The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (9 page)

From beneath the silver filigree bodice of her gown, she withdrew a small locket, opening it to reveal the portrait of a young man. With it cupped in her hands, she offered it for my admiration.

“Don’t you find him handsome?”

This was not the first time I had been invited to comment on the appeal of Giovanni Sforza—nor the tenth. I stifled a sigh and said what I always said on such occasions.

“He is very fine.”

In fact, at the age of twenty-six, the Lord of Pesaro and Gradara was almost exactly twice Lucrezia’s age and a widower in the bargain. The bastard son of Costanzo Sforza, he had succeeded to his natural father’s honors by virtue of the lack of a legitimate heir. Completely dependent on the far more powerful branch of the Sforza family in Milan for his advancement in this world, he was hardly the great lord Lucrezia might have dreamed of marrying. But he did have pleasing enough features, including a long, straight nose, a fashionable beard, and dark, flowing hair. He was also said to have an amiable nature, although that is said of all bridegrooms who are not outright ogres.

“Pesaro is said to be quite charming,” Lucrezia remarked as she returned the portrait to its place close to her heart.

“So I have heard.”

Her betrothed’s seat was a pleasant enough little town on the Adriatic coast, famous for its festivals. It was of interest only because of its strategic location on the Via Emilia, the ancient road of the Romans linking the eastern coast with the agriculturally rich north. At Rimini, it connected to the Via Flaminia, leading directly into Rome. None of which would interest Lucrezia in the least. Of far more importance to her was what Pesaro was not—not Milan, or Florence, or Naples or Venice or Rome itself. It was, in plain fact, a provincial town ill-suited to a young woman who had lived all her life at or very near the glittering heights.

I was mulling that over when a page approached, arms folded behind his back, eyes averted yet watchful, ready to be of use should Madonna Lucrezia require anything.

She waved him off, a signal that she had more concerns.

When we were alone again, her golden head bent closer to mine as she murmured, “Has my father said … anything?”

I understood at once what she was asking. Had Borgia said anything about whether or not this was to be yet another broken betrothal. Not that he confided in me—although, to be entirely truthful, there were nights when we sat together over a flagon of wine when he had been known to unburden himself. But Lucrezia knew that I was often in her father’s company and she was asking if he had said anything I had overheard.

In point of fact, nothing needed to be said; the problems were that obvious, centering as they did on the refusal by the head of the House of Sforza to yield control of the rich duchy of Milan to its legitimate ruler. As that young man happened to be the grandson of the King of Naples, the stage was set for a bloody clash between two of the most powerful families in Italia. Borgia, nominally allied with Milan but not eager to face the wrath of Naples, which he had managed to annoy in his own right, was counting on the Spanish monarchs to arrange a solution that in effect allowed him to have his
torta
and eat it, too.

“It seems clear,” I said carefully, “that your father values his alliance with the Sforzas.”

A less aware young woman might have been satisfied with that but Lucrezia knew her father better than almost anyone else, although I do not think he ever realized the extent of her understanding.

“Today he does,” Lucrezia said. “But I fear he is like Cesare, believing that no man will ever be good enough for me.”

My private theory was that it was more a matter of Borgia being uncertain that any man was good enough for himself. Having achieved the papacy, he might have been expected to settle back and survey the world from the lofty heights of Saint Peter’s Throne. Instead, his restless mind sought even greater victories—and the alliances he would need in order to achieve them.

Tact did not come easily to me but I tried all the same. “A year may seem like an age but it really is not. It will pass before you know it.”

Lucrezia cast me a sideways glance redolent of skepticism more suited to one far older than herself. But then I was forgetting that for all her tender years, she had grown up in a household that left very little room for innocence.

“Come,” she said, rising from the bench. “I have an adorable new monkey I want to show you and you will stay for supper, of course. I will be desolate if you do not.”

