The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) (47 page)

“Again, please!” I smiled a little as my husband described his
castello
with its painted sala and long gallery, the quiet little surrounding town with its fields and hazelnut trees. His shyness had fallen away these past few days, especially in the quiet evenings like this when he would knock hesitantly at my chamber door before
cena
, and I would wave him in to sit with my maids and me as we sewed. Pantisilea would pour wine for us, her ears standing out like jug handles in her eagerness to hear anything juicy, and I’d stitch crooked seams across the altar cloth I was mangling, and Orsino and I would talk. Not of anything very important, really. Just ordinary talk, like any ordinary husband and wife.

I liked that.

“And there’s a garden in the
castello
too, of course. Herbs for the kitchens, but I want to have it planted with flowers.” My husband’s blue eyes rested on me more easily now, and his voice was firmer than its previous nervous fits and starts. A young man now instead of a boy; handsome in his best doublet, which had just been brushed, and his boots, which had just been shined. A man come wooing, only Orsino was paying court to his own wife. That had touched me very much the past few days. “Do you like roses, Giulia?” he asked me, still enlarging on his plans for the
castello
garden.

“It is generally safe to assume that women like roses!” I teased him. I could see that little garden: just the kind of sunny place where the chatelaine of the
castello
might sit with her sun hat, reviewing the daily tasks with the steward and keeping watch over her children.

Orsino was talking about his horses now, and the good hunting to be had around the
castello
. Another night I would have been happy to listen as he rambled, but time was short this evening.
Cena
would be laid soon, and we would have an extra guest at table tonight: my mother-in-law had arrived by coach an hour ago. She’d been all correct courtesies in the hall, where I’d offered my greetings and escorted her to her own chamber to wash the travel dust away, but I didn’t in the least imagine that she’d wait until
cena
was done to come chide me, or her son, or both.

“—herons and ducks in the lake for hawking,” Orsino was saying. “I could get you a little merlin if you wanted to learn—”

“Husband,” I interrupted gently. “Perhaps you should just say it.”

He cleared his throat. “Say what?”

I set my own cup down, waving back Pantisilea and her pricked ears as she edged closer. “What you came to Capodimonte to ask me.”

He rotated his goblet between his hands. “You know what I want . . .”

“Yes, but I want
you
to say it.” Firmly. “Women are like that, I’m afraid.”

He gulped and took the plunge. “I want you to come back with me to Carbognano.” He even managed to look me in the eye. “It’s a good place to live, Giulia. I’d have to rejoin my men at Bassanello first, but I’d come back to you once the fighting was done.” A shy smile. “You know I want you there.”

And oh, part of me wanted it too. Bring up my Laura by the lake, away from the serpentine politics of the Vatican that had governed Lucrezia’s brief childhood. I could live quietly; not a harlot anymore, not spat on in the streets. In time my notoriety would fade, and I’d just be another young mother in the bosom of her family, taking her daughter to Mass and eating those little fried smelt that I liked so much. Eating as many of them as I wanted because I wouldn’t have to keep myself slim anymore just to keep a man’s passion stoked.

But—

“When the Pope orders you to send me back to Rome,” I said, “what will you do?”

His eyes flickered. “Maybe the Pope won’t order you back. You said his letters were angry—”

“But he still wants me.” My long absence really had made his heart grow fonder—which had been my aim, when I first departed Rome this summer. Now it looked like I’d succeeded a little too well. “What will you do if he comes for me himself, Orsino, instead of just sending your mother?”

A long silence as my young husband bit his lip. And then a knock sounded at the door, and before I could send Pantisilea to answer it, a figure swept in: square-faced, sharp-eyed, powdered, and curled.

“Madonna Adriana da Mila,” Leonello announced unnecessarily.

“Good evening, children,” my mother-in-law beamed, and her eyes did a fast relieved flick to see that we were well attended by maidservants. Holy Virgin forbid I ever be alone with my own husband! “So lovely to see you again, Orsino. Giulia, my dear, you’ve been too long gone from Rome! I’ve missed you terribly, and I’m not the only one.”

I didn’t offer her either wine or a seat. She helped herself to both.

