The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (23 page)

“The ladies,” he began indignantly in his stiff German accents. “The ladies were first into the
sala
, just as arranged, and I’d planned the most
beautiful
little procession for them where they advanced by twos, and bowed to the Pope and kissed his shoe, and did any of them listen to me? No! They just rushed in any which way, like cattle released into a pen, and not
one
of them paused to bow! It’s the end, Messer Leonello, it’s the absolute end of the world!”

“That the Pope’s shoe went unkissed?” I inquired.

“Moral decay! Tradition slips, propriety slips, then morality slips, and before you know it the end is nigh!” He ran through his lists again, wild-eyed. “Oh, why did I keep this position,
why
? I should have quit, that’s what I should have done. Before this wedding, I should have quit. Because there is
no
proper way to host an official wedding of the Pope’s daughter, attended by the Pope’s sons and the Pope’s concubine! None! Because by rights, none of them should exist in the first place!”

I looked at him with a certain degree of sympathy. I would not have wanted his job, that was certain: pasting papal legalities over the antics of the Borgia Pope and his offspring. It was certainly no job for a prim little German from Strasbourg who heard the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse if the Pope’s slipper went unkissed. “Cheer up, Burchard,” I said with a thump to his arm. “Another twelve hours and you can go get drunk.”

He regarded me with as much horror as though I’d suggested he attend the papal wedding in the nude. “Twelve hours? You think it will all end in twelve hours? Are you mad? The evening banquet and the subsequent dancing
alone
 . . .”

I left Burchard to his Teutonic anguish and slipped into the crowds of silk-decked wedding guests already thronging the high-ceilinged chamber. The first of the private anterooms the Pope had staked out for himself, setting the great Pinturicchio to paint them with gorgeous new frescoes. Pinturicchio worked slowly, so the frescoes were not yet near done, but the walls had been hung for the time being with silken tapestries, the floors covered with Oriental carpets deep enough to cover my boot heels, every wall bracket gleamed with fresh gilt, the ceiling arched over the guests high-carved and corniced. The Pope’s throne had been brought in to loom over the proceedings on its own dais, and he already sat ensconced: Rodrigo Borgia no more, but Pope Alexander VI. I wondered if anyone else besides myself had thought it significant that he chose not an apostle’s name or a virtuous name—no Paul or John, no Innocent or Pius—but the name of a conqueror.

Even with the welcome refuge of his seraglio to relax him, a year on the papal throne had already worn grained circles under the eyes of Pope Alexander. But his heavy-lidded gaze was alert as ever as he looked out over the wedding guests, his heavy three-tiered papal tiara pushed back as nonchalantly as a cap on his black hair, and he lounged in his white and gold robes as Alexander the Great must have lounged as he contemplated Darius and the Persian hordes.

Until his daughter entered, flanked by his mistress. Then he had only the proudest and most tender of smiles.

The procession came with great pomp: a great fanfare of music, the Duke of Gandia in all his gaudy finery slipping back into place beside his father, Cesare Borgia coming behind almost unnoticed in his churchman’s robes. Archbishop of Valencia now, not just Bishop of Pamplona, but he still looked more like a lazy leopard dozing in the sun than a churchman. The guests fluttered, craned their necks, chattered excitedly among themselves . . . and yet the moment when it came was almost quiet: a girl of thirteen, swamped in jewels, slipping through the door into the crowded
sala
and pausing for a moment out of sheer nerves.

From my position squashed among the papal guards I saw Lucrezia Borgia swallow, her slim throat moving behind a collar of pearls and emeralds—and I saw Giulia, standing just behind, touch a finger to her elbow and murmur something too quiet to be heard. “Chin up,” I rather thought she would be saying. “You are the Pope’s daughter, so head high! Don’t worry about your dress; it has so many jewels it will fall into line all on its own.” For days before the wedding, Giulia had coached Lucrezia in her fifteen-thousand-ducat wedding dress, around and around the garden. “Glide, don’t struggle. Move
with
your skirts, not against them. That’s it, look how beautiful you are!”

She wasn’t beautiful, she was just young. Painfully young, and almost swamped under the weight of stiff jeweled brocade and ornate headdress and loops of pearls. But Giulia’s coaching paid off, because Lucrezia Borgia lifted her head and glided into the
sala
, moving at the center of her jeweled skirts like a shackled young swan. A rustle of admiration crossed the throng, and Giulia gave a smile of pride as she followed.

