The Lion and the Rose (49 page)

Lucrezia sent me a dish of sugared almonds with a queenly wave, a sign of the new Duchess’s favor, but I waved them away.

“—a pleasure to see your radiant smile again, Madonna Giulia! You have been too long from our court!” A red beaming face bobbing before me at the table, one of the Colonna lordlings. I watched his mouth move, not listening to his words. “My deepest regrets for your lord husband, but so fair a woman cannot be allowed to molder in her grief. Perhaps you will allow me to call upon you soon—”

More dishes, more overbaked haunches of boar and sour greasy cheeses. Oh, but my head ached. “Madonna Giulia, perhaps you will allow me to meet that little daughter of yours? As beautiful as her mother, they say, and I have a young son of my own. Tell me, she is heiress to Bassanello as well as Carbognano, is she not?”

Cesare, ghosting about the tables like a black bat. Pulling all the strings for tonight’s celebration, conjuring magic for his preening little sister, whom he watched with such fondness. Michelotto trailed behind, his usual colorless shadow, but I did not see Leonello. I had not seen my former bodyguard at all since the burning of Fra Savonarola. Cesare had sent Leonello away from Rome, some dark business in Romagna, where people whispered of deaths in the night among the Borgia enemies. “Cardinal Borgia’s demon dwarf,” people whispered, crossing themselves when they spoke Leonello’s name. “They say he grows wings and slips through cracks in walls to do his master’s bidding!” The demon dwarf had returned to Rome, or so rumor had it, but who knew for certain?

Gifts for Lucrezia—silver platters,
credenza
services of solid gold, frail blown glass, jewels. A necklace of rubies and wrought gold from her father, and Lucrezia squealed as Alfonso of Aragon hooked it about her neck for her. “You did not bring my daughter a gift, Giulia Farnese?” a supercilious voice sniffed behind me, and I smiled at Vannozza dei Cattanei because I knew it would annoy her.

“Lucrezia said my mere presence was a gift, since I am still in mourning and would not otherwise make an appearance in public.”

“I don’t suppose you had anything suitable to offer the Duchess of Bisceglie, anyway. Not from that little hole you live in now—Viterbo?”

“Carbognano.”

“Yes, Carbognano. Dull little place. Your daughter’s inheritance, I understand.” Vannozza smiled, her feathered fan twitching like a cat’s tail. “Well, not all our daughters can be duchesses.”

“No,” I agreed. “Not all our daughters are divorced, disgraced, and rumored to whore for their brothers, either. Whom do you count the luckier, Vannozza?”

Her smile disappeared, and since the guests were rising now to stream into the papal apartments, I found it a good note on which to leave her.

Cesare had worked his sorcery on his father’s private papal apartments as well. Tableaux in every chamber: a
sala
turned into a garden with real apple blossoms scattered underfoot and vines twined over the walls and serving girls dressed as nymphs in transparent gauzes; another
sala
transformed into a forest with green boughs hanging from the ceiling and fresh leaves covering the carpets, a fountain taking up the whole of another chamber and splashing wine instead of water. The fountain writhed for a moment as I looked at it, and I saw it had been twined all over with vipers, empty scaly skins stretched and stuffed to look alive. All those jet-bead eyes and ivory fangs seemed to coil in my fevered eyes and I turned away, flinching.

Cesare stood beckoning the guests: master of revels in his black velvet. The servants were masked and costumed like mummers; nymphs and satyrs and beasts, and Cesare wore a mask with a single twisted black horn: a dark unicorn. I’d been the unicorn at the last masquerade, where Rodrigo had ordered a guest hanged for daring to insult Juan. Why had I not realized such a man would take revenge on Orsino, for the supposed crime of cuckolding him?

My fault. My fault.

“Snakes,” a voice slurred, and Sancha of Aragon trailed forward with her reddened eyes fixated on the writhing fountain behind Cesare. “Snakes, snakes, you Borgia snake—” She hissed at Cesare, her little pointed tongue flickering, not unlike a snake herself, and she raised an unsteady hand to slap at him. She had been glaring at him all night, and she was drunker than a dockside slattern. “Borgia snake, you know what you’ve done to me—”

She fell on him, slapping and shouting, and his servants rushed forward in their masks and her servants too. A bishop staggered back with a bloody nose, Michelotto hit the Tart of Aragon so hard her neck wrenched, one of Sancha’s guards drew his dagger, and for a moment I thought Lucrezia’s wedding would see murder. Why not?

