The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (11 page)

What could I say to her? That she need have no such worry for me because I had enjoyed killing the attacker? That far from being dogged by terror, I still basked in the lingering pleasure of what I had done?

No, I did not think Sofia wanted to hear that.

Instead, I said, “I thank you for your concern but this is far from over. I must remain strong to deal with what may be coming.”

That at least she seemed to understand. “Your courage is admirable but please, heed what I say. I count you among my dearest friends and I will be glad to listen whenever you need to talk.”

Oh, ho, she would not be! What, after all, would we discuss? The surge of power and release that overcame me when I killed, as though a demon buried deep within had broken free? The various and imaginative ways in which I contemplated ending Morozzi’s time in this world? The nightmare that I knew, in the aftermath of recent events, had to be upon me again soon?

I could never let my mask slip, not with Sofia or anyone else. To the world, I had to be simply Francesca Giordano, a poisoner to be sure and therefore to be feared. But still not that different from all those who make the hard bargains needed to live in a hard world. Let any discover otherwise and I was certain they would turn on me like ravening dogs and tear me asunder.

I was fumbling for something, really anything to say that would divert her when the door at the back of the shop opened. The man who entered was young, only a few years older than myself, tall and broad-shouldered. With his dark, curling hair, strong features, and black eyes, he could easily have been mistaken for a Spaniard. But David ben Eliezer was a Jew, one of the first I had met after discovering that my late father had himself been born into that tribe. Until recently, David had made his home in Rome but he had left the city the previous year in pursuit of Morozzi. At the sight of him I tensed, knowing as I did what his presence likely meant.

David pulled out a stool from beside the worktable and sat down. He looked tired but resolute. Nodding to us both, he said, “Should I be worried that the boy found me so quickly?”

“I told him where to look and he’s a good lad, he won’t say anything,” Sofia replied.

By which I gleaned that the leaders who oversaw the Jewish Quarter were not aware that David was back among them. As they considered him a dangerous rabble-rouser, that was just as well.

“Donna Francesca,” he said with a faint smile, as though we had been apart no time at all. “You look tired.”

Before I could reply, Sofia took it upon herself to say, “Someone tried to kill her last evening. It was the second attack in as many days.”

David’s eyebrows shot up. “I have heard nothing of this. What is happening?”

I made short work of telling him, minimizing the details as much as possible. Even so, he grasped the whole of it without difficulty, putting it together with his considerable knowledge of larger events. David made it his mission to know of anything and everything that might affect the safety of the Jews in Rome and throughout Christendom. The simmering conflict between Borgia and Cardinal della Rovere was no secret to him.

“Could Borgia be responsible?” he asked. “Would he go that far to convince you to kill della Rovere?”

Carefully, I replied, “It seems a little extreme, even for him. I think it more likely that Morozzi is behind what is happening. That is, if he has returned to Rome?”

David sighed and for a moment I had a glimpse of the toll the past months had taken on him. He had lost weight from a frame that had been spare to start and there were deep shadows under his eyes. But he rallied quickly and said, “He may have, I am not certain. Since his flight from Rome last year, he has kept busy cultivating those who share his hatred of us and are eager to work with him to bring about our extermination. He slipped out of Florence a fortnight ago. I tracked him as far as Ostia before he eluded me.”

“Does he know you have been watching him?” I asked, struck by the sudden thought that David himself could be in danger from the mad priest.

“Despite my best efforts, I think he may. He has made powerful allies among Il Frateschi. I have no doubt that they are helping him now. At any rate, by the time I lost him, I was convinced he had to be making for here so I came on in the hope of discovering his whereabouts. So far I have been unsuccessful.”

“If he is here,” Sofia asked, “what does he want?”

“I don’t think there is any mystery to that,” David replied. “He wants what he has always wanted—a pope who will destroy the Jews.”

“Then he has a problem,” I said. “Della Rovere has no love for you but if he achieves the papacy, he will have greater matters than the Jews to concern him.”