Dio.
So much fuss, so much anticipation, so much expense, and the wedding itself was over in no time at all. Lucrezia knelt before her father on a golden cushion, facing her bridegroom—Giovanni Sforza, Count of Pesaro, an agreeable-enough looking fellow of twenty-six with a long nose and a fashionable beard. He looked pleased enough as he listened to the notary drone, and I saw Lucrezia cast little sidelong peeping glances at her bridegroom.

“Illustrious Sir, are you prepared to pledge yourself to, and to receive pledges from, your lawful spouse, and to marry the Illustrious Donna Lucrezia Borgia, who is here present and promises to become your wife?”

“I do,” Giovanni Sforza said, “most willingly.”

Lucrezia Borgia repeated her vows in a firm voice (Giulia had coached her on that too); the rings were given; a naked sword was lowered ceremoniously over the heads of the bridal couple; a brisk homily on marriage was delivered . . . and the thing was done. Burchard sagged with relief; I rather wished there had been an assassin to liven things up.

The festivities moved out to the Sala Reale after that, a high-arched hall that had already been prepared with stools, padded benches, and liveried pages with trays of sweetmeats. The guests chattered and circulated, freed from the stifling confines of Burchard’s propriety and the small
sala.
I obeyed my orders and drifted, keeping my charges in my sight. Lucrezia, stiff with the importance of the moment, sitting between her papal father and her new husband as the first dishes were presented . . . Giulia moving effortlessly through the crowd, laughing and easy, drawing every eye . . . little Joffre in a slashed-velvet doublet, pop-eyed with the effort to behave like a prince . . . Cesare, dark and lounging, lifting his cup across the room to his sister and winning from her the first effortless smile of the evening . . . Still no assassins, and a troupe of players came out, painted and masked, to launch into one of those mindless comedies that seem inevitable at all weddings, and I thought,
How Anna would have loved this
.

Had my friend been alive, I would have smuggled her in to watch this gathering of the greats. Gotten her a temporary job as serving maid, perhaps. But of course, Anna could not ever have been here to gape at the young bride’s jeweled gown, or marvel as the Pope settled himself in his throne with all his Spanish arrogance. If Anna had not died, I would never have swum into the Borgia orbit at all.

The comedy was succeeded by a more classical offering; a Latin play by Plautus that the Pope silenced halfway through, bored and frowning. Giulia Farnese slid from her chair to curl on the step below his throne, her fingers stealing upward to twine with his inside his sleeve, and he smiled down at her as a poet hastened forward with a pastoral eclogue. Papal thunder, abated by a woman’s slow-burning smile.

I could hear Anna’s voice, but not remember her face. It had been a long time since I’d thought about the man who had escaped me: the one in the mask who had helped kill her. I’d done for the other two, after all. No need to look for the third. Especially not with Cesare Borgia warning me just what would happen if my knives stirred up any trouble, for any reason other than protecting his family. I was certainly no hero—bringing a murderer in a mask to justice wasn’t worth having my own murder charges resurrected.

The eclogue concluded with a flourish, and a roll of laughter and applause crossed the vast
sala
. Women were squealing and fighting over the passed trays of sweets, and I recognized
Signorina Cuoca
’s little fluted
tourtes
with the rosewater glaze, her stuffed and sugared figs, her colorfully dyed marzipan treats. I never understood how that unsmiling stalk of a woman with her fiery glares and dark Venetian curses could produce such airy delights in food. On the dais, Lucrezia looked far too excited to eat, but Giulia reach up to press a slice of candied pear into her papal lover’s mouth, and he unhurriedly sucked the sugar from her fingertips.

What is wrong with me?
I wondered in some irritation. Everything I had ever dreamed of—money in my purse that did not depend on the fickle luck of the cards; good food when I wanted it; a soft bed; books enough to drown in; and spectacles like this for marveling and mockery. But all I felt was discontent rising in a gray tide, and I couldn’t shake the thought of Anna. I didn’t miss her—I remembered how her giggle had sometimes grated on me, how her breath was stale and how her openmouthed awe at the doings of the great had brought cutting japes out of me until her eyes welled with hurt. I didn’t miss her, not really . . . but maybe I missed the taut, focused fury of the chase I’d launched on her behalf.
Fool
, I mocked myself.
Fool to be dissatisfied just because you’re bored.

