The Lion and the Rose (43 page)

I tripped over a loose stone in the courtyard and fell with a gasp that was half shriek, but Cesare Borgia was already moving past me, toward the stairs that would take him to his sister. “Silence that one too,” he said over his shoulder at me, and was gone.

Gone. Pantisilea gone, the midwife gone, Perotto gone. No one left to know that the Pope’s daughter had given birth tonight.

The other guardsman swung off his horse, and I felt a squeeze of relief so violent that my heart almost burst from my chest. “Leonello, you’re here, I—”

But his eyes were cold this time, cold under the moon, cold, cold. And the knife in his hand was not for my attackers, but for me.

Giulia

M
amma, Mamma!” My daughter looked up at me in glee as I entered the kitchens, her little nose smudged with flour. “I can make
frittelle
!”

“More than I could ever do.” I smiled at the sight of her: sitting on the trestle table swaddled in an oversized apron, assiduously rolling out misshapen little balls of dough. “How did you get down here,
Lauretta mia
?”

“
Il Signore
was turning white every time the little one here went careening past his precious statues.” Bartolomeo deftly whisked something in a bowl with one hand and pushed a lump of butter around a hot skillet with the other, but he still managed a bow. “The nursemaids had the bright idea of bringing her down here.”

“I hope she is not keeping you from your work.” I rescued a bowl of flour before it could tumble out of Laura’s hands.

“Work was never lost to a more worthy cause, Madonna Giulia.” Bartolomeo reeled off a few orders to the pair of pot-boys scrubbing pans under the cistern, more orders to the boy eternally cranking at the spit of hot-roasted pigeons rotating over the fires. “I want to see mouths shut and hands moving,” he warned, and turned back to me. “Only a few of us are needed in the kitchens here if
il Signore
isn’t entertaining. Most of the others have gone off to see a miracle play in the Piazza San Pietro. The martyrdom of Santo Bartolomeo, and they say he’s flayed on the stage so realistically, they had to bring the player back out to show the audience he was still alive. I didn’t care to watch my patron saint get killed horribly, so I’ve enough time to give all the
frittelle
lessons anyone could want.” Bartolomeo smiled down at Laura, and she dimpled at him through her lashes. Nearly five years old, and my daughter was already a flirt! Though Bartolomeo had certainly turned into a lad with whom girls of any age would long to flirt. I still remembered Carmelina’s favorite apprentice as the scrawny boy who had loped along the wagons on the journey back from France, but this lean young man with the broad shoulders and the shock of fiery hair could have made a nun’s heart flutter.

Laura held her breath as her very first batch of
frittelle
went into the skillet, and Bartolomeo handed her the spoon so she could push them around in the butter. “Watch them carefully, little mistress, you don’t want them to burn—”

“Carmelina tried to teach me to make elderflower
frittelle
once.” I smiled, remembering. “I nearly burned her kitchens down.”

Bartolomeo’s freckled face lost its smile. “Pardon me, Madonna Giulia—but have you had any news of—”

“No, not yet.”

“My last letter came back unopened. The messenger said there was no one of her name within the convent walls.” He scowled. “She can’t have left the convent already, not without coming to see me! Months I’ve been waiting and writing; does she think I’m made of iron?”

I tilted my head at him, giving a grin. “So you’re her sweetheart!”

“She clearly doesn’t think so,” he grumbled.

“Well, I shall ask Madonna Lucrezia about her tonight.” Orsino and I were invited to see His Holiness again this evening; another of his small gatherings in the papal apartments. Surely Lucrezia would be there. Now that her marriage to Lord Sforza had been annulled and a few months passed for the talk to die down, she had left the Convent of San Sisto for the Vatican. I knew Lucrezia was cross with me; I’d had a few letters arrive in Carbognano, accusing me of breaking her father’s heart—but she never held a grudge for long. Leonello would have said it was because she had the attention capacity of a flea.

“My sister is ill,” Cesare informed me as I inquired after Lucrezia that night, making my entrance with Orsino. “She broke her arm at the convent, and she is resting quietly while the bone heals. I know she will wish to see you in a week or two, when the pain passes.”

