The Lion and the Rose (55 page)

We all looked at each other for a moment. I had half an impulse to put my head out the window of the coach and look back on Rome. The Holy City had been a haven to me once, an escape from all my troubles, and now it seemed more cesspool than salvation: a blood-drenched pit with the Borgia dream of power swelling black and hungry overhead, like some great ravenous snake. Their emblem
should
have been a serpent. Something poisonous and devious. Not a blunt and straightforward bull.

But it didn’t matter. I wasn’t ever going to lay eyes on a Borgia again, and I didn’t think anyone else in this coach would either.

“You all look like masks of tragedy.” Giulia looked around at our momentarily grave faces. “Especially you,” she said to Leonello, and I very definitely saw her fingers stroke against his for a moment behind the spread of her skirts. He smiled, which I hardly thought I’d ever seen on his cynical face, and Giulia twinkled back at him before looking to me where I sat with my head leaned against Bartolomeo’s shoulder and the cat purring on my lap in his pearl necklace. “Of course, there is one thing to be sad about,” she added. “Very sad, in fact.”

“What’s that, Madonna Giulia?”

She leaned forward, looking at me very seriously. “We’ve eaten all the marzipan
tourtes
.”

HISTORICAL NOTE

R
odrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI
, died five years later without realizing his dream of founding a lasting Borgia dynasty. Despite his lurid reputation, he was in many ways an effective pontiff: energetic, intelligent, hardworking, with great toleration for free speech, homosexuality, and Judaism. But his Achilles heel was his adoration of his children, who in his eyes could do no wrong. In their defense he committed his most shocking acts, such as the impromptu hanging of a party guest who dared offer his favorite son a mild insult.

The murder of
Juan Borgia
, the handsome, vicious, and incompetent Duke of Gandia, was never solved. Whoever killed Juan, Pope Alexander was truly devastated and resolved to reform both the church and his own life. If he had stuck to that resolve, history might well remember Alexander VI as a visionary. Many modern scholars attribute Juan’s murder to Cesare, who was certainly ruthless enough to kill his much-hated brother for a chance at the military career Juan had squandered.

Cesare Borgia
would go on to a military career of such brilliance and ruthlessness that he would inspire Machiavelli’s political treatise
The Prince
. The violence lurking under his surface self-control was legendary; he kept a personal assassin on retainer in the form of the much-feared Michelotto, but Cesare was always willing to do his own dirty work, such as the time when he stabbed the papal envoy Perotto literally at his father’s feet in the Vatican. Cesare’s career and power ended with his father’s death; he died at age thirty-two fighting a minor battle in Spain.

Lucrezia Borgia
endured a sinister reputation but seems to have been largely a pawn among the powerful men of her family. During her third marriage to the Duke of Ferrara, she outlived her youthful reputation for frivolity and became known for piety and good works. She died at age thirty-eight, the mother of at least seven children, having survived all her brothers.

Joffre Borgia
eventually separated from his wife,
Sancha of Aragon
. She died in her twenties with a lurid reputation, and he went on to an undistinguished adulthood as Prince of Squillace.

The Roman Infante
was the title given to an illegitimate Borgia child born in 1498. He was formally claimed by papal bull as Cesare’s son, and by a contradictory papal bull as Pope Alexander’s son. Rumor of the day claimed the baby had been born to Lucrezia during her convent stay, but she always maintained that the Roman Infante was her half brother.

Giovanni Sforza, Count of Pesaro
, went on to marry again after the annulment of his marriage to Lucrezia. He fathered a son with his next wife, disproving the farce of the impotence charge leveled by the Borgias. He retaliated for the loss of his reputation by accusing the Borgias of incest, a charge that dogs their reputation to this day.

Alfonso of Aragon
, Lucrezia’s second husband, was murdered two years later by Cesare Borgia once the Neapolitan alliance was deemed unnecessary.

Adriana da Mila
remained a Borgia intimate even after the death of her son, acting as escort to Lucrezia when she went to Ferrara to join her third husband.

Johann Burchard
managed not to crumple under the difficulties of serving as Rodrigo Borgia’s master of papal ceremonies. He kept a meticulous diary throughout his life, and his writings give us firsthand glimpses of the Renaissance’s most notorious family: the French invasion, the details of Lucrezia’s various riotous weddings, and the sequence of events surrounding Juan’s murder.

