Blood & Beauty The Borgias

Chapter 41



July, and the French army is on the move. Cesare leaves his new bride in tears as he takes command of his squadron of cavalry. The King greets him publicly, embracing him, calling him brother and warrior and finding yet another French decoration to add to his list of titles.

When the news reaches Rome, Vice-Chancellor Ascanio Sforza leaves immediately on a hunting trip, his baggage train altogether too large for such a short stay away. Milan is doomed and he can expect no help from the Church to save it.

Even if the Pope had the will there is little he could do about it. Half of Italy is in France’s pocket anyway. Venice has signed her own treaty and the smaller states of Ferrara, Mantua and Savoy are already banking on the favours they will get from supporting King Louis. Whatever patriotic dreams Alexander might have had for his adopted homeland, the unpalatable truth is that the country is a sack of spatting cats that has learned nothing from the past. The only justice will be a poetic one: the man who started the tide turning five years ago will be the first to be swept away by it. As Alexander predicted, nobody is crying for the Sforzas.

Before the Vice-Chancellor leaves he makes a last call at the palace of Santa Maria in Portico to say his goodbyes to the young couple who have been the nearest he can get to the Pope over the months of escalating tension. He sits nervously, as if the door might open on soldiers at any time.

‘Must you leave?’ Lucrezia asks anxiously.

‘The lines are drawn. There is no place for me here any more.’ He pauses. ‘And if you want my opinion I would say this is no longer a safe city for your husband.’

‘But I am the Pope’s son-in-law,’ Alfonso says automatically. It is a phrase that has already lost much of its comfort.

‘You are also the King of Naples’s nephew. If I may speak freely, my lady?’

Lucrezia nods. She has learned fast these last few months and knows that allies can only be friends when the political moment allows. Nevertheless, she has developed a certain fondness for this Sforza cardinal. Though he lacks a taste for the kill, he is more able than many and with a different brother might have made a greater career for himself.

‘Once the French have taken Milan, they will revive their claim on Naples. By refusing Cesare’s marriage to Carlotta, King Federico has thrown not only himself but the whole house of Aragon to the wolves. Your brother will get French troops to carve out a state for himself in Italy and Naples is the price the papacy will pay for it. Being married into this family is no longer a privilege but a liability. I speak as someone who knows only too well.’

No, no, she wants to say. No. This is not the same as last time. How could it be? She crosses her hands across her belly in a gesture of unconscious protection.

‘I am sorry, madam. It is what I think.’

Lucrezia stares across at her husband. Neither of them speaks. They are both thinking the same thing: It has started already.

It is partly Jofré’s doing. In his struggle to get his father’s attention, he has taken to imitating Juan, dressing in jewels and carousing around Rome at night with a band of Spanish reprobates. Crossing Ponte Sant’ Angelo a few days before, he was confronted by the Sheriff of Rome and in the brawl that followed someone fired an arrow into Jofré’s leg. He’d been brought back to the palace howling murder as the blood spouted and Sancia, terrified by the sight, had raised the alarm as far as the Vatican, pulling the Pope out of bed in her demands for revenge.

But Jofré’s pain can never pierce his father’s heart in the way that Juan’s did. After calling both sides to put their case, he excuses the Sheriff and sends his son to Castel Sant’ Angelo to cool his temper in a cell. When the news reaches Sancia, she explodes with fury.

‘It is an outrage. Jofré almost bled to death.’

‘That is not what the doctors say. According to them it is a flesh wound.’

‘That’s not true! He was beside himself with the pain.’

Alexander sighs. Up to his eyes in high politics, he does not need this now, but Sancia has never learned the art of softening up her prey before she pounces.

‘How can you pardon the offender and punish Jofré? This is not justice.’

‘If Jofré draws his sword and attacks the Sheriff’s men, then he deserves what he gets.’

‘But he is your son!’

‘In which case he should act like it.’

‘That is not what you would have said if it had been Cesare. Or Juan.’

Juan. The word hangs in the air. The fact is, nobody mentions his dead son in the Pope’s presence. He has made it clear that he does not like to be reminded…

He stares at her: this dark little beauty with her piercing eyes and flamboyant ways. Four years of marriage and not a hint of a pregnancy. He would be willing to believe it was Jofré’s fault had she not bedded all of his sons with not even a miscarriage to show for it. Maybe it is she who is the problem. If he needs to find Jofré another wife… ah! For now, it is not worth the trouble.

‘This audience is finished, young lady. Go back and look after your husband.’

‘Will you come and see him?’

‘I am a very busy man.’

‘But he is your son!’

‘If he is indeed “my son” then…’ He waves his hand in blind fury. Oh, how he is tired of being lectured by hysterical Spaniards.