Had he become pope the previous year as he had sought, della Rovere likely would have signed the edict condemning all the Jews and thought little of it save what advantage he could gain by seizing their property. But circumstances had changed since then. The discovery of what truly might be a new world had given everyone pause. Few sovereigns would be eager any longer to expel those who included many of the men capable of financing the exploitation of virgin lands. Worse yet, those same men would likely find a welcome in the embrace of the Turkish sultan, who, with their encouragement, could decide to take an interest in the new world himself. How ironic it would be if, in an effort to “cleanse” Christendom, the Church handed Novi Orbis to Islam.

Whatever his failings, della Rovere was at least smart enough to understand that.

“Morozzi may well be thwarted yet again,” I added, hoping that it was true.

“Who could he hope to make pope in della Rovere’s stead?” David asked.

Even as he spoke, the same thought seemed to occur to all three of us. It fell to me to voice it, reluctant though I was.

“From what I understand, Savonarola is a true fanatic.”

David nodded. “He is that and more, and he has the support of the common people because he claims to want to purify the Church of its venality.”

“Perhaps he does,” I said. “How better to cleanse Holy Mother Church than to take control of it?”

“Surely the cardinals would never elect him?” Sofia asked. The idea clearly horrified her, and for good reason. Venal popes bathed in corruption could at least be bought. But a true fanatic, imbued with the conviction that God moved through him … There was no telling what that sort might do.

“They will if they feel that they have no choice,” I said. “Let him bring big enough mobs into the streets, as he has been doing in Florence, and anything might happen.”

Papal conclaves were notorious under the best of circumstances. Crowds streamed into Rome from all points, most normal business was suspended, and the potential for mischief was always in the air. Add to that the inevitable tension people feel when a matter so touching on their own welfare is being decided and it does not take much to set match to tinder. Had the Church and her princes been better respected … had ordinary men and women seen them as anything other than venal hypocrites, it might have been different. But as it was—

“They must be stopped,” Sofia said. Her hands were clasped so tightly in front of her that I could see the knuckles gleaming white. “We cannot let this come to pass.”

“Indeed, we cannot,” I said. “But if we are to have any hope of preventing Morozzi from carrying out his designs, we must learn his whereabouts.”

We spoke for some time about how that could best be accomplished. With the rapid growth of Rome since the healing of the Great Schism almost eighty years before, the city had become even more of a warren of neighborhoods, streets, and alleys. Morozzi might be hiding anywhere. The three of us could not hope to find him on our own; we would need considerable help.

“Rocco will have to be told,” Sofia said.

With the memory of what had happened to Nando the previous year, I agreed. “And a safe place must be found for his son. I will see to that.”

I did not have to explain the necessity of finding a sanctuary for the boy before I could focus on the business of stopping Morozzi. Sofia and David were both well aware of my lingering guilt over the danger I had placed the child in.

We spoke a while longer about how best to find the mad priest, ending our discussion shortly before sunset when the streets leading into the Jewish Quarter would be closed. David departed a little ahead of me. He exited through the back door of the apothecary shop into the warren of alleys that made it possible for anyone so inclined to move about the ghetto unobserved. I knew he would find ready shelter with others who believed as he did that any people, Jews included, had to be prepared to fight for their own survival rather than rely on purchased tolerance.

Sofia saw me out through the front door. As we walked a short way together, she asked, “Do you have any idea why Rocco wasn’t at the meeting?”

“He didn’t say, but I’m sure he had a good reason.” In truth, I had not had any chance to think about that, what with one thing and the other.

We walked a little farther to the edge of the piazza. With David’s departure, Sofia’s concern for my well-being returned. Before we parted, she said, “You will remember what I said, won’t you, Francesca? If ever you wish to talk of matters weighing on your mind, I would be glad to listen.”

Reluctant to give her any false assurance yet equally unwilling to hurt her, I could offer only a smile and an embrace. Leaving the Quarter, I resisted the urge to turn around and see if she was still watching me.

