The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (7 page)

That left only the matter of contact poisons, the rarest and most difficult to handle of all substances in the poisoner’s arsenal. I had some considerable familiarity with them, having accomplished the rare feat of applying a contact poison to the outside of a glass carafe, the method by which I had killed my father’s successor and claimed the position for myself. With that incident always in mind, I inspected anything that could come into contact with Borgia or his family—every scrap of fabric but also other materials including glass, gold, silver, and the like. With the wedding fast approaching, gifts were beginning to arrive and each of these also had to be checked.

Despite all these demands on my attention, I was at work only a little time before a page came to fetch me. His Holiness required my attendance. I washed my hands in a copper basin, dried them on a length of cloth offered by a kitchen maid who kept her head down and fled the moment I was done, and followed the page up the stone steps from the kitchen, through flagstone passageways, up a gilded flight of steps, and finally into the presence of Christ’s Vicar on Earth, Il Papa Alexander VI.

6

“Christ’s blood!” Borgia bellowed. His voice shook the gilded walls and threatened to crack the high windows looking out over the square. Secretaries, clerks, and hangers-on alike quaked and looked about wide-eyed for some means of escape.

“Blessed Mary and all the Saints tell me why I did not kill that man when I had the chance?”

Abruptly, his attention swiveled to me. My hope that his anger would have been defused by now was not to be fulfilled.

“You should have convinced me to do it,” Borgia declared. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

As our avid audience looked on, relieved no doubt that someone had taken the brunt of his displeasure, I came a little farther into the room. My face was schooled to calm despite the knot in my stomach and the dampness of my palms that had nothing to do with the sultry morning. Borgia was not given to such outbursts of temper, reserving them solely for those occasions when he felt particularly provoked. But when he was so roused, truly he was a force to behold. In the interest of candor, I will also say that there were times when I suspected his anger was more artifice than actual emotion, but on this occasion, he seemed genuinely enraged.

In light of the news Vittoro had given me, there was no mystery as to who had so provoked Borgia’s ire, nor could I pretend to misunderstand him. That being the case, I had no choice but to fall back on the semblance of candor. True candor would be a shocking breach of decorum, raising all sorts of problems of its own accord. But the semblance of it was a well-practiced art within the hallowed walls of the Vatican and, for that matter, wherever those with an appreciation for power gather.

“Is it?” I asked lightly, as though it were really no great matter, certainly no reason to explode in fury and burn all before him, starting with my own poor self. “I thought my job was to see to your safety.” Almost as an afterthought, I added, “And on occasion perhaps remove some encumbrance. I don’t recall you mentioning the Cardinal in that regard.”

“More fool I,” Borgia muttered but he was calming already, the admirable intelligence and order of his mind once more in evidence. He glanced round as though suddenly aware that we were observed. “Out! Out! Worthless dregs, all of you! Out!”

They went. Borgia and I were left alone, as no doubt he had intended, for now there would be great speculation about what he had to say to his poisoner in private. I admit to being curious myself.

Without ceremony, he slumped in the high-backed chair behind the vast desk of burled wood and inlaid marble, and gestured me into one of the smaller chairs across from him. It was a signal honor to be seated in his presence and one he did not accord me except when we were alone or as good as. You may wonder at such intimacy, as I did myself from time to time, but over our years together I came to at least some understanding of what drove Borgia to confide in me. La Bella and other women who came and went had their place in his life but I don’t believe he ever allowed them to see into the darker reaches of his soul. As for his confessor, some hapless priest held that nominal position while no doubt thanking God daily that Il Papa felt no impulse to bare his conscience to him.

But great men, for all their armor of invincibility, are still only men, and something in them all cries out to be known by at least one other who can, at the end of days, attest to their humanity. Typically, it is an outcast who takes such a role—a jester, a dwarf, or, though it was painful for me to acknowledge, one such as myself, set apart and isolated by my dark calling.

