Blood & Beauty (4 page)

Cesare’s face is impassive as he reads. Not a twitch or a breath, even the eyelids lizard-still. From somewhere in the gloom comes a cooing noise; something willing and lovely is turning over, beginning to wake. Too late Pedro remembers the order to keep his eyes down. He snaps his head to the floor. The cooing subsides. He waits. And waits.

Then, without his hearing any footsteps, Cesare is in front of him again.

‘You will never deliver a sweeter letter in your life,’ he says, his voice now loud enough to be heard far outside the room.

From the courtyard below Michelotto lets out a howling whoop.

‘Oh, my lord. I knew… I mean… I hoped.’ Pedro falls to his knees. It is a less painful position than staying on his feet.

‘Oh no, soldier,’ Cesare laughs. ‘Not me. Not yet. Keep your devotion for your new holy father.’

Pedro pulls himself up, covering his own embarrassment. ‘You have a reply to go back?’

Cesare studies him through half-closed eyes. ‘When could you be ready?’

‘Now, sire. I am ready now.’

‘You, perhaps, but your horse will die under you.’

‘I… I can take another.’

‘Ha. You are keen to serve.’

‘With my life,’ he says, slapping his arm over his chest, the drama of the gesture undermined by the explosion of dust that it raises. ‘With my life.’

‘That will not be needed quite yet, I think.’ And there is amusement, though no smile.

The sweet pigeon coo comes again. In the corner of the room the gloom has lifted to show a bed, a tumble of covers and a glimpse of rising flesh. ‘My lord?’ followed by a silvery laugh, like a small wave breaking on to a sandy beach.

Cesare glances behind him, then puts his arm on the young man’s shoulder and walks both of them out of the room, closing the door behind them.

‘Michelotto?’

In the courtyard below Michelotto is grinning ear to ear, his face made even uglier by joy. Other doors off the courtyard are opening, half-clothed men emerging, rubbing their eyes, half awake when they should be asleep.

‘Tell Carlo he rides to Rome within the hour.’

The servants, a few older men and younger women, hover in the shadows. The Spanish dialect is not so far from their Tuscan tongue that they cannot decipher insults from praise, but they have made it their business to understand neither until they are told directly. The management of Cesare Borgia’s household is a subtle art.

‘Do I tell him why?’

Cesare nods. And for the first time a smile breaks his lips.

Michelotto takes in a lungful of air. ‘Christendom has a new pope!’ he yells in Italian, in a voice to carry halfway through the city. ‘Rodrigo Borgia, Vice-Chancellor and Cardinal of Valencia, is elected. And everyone in this house serves his best-loved son.’

As Cesare walks down the stairs the men go crazy with joy. Many of them had their money as well as their ambitions on the outcome and they will be drinking the profits for weeks. At the bottom of the stairs, Cesare and Michelotto face each other without moving for a moment, then Cesare opens his arms and they embrace, a bear hug that takes the breath out of both of them. The Borgia is a head and a half taller than his swarthy henchman, his features as regular as the other’s are crooked. Beauty and the beast, some of the men have been known to call them, though never to their faces.

‘So?’

‘We go to Spoleto.’

There is a second of hesitation. ‘Not Rome?’

Cesare flicks his eyes to the ground. Whatever it is, this is not the time for it.

‘And the Palio?’

‘There will be others.’

‘What about the girl?’

‘Send her back to Pisa with a full purse. Make it big enough so that the next time that sap Giovanni de’ Medici comes knocking she will say she is spoken for. Come, I need food and pen and paper. See to the mount and the messenger. What’s his name?’

‘Pedro Calderón.’

‘Right,’ he says, calling more loudly as he moves across the courtyard. ‘And make sure you treat the rider as well as his horse.’

Michelotto turns, expecting to find the boy somewhere on the stairs, drinking in the praise. No sign. He glances up to the second floor. Propped up against the wall next to Cesare’s closed door, the young Pedro Calderón is asleep on his feet.

Rome: a city born from the milk of a suckling wolf. Rome: the centre of the strongest empire the world has ever known. Rome: birthplace of the Holy Mother Church. Rome: the very word paints pictures of splendour and wonders.