More likely she would be bored and lonely. Until her marriage, and its consummation, by agreement not to occur until a year hence, Lucrezia lived as did all young women of high rank, sequestered in a beautiful cage. Because of the ambitions of her father, she had to guard her every word and look even from her own ladies. I was one of the very few of her acquaintance with whom she could experience the freedom to be herself.

Her tacit acknowledgment of this was flattering, of course, hinting as it did at a friendship of equals that ignored the very real differences between us. A lesser mind than my own might have been gratified by it. But I saw past myself to a young woman, alone and anxious, whom I was, by virtue of my distinctly unvirtuous profession, engaged to protect.

“I would be delighted to stay,” I said, which was overstating the truth considerably but seemed worthwhile all the same for the smile it prompted from Lucrezia.

I stayed. I admired the monkey—a dirty little animal, in my opinion, better left to run wild wherever it is they come from. We ate supper together at a small table in her private chamber. Her ladies, to their consternation, were excluded.

Over partridge flavored with fennel and apples, I teased, “You know there will be great speculation as to why you insisted on dining privately with one of my peculiar calling.”

We had, by then, drunk a fair amount of wine, enough so that we both giggled at the prospect of what the gossips would say … or were already saying. It was all a little blurred.

“They will wonder,” Lucrezia ventured as she sucked on a partridge wing, “if I am seeking your professional advice. Perhaps I want to know how to deal with my soon-to-be husband if he proves less than pleasing.”

She had drunk as much as had I, I swear, yet for just a moment her gaze was disconcertingly sober. And serious.

“Are you asking me how to be rid of a tiresome husband?” I asked, half jokingly, praying that she could not possibly intend any such thing. She wasn’t even wed yet. Surely she could not already contemplate the need to free herself from matrimony’s bonds?

But she was Borgia’s daughter, as I would do well to remember.

“Of course not,” she said quickly. “I have only the greatest affection for Giovanni, or I’m sure that I will once I finally meet him. It is merely that one hears things. That there are ways to prevent children from coming, ways to render a man so that he cannot perform, and even ways to—”

She broke off then, perhaps seeing from my expression that she should go no further.

“I have disturbed you, dear Francesca,” she said as she refilled my glass. We were entirely alone, without even servants.

“Believe me,” she said with all apparent sincerity, “I would not upset you for the world.”

Say it was the wine, if you will, but I say it was the memory of Lucrezia as a little child, toddling toward me in perfect trust, that was as a balm to the spirit of one set apart from all others by the darkness she had only just begun to recognize within herself.

“There are ways to accomplish all sorts of ends,” I said. “Obviously they exist and I know of them, or I would be of no use to your father.”

Such were the remnants of her innocence that she flushed and for a moment could not meet my gaze.

Such was her strength of purpose—or perhaps her desperation—that she overcame her qualms and looked at me squarely.

“If I ever need to know what they are, will you tell me?”

What would Giovanni Sforza have given to know that his betrothed had asked such a question?

What more would he have given to know my answer?

“I will do whatever is needed to keep you safe.”

8

I lingered awhile longer in Lucrezia’s company but declined her invitation to stay the night. By then, I was so exhausted that I barely felt able to put one foot in front of the other. Instead, I indulged and hired a sedan chair to convey me back to my apartment.

Only one last task remained to me before I could tumble gratefully into bed and hope no nightmare visited me. Stopping at Portia’s door with the basket of cherries I had filched for her, I raised my hand to knock only to discover that the door swung open at my slightest touch. From beyond, in the darkness of the apartment, I heard a faint moan.

I set the basket of cherries down outside the door and entered cautiously. Uppermost in my mind was the thought that if whoever had been behind the attack on Lux had come looking for me, Portia might have gotten in his way.

I slipped a hand beneath my overdress to grasp the knife worn in a leather sheath near my heart. The blade was a gift from Cesare, who gave it to me because of what he insisted was my known propensity for getting into trouble. I have no notion how he came by such an idea but on several nights when we were both a little tipsy and temporarily sated with lovemaking, he had instructed me in the knife’s use. I will not distract you with the image of him, naked, by candlelight, demonstrating the proper way to gut a man, but I will say that he claimed I showed alarming aptitude.

