The Lion and the Rose (24 page)

Lucrezia hesitated, pushing at the wet bundle of her hair. “The Holy Father wishes to annul my marriage to Lord Sforza.”

My mouth dropped. “You cannot be serious!”

Lucrezia tossed her head. “He doesn’t tell you everything, you know.”

“Annul your marriage? The legality alone—”

“Cesare says I deserve better than a Sforza lordling. He says a duke is none too good for me, and our father thinks the same.”

“But Lord Sforza—” My thoughts whirled. “You loved him. I saw your face, in this
palazzo
just three years ago. I let you sneak him into your chamber to consummate your marriage, and you looked so happy—”

Lucrezia shrugged. “And he used to write me poetry, but he doesn’t bother anymore. Too busy droning on about his soldiers and his horses. Besides, Pesaro is
so
dull. I’d rot away if I had to live there forever.”

“All excellent reasons to cast off a husband, I’m sure,” I snapped. “The law will require something a trifle more substantial than your boredom.”

“Cesare says something can be managed. An annulment—we’ll find some pretext. Consanguinity, maybe. People are always getting marriages annulled for consanguinity, aren’t they?”

“He’s not your
brother
, Lucrezia, he’s not even a distant cousin! There isn’t
any
shared blood between you, much less enough for a legal pretext. There’s no pretext at all to annul your marriage, not one that anyone would believe!”

“You don’t understand, Giulia.” Lucrezia sounded patronizing now. “It’s not what people believe. It’s what we
tell
them to believe.”

I stared at her.

“Cesare says I’ll be a duchess by this time next year.” Lucrezia rose from her bath, and this time I didn’t push her back down. “Or even a princess. Then
I’ll
be the first woman in Rome, Giulia Farnese—not you. I’ll be the one setting the fashion and heading every parade. Sancha says—”

“Sancha says, Cesare says.” I cut her off as she reached for her robe. “What do
you
say?”

“Sancha—” Lucrezia stopped herself, looking annoyed.

I looked at her, my middle no longer roiling with rage but with something much colder. My lover’s daughter looked ungraceful and young, lips pushed out in a stubborn pout, hair coiling in wet strings down her neck. Without all the sophistication of paint and powder, you could see she had a red spot on her chin.
Seventeen
, I thought,
she is seventeen
. Not much younger than I had been when I went to her father’s bed.

“You didn’t use to hate me, Lucrezia,” I said finally. “In fact, I thought you loved me. I have certainly loved you, ever since I first met you.”

Lucrezia avoided my eyes, slipping into her loose wide-sleeved robe.

“I didn’t think you hated Madonna Adriana, either.” I paused. “So why were you so cruel to her? You’ve been thoughtless sometimes, but I’ve never seen you cruel.”

“I didn’t mean it.” Defensive. “Sancha just made a joke. I thought I would too.”

“A very unkind joke.”

“Oh—” Lucrezia piled her wet hair up again, jabbing pins through the mass of it. “Really, such a fuss. I’ll go apologize to her later.”

“You’ll have to do it quickly, because she’s leaving.”

“What?” Lucrezia turned, still pinning her hair.

“You
hurt
her, Lucrezia.” I enunciated the words. “Madonna Adriana has decided to go back to her niece in Liguria.”

“All because of a little joke,” Lucrezia muttered, and that was when I slapped her. First with the flat of my palm; I paused to let her look shocked and then slapped her with the back of my hand, as I’d seen her hit clumsy maidservants.

She took a step back, holding her cheek, and I wondered if she’d slap me back. But she stared at me another moment, and then she burst into tears.

“I
hate
you,” she sobbed, and flung herself down on the marble edge of the
bagno
. “I hate you, Giulia Farnese—everyone looks at you instead of me, they all do, and Sancha says you’re just jealous I’m the Pope’s daughter so you take all my attention away. Father loves you more than me, and when Laura grows up he’ll love her more than me too, because she’s
yours
, and anything
yours
is perfect.”

