Blood & Beauty The Borgias

Chapter 39



In France, Cesare’s courtship of Naples has only just begun.

Princess Carlotta of Aragon is a particular young woman. Born on the right side of the blanket to a strict father, there had been no running wild in the palace kitchens for her. She laughs less than her tearaway cousins, and when she does she cups a hand in front of her face, a coquettish gesture in some, but in her case more to hide her teeth, a set of crooked tombstones fighting with each other to fit into her mouth. Of course Cesare is courting royalty, not beauty, but one cannot help noticing such things. She is tall, head and shoulders above the Queen’s other ladies-in-waiting, and her face is long and rather flat. Though not as flat as her chest. All this he has taken in across crowded court gatherings. Now, face to face for the first time, his overriding impression is of a piece of dough that has been rolled too thin. The French word ‘crêpe’ comes to his mind. Duke Valentino and his pancake princess. He smiles to himself. Ah, the price a man pays for family.

‘Princess. I have ridden day and night, crossed rough water and stony ground, spurred on by the promise of our meeting. But seeing you now in front of me, I would do it all again for the pleasure of this moment.’

There is a grain of truth in his pomposity. It has not been an easy journey. The sea crossing from Ostia was bilious and an early winter had soaked and then frozen the French roads. Disembarking at Marseilles, they were met by the King’s agent with warm words of welcome and a demand for the letter of annulment so it could be sped to Paris, where the King was waiting impatiently to divorce his wife. Except Cesare doesn’t have it. Alexander, a stickler for canon law when it is to his advantage, had calculated that a delay in this trump card might concentrate the King’s mind on his side of the bargain: the softening up of the princess for the attentions of his son. It is a rare miscalculation on the Pope’s part. By the time their next letters cross, the document is already halfway across the Alps.

In the papal state of Avignon, the city comes out in celebration. It is a party to rival any that the Borgias used to throw. Waiting to greet him at the steps of the old papal palace stands their oldest and greatest enemy, cardinal and now papal legate of France, Giuliano della Rovere.

‘Valencia and the Sacred College have lost a fine cardinal but gained a finer warrior,’ he booms, arranging the features of his hatchet face into a smile.

The last time Cesare had been in della Rovere’s company was at the banquet in the town of Veltri, the night he slipped his hostage reins. They had hated each other then and the years in between have done nothing to improve matters. But both of them know that if della Rovere has any hope of becoming a player in time for the next papal conclave he cannot afford to sulk any longer in voluntary exile. His first overture, a letter of condolence after Juan’s death, had been well received. Now he offers something solid: as a friend of the French Crown, he will use all his influence on behalf of the Pope’s son. With both sides watching their backs, it may work for a while. Cesare’s return smile is prettier but equally insincere.

‘You do our Holy Mother Church proud, cardinal. Avignon shines under your government.’

‘It was once the seat of popes.’ The irony of his rejoinder is lost on neither of them. ‘One has a duty to the past.’

‘And to the future.’

Though the cardinal has aged in exile, he remains an imposing figure. If one did not know better, one might think they were father and son. Certainly they have the same appetite for life and the same ruthless desire to drink it dry. They share something else as well.

Gaspare Torella notices it straight away: the telltale purple buds decorating their faces and hands, disappearing up inside the folds of their clothes. The doctor in him is already measuring out the mercury, the priest is more resigned: Lord, how these Roman cardinals do love their ladies.

As they set off for the King, they are besieged everywhere they go, people flooding in from the fields and villages, shouting, openly gawping at the spectacle the duke’s entourage presents. Nobles bejewelled like kings, pages dressed like nobles, horses so decorated in precious metals that it’s a wonder they don’t shit gold. France has never seen anything like it and people don’t know whether to cheer or jeer. What passes for sophistication in Rome evidently conveys a different message outside it. In the cities, the more educated can barely conceal their ridicule. Mon Dieu! How can any man carrying a French title exhibit this level of crassness and vulgarity? If Italy breeds such parvenus then it is no surprise that she is fresh meat to foreign conquerors.

Cesare realises fast enough how badly he has misjudged the situation. But what is to be done? He can hardly strip the gold leaf off his horse’s saddle, or send back all the clothes and the jewels. That would have them laughing behind their hands ever louder. In such an atmosphere, his charm becomes unctuous rather than winning, and by mid-December, when he reaches King Louis’s court, he is a sullen, angry man.

He decides to brave it out, marching into the city of Chinon, where the King is holding temporary court, in full splendour. Louis watches the performance from a tower inside the city walls. ‘My, my,’ he is heard to remark when the city gates finally close behind them, ‘… altogether too much, one thinks, for a little Duke of Valentinois.’

When the gossip reaches the Pope’s ears back in Rome his much-vaunted tolerance dissolves into rage. ‘What makes the French so superior, when everyone knows it was their troops that soiled Rome’s sheets because they don’t wipe their arses properly?’ he yells. ‘How dare such poxy men mock my son?’

The insults are about nationality as much as family; the Spanish and the French have long fought a war of manners, finding each other crude or affected by degrees. It touches Alexander more deeply than he might choose to admit, because underneath his pragmatism he is still a Spaniard at heart, and this new alliance with France is making him anxious in ways even he does not quite understand.

With the annulment of his marriage now in his hands, King Louis is instantly transformed into a more gracious host. The ‘little duke’ becomes the Pope’s beloved son and his dear cousin, a man to be royally entertained day and night. As to the business of Cesare’s courtship with Carlotta, well, there is no time for it just yet. As lady-in-waiting to Louis’s future queen, Carlotta is too busy preparing her mistress for the wedding.

