The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (39 page)

Il re
sat slumped in the gilded chair, his raw-boned features suffused with grief. The dead girl’s twin knelt beside him, weeping.

Glancing up, he saw me and for a moment I thought he might be overcome with horror. But any such capacity had been leached out of him by what he had witnessed. He simply shrugged.

“Have you lost your way to Hades?”

“No, although I can understand why you might think so. I am very sorry for what happened.”

“It would not have if I had not made common cause with you.”

There was no denying the truth of that. I had, however inadvertently, had a hand in the girl’s horrible death. Yet another sin for which I could never make amends.

“There being no consolation for such grief,” I said, “I have brought you something else that I hope you will find useful.”

He looked at me with his better eye. “What would that be?”

“Morozzi did not act alone. He had help from six members of Il Frateschi who are resident at the guesthouse adjacent to Santa Maria. They are disguised as merchants from Florence come to discuss renovation of the basilica.”

Alfonso stirred a little in his chair and looked at me more closely. “How certain are you of this?”

“Entirely certain. It should be a simple matter to confirm that.”

“Yes,” Alfonso said, “it should be. What about the priest?”

“Leave him to me.”

“I would rather not.”

“I understand that but you have no choice. I do not presume that my claim on him is greater than yours but he is mine nonetheless.”

Alfonso considered that. Finally, he said, “Do you think she suffered long?”

“I think the smoke suffocated her before the flames could do very much.”

It happened like that sometimes, but burnings can be done with green wood, the better to stretch out the torment of the condemned and be sure that death comes only after great agony. I could only hope that the girl had been more fortunate than that.

“I want him to suffer,” Alfonso said. Just then he sounded very young, a child’s voice coming out of one who seemed aged far beyond his years.

“He will,” I promised, and knew that within the ledger of my soul, the torment of the girl and the grief of her compatriots had been added to all the other harm Morozzi had done and sought to do. The reckoning, when it came, would have to be very great indeed.

I left the way I had come, confident that Alfonso would act to eliminate the allies who might yet help Morozzi. As I emerged back into Trastevere, the fading rays of sunlight were turning the rooftops red-gold. Cesare’s house was on a corner near the river. Not much smaller than the building where I lived, for all that it was home to only one man and his servants, it was also three stories tall, with a sloping, tiled roof and small barred windows facing the street. Only the fineness of the carvings around each window and beneath the roof, as well as the presence of armed men at the ornate entrance, declared it to be the residence of a great lord.

I approached it by a circuitous route and stood for a little while deep in the shadows of a doorway on the other side of the street, from which I could watch the house. Servants came and went through an entrance to one side. I waited until a page went in, then slipped quickly behind him before the door could shut. Scarcely had I taken half a dozen steps inside than I was seized from behind by the nape of my shirt and lifted off the floor.

“What do you think you’re doing, brat, prancing in here like you’re the lord’s own get?”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” I gasped in as servile a tone as I could manage. “Message for Signore Borgia from Signore d’Amico.” For good measure, I added, “To be delivered personally, sir.”

I was dropped, only just managing to land on my feet. The guard pointed a beefy arm toward the stairs. “Present yourself to the sergeant-at-arms next time, whelp, instead of skulking around. Not everyone here’s as patient and kind as myself.”

Pursued by guffaws, I scrambled for the stairs and quickly made my way to the main floor of the house. The loggia bordering lush interior gardens was elegantly designed with paneled walls, marble columns, and a selection of statues I recognized as having been taken from some of the many excavations going on all over the city. I walked past a naked warrior with a bow strung across his back, a youth strumming a harp, and a young woman bare-breasted in all her glory who might have been Venus herself.

A steward, accepting my claim to come from Signore d’Amico, brusquely directed me up another flight of stairs, where I proceeded down a hallway. My eye caught a door designed to blend in with the wall and meant for use by servants. I opened it and found myself in a narrow corridor running the length of the house. Steep steps led to the uppermost floor where half a dozen doors led off the passage. Opening one, I discovered what was likely Cesare’s private office. Another led to what I assumed was his bedroom.