“We had planned to return to Carbognano in another week,” I began. Holy Virgin save me, how long was this visit going to drag on? We had originally intended to stay in the city only a fortnight or so, but Rodrigo had said we must wait until he decided upon a match for Laura. And then he ruled that
that
would have to wait until Lucrezia’s next marriage was settled first, and then he decreed that both betrothals must be postponed until after the Christmas festivities. And now Christmas was come and gone; the year had turned and we were nearing
Lent
, and nothing at all was settled. I missed my square
castello
in Carbognano with a fierceness that surprised me.

And these past few weeks, it wasn’t just the Pope who delayed our return home. Orsino was making excuses too, and that surprised me even more.

“Don’t you want to see how the garden is faring?” I’d cajoled him just last week. “I want to see the beautiful roses you had planted for me. And we could attend Easter Mass in our own church. The new stained-glass window is bound to be in place by now.” All of us together at the altar, my daughter kneeling between us—and pray God, no betrothal for her yet. Not for
years,
if I got my way
.

“You’re the one who wanted to come to Rome,” Orsino had pointed out.

“And you’re the one who wanted it to be a short visit,” I said in return. Why in the name of the Holy Virgin had my usually pliable husband changed his mind?

“My lady wife will be delighted to pay a call upon your sister,” Orsino was telling Cesare in the rather grand tones he had been using lately. “Perhaps our Laura will someday be a countess like Madonna Lucrezia. His Holiness will have told you he is now considering a French
comte
for a betrothal?”

I hid my disquiet at that. It wasn’t just the matter of returning home where Orsino seemed to have changed his mind. Lately he seemed more willing than ever to hear about these various suitors who had been sporadically proposed, one after the other, for Laura’s hand. Perhaps because such gossip granted power at these small private gatherings between powerful men—my husband seemed to have discovered how much he liked moving elbow to elbow among such men, telling them so casually that he just might make his daughter a countess someday. “A countess like Madonna Lucrezia,” he repeated importantly, and Cesare gave a bored blink.

“You forget that my sister is no longer a countess.” The young Cardinal slid off without farewells, toward a dark-haired beauty laughing over a marble chessboard. This was one of the larger halls in the papal apartments; Rodrigo presided at one end in all dignity, but the dignity was somewhat marred by Caterina Gonzaga perching on the arm of his throne—a sight that still gave me a distinct, if small, pang of outrage. The rest of the company lounged merry and at ease about the room, trading soft jests and flirtations. Another of those easy intimate evenings I had once presided over; the ones that sent Burchard into spasms of indignation over the
impropriety
of having such company in the
papal apartments
, oh,
Gott im Himmel
!

But I had other things to worry me now than Burchard’s proprieties.

“What’s this about a French
comte
for Laura?” I said low-voiced to Orsino. “His Holiness didn’t speak of it to me.” His Holiness had been too preoccupied lately with possible alliances for Lucrezia to talk much about Laura’s future—and I’d begun to breathe easier. “Where did this idea of a French
comte
come from?”

“He brought it up to
me
, Giulia. As is fitting.” Orsino’s worry that Rodrigo wanted me back had abated, the more he saw Caterina Gonzaga flaunting herself on the papal arm as though she were an empress and not a concubine. A concubine in too much jewelry, and tasteless two-tone velvet. “A French lord for Laura,” Orsino went on. “We should consider it.”

“Why? France is our enemy!”

“Politics have shifted now. A French alliance could be a great thing for our family.” Orsino accepted a cup of wine from a page with a regal nod. “I’ve had time to consider the idea, and you should consider it too. Laura could get a far better match through the Holy Father than she could from us.” I heard a hint of his mother’s careful coin-counting in his tone. “Daughters are very expensive to marry off, you know. If His Holiness dowers Laura, well, we can save the expense for our own daughters someday.”

“Orsino—” I heard my voice rising and brought it down with an effort. “My lord husband, if the Holy Father dowers her, there won’t be a soul in Rome who doesn’t assume she’s his daughter, even if she has your name. I thought that to be the
last
thing you wanted.”

