Madonna of the Seven Hills (25 page)

Angelo was dead
. He had embraced his sister for the last time and told her that she must always thank the Virgin for her beauty and remember that through it she was able to lay the foundations of her family’s greatness.

He did not know what was happening beyond the palace walls. He did not know what was happening within them. She was never free from Orsino. He was full of demands; he insisted on his rights; and he would take no refusal.

She herself was a sensual woman and as such was beginning to find a certain excitement in her encounters with Orsino.

Alexander would be furious, but she was powerless. She was a prisoner in Capodimonte at the mercy of a husband who had been kept away from her for years. Alexander was an accomplished lover, Orsino something of a boor, but the boor provided a stimulating change; and it amused her to
submit to what was almost rape and yet was legitimate behavior for a married pair.

She was sorry Lucrezia was not with her, so that she might have confided in her.

As for the Orsini family, they naturally supported their kinsman. Orsino was within his rights in his demands, they declared. Her lover? They could laugh now at an old man in decline. He would not last long.

Adriana had changed too. “I must support my son,” she declared. “It is the most natural thing in the world that he should insist on his wife’s living with him.”

News of what
had happened eventually reached Alexander.

Never had anyone seen him so furiously angry as he was at that time. He paced up and down his apartments, threatening excommunications right and left. He would not leave Giulia in the hands of that boor, that cross-eyed idiot. She must be brought back to Rome at once.

Why had she been allowed to leave Pesaro? What of his daughter? Was she conniving at this plot against him?

He wrote to Lucrezia. It was bad enough, he wrote, that a daughter should be so lacking in filial love that she showed no wish to return to her father, but that she should disobey him passed all understanding. He was bitterly disappointed in one whom he had loved beyond everything on Earth. She was deceitful and indifferent to him, and the letters she was writing to her brother Cesare were not written in the same sly way as were those she wrote to him.

When Lucrezia heard thus from her father she was desperately unhappy.

There had always been quarrels between Giovanni and Cesare, but never between her and the other members of her family. And that her father should write to her in this way wounded her deeply.

Desperately lonely, she fell into a mood of melancholy. What had happened to the beloved family? They were all separated now. No wonder there was misunderstanding. Giovanni was in Spain, and Goffredo in Naples. Cesare was in Rome, wrapped up in his bitterness particularly now
that war threatened. And most dire tragedy of all, her father loved her so little that he could vent his anger, at Giulia’s betrayal, on her, his daughter Lucrezia.

She could only try to ease her sorrow by writing to her father. She implored him to believe that she had been unable to prevent Giulia’s leaving Pesaro, and that she had done all in her power to stop her going. Her letters to him were as loving, as tender and as truthful as those she wrote to Cesare. He could always be sure of her love and devotion. “I long to be,” she wrote, “at the feet of Your Beatitude, and I long to be worthy of your esteem, for if I am not I shall never know satisfaction and have no wish to live.”

When Alexander received this letter, he wept and kissed it tenderly.

“Why did I doubt my beloved girl?” he asked. “My Lucrezia, my little love. She will always be faithful to me. It is others who disobey and deceive.”

But what an unhappy man he was! The “demons of sensuality” were gnawing at him, and he could not shut out of his mind pictures of Giulia and the cross-eyed Orsino together.

The French fleet
had a speedy victory over the Neapolitans at Rapallo. The French armies crossed the Alps and the Italians found themselves outmatched from the start. These armies under the white banners of the Valois were advancing through Italy. At Pavia Charles VIII found the poor half-demented Gian Galeazzo, the true Duke of Milan; and when his beautiful young wife Isabella threw herself at the feet of little Charles, the French King was so moved, because she was beautiful and had suffered so much, that he promised that he would do all in his power to restore her husband. However, Ludovico’s friends hastily administered a posset to the young Duke, and within a few days he was dead. Ludovico was then declared Duke of Milan.

The news was bad for the Italians. Ludovico decided not to fight, and welcomed the French invaders as they swept through his land. The great captain Virginio Orsini also put up no fight, but issued the command that all were to give way to the invaders.

There was only one who seemed prepared to take a stand against the French: Alexander, the Pope.

He was contemptuous of the Italians. “They are despicable,” he cried. “Good for nothing but parading in fine uniforms. The only weapons the French need to conquer Italy are pieces of chalk, that they may mark their billets.”

He was determined that he would stand out alone if necessary against all his enemies.

Once again, as he had at the time of the death of Calixtus, Alexander showed the world the stuff of which he was made. No one could but admire that calm dignity, that assurance that he could not fail though all the world came against him.