The reality, as any number of visiting pilgrims will testify, is a miserable disappointment: not so much a great city as small islands of wealth poking their heads up amid a sea of festering slums and wilderness. It is history that is to blame. History, which had made the city imperial, had gone on to rip out its innards and leave the remains for the jackals and the vultures to feed on. Centuries of war and neglect have eaten like deep frost into the very structure of living: with no fresh water, no sewage system and precious little employment except the burying of its dead, much of the population had fled or bled away, with such government as there was undermined by the tribal violence of a few great families.

When other Italian cities – Florence with her cloth and Venice with her ships – were fusing wealth and scholarship in the great rebirth of classical culture, Rome was still waking from the nightmare of the great papal schism. The return of the papacy from Avignon seventy years ago had brought with it the promise of a better future: cardinals, bishops, papal lawyers, secretaries, copiers, ambassadors, diplomats, all with households to be fed and watered.

By the time young Rodrigo Borgia arrived here at the age of twenty-five, there were already clear signs of progress: men and horses were moving through the streets with less fear of injury from gangs of thugs or falling masonry, and Church officials with patronage to dispense and appearances to keep up had spawned an industry of cloth merchants, tailors and jewellers. As the young Borgia climbed the rungs of Church power, so came further changes: a new bridge over the Tiber after the old one crushed a multitude of pilgrims, an edict cleaning away centuries of unauthorised building to create new thoroughfares and markets. And, most wonderful of all, the mending of a hundred subterranean water pipes, so that what was once the greatest fresh-water system in the known world could at least offer its citizens an occasional fountain to drink from or, at a cost, siphon water into the new palaces that the papal officials were eagerly building, each bigger, richer and more fashionable than the last. Rodrigo had benefited like all the rest, but he had also been part of it, since as Vice- Chancellor it became his job, through the selling of offices and other imaginative taxation, to keep the money flowing: Church wealth and city growth rising entwined out of the fertile soil of corruption.

This then is Borgia Rome; a city where a traveller entering the gates must still cross acres of country before he reaches the centre, where animals still outnumber citizens, goats and cattle grazing the imperial ruins, their insistent teeth pulling weeds – and mortar – from between the stones of history. A city still struggling with a chasm of hardship between rich and poor, still ripped apart by gross family violence. But also a place of growing magnificence and confidence where, for the first time in centuries, the future no longer looks bleaker than the past, and where the new pope has chosen for himself a name designed to foster a belief in magnificence again.

Alexander the great… Alexander the warrior…

His first job as head of the Church is to dispatch a number of errant souls to eternal judgement. The mayhem following the old pope’s death has delivered hundreds of corpses to the morgue and the city has grown accustomed to lawlessness. He increases the Papal Guard, makes it illegal to buy or sell arms without a papal licence and speeds up the judging process. When caught, many of the wrongdoers are strung up from gallows built in the ashes of their own houses, smoke plumes of summary justice rising high into the air.

To show that he is fair as well as ruthless, he personally inspects the city jail, then throws open the great salon of the Vatican palace one day a week to take petitions from ordinary citizens. The people flock inside: it is a long time since they have had a pope able to sit upright on his throne, let alone one so glowing with health and energy. Clothed in lustrous velvet (and a cap which fits his large head perfectly), he listens, deliberates, fine-picks the arguments and delivers his summations: a Solomon as well as an Alexander, with a voice as resonant as a church bell. Even those who lose come out satisfied.

The heavier labour he leaves to others: mules, carts, servants bowed under the weight of tapestries, bedsteads, chests of gold plate and majolica and great coats-of-arms of the Borgia bull. As his old palace empties from one door, it fills up through another. Cardinal Ascanio Sforza is the new vice-chancellor and the office of the job will now become his home.

