Blood & Beauty The Borgias

Chapter 43



When Lucrezia welcomes back her husband, the child is so large inside her that it comes between them as they embrace.

‘Look at you. It has made you even more beautiful. Naples is full of women dark as roasted chestnuts, while you are lilies and thick cream.’

‘Ha! I smell a man who has been indulging in courtier’s talk.’

‘Untrue. There is not a moment when I was not thinking about you. My God, I have missed you, wife.’

And she knows it is true, because she feels it too. She holds his face in her hands, pushing his cheeks together so that his lips, those full fleshy lips, are squeezed and open. She stands on tiptoe to kiss them.

‘We have done it,’ she says, laughing as they break apart. ‘We have brought you home.’

It has taken almost two months and a crosstrail of envoys and ambassadors, with neither side willing to give in: Rome because it has too much to bargain with and Naples because it has nothing.

King Federico had always known that his stand against the Borgias would sever the alliance with the papacy and open Naples to the French, but he had banked on Spain’s outrage to provide him with protection. He is, alas, an idealist in an age of pragmatism. Their Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella, watching the French walk into Milan and realising that Naples is already lost, are already making secret overtures to King Louis.

Such is Federico’s isolation that he feels chilled even when the day is hot. If he is to stand any chance of survival, he would do better to appeal to the Pope’s Spanish blood and give him what his daughter wants most – her husband’s return in time for the birth of their child. And while he is at it, they might as well have Sancia back as well.

When the decision is made, he is, at least, honest about it. ‘I do not like it, nephew. But I have no option.’ His eyebrows are so used to being knotted together in worry that they seem to have fused, so that now he peers out at the world from under an overhang of hair. Some of his courtiers are beginning to wonder how far it is obscuring his vision.

‘I know that.’

‘The Pope’s bargaining is always the same: he offers you a warm coat, until you put it on and find it has open razors for a lining. I have no power against him. If you go, I must tell you I cannot guarantee your safety.’

‘I know that also.’

The King sighs. In the past he never had much time for his bastard niece and nephew, feeling them to be tainted by the decadence of their father. It had been almost fitting when they had found a place inside an even more corrupt family. But it seems this marriage to the Borgia hussy has given Alfonso unexpected dignity. His own plain daughter is newly married to her Breton nobleman; a man with as little charisma as he has ambition. She will never return to Naples. Well, God grant her a long and happy life. It is more than he has to look forward to.

As soon as it is decided, Alfonso rides north with an armed guard, bypassing Rome and moving straight on to the papal city of Spoleto, where Lucrezia and Jofré have made a home of sorts. While the city has good reason to be grateful for the Pope’s protection (especially when it is being so brutally withdrawn from others), it has also taken her to its heart, impressed by her diligence and grace. Now, with her husband at her side, together they can inspect outlying areas of her governorship.

It is a glorious autumn, balmy after the mad heat, and the forests are starting to take fire. For the first time in their married life they are their own masters. They both know it is a freedom that cannot last, which makes it all the sweeter. They are welcomed everywhere they go: the Duchess of Bisceglie may be a Borgia but she represents a softer face of power and her deliberations in Spoleto have earned her a reputation for fairness. Besides, who can resist such fecundity: a young woman ripe with child and so clearly in love with life itself?

By the time they are summoned back to Rome she is within weeks of giving birth.

Alexander, who sent away his children only to become lonely without them, is bedside himself with pleasure at her return. Giulia, who has been away visiting her family for much of the summer, has become more resistible with time, and there are moments when he feels almost sentimental for a less arduous kind of love. His daughter’s particular beauty fells him completely. In this last stage of pregnancy, she has come to resemble her own mother in her youth. She brings a glow into every room. The baby rides so high in her now that when she walks she must hold herself backwards to accommodate its weight, putting a hand in the hollow of her own back for extra support, and when she sits she gives a slight breathless laugh, as if she can hardly believe her own condition. Such gestures trigger a flood of other memories in Alexander: Vannozza’s full breasts, the sheen on her skin, the sense of voluptuousness in her weariness. When he had experienced it the first time it had been so powerful that he could barely wait for her to drop the child so that they might set about making another. Even Giulia, at her most exquisite, never inflamed him in the same way. It was as if there was something about Vannozza’s beauty that had been bred to make babies, and the force of it plucks at his heartstrings even now. Well, why not? It is good for an ageing man to be reminded of his potency and anyway, God knows, he loves his daughter deeply and it is impossible not to be touched by her happiness.

He is also proud of her. The letters from his representatives speak of a curious and serious mind, a willingness to listen but not to be shaken from her decisions by spurious argument. Of course such observations are inflated with flattery, but even so…

Jofré, on the other hand, affords him little pleasure. Since his brief sojourn in Castel Sant’ Angelo, he is sulky and aggressive, like a pet animal neglected and gone to the wild. He is only bearable now when in his wife’s company, for she has always been partly the mother he didn’t have, chastising and cajoling by turns. Sancia herself, despite all the vicissitudes of life, has retained both her appetite for pleasure and an inability to disguise her feelings. It makes her almost refreshing in a world dictated by subterfuge.

Inside the palace of Santa Maria in Portico, the talk is all of births and babies. The kitchen buys in doves and young calves ready for the knife for the celebrations that will follow. A gilded crib is put into the bedroom under the portrait of the Virgin, the new linen embroidered ready with a space for the first initial. In the morning of October 31 Lucrezia goes for a walk with Alfonso in the courtyard garden. Coming back inside she feels a sharp stab and then her waters break, a flood that soaks her skirts, sending Alfonso running in panic for assistance. The midwives and women swoop in like a flock of birds, shooing him away as they take charge, supporting her to her rooms and closing the doors. After a few hours, when nothing more has happened, the chief midwife starts massaging her belly with scented oils, sliding well-practised fingers up inside her to encourage dilation. By sunset labour has started. Her groans rise up throughout the palace, and the Pope, who is informed of the progress when he comes out of a meeting with the new – and rather more pliant – Spanish ambassador, swears that he feels her pain himself. He refuses all food and drink and orders prayers throughout the Vatican for her safe delivery.

In the early hours of November 1, after a final stage of labour which leaves them all breathless with its speed and intensity, the Duchess of Bisceglie is delivered of a baby boy, in rude health and good voice. After a prolonged suck at the wet-nurse he is put into his mother’s arms, suffused with an air of self-satisfaction.

He is given the name Rodrigo after his esteemed grandfather and, as the winter dawn creeps in, Lucrezia falls asleep safe in the knowledge that she has achieved the one thing that might save her marriage: a male heir for the Borgia dynasty in Italy.

For his part, the Pope is so elated one might almost think he had fathered the child himself. He holds a mass of celebration to thank God and then calls in Burchard. Having presided over two papal weddings, three betrothals and a divorce, it is now his job to orchestrate a baptism. Fortunately, the Vatican has a chapel that will do nicely for the event.