But perhaps the soft bed and the easy money and good food wasn’t all I needed to be happy. “What is it you most wish for?” Cesare Borgia had asked me at our first interview.

Books. To be tall. To matter.

One of three, surely, was not at all bad in this unlucky world. The Borgia library
was
splendid. If I grew bored sometimes—and bodyguarding could be an idle, tedious business—then a good book did much to distract my restless brain.

“Little man!” The ambassador from Milan paused in a tipsy lurch across the
sala
. “Juggle for us, little man!”

“No.”

The ribald comedies ended as the skies outside darkened, and one by one the guests began drifting for the doors, casting longing looks behind them to where the Pope had gathered his most intimate circle of allies and enemies. A private
cena
, I knew; perhaps twenty or thirty guests, and every ambassador present took note of those who stayed—those who mattered. Cardinal della Rovere, spouting hatred toward the rival who had beaten him for the papal throne; Cardinal Sforza, who oozed complacency for having sold his vote in the papal Conclave for this marriage of Lucrezia Borgia into the Sforza clan; Adriana da Mila, for once just beaming instead of counting her ducats . . .

Wedding gifts: a
credenza
service of solid silver; lengths of Milanese brocade; two massive rings from the Duke of Milan. Giovanni Sforza took the pearl ring and slipped it over his bride’s finger, lifting her hand to show it off in a credible courtly gesture, and Lucrezia forgot her stiff dignity for a moment and giggled like the child she was. Giulia had slipped from her chair to sit openly on the Pope’s knee, one affectionate hand toying with the black locks of his hair, and Rodrigo Borgia deliberately dropped a candied cherry between her breasts. Giulia gazed at him in mock outrage, but he bent his head and teased the cherry out between his teeth. She laughed a little, cheeks brightening, and every man in the room stared on in envy. I pushed off from my place against the tapestried wall and swung away for the stairs leading outside, craving fresh air. No assassins in this crowd, and if there were they would soon be too drunk to stab anyone.

The vast Piazza San Pietro outside was quite dark, but still busy enough with dawdling citizens. Women clustered, whispering and squealing, as wedding guests trailed out in their grand silks, some pausing to toss a few coins into the crowd, and children hopped and scrabbled under the brightly lit windows of the Vatican. I saw a tall figure standing in the shadows, a little distance from the papal guards who kept their vigilance by torchlight, and raised a hand to her.
“Signorina Cuoca!”
I felt a twinge of pain in my twisted thigh muscles as I crossed the stones toward her. It had been a very long day for my malformed legs. “Why aren’t you eavesdropping on the festivities with the rest of the servants?”

She didn’t answer me, just looked out over the
piazza
with a bitter twist to her mouth and her arms folded across her small breasts. “Look at that,” she said, and jerked her chin.

I saw nothing but a shadowy expanse of stones thronged with beggars and idlers. “What?”

The cook took a few angry strides into the
piazza
, bent and retrieved something, then stamped back. “Look!” she exclaimed, and thrust her hand under my nose. I saw something small and flattened in her palm, and it took me a moment to recognize it: one of her tiny bite-size strawberry
tourtes
, the ones she had shaped into minuscule roses with thin sugared slices of strawberry curving and overlapping like rose petals about flower stamens fashioned of saffron threads. Half the petals were gone now, the
tourte
squashed almost flat and the saffron center missing.

“They threw my sweets out the windows,” she growled. “Near half of them, judging from the mess stamped flat on these stones! Just ate their fill and tossed the rest away like trash!”

She flung the ruined
tourte
into the darkened
piazza
with one of her muttered Venetian oaths, and I watched a beggar hitch his crutch to scrabble it up. “Largesse to the crowds,” I said. “Sugared
tourtes
instead of bread; well, the Borgias do like to be flamboyant. Even in their acts of charity.”

“Everything could have been taken down in baskets for distribution!” She gave her hands an angry swipe across her apron. “Not just heaved out the window like scraps tossed for dogs. Three hundred pounds of sweets, and at least half are out here crushed into the ground! Weeks I spent working—you could recite two rosaries for how long each of those strawberry
tourtes
took. I didn’t even sleep last night, I—”