Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (11 page)

You see the problem? If the goal is simply to kill, there are no end of ways to do it. But to kill without raising suspicion, that is another matter entirely. I could say more, but I fear I am telling you too much. God forbid I give you occasion for sin.

My point is that if there was any thought that the Pope’s death was unnatural, Borgia’s reputation was such that he would come under immediate suspicion. He was of an age when this was his last chance for the papacy, and there were others, as strong as he, who would contend for it. No matter what incentives he might offer for their support, there was a line beyond which they would not go. Killing the Pope was on the furthest, darkest side of it.

My imagination would not venture there. Try though I did, I could not begin to fathom what my father had done, assuming he was actually responsible for Innocent’s recent illness. I could not discount entirely the possibility that it had been a coincidence.

Which would not spare me the Cardinal’s demands. They came shortly after nones—the priests again, did they do nothing but chant? Although he had been gone only a few hours, His Eminence was not a man to arrive or depart anywhere without due notice. The household turned out at the first shouts of the escort announcing his approach.

I went along to get a sense of his mood. It was not good. Amid the sharp ring of hooves on cobblestones, the jangle of harnesses, the clash of shields as the guardsmen sprang to attention, and the babble of voices from servants, retainers, and hangers-on, Il Cardinale was a dark and glowering presence. He threw his reins to the cowering stable boy and stomped off toward his apartments without a word to anyone.

Moments later, I was summoned. The Cardinal was still being divested of his heavy garments when I arrived. I hung back, gazing into the middle distance, until he was decently attired. He waved off his valet, accepted a cold, wet cloth to put at the back of his neck, and grunted in my direction.

“You saw the Jewess.”

It was not a question and I did not take it as such. Nodding, I said, “As you instructed, Eminence.”

Borgia took a long swallow from a goblet of chilled wine and nodded. “What did she tell you?”

We were not alone. One of his secretaries was present, the valet was still in the room, the anxious steward, Renaldo, was hovering nearby, and likely there were others just out of sight. Men such as Borgia tend to take the services they receive so much for granted as to be oblivious to the people who provide them. My silence was a pointed reminder that they had ears.

The Cardinal waved a hand and, like a magus, made them all
vanish. They might as well have evaporated as rain does on hot stone, so quickly were they gone.

“Well, then?” he asked.

“There are no records. I am certain my father stopped committing anything to paper months ago.”

Borgia gave a quick, sharp nod. “What else did she tell you?”

I had thought long and hard about what I would say to him. Do not ask me why I had decided to protect Sofia Montefiore; I could not tell you. Perhaps it was simply because she had been my father’s friend.

“She told me that His Holiness intends to issue an edict calling for the expulsion of all Jews from Christendom, or, failing that, their deaths.”

I had not expected him to be surprised and I was not disappointed. Borgia merely nodded and went on. “Anything more?”

“That was all.” I had to account somehow for the time I had spent alone with Sofia, so I added, “As you may imagine, she went on and on about it.”

“And said nothing about what your father was doing? About his work?”

“I am sorry, Eminence, but she knows nothing about my father’s activities. That was very clear.” It was a lie, of course. Sofia knew what my father was seeking. She was an intelligent woman. It would not have been difficult for her to reach the same conclusion that I had. But if I told the Cardinal as much, he would see her for the danger she was, a means of implicating him in the planned murder of a pope. Sofia could be made to disappear with the greatest ease.

Borgia looked . . . how? Frustrated to be sure, but also in some measure relieved, believing his secrets were still safe.

Before he could resume, I jumped in. “Eminence, I am puzzled
as to how my father learned of the edict.” For certain, no one in the Pope’s confidence would have discussed such a matter with the poisoner serving the great rival for Innocent’s crown.

I give the Cardinal credit, he did not hesitate. “I told him.”

“May I ask why?”

Borgia reclined in a large armchair, stretched out his legs, and regarded me almost benignly. I say almost because nothing involving the Cardinal was ever truly benign.

“Why do you think I did?” he asked.