“Every soul in Rome assumes she is his daughter, anyway.” Orsino’s voice was stiff. “A French marriage might be the best thing for her; get her away from all this scandal. Anne of Brittany has raised a great many noble wards at her court—the King of Naples sent his own true-born daughter there, Carlotta of Aragon. You know Cesare has an idea of laying aside his red hat and marrying her? Carlotta of Aragon, that is.” Oh, the importance of trading such intimate gossip about the great and powerful of Rome! “Laura could join the French court there; be raised in the French fashion. By the time she grows old enough to marry, any malicious talk about her birth will be forgotten.”

I stared at my husband. In my ears I heard the soft click of marble on marble across the room as Cesare moved a chess piece for his laughing girl; a ripple of laughter from Caterina Gonzaga as she allowed the Venetian envoy to kiss her hand; a page boy muttering an oath as he tripped over his own shoe and nearly dropped his decanter. “I am not sending my daughter away to France to be raised by strangers,” I said at last, levelly.

“But it’s how things are done among the great,” Orsino assured me. “We must think of what’s best for Laura. She won’t be lonely in France, not among other girls of her own age. And we could send her pet goat with her, eh?”

My
pet goat.
My
daughter. The things I’d brought from Rome when I came back to Carbognano, the things from my former life, the things my husband didn’t really like to look at because they reminded him of painful times. Well, with Laura off in France he wouldn’t have any such reminders left, would he? He could just keep on plowing me until I filled up his
castello
with little true-born Orsinis instead.

I shut my teeth on some very hot words indeed.
Softly
, I thought.
Soft and sweet, as a wife should speak to her husband
. I forced a smile, murmuring something dulcetly noncommittal, and he chucked me under the chin.

“That’s my little rose!”

I did not feel very soft or sweet. And if he called me his little rose one more time . . .

“Giulia!” Rodrigo beckoned me, his rings glinting. “Where is Laura? We had particularly wished to see her.”

“
My
daughter”—I didn’t particularly feel like sharing Laura with either of her rumored fathers at the moment—“is abed. The hour is far too late for a child of four.”

“Bah, she’ll soon be five.” Rodrigo chuckled, the jeweled crucifix about his neck glittering. “I’ll give her a betrothed for a present. Did Orsino speak of it? ‘Laura, Comtesse de Laval’—how does that sound?”

“It sounds like something that will never happen,” I said. “Even if I have to fling myself across the road to prevent her taking one step in the direction of France.”

Orsino stopped breathing, and Rodrigo’s brows knitted together, but Caterina Gonzaga from her perch on the pontifical throne was clearly bored with all this talk that was not about her. “A game of cards, Giulia?” She fluttered an imperious hand at me to show off a clutch of emerald and sapphire rings. “Like those evenings we spent in dull little Pesaro when our dear Lucrezia was first married. Wasn’t there a silly little contest of beauty that I won?”

“Lucrezia won,” I returned. “But yes, it was very silly.” And my brother Sandro was pulling up a stool beside mine, offering his own deck of cards with a breezy “Thirty-and-one, or
primiera
?” And Rodrigo gave a chuckle and said, “Giulia, how did you ever talk me into giving this good-for-nothing brother of yours a red hat? He’s the most useless Cardinal in the lot!”

“But can any of the useful ones make you laugh the way I can, Your Holiness?” Sandro asked cheekily, and a game unfolded as the Venetian envoy joined us and Caterina Gonzaga made a spectacle of herself flashing her rings and her bosom, and Sandro leaned close to my ear as he filled my wine. “Careful,
sorellina
.”

“If Orsino and the Holy Father think they can ship Laura off to France—”

“They won’t.” My big brother’s eyes were unaccustomedly serious over his usual airy smile. “The Holy Father has his hands full arranging Lucrezia’s marriage, not to mention that Cesare’s angling now to get rid of his cardinal’s hat. Wait it out, and the Pope will forget all about this French alliance.”

I was not nearly so certain Orsino would. “Fight for Laura, Sandro,” I breathed as the cards were dealt. “If the matter is brought up among the men when I’m not there to protest—”

“Who do you think pops up with a filthy joke to distract everyone as soon as any talk of Laura or her marriage comes up?”

“Spreading dirty jokes, and you a man of God?” I managed a little smile. “Don’t you take anything seriously, Sandro?”

“My niece’s future. I assure you I take that
very
seriously.” Sandro gave my arm a squeeze. “I’ll work on His Holiness, and you take on Orsino. Surely you can wind him around your little finger!”