Laura Orsini
may or may not have been the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, but her life lacked the turbulence and tragedy of Lucrezia’s. Laura married a nephew of Pope Julius II and bore him three sons.

Bartolomeo Scappi
would become one of the greatest cooks of the Renaissance. He worked as Vatican chef to two popes, and he penned a massive compendium of recipes and career advice to cooks that is still in print today. Most of the recipes from this book have come directly from Scappi’s own words. The details of his personal life are extremely vague: there is no surviving birth date for him (though he was probably born somewhat later than in this story), and it is not known if he ever married or had children. But he enjoyed a long life and a brilliant career, and he must have traveled a great deal since his recipes show familiarity with the regional cuisine and markets of Rome, Venice, and Milan. It is not known who taught Bartolomeo Scappi to cook—Renaissance cooks were trained without the oversight of a formal guild—but whoever trained the young Bartolomeo instilled him with iron discipline, a great love of his craft, and an unshakable belief that preparing and serving good food was honorable work.

Sandro Farnese
would later go on to take the Throne of Saint Peter as Pope Paul III. Among his achievements he laid the foundation for the Counter-Reformation, supported Katherine of Aragon in her tumultuous divorce appeals, and excommunicated Henry VIII.

Vittorio Capece of Bozzuto
married Giulia Farnese some time after the death of her first husband, Orsino Orsini. Little is known of Giulia’s second husband, who was historically named Giovanni (I renamed him since this story already had too many Giovannis and Juans). He died some years after their marriage without giving Giulia any further children.

Giulia Farnese
survived all the Borgias, going on to a long, wealthy, and apparently happy life. It is not known exactly when Giulia’s affair with her Pope ended, or whether the break came from her or from Rodrigo Borgia. However it happened, Giulia returned to the country and devoted herself to her daughter. After her second widowhood, she took over governorship of the town of Carbognano, where she is recorded as a lively and capable administrator.

Leonello
is a fictional character. Many Renaissance lords kept dwarves as entertainers, jugglers, and companions. They were generally treated like pets: they might be pampered or they might be abused, but they were always looked down upon as lower beings.

Carmelina Mangano
is also a fictional character, though many women suffered similar plights in being stuffed into convents against their will. The Renaissance was an era of dowry inflation; even wealthy families found it very expensive to marry off more than one daughter. Spare daughters were usually sent to convents, and the result was a great many unwilling nuns leading very secular lives within convent walls. There are records of nuns who managed to smuggle lovers into their unlocked-at-night cells, and other nuns who donned men’s clothes and escaped over the convent wall in desperate attempts to forge a new life. There is record of a convent in Venice that boasted a religious relic of the hand of Santa Marta, patron saint of cooks, but there is no record of the relic ever being stolen.

I have taken some liberties with the facts in order to serve the story. Orsino Orsini’s exact death date is not known, but records indicate that it happened a year or two later than in this story. There is no indication that his death was murder, but it seems like a convenient mishap, and other notorious assassinations of the Renaissance were covered up by just such rigged “accidents.” And Juan Borgia was not recorded as a serial killer of low-born women, though his wild evenings of drinking, whoring, fighting, and killing stray dogs are well documented.

My supposition that Lucrezia Borgia gave birth to a child while waiting for her marriage to be annulled is based on the widespread rumors of the time. The young papal envoy Perotto is frequently named as the father of Lucrezia’s supposed child; not only is his death at Cesare’s hands suspicious, but he was one of the few men with access to the Pope’s daughter during her convent stay, However, there is no proof that Perotto’s relations with Lucrezia were anything other than formal; her pregnancy could well have been legitimate. Lord Sforza officially parted from his wife the Easter before her convent stay, but not all his travelings during that year have been recorded, and a private visit from the Count of Pesaro to his wife is not impossible: he fought hard to keep her, indicating that their marriage had its happy moments even if it ended sourly. If Lucrezia had borne a legitimate child to her husband, their union could not have been annulled and the Borgias would have lost their chance for the longed-for alliance with Naples—a reasonable explanation for the ruthless secrecy with which Cesare Borgia removed both Perotto and Lucrezia’s maid Pantisilea, who would have been the only other people besides the enclosed convent nuns to know about the pregnancy. If Lucrezia did give birth, we have no way of knowing if her child was a boy or a girl, whether it lived or died, or whether it was in fact the mysterious Roman Infante who was born at about the same time.