10

I stopped on the way to my rooms to pick up the ingredients for a simple meal—a little
culatello,
the ham we soak in wine until it emerges rosy red, a small loaf sprinkled with rosemary, a handful of the good, meaty olives of Puglia, and a decent bottle of wine. Outside Portia’s door, I put my burdens down and knocked softly so as not to disturb her if she was asleep. To my pleased surprise, the top of the door was flung open. Standing on her stool, Portia grinned at me.

“There you are then, Donna. How has your day been?”

For reasons I could not begin to guess, Portia looked like the proverbial cat that had swallowed the canary. Her dark eyes glowed and her cheeks, beneath the bruises, were pleasantly flushed.

At a loss to understand her manner, and more than a little envious of it, I said, “Fine, I suppose.… I wanted to see how you are.”

“Have no worry for me, Donna. I’m fit as a fiddle. You just go on up now and enjoy your evening.”

As I intended to spend it alone, save for Minerva, I could only nod. Having gathered up my purchases, I made my way upstairs still puzzling over Portia’s mood. To add to the mystery, I heard her chuckle behind me.

I opened the door, eased my way in, and made for the small pantry, where I deposited my packages with a relieved sigh. Minerva was sitting beside the stone sink. She blinked and moved aside when I tried to pet her, her blue gaze fastened on something behind me.

I think I knew before I turned, feeling him in some way I could neither define nor deny. Perhaps I smelled him. At once, my body tightened and I felt a rush of warmth.

“Cesare,” I said in a futile effort to sound stern, for truly what right did he have to cajole his way into my apartment, as he had obviously done with Portia’s connivance. How daunting to think that not even the sensible
portatore
was proof against the charms of Borgia’s eldest son.

He had a drink in his hand—one of my best goblets, I noticed when I turned to face him. His dark hair with a slight reddish cast was loose and brushed his shoulders. In features, he resembled his mother—the redoubtable Vannozza dei Catannei—far more than his father, having her long, high-bridged nose and large, almond-shaped eyes. He had been in the sun even more than usual and was deeply tanned. In public, he wore the expected raiment of a highborn young man but that night he was dressed for comfort in a loose shirt and breeches.

Apparently, he had been in my apartment long enough to make himself at home. Besides finding the wine, he had removed his boots and was barefoot.

“Let me see you,” he said, and put down the goblet.

He undressed me there in the pantry, stripping my clothes away garment by garment. I did not help him but neither did I offer any hindrance. Women’s clothing held no mysteries for him; he made short work of the task. When I was naked, he stepped back and scrutinized me slowly from head to toe.

“You are bruised.”

“Am I? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Lucrezia says you killed the bastard.”

I did not question how the Pope’s daughter knew of the attack on me. Young though she was, Lucrezia understood the value of information and cultivated her own sources for it.

Cesare’s hands were shaking. Hard, sun-darkened hands made to hold a sword or lance unflinchingly, but they trembled against my pale skin.

Something broke within me. Sofia believed that I did not allow myself to feel but she was wrong; I felt far too much. Terror when the nightmare came upon me as it so often did, pleasure when I killed, and always wrenching longing for the life that might have been mine if only I were an entirely different person, so that I was locked in a paradox where I could never have what I yearned for without my own extinction.

All of that rose up in me in the moment that I touched Cesare, ran my hand down his muscled arm, curled my fingers around his, and went forward quickly, without thinking, to take his mouth with mine. He allowed this, my dark lover, because hunter that he was he seemed to understand and accept my need.

In truth, I think a part of him gloried in it. You may assume that life came to him easily by virtue of his unvirtuous birth but in fact everything he valued he took for himself through the sheer force of his will. Everything except me. Even that first time under the gaze of Callixtus, I took him.

Some while later, I remember him laughing as he picked me up from the slate floor of the pantry where we had lain oblivious to discomfort and carried me across the salon to my chamber. We tumbled across the bed, limbs entwining, mouths searching. Drugged by pleasure, I scarcely felt the tears running down my cheeks until Cesare caught them on his tongue and touched the saltiness to mine.