All the same, I did not fool myself. Whatever the needs of his soul, Il Papa played a deep game in which I was only one more pawn.

“That turd, della Rovere, plots to bring down my papacy,” he said. “Moreover, he may be behind the recent attempts on my life, the source of which you still have failed to discover. Whatever he is up to, I want the problem he presents resolved once and for all.”

“Holiness—” I intended to mention the practical difficulty of getting to della Rovere now that he was over three hundred miles away in his family’s stronghold, and perhaps even my own doubts that he had a hand in the attempts to kill Borgia, but Il Papa was having none of it.

Before I could speak further, he declared, “You’ve come up with creative solutions in the past. Do not disappoint me now.”

Having written
fini
to the discussion, at least so far as he was concerned, His Holiness reached for a flagon of wine set on a silver tray on his desk, filled a Venetian goblet studded with gems, and took a long swallow of claret. He was drinking earlier and more often than had been his custom before coming into the papacy. La Bella had told Lucrezia, who had told me, that he slept poorly and sometimes woke in the grip of night sweats. I wondered if what he had plotted and schemed for decades to attain was proving to be both more and less than he had anticipated.

I was about to stand, assuming myself to be dismissed, when he spoke again.

“What do you hear from Cesare?”

Still struggling to come to terms with the order I had just been given, I replied noncommittally. “He seems well.”

I assumed that letters from Cesare were intercepted and read before they ever reached me. What Borgia wanted was not so much the content of the letters as my interpretation of them, but that I was hesitant to give.

“Happy with his lot, is he? Content to follow my orders?”

Cesare happy? Content? His was a mercurial nature ruled by passion and ambition. Happiness did not enter into it. Surely his father, who was not far different, knew that?

“He is loyal to you,” I said, because in the end wasn’t that all that mattered, at least to Borgia?

Il Papa passed a hand over his jowls wearily. An observer might have been forgiven for thinking that he was an old man resigned to the foibles of the young. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Is he? He rails against the life I have given him. Claims he’ll go off and become a
mercenario
for whoever will hire him. Says he’ll make his living with his sword before he’ll put on red skirts.”

“He is young yet—” Although to be truthful, I had difficulty imagining Cesare in the vestments of a cardinal of Holy Mother Church. Aside from the very few old men still clinging to their missives, the princes of the church were cunning, ambitious schemers best suited to wield power from behind their expansive desks. Cesare, on the other hand, was made for the field of battle. Anyone who had been in his presence long enough to say a single paternoster ought to have known that.

“He is my son! He will damn well do as I tell him.”

My father had wanted me to marry and give him grandchildren but he had the good sense to recognize that I was my own self, for better or worse, and not a mere extension of his will. Perhaps it was because he had afforded me such regard in life that I was so determined to honor him in death.

“Then what difference does it make to you how he feels about it?” I asked.

Borgia took another swallow of his wine. He set the goblet down and appeared to study it for a moment before looking at me. Without warning, he said, “Will he betray me? Tell me that, poisoner. The son of mine you take into your bed, does he whisper to you of patricide?”

I was aghast, plain and simple. That he should entertain the notion of betrayal at the hands of his eldest son was bad enough but that he should consider me as a coconspirator was unthinkable in all its ramifications, not in the least for my own survival. An only child of a doting father, I claim little understanding of the inner workings of families, but even I knew that there could be only one possible answer.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” I was bidding for time, of course, time for my frantic mind to frame the necessary response in a way that would be believable. But in some flickering corner of my thoughts, I was also genuinely concerned for him, God help me.

“Is Giulia prattling?” he countered, scowling.

“She cares for you. We all do. If you go around talking like that, people will say your wits have addled.”

Harsh words to hurl at a pope, but they seemed to soothe Borgia. He had claimed in the past to like my audacity although I always doubted that. I think rather that he ever weighed me in the balance, looking for the moment when I would become more trouble than I was worth. But just then I still had use, not only to preserve his life but also as a means of communicating with his wayward son.