‘Don’t worry, dear cousin. Let her feast her eyes on you for a while. That will get the juices going.’ And the King nudges him in the ribs. He has good reason to be so sunny. Anyone with the wit to understand politics can see he has scored a double victory: he now has the Pope’s son as semi-permanent guest, and a wife who carries part of a kingdom between her legs.

Cesare, who sees it too, takes his impatience out on the hunt. The royal forests are groaning with game and there is no one who can ride or throw a spear to match him. Smooth-skinned now, with his falcon on his arm alert to his every whisper, he knows that once again he is a man to be watched and admired. And when he has ridden and killed to his fill, there are court games to be played, with pretty ladies eager to partner him in the dance. By the time the princess is ready to meet him, he is the talk of the court. What a fortunate young woman she is.

‘I would do it all again for the pleasure of this moment. I look forward to a long and fruitful acquaintance between us,’ he says, slipping into intimate Spanish as his smile widens to greet her,

‘That is most kind of you to say, Duke Valentinois,’ she replies in formal French. ‘However, I did not ask you to make such a journey on my behalf.’ Her long thin face shines like a waning moon in the candlelight. ‘I know you to be a very busy man and I do not want to waste your time.’

‘Perhaps you should let me be the judge of that.’

Over her shoulder he sees the broad, intelligent face of Anne, Queen of Brittany, and now again Queen of France, watching him carefully. Who exactly am I wooing here? he thinks.

‘It seems she is in love with someone else.’

‘Who?’

‘Some Breton nobleman, kinsman to the Queen, I gather,’ the Pope murmurs, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

‘Oh, Papà. He is nobody compared to Cesare.’

‘Less than nobody. But the lady is unshakeable. I gather she is as forthright as she is plain.’

‘It could be that Queen Anne supports her in this. The princess is in her care and the man is a kinsman.’

‘Ha! Your brother is of the same opinion. In which case the King should tell his wife to keep her nose out of it. Alliances of state are men’s business.’

‘Nevertheless, Papà, women – plain or pretty – do have feelings,’ Lucrezia says gravely.

‘Indeed they do. Still, I did not come to burden you with such things. How are you?’

She is lying on a day bed in the receiving room of her palace, lovely though a little paler than usual. ‘Oh, you do not burden me. It is good to have something to take my mind off things. Anyway, I am better. Only a little sad now and then.’

‘Have you dismissed the maidservant yet?’

‘It was not her fault, Papà. I was the one who fell. I was just feeling so… so full of the joy of it.’

Happiness has its drawbacks. It had been one of those tender days towards the end of winter when the sky is a bolt of blue silk and no one can bear to be inside any more. On the spur of the moment she had arranged for herself and her ladies to ride into the country along the riverbank. After eating, they had been playing and she had started to run, because her energy had returned and she no longer felt sick, because the day was so beautiful, because she was eighteen and in love and going to have a child and wanted to celebrate all of it. Long skirts, muddy grass, tree roots. At any other time it would simply have been a tumble and the girl behind falling on top of her a cause for breathless laughter. At the moment it happened they had indeed laughed, but she had registered the flash of worry in the girl’s eyes and by the time they were on their way home there was a gnawing pain in her abdomen and everyone knew something was wrong.

It was too early to tell the sex. Too early to tell anything in the clump of black blood that she passed later in the night. Such things happen all the time, both the doctors and her women assured her. A clean expulsion. Nothing to prevent the next one. But she had been taken aback by the desolation that followed, and even Alfonso’s brightness could not bring back her laughter. Her father’s bear hug and the very smell of his love had brought more comfort, so that over the last weeks, when the worst of business is over, he has taken to visiting and sharing the gossip of politics with her.

‘What about King Federico in Naples?’ she asks. ‘What does he say about this other man?’

‘Nothing.’ The Pope scowls. His moods these last weeks have been much affected by the news from France. ‘He buries his head in the diplomatic sand and says nothing at all. The fact is he wants this marriage as little as she does, but he doesn’t want to say it out loud. Which makes him twice the fool.’

‘I am very sorry to hear it. You know Alfonso has written to him many times telling him what a fine man Cesare is and what a great match it would be.’

‘Hmm.’ He nods distractedly. While he enjoys his new son-in-law’s company head and shoulders above that of the idiot Sforza, not least because he has made his daughter so happy, the Duke of Bisceglie’s grasp of politics has proved disappointingly superficial.

‘Perhaps you should bring Cesare home and find him another wife,’ she says. ‘Cardinal Sforza has a number of suggestions for the right bride.’

‘I can imagine. You see more of my vice-chancellor than I do these days.’

It is true that, since Cesare’s departure, the Milanese faction have taken to using Lucrezia as a way of trying to get their voices heard by the Pope. Ascanio Sforza’s letters to his brother Ludovico talk of a sharp mind inside her studied graciousness.

‘He says nothing disloyal, Father. He is simply worried about the future of Milan.’

‘Then he should have thought about that five years ago when his brother invited in the French in the first place.’

The Sforzas are not the only ones complaining. Since Cesare’s departure Alexander’s audience chamber has become like a fish market with so many raised voices. The Spanish ambassador has gone so far as to accuse the Pope of compromising the independence of the Church with this reckless alliance. As the Pope roared his response, the ambassador exited so fast that he almost hit the hovering Burchard in the face. Tales of the row had been halfway round Rome the next day.

‘Papà?’

‘What?’

‘Are you all right? You look so angry.’

He smiles. ‘Yes, yes. Just thinking about business.’

‘Can I help?’

‘You do already, just by being here. I must go and you should rest.’

But at the door she calls him back.

‘If this courtship does not work, you will find him another fine wife, yes? I mean… whatever happens, Alfonso and Sancia will still be family, won’t they, Father?

‘You are not to worry about such things, Lucrezia,’ he says, because he does not want to think about it either. ‘Just get well and give me that grandchild.’