He was playing me, of course, but there was more to it than that. Despite having lived in his household for ten years, I was still something of a stranger to him, at least in my newest incarnation as his poisoner. He would want to test my mettle.

Slowly, I said, “I think you knew of my father’s friendship with Sofia Montefiore.” Which was certainly more than I had done. “You judged that he would care about the fate of the Jews and would warn them about the edict.”

“Why would I want them to be warned?”

Why indeed? Borgia had no love for the Jews. Why would he care if they lived or died?

The answer came to me in an instant, and when it did, I wondered that I had not seen it sooner, it was that obvious. To survive, much less prosper in the world we know, power is essential. Hadn’t I gone to the greatest lengths to secure what I could of it in order to avenge my father? How much further would one such as Rodrigo Borgia go?

“The Jews are not without wealth,” I said. The conditions in the ghetto were not the inevitable result of poverty. They came rather from the strict limits placed on where and how the Jews could live and work. Left to their own devices, they were more than able to earn their way.

Ultimate power, of the kind Borgia sought, required money. A great deal of money.

“You offered them your protection.” I could not begin to imagine what amount of wealth would have to change hands for the Cardinal to extend his benevolence over so despised a people, but I was certain it would have to be immense.

“
If
I am pope,” he said. “If I am not, there is nothing I can do for them. With the proper financing, I can buy the papacy.”

“Once the Pope is dead.” I felt that I had to remind him of this small condition that must be met first.

Il Cardinale smiled, as though at a student he had feared might be slow but who instead was proving to be apt. “Yes, Francesca, once Innocent is dead.”

My palms were damp and I was certain that my voice would betray my state. I took a breath, willing myself to steadiness. “It would have been one thing for my father to warn the Jews about the edict. But the death of a pope—”

Borgia took a sip of his wine and smiled. Without any change in his expression, nothing to warn me, he said, “Your father was
converso
. Did you not know that?”

I stared at him dumbfounded, unsure at first that I had heard him correctly. I
knew
my father. I had been raised by him, a motherless only child. He had shaped my knowledge of the world, given me what wisdom I possessed, and always treated me with what I was certain was impeccable honesty.

Except that he had never mentioned his friendship with a Jewess or her dead husband, or his desire to protect the despised tribe of Israel.

Even so, it could not possibly be true that my father was one of
them
. A Jew who had converted to Christianity. A suspect turncoat
imagined to be slinking about unholy rituals while pretending to be one of us. A candidate for the flames that devour heretics.

“I don’t believe you.” My voice was shrill and taut but I could not help that. I had been dealt a blow I could scarcely fathom.

Borgia didn’t bother to take offense. He merely shrugged. “For all I know, his conversion may have been real. Stranger things have happened. He was born a Jew in Milan. He fell in love with a Christian girl, your mother, and converted for her sake. But he remained a believer after her death and he raised you in the true faith.” His gaze narrowed. “Or so he assured me.”

Swiftly, I said, “I am a Christian.” Not pious, not exemplary, but not one of
them,
either. Not one of the Others, scapegoats for all our failings and our ills.

My profession of faith did not seem to matter one way or another to this prince of Holy Mother Church. “If you say so,” Borgia told me dismissively. “Whatever else you are, you are your father’s daughter.”

And he expected me to take up my father’s task. But if Borgia was to be believed—and I did not for a moment actually believe him, not then—my father had a motivation I lacked. As a Jew, former or otherwise, he would have had a natural inclination to prevent the extermination of his people. Of course, I didn’t relish the thought of their suffering and death. But neither was I prepared to imperil my immortal soul on their behalf.

“I know what you want,” I said, thinking it was far more likely that Il Cardinale was simply lying about my father to secure my cooperation. “I understand completely, but so must you understand: To kill a pope and survive, there would have to be no suspicion that the death was unnatural. I have no idea how to accomplish that. Even if I did, I would be courting eternal damnation.”

“For killing Innocent?” Borgia looked amused. “For cleansing the earth of that depraved fool? Oh, yes, the angels will weep at his passing.”