I didn’t know whether to feel more exasperated or astonished. “Lucrezia, really—”

“Even my husband—I saw how he looked at you when we went to Pesaro three years ago, and all the ladies arranged themselves in tableaux for that contest of beauty. I was Primavera in a special dress, and that proud slut Caterina Gonzaga came prancing out half
naked
as Venus, but all you did was cast your lashes down and drop to your knees like a Resurrection saint—you didn’t take a stitch off, and every man in the room was
still
panting for you. Including
my
husband.” A great moist sniff. “Not that he’s to be my husband much longer. Who knows whom I’ll marry next, maybe some hideous old man. I’ve been a good wife, I
have
, I tried to put up with Pesaro, and I put up with all my husband’s stupid unshaven captains putting their boots on my table, and what do I get for it?” she cried. “What do I get for it? I get my marriage annulled, and I don’t even get any babies! You’re not a proper wife at all, and you get everything in the world. You’re beautiful and everyone loves you and you even got a pretty little girl who looks just like you, and why can’t I?”

Lucrezia just sobbed then. “I’m sorry,” I heard indistinctly through the tears. “I’m
sorry
—” And my surprise and exasperation melted away into pity. I sat down on the edge of the
bagno
, and she put her head on my shoulder and cried.

“I don’t really have everything in the world, you know,” I said quietly, but she was making too much noise to hear me, and when do girls of seventeen ever hear sense anyway? I’d been little older when Madonna Adriana had to deal with my tantrums and shoutings, and now I could feel some sympathy for her. I put my arm about Lucrezia and stroked her wet hair, and finally she lifted her head.

“Is Adriana really leaving?” Wiping at the reddened slits of her eyes. “I didn’t mean it, what I said. I was just trying to make Sancha laugh—I don’t mean half the things I say when I talk to her.”

“Then go up and make Adriana a good heartfelt apology.” I smoothed the hair out of her eyes. “And I do wish you would stop trying to impress Sancha of Aragon.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Lucrezia sighed, wiping at her eyes again. I felt my way carefully.

“Perhaps a change is what you need.” I looped up a wet lock of her hair and pinned it back out of her eyes. “Someplace quiet, peaceful. Someplace you can think.”

“That would be lovely.” Lucrezia scrubbed at her cheeks. “Was Rome always so noisy and hectic, or was I just too young to notice?”

I thought Rome was the same as it had always been; it was the Borgias who were worse. But what did I know? “The Convent of San Sisto,” I said instead. “You’ve often spoken of it, how much you enjoyed taking your lessons from the sisters there when you were a little girl, how many friends you made among the sisters. Perhaps you could go back for a short visit. Pray, rest, see your friends. Get away from all the noise here in the city.”

“You think so?” Lucrezia brightened. “Would the Holy Father allow it?”

“I’ll make sure he does,” I promised. “A retreat for you—I’m sure you could use the time to reflect in peace and quiet, if it’s really true the Holy Father wishes to annul your marriage.” I half-hoped she’d made that up, but she just gave a little shrug.

“He doesn’t need the Sforzas anymore,” she said, and sounded remarkably offhand about it all. “It’s the Neapolitan alliance he needs to reinforce now, in case the French get restive again.”

“I see,” I said, and wondered why Rodrigo had said nothing of it to me.
H
e doesn’t tell you everything
, I heard Vannozza dei Cattanei whisper in my mind, from that warm afternoon in the gardens of the Vatican when I had first spoken of my doubts about her daughter’s behavior.

Just how long had my Pope been planning to rid himself of Lucrezia’s husband?

“I wouldn’t mind seeing the sisters at San Sisto.” Lucrezia’s little face had brightened again. “I can tell the Holy Father it will keep me safe out of reach from my husband, in case he decides to return from Pesaro for me. Even my Giovanni isn’t so crude he’d storm a convent!”

She giggled at that, good humor apparently restored now that the tears had been cried out. “I’ll go to see poor old Adriana now,” she said, rising. “And I shall be absolutely
abject
, I promise. I really didn’t mean to hurt her. She knows that.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Then I shall apologize to you all over again,” Lucrezia added. “I get stormy when I cry, you know—I don’t hate you, not at all. I just said that. You’ll forgive me, won’t you? Of course you will. Then we shall go sit in the garden and sun our hair together; I have to dry mine all over again now that you’ve gotten me soaked, and maybe Laura can sun her hair too! It’s never too early to begin caring for your looks, you know.” Lucrezia strolled over to pick up her hand glass, pinching her cheeks to make them pinker, admiring her fine white teeth in a dazzling smile. “I don’t think Laura’s going to be as pretty as me, so she’ll have to work with what she’s been given . . .”