The French King,
Re Petito
as the Italians called him, for he was deformed and made a strange sight riding in the midst of his stalwart troops, was a little disturbed about attacking a man who had the courage of Alexander. It seemed to him that there was a touch of divinity about the Pope after all. He therefore turned aside from the repeated prayers of Alexander’s enemies in Italy to go ahead and depose him.

Harm must not come to the Pope from him, Charles decided; if it did, he might have the whole of Catholic France and Spain against him.

Cardinal della Rovere, Alexander’s old enemy, who had allied himself with the French King, riding beside him and declaring that the French had come to deliver Italy from the yoke of Alexander, was dismayed. He saw once again that his plans to step into Alexander’s shoes were to be foiled.

The French must pass through Rome on their way to the south, but Charles decided that all he would ask for in Rome was the Pope’s permission for transit through the Papal states.

Meanwhile Alexander remained firm. He would resist the French demands, he said; a tremor of fear ran through all those who had been assuring themselves that Alexander’s days of power were over. Adriana and the Orsinis in Capodimonte were the first to falter.

Adriana upbraided her son for disobeying the Holy Father, and other members of the Orsini family joined with her and urged Orsino to leave at once for his brigade and not risk infuriating Alexander further.

Consequently Giulia awoke one morning to find that the masterful manners of her husband had been only temporary, and that he had fled.

There came a letter for Giulia from the angry Pope.

“Perfidious and ungrateful Giulia! You tell us you cannot return to Rome without your husband’s permission. Though now we know both the wickedness of your nature and those who advise you, we can only suppose that you wish to remain where you are so that you may continue relations with that stallion of a husband.”

Giulia read the letter in alarm; the Pope had never written to her in quite the same manner before; her family were beginning to criticize her for having turned against her lover for her husband’s sake, and the husband, who had been so bold, had fled at the first sign that Alexander’s power was unshaken.

Trembling she held her daughter to her.

“We should never have left Rome,” she said.

“Shall we go to see my father?” asked the little girl. She had refused to call the squint-eyed Orsino, Father; Father, to her, was a glorious god-like creature, tall, commanding, in beautiful robes with a deep sonorous voice, caressing hands and comforting affection.

“We shall,” said Giulia, determination shining in her eyes. She laughed suddenly. After all, she was La Bella, she could win back all she had lost.

She sent a slave to ask Adriana to come to her at once.

“I am leaving for Rome,” she told her mother-in-law as soon as she appeared.

“For Rome! But the roads are unsafe. The French invaders may be anywhere … before we reach Rome.”

But Adriana was looking intently at her daughter-in-law, and Giulia realized that, dangerous as the road might be, it was even more dangerous to remain under the shadow of Alexander’s displeasure.

So Giulia, Adriana
and a small retinue set out from Capodimonte on their journey to Rome.

Giulia was in high spirits; so was Laura. Giulia was wondering how she could have been momentarily excited by the sudden masterful ways of Orsino who at the first hint of alarm had taken to his heels and fled. She was longing for reunion with her lover. Laura was prattling about
going home and seeing her father again; Adriana was silently praying that the Holy Father had not been so angry toward herself and Giulia that he would never have the same feelings for them again. They were all eagerness to reach Rome.

The journey was long and tedious; the weather was not good, as it was November; but the gaiety of Giulia was infectious, and it was a merry party which traveled along the road to Viterbo.

Suddenly Laura pointed and cried out that she could see houses ahead of them. They pulled up to look, and there sure enough on the horizon was the town of Viterbo.

“It will not be very long now,” cried Giulia. “More than half the journey is done. I shall write to His Holiness when we reach Viterbo and tell him that we are on the way.”

“Listen!” said Adriana.

“What was that?” asked Giulia.

“I thought I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs.”

They waited. They could hear nothing, and Giulia laughed at her mother-in-law. “You are nervous. Did you imagine Orsino was galloping after us to take us back by force?”

Laura began to cry at the thought. “I want to see my father.”

“And so you shall, my darling. Have no fear. We shall be with him shortly. Come, let us waste no more time but ride with all speed into Viterbo.”

They started off, but this time it was Giulia who fancied she heard the sound of galloping horses.

They stopped again. This time there was no mistake. Giulia looked fearfully at her little party, mostly women.

“Let us go on with all speed,” she said. “We do not know whom we might meet on these roads at such times.”

They put spurs to their horses but it was not long before one of the women cried out that cavalry were advancing upon them.

They rode desperately on but nearer and nearer came their pursuers, and they were almost a mile from Viterbo when they were surrounded.

Adriana’s lips moved in silent prayer; Giulia was horrified when she recognized the uniform of the French invaders.

It was a desperate moment as they were forced to stop while the men surrounded them, and Giulia felt several pairs of eyes fixed upon her, knowing too well what those looks meant.