approaching and she unleashed her body and began to pummel him for all she was worth, letting herself be carried away by her own momentous passion.
She could feel her loins swarming as if a thousand snakes were writhing inside. She released a stream of gasping cries which broke through the blackness in Innocent's head and revived in him a last flush of passion so that he thrust his loins up at her, mumbled painfully through dry lips, groaned agonizingly in an evident warning climax and clenched his fingers into her thighs with a last strength.
Dazedly he opened his eyes again. His loins seemed to be covered with a sticky wetness amidst Lucrezia's meanings. His prick felt grazed, beaten, full of something that must escape. He saw her face mistily, head thrown back-beautiful neck-lips moving. His fingers dug hard into her fleshy thighs in a last paroxysm of life. He felt the climax near… on him… there! He gasped deliriously, felt his penis explode as if in a thousand pieces, fought for breath, fought for consciousness, felt himself losing both, tried to appeal to her with his eyes and slowly slipped off into a painful darkness.
Lucrezia had echoed his feelings with precision. Her flood of sensation had swamped up in her loins with a dragging delightful pain, swamped up and over just as his prick had seemed to be at its biggest in her so that she felt it would smash right through her and up into her belly.
For some seconds afterwards, still excited and hardly knowing where she was, she had swayed about on his prostrate body and then she had flopped down on top of him.
It took her almost a minute to begin to collect her wits.
The first thing she realized was that Innocent was not just lying still through exhaustion. He had lost consciousness. Lucrezia wasn't dismayed: this was all part of the plan-except that it appeared to be succeeding almost beyond expectations.
Swiftly, methodically, she got up and dressed. With the inside of her dress she wiped away any tell-tale signs of the Pope's incontinence and then she rearranged the bed and his body. After that she collected herself for a moment, checked everything, quietly went to the door and unbolted it. She tiptoed back to Innocent's bed, let out a high-pitched scream and rushed back toward the door.
She hadn't reached it before it was flung open and two attendants rushed in.
Lucrezia pointed to the bed.
“God protect us,” she cried. “His Holiness just passed out in the middle of talking.”
CHAPTER 6
The news of the Pope's collapse spread like pillage through the city.
His doctors came forthwith and pronounced that the strain of receiving visitors had obviously been too much for his weak heart. There was little hope of his survival beyond a few hours.
His doctors stayed at his bedside and visitors from the Pope's circle were frequent. He got weaker and weaker at a very rapid rate. His physicians were agreed on their helplessness in face of his critical state.
The following day, Innocent, without having regained consciousness, was still clinging weakly to life and a Hebrew physician came to his bedside, claiming to have a prescription which would save the dying prelate's life. For his task, he said, he needed the blood of young boys. The Pope's skeptical physicians eventually found him two young boys, who, for a ducat each, were prepared to give him all the blood he needed.
But so complete was the failure of his remedy that the two boys died and the physician was forced to flee to save his own life from the wrath of those who had doubted him from the beginning.
For just one more day, Innocent lay in his bed breathing very feebly. In the early hours of the following morning he was found to be breathing no more.
Cardinal Roderigo lost no time in organizing the succession. Even during the prescribed nine days of ceremonies connected with Innocent's death, he was busy arguing, offering, bargaining, encouraging toward his own ends.
On the tenth day the cardinals assembled in St. Peter's to hear the Sacred Mass of the Holy Ghost recited on the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. They swore upon the gospels to faithfully observe their trust and the Conclave was immured.
A few days later Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was elected Pope Alexander VI. He had bargained well.
Many were the cardinals who benefited from Roderigo's election. To Cardinal Sforza went the vacated vice- chancellorship and the bishopric of Agri; to the Orsini the Church of Carthage and the legation of Marche; to Colonna the Abbey of Subiaco; to Savelli the legation of Perugia; to Raffaele Riario went Spanish benefices worth four thousand ducats yearly. They, too, had bargained well.
Lucrezia, who had played the largest part of all, was rewarded with a beautiful diamond necklace and a passionate night in her father's bed during which he mounted her five times and both were completely satisfied. She was then sent off to continue her studies under the tutors who were shocked at her provocative display of bosom and would have died of horror had they known exactly what had been displayed to the Pope before his death.
CHAPTER 7
Cesare had been brought back to Rome on the news of his father's election. Cardinal Roderigo felt it only fitting that his son, whom he hoped would one day succeed him, should be present at the ceremony.
Ever since his adventure with his sister, Cesare had been in a fever heat to renew his relationship with her, but there had been no opportunity.
Over and over in his mind he had relived those furiously passionate moments by the pool, over and over he had thought of how next time he would be less embarrassed, more expert, more concerned with prolonging the pleasure. His incestuous lovemaking had given him a new awareness of women as well. In Perugia he had watched them walking down the street with their bosoms soaring, had imagined their breasts untrammeled by clothes. He had stared at the occasional traces of a round and protruding buttock under a dress such as the peasant girls wore and had longed to move up behind and place his hand on that undulating mound of firmness. He had longed for lips, for fondling hands, for the aching sensation of that body-grip on his penis-until he walked around with an almost permanent erection and a slight flush always on his face. At night he was haunted by dreams of his sister's passion-wracked body, images of other bodies. He masturbated with a new vigor. He almost wept with desire for a good screw. And on return to Rome he conceived of a daring plan to achieve the aided orgasm he so desperately needed.
The interregnum between the death of one Pope and the election of another was invariably filled with a furious outburst of lawlessness in Rome. Bands of lawbreakers would roam the streets. Murders were committed on an average of several a day, robberies took place on an unprecedented scale and rapes were so numerous that count was lost. It was this savage jungle state within the city that Cesare decided should cover his own fulfillment of his desires.
In the grounds of Cardinal Roderigo's house was a gardener's shed in which Cesare had previously noted some old, cheap clothing such as would be worn by the ordinary citizen. This, he decided, he would don one evening when his father was not at home. He would rub grime into his face, tousle his hair and, with his gold-hilted dagger in his belt under his doublet, sally out into the lawless streets in search of a woman.
It was a wild plan, he realized. It was full of dangers. He, himself, might be attacked; he might be caught in the act of rape; he might be beaten up by the city guard which functioned in a desultory fashion from time to time. But on the first count he hoped his old clothes would make him seem too worthless an object to make it worth anybody's while to assault him-and on the others he'd take a chance, so dearly did he need to plunge his dagger of genital flesh into a female sheath.
For a couple of days, while he awaited his opportunity, Cesare wandered through the city, which was calmer by daytime, watching the women who quickly came and went, or-in large bands for safety-washed their clothes down at the river's edge. He particularly frequented the poorer sections of the city as it was here that he was more