The spurt of energy that had carried me along since the discovery that I was still alive was waning fast. I stared at the bed in longing only to decide that a message boy making himself at home so daringly was likely to earn himself a beating from outraged servants. Glancing around, I spied another door, which upon examination led into a small chamber with windows facing the garden. An immense silvered mirror in a gold frame took up one entire wall. The others were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves and finely carved wardrobes. The room was filled with clothing, everything from velvet doublets, wool capes lined with silk, fine linen shirts, brocade collars, soft leather jerkins, hose of every description, and a truly astounding quantity of footwear from shoes to boots and back again. In addition, several locked chests held what I assumed to be jewelry—chains, rings, and the like. No wigs, though. Cesare had a marvelous head of hair and would never have dreamed of concealing it.

Too weary to do more than sigh, I slid down onto the floor, leaned my back against one of the walls, and was about to close my eyes when I heard shouting.

“Where in hell is he then, this boy you say brings a message from d’Amico?”

Murmur, murmur, placating sounds …

“For God’s sake, I’m surrounded by incompetents!”

The door to the closet was flung open and Cesare strode in. He took one look at me sitting on the floor and slammed the door shut.

“You are going to be the death of me,” he said.

“No, I’m not. Your terrible security will get you killed long before I can.”

Something unfathomable moved behind his eyes. He sighed deeply.

“Do you ever, even once,” he asked, “consider the price of caring about you?”

I opened my mouth to tell him that I was not so foolish as to take that seriously, but no words came. For whatever reason—my wayward nature, the darkness within me, whatever—I simply could not comprehend that he might be speaking from the heart. After another long look in my direction, he threw off his cloak, leaving it where it fell, and turned toward the mirror. I scarcely had time to wonder what he intended when he pressed a concealed latch, causing the glass to swing outward.

“Up you go,” Cesare said, and hauled me to my feet. Before I could think to protest, he thrust me through the opening behind the glass and followed swiftly.

I found myself in a gracious salon lit by the faint gray light filtering through small windows near the ceiling that were covered with tilted wooden slats. As I looked around, trying to take in my surroundings, Cesare lit several candelabras. I realized that I was in a cleverly concealed apartment.

“One of two in the house,” he said in response to my startled observation. He reached behind me to close the mirror, which on our side was an unremarkable door.

“A hidden stair leads to a passageway that comes out behind a stable near the river. There are horses always on hand as well as several boats.”

Still trying to take it all in, I said, “Your father thought of everything.”

Or at least everything needed for a fast escape should the unhappy day come when that proved necessary.

“Actually, I did. He had the notion to build the houses but I suggested that privacy and security both would become even greater issues when he achieved the papacy. Fortunately, he agreed.” Cesare paused. “Of course, that was in the days when he didn’t imagine me to be his enemy.”

“He doesn’t really believe that.” Never mind that Il Papa had said as much in what surely must have been no more than a bad moment.

“He at least entertains the notion. Turn around.”

Already, his hands were on the laces of my doublet. I could not deny the sheer carnal pleasure that welled up in me at his touch. I lived, I breathed, I felt, and in that moment, nothing else mattered so much. That in acquiescing to his sexual demands I would also placate him did not enter my mind, or only very slightly. Even so, I did take a faint stab at reason.

“Your father—”

“Decamped for the
castel
immediately after your funeral. Vittoro has him under heavy guard there. Hold still.”

The news that Borgia had been inspired by my “death” to take shelter in the city’s ancient fortress where I had almost perished the previous year while doing my utmost to usher Pope Innocent VIII to his eternal reward gave me pause.

“If Morozzi realizes where he has gone—”

The mad priest knew the
castel
well, having lived there for a time as part of Innocent VIII’s inner circle. If anyone other than myself could penetrate the fortress with deadly intent, Morozzi could.