She stares at him, both of them immediately aware of what has been said.

‘What a madam you are,’ he says, collecting himself. ‘You should learn to hold your tongue.’

But she has always been impetuous and when she is scared she has to fight to get over the fear. ‘I am sorry, Holy Father. But where I grew up we were allowed to speak our minds.’

‘Then perhaps it would be best if you went back there.’

‘What do you mean? You would send me away from Rome? What about Jofré?’

‘Oh, such drama! Go to your husband, woman. I want no more of you.’

He sits fuming after she has gone. He is the Pope, the heart and head of the Holy Church, how dare she rage at him? Holy Mother of God, he should command more respect. He sighs. He is expecting the Ferrarese ambassador at any moment. The man will stride in huffing and puffing, demanding reassurance that wherever Cesare takes his army after Milan, it will pose no threat to the noble house of Este. Ferrara, Mantua, Bologna – oh, they are all worried now. Letters criss-cross the Alps between father and son: the most secure postal system in Europe, thank the Lord. The future of the dynasty is at stake. So much to be done, yet he spends his life surrounded by people who either cannot stop complaining or think they can raise their voices to him.

Somewhere inside himself, Alexander understands that he too is overreacting. It does not suit him being so bad-tempered, but then this sudden shift of allegiance away from Naples and Spain has made his life difficult in all manner of ways. He would like to talk to Lucrezia, because in the past she has been a discriminating listener. But not now. Now she stares at him with big mournful eyes. What? Is it his fault if the King of Naples signed his own death warrant? God damn them all.

Sancia is close to collapse when she arrives at the palace, throwing herself into Alfonso’s arms and crying that they are about to be displaced – or worse.

‘You should not have angered him, sister. He is under much pressure.’

‘And we are not? I tell you, Alfonso, we are disowned. You should have heard what he said. He does not even care for Jofré. To listen to him you would think he only had one son, that monster Cesare.’

‘Do not call him that,’ Alfonso says quietly.

‘Oh, you are such an innocent, brother. Cesare never liked you. It was all pretence. He only cares for people when they’re of use to him. He would swat you like a fly if the “family” would gain from it. Talk to Lucrezia, she will tell you.’

But when he repeats Sancia’s story to Lucrezia he does not press her further about the past. She is nearly five months pregnant now and he does not want to alarm her. Instead he takes up his pen and writes to his uncle. Even when a husband loves his wife as much as he does, his first loyalty is to the family he comes from. It is simply the nature of things.

August: too hot to move, too hot to think, almost too hot to pray. French troops are sweating their way up the foothills towards the summer passes of the Alps. By winter there is no telling where they will be. The feeling of impending doom is made greater by the fact that this will be no ordinary winter. 1499 is drawing to a close and with it, not just the end of a century but also the end of a half-millennium. 1500. It is such a cleavage in the passage of time that for many it brings on a kind of spiritual vertigo. Invasion, war and this new sexual plague, so clearly a sign of God’s wrath, all add to the whispers of doom that are spreading like fire in bracken across Christendom. In preparation, sinners everywhere (and who, after all, is not?) make plans for pilgrimage. Their destination will be Rome.

What is panic for some will be profit for others. It is a fortunate vicar of God who presides over such a windfall of revenue, and Alexander is already busy rebuilding. In the cauldron of heat, the work goes on: men ripping down the barnacle growth of houses and shops that have sprung up along the long route of pilgrimage between the great churches of Rome. From Castel Sant’ Angelo to the steps of the echoing old Basilica of St Peter, an elegant new thoroughfare is emerging: Via Alessandrina. In his mind it is already teeming with faithful souls, filled with God’s love and the majesty of His church on earth. The papal coffers will be full, Rome will be seen to be a great city again and they will travel back to towns and hamlets all over Christendom with the name of the holy father who presided over it all on their lips: Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander VI, a Spaniard by birth, but a pope with history on his shoulders. Of that he is now sure.

In her palace next to the Vatican, Lucrezia starts to feel the child move inside her. She sleeps sometimes in the afternoon now, heavy deep sleep, like a drug sucking her down underwater, while the baby flips and rolls like a fat fish. When she wakes, her mind is sometimes so glued that it takes her a while to remember what is happening. The movement comes again and she claps her hands over her belly. ‘Hush, hush, it will be all right. You are safe.’

At the beginning she had prayed constantly: ‘Let it be a boy, dear God, if I am worthy of being granted anything in Your mercy let it be a boy.’ She said the words so many times that she began to feel it was a fact already. Then, fearing that her certainty was arrogance for which she would be punished, she asked forgiveness. In the last weeks she has rearranged her bedchamber so that everywhere she looks there is a devotional painting. Rome is filled with great artists who celebrate the beauty of man, but not all of them capture the spirit as well as they do the flesh. She searches for the images of the crucified Christ where his suffering has the most pity in it. When faced with half a dozen Virgins-and-child she picks the one where the serenity is as great as the joy; this way when she wakes she can move her gaze between the two. In the midst of the growing chaos it helps to be reminded.

