boundary was drawn by the beautiful Lucrezia, for whom my love was undiminished. She had not accepted my explanation as to why I had severed relations with her brother in his hour of great need; but I convinced myself that if I were to go about the matter properly, she could eventually be made to understand. Though devoted to Cesare, she understood as clearly as anyone that he really was a treacherous scoundrel.
Before leaving Rome I had one more opportunity to speak to Madonna in the underground complex where we had met on my most recent return to Rome. The murdered bear was gone now, but ropes and chains still hung from the ceiling, as if in readiness for some other creature to take its place.
At the time of our final meeting in that chamber, days had passed since Alexander's death, but Lucrezia was reluctant to start back for Ferrara as long as her beloved brother's life, health, and fortune still hung so perilously in the balance.
I presented myself before her, and we began a conversation that quickly turned into an argument. Madonna Lucrezia declared, with great spirit and passion, that dear Cesare at this moment needed all the help that everyone could give him, and I was a scoundrel for choosing this time to leave his service. I in turn described the way in which her brother had mortally insulted me, and assured the lady that if he were not her brother, he would even now be sharing in the funeral rites, such as they were, of Alexander.
To vindicate myself in Lucrezia's eyes, I justified, in legalistic detail, my reasoned refusal to take part in the ordered cleaning-out of her father's treasury, the thievery of money that, as everyone admitted, belonged to the Church. As far as I was concerned, their father might have stolen freely from the Church he was sworn to protect, and Cesare might continue to do so, if he considered such actions compatible with the Borgia honor—but theft of any kind has always been utterly repugnant to the honor ofDrakulya, and that the contemplated thievery was sacrilegious only made the matter considerably worse.
I asked Lucrezia whether she had never heard of my reputation as a ruler, of the thousands—the numbers grew with the stories, from year to year—of impaled bodies of bandits that lined my highways? Her reply— something to the effect that if I could impale all those people, why should I draw back at a little pilfering in a good cause?—showed her failure to grasp the true moral principles involved.
It argues much for the closeness of our relationship that, after we had such a discussion, we were still on speaking terms. I of course volunteered to escort Lucrezia safely home to Ferrara, Word had reached her in Rome that her husband had come home from one of his artillery outings rather sooner than expected, and was complaining of her absence. Or if she preferred, I was available to carry a message there for her.
But haughtily she said: 'If you will not help me to save my brother, then I will accept no other gifts or favors from you.' And as we parted matters between us were left in that unsatisfactory state.
I felt the need of rest, but at the same time I was troubled by a vague uneasiness—from my early youth (as I have explained elsewhere) I have been immune to fear, but no sane person made an enemy of Cesare without feeling some unease about it. Therefore I chose for my place of retirement the newest of my several Roman earths, one I felt confident the Borgias did not know about.
The location I had chosen for this facility was not far from dear Lucrezia's poison laboratory. Intrigued by the riches of ruins underground, I had spent some of my spare time in reconnoitering the vicinity and had in the process located another buried chamber that was eminently suited to my special needs.
The chamber in which I now established my new earth was another remnant of imperial Rome. Once it too must have been located on the surface of the ground. But now it formed a subterranean hideout, cut off virtually completely from the surface as far as access by breathers was concerned.
To this remote cavern I had managed to convey most of the Transylvanian soil from one of the caches that I now considered only doubtfully secure. Naturally I did this work at night, when the smallest crevice served as well as an open door to let me through. And in my new earth I was able to rest securely through the following day.
When night dawned again, I awoke feeling utterly tired of Rome, of Italy, of the entire situation in which I found myself. I felt convinced that the best thing to do was to put as much distance as I could between myself and the affairs of the Borgias as soon as possible. There was really nothing to hold me in the city any longer, nothing to keep me in Italy but my wavering affair with Lucrezia, and I foresaw no very smooth course for that in the immediate future. And there would of course be danger, subtle and miasmic, without any real prospect of anything in compensation. Borgia at the moment was too intensely concerned with his own survival to spend much time scheming for revenge, but with him one could never be too careful. I had no inclination to break my vow to Lucrezia with respect to her brother's safety, and certainly no positive wish to die.
(Here there follows a period of silence on the tape, broken occasionally by sighs and mutterings too faint for intelligibility.)
* * *
There is a small narrative problem here, but I shall handle it this way: The following three or four years of my life, until approximately the end of 1506, constitute an interlude having little or nothing to do with the Borgias, belonging rather with a series of unrelated events that I may decide to chronicle at some time in the future. Therefore I shall now pass over this interlude in silence. Suffice it to say that I spent the bulk of those three or four years out of Italy, and most of the time away from my homeland also. Thus a considerable period elapsed in which I saw neither Lucrezia nor Cesare, though news of Duke Valentino did reach me on rare occasions.
It was in late 1506 that I began to interest myself closely in Borgia affairs once again. The proximate cause of this renewed concern was a message from Lucrezia brought to me, in a far land, by Constantia, who had committed it to memory, word for word. This was the first time in several years that I had seen my little gypsy friend, and her visit, apart from any news she brought, gladdened my heart.
In the interval since our last meeting, of course, the world had changed, though as so often happens the greatest changes were not immediately perceptible. Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, had died in 1498, and Columbus in 1506. The newest Pope, Julius II, was directing his considerable fierce energies to the task of creating St. Peter's as we know it today, and to this end he had summoned to Rome a horde of artists and craftsmen, Michelangelo among them.
Lucrezia, at the time I received her urgent message, had already begun to be intensely on my mind. Ferrara would have been the natural place for me to seek her, and indeed I was considering such a pilgrimage when her communication arrived. Her situation in Ferrara had not changed drastically, except that her husband's father had died in the interval, and she was now the Duchess.
Her message began appealingly, telling me that I was the only one she considered strong and trustworthy enough to save her brother now, from whatever immediate danger was posed by his swarm of enemies and his own nature. She was not specific about the danger. None of this surprised me particularly; what did somewhat surprise me was that I was not urged to go immediately to Navarre, where Cesare was now, but summoned to Ferrara first.
I have said that it was not at all unexpected to hear that her brother was in trouble. I already knew that once the prop of his father's powerful support had been knocked from under him, his own career had gone downhill rapidly. He had careened briefly around Italy, surviving episodes of imprisonment, escape, and exile. He had confounded his enemies by recovering from his near-fatal illness of 1503, and then rebounding from one fresh political and personal setback after another, but in three years the total sum of his bad fortune had proved too much for him. As it would have done, I suppose, for any man.
Among his legion of enemies it was certainly necessary to number the new Pope, Julius II, a harsh autocrat who had long been a Borgia rival and was certainly no friend to Valentino now.
I found Madonna Lucrezia predictably in Ferrara, to all appearances happily and comfortably settled in there with her third husband, the fortunate Duke, and their several
Meanwhile, Lucrezia herself, in opting to remain in Ferrara, enjoying the consolations of religion, and sharing the life of the breathing man who had given her a decent life along with their children, had with clear eyes given up all thought of vampirism—for herself. She was not even tempted, finding the idea increasingly repulsive despite its promise of certain enhanced powers and a much extended life.
She was, however, even more concerned about her brother than her message had indicated. And she knew that her brother would never rest, in this world, until he could get back upon that stage himself.
Adding to Lucrezia's burden, so she informed me, was her increasing concern lest Cesare become a vampire, whether fully intending to do so or not; and she persisted in viewing this outcome as somehow bad for his soul.
