Wolves in Winter (25 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

O
N ST STEPHEN’S DAY, WE AWOKE TO SILENCE. THE
storm and the fire from the French guns had stopped, and our skulls
rang with the quiet. There was no word from the town, though the scouts on the ramparts reported that the lines were still drawn up to the south and north-west of the Rocca. The Countess bade me
accompany her to the
farmacia
, where we spent a morning of ghostly peacefulness, preparing a mix of egg yolks, sugar and Brionia water, to smooth and whiten the skin. It astonished me that
she could appear so tranquil, and I asked her if she thought that Valentino might have reconsidered.

‘No, Mora,’ she answered grimly. ‘But then all the more reason to make the best of it. I don’t want to make an ugly corpse.’

Towards noon, as the mixture was cooling in a china pot and we were cleaning our hands with scraps of muslin, a maid came to inform the Countess that a messenger was positioned on the main
drawbridge.

‘Dress me,’ muttered my lady, and we hastened to her rooms. I laced her hurriedly into one of her finest gowns, scarlet tabby with a gold mantle, and she added her sable pelisse,
scrabbling in her jewel chest for her ruby pendant. Caterina paused before the looking glass, tweaking at her hair beneath her working linen cap, before loosening it and arranging it becomingly
over her shoulders. The glance she gave herself was one I had not seen in a long while – expectant, satisfied, flirtatious.

‘They’re lighting up the city, Madonna.’

From the window, I could see a train of torches, illuminating one by one the climb to the Rocca.

‘How festive,’ she replied sardonically, rubbing a layer of rouge over her lips. ‘Shall we?’

I followed her out onto the ramparts above the gatehouse. I saw how she set her shoulders so as not to tremble with the cold. Below us, he waited on his white horse. Like Caterina, Valentino was
dressed in red, an elaborate gold-frogged doublet beneath a scarlet cape, soft leather boots with gold spurs, and a huge soft hat with white eagle feathers that he swept off as Caterina stepped
forward. I hung back, hovering with the guards in the doorway, so that I could only see the colours of him, his face obscured by the Countess’s body and the rise of the wall.

‘Caterina, Countess of Imola and Forli?’

‘Monsieur le Duc.’

Their voices carried easily in the still cold, the Countess spitting the French title with courteous contempt.

‘I come to ask you, madam, if you will not render yourself peacefully into my protection, as your uncle of Milan chose to do. Forli is no longer yours to command.’

‘I will not.’

‘I have a guarantee, from His Holiness the Pope, that you will be compensated with another state, where you may live quietly and honourably with your children.’

‘I care not for His Holiness’s guarantees. And this is not the first time, Monsieur, that I have defied threats to my children.’

‘Then, madam, I will make you repent of this foolish pride.’

‘I repent, sir, that I ever trusted in the protection of the Pope. I repent that there is no longer justice in Italy, so that the Pope might declare untruthfully that I have failed in my
obligations to him. And I trust that Christ, the protector of innocents, will defend my cause. I have no need of your guarantees.’

‘But madam, I will have Forli, in spite of your cause.’

‘And I shall die for it like a man, sir, if I have to. I wish you good day.’

They were so well matched, the two of them. They might have been speaking in a ballroom, or a play, old hands at the game: he, gorgeously dressed and supplicating, she the proud virgin on a
tourney tower. I recalled the subtleties at Piero’s spring feast, long ago, a marchpane lady and her sugar knight.

The next day, as though to remind Caterina of her glory days in Rome, Valentino sent the cardinal of San Giorgio, her nephew by her first marriage, with another offer from the Pope. He came
puffing up on his mule, greeting her pompously, calling her ‘cousin’.

‘You are no cousin of mine, sir!’

He rummaged amongst a pouch of papers and held one up that she might see it.

‘His Holiness offers four thousand ducats, Countess. A pension that he will pay to you every year, if you will leave his state in peace.’

‘Forli is mine!’

‘And a safe conduct, see here, and you may remove all your possessions unmolested.’

‘What has he given you, Raffaele? How much to betray your family? Or did he promise to hurt you less next time he shoved his holy staff up your miserable arse?’

There were gasps of shock from the watchers, but I knew my lady, my courteous, perfect-bred Sforza lady. She was enjoying this.