With the first troops flooding over the passes, news comes from the court of Milan. Ludovico Sforza, a man who poured scorn on those who ran their life by astrologers, has looked into his own future and is seizing everything that is not nailed down in readiness for running away. The fear is contagious. Two days later, Lucrezia wakes to find her husband has made the same decision. The letter he leaves tells her he loves her and that he will write when he reaches Naples. She does not know whether to laugh or cry.

‘This is King Federico’s work,’ Alexander roars when he finds out. ‘If he is so keen to have his family reunited, let us make a clean sweep of it. Tell my daughter-in-law to pack her bags. He can have her back as well.’

When Sancia refuses to go, he threatens to have her expelled by force. The whole court is thrown into disarray with his temper. After tears and pleading from both Jofré and Lucrezia, Sancia goes on her miserable way.

A few days later the Pope’s spy service intercepts a letter from Alfonso to Lucrezia, urging her to leave Rome and join him.

Lucrezia is reading it – badly resealed – when Alexander arrives unannounced. ‘I have come to see how you are,’ he opens in blustering fashion.

‘I am six months gone with child and my husband has left me.’ She has prayed and cried and prayed some more. And now, to her surprise, she feels almost calm. She folds the letter and hands it to him. ‘In case you have not read it already.’

He is taken aback by her self-possession. ‘He should not have gone in such a manner,’ he mutters. ‘Without permission.’

‘He was frightened for his safety.’

‘There was no need. As your husband he is under our protection.’

‘What, like Giovanni Sforza?’

‘That is different.’ He sighs, as if he is the wounded party and the world is conspiring against him. ‘I am not here to fight with you, Lucrezia. On the contrary, I have come because I need your help.’

‘My help? In what?’

‘I am in need of a governor for the cities of Spoleto and Foligno; someone who can do the job with strength and fairness.’

She stares at him. ‘Me? But it is a post for a cardinal, surely.’

‘In the past perhaps, yes. But the coming months will see our fortunes change dramatically and I need people around me that I can trust. There is already unrest through many of the papal states in anticipation of what may come. Spoleto remains loyal, and her loyalty must be honoured by a good governor. You have an aptitude with people and with politics, Lucrezia. I have watched it grow.’

‘But… What about Jofré?’

‘Jofré! We both know Jofré is not capable of peeling his own fruit. Though I will send him with you, for companionship.’

‘And my husband? Will you bring him back to me?’

‘It is the King’s decision, not mine.’

She waits.

The art of bargaining: whatever his motives for the offer, his admiration for his daughter’s growing acumen is not false. He sighs.

‘Very well. I will try.’

She refuses the silk-lined palanquin the Pope has arranged for her to ride in, and does much of the journey on horseback. She knows the road; it is the one she once took to Pesaro and she loves the way the landscape, at first wooded and dense, gives way to a long fertile plain with spectacular hill-towns poking up their stone-clad heads in the distance on either side. Wherever they stop people flood out to greet her. The sins of the Pope’s daughter are ripe gossip and those who meet her are amazed to find her such a gracious, modest figure. Her belly is big now, catching the light on the silk of her gowns, and women in particular press to get close to her, many in the hope that her fertility may pass to them. Others bring flowers or amulets to have her hold and bless. On the road into Narni, with its sculpted Roman bridge and rippling river water, a bent old woman shouts from the front of the crowd.

‘A boy, the duchess is carrying a boy! I can see him, my lady, swimming in your waters.’

‘She should know,’ someone else yells. ‘She’s delivered hundreds and never got it wrong.’

The crowd roars its appreciation and the baby rolls and slides inside her as if in answer.

The castle of Spoleto sits perched like an eagle above the hill-town, the great viaduct below a memory of ancient splendour. Once inside the fortress, the gates are bolted behind them. As she is helped off her horse, she can feel her heart beating hard against her chest. She has no illusions about the velvet trap her father has set for her. A pope’s daughter governing a city cannot be a wife running off to join her husband in exile. But Alfonso is safe and she is in that blessed stage of pregnancy when many healthy young women find themselves filled with unexpected energy and well-being. While the post may be a prison as much as a privilege, she is exhilarated by the challenge.

The household is still unpacking, flinging open windows and doors to ventilate the stifling chambers, when Lucrezia welcomes the dignitaries of the town and starts taking petitions and hearing complaints. She can do this. She is a Borgia.