Poison: A Novel of the Renaissance (34 page)

“Then she is a fool.”

Well, yes, she was, but to hear him state it so harshly was a shock.

Carefully, I said, “She has paid greatly for her foolishness.”

Borgia sighed and drank some of his wine. He set the goblet down before he spoke again.

“The child . . . do you know . . . was it a boy?”

Men always want sons, so it is said, and value them more highly than daughters. But Borgia had two sons, possibly three if you believe what their mother claimed, and he had older boys by a mistress in his younger days. But he had only one daughter.

“It was a girl,” I said gently.

He looked away but not before I saw the tears in his eyes.

I gave him what time I could before we had to return to the business at hand. “Morozzi must believe that you will blame her husband. He will be expecting you to strike him down and in the process, lose the Orsinis’ support for your election.”

Borgia’s expression was inscrutable. “He will also be expecting me to strike at you.”

A sudden image of the torture room under the palazzo sprang into my mind. I pushed it down as best I could.

“Yes, he will,” I said with a calmness that surprised me. With all that had happened, I felt almost numb.

“In fact, he may be counting on it,” I continued. “The conclave is due to start in two days—” A fact that caused me great concern as there had, as yet, been scant opportunity to plan how to keep Borgia safe within it.

“Four days,” he corrected. “The Curia has received a message from the patriarch of Venice. He is en route to Rome and begs us to delay the convocation until he can arrive. Given his age and the great respect in which he is held, it was agreed.”

I tried to remember what I knew of the patriarch, a man so elderly that mention of his name was usually accompanied by surprise
that he was still alive. If memory served, he was in his eighties and had waited for his cardinal’s red hat longer than any other prince of the Church, being named only in Innocent’s final days. That Maffeo Gherardo was even attempting the journey to Rome at his age was a surprise. That he expected to arrive in good order, if somewhat tardy, astonished me. However, I was happy to take a delay any way it came, assuming that I would be alive to make use of it.

“If Morozzi can manage to remove me from your service”—how delicately I described my imprisonment and likely death—“he will be that much closer to success.”

“Then you believe you can stop him?”

Did I? So far, the mad priest had been ahead of me with every step. I had escaped him at the
castel
only thanks to Vittoro and sheer luck. I believed that I had reasoned my way to his plan with Torquemada, but what if I was wrong? What if he had some other scheme in mind to prevent the Cardinal’s election? It was impossible to really know what was in so twisted a mind. I could only keep my eyes focused on the ultimate goal, Borgia’s elevation to the papacy. After that, God willing, there would be time to settle other scores with Morozzi, to which had to be added the death of Giulia’s baby.

“I have to try,” I said. “For all our sakes, you have to let me.”

Telling Borgia what he had to do was probably not the wisest course at that moment, but greater delicacy was beyond my reach just then. I waited . . . for him to explode in rage, call the guards, do whatever he chose to do.

For several moments, he said nothing, only sat in his chair looking lost in thought. Truly, I had never seen him so weary or dispirited. I was beginning to wonder if he meant to answer me at all when, from the shadows near the door, a too-familiar voice spoke.

“She’s right, you know,” Cesare said as he stepped into the light.

Borgia’s eldest son, the one he intended for the Church, was dressed for battle. He carried his helmet but still wore his breastplate of hammered steel. The sword belted at his waist lacked all adornment, being meant solely for killing. Beneath his armor, he wore austere, unrelieved black—shirt, doublet, hose, clothing chosen because it would not hinder him in combat. He could, when he chose, dress himself as extravagantly as any prince or prelate. But for the time I knew him, he always preferred to dress as what he was born to be—a warrior.

Borgia appeared to be expecting his son. He waved Cesare into the chair next to mine, filled another goblet, and slid it across to him.

Cesare drank, wiped his mouth, and said, “I got your message. Three hundred men-at-arms marched with me from Siena and I have two hundred more within easy reach. Fifty are here at the palazzo.
I’ve sent the rest into the city to search for that mad priest. Is there any word of him?”

These preparations for war did not surprise me; indeed, I was relieved by them. But I dreaded what was to come.