But the Pope’s guards rushed around him with their own blades, Cesare’s voice cracked like a whip, and Alfonso of Aragon came forward to put an arm about his sister and lead her off. “He gave me the French pox,” I thought I heard Sancha snarl to her brother, but Cesare just shrugged as though he could not care less. He adjusted his horned mask, and I thought I saw the disease’s livid marks spotting his sharp handsome face. The French pox would eventually rot your nose right off, or so they said, and then it drove you mad. But Cesare Borgia was already mad, wasn’t he?

“Put up your sword, you fool,” a deep voice snapped to the last of Sancha’s Neapolitan guards, and I gazed at Leonello a long blank moment before recognizing him.

“You would not wear a costume for my masquerade,” I said.

“Because people would laugh at me.” His voice was muffled behind the huge lion mask; he wore a tawny doublet and absurd clawed gloves and an enormous furred ruff. “No one laughs at the demon dwarf now.”

“You look—” I saw Caterina Gonzaga point at him and titter, and I wanted to claw her eyes out. “You look ridiculous.”

“Indeed.” His normally precise words had a blur about the edges I didn’t recognize.

I lowered my voice. “I want very much to speak with you, Leonello. Privately.”

“Do you?” He tossed down the cup of wine in his hand. “I don’t.”

He dipped his cup into the fountain for more. “Are you
drunk
?” I asked. I had never seen my abstemious, fastidious, dignified bodyguard drunk in his life.

“No, but I plan to be.”

I had never seen him dance either, but he danced tonight. All the mummers in their masks danced for the Pope and the bridal pair and the laughing guests, and Leonello did a grave jig under his huge ruff that had everyone guffawing. I turned my eyes away, and promptly my hand was claimed by an eager-eyed lordling from the Piccolomini family. “Dear Giulia, your beauty dims even your black! Perhaps I can call upon you soon?”

Why did everyone want to call on me? Leonello in his lion mask was chasing after the mummer dressed as a stag now. Lucrezia giggled helplessly into her husband’s shoulder.

“Madonna Giulia, surely you will open the dancing with me?” Another shiny-eyed man, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. “I have so long admired your grace in the turns—”

Go away
, I thought,
just go away, all of you
. But I had a cluster of men about me, and they didn’t seem to care how little I spoke.

The farce with the mummers drew to a close, and applause rippled. The mummers descended in their masks into the ranks of guests, and the viols struck up a dance.

“Madonna Giulia—”

“Surely you will partner me—”

They were all vying to grasp my hand, and one fellow tipsier than the rest even gave my waist a moist squeeze. “May I rescue you?” Sandro murmured, and my little crowd of suitors looked on in disappointment as I gave my hand to my brother.

Lucrezia was whirling palm-to-palm with Alfonso of Aragon, one of her squealing ladies had seized Cesare’s hand, and Caterina Gonzaga was dancing with the mummer masked as an elephant. I swept around to face Sandro and made the opening reverence. “Thank you,” I managed to say. “They were pressing rather hard.”

“They’ll press until you marry one of them.” Sandro’s normally mischievous expression had gone quite serious as he made his bow to me. “You had better give some thought to a second husband,
sorellina
.”

“I’m only three months widowed!”

“And a very tempting prospect to any unmarried man, as well as a good many of the married ones.”

“As a soiled wife? It’s been made very clear that’s all I am.”

“
Orsino’s
soiled wife, Giulia. Now you’re a wealthy widow free to marry another man, and you’ll bring that lucky man a number of profitable little country properties
and
the loveliest face in Rome.” Sandro raised his hand toward me with the first flutter of viols. “Most men will now find it quite possible to forgive you your reputation.”

“What Orsino left me belongs to Laura.” I put my hand against my brother’s, gliding into the first pass. “Carbognano, the
castello
, it will all be Laura’s dowry.”

“And there is not a man in this room who does not hope to marry you, get sons on you, and take Carbognano and the rest for his own heirs.” My brother made a turn about me with all his usual grace. “Be careful, Giulia. Choose your second husband wisely.”

A little flame of resentment burned in my stomach. “I don’t
want
a second husband!” Or sons either . . .

“You will need one whether you wish it or no, if you wish to safeguard Laura’s inheritance.” Sandro’s voice had a bleak matter-of-factness. “An older brother, even if he is a cardinal, isn’t enough to protect a wealthy young widow in this wicked world.”