‘If you will reconsider, Countess—’

‘I’ll consider nothing, you wretched catamite. Is there no end to your villainy that you would hide under the Borgia’s cloak to save your own sorry skin? I spit on you, do you
hear? I spit on you and your false and shallow heart.’

And she did. She sucked up a gobbet and plopped it over the wall, right on his bald holy head, cool as an urchin firing cherry stones. The cardinal took out a handkerchief and slowly wiped his
brow, mindful of his state.

‘You are most unwise, Countess. You are a woman, you can understand nothing of His Holiness’s mind.’

‘I understand his sacred greed all too well, Raffaele. Get you gone, and pray that you don’t meet your uncle in Hell. I will have none of such dishonest dealing, none of it. The
Borgia is a thief and you are his gull and I curse the day you were born a Riario.’

Again and again she refused. At length, the cardinal kicked up his mule like a chastened schoolboy, while the Countess wept with rage and recalled the vengeance she had taken for her Riario
husband, of how Forli had swum in the bloody tide of her anger.

To her defiance, Cesare responded by declaring the Countess an outlaw, with a price of five thousand ducats on the head of her corpse, and ten thousand to any man who could take her alive.
Caterina drew up her own proclamation, which she had read into the winter silence from the walls of the Rocca, offering an identical ransom for the Duke. They moved against one another like
accomplished chess players, each wryly mirroring the other’s advance. There was almost laughter between them, as though this really were an elegant game, as though Forli were not burning, as
though the stench of corpses did not carry to the Rocca on the winter air, creeping into our apartments even though I lit the purest Persian incense to keep it out. And the princes of Italy watched
the play, and sent letters applauding the Countess for her gallantry, and no one came to relieve us. But the net, the long ago plot of the spider Pope, was slowly, irrevocably, fastening us in its
mesh.

Caterina was growing desperate. She had the guns trained on the Palazzo Numai, she sent a squad of guards into the city in the night to attempt to kidnap Valentino, whose French soldiers cut
them down at the very foot of the Rocca, and sent their heads back as a gift the next morning. Valentino’s men were digging into the foundations of the fortress, attempting to deviate the
springs that gave us water, Caterina turned the guns on them. The earth beneath the battlements became a hideous puddle of blood. The surviving citizens, huddled around their pathetic fires in the
remains of their homes, repented of their cowardice and of having submitted so easily to Valentino. Each day, they saw their Countess on the ramparts, her breastplate fastened over her gown, going
among the soldiers to rally them. They whispered of her that she descended into the city at night, flashing a Turkish scimitar, taking her silent and stealthy vengeance on those who had betrayed
her. Notes arrived from the town, declaring love for the Madonna of Forli and begging her forgiveness, but Caterina cast them into the fire. She was pure Sforza now. The hardening I had seen in her
at Giovanni’s death was complete. It had sculpted her like granite. She thought no more of her children, or her people, or of me, or even, I thought, of victory. She thought only of the
battle, giving herself over to the urge for blood with more passion than she had ever known in the arms of her lovers.

In the last days of the year, hope arrived. The Florentines sent forty men, who had made their way south disguised as pilgrims journeying to the jubilee celebrations at Rome. It was not the four
hundred that they had promised, but they were admitted to the Rocca and swiftly set to the guns. They told the Countess that Giovanni’s brother Lorenzo was sending a mission on her behalf to
make peace with the Pope. From Milan came news that Ludovico Il Moro had formed a pact with the German emperor and was preparing to retake his city from the French-appointed regent. If my lady
could hold Forli until Il Moro had Milan, Valentino would have to withdraw and ride north to fight for his French masters. Caterina was quick to spread the good news amongst the men, and insisted
that the music and dancing continue nightly in the Rocca, that Valentino might know she was not cowed. Yet I knew that in her heart she was preparing herself for the end, and that, in part, she
welcomed the crisis that would come.

And I? I could not be afraid, for I knew I should live to witness Caterina’s humiliation. I had seen the end; I knew how it should go. My only hope was that the man in black, whoever he
was, would allow me to remain with her, to serve her in her grief as I had done in her happiness. I thought then that I knew my destiny, that my fate had not been cast in the marketplace at Toledo,
or in the Medici palazzo, or in the hills of Careggi. I thought that I could choose, and I chose Caterina, because I came to know, in those long days in the Rocca, that I loved her.