“He went by the
passetto,
” Cesare said, naming the passage hidden within what looks like nothing more than an old city wall between the Vatican and the
castel.
“Every effort is being made to make it appear that he is still within the Vatican. We have left the way open for Morozzi there, not too obviously to arouse suspicion but enough for him to be tempted by it.”

“All well and good but Il Papa can’t remain in hiding for long. Pesaro is due in the city tomorrow.”

With the wedding scheduled to take place two days after the Sforza bridegroom’s arrival. Borgia would have to be present for the welcoming ceremonies as well as all the other events leading up to and including the actual marriage.

My breeches fell to the floor, the laces having been undone by his too-clever hands while I scarcely noticed. His shirt followed swiftly, as did the remainder of our clothes. Finding the knife in its leather sheath across my breasts, Cesare removed it with great care, tantalizing me as he brushed his thumbs across my nipples.

“Are you never without this?” he asked as he dropped the blade onto the pile of clothes.

“I keep it as a remembrance of you.”

He laughed, far too wise to take me seriously, and yet there was something fleeting in his eyes that made me think he wished that my sally was true.

As I watched, he hopped on one foot, then on the other, to remove his boots; he considered it the mark of a gentleman to do so before coupling, although by his own admission—and my experience—that level of civility sometimes escaped him. We did not make it so far as the bedchamber but fell together onto the floor of the salon. I had a moment’s appreciation for the thick, soft carpet covering it before passion blotted out all else.

After my sojourn in the dark pool, my senses were acutely heightened. I was vividly aware of the salty tang of Cesare’s skin on my tongue, of the weight of his thigh pressing between mine, of the hard length of him driving into me in response to my heated urging. The muscles of his buttocks tensed under my hands, his heart beat powerfully against mine, and I caught, like a fluttering echo, the deep current of that oneness in which I had drifted free and at peace for too little time.

Cesare rose above me, holding my hips, and drove harder, deeper, faster. The fury of the day with its pain and fear, its tumult and risk fell away and I soared on a current of near-unbearable bliss into the heart of a burning sun.

And then it was over; I mean no criticism of Cesare, he never lacked for stamina. It was my own impatience that drove us to a hasty completion. In the aftermath we lay side by side, struggling for breath. I reached out, brushing my fingers lightly down his arm. He seized my hand and pressed it to his lips. We remained like that as slowly the world righted itself.

I became aware that naked cherubs were grinning down at us as they cavorted across billowing white clouds on the ceiling.

“Pinturicchio?” I asked.

Cesare propped himself up on his elbows and nodded. “Do you like it?”

I squinted, considering. “Honestly, it’s a little romantic for my taste. The frescoes he’s painting in your father’s new apartment are better.”

With a laugh, he bounded up and held out a hand to help me rise. “Truly, Francesca, if all women were like you, I would become a Turk for the sole purpose of assembling a harem.”

“A harem of poisoners? You do like to live dangerously.”

Looking around for our clothes, Cesare said, “No more so than you. Have you considered how my father will react when he discovers that you deceived him?”

“Perhaps he will have greater concerns.”

I do not pretend to understand the workings of my mind, roiled as it was by the darkness that was never still for very long. Why I should ricochet from the heights of passion into the depths of suspicion escapes me. I could only conclude that even as I took Cesare into my body and drained him of the pleasure he offered so unstintingly, some part of me remained aloof and calculating, weighing what he had let slip.

He dropped his shirt over his head and began lacing it. “What does that mean?”

I finished dressing swiftly and eased the knife from its sheath, holding it behind my back. As I did so, the darkness stirred within me, a reminder of what could happen if I was not very careful to keep myself in check.

With my fingers closed around the hilt, I asked, “Who is in the other apartment?”

My timing was poor, to say the least. I would have done better to put the knife to his throat while yet we lay in postcoital bliss, for that is the best time above all to take a man by surprise. A woman less susceptible to passion might have managed that. As for myself, I had to do the best I could.