Relenting slightly, he said, “I know I can depend on Cesare when all is said and done. Whatever else he is, he is no cuckoo, slipped falsely into my nest. Were he, I would be forced to expel him even though he fall to earth and be crushed, which, I am assured, he most certainly would.”

“How fortunate then,” I said with a perfectly straight face, “that he is an eaglet, the true son of his father.”

Borgia chuckled; he was as mercurial as his son in his own way, his moods ever ready to be shifted. But I never made the mistake of thinking him capricious. Anyone who did think so quickly had reason to regret it.

“You worry needlessly,” I said. “Would you be happier if Cesare was a milksop to meekly accept whatever you decree for him? He has strength and spirit. Be glad of both but know that in the end, he will always do as you wish.”

Borgia belched softly behind his beringed hand. “I could do with a decent night’s rest.”

Which was as close to apologizing for his suspicions as he would ever get.

“I know a good apothecary, should you want something more effective than wine.”

He pretended to be startled. “You surprise me, Francesca, as ever. Part of being a good Christian is to refrain from providing others with opportunity to sin.”

It was my turn to sigh. Sometimes I truly feared that he knew every nook and cranny of my life even as I still clung to the belief that Lux remained hidden from his scrutiny.

“Sofia Montefiore has no reason to harm you, Holiness.”

“Indeed not, the Jews love me. Have not I offered them the hand of tolerance?”

A well-greased hand, to be sure, but I refrained from saying so. Borgia eyed me a moment longer before he said, “When next you see my son, remind him to behave himself at the wedding. I will brook no nonsense there.”

“I don’t expect to see Cesare any time soon.” Indeed, I had no idea when I would see him at all, as in his present mood, it might be best if he stayed away from Rome until Lucrezia was well and truly wed.

Borgia merely smiled and waved me off. I left still struggling to come to terms with what I had been ordered to do. The practical hurdles aside, I was not convinced that sending Cardinal della Rovere from this world would accomplish anything of real value. The Church would still be riven by ambition and steeped in venality. And the ordinary people, what of them? They would still be distracted by the day-to-day struggle to live, too wearied to care much about the doings of their “betters.” Unless something happened to pierce the fog of apathy and seize their attention. The death of Cardinal della Rovere, for example? Would that be sufficient to send the mobs into the streets?

I had no time to dwell on the matter. Renaldo was waiting for me in the antechamber. The steward bent his head toward the inglenook where we had spoken the day before. I joined him there. Borgia’s mood had been such that I hadn’t dared to try to discover what he knew of the fire at the villa but Renaldo was another matter. I would not hesitate to sample whatever tidbits he had to offer.

Barely had he gained my attention than he confided, “He signed the bull.” This was said with the air of a man well satisfied with the bets he had placed and not a little relieved to have the matter settled.

I nodded, glad myself of the information but determined to acquire much more. “Well and good but, as you will already know, he is troubled.”

The steward looked at me sharply, no doubt hoping that I would reveal what had required a private conversation between Borgia and his poisoner. The betting on the subject would be fierce, one way or another. Indeed, it was likely that the touts of Rome were already setting odds on whether I would be sent to dispatch della Rovere and, considerably steeper, if I would succeed.

“I wondered if you knew why,” I said, deflating Renaldo’s hopes while at the same time flattering him with my apparent faith in his wisdom. In point of fact, the steward could have become an immensely wealthy man, as opposed to being merely very well-off, had he chosen to sell what he knew about Borgia’s dealings. The presumption is that secrets are to be found hidden in ciphered letters or overheard in whispered conversations, but the truth is that the best place to learn what a great man is really up to is to look at his household accounts. Know where and how he spends his money and you will know all that really matters.

Renaldo kept those accounts and did so with scrupulous care. He knew what Borgia spent on porridge for the boys who turned the spits in his kitchens and what he spent for little toys of a lascivious sort for La Bella, not to mention everything in between.