“Not yet,” Borgia said. “But something else has happened.”

Quietly, he related the events of the past few hours. I sat stiffly in my chair, waiting for the blame I was sure Cesare would rightly direct at me, but while he cast several glances in my direction, he did not speak until his father had finished.

“I am sorry about the child.” The proper sentiment having been expressed between men, Cesare passed by my manifest failing and went on. “Morozzi will know we are hunting him. Where will he look for sanctuary?”

“With Torquemada,” Borgia suggested so promptly as to leave no doubt that he hoped it was true. To take down two enemies in one fell stroke would be an auspicious beginning to the glorious papacy he anticipated.

I will pause here to say a word about the Grand Inquisitor. Undoubtedly, you have heard the rumors that Torquemada himself was descended from
conversi
. His followers—and make no mistake, he still has them—deny any such thing, but those in a position to know hold fast to the assertion that he had Jewish blood. They cite evidence that his grandmother was herself
converso,
having been born to a Jewish family in Castile.

We can speculate about the terrible pressures faced by
conversi,
especially after the uprising against them in Spain several decades past around the time of Torquemada’s birth, but that is a distraction I do not seek. Suffice it to say that I remain convinced that the Grand Inquisitor was a deeply troubled man who strove to protect himself—in
this life and the next—by basting his own guilt and fear onto those he consigned to the flames.

To return to the present circumstances, against the tightness in my chest born of mingled relief and regret, I said, “The Grand Inquisitor might give Morozzi shelter, but we have a friend among the Dominicans. If Morozzi goes to Torquemada, we will know of it.”

Cesare nodded. “Good, but what about della Rovere? Might Morozzi not go to him instead?”

At mention of his great rival for Peter’s Throne, Borgia looked thoughtful. “No doubt . . . but I suspect that as much as he may share Morozzi’s objectives, Giuliano will be cautious about being tainted by him. He will try to keep his distance while maneuvering for whatever advantage he can grasp.”

“He will be hard-pressed to find any,” Cesare said. “The Jews have done as they promised. The amount you agreed to is in place. You will have no problems, at least not with money.”

It was later said that the sum paid to Borgia by the Jews was no less than four hundred thousand silver ducats, an emperor’s ransom to buy safety of a sort for a despised people. I cannot swear that number is correct, but it is telling that the amount was large enough for Borgia to send Cesare to keep a close watch over its receipt.

It was also said that Borgia kept the money in Siena in the care of the Spannocchi rather than bringing it directly to Rome because he did not trust the Medici, who had long dominated banking not only in their native Florence but in the Eternal City as well. I cannot vouch for that, either, but I will say that if it was true, it was a sensible precaution on his part, considering the trouble they were to give him in the future. Even at that time, with the great Lorenzo newly dead, they were the most formidable of the noble families arrayed against the upstart Borgias.

“We have Sforza,” Borgia said. “He did not come cheap but we do have him.”

Cesare raised his goblet to his father in salute. “At what cost?”

When Borgia told him, I really did stop breathing. Truly, the Milanese cardinal had not surrendered, or perhaps merely deferred, his own papal aspirations cheaply. In addition to fifty thousand silver ducats and a host of benefices and offices that would pay him easily ten times as much, including the vice chancellorship, Sforza would become the new owner of Borgia’s pride and joy, his palazzo. There was no mention of a betrothal between Lucrezia and Sforza’s cousin, Giovanni, lord of Pesaro and Gradara, but I did not take that to mean it was not agreed to. Borgia would be unlikely to mention it to his son, who, as he was to demonstrate so amply later, disapproved of anyone Lucrezia might marry.

Cesare whistled softly. “If this gets out, the vultures will be circling, demanding equal payments.”

“They won’t get it or at least most won’t,” Borgia said with confidence. “Once the vote is seen to run in my favor, the rest will scramble for whatever they can get.”

If
the vote ran in his favor, but I was not about to say that. Indeed, I did as Benjamin had done and strove to be as inconspicuous as possible. How often did anyone outside La Famiglia have the opportunity to hear the master plotter and his prize pupil at work? I could learn more about strategy and tactics in an hour with Borgia
padre e figlio
than I might from prolonged study anywhere else.