“Goodness, but I’m tired,” she said, giving a wave of her hand to dismiss my maids. I nodded Leonello out too, and he shut the door on our little trio without comment. Normally, I’d have welcomed his presence here as a caustic-tongued shield against my mother-in-law, but I’d hardly spoken to my little bodyguard since the day I’d slapped him beside the shore. And I didn’t really want his sharp eyes on the quarrel I could already feel building in this room like storm clouds gathering over the lake, hunching Orsino’s shoulders and bringing my chin up at a defiant angle, as Adriana settled herself like a cozy velvet-clad cat.

“His Holiness ordered the pace himself when I started out from Rome,” she went on in her creamy voice, “and I must say it was a killing pace! Warm this wine for me over the brazier, won’t you, Orsino? That’s a dear boy. And then perhaps you’ll run along and allow me a word with Giulia. I’ve one or two things to discuss with her in private.”

“I think—” Orsino blushed as he took his mother’s cup, but he looked at her squarely. “I think I should stay.”

“Really, dear boy—”

“There is nothing you can say to me that you cannot say in front of my husband,” I interrupted, and gave Orsino a quick smile.

Adriana looked at the pair of us and gave a shrug. “As you please. I’ve a letter for you, Giulia, from His Holiness. You really have made him very irate, you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

“You don’t sound very bothered by that, my dear.”

“I’m not.”
Giulia la Coraggiosa
, I remembered Carmelina saying. “He doesn’t own me, after all,” I said, and gave another glance at Orsino where he stood warming his mother’s wine over the brazier.

“Maybe not, but His Holiness is still frantic to have you back.” Madonna Adriana gave a little smile. “Cardinals and ambassadors pressing him day and night about the French, and all he cares for is getting you safely back to Rome.”

“Hmm.” I picked up my mangled altar cloth again and began unpicking a crooked stitch. Orsino drew a deep breath.
Shout at her!
I winged the thought toward him, arrow-like.
Put her in her place!
But he crossed the room silently and gave his mother back her goblet.

“Thank you, dear.” Adriana blew on the surface of the warmed wine. “Now, Giulia. Your return to Rome isn’t just a matter of what the Holy Father wants anymore. It’s a matter of safety. You really must not be here when the French army comes—have you heard what happened to the other towns they’ve passed through? Men murdered, women having their fingers sawed off for their rings, altar boys raped—you know the French. Babies no older than Laura having their heads dashed against the stones—”

I jabbed the needle into the ball of my thumb, and winced. I’d managed to put the French rather successfully out of my mind lately, what with everything else I had to worry about. “Is the army really so close?”

“No more than a few days north, my dear. The advance parties may be even closer.”

“Then I’ll prepare to leave tomorrow,” I decided. Arranging my life to please myself instead of others was one thing, but there was no point in being foolhardy. One of my shutters had come loose in the night’s breeze; I rose from the cushioned wall bench and crossed the room to close it. Capodimonte was unseasonably warm considering it was November, but the nights were winter cold again. I hoped the French froze in their camp.

“I’m glad you’ve seen sense, Giulia.” My mother-in-law smiled. “I’ve already spoken with your sister downstairs; she’s planning to leave tomorrow as well. We’ll accompany her at first light, and strike out for Rome. Back and forth across the papal states at my age; goodness, but I feel like a message case sometimes—”

“Not to Rome.” I turned and faced my husband and my mother-in-law. “Orsino was just inviting to take me to Carbognano.”

“Was he?” Adriana looked at her son, who stood gazing at me with eyes suddenly alight. “Dear boy,” she clucked. “You know that will never happen.”

“Why not?” I challenged. “Even the Pope cannot excommunicate a man for taking back his lawful wife—”

“Excommunicate?” Orsino stammered.

“He’s always threatening to excommunicate me.” I brushed that aside. “It’s not important.”

“Some people would think it important,” Adriana murmured.

“Stay out of this!” I felt anger rising in my throat, all the hot words I’d ever choked back at my mother-in-law, at my husband, at my family—at the whole lot of them who had connived to put me in the Pope’s bed. Rodrigo’s motive for wanting me there had at least been passion, straightforward as the sunlight. What was their excuse? Even if I had enjoyed my time in Rodrigo’s bed, it did not excuse their greed.

