Blood & Beauty The Borgias

Chapter 49



‘Imola! Forlì! Imola! Forlì!’

As the procession moves towards the river, the crowds get bigger, yelling and pushing like a human battering ram against the makeshift barriers as the first wave of horses arrives, their snorting breaths making feather plumes of smoke in the winter air.

The Borgia spectacle has, as ever, been Johannes Burchard’s nightmare, so much so that there have been times when, faced with another outrageous demand, Burchard has looked back to his life as a young priest in Alsace with uncharacteristic nostalgia. How God had cared for him then, endowing him with a prodigious memory and thus a place in the great cathedral school of Niederhaslach, far above any family expectations. A year after being sent to Rome he had found the job he was born to do. What he didn’t know about Church ceremony he could learn faster than anyone else. But it was more than memory and pedantry: he also had a talent for organising spectacle. He was the right man at the right time. The papacy was growing richer, a consumer and patron of the new arts. The line between private and public was also changing, so that things once hidden were now more on display. How to bring the two together? How to celebrate weddings, baptisms and funerals for a papal family that ought not, by canon law, even to exist? Leave it to Burchard. How to negotiate the conflicting vanities of bishops, cardinals, papal legates, diplomats and foreign ambassadors? The Master of Ceremonies would find a way. No pope could do without him. What did he care if people made fun of him behind his back?

But what he could not bear was sloppiness, disorder, the cutting of corners, the patching-over of cracks. And in the Pope’s determination to take advantage of the timing of Carnival, what should have been weeks of organisation have been collapsed into days.

In the rising chaos had come increased squabbling. Cesare and his condottieri commanders treated him more like a messenger boy, with demands for scores of new uniforms and banners to be made in tailors’ shops all over the city, collected and transported in time for the parade. Then, with barely hours to go, a small company of Gascon mercenaries had kicked up an almighty fuss about the order of entry. As foreigners in the army, protocol demanded they enter last. Yet they flatly refused, insisting on marching close to the duke. To have his authority so flouted by men of no rank with uncombed hair and filthy fingernails was insupportable. In the end he had gone to Cesare himself.

‘I would have you tell them, Duke Valentinois’ (not for him the diminutive Valentino), ‘that I am the Master of Papal Ceremonies.’

‘I am conqueror of half of Romagna,’ Cesare had added with uncharacteristic good humour. ‘And I can’t do anything with them either. Relax, Burchard. It’s not worth it. Draw comfort from the fact that we are making history here.’

But that is exactly what he is worried about it. Not least because of Cesare himself, who has adapted his name to become exactly that of the first conqueror of Romagna, has had the word ‘CAESAR’ embroidered – silver thread on black velvet – on the chests of a hundred young grooms and mace bearers. And in case anyone should miss the message, the celebrations are to be continued next day with a series of tableaux in which Julius Caesar’s own crossing of the Rubicon is to be recreated, the great Roman soldier in battle dress and crowned in laurel leaves riding in a chariot behind. In a last-minute act of humility, the duke has decided to give the role to someone else.

What can he, Burchard, possibly do against such flagrant arrogance? Except sit at his desk each night and note down every detail, so that those who come after will understand that this family was not his doing.

‘Imola! Forlì! Imola! Forlì!’

From the windows in the upper storey of her white house near the Tiber, the courtesan Fiammetta de Michelis looks down as the first carts and banners roll into sight, moving from the Piazza del Popolo to Ponte Sant’ Angelo on their way to the Vatican. Hers is a prime view and she could have shared it with others – she has had enough offers – but she is sitting alone, save for a handsome grey bird perched upon her shoulder, its head cocked close to her ear, its long cherry-red tail perfectly complementing the gold and black of her dress.

‘Fiiimetta. Fiiimetta,’ it cackles into her ear, rocking to and fro as it settles its claws more firmly into the padded material of her shoulders. She laughs, putting a nut between her rosebud lips and offering it up as a treat. The bird pecks it neatly, expertly, tossing it down its throat then cocking its head again to nibble at her ear like some eager young lover.