The discretion required of a professional prevents me from revealing the specifics of what I heard that night. Let it suffice to say that Il Cardinale understood better than any man the utter greed and venality that drove the princes of Holy Mother Church. He knew them all, each and every one, probably better than they knew themselves.
What did each most desire? What did he fear? What did he lust after in the most secret realm of his heart? Decades of diligent, devoted effort had prepared him perfectly for the moment when he, alone among all the rest, would make the Throne of Saint Peter his own.

If God loves ruthless ambition and cold brilliance, truly He must have loved Rodrigo Borgia.

After an hour and more, during which father and son exchanged information and plotted their strategy aided by several flagons of wine, Cesare said, “Francesca is almost asleep.”

“I am not,” I claimed, but my voice was slurred, and in truth, I had drifted off for a moment or two.

“Take her to bed,” Borgia suggested, and Cesare appeared to consider it. He leaned over, took my hand, and raised it to his lips. His breath was warm, his gaze compelling. Time seemed to slow and for a moment, I was tempted. If a child’s life and the entire future of Christendom had not hung in the balance—

I pulled my hand away, prompting a sigh from him that I heard as the surge of a wave reaching the shore. All my senses seemed strangely heightened.

The still air was weighted with the scent of candles and wine, yet for a fleeting moment I could have sworn I smelled copper and tasted on my tongue the tang of blood. The sensation roused me from my lethargy.

“Morozzi will not be resting.” I heard myself as though from a distance. “We must find him before he acts.”

“If the angels love us, he will be at the funeral,” Borgia said.

I remembered then that the services for Innocent were scheduled for the coming morning. Those cardinals already present in Rome would be in attendance, along with a full complement of lesser prelates
and nobles. Borgia himself would have a prominent role in his capacity as vice chancellor of the Curia. But I nurtured little hope that the man we had to stop would be so foolish as to expose himself at such a gathering.

Where then would he go? Not to the
castel
now that Innocent was gone, and with him his protection. To the chapter house then? Or to della Rovere, despite what Borgia believed. Where could Morozzi go that Il Cardinale’s spies had not already found him?

Rome is a warren of streets old and new, a tumult of tearing down and building, perfect chaos on the best of days. It is also an ancient place, inhabited gloriously and ingloriously for thousands of years through the best of times and the worst. Beneath Borgia’s own palazzo were the layers of the far earlier city. So, too, in the rest of Rome, stick a spade in the ground and you will unearth a hidden world we call the past.

More than anything else, it is a city of secrets made all the more necessary by the Roman love of gossip. Much of the city is hidden away behind walled gardens, down gated lanes, reached by passageways accessible only through innocuous buildings, the ideal hiding places for anyone who does not want to be found.

If I were Morozzi, where would I go?

As quickly as the thought surfaced in my mind, so did I reject it. I was not Morozzi, emphatically not. He was insane and I was . . .

The smell of blood grew stronger, so much so that I looked around half in expectation that someone somewhere nearby was bleeding. Looked but saw nothing save the landscape of my memories.

Giulia writhing on the bed . . . the boy holding out his mutilated arms to me . . . the man in the torture chamber spewing out his life’s blood at the flick of my hand . . . the Spaniard with his
black-foamed lips . . . my father lying lifeless in the street, his skull crushed . . .

“Francesca . . .”

I was back in the wall, watching the torrent of blood and feeling the world tilt, falling away into an abyss.

The scent of blood faded and I smelled candles—many, many candles, far more than lit the room where I still sat without being aware of it any longer. I saw instead a sea of flickering lights and far off I heard the chant of prayers.

I was on my knees, staring up at the statue of a woman who gazed down at me, a frown on her smooth face as though I had done something to perturb her.

“For pity’s sake, Francesca!”

A hint of camphor and citrus hung in the air. I turned, looking over my shoulder, and saw Morozzi, the fallen angel, gazing at me.

“Signorina Giordano?”