Rodrigo Borgia’s enemy Fra Savonarola was excommunicated and executed as described, but in Florence rather than in Rome. Savonarola’s famous Bonfire of the Vanities was not attended by Giulia Farnese, nor to our knowledge was she painted by the great artist Botticelli, who is rumored to have tossed a number of his own works onto Savonarola’s bonfire. And while the poetic romances of Dante and his Beatrice and Petrarch and his Laura are well known, there are no sonnets written by an Avernus to his Aurora.

One final bit of fancy on my part is Bartolomeo Scappi’s experimentation with “tubers.” Potatoes were just beginning to make their way into Italian cuisine, but Scappi apparently had few dealings with them. He was in many ways the greatest cook of the Renaissance, but alas, he cannot be credited with the invention of the French fry.

The Borgias were certainly the high—or low—point when it came to scandal in the Vatican. There can be no doubt that the flow of papal power did its damage in corrupting this intelligent and energetic family. Unlimited power turned their virtues into vices: Rodrigo’s affection for his children became blind nepotism, Cesare’s ambition became hubris, Juan’s arrogance became violence, Lucrezia’s love for her brothers became an eagerness to excuse them every crime. Perhaps Giulia Farnese was glad to get away from the Borgia family, before they tainted either her future or her daughter’s.

But all the conflicting facts, contradictory rumors, and hidden secrets are gold for novelists, readers, and historians, who will forever continue trying to unravel the Borgia myth.

CHARACTERS

*denotes historical figures

THE BORGIA FAMILY

*
RODRIGO BORGIA
, Pope Alexander VI

*
CESARE BORGIA
, his eldest son, Cardinal Borgia

*
JUAN BORGIA
, his second son, Duke of Gandia

*
LUCREZIA
BORGIA
, his daughter, Countess of Pesaro

*
JOFFRE BORGIA
, his youngest son, Prince of Squillace

*
VANNOZZA DEI CATTANEI
, Rodrigo’s former mistress, mother of his children

*
GIOVANNI SFORZA
, Count of Pesaro, husband to Lucrezia Borgia

*
SANCHA OF ARAGON
, Princess of Squillace, wife to Joffre Borgia

*
MARIA ENRIQUES OF SPAIN
, Duchess of Gandia, wife to Juan Borgia

*
ADRIANA DA MILA
, a cousin to Rodrigo Borgia, former
duenna
to Lucrezia Borgia

*
ORSINO ORSINI
, her son, husband to Giulia Farnese

THE FARNESE FAMILY

*
GIULIA FARNESE
, mistress to Pope Alexander, called Giulia La Bella, the Bride of Christ

*
LAURA
, her daughter

*
CARDINAL ALESSANDRO FARNESE
, called Sandro, Giulia’s older brother

*
GEROLAMA FARNESE
, Giulia’s sister

*
PUCCIO PUCCI
, Gerolama’s husband

IN ROME:

MARCO SANTINI,
maestro di cucina
for Adriana da Mila

CARMELINA MANGANO
, his cousin from Venice

PIA,
*
PANTISILEA, TADDEA
: household maidservants

LEONELLO
, cardsharp and bodyguard

*
MICHELOTTO CORELLA
, Cesare Borgia’s private assassin

*
BARTOLOMEO SCAPPI
, kitchen apprentice

MATTEO, ALFONSO, OTTAVIANO,
GIULIANO, UGO
: other kitchen apprentices

*
JOHANN BURCHARD
, papal master of ceremonies

*
MAESTRO PINTURICCHIO
, an artist

*
CATERINA
GONZAGA
, Countess of Montevegio

ANNA
, a tavern maid, Leonello’s friend, killed by a masked murderer

*
PEDRO CALDERON
, called Perotto, papal envoy

SUORA SERAFINA
, a lay sister at the Convent of San Sisto

AVERNUS
, a poet

SANTA MARTA
, a holy relic

IN ITALY:

PAOLO MANGANO
, Carmelina’s father,
maestro di cucina
in Venice

MADDALENA
, Carmelina’s sister, married in Venice

*
FRA SAVONAROLA
, Dominican friar in Florence

*
SANDRO BOTTICELLI
, artist in Florence

IN FRANCE:

*
CHARLES
VIII OF FRANCE
, claimant to the throne of Naples

*
GENERAL YVES D’ALLEGRE
, leader of the French armies