Carmelina

Y
ou’d never think a whole household could be thrown into such an uproar by a visit to a nunnery. Hours after
cena
it was, but the Pope’s daughter was keeping every servant under this roof at a trot, packing and unpacking and repacking for her forthcoming sojourn to the Convent of San Sisto. I flattened myself against a wall to let a manservant bent double under a loaded chest stagger past, followed by a maid with an armload of little slippers and another maid with a basket of shifts for mending, and crept back through the dark kitchens toward the wine cellars.

I cast my usual critical eye over my domain, but the fires glowed softly, banked for the night, and the floors were immaculately swept. Much quieter than usual. A fishwife from the docks had been sentenced to hang tonight for strangling her husband with his own fishing line; my carvers and undercooks were all wild to go see the execution. I gave my permission after their work was done, and most of my people tripped out just before the sun was beginning to set, already taking odds on how long it would take the murderess to strangle and planning where they would take celebratory drinks afterward. I had already sent up a plateful of honeyed figs and a plate of toasted salted almonds for Madonna Lucrezia to nibble as she packed—now, I had a rare evening to myself.

“Marco had better not take up much of my time,” I grumbled under my breath to Santa Marta, who rode in her usual pouch at my waist. I’d seen my cousin only once since the masquerade, when he’d appeared in the Duke of Gandia’s train among the guardsmen during a visit to the
palazzo
. “And what is a cook doing nobbing with guardsmen instead of tending his kitchens?” I’d asked.

“We play the occasional game of
zara
together.” Of course they did. “The Duke of Gandia plays with us too, sometimes—he’s not too proud to have a laugh and a game of
primiera
with his guards. Or with the cook either, come to that. Not like that brother of his who’s too good for anyone else on this earth. At least the Duke of Gandia always brings good wine.”

“And gold too, I shouldn’t wonder,” I couldn’t help warning. “It may sound very fine to play cards with a pope’s son, Marco, but he can afford to throw a hundred florins down on one bet, and you can’t.”

“Don’t harry me,” Marco snarled, and that had been our last words to each other since the masquerade. But evidently he was sorry for being short with me, for I’d received a hasty note today in the afternoon.
I can
repay you the money I oh you,
my cousin wrote me in his none-too-literate scrawl.
Meet me in the palatso wine celler after cena? Its quiet and Im trying to avoyd the others—I stil oh Ugo 10 scudi.

“I doubt he’ll have any coin for me,” I told Santa Marta. “Likely he just wants to borrow more.”

Santa Marta agreed with me, and I hoped again that my cousin wouldn’t take up much of my precious free time this evening. A real cook hardly ever
has
any free time, and I’d had an idea scratching at the back of my mind for a while now, like that tattered-ear cat tickling my hem with his claws when he wanted another meal he hadn’t earned. I had a notion that I just might follow my father’s example and write up my recipes in a proper collection. Santa Marta had seemed to approve of that idea, too.

“Though you have to wonder why I should bother,” I added as I descended the stone steps toward the barred cellar doors. Leave a wine cellar unlocked, and every cask in it would be empty by morning. “The only point of noting down your recipes is so you can pass them on to someone worthy. And there isn’t anyone in these kitchens worth giving my secrets to.”

Bartolomeo
, I thought immediately, but frowned. My red-haired apprentice was gone; he’d cleared out that tiny immaculate cubby in which he slept and taken himself off before the noosed and silent body of the murdered Sforza guest had even been taken down at the masquerade. And perhaps it was no bad thing he was gone: he’d had the temerity to both fall in love with me
and
tell me my recipes were wrong. I must have threatened to send him packing at least nine times over the past year of stormy shouted arguments . . . but just now, I had to admit as I paused at the cellar doors to light a taper, I missed him. I had a kitchen full of dullards who were happy if they could get the dishes cooked and out to the
credenza
in time, unambitious undercooks and pinheaded apprentices who looked at me blankly when I required anything more creative of them than boiling water. Bartolomeo might have been an arrogant young jolthead, but I’d somehow gotten used to exchanging a triumphant glance with him when a roast surpassed my expectations, to relying on his finely tuned nose when my own wasn’t sure if a game hen was quite fresh or not. If I stood frowning over a sauce, it was always Bartolomeo who took a taste and suggested a pinch of pepper or a dash of wild thyme. Half the time I scolded him for being presumptuous, of course, and said that if I wanted an apprentice’s opinion I’d damned well ask for it—but as soon as his back was turned, the pepper or the wild thyme usually went in anyway.