Adriana ignored me, looking at her son. “I do hope you haven’t bedded her during this unwise little visit, Orsino. The Holy Father took it very hard before—it was all I could do to keep him from taking Carbognano and Bassanello away from you in punishment. You aren’t supposed to lay a finger on her; that’s the arrangement, and you know it.”

Orsino blushed. “I—that is, she’s my wife, there’s no wrong done if we—” He broke off, red as a sunset. “What I mean to say—”

“Oh good.” She patted her son’s arm. “You didn’t.”

“Either way, it is none of your business,” I said crisply. Of course I’d wondered, when Orsino first arrived in Capodimonte, if he meant to demand his right to sleep in my bed. My family had stuck him firmly in the farthest possible chamber from mine, but he could have crept along the passage to my bed any night he liked. I thought of creeping along to his chamber myself, but I didn’t think he’d like that—far too bold and unmannerly for a proper wife. I set myself to wait for him instead, and I couldn’t help but remember another set of darkened stairs, another flickering taper, as Lucrezia sneaked her husband up into her chamber for the first time. Most women could bed openly with their husbands; Lucrezia and I had to visit ours in utter stealth . . .

But at least Lucrezia’s husband had summoned the nerve to sneak into his wife’s chamber. My husband hadn’t. No more than he seemed able to summon the nerve now, to tell his mother what she could do with her meddling.

“Orsino,” I said. “Look at me. Not at her, at
me
.”

His blue eyes flickered as they met mine.

“Do you want me to come with you to Carbognano?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Jesu, yes.”

“Dear boy,” Adriana began.

“Be a dear, Adriana, and shut up,” I told her without taking my eyes from Orsino. “This is a matter between husband and wife.”

She pursed her lips tight, looking back to her wine. I reached for Orsino’s hands, and I felt his pulse thrumming right through me. “I’ll go with you,” I said, and felt my own pulse speeding too. “We’ll ride to Carbognano tomorrow, and I’ll be your wife and keep your
castello
and bear you sons. But the question stands: When the Pope comes for me, what will you do?”

Another long silence. My husband bit his lip.

Say you’ll bar the gates before you’ll let him take me, Orsino
, I found myself thinking.
Say you’d rather be excommunicated before you gave up your wife, Orsino. Say anything.

I could face down my Pope—I knew that now. I could face him down, and I would. But not if my husband was not firmly allied behind me.

“If we sent him the child,” Orsino blurted out. “If he had his own flesh and blood back, maybe he’d allow you to—”

“What?”
I dropped his hands. Whatever I’d hoped he would say, it was not that. “I am not going to give away my daughter!”

“Giulia—” Orsino’s eyes begged me. “I have to know. Is she his child? Or mine?”

“Oh, Holy Virgin!” I exploded, and found myself shouting. What a great relief it was, too. “We’ll never know, Orsino, we’ll never know and I’m sorry for that, but why does it
matter
by now? She’s
Laura
, that’s who she is. She’s the loveliest girl any man could ever hope to have as a daughter, so what
is
it with you men? Why do you and Rodrigo refuse to have anything to do with her unless you can prove she has your blood? Why is any of that her fault? You don’t
either
deserve to have fathered her!”

“I’m—I’m sorry—” Orsino stammered.

“You should be,” Adriana commented. “Really, Orsino. Laura’s a little love. And it’s not as though she’s your firstborn son and heir! There’s plenty of time for that later.”

I rounded on my mother-in-law. “So your plan is that I go back to the Pope until he’s tired of me, and then I settle down with your son and start birthing plenty of legitimate little heirs?”

Adriana’s voice was placid. “That seems entirely reasonable to me.”

I nearly heaved the altar cloth at her head. “What kind of mother
are
you?”

“The practical kind.” Her eyes met Orsino’s, and I might as well not have been in the room at all. “My dear boy, I only want what’s best for you. You’re like your father—sweet as clover honey, but he had no notion at all how to forge a path in this world, and neither do you.” Adriana looked momentarily sad, and Orsino reddened to the color of a pomegranate. “You’ll need assistance in your career, Orsino, assistance and patronage, and how are you to get that if you anger the Holy Father?”

“So you’ll just pack me off to the man who put horns on your son’s head,” I shouted, “and it’s all for his own
good
?”

“A mother does what she must to make sure her children succeed.”