Those he cannot win with favours he woos with good behaviour. In the first weeks the Vatican sees no instant invasion of Spanish freeloaders as was feared. Most particularly, his adored children are noticeable by their public absence. Instead the talk is all of the integrity of the Holy See, the banishing of corruption and his intention to abide by the wishes of the College of Cardinals. Old enemies are wrong-footed, and those ambassadors and diplomats who barely two weeks before had been damning him as a crude and venal manipulator now risk falling into hyperbole to do justice to the wonders of this new reign.

His coronation helps. How could it not? It’s the party the Borgias have been waiting to throw for thirty years. After ten days of intense preparation, the day begins soon after dawn inside the great barn of old St Peter’s Basilica, where all those with the money or the influence cram themselves in, craning their necks to watch as an army of peacock cardinals make public obeisance, prostrating themselves at the Pope’s feet, kissing first his shoes, then his hand and then his mouth.

The Vatican square afterwards is, in contrast, a battleground: squadrons of city troops, archers and Turkish horsemen jostling alongside the retinues of bishops, cardinals and city dignitaries, each one ablaze in their family colours, the flags of their coats-of-arms somersaulting through the air to the heartbeat of drums. Finally, when everyone is gathered and pointing in the same direction, the procession moves across the river over Ponte Sant’ Angelo, led by the Papal Guard, the morning sun crashing off their polished shields, winding their way through the city and countryside towards the Cathedral of St John Lateran at the southern gate.

The Borgia appetite for theatre reaches new heights: along the route great arches garlanded with flowers have appeared, as if by sorcery, during the night. Free food and wine flow from different staging-posts and to counter the scorching heat the dirt roads have been doused with water. Useless, of course. By mid-afternoon everyone is half blinded and choked by the dust and people are passing out under the hammer of the sun. Still, the crowd goes wild wherever he appears: a big man on an even bigger white horse. His smile never wavers: Alexander VI, Sovereign Pontiff, Vicar of Christ, Supreme Lord of Rome and the Papal States and guardian of all human souls, his face bright with sweat, showers blessings on each and all of them. Rome’s new pope is having the time of his life and wants everyone to join in.

Long after the wine runs out, people remain drunk on the memory.

‘The city was awake all night, my lord. Even the stars in the sky were celebrating.’

All this and more Cesare learns, not only from the letters which arrive regularly from his postal service, but also from the lips of the young man whose exclusive job it is now to bring them, and whose acceptance into the fold has encouraged him to try his hand at poetry in order to serve his master better.

‘“Antony was not received with as much splendour by Cleopatra as Pope Alexander by the Romans.” I heard those very words said by a nobleman in the crowd as they passed. And leading it all, our Holy Father… Oh, his mount, my lord, it was the most beautiful of creatures, seventeen hands or more, white as new snow with a step like a dancer. The bridle, I swear, was solid gold and—’

‘I dare say the people had no time to notice who was riding.’ Cesare, who might knock another down for taking liberties, has taken an unexpected liking to this eager young man.

‘Oh, no, sire, the sovereign pope, your father, rode like a conqueror. I heard one man liken him to the great lord of Revelation himself.’

‘“And I saw heaven open, and behold, a pale horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True and in righteousness.”’ Cesare watches the young man’s jaw drop. ‘I am a man of the Church, Calderón. It is my business to know the scriptures. Tell me again about the moment when he swooned. How many people saw that?’

‘Oh, it was nothing. He had come ten miles, maybe more, and half of Rome was fainting with the heat and the dust and the crush. If anything it made the people understand that he was human. He recovered soon enough. And when he did those around called out even louder for him. As if his very glance would bring them a blessing.’ He hesitates. ‘Or that is what I heard, for I could not be in all places at once.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Michelotto mutters. There is a second’s silence, until Cesare laughs and relief breaks out like sweat on the boy’s face.

In his enforced exile, this fast-footed young Borgia is restless for entertainment. He sits, draped over a chair in one of the state rooms of the castle of Spoleto, perched on the hill above the city, a merciful cross-breeze moving in through the windows to counter what, even in September, remains a suffocating heat. In front of him sits a chest, its elaborately carved lid cluttered with maps and papers.