Closing around the hilt, my fingers trembled. I almost called out to the
portatore
but before I could, a movement to my left alerted me to danger. I turned, the knife drawn, and saw in the obscurity of the shuttered room the shape of a man coming stealthily but swiftly toward me. I had only a quick, blurred impression of him—taller than myself, broad through the shoulders, agile. The cold sheen of steel in his hand blocked out all else.

The attacker came closer, emerging out of the gloom. I caught a quick glimpse of a young face grimly set and then …

I was no longer myself save so far as I am the darkness and the darkness is me. As a wave will surge up suddenly out of a storm, driven by unseen forces deep below, so did the darkness awaken within me. It came with irresistible fury sweeping away all else. The woman I can pretend to be vanished beneath the ravenous hunger I could neither deny or defeat.

I heard the measured beat of my heart resounding as a solemn cadence deep within me. The dim light rippled as though I could see the faintest movement of the air. I pivoted on one foot, instinctively mimicking what Cesare had taught me, and thrust out my arm, the elbow locked in place exactly as I had been instructed. In the throes of the darkness, bright clarity beckoned. I was above and beyond fear in a realm where nothing existed save for the single, perfect moment of release.

I saw my hands and the knife that had become an extension of them as though both were far removed from me and I no more than a spectator observing a contest, the outcome of which seemed already decided. Certainly, I experienced no hesitation as I plunged the blade into the soft tissue of the lower belly and felt the echo of its entry reverberate up my arms.

The man made a strangled sound, almost a grunt, more of surprise than pain. With both hands still clasping the hilt, I drove the knife upward, digging the razor-sharp edge through skin and muscle. Dark blood gushed from the ripping wound. My victim howled and grabbed for my throat only to miss when, instead of trying to elude him, I thrust in even closer, as a butcher will the better to split a carcass.

So much blood, hot and rank with the stench of copper, flowing over my hands, my arms, spraying my face, pooling at my feet. So many screams but none my own, for the darkness within me had burst all bounds, fed by a fierce elation that blotted out all else.

A neighbor, entering the building, heard what was happening. He moved out shortly thereafter, before I had an opportunity to speak with him, but, as I pieced it together, he summoned the patrol, which took one look and retreated, calling for the nearest condottierri. Vittoro was still in the barracks when the summons came. Recognizing the address as my own, he led the guard. I will not speculate about what they confronted when they burst into the room save to say that none of those men, excepting Vittoro, has ever looked me in the eye since. As for me, I was lost in the red womb of death where light does not penetrate and conscience, mercifully, does not exist.

When next I recalled myself, I was sitting in a chair in my own salon. Minerva was nearby, observing me. Looking at her, I was surprised to see that her fur was white, not gray as I had presumed. The discovery of the kitten’s true color assumed the utmost importance in my mind. I concentrated on it to the exclusion of all else and was still mulling it over when Vittoro touched my shoulder gently.

“Francesca?”

I looked up, meeting his eyes, and memory returned. “Portia?”

He appeared relieved to have me back again, more fool he. “The
portatore
? She was beaten but she’ll recover. I spoke with her briefly. The trouble started when she opened the door to the man. He was there to ask about you, she was reluctant to answer, and apparently he thought he could persuade her.”

“Is he—?”

“Dead? Yes, he is. How are you feeling?”

I looked down at my hands, noting only a few lingering traces of blood around my nails. My overdress was gone; I never saw it again. I wore only my shift. There was no sign of the knife.

“I am very thirsty.”

Vittoro went away for a little time and returned with a goblet. I drank greedily. My hand shook on the cup, so that he had to hold it steady for me. When I was done, I let it go and sat back with a long sigh.

“Do you know who he was?” Vittoro asked. He had taken the stool beside me. I opened my eyes a slit and noted that he was watching me carefully.

“I barely saw his face.” The thought occurred to me that I should steel myself to look at what was left of the attacker. “I could—”