‘Your Holiness,’ he uttered breathlessly, and knelt to kiss the pontiff’s foot. Unable to speak, Alexander frantically gestured for the man to rise and give his report.
‘We have found the Duke of Gandia’s groom,’ the guard said, ‘in an alley near the Tiber. He has been pierced several times with a sword; he is dying, unable to give witness.’
Alexander put his head in his hands and slid from the throne to his knees.
‘Leave us now,’ Jofre commanded. ‘Come back when you have news of the Duke.’
The soldier bowed and left, while we two went to the weeping Alexander and tried to wrap our arms about him as he swayed in misery on the steps. I did what was expected of me, as a good daughter-in-law-yet I was surprised to discover that, at the same moment I despised him, I could not help feeling pity for the old man’s genuine suffering.
‘This is my doing, O God,’ he cried, in a voice so wrenching, so heartfelt I had no doubt it ascended straight to Heaven. ‘I have killed my son, my beloved son! Let me die now-let me die in his stead!’
His wailing continued onwards for an hour, until another papal guard entered the room, accompanied by a peasant.
‘Your Holiness,’ the guard called out. ‘I have here a witness who says he has seen suspicious activity relating to the Duke’s disappearance.’
Alexander seized control of himself with a will admirable to behold. He rose-refusing Jofre’s and my assistance-and with consummate dignity, went up to his throne and settled there.
The witness-a middle-aged man with a dark matted beard and hair, dressed in a torn, dirty tunic whose vile smell marked his profession as a fisherman-removed his cap and, trembling, ascended the steps to kiss the proffered papal slipper. He then descended and, twisting his cap in his hands, jumped when the Pope commanded, ‘Tell me what you have seen and heard.’
His story was simple. On the night Juan went missing, the fisherman had been in his boat on the Tiber, close to the shore. Half-hidden by fog, he watched as a man riding a white horse approached the river from an alleyway. This was not in itself cause for interest, but what caught the fisherman’s eye was the body thrown across the horse, carefully held in place by two servants. As the rider reached the river and manoeuvred the horse sideways, the two servants took the body and slid it into the river.
‘Is it under?’ the man on horseback asked.
‘Yes, my Lord,’ one of the servants replied.
But the body failed to cooperate; the servant had scarcely answered before the corpse’s cloak ballooned with air, and pulled the body back up to the surface.
‘Do what must be done,’ the lord commanded. His servants pelted rocks at the body until it at last disappeared beneath the Tiber’s black surface.
I kept my arms wrapped tightly around Jofre as he listened, horrified. As for His Holiness, he heard all of it with a hardened expression.
When the tale was done, he demanded of the fisherman: ‘Why did you not report this at once?’
The man’s voice trembled. ‘Your Holiness, I have seen more than a hundred dead men thrown into the Tiber. Never has anyone shown any concern over one of them.’
As astonishing as this statement seemed, I did not doubt its veracity. At least two or three murders were committed each night in Rome, and the Tiber was the favourite repository for the victims.
‘Take him away,’ Alexander ordered heavily. The guard complied, escorting the fisherman off. When they were gone, the Pope again buried his face in his hands.
Jofre traversed the steps up to the throne. ‘Papa,’ he said, encircling his father with an arm. ‘We have heard of a murder. We still do not know if it involved Juan.’
None of us dared mention that Cesare’s favourite horse was a white stallion.
‘Perhaps not,’ Alexander muttered. He looked up at his youngest son with a flicker of hope. ‘Perhaps all our grieving is for naught.’ He gave a tremulous laugh. ‘If it is, we must think of a terrible punishment for Juan, for troubling us so!’
He vacillated between hope and despair. So we remained with him another hour, until a third papal guard appeared.
At the sight of this soldier’s expression, Alexander let go a howl. Jofre burst into tears; for the dread in the young soldier’s eyes revealed what he had come to announce. He waited until the sounds of grief subsided enough for him to be heard.
‘Your Holiness…The Duke of Gandia’s body has been found. They have taken it to the Castel Sant’Angelo, where it will be washed for burial.’
Alexander would not be restrained, would not listen to reason: he insisted on going to see Juan’s body, even though it had not been prepared for viewing, because he would not believe his son dead otherwise.
Jofre and I accompanied him. We flanked him as we entered the room where the women were gathering to wash the corpse; they bowed, astonished at the sight of His Holiness, and quickly left us alone.
Juan’s body had been draped with a cloth; Jofre drew it back reverently.
The stench assaulted us at once. The body had been in the river a night and a day, at the height of summer.
Juan was grotesquely recognizable. The water had bloated his body to twice its size; his clothes were torn, his belly bulged out from beneath his tunic. His fingers were thick as sausages. It was hard to see him thus: swollen tongue protruding from between his teeth, eyes open, covered with a milky film, hair plastered to his face with mud. He had been stabbed repeatedly, drained of blood, his skin the colour of marble. Worst of all, his throat had been slit from ear to ear, and the gaping wound had filled with mud, leaves, and bits of wood.
Alexander screamed and collapsed. The combined efforts of Jofre and myself could not restore him to his feet.
Because of the heat, Juan was buried as soon as he was washed and redressed. The coffin was carried by members of the Duke’s household and his closest men, followed by a contingent of priests. Jofre and I watched from the papal apartments as the torch lit procession headed for the cathedral at Santa Maria del Popolo, where Juan was interred beside the crypt of his long-dead brother, Pedro Luis.
The Pope did not attend-but he cried out so loudly that Jofre and I could not hear the other mourners. We stayed with him that night-unable to convince him to eat, drink, or sleep-and we never made any comment, then or later, about the conspicuous absence of Cesare.
Autumn 1497
XXII
Juan’s death prompted an investigation directed by Alexander’s most prominent cardinals, including Cesare, who made a great show of verbally attacking those suspected. The first investigated was Ascanio Sforza, the cardinal whose party guest had insulted Juan and been hanged for the crime. Cesare vilified Sforza, but the cardinal was wise: he did not bristle at the accusations, but cooperated utterly, insisting he had nothing to hide-a fact soon confirmed. Cesare grudgingly apologized.
Other enemies-Juan had earned many-were investigated, but time and persistence revealed no clues.
Or perhaps they revealed too much; less than three weeks after the crime, Alexander halted the search for the murderer. I believe he knew the identity of the culprit in his heart, and had finally given up trying to convince himself otherwise.
Wisely, Cesare had left Rome by that time on official business, presiding as cardinal legate at the coronation of
