The Borgia Bride

The doors closed behind her with a slam that echoed down the long Vatican corridor.

As they did, she sank slowly to her knees, to the sound of the bolt sliding into place on the other side of the thick wood.

I glared at her, unable to comprehend the monstrousness of her actions, but she would not meet my gaze. Her eyes, focused on some far-distant spot, were dead-devoid of any light or hope.

I screamed at her, with such volume, such force and fury that my lungs were left burning, my throat ragged, raw.

‘Why?’

‘WHY?’

I lurched forward and sank to her level; if I had still possessed my stiletto, I would have killed her. Instead, I pummelled her with my fists-feebly, for grief had devoured my strength, leaving my limbs heavy, numb.

She reacted limply, like a corpse, making no move to defend herself.

‘Why?’ I screamed again.

She returned to herself as though from a great distance, and whispered, ‘Rodrigo.’

With the release of that single word, she began to weep-silently, without expression, like ice melting.

At first, I thought she meant the Pope, and recoiled in disgust: was this some conspiracy she and her lover- father had planned?

And then, seeing the purity of her grief, I understood with sudden horror that she meant her child.

The baby. Cesare must have threatened her with the only thing that could possibly make her betray her husband, for there was only one in all the world Lucrezia loved more than Alfonso.

At the moment that I hated her most, I understood her best.

Shrieking my brother’s name, I raised my arms and beat vainly against the heavy doors until my hands were bruised and aching, while Lucrezia softly wept.

XXXIV

Along, dreadful silence ensued from within the closed apartment, broken only by my cries for Alfonso, and Lucrezia’s gentle sobs.

At last, the doors opened, and Don Micheletto emerged.

I rose and tried to move past him, to see for my own eyes the inevitable result of my brother’s return to Rome-but soldiers barred my entry and my view.

‘Donna Lucrezia,’ Micheletto said, his tone smooth and dolorous, ‘an unfortunate accident has occurred. Your husband fell and reopened one of his wounds. I regret to be the bearer of such sad news, but the Duke of Bisciglie has died of a sudden haemorrhage.’

Behind him, from Pinturicchio’s frescoes, the sibyls glared mutely down at the ghastliest of crimes.

‘Liar!’ I shrieked, beyond all self-control. ‘Murderer! You are as evil as your master!’

Micheletto was also as self-possessed as Cesare; he ignored my words as if I had never said them, and instead directed his attention to Lucrezia.

She did not respond, did not stir at the commotion surrounding her. She remained dazed, seated on the floor with her back to Micheletto, silent tears still streaming down her face.

‘How terrible!’ the commander murmured. ‘She is in shock.’ He reached for her arm, to assist her to her feet; I leaned forward and slapped him on the cheek.

He drew back, startled, but was too cold-blooded to redden; he composed himself at once.

‘Do not touch her!’ I cried. ‘You have no right-you filth, with your hands tainted by her husband’s blood.’

He merely shrugged, and watched calmly as I helped Lucrezia rise. She did so like a puppet, with no will of her own; hers, after all, had been stripped away by her brother and father.

Meanwhile, soldiers led away the arrested doctors, Clemente and Galeano, as well as Alfonso’s male attendants. The ambassadors’ representatives were firmly dismissed, and when the Neapolitan at first refused to leave, a blade was held against his throat until he yielded.

A large group of papal guards then emerged, those on the outside trying to shield from view the burden their comrades in the centre bore: my brother’s body.

Lucrezia turned away, but I pressed forward, trying to see Alfonso for the last time; I caught only a glimpse of golden curls, speckled with blood, of an arm swinging limply down. As the men passed, I tried to follow, but a pair of soldiers stepped forward, barring my way. They forced me back, and moved into position, flanking me and Lucrezia; they had clearly been assigned to guard us.

‘The King of Naples shall hear of this,’ I raged. ‘There will be recompense.’ I scarcely knew what I said; I only knew that no words would ever be strong enough to avenge the crime committed here. Don Micheletto did not even try to feign concern; one of the soldiers laughed aloud.

Donna Esmeralda and Donna Maria joined us; the guards waited until Alfonso’s body had been far removed from our sight, then prodded us to move.

In those early moments, my mind refused to accept what had just happened. Numbed, I shed not a single tear as we were led away. Once we had left the Borgia apartments, and were in a corridor leading out of the Vatican, I spied on the floor a heart-wrenching sight: a dark blue velvet slipper, one Alfonso had worn during his month of convalescence in the Vatican; it had fallen from his body as the soldiers bore him away. I leaned down and picked it up, then clasped it to my bosom as though it were a holy relic-indeed, it was to me, for my brother had the heart of a saint.

The guards were wise enough not to take it from me.

Clutching Alfonso’s slipper, I staggered outside into a landscape made meaningless and unfamiliar by grief. The voices of the pilgrims crowding Saint Peter’s piazza were a harsh, incomprehensible babble, their moving bodies a vertiginous blur. The gardens, lush and verdant in the humid summer heat, seemed mocking, as did the breathtakingly lovely marble entrance to the waiting Palazzo Santa Maria. I was offended: how dared the world parade its beauty, when the worst possible event had just occurred?

I stumbled, and several times came close to falling: I believe Donna Esmeralda caught me. I was aware only of a rotund black-clad body next to mine, and a pair of familiar, soft arms.

The soldiers spoke: I did not understand them. I know only that at some point, I found myself sitting not in my own chambers, but in Lucrezia’s more luxurious ones. She was there, weeping, along with Donna Maria; Donna Esmeralda sat next to me, and from time to time, asked questions which I did not answer.

Had I possessed my stiletto in those first dreadful hours, I would have slit my own throat. It mattered not to me that I would have yielded to cowardice, as my father had: nothing mattered at all. A blackness had settled over me, one far more profound than that of my father’s chamber in Messina.

In my mind, I was a petulant eleven-year-old rebuking my father for punishing me by separating me from Alfonso. It was not fair, I had told him, for my brother to be hurt, too.

My father had smiled cruelly-as cruelly as Cesare Borgia-and taunted me. How does it feel, Sancha? How does it feel to know you are responsible for hurting the one you love most?

For my efforts to save Alfonso by assassinating Cesare had directly resulted in my brother’s death.

I have killed him, I told myself bitterly. I and Cesare. If I had never allowed myself to fall in love with Cesare, had never come to reject his offer of marriage, would my brother still be alive?

‘You lied,’ I told the strega, whether aloud or silently, I do not know. ‘You lied… You said if I wielded the second sword, he would be safe. I was only trying to fulfil my destiny…’

In my imagination, the strega appeared before me-tall, proud of bearing, veiled. Like the sibyls in the glorious Borgia apartments, she remained maddeningly silent. ‘Why?’ I whispered, with the same raw fury I had shown Lucrezia. ‘Why? I was only trying to save the best and gentlest of souls…’

At last the initial shock of the event wore off and the brutal reality of my brother’s death overtook me. Cesare and my father became intertwined in my thoughts, as the cruel, dark-haired man who had taken Alfonso away-a cruel man I had helplessly loved, and also been forced to hate.

As a child, I had cried when my father separated me from my brother; afterwards I had sworn that I would