‘It comes from the shores of Africa,’ he had said when he had delivered it a few days before his leaving for France. ‘Its eyes will turn yellow as it grows. But the tail will remain the same: an African parrot with the colours of Valentinois on its backside – just in case you should be tempted to forget me.’

‘But when you come back you will be a married man,’ she had teased him.

‘And what difference will that make? Just don’t keep it in your bedroom. If it hears names being moaned too often it will moan them back to the next man.’

‘Fro Valteeenwaw, Valteenwaw,’ it had squawked excitedly as soon as Cesare had removed the cap from its head. And she had clapped her hands in delight. She, who had grown used to expecting nothing from him, had been most pleased.

Fifteen months on, its feathers are a deeper grey and its eyes glint like wheat in the sun, but as promised the red tail remains shining fast. Its vocabulary has grown along with its plumage. It can now say the name of the Pope and the King of France and even mutter a few Latin words to welcome the odd cardinal client, drawn to the house by tales of her proficiency.

But in the last few weeks Fiammetta has been working hard to teach it two important new words.

‘Imolaa, Forlììì, Imolaa, Forlììì,’ it cackles now, the last syllable rising in a cheeky shriek to join in the roar from the streets below.

Not far from the white house, the tavern at the southern end of Ponte Sant’ Angelo boasts an even more impressive vista: across the bridge to Castel Sant’ Angelo. Behind the banners, on the upper turrets, guards wait by the guns, ready to dispatch furious salvoes as the parade arrives on the spanking new Via Alessandrina, the Pope’s own jubilee gift to Rome, which joins the castle to the Basilica of St Peter.

The owner of the tavern stands looking out over the bridge, empty for the first time in months in readiness for the parade. Behind her, servants scuttle around carrying food and wine to a crowd of guests. Vannozza dei Catanei may be the mother of the conquering hero, but she is also a successful businesswoman and today is an opportunity for profit, with each inch of viewing space already rented out to those who have the purse to pay for it.

Whatever pain Vannozza experienced over Juan’s death, it had been eclipsed by the theatrical suffering of his father and the political crises that followed. Excluded from public grief, she had withdrawn into herself and in the dark days that followed had turned to God and work as solace. The running of her vineyard and the tavern, always a pleasure, now gave her a continued sense of purpose. A year later, as she kissed goodbye to Cesare, she had invested in two new buildings in the reconstructed area of the city in anticipation of the jubilee, with loans guaranteed against her existing properties. The risk had been the challenge she needed. With her own estate supplying most of the food and wine, and her past an open secret to the kind of pilgrims who enjoy, and can afford, status in devotion, her new hostels have been full since long before the year began, so that she has already paid back half the loan. It may be a small achievement next to the glories of her elder son, but it brings her immense satisfaction.

She could be watching today’s festivities from a room in the castle: the Pope, though absent-minded about her, especially when things are going his way, has been kind enough to issue an invitation. But she is happier in the world she has built around herself. She has always been her own woman, and for all that Alexander might see his children as Borgias, he would, if asked, surely concede that something of her determination and self-sufficiency has made its way into them too.

The roads leading up to the bridge are seething, the crowd hemmed in by troops, their great staves plaited together to make the barrier. Half the religious movements of Europe are represented here: brown Franciscans, white Cistercians, black Dominicans, old and young, many with their cowls up against the winter wind. She watches as a young man – Jofré’s age maybe – with blunt features under a tonsured head takes issue with the soldiers’ roughness, yelling something in German as they push a woman to the floor. He helps her up then disappears into the crowd, muttering furiously. So many people, she thinks, each one with their own story, each following their own singular line of fate. The sound of trumpets rises up in the distance. It is time to open the best wine, which she has had brought over from her private cellar. There will be no better moment to drink it. Her son has come home.