Pedro Calderón has earned his spurs these last weeks, making no fewer than seven return journeys carrying news from both the Vatican and the house of Adriana de Mila. It is a longer ride than Siena, for Spoleto is deep into the hills of Umbria and by the time he urges the horse up through the winding cobbled streets towards the castle gate they are both in a lather of sweat. Still, it is worth it. Now when he arrives, he is shown straight into Cesare’s private apartments, moving past a row of people outside clutching petitions. More often than not when he comes into his presence Michelotto is with him, for he acts as his master’s bodyguard as well as his chief of men. In the kitchen, Pedro has heard, they have taken on new poison tasters. Already it is a palace of two tongues: one for the men and women who come from Spoleto itself and another for those who are intimate only in Catalán. What was once the language of secrecy is now the language of power.

‘I… I fear I have not done it justice, sire. You should have been there yourself.’

‘Oh, I am sure the Orsini and Colonna families were all shouting for me. “Where is the Pope’s bastard, the new Archbishop of Valencia, so we can squeeze his balls to congratulate him on his rise?”’

They all laugh now and Pedro feels a glow that makes his aching thighs and thick throat seem a mere inconvenience.

‘It is a great appointment, Your Excellency. No one can deny it.’

‘Careful there, Calderón,’ Michelotto growls sweetly. ‘You get your nose too brown and the smell of it will reach others. Then you will be of less use to us.’

The boy’s eyes stay bright, but the laughter stops in his throat. Michelotto finds that even funnier.

‘What of the Florentine contingent?’ Cesare is kinder. ‘Piero de’ Medici was there with his cardinal brother, yes?’

‘Yes. Yes. Though I… I heard talk that there was trouble in Florence.’

‘It is more than talk. His father’s shoes sit like boats on him. Not that his sap brother Giovanni would manage any better! Meanwhile, I see you bring no letter from my own dear brother,’ he says, a thin layer of ice coating the endearment. ‘Perhaps Juan is too busy celebrating to find the time to write.’

‘I – I don’t know, my lord.’

‘But he is not to be found at Adriana’s palace?’

Calderón shakes his head. The Pope’s women had been there though. They had been in the room just before him, of that he is sure: the air had been heady with perfume, roses and frangipani, and the rush of their rolling skirts as they left had caused the dust to dance in the sunlight. The first time he had gone to collect letters he had sat on a chair where a strand of long fair hair lay carelessly across the arm. A cloak of beaten gold, so the gossip has it. He had wound it round his finger when the aunt was not looking. Later he had tied it around the clutch of letters, to keep his journey safe, but it rubbed off in his pouch somewhere on the road.

‘What about the word on the street?’

‘On the street? About your brother?’ He hesitates. ‘On the street they… they say that the Duke of Gandia cuts a fine dash and that the tailors and jewellers are flourishing under his patronage.’ They also say he is enjoying a juicy young bride while her half-baked husband is not looking. But it is hard to gauge what he is employed to find out and what to forget. ‘Certainly he is not much at home these days, my lord.’

‘Indeed.’ Cesare gives a mirthless laugh. There is nothing he could be told about Juan that he doesn’t know anyway. With barely eighteen months between their births, they were in conflict before they had the language to express it. Perhaps if Juan had climbed off his father’s lap sooner he might have found a way to stand up to his older brother. There are moments when Cesare wonders if he isn’t still there; it would surely explain his father’s indulgence towards a young man whose bad behaviour makes enemies faster than old meat breeds maggots.

‘You should know that the household will be moving soon, Calderón.’

‘What! You are called to Rome?’

‘Not us. No, the house of Adriana de Mila.’ Cesare glances at Michelotto. The other man purses his lip, as if to show disquiet at the direction of the conversation. ‘They are to live in the Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico. You know it?’

Pedro nods. He would probably say he did even if he didn’t, but in recent weeks he has made it his business to know all the buildings close to the centre of power. It is one of the newer palazzi, full of sweeping lines fluent in a classical language he does not understand but knows to be all the rage among those rich enough to follow fashion. More important than its architecture is its situation: directly to the left of the Vatican palace, so close that it is rumoured that a person does not need to step out of one to get into the other. ‘It is Cardinal Zeno’s house?’