is imperial, in both design and intention. Julius Caesar’s exploits are everywhere. Caesar and Cesare. Not a letter to separate them. The River Rubicon that Caesar crossed from Gaul, against the will of the Roman Senate but to his own glory, still runs across the north-east of Italy, only now it is inside the papal states, where the right soldier might forge a new empire if he had the backing of the Pope and an army to go with it.

‘The die is cast.’ The inscription works for both men.

Cesare’s future is irresistible. How upsetting, then, when a week before he is due to leave he wakes with his legs in spasm and his skin erupting again. Not pustules this time, but blotches, like a rash of raspberry birthmarks all over his face. ‘Get me Torella!’

The doctor is out of bed and in attendance within minutes.

‘I thought you said it was over. That I was cured.’

Gaspare Torella, who has been busy with correspondence and notebooks on this very subject over this last year, shakes his head. ‘I had hoped so, my lord, but it is such a new disease, we have yet to understand its journey through the body. It first appeared in cities where the French army went, though some say the men who brought it had been in the service of Admiral Columbus in New Hispania. I have made a study of it and—’

‘Forget the history,’ he interrupts. ‘How do I get rid of it?’

‘It comes in phases. The first is the open sores and the second these… these flowery blotches. Steam baths and mercury have been shown to help. I have made up new herb compounds in differing strengths.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then we do not know exactly. For some it seems to go away entirely.’

‘Then I shall be one of those. You’d better bring me the unguents.’

‘It is not so bad, my lord,’ he says cheerfully. ‘At least there is no breaking of the skin.’

‘Not so bad! My legs scream as if they are on the rack and I am going to woo a wife. Would you sleep with this face?’

‘May I ask, is there anything further down?’

‘God’s blood, Torella, just get rid of it, will you?’

‘I shall do my best.’

‘How long?’

He hesitates. It is always hard, judging the gap between what he knows and what a patient wants to hear. ‘When do we leave for France, Your Lordship?’

‘The week after next.’

‘It cannot be postponed?’

‘Ha! Someone better get me a mask.’

He props the bone-handled mirror in front of the window. The black velvet covering his face is as soft as skin. His eyes, in contrast, are bright: young man’s eyes, blazing with life. The mask looks well on him, suggesting a certain insolence along with the mystery. When he wears it during Carnival he winds in women like a ball of wool. But it is not carnival season now.

He slips it off and looks back into the mirror. How do ugly men make their way through life? He thinks of Michelotto. When he walks down the street men take half a step back from him. But he, Cesare, wields a different power. His face has always been his first weapon. Look at me, it says. I am what you see: easy on the eye, strong to the taste, a man with substance, someone to admire, for how can beauty this natural lie? But now… What will they make of him now? Even if this is not a plague from God, everyone knows the soil these flowers grow from: those moist, corrupt places where careless appetite is king and honour has little to do with anything. A man with this face may not keep his promises. A man with this face is not the kind of husband that a good king would want for his child. A man with this face might not even like himself.

Well, it will not last for ever. The sea voyage will take the best part of two weeks and then there is the journey from Marseilles to meet the King. If that is not long enough he can always wear more jewels to dazzle their sight. He chooses not to think of Juan and the arrogance that goes along with such behaviour.

Back in his room, Gaspare Torella’s pen scratches rapidly across the page.

Second stage. Return of pain and rash of purple flowers.

Records are essential to the understanding of the body’s ills: what, when, for how long and the effects of what treatments. He is writing a treatise on this new plague and has been exchanging letters with doctors and scholars from Ferrara and Bologna, where the universities have the best medical men in Europe. This contagion has spread further and faster than any they have heard of before, bar the great plague itself. It appears to transmit through intercourse and its symptoms attack more men than women. Some say that the Jews brought it to Naples, others that it has travelled from the New World, others still that it comes direct from God as punishment for an age of fornication. Yet one scholar has discovered its symptoms in the works of Hippocrates, and another has recorded the disease in young virgins and old, sexless men. For many the answer is blood-letting or the use of hot irons applied to the back of the skull to release the build-up of bad humours. Torella himself thinks blood-letting is of little use and recommends mercury, but only in small quantities. Too much and the cure is worse than the disease. The fact is, no one knows. Some men die fast, the stages of agonies and eruptions coming within months of each other, followed by a kind of mania until their brains seem to boil and they lose their minds. Others hold it at bay for ever, or at least for as long as their records show.

It has been over a year since Cesare Borgia was first afflicted. Before the first attack, Torella had never known a young man so healthy or so strong. It was as if illness itself was afraid of him. With such a disposition, and good treatment, he might well die in his bed with his grandchildren around him. Or… well, that is not for him to say. While Torella is a scholar he is also a priest. In Dante’s inferno there are doctors herded in with the soothsayers, their heads twisted on their bodies so they walk into eternity backwards, their bitter tears falling into the clefts in their buttocks. No one predicts God’s future but God.

He puts his books aside to prepare more salves for the journey.