On the last day of the year, the French hanged a twelve-year-old boy, a pharmacist’s apprentice, claiming he had tried to poison one of their commanders. They burned the body in the
piazza, except for the head, which they mounted on a pole and paraded through Forli. They nailed his right hand to the door of his father’s house, and that was the end of 1499.
Valentino’s patience turned with the year. The Countess continued to taunt him, sending out rumours that he could not pay his troops, that the French king would abandon him, that the Pope had
disowned him. For her part, she declared that she would not leave Ravaldino until her fortress and her own body were in pieces. So Valentino moved his guns from the north-west wall, behind which
lay Caterina’s rooms, to the south-west, where the belt of the ramparts joined the massive central tower. The cannon no longer ceased at twilight. Valentino was in a hurry. For ten days the
artillery fired at the Rocca without cease, pounding the walls night and day.

Caterina’s ladies shut themselves in the sala, weeping and praying, or staring dumbly into the space that was shattered every few moments by the relentless thunder of the guns. I had never
been much amongst them, first for shyness and later as I had my duties in the
farmacia
and my study to occupy me. Nor did I care for their talk, for it was all of beaux and letters and
gossip, of who they liked and who they thought to marry. Such things could never be for me. They were not Forlivese, but Roman too – one could hear it in the nasal twang of their quick
chatter. They were all girls of good family. One was a cousin of Donna Alfonsina, Piero’s wife, who once, I supposed, had been my mistress in Florence. They talked of what would happen to the
republic now, if the French and the Borgia triumphed. Of how Piero was become a sot, idling his days between the tavern and the gaming house, loudly proclaiming the treachery of the Florentines to
anyone bored enough to listen, and how Donna Alfonsina still conspired for him, that the Medici might return to their lost palazzo. I had always thought them slight creatures, who cared for nothing
more than fine clothes and the latest poems, yet I pitied them deeply now, when even old scandal failed to liven their tongues. The French, they said, were gallant, they did not harm well-born
women, but none of them could forget what had become of the sisters of Santa Maria and they bewailed the callousness of their mistress, who had not seen fit to send them south to safety.

The guns went on and on. The very earth beneath the Rocca trembled with it. It was unendurable, save that we had no choice but to endure. The Rocca had been well provisioned, but supplies ran
very low, the salt pork was gone, there was no white bread. We lived on eggs and boiled beans and dried spinach, the men had gruel and cheese. No dancing now, no pretence that we should be saved.
No messengers could come near, we had no idea if Milan or Florence intended to make good their promises, and it was only the Countess, with nothing but the force of her Sforza will, which kept the
garrison from opening the gates to the enemy, for no mortal could withstand that chaos without running mad. I tried to forget that I needed to sleep, to eat. I worked frantically in the
farmacia
, concocting every cure I knew from our dwindling stock of herbs and ointments, passing among the men to dispense what little comfort I could.

At first, they had been sanguine. There was food enough, and fuel, and they were better off than the benighted souls beyond the walls. Under the endless pounding of Valentino’s guns, their
will was broken. They went to the guns like dumb beasts to the plough, and slept in their boots where they stumbled back in the
cittadella
. No stories, no games of dice or cards. The
Countess said they might have wine now, to give them courage, but the older ones soaked it up mechanically, cup after cup, and the younger men were dull and fuddled, swaying in disbelief as one by
one their companions dropped from the walls amongst them. I thought I had seen the worst when they dragged Suora Cecilia out beneath the ramparts, but maybe the devil’s own work was nothing
compared to man’s. I saw one fellow’s neck shot away so his head plopped into the hole between his shoulders like an egg into a cup, his mouth still babbling his surprise. After one
barrage the
cittadella
was filled with scattered limbs, like a child’s forgotten game of spillikins. Another man lay quiet under his blanket for days, and I thought him healed until
the stench grew too strong and I pulled away the covering to see his heart beating raw in his chest in a lattice of maggots. I understood my lady better then, for once one has seen such things pity
becomes dangerous. Those who grieved went out of their wits, raving and laying about with their swords so that we had to shut them in the dungeon beneath the house – the prison my lady had
named the Inferno. There was not time even, in those early terrible days of the year, to bury the dead. The French guns dug their victims’ graves and they were left to rot where they
fell.