I made a turn of my own, seeing my black skirts flare and seeing the eyes of men flare too as they looked on me. Of course. I was a prize now. Foolish of me not to have considered it sooner, in my frozen state after Orsino’s death. I was a prize, and Laura was an even bigger one—and my brother looked at me with immense sympathy as he saw me realizing it. “When did you turn so cynical and wise, Alessandro Farnese?” I managed to ask.

“When I accepted a cardinalate from the Borgia Pope, Giulia. It’s deep water I’ve learned to swim in, and there are serpents under every ripple.”

I’d persuaded him to take the red hat, when Rodrigo offered it. I should have left well enough alone; should have let my big brother scamper on through life as a notary. Should have let him stay a scamp and a jokester, instead of this handsome, serious churchman who spoke so knowledgeably of serpents and dangerous waters.

“‘Serpents under every ripple,’” Sandro mused, perhaps turning his voice back to its old airy amusement because he saw the look on my face. “Do you like that,
sorellina
? Perhaps I have a gift for rhyme. Everyone agrees I don’t have any gift for church business.”

“Oh, Sandro—”

“Now, Giulia, don’t look so stricken.” Sandro put his palm against mine again for a final turn. “I’ll manage, and so will you. Just think about it, eh? What I said about marrying again.”

“Yes,” I answered, and a dozen men clamored for my hand before the dance’s last notes finished. I looked over the sea of eager faces, and I took the hand of Vittorio Capece, my erstwhile host who had hardly been able to look me in the face after what had happened to Orsino in his
palazzo
. “You really must stop avoiding me, Vittorio. How often must I tell you nothing was your fault?”

“Good of you to say so.” He gave me his kindly smile as we moved into the next dance. A livelier tune than the grave passes I’d trod with my brother, but Vittorio was as light on his feet as a young man, and he turned me capably about the waist. “You’re looking very grave, m’dear. Thinking of Orsino?”

“In a way.” I inspected the lord of Bozzuto as he spun me. “Tell me, Vittorio, have you ever thought of marriage?”

“Yes, dreadful prospect.” Vittorio shuddered. “I’ve staved it off gallantly, but it may prove inevitable.”

“Inevitable?” We checked, reversed, joined hands again.

“Our good Pope Alexander VI does not persecute . . . hmm, well, let’s just say, men like me. But who knows about the next pope?” Vittorio arched an elegant brow at Rodrigo, reclining on a chair twined with vines as he tapped a jeweled finger in time to the music. “A wife would provide protection, shall we say, should the winds of change begin to blow. Because our Holy Father will not last forever.”

It had always seemed impossible to me that Rodrigo would ever die. He had too much energy and vitality, too much
life
for that. But I saw now that his eyes were puffy and pouched, as though the late nights were beginning to tell upon that famous energy, and the food at his table was as terrible as ever but it was fattening him as it hadn’t done even a year or two ago. He was an old man, old as he had never before seemed in my eyes, and I felt one last twinge of pity. Then his gaze passed over me with the same faint smile of malice he had bestowed on me after Orsino’s death, when I had come before him with eyes full of accusation, and my heart hardened like hoarfrost.

The dance was done. Vittorio Capece bowed and released my hand, but I said, “Another dance?” and we trod three more tunes together, my other suitors falling back in disappointment. Vittorio made polite conversation, and I eyed him thoughtfully. Sandro watched us from across the room and raised his goblet to me with a silent, tilted smile.

Vittorio kissed my hand at the end of the music, gracefully begging my leave—“Allow a gray-haired man to regain his breath, m’dear?” He settled me courteously in a cushioned chair beside the fountain full of snakes, and I smiled thanks as he bustled off in pursuit of wine. Or perhaps a handsome page.

More suitors pressed, but I turned them all down, calculating just when I could make my exit. Lucrezia and Alfonso of Aragon were still dancing; they likely wouldn’t be bedded down together until dawn. Sancha must have drunk enough wine to forget that Cesare had given her the French pox because she was dancing with him now, and the dress kept slipping off her shoulder. Caterina Gonzaga was dancing with the little masked lion in his huge furred ruff, and laughing when he stumbled. Surely it had to be long past midnight.

“The lion and the unicorn!” someone shouted, and Cesare broke from Sancha to lower his horn and go charging after Leonello with a cry of challenge. My former bodyguard gave a mock growl, waddling away, and in his chair the Pope convulsed with laughter. The mummer in the stag mask lowered his own horns and pricked Leonello in passing, and Leonello stumbled and fell. I saw his hazel eyes through the mask’s eye holes, and they had a bitter shine.