He rose and walked over to the high windows looking out toward the river. Transparent curtains billowed in the strengthening breeze. Another storm was brewing, perhaps greater than all the others that had swept Rome in this season of upheaval and disorder.

When he turned back to me, he looked not angry as I had feared but merely calm, as though he had come to a decision within himself. Almost gently, he said, “In memory of your father’s faithful service, I will give you time to consider your decision. Do so carefully, Francesca.”

I was foolish enough to believe him and, being a fool, departed with grateful speed to hide myself in my rooms and contemplate the enormity of what he asked.

The summons came a few hours later. A harsh knock on my door, the hard smack of it being thrust open, and then a light above me as I woke, befuddled, not understanding what was happening.

“You must come now, signorina,” a familiar voice said.

“Vittoro—?”

“Put this on.” He held out my robe for me.

“Why?” I asked, my thinking slowed by surprise and dread. I had denied the Cardinal. What punishment did he intend?

Vittoro did not reply. He merely thrust the robe toward me and said again, “Now.”

I went; really, what choice did I have? Hustled through the dark hallway, down a flight of steps, down another, Vittoro’s hand firm on the small of my back, I struggled against the terror threatening to engulf me. Dimly, I was aware of other guards, a small contingent
accompanying us. Did they think I would attempt to flee? At the thought of that, a panic-stricken laugh began to bubble up in my throat. I clamped a hand over my mouth and kept going—down and down and down.

I had been in the cellars of the palazzo where the storerooms were located many times. But I knew, in the way we know things we do not wish to acknowledge, that there were other levels lower still. Levels where it was said traces of our ancient Roman ancestors had been found and where enemies of the Cardinal were sent to contemplate their sins.

With the realization of where we were going, I did try to turn around, but Vittoro was having none of that.

“I am sorry, Francesca,” he said, very low so that only I could hear him. “But the Cardinal would not be dissuaded.”

I was going to die, quickly if I was lucky, otherwise alone and starving in the dark. I was a fool to have crossed swords with Borgia—a poor benighted fool soon to be praying for death.

The stone staircase ended in a low corridor that ran off into darkness. One of the guards went ahead, carrying a torch. We followed. At the end of the narrow passageway, a cavernous room suddenly appeared, its arched ceiling looming far above. Water dripped from the stones, reminding me that we were near the river. Rats scurried in the shadows but I scarcely noticed them. The torches set in iron brackets along the walls illuminated a nightmarish scene that drove all else from my fear-haunted brain.

Why had I ever read Dante? Why wasn’t romantic Boccaccio or lyric Petrarch enough for me? Why was I not content with the masterful poems of Lorenzo de’ Medici, prince and visionary, dead these two months—of poison, it was said. Why did I have to put into my
mind the writhing, tortured sufferings of the damned so vividly evoked by the author of
La Divina Commedia
?

The torments of Purgatory and Hell combined seemed to spring to life before me there in the torture chamber of Rodrigo Borgia. Red-hot coals glowed in braziers set on high tripods beside an array of instruments designed to wrest the greatest possible pain and suffering from a frail human vessel. I saw in quick succession racks, hooks, chains, and spike-filled metal coffins, but they passed in a blur for what I saw most, what I could not rip my eyes from, was the naked man stretched out on a rack, screaming hoarsely.

“Mother of God, save me! Jesus, save me! Mother of God, save me! Jesus—”

He broke off, choking on his own blood. His face was a swollen mass of bruises, his upper body and limbs webbed by cuts deep enough to show bone; his legs, arms, and shoulders were grotesquely arranged, having been pulled apart and dislocated. He had been racked, beaten, burned, and castrated, the last wound crudely cauterized so that he could not bleed to death. Maddened by pain and fear, he thrashed helplessly, his chest rising and falling in rapid spasms.

One of the inquisitors bent down, cupped the back of the man’s head in his hands and lifted him enough so that he could see me.

“Tell the lady,” the torturer